Jakob's Sculptures

Jakob discovered a new talent today. As all kids are, he's fascinated with magnets. He took this to a new level and decided to make sculptures using drywall screws and magnets. So while my fridge door was bare because he took everything off, he made some pretty fun sculptures. Here they are.

Results Are In

Well its was a tough race (a whole 16 votes but hey, that's pretty good!). It looked like Fairy Tales and Copy Cats tied with Jac's Box of Books(my personal favorite but that's because I'm the Jac...). For most of the survey Fairy Tales and Copy Cats was tied with Dragons and Fairy Tales. SO we decided to combine them. The name of our store is officially (got the business license and everything!)

Dragons, Fairy Tales and Copy Cats

Bookstore and Copy Center

Steve and I are coming up with a fun logo to put on the sign, shirts, bookmarks, etc. We'll be selling both online and in the bookstore, hopefully to be opening in the next few months! Thanks for everyone's support! We can't wait to get it all started and share our love of reading with all of our friends and neighbors!!!!!!!

Ashley's a Big Girl Part 2

This morning I decided to see how much Ashley remembered from yesterday. She wrote her name with no help from looking at another page! She then asked how to spell Gavin so I wrote it out and she copied that and then proceeded to ask about each other family member in turn. After that, I asked her if she wanted to learn numbers so she worked on those too. She had a harder time with them because of the curvy 2 and 3 but still did pretty good! I don't have that part scanned though... My little girl is getting so big!!!

My Big Girl

Ashley has recently decided that since she is going to be 4 this month she wanted to learn to read. She wants to be able to read the scriptures with Daddy at night. While that will be a while from now, she's working very hard. She's been using Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons (By Siegfried Englemann) and did 5 lessons this morning!

Anyway, so after each lesson they have the child write one or two letters. She was having a rough time with s's so Steve decided to teach her A instead. She wanted to know the other letters for her name. I wrote it out in capital letters and then had her try. She wrote it all out on the first try! And the second, and third and on and on. She still has a hard time with the 's' but I was SO happy my little girl is learning to write! The best part is that as I was scanning her first paper(down below), she came in and showed me the paper she wrote it on again - this time without a prompt to show her the letters!!! Yeah, she's still three... for 3 weeks more anyway. :) What a happy day for any mom or dad - and yes, I did burst into tears the first time she did it...

Its Survey Time Again

We're getting ready to do business licenses and stuff and so we're in desperate need of a name. We've come up with a few but haven't picked one for sure. SO please help us out by voting for the one you like!!! Just click on your choice on the survey to the right of the page. :)

And any other names would be welcome. Here is what's happening in the store to give some ideas:
Books(of course)
Copy center with scrapbooking, laminating and book binding supplies
Games
Toys(not a lot)
Reading time for kids
Book clubs for adults,
Game nights every other Friday

ETC

Thanks! Any ideas for feedback would be GREAT!!!

Gavin and "The Girls"

It may not seem like much now, but Gavin carried this bag with the now popped balloon EVERYWHERE for the last several days.

He had been having a couple of rough weeks of not wanting to go to nursery for some strange reason. Although with the playdough in there I know I would have wanted to stay!!!

So his sweet nursery teachers decided to come during the week and let him see them outside of the nursery environment to see if he would get used to them and want to come again. They brought him this gift bag with the balloon, crayons and a Spider-Man coloring book. He wouldn't look at them and when he did he was embarrassed and would only smile and stick his tongue out(he does that when he's embarrassed). As they were getting ready to leave he snuck over and looked in the bag to see what was in there and LOVED his gift.

For the next several days that bag did not leave his sight - whether we were at home or in the car! It was a fight to get him to keep it in the car while we went into the store!! Now the balloon is popped and the bag is flattened but he still loves that bag.

Now you're wondering where "the girls" phrase comes in. Whenever Steve and I asked where he got that bag, he'd say "From the girls."

"Well, where do you see the girls?"

"Nursery."

"Are you going to go play with them on Sunday?"

"NO"

This went on for a few days with always the answer of "the girls" and an emphatic NO to the prospect of going to nursery.

Well, the results were positive and he went to nursery today! He did hold on tightly to Daddy's finger for a second but was thrilled to see the bubble machine and life was good! He was happy and grinning when he came to me after church. So thanks to his sweet teachers that went out of their way to get my little boy to nursery!!! Next on our list? Teach him their names. ;)

Blue Bunny

Now that I've gotten the "our basement flooded again" out of my system, I have some really fun pictures to show. We were in St. George last weekend and went to Blue Bunny for ice cream. We were there with Steve's sister and her family. We had lots of fun and lots of messes to clean up - mostly coming from Gavin's sundae!!

Steve enjoyed his banana split!

Jakob had a sundae with chocolate ice cream and chocolate sprinkles

Andy had about the same thing, only not as much chocolate

Poor Ashley was getting a cold so she was a little miserable but sure enjoyed her "1 scoop" anyway!

Ethan even got in on the action and enjoyed my bananas. He yelled at me when I wasn't getting the bites to him fast enough!!!

And then there's Gavin. Oh how he LOVED his sundae!!! So much that he couldn't wait to get the spoon into the ice cream and up to his mouth - so he just shoved his face into the bowl!!! These are my favorites of the pictures I took that night! Although everyone else was fun too. :)

Oh What a Day

Today started out like any other day. Wake up, pull the wire off your finger. Oh wait, that's not normal. They had me do an oxygen test for sleeping because I'm always tired. I'm a mom. What more do I need to say?!

Anyway, so we went from breakfast to letting kids play at friends houses, to getting my fruit from a neighbor, to the playground and back home before going to get the kids again. Then we went out and did stuff (yes STUFF) in the yard. Oh and I played lightning with Jakob and Steve. Too bad I can't hit foul shots in a game like I was hitting today!!!

So Steve, Jakob and the rest of the kids (except Ethan who just wanted Mommy) wanted to wash the car. They got everything ready and headed outside and started washing. I was going to get ready to go to enrichment even though I wasn't feeling that wonderful and noticing a loud humming from the nursery.

I knew there was a computer in there and figured one of the kids had turned it on so I was looking all over for the switch. I think my brain was only working at about 1% because it took a while to remember that there IS no switch to the computer since Steve had taken the power supply out. SO suddenly it clicked that they had the faucet on that was just outside that room and I had the impression I better run downstairs. And boy am I glad I did!!!

There was water in the boys room so I ran outside and told Steve we had flooding and ran to the front. My neighbor noticed me running for the faucet and asked how things were. She rushed over to see what she could do to help and her husband came over to see why there was flooding. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the water dripping from the siding!!!

Steve got to work with the shop vac and gave that up and went in with the steam cleaner(thanks Mom and Dad! We love that vacuum!) to get the water out. While he did that I chased kids around the yard getting them away from the things that had been left out in our rush to fix the basement. Finally I got them in and got to soak up the mess in one room while Steve did the other.

We had two guys from the ward show up with fans and they managed to find out where the leak was from and cut a hole in the wall to get the pipe out. Steve rushed to Home Depot( and had to wait for a train) to find the right part. He got us pizza for dinner and then within minutes of him getting back we had our new pipe all ready to go!! What amazing neighbors we have!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here are a couple good to know hints. 1. don't have neighbor kids that like to come by and turn your faucets on at random times. 2 don't leave the hose on your faucets during the winter or they'll FREEZE. I must note that we only did that because of hint #1!!! We figured if they turned it on, it wouldn't go into the basement... so instead the water from the broken pipe will! 3. If you have the problem from #1 and #2, don't keep the handles on your faucets... 4. Always have a shop vac and/or steam cleaner handy. Oh and fans. You never know when you or a neighbor might need them!

Anyway here are a few pictures. They're not the best but you can at least get the gist. I'm just so thankful to my friends and neighbors that jumped at the chance to help us! We feel loved and blessed!!!

Watch Out World, Here Comes Ethan!!

My little boy decided to grow up. I'm not sure I like that... I've been happy with him hanging out in one spot, not getting into trouble, not finding me when I leave the room, and not being a human vacuum. But alas, they all grow up sometime!!!

The last few days he's been working hard at crawling everywhere. He has a couple bumps on his forehead to prove it!!

Today he took that big step into heading off to find Mommy. He knew I wasn't in the room anymore so he crawled that very long (all of 10 feet) hallway to come and get me! I was proud and knew I was doomed all at once. :)

While I was washing dishes he was playing quite peacefully in the living room before deciding it was time to go find Mommy again. He found me! And the blueberry muffin Gavin dropped on the floor, and the pencil he liked banging on the floor... Its a whole new world for Ethan!

These are pictures of Ethan crawling out of the laundry from "helping me" fold the laundry. Sorry they're so blurry. Maybe someday I'll upgrade to a real camera instead of just the one on my cell!!!

That One Poll

Hey,
So the poll ended and 75% were in favor (3 out of 4 votes) of the bookstore. Someone wasn't but I don't know who. :) I'm looking into land (well, more a building) and grants to try and figure this thing out. I also found out that the booksellers convention I wanted so much to go to is the same weekend as Jakob's baptism! So I'll be missing it there as Jakob's baptism is much, much more important. Like, not even on the same scale. I am bummed about not going to the convention though. Just a little. ;)

We got to tear out the surround on our bathtub downstairs today. We'd tried this one a year ago and it was so warped that nothing we did would get it to fit right. SO I finally called the company and they sent one to me free of charge! This one looks like it will work better. However, we found out one of the studs that Centex put in is NOT level and therefore is messing a few things up so Steve gets to fix that before we move on. LOVELY! I'm very excited to get the bathroom done sometime though. Hopefully very soon...

OH and I'm an aunt today! Yay my sister! I'm excited to see my new little baby boy nephew soon.

So those are just a few of the ramblings of my day. I could add more but then I would want to add even more and this post would be 10 pages long. :)