V-day Par-tay!

My good friend, Ashley, threw a fun little Valentine's Day party for some kids in our ward on the Friday before Valentine's day. That was officially the extent of my Valentine's Day celebration all weekend. Jon and I are not really Valentine's Day people, I know how lame are we?

Scarlet had a great time though. Of course I pretty much let her eat as much sugar as she wanted, what kid wouldn't have a blast? We were the first to arrive so I got a shot of Ashley's boys, Blaze and Bennett with their decor.

We ate a ton of fun little goodies. Ashley made these amazing sugar cookies on a stick dipped in frosting and sprinkles. I totally felt like a six year old eating it, but in the best of ways. It was just so good! I did control my six year old desires and kept myself to only one of those (finishing the other half of Scarlet's does not count...) Scarlet and I brought brownie bites with a little frosting heart on them. Sadly, she insisted on carrying them in from the car so the hearts got smeared all over the place. Still, how bad could a brownie be?

The kids did a cute little Valentine's craft and then burned off some of their sugar energy outside.

Whatever character Afton was playing (pink sweater) she was way getting into it!

It is quite the interesting phase of life when your idea of a party drops even below the way nerdy mormon college party level to cupcakes and two year olds. Maybe it really is hip to be square...

Top 5 Reasons Never to Leave Home

Rhode and I took a mini-vacation up to Moses Lake, leaving Jon and Scarlet to fend for themselves. Boy have I learned my lesson. Never again! And here's why...

5. Scarlet called me every night and used her sweet little voice and ever growing vocabulary to tell me she missed me, she loved me (first time by the way) and that I should come home until I missed her so much I could hardly believe I ever looked forward to my Scarlet-free time.

Of course, I have returned to find sweet phone Scarlet isn't actually here. Clingy, fit-throwing, mess making, baby beating, toy stealing, piercing scream emitter Scarlet has taken her place. Ok she is not that bad. I can say that now because she is taking a nap. It always easier to enjoy sleeping children.

4. I already get to avoid soy products (think soy sauce, hot dogs, and other random foods) to appease my little man who sure likes to puke on me when I eat them. Now after finally getting him to take a bottle, I learn that formula is not the boy's best friend either. It was the cheap stuff so maybe he will do a little better with the expensive kind, but that little experiment left me covered in white spit up spots all weekend.

3. I refuse to pay the extra fee to choose your seat assignment on Allegiant Air. I get so sick of their nickel and dimeing me! So, not surprisingly I ended up on a window seat next to two men who were not excited to be sitting next to the baby mama combo. Rhode wasn't all that into sleeping either so I got to wrestle with him with my knees crammed up against the seat in front of me (sucks to be tall on an airplane) for 2 and a half hours. Sucks to be so cheap...

2. I am oh so very behind on my life, but it is all that much harder to catch up when you leave your phone behind in Washington! We are not believers in having a land line so it means I am stuck with little contact to the outside world and without the ability to get many of my important tasks done as I wait for my phone to arrive in the mail.

And the number one reason that I will never ever ever leave home again is because, after only a few days, I came home to this...

No woman should have to endure such facial hair torture!

Ok, actually I had a really fun weekend. I got to see my Aunt Julie and spend a lot of time with my sisters who looked absolutely beautiful this weekend.

But I have learned my lesson and will never leave Scarlet and Jon to their own devices again... until the Earl cousin reunion that is! :)

Crazy lazy weekends

Since we moved into our house almost every Saturday has been a working Saturday. There is always something that needs to be done... ok, several things that need to be done. But we have found a little time lately to enjoy some weekend down time as well. It has been oh so very nice.

It is really hard to stay cooped up painting, sanding or whatever else when you have a sunny 70 degree day waiting for you outside. We fling open every door and curtain and let the sunshine fill our half remodeled home and it just makes us so much happier! Our kids even got to enjoy a little naked time by the open sliding glass door.

Scarlet loaned Rhode the block for the picture.

Two weekends in a row we were able to convince friends to cart their kids over to our house where we let all under the age of four run 'Lord of the Flies' style upstairs while we occupied the downstairs. It was so nice this last weekend that Jon and I decided to pull out the barbecue. Is there anything more fun than enjoying a delicious right-off-the-grill hamburger on a beautiful night in January?! I don't think so.

Once we got all the kids distracted upstairs, we pulled out some Rock Band on the projector. There were four couples in all so the boys went first. We let them play around for a little bit. Then it was time to hand over the babies to the men and form the greatest girl band ever.

I love that you can see all the guys holding the kids in the back.

On drums, we have newly mother of two and first time drummer... me.

On vocals, five months pregnant with baby number three... Ashley.

Rocking the guitar on the left is mother of one Mindi and Angie laid down the bass only weeks away from her due date.

Ok, so by greatest girl band ever I really mean hardly coordinated enough to make it through a whole song on easy... but we had ourselves a good time.

Jon occasionally made it upstairs to make sure all children were still alive with all limbs still attached and I found these pictures on the camera.

Angie's two cuties, Evan and Afton.

Scarlet with Ashley's boys, Bennett & Blaze, and Afton.

And no, luckily no one died from choking on the ping pong balls they are shoving into their mouths.

Good times.

A third of the first year of his life is OVER!

My little guy is officially four months old!

I am told my baby is not as photogenic as I think he is. Somehow pictures make him look even chubbier than he is. My family claims they expected him to be bigger when we came up for Christmas from my blog posts. I'm not sure... he is quite the chub! Almsot everyone who sees him can't resist a little cheek squeeze. Not even Scarlet!

He is also getting so big! I really should be dressing him in 6 month + clothes but he has so many adorable 3-6 month outfits I'm having a really hard time moving on.

He loves to smile, he is just starting to laugh, and he loves the jumperoo. I should clarify, he loves standing in the jumperoo and occasionally lifting his legs in the air. The jumping part of the jumperoo still eludes him. But he has discovered the toys on it and gets a kick out of whacking those.

He has yet to even attempt to roll over. I have decided the delay is a combination of satisfaction and extra chubbiness. He is just too content to lay in whatever position I put him to do anything about it. And really that is a lot of extra baby poundage to get up and around to the other side.

Everyone should be blessed with a kid this happy and chunky. It is the sweet life!

Christmas '08

We have always had wonderful Christmas's at my house. I have been so lucky since I've been married to have been able to spend Christmas with my family every year (we always do Thanksgiving with the Nielsens). I love the traditions, there is something in my personality that really likes things to happen the way I expect them to happen. Christmas always does.

We had a great Christmas Eve with the extended Earls. Though I must say, there were not enough of us there. So if all of you who didn't get their butts up to Moses Lake for Christmas this year can step it up next year and get it right I would really appreciate it!

Jon brought one of his family traditions with him this year, the Christmas chimes. His family takes a casual approach to the chimes. They all hand out the different chimes and politely play along with the music until they figure out which tune they are playing. Nothing about that is Earl style. first off, each of us tried our hardest to get the chime that got the most play time. Then we practiced the tune several times in order to sound good enough for the Earl talent show. Corrections were shouted out frequently during our practice session, 'Bryan you aren't holding your spoon right.' 'Dad, that's not your note!' 'Courtney you are high C, not low C.' 'Bryan, you are still not holding your spoon right! Are you going to do it correctly or not?' I caught Jon shaking his head in resignation a few times.

The truly funny part was, the chimes were not their first choice for Earl talent. My parents were dead set on the family learning this lovely routine.

I will admit, my dad doing a little Beyonce booty shake would have been pretty dang funny, but we just couldn't get our moves together in time. So we moved on to the chimes.

That night, we opened our Christmas pajamas and the photo shoot ensued. I am just remembering as I type this that we used to runway style walk down the stairs in our new pjs, do our model turn, hair flip, and continue back down our runway... I will tell you you really haven't laughed hard enough if you haven't seen Kristy's 6 year old model walk. Oh the good ol' days!

We debated back and forth whether to wake Scarlet up for Santa but we finally decided to go for it. So when my dad came downstairs in the wee early hours of the morning (ok, about 6:30 a.m.) I grabbed a half awake, half frightened Scarlet out of her bed, pacifier still in mouth, and we crouched under a well placed table. She laid in my arms pretty peacefully until Santa walked in the door. I could feel every muscle in her body tense and she was instantly wide awake. I could see her eyes following those boots as they walked back and forth across the room. At one point he came up to the side of the table and we could see him from head to toe. She instantly grabbed tight to my hand and I could feel her slightly shaking. I held her tight and she continued to watch his every movement until he walked out the door.

Then we all came rushing out of our hiding spots to see what he had left behind. Scarlet got a Baby Alive doll, which she loved. Rhode (who we got after Santa has exited) got a winnie the pooh tummy time mat. So far, he still isn't a huge fan of the tummy time but he had a great time staring intently at the box for awhile.

My mom never puts our names on the presents. She doesn't want us trying to figure out what we got or how many are ours so the names are always in code. This year we were all pop stars. I was Shakira this year and Jon was Hannah Montana. We got some great presents this year. Jon and I tried to keep things pretty low key this year. He got a pretty expensive speeding ticket the week before Christmas so my present to him this year is to do his online traffic school for him. He got me a much needed new set of scriptures.

Scarlet trying on Aunt Kylie's new Christmas hat.

Scarlet did very well. Jon and I got her several sets of color wonder markers and notebooks in hopes of saving our walls from further graffiti and some new books. Aunt Kylie got Scarlet the new Tinkerbell movie. And my parents got her several adorable outfits, snow clothes, an electronic purse, a teddy bear, a toy vacuum cleaner, and SEVERAL others that made a lot of noise. She was in toddler heaven! Rhode also got some fun toys from grandma and grandpa, we played the 'he's not old enough to care' card and got him nothing!

One of our favorite gifts of the year was Jon's gift to Bryan, his secret santa sibling. We had the hardest time decided what to get, so Jon decided to get him... a machete. Yeah, a real machete. It was pretty awesome. Bryan seemed excited about it. I think Jon and Bryan found a few things outside that needed machete-ing before we left. Boys...

We spent the rest of Christmas day in our pajamas, playing all our new games and eating all the junk we could. Scarlet kept going up to different aunts and uncles saying, 'I'm hungry!" which actually sounds like "I'n hun-gee". They would then say, ok what do you want? To which she would reply, "candy!" or "tan-dee"! She scored a lot of chocolate that way. Every time I would find her with another mouthful of chocolate, I would turn to the offending aunt or uncle and they would look at me with their innocent eyes and say, "She said she was hungry!" So easily fooled by a cute face....

I loved seeing my children get to spend so much time with my family. Scarlet was constantly beckoning one of her aunts to "come!" and follow her to wherever she wanted to play next.

She even learned a few names! Kendall (Ten-dow) is her favorite name to say. She still will turn to me occasionally and say, "mom, where ten-dow?".

Rhode got spoiled rotten as someone was there to hold him every second of the day.

I was also able to help out my mom during the week with some dance choreography. We spent a lot of time editing music, watching the routines, fixing the parts that weren't working. Kristy snapped this picture of us watching yet another routine. She calls it the three generations of dance.

Anatomy of a photo shoot

As I looked back at what I thought was a horrible attempt to take pictures of our children, I found myself highly entertained. And so in future years when Scarlet might ask why there are so few good pictures of her and her brother... Scarlet, this is for you.

*disclaimer - Jon really wanted to mess with all these photos in photoshop before I posted them but I wouldn't let him. He really wanted everyone to know that...

I have had Scarlet's 2008 Christmas dress in my posession since January. I was casually looking at kids clothes when I saw it and fell instantly in love with it. Not only did it have beautiful velvet and beading but it was a dark brown. I knew it would look so beautiful on my brown eyed girl! And, icing on the cake, it was cheap! So it has sat in the back of her closet for almost a year and I was so excited to pull it out.

Rhode also had a pretty adorable Christmas outfit and all I really wanted was a few nice snapshots of the two kids together then a chance to show them off at church.

We decided Rhode would start our show. Here is us setting up...

He wasn't so sure about the whole thing at first...

but he warmed up quickly like the good little guy that he is.

You would think I would learn from my mistakes but obviously not. I gave Scarlet the box of raisins right before I wanted her picture taken. Stupid mom.

So I attempted to hold the raisins for her just while we snapped a quick picture.

"I don't know what's going on dad..."

She didn't take too well to the raisin-less idea

"Just let me know when you need me to smile, I'll be here"

Raisins returned and tears ceased, we now had to get the two kids happy and together. Then came the brilliant idea... 'hey Scarlet, give baby brother a raisin!'

That idea earned us this photo. Too much light but two pretty happy kids!

Now to get a shot of the outfits. Scarlet was done participating (oh wait, when was she ever participating) so Jon snapped these as she wandered around the room.

While our backs were turned, Rhode decided to hit a more alluring pose on the pillows. So we turned our attentions to him!

Turns out, the best way to get Scarlet to want to get her picture taken is to ignore her.

"Look at me again!"

Some of my favorites of the day...

Scarlet must have really not been happy with me after the shoot because she decided to pay me back during church. Jon had to take her out of Sacrament because she was crying so hard about who knows what. She continued to cry until... she threw up. All over Jon, all over the dress. So they got to go home second hour for a costume change and Scarlet spent the rest of nursery Christmas dress-less. Aren't toddlers great?!

It's Official... Hell Froze Over

Las Vegas gets its occasional snow flurries during this time of year but for the first time in 30 years, we got DUMPED on. The snow started falling early in the morning and was still coming down hard late that evening. It was insane.

I was so glad that I had nowhere to be but warm and cozy in my house. Las Vegas doesn't react too well to precipitation. Whenever it rains, cars just start hitting each other and streets immediately become rivers. Snow? Yeah, the city went into widespread panic. The freeway was shut down, almost all flights were cancelled, and I could hear sirens speeding by every few minutes. It was crazy.


So anyone remember the scene from The Office when Michael comes in screaming for ideas because there is wet concrete outside and he has to put some kind of mark in it? Well, imagine that scene but instead of Michael, picture Jon. And instead of concrete, freshly fallen, sticky snow.

And oddly enough, both of their solutions involved faces...





The head was about eight feet tall when he finally finished.


Cars kept slowing down as they drove by and I'm pretty sure every one of our neighbors stopped by to take a picture. Sadly some teenagers decided to knock it down on their way home from school the next day.

Jon got it right though when he came in and said, 'It really does actually feel like Christmas.'