Boise Temple Open House

We had the opportunity to tour the Boise LDS temple on the 23rd of October.  It was a breezy night and very busy.  It was so busy that they didn't have time for speaking tours at night, so we got a silent tour.  The temple remodel is gorgeous and everyone kept commenting at how well behaved our kids were.  Bob and I are hoping to attend the temple for a session sometime before Christmas.

The long line we stood in:

Not the greatest pic and no one happened to be around to take the pic for us, so Bob is behind the camera.

Pretty pic as we were walking back to our car:

Halloween 2012

Bob got to dress up at work with his team.  He was Doc from Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs because he has glasses...  Love the costumes they came up with.

Mylie and Clark trick or treating

We walked around the neighborhood with the next door neighbors, their kids and are kids hang out together every moment they can.

Braden was a great sport and re-wore this costume from a few years ago even though it was getting a bit too small.  Star Wars - a young anakin skywalker.

Being Belle for Halloween was all Mylie could talk about for months and months before.  I had the most horrible time finding her a costume that fit and didn't cost lots of $$.  My sister found this one online for me and it came just in time!  It was pretty much a one time use though as the bottom of the dress just started falling apart as we were trick or treating.  She absolutely loved it though.  We even put gold glitter in her hair.

I had planned for clark to wear a pair of fireman pjs that he already had, but we stopped into the Gymboree outlet about a week before halloween and they had this adorable costume super cheap and we couldn't pass it up.  He was so stinkin' cute in it and got compliments all night long.

Face Painting

Mylie got to attend her best friend's birthday party on the 2nd of November.  They had a mom there who did amazing face paint!  I've never seen one like this before:

The fish opened and closed it's mouth when Mylie talked!  She loved it!

Train Depot

We got to attend the wedding of some good friends last month at the train depot in downtown Boise.  Clark got to stay home with my parents, but Mylie and Braden got to come because they are friends with the kids in the wedding party.  We volunteered to help clean up, so during part of the reception, we snuck outside to take some pictures.

and this one of inside the building:

3 Little Trees

We decided to do it a little different this year and let each of the kids have their own tiny tree!  They absolutely love it and show their trees to everyone that comes over.  I love that they all had their own ideas of how to decorate them.  Bob used some small pieces of a cloth-dropcloth to wrap around the base of each tree.
Merry Christmas!

Clark's 2nd Birthday!

 Our sweet and crazy little Clarky boy turned 2 on 11/25/12!

We invited all the family in town and celebrated with a Pixar Party (mostly Cars and Toy Story! - his favorites)

Before Clark discovered Toy Story about a month ago, he love love loved Cars and I'd been collecting a bunch of Mater items as his gift.  We filled a Mater shaped suitcase with fun Mater toys and he LOVED it!

Grammy and Papa gave him this Scout toy that you can program with his name and favorite things.

 They also gave him a Cars shirt and a Mac truck that holds a Lightening McQueen car.

Clark was seriously loving opening all these gifts.  Most kids at this age just shut down and want to open one of the toys to play with and you save the other gifts for later.  Clark did great! He opened each gift, oohhhed and aaahhed, showed them to me so I could take a picture and then quietly said thank you.  Then onto the next gift!

Stephanie, Clinton and girls gave him 2 sets of Cars toys.

Dan, Kayla and boys gave him some tools and some Toy Story bath toys.

Braden picked out a set of Zoo themed Lego Duplos.

Nikki, Steven, Ryker and Lily gave him some books and a coloring set.

Mylie gave him a Cars Lego Duplo set.

After all the gifts, we went to the kitchen to light his "2" candle on a cupcake that was decorated with a edible picture of Woody from Toy Story.  He wasn't sure what was going on or why everyone was singing to him.

Here Bob is trying to teach Clark how to blow out the candle.  His little "pffs" of air were pretty cute!

I apologize to Grandma Sara, she was over the weekend before I neglected to get a picture of her giving her gift to Clark!  He absolutely adored the bag of treats, a book and a little puzzle.

Clark also got several fun cards (all with cash!) in the mail.  A card from his Great-Grandparents (Johnson), a card from Bob's Aunt Linda & Uncle David, and one from Grandpa Irish, Lesley & Truffles (the dog).

Clark is one very loved little boy!  He is in the 7th percentile for his age in weight and the 17th percentile for his age in height.  The Dr. said that he's just gonna be a little guy.  We shall see.

He's wearing mostly 24-month clothes and size 5 or 6 shoes.

Clark loves to watch "Woody" (aka Toy Story 1, 2 or 3) several times a day.  Some times now, he'll ask for "Queen" which means any of the Cars movies, but they don't keep his interest for quite as long. Mater's Tall Tales is another favorite - if you haven't seen it, you should! Pretty funny!

At age 2 Clark is quite the flurry of activity - he is into everything and anything.  He loves playing with his brother and sister, loves going in the car and any reason to go outside.  He has one jacket that he loves.  He asks for "shake" just like Mylie did at his age (milk and ovaltine).  He eats carrots, apples, rice, some chicken, loves crackers of any kind, cereal, juice, pizza, french fries, pb&j sandwiches, cheese and ice cream.  He also loves helping himself to water from the door of the fridge, although he also loves to either pour or spit it onto the floor and then stop in the puddles...

4th Grade!

I have a 4th Grader this year!!!  Braden started 4th Grade this year at Chaparral Elementary on the 7th of August!  His teacher is Ms. Bryant and there are 31 kids in his class this year.  Huge!

Braden decided to try a new hair "style" that morning.  Sticking straight up and hairsprayed.  LOL.  He thought that maybe people wouldn't recognize him with a new hairstyle.  Such a funny kid.  It didn't really work, so we're trying to grow it out a bit to see if we can come up with a new "style".

Just for fun, I thought I'd post his supply list again this year:

Activity Fee $26.00

2 Assorted pocket only folders

1 Spiral comp. notebook, wide rule (70 count)

200 count Wide rule filler paper-Girls only

1 pkg index cards-Boys only

1 box of Kleenex tissue-120 count

1 box 7”  12 count Crayola colored pencils

1 box of 24 count Crayola crayons

1 Elmer’s school glue (4 oz)

4 (22 gram) Elmer’s glue sticks (large)

1 pair of 7” pointed Fiskar scissors

4 color set chisel tip Expo Dry Erase Markers

1 Pink Pearl eraser

1 pkg 8 Pencil cap erasers

1 Fluorescent yellow highlighter

1 Red medium stick pen

1 Blue medium stick pen

24 #2 Made in USA wood pencils

1/16” plastic ruler (12” standard & metric)

1 box gallon Ziploc-Boys only

1 box quart Ziploc-Girls only

(and my notes: only sent in 3 of the big glue sticks because that's how many came in the package.  Wasn't going to spend another $3 just to get one more glue stick.  Bought pointed scissors, but evidently not 7" ones cause Braden says his are way smaller than everyone in his class.  Finally found made in USA pencils this year - at Walmart of all places!)

Gilmore Girls Night

Michaela came up with this fun idea for a Gilmore Girls Night!  We all met at Mom's house on Friday night at dinner time.  We ate "Gilmore Girls" food: pizza and chinese. And since we don't drink coffee (like the GG's do 24/7) - Stephanie stopped at McDonald's for big sodas for all of us.  We started with the very first episode and laughed and talked while watching.  We also each painted our fingernails.  Mom's looks a little funny because she had a different kind of polish on that is a bit harder to remove.  We also had a lot of candy to snack on.  Stephanie and I weren't able to spend the night, but I think we stayed and watched 5 or 6 episodes!  Not sure how many more Mom, Kayla and Nikki watched before going to bed.  It was such a fun night! Can't wait to hang out with them again!

Dirty Dash 2012

 Bodybuilding.com put together a team for the Dirty Dash race this year at Bogus Basin (they were a sponsor of the race too).  Most of the people on Bob's team at work decided to race together - with the theme - Mud, Muscles & Mustaches.  We were supposed to meet them there at 9:40 and then they were going to race at 10am.  We didn't anticipate the amount of traffic going up the mountain, so we were pretty late.  So Bob decided to find a spot near the end of the race to wait until he saw someone on his team.  We waited quite a while before one guy and his wife came by and Bob jumped in and ran beside them for the last part of the race.

He made the most out of that last part of the race and got super muddy :)  He was glad to have participated as much as he did even though he did get pretty scraped up coming out of the mud pit at the end.  He waited in line at the "showers" and got washed off a bit, but since the showers were sooo busy and in mud of course - he didn't get too clean.

We took some pictures and found the other members of his team before heading home.  Luckily we had a blanket in the car he could sit on.  We stopped for lunch at Smashburger on the way home - he got lots of looks in his muddy attire!

In the car headed home:

Some not so fun parts of our trip - Braden, Mylie and I being motion-sick in the car on the way there and back.  Those bogus roads are nasty.  And our stroller - a used one that I just bought at Kids Again - got a flat tire when we got there.  We passed a guy who had a pump in the parking lot and filled it, but it didn't last long.  We were just lucky to have the stroller though - there were soo many people there.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

Mylie and Clark had a great time this morning making a mess in her room.  All her toys, books, pillows, etc were stuffed between her bed and her closet.  I had been looking for Clark and found him just hanging out on the little bed they'd made behind the mess.