The Winer is...

Ethan. But here is the honest truth, he did draw his own name, but the only one who entered besides Family was Bree, so I think that she deserves something, so I will post pictures later this week, nut I am thinking maybe a yummy flower bouquet to get her in a springy mood.

Finished!... Almost

I know it seems like this is a never ending journey, but I am happy to announce that Jordan passes his Thesis defense today. It was conditional though that he make some changes to his written thesis. We are soo excited to finish this, and the boys and I are pretty proud of how far he has come, and we are almost there. While he was giving his oral defense today, the boys and I made a banner and a little gift for him to come home to. He finds it embarrassing, but I LOVE it!

It is hard to be a good Mom

We have fought with Ethan over food for as long as he has been eating. He simply will not put food into his mouth. At one point I was threatened with Hospitalization or worse, and I hid veggies in all of the foods that he would eat. This worked, as in he did eat some veggies, but it is not the answer because he still will not put unfamiliar, (or familiar for that matter) food into his mouth if it is not what he wants to eat. I will hold off, but will then cave and let him eat a snack that Skyler and I are having because it is good for him (like apples, cucumbers, carrots, sugar snap peas etc.) He is now 2 1/2 years old, and had never eaten dinner with us. He may pick at it and eat the rice, or eat the bread, but never dinner. All day today I have held out on this little man, and he is now sleeping on the couch after screaming and tantruming for several hours, but his dinner is still untouched, not even one bite. Really I feel horrible, I feel like I am starving him, all he wants is something to eat, but not what is good for him. He said to me today Mommy, I only like treats. I am afraid that this might be the only way to get him to eat properly because I have tried just about everything else over the past 2 years.

Give Away

so, I have finally decided to start Selling some of the things I make, and my neighbor is working right along with me. The problem we have now is a name. We are selling things like aprons and Chef Hats, Tutu's, fabric high chairs, sleep sacs, hair accessories, soother clips etc.

So I am going to give away an apron and chef hat to one randomly chosen person. To enter you need to leave a comment with an idea for our name. The give away will close on the 27th of February. I will give you an extra entry if you promote this on your own blog, or on facebook.

Valentines Day

as you are probably aware, I love to make holidays special for my kids. This year Valentines was on a Sunday which made it harder to do a lot of the fun things that I would normally do with them. This year the kids have really gotten into reading books, and especially love books by Robert Munsch, so I have been picking up new ones here and there when I see ones that we don't have. I tied a ribbon around a book and a treat for each of the kids, and tied a heart shaped balloon filled with Helium to the other end and left them outside the kids rooms. Skyler is a morning person, and was up at 7:30 although he came out of his room, had to walk around the treats, and didn't even notice that they were there, and Jordan had to send him back upstairs to find his surprise.

We decorated sugar cookies (come on what Valentines is complete without sugar cookies?) at Grandma and Grandpa Nielson's after family dinner. It was fun and doing it that way meant that there were more kids to enjoy.

Family Day Fun

I am soo grateful for Jordan and the fact that he, while being busy with work and a few other contracts made the time to spend with us on Family day. I am glad (at least most of the time) that he values vacations and down time.

On family day we went to my in laws in the morning and swam in their pool, the boys love this! I had everything for Ryley to swim in her cute new bathing suit, but she chose to sleep through this activity.

We then went to Mc Donalds, I know not fabulous food, but the boys love it and really enjoy the play structure. This time it was busy though, and I ended up climbing the structure to save Ethan from some kids who were hitting and pushing him around, and to save Skyler from trouble because he was adamit that he protect his little brother. Getting up there was bad enough, but them Ethan went to go down the slide, and there was a kid sitting half way down that refused to move, so Ethan ran into him, began crying again, and I ended up half way down this slide as well, trying to get the jam unplugged, and my kids out!

We then went to the film festival at Cardel Place. It was a little mature for our kids, but they had fun all the same. Skyler got to be an actor in a movie that was directed, and filmed by other kids, and he also got his face painted like a 'puma' which he believes to be the fastest animal in the world.

I do love long weekends!

Amazing Race!

So, I found this super fun idea here and had to do it, so I started asking some friends to do it with me. There ended up being 5 couples all together, and it made it nice to give little assignments to everyone and then it wasn't a huge deal for any of us.
We made uniforms for everyone, and insisted that the guys wear them the whole time.
We sent the guys pretty much all over the city (that might have been more of an accident thanks to my amazing directional skills, and mad knowledge of Calgary streets)

They had a task at each location as well as instructions to buy us a gift with the money we provided (it ranged from just over 40 cents to almost 2 dollars) I took every one's wallets before they set out to make sure there was no cheating.

At the palm tree park they had to create a love message for us out of snow, rocks or leaves.

At Chad's work they were supposed to make a music video to "I'm too sexy..." but the stereo wouldn't play the cd, so they got off.

At Danny's work they had to spell out LOVE with their bodies.

At Jordan's Dad's office they had to use props to make a video (they bopped their heads with dark sunglasses on for about 3 minutes! - actually soo funny to watch)

Then they finished off making us rose bud flowers out of kisses out at heritage point.

While they were out, we were busy making them tins with magnets to leave love messages on the fridge, and a score bar with the message "I am so attracted to you, maybe this will help you score"

We also made them dinner (stuffed baked potatoes, garlic shrimp, bacon wrapped scallops, ceaser salad, asparagus and steak)

{we need to note that the guys informed us that they had been pulled over by the police, made us girls feel horrible because I had a bag with all of their wallets in sitting at my home, then said that they got off because of Brandon's I heart BJ shirt - all of which was a lie!}

We ate, and then got to watch the video that we made them take as they were accomplishing their tasks.
This guy is the reason I did it, and I sure do love him!
Overall it was a fun night, but I would say the boys would be happy with some revenge, but revenge is sweet right?

from the mouth of Skyler

"Mommy you broke my heart and turned it into triangles."

for the record, I was making him come home from Grandma's

Religious Fanatics!

Last Sunday Skyler woke up in the middle of the night with an ear infection, and he was super upset. I gave him some Tylenol, and Jordan gave him a priesthood blessing to help him calm down and get back to sleep. He did sleep although restlessly for the rest of the night, and Monday morning I took him to the doctor to get a prescription. I guess I hadn't grasped the effect this had on him because everyone who would listen, and I mean everyone - the receptionist, nurse, doctor, person sitting beside us, person who parked their car beside us etc. he explained in a very excited Skyler voice that he had an ear infection, and daddy put his hands on his head, and the power of Jesus helped him sleep!

(This is the boys singing 'Book of Mormon Stories')

Then throughout the week the kids were playing church. They carried around books that they called their scriptures, and song books, they said prayers, and had lessons. I am glad that my kids listen to some of what I teach them, but I got a good laugh out of this one too.

Favoritism?

This afternoon we went over to my in-laws, and my sister in law, Jocelyn and her family are living there for a few weeks. Jocelyn had a baby girl last month and Skyler seemed surprised to see that there was another baby girl. He was looking at Elise (who is cute by the way), and says you have a baby girl, my baby is prettier, and goes to kiss Ryley in Grandma's arms. We all got a good laugh.

Uggg!

I have been on the phone all afternoon with Government offices, and Skylers Preschool. See back in September I applied for the stay at home mom subsidy (we are poor, we qualify!) and I was denied because Skyler's school was not participating. At that point I went to talk to the school because it was close, and convenient and Skyler needed the extra stimulation especially with Ryley just coming home. The school promised to get the application done for January. I considered looking for something that was already participating, but decided to suck up the extra expense for the 4 months because it really is convenient. Early in January one of the owners comes to me, and tells me that they have done their part, and I can re-apply. I did this! today I get a phone call telling me I am denied because the school didn't apply! I call the school and they said that when they were talking to the government office that none of the parents of the kids qualified so there was no need for them to apply. Well, I qualify, and I am MAD. Really, now I am going to fight and make the school pay me the extra money that would have come.

Happy Groundhogs Day

So I share my birthday with a special day for groundhogs, but oh well, today was a wonderful day!

We did start the day with vaccinations for Ryley and Skyler this morning and my poor sweet girl is really sensitive to needles. Where my boys don't like needles, I have never really had to deal with a sore, cranky baby because of them, but our princess is sore AND cranky.

After we got that done though my amazing friend and neighbor took me out to lunch to RED LOBSTER and oh how I love good sea food. We were able to spend some (not a ton) of time talking about whatever we wanted and my brother had my boys at home, and they started our groundhogs celebrations. We made some slightly creepy looking groundhog cupcakes. I love making small days special, but today Skyler kept asking me what do we get to do today, and unfortunately for him we never did get to the shadow games, and shadow puppets that I wanted to do, maybe next year...
The boys were soo super excited when I let them have the left over m&m's sinc eI only needed brown ones for our groundhogs.
Tonight My brother and his fiance treated Jordan and I to dinner at Open Sesame which was oh so yummy as well, and this means more to me than I can ever describe. He used to be my best friend and he could make me laugh, no matter how mad or uptight I was, then he made some questionable decisions, and I became queen of my soap box (SOO happy that I have been able to let stuff go, see past things and keep perspective here) The fact that we were able to go out, have fun and enjoy a dinner and really have a good time means so much.

I feel very loved and very blessed today.