who knew cleaning a toilet would be so fun?

So I was talking to a friend about our problems with Easton and she suggested a sticker chart since that is what she is using for her two boys right now. I am not always a fan of sticker charts but I'm kind of desperate so I went to work on one. Here it is:

And its working.

He has 13 responsibilities listed on the chart. Not all of them can be completed every day, but he only needs to complete 9 to get a big sticker for the day. Once he gets 4 big stickers, he gets a marble. Marbles are like money in a sense. One marble will get him a pack of skittles (his FAVORITE), two marbles will get him 2 toys at the dollar store or a mini icecream date with mom or dad, 3 marbles gets him a $10 toy, 4 marbles gets him a $15 toy. We're kinda banking on the fact that he won't be able to wait, although as you can see, he has 5 stickers. I asked him today if he wanted to get skittles with his marble or save it to get something else. He wants to save it so he can buy the train "Stanley". I actually am glad he wants to wait, because I think teaching a child the value of waiting is priceless, but yikes... we'll probably fizzle out the sticker chart around Christmas time because we are traveling so much and get it out again after the baby comes. (i'm sure it will be another adjustment for him)

So anyway, as you can see the last line says "Clean a toilet". Well I kinda put it on there in case he was having a hard day and still wanted that 9th sticker and so we could just clean a toilet real fast. I usually save bathroom cleaning for when he's at preschool. Well this kid LOVED helping me. It was crazy! He couldn't wait to clean all 3 bathrooms. Sweet! So I gave him 3 stickers for doing such an awesome job.

Oh and yesterday was our primary program. Nathan and I thought for SURE he wouldn't go up there. At the practices he'd just be his usual self. Rolling around on the floor. Collapsing with his hands over his ears, making weird screaming sounds. I know, it sounds like he has a serious problem. BUT with the help of the sticker chart AND a promise of skittles from his Aunt Shauna he did GREAT. I couldn't believe it! I got all teary eyed when he stood up there singing along with all 80 kids in the primary...okay maybe there's not that many but there are like 34 sunbeams (kids his age). But then he started hiding behind other teachers and kids because he "didn't want us to see him sing". But whatever. He went up there. He was somewhat reverent. And he got his skittles.

The Kids

Easton:

He is in love with the baby. He asks every day, multiple times a day, how big the baby is and if its coming soon. I keep thinking he'll grow tired of asking but not yet. He will come up to me and say "I want to say "boo" to the baby". Then he'll say "boo!!! did he laugh??" and of course I'll say yes he did laugh! He loves you! He wants to cuddle with the baby and he wants to know where its head is and bum is and legs are. It is just so cute.

We've been reading 5 verses of the Book of Mormon almost every night with Easton for a long time now. We're only in 2nd Nephi. But lately he has been VERY interested in what the words mean. He'll ask what each word means and what the phrase means. It really tests my knowledge and ability to teach vocabulary and gospel principles but I'm grateful for the inquisitive mind that he has. I have enjoyed reading the verses slowly. It helps me understand them more. I can tell that the Spirit is in our home when we read with Easton.

He loves preschool. I am impressed by his desire to do things by himself. He has ALWAYS wanted me to do things for him. He still has me dress him and everything, but now he wants to attempt his name by himself and do his homework by himself. It makes me so happy! I love his teacher and I know he'll learn a lot. He can almost write his name. Which considering he's only been going to preschool for a month and he had absolutely ZERO interest in writing before, its a miracle! YAY Easton!

Lincoln:

LOVES to help me in the kitchen. Whenever I am making something he'll say "help!" and scoot a chair over to help me. He's not much of a help but I love that he's at that stage. So cute

He loves to doodle. Everywhere! Every time he sees me on the computer he'll come sit on my lap and grab another piece of paper and make his little doodles. SO different from Easton. Easton never wanted to do much of anything by himself. Lincoln will ask me to draw a horse (swwwwe), a doggie, and a ball.

He LOVES "The Wheels on the Bus". I have been trying to get a good video of him but I fail every time. He'll go through all the motions. It is really cute when he puts his fingers to his lips and says "shh shh shh" at the end or attempts to cry like a baby. Love it.

I love my boys!

Easton's birthday day!

Easton had a great birthday in my opinion. He got to take fruit snacks for the kids in his preschool class, got a crown, a goody bag and they sang him happy birthday. Then he got to go to Wendy's with daddy for lunch. (His choice) and according to Nathan he kept saying "this is the best lunch ever!!".

Then he got to do as many Thomas videos on Youtube that he wanted and watched some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Then I made him pancakes for dinner, and not even healthy ones...although I did sneak in whole wheat flour and sucanat sugar. :) Then he got to open his presents and play with his friend Crew with his brand new Cranky the Crane. He was VERY cranky before he went to bed and my only regret is that I didn't have him call Grandma Judd. He got to talk to Grandma and Grandpa Seibel on Skype before he opened his presents and he wasn't ornery. I think he just needed some sleep. So ya. It was a pretty good day.

I am completely in love with my little boy. He is such a joy in our family. I love that he loves trains so much. At Walmart the other day I accidentally ran into the curb with our shopping cart. Easton's like "uh oh! We screeched around the bend!" He is constantly saying things like "oops you need to apply the brakes!". What kid says stuff like that? Oh a kid obsessed with thomas. ;)

Easton's Birthday Party

I finally broke down this year and threw Easton a little birthday party for him and his friends. I've never been into the whole birthday party thing but now I realize what I've been missing. It was SO fun to plan and SO fun to watch the kids have fun at the party!! I think it also has to do with the fact that Easton is 4 and likes to have fun with his friends. It was a Toy Story themed party. I found some great games online! The first thing I did was tell the kids that the lightning storm we had a few days ago wasn't a lightning storm. It was Buzz Lightyear's crash landing on earth!! And on the way down he bumped into the moon sending moon rocks all over our backyard! I needed help to get them cleaned up. So all the kids went out and cleaned up the "moon rocks" (tin foil balls). Once they were inside I told them that they were special moon rocks and that inside of them were special surprises. I hid things like candy and dollar store toys. It was pretty sweet if you ask me. :)

finding moonrocks

After a Toy Story Tattoo Parlor I had the kids go on a rescue mission. The little green army guys got lost in our backyard looking for Buzz Lightyear and that they needed to go rescue the guys and bring them back home. They LOVED this and they raced around and had so much fun finding them!

Easton with two fistfulls!

Then we opened presents. I debated on whether we should wait til the kids went home to open the presents so the other kids wouldn't be jealous but I'm glad I had Easton open them in front of his friends. It was fun to see their excitement as Easton opened their present. He got a Buzz Lightyear, a Stomp Rocket, and a little Alien fishing game.

I just had to post this picture because I thought it was SO cute. The other boys' name is Easton too, and apparently he was SOOOOO excited about the present he bought for Easton he couldn't contain himself!

Such a cute group of boys: Phenix, Easton, Easton B., and Jack

And here is my master piece. :)

We'll have a little party on his real birthday too. We have WAY too much cake leftover! They barely put a dent in the top layer! I'm excited to give him his presents. :)



**edited to add: I took Easton's friend Phenix to preschool today and he told me that Easton's party was SO fun and that he wanted to do the moonrock thing again and for me to tell the stories again. sweet. maybe i'll do okay as a mom of 3 boys? ;)

Fun in Boise

We had such a great time in Boise! While Nathan and his brothers and Dad were having a blast golfing and attending the BYU game, we were doing all sorts of fun things in Boise. Easton was absolutely enamored with Grandpa Seibel and just had to do every single thing that he did. All day.

We spent our first day hiking in the Boise foothills. Easton LOVES hiking. Since my dad was on call for work we couldn't go hiking in the mountains but he didn't care. But he does want to know where the roads are to get up to the mountains, so Nathan and I are planning on taking him hiking for reals sometime soon before the weather gets too cold. Lincoln loved it too but he tripped and fell a lot and it was pretty hot. Next year I"m sure he'll do a lot better.

Our next day we went to the old train depot in Boise. It has a beautiful view with gardens and a pond with huge koi and of course, an old train. The kids loved it. I LOVEd playing there as a kid so its fun to take them there too.

While Lincoln and I were napping my dad set up his old Lionel electric train set for Easton. Easton was seriously in love. He played with it for about 6 hours. Not kidding. He was so careful with the trains and just loved to watch it go around and around. Now he wants an electric train for his birthday....great. I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in trains!!

Sunday was church and then on Monday while my mom and sister and I were shopping Easton stayed at home with grandpa. They set up the tent in the backyard and then my dad taught him how to pick green beans. Easton wanted to even try the green beans that he picked that night for dinner. That's pretty huge for Easton. He also wanted to try a tomato in from the backyard. He didn't like either of them, but it gives me hope that as he watches us grow our own food he will want to try them more and more and learn that most food is pretty darn good :)

There are seriously so many pictures to go through because my sister is a great photographer and I keep telling her she needs to buy a good camera and work on that talent!

Easton's First Day of Preschool

This is the only picture I could snag of Easton. He is NOT good at getting his picture taken. But his face says it all. He LOVES his new preschool class. I can't believe it! I thought for sure it would be another rough adjustment for him but his teacher is excellent and I think he is getting better with his whole nervous-ness issues. The first time we took him to her house (the preschool area is in her basement--it is an awesome facility) he was SO nervous and wouldn't talk to her and had a meltdown when we tried to get him to take his picture. During his assesment he got a little too comfortable and acted like a goofball the entire time. He acted not as smart as I think he really is. He is in the 4 year class even though he won't start kindergarten for 2 years. I like that he's around kids that are a little bit older and I think its helped that we did Joy School last year. His friend Phenix is in his class with him (Phenix is in our ward and lives just down the street) so I think that helps. I am enjoying time with just one kid!

Easton

Easton in his element

Got this picture today. It was taken in May I think. I just love it!

Easton and Uncle Charles mowing the grass at his farm

Can I just say though how awesome Uncle Charles is? Every single Sunday unless he is out of town, him and his family put on an AMAZING Sunday dinner for at least 25 people. Family, friends, random college kids, you name it. It is just so fun with food, family and games. We look forward to it every Sunday. Easton just cannot wait. (I mean who wouldn't? Its basically a candy fest for both of my kids since I can't get them to eat anything). I am so grateful for his kindness and generosity.

a disaster!

I should be hopping in the shower or cleaning my house but instead I just had to blog my latest disaster. I'm in search of the perfect vanilla (or yellow or whatever) cake recipe from scratch. I am making a cake for Sunday dinner this week that will double as a birthday cake for one of Easton's second cousins. This particular recipe seems to raise a lot in the oven because It got all over my oven. It was sweet. NOT! My house smelled like burnt sugar all day and to make matters worse the cake sunk in the middle. Should I just give up? I have a great chocolate cake and a spice cake recipe but vanilla just is way too hard!

p.s. I was talking to Easton about how lucky he was to have grandmas and grandpas and how I didn't have any. He said "mom, you can have one of my grandmas and grandpas, we can share". so sweet. He is the best

Organized Chaos

Easton is sound asleep but this is what our loft looks like:


Normally I have him clean it up before he goes to bed but with 1:00 church and 5:00 Sunday dinner there is barely enough time to even get changed before we leave for Charles' house and then it is late when we come home. But this happens EVERY DAY. Every toy is meticulously placed on a cushion or blanket. He knows when you knock one off or put one away and he has a minor (okay MAJOR) meltdown when Lincoln tries to touch one. This wont' last forever right? :)

*at least this keeps him occupied and at least I have a loft away from my downstairs so I dont' have to look at it as much...

stuff

It was so much fun having my parents and Julie here last weekend. I kept saying how awesome it was to be able to have them all here and still have enough space. My parents never visited together when we lived in California and they never could have driven. I'm so grateful to be here. My mom helped me work out how to make my pillows not fray (genius!) and we amazingly finished them with the little amount of fabric we had left. Phew! And my dad helped me take apart my piano (like TOTALLY disect it) so we could paint it black. It was a big ordeal until we found the type of paint to use. I think it turned out great and I love the knobs I found. I was dead set on yellow knobs but I like these better. Easton for some reason had a blast telling stories. This was a new thing. He made up a story about a pig owl monster. I wish I had it on video. He is hilarious. We also went up to the temple that is right up the way and before we got there he kept saying something about "stacked" in regards to the temple. I'm like sure, ya, the temple is tall, whatever. But when we got closer Julie realized he meant "stuck". He proceeded to tell us that people go to the temple to get stucked together. I couldn't handle it, it was too cute and hilarious. He also though we got stucked together with tape. :) Just the monday before for Family Home Evening we had talked about the temple and how when we are married in the temple we can be together forever. But i didn't know if he understood what that meant so I said it would mean that we would be stuck together forever. I really didn't think ANYTHING had stuck with him that night. Guess I was wrong. He also is pretty stoked about our cold storage unit downstairs. He constantly wanted to build a cold storage out of legos with my dad or mom. Here he is playing with my mom :)

Lincoln is still obsessed with balls. And he LOVED Julie. That was definitely apparent since he was HORRIBLE for me yesterday. He can say "ball" and "hoop". Along with mama and dada those are his only words. Go figure. At church when he sees the basketball hoop he just stands under it and points. He wants to make a basket. Is he the next BYU basketball star? That would be sweet :D

I love our views out of our house. I have the mountains out of the big window at the top of the stairs and the temple outside our bedroom window. It is absolutely stunning at night. We have been spoiled by good views ever since we left Provo and this is by far the best place.


I tried to upload a video of Easton when we were discussing being stucked together but I don't know if it worked...so here ya go


Oh, and May the Fourth be with you. :D

Easter photo shoot

I got a great surprise today! My friend Mikelle posted my kids Easter photo session on her blog. See them here! They loved the bunny and of course they LOVED the candy!!!

Stuff

Well, since we are moving now life is probably going to get a little crazy. Thankfully Nathan's new job is hiring a moving company for us and we won't have to do much besides pack the boxes since I would feel weird having someone else pack my stuff. But there is still a ton that i want to get done before I go. Like see all our friends and hang out with family as much as we can, go to the beach, maybe go up to LA to get some fabric for the house that i have NO IDEA how to decorate. (I am going to need some major help so I'll definitely be asking for it!) I have some other sewing projects I want to get done before I'm away from my technical support group (i.e. cheryl and elizabeth), and I don't want to gain 10 pounds from all the stress eating I am doing right now. Oh, and I want to try and keep my house somewhat decent because for some reason all this stress and anxiousness to move makes me not want to clean as much)

Anyways...so there's a lot that happened last week. The day we found out that Nathan got the job, well the very moment, we were on a whale watching trip. We didn't see any whales but lots of dolphins and it was just fun to be on the water. I didn't really enjoy it as much as I would have since Nathan got the phone call ON the boat.





We left Easton with grandma Judd and all the cousins and we left for St. George that night. We got in at two in the morning and oh man. WE WERE TIRED! Lincoln sure was a trooper thats for sure. We spent the next few days looking at houses. It was fun yet tiring and hard to find the perfect house. We made an offer and we're supposed to find out more today but nothing so far. I took pictures of it but I'll show you more if it goes through I guess. I don't really want to get my hopes up too much. So here is what the front looks like. it has 4 bedrooms on the top floor with a large loft and it has a beautiful kitchen. BEAUTIFUL. It was a model home so it has all the bells and whistles. We really really love it.


It was really fun to just have Lincoln with us. We totally missed Easton and we talked about him every day, but it was fun to have one on one time with Linky. He is such a sweetheart and was so good. He's also a big cheese ball. Love him.


Oh, I finished the squares on the book of mormon quilt. Its not anywhere near done, but I feel like it was a big accomplishment. I actually really loved doing it and it was a great experience. I thought a lot about the story being depicted on the block as I was sewing and as crazy as it sounds it reaffirmed my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I know that it is true! Who knew sewing would do that to you? Now I am kind of lost when I am sitting watching TV with nothing to do! I hate just sitting there now! Kind of bad, but also really kind of good.

Oh and I love this picture of both of my kids playing with flour

Well, that's all for now. No guarantees on how much I'll be posting but hopefully we get some good house news this week!

Sometimes the mess my kids make when they eat makes me want to cry:

(this is Easton's way of "eating" chicken) I love that there is carpet under the table. NOT!!

More to come about our trip to Utah. We made an offer on a house in Riverton and we're just waiting to see what happens with it. It is a beautiful home that would be perfect for us for FOREVER!

just a lot of random stuff

Well it's been a little while since I've posted but not a whole lot has been happening! Nathan has been working A TON. But I can't complain since this busy season hasn't been bad at all this year. He got home at 11:30 last night and the night before last. Not a fan of that!

I'm feeling sick...not cool, since I am teaching preschool tomorrow and I have zero energy. I ran out of my precious echinacea last night and didn't get any until noon today. Hopefully I'll still be able to kick this cold before it gets the best of me.

I decorated 70 cupcakes in 7 different colors in the YW value colors for Young Women in Excellence or something like that. They wanted to do the olympic rings and I hope to get a picture of that so check my cake blog in a few days!

Lincoln is starting to play with cars, although he prefers balls, but he is making car sounds and it is just too cute. Lincoln also likes to watch Easton on the computer when he does his letters or watches his whale videos.


Easton is obsessed with everything whale. He checks out whale books from the library and then he'll take those books to the grocery store to look at while I shop. There is a whale skull on display at the grocery shopping center we go to and we had to take a detour to look at it. He wanted me to read the sign so he could know what it says and so I did (even though it had some pretty big words) and he's like "oh, that's what it says!". He is obsessed with whale videos on Youtube.

Easton has such a funny vocabulary from watching Thomas. His friend Nixon was over here today and I asked him if he had had fun with Nixon and he says "yes yes, I surely did". What 3 year old says stuff like that? I really had no idea I could fall so in love with my boys. They are just the best.

(here is an awesome tent daddy made this weekend)