October

So, WAY behind on updates.  I kept telling myself at the beginning of November to post and now it is almost the end.  Anyways, I few pictures of what we've been doing.

 

 Took the kids to a Utah State game.  Jaydon loved it and Jori loved the people around us!  She is always waving and saying "hi" to people trying to get their attention.  It is kind of cute but I don't know if everyone thinks it is as cute as I do.

Jason and Jaydon loving the game

 We also did the annual Pumpkin Walk.  We went during the day with some of his cousins on one side of the family, then the next night we went with Jaydon's other cousins too.  He loves the Pumpkin Walk.

Jaydon and Alexander

Jaydon, Addy and Brynlee

 Jori was trying to get on this horse one day and Jaydon, being the helpful big brother that he is, decided to help her.  The succeeded, at least Jaydon thought so.  Jori got her leg up and around so fast she was wondering what the heck happened!  Don't worry, she was all smiles going around the house.

We also took the kids to the Corn Maze.  Jaydon has been begging to go to one ever since he saw a Curious George show with a corn maze.  I think we picked one of the only COLD days we have had and froze the whole time.  But Jaydon thought it was awesome as he had a map in hand and ran around.  

Me and the kids inside the tee pee right before leaving!

We always make sugar cookies for Halloween too.  I don't know why, it is so messy and I end up finishing because everyone else gets bored, but we do and Jaydon asks to do it, so maybe it's just a tradition thing now.  

We celebrated my mom's 60th this year too.  She does a Halloween Grand kid party every year and it happened to fall on the same weekend as her birthday.  I didn't pull out my camera as much as I should've, but here is at least one picture of my mom.  All the kids wrote down things we remember our mom teaching us, serious or funny, and then we put the gist of what everyone had onto this board for her.  It was fun and something different that how we presented my dad's.  I think she liked it!

 

We carved pumpkins too.  A few days before Halloween we finally finished off the last pumpkins we had for carving.  (The pumpkin in the back started to slump too much).  Jaydon loves doing this too.  Well, he picked out the designs for them-he won't even touch the insides of them!

Halloween costumes...Jaydon is Bumblebee and Jori an owl.  Jaydon had a preschool party and no masks were allowed.  That morning I drew an Autobot on his face and he was so proud.  I just crossed my fingers that he would think it looked enough like an Autobot!   For trick-or-treating he wore his mask though and Jori and I stayed home to pass out the loot.

 Last, here is a picture of Jori napping.  This is for me to prove to me someday that she did nap.  However, she hates her crib.  She and Jaydon just aren't nappers.  I don't know if it's me or what but my two missed the boat on this area that is really important to my sanity.   Anyhow, she tuckered out one day and slept here instead.  I'll take it!

One year old

 

I keep looking at pictures from a year ago.  Time is going faster the older I get.  It really doesn't seem that long ago that I had Jori.  I spent most of September last year going to the hospital to see Jori and then home to spend time with Jaydon too.  You'd never know looking at Jori that she was such a tiny little lady.  I remember asking the nurses that were in the room over and over again to tell me how big she was.  She was 5 lbs. 2 oz.  then and that was pretty good for being almost 6 weeks early.  Now a year later, Jori is a "thriving"  "round" "chubby" baby....people comment on her chubbiness all the time and isn't it true?!  She is such a cutie. 

She's full of personality.  She's a tease and a cuddle baby.  I get lots of loves from her.  She's too smart for her own good and she will definitely keep me going.  She has slowly outgrown her milk intolerance and has moved from soy formula to regular formula.  And now onto cows milk. She's a good napper and good at entertaining herself too.  Those are some of my favorites!  Her laugh is infectious and her teeth are crazy, so her smile is just fun.  We love her like crazy!

 

 For her birthday we went miniature golfing with my family.  My parents had my brother's kids for the weekend and we wanted to do something fun.  She was napping for most of it, but woke up at the end to get some pictures! We had a picnic planned for later that day so we headed straight there and spent the afternoon with family eating and having cake.


Jori with chips.  I think that's all she ate for dinner

Jori smiling for us with her cake.  She just wanted the cake really, she has a sweet tooth.

 Jaydon was helping Jori with her presents.  He would open it and then hand it to her.  He gave her a Care bear and so he was really excited about that.  And when he saw she was given headbands he whipped one out and tried to get her to wear it.  She is still getting used to liking that and we keep encouraging it too, she's so bald!  The next day was her actually birthday and we had leftover cupcakes so we got out a candle and sang to her again.  Don't worry, Jaydon was making sure she didn't touch the fire!

Not a big fan of my kiddos bathing together but Jori loves baths
so I let her in one day, she was pretty excited!

After church in her birthday outfit from grandma.

 I had to throw in a few more pictures.   A couple weeks ago I ran my 1st half marathon.  I decided last winter I wanted to run a race this year and started to do the elliptical a couple times a week.  I looked into the half marathon and it opened up to register on March 1st at midnight.  I kept thinking and thinking about it and I happened to be up with Jori that night right around midnight.  I took it as a sign...and yep, I was registered. 
I ran a few times outside in February and March, then in April I went a few times a week and then once Jaydon was out of school, I would wake up and go at 6am.  It was something I started to really enjoy doing once I was outside, but it was sometimes hard to want to wake up and go.  After lots of training I was still nervous for the big day, but it came and I beat my goal by 17 mins.  I told Jason to come at 9:30, he got there early, and good thing, a few minutes after they got there I crossed the finish line!  Jaydon wants to run a race now too, so we are going to find a kid race.  So glad I did it, but glad it is over.  Now I run 5-6 miles instead and that is much nicer!

Can't leave out this picture either.  Jaydon was so ready to go to school again.  All of the older kids started a couple weeks before him, so he kept waiting for his turn.  He loves going and he loves his teachers so hopefully this will be good for him to get ready for kindergarten.  And to ride the bus, that's what he really wants to do!

Summer

 Trying to play catch-up is hard, but Jaydon loves to come down and look at the blog and see pictures.  Even though I tell him to look at picasa, he likes this for some reason.  I am sure I will miss stuff about the summer.  Lots of outdoor stuff, family reunions and excitement, that's for sure.  Jori is almost a year and I feel like it wasn't that long ago that we brought her home.  She is such a cutie.  Whenever someone at the store or some random person sees her they always say two things:  Something about her chubby-ness and her big eyes.  She is such a cutie and also very calm.  She gets going loud and babbling every now and then, but for the most part if I put her in front of toys, she is really good.

I used to put her on the bed while I got ready.  This is Jori at 9 1/2 months. 
She just started to crawl a couple weeks ago!

 We had a few family reunions with both my mom and dad's sides.  I didn't get too many pictures at them.  They were close by which is always a plus!  Jaydon had fun building a rocket and launching it, getting his face painted, dancing with cousins and doing his 1st potato sack race...wish I would've taken some pictures.  Next was July and we stayed here for it.  We went to the stadium of fire and then to Bear Lake to visit Jason's grandma for the day.  The kids did better than I thought at the fireworks and the next day at Bear Lake was good too.  We went to the Paris parade and had lunch up there, only down-side was our car getting backed into by Jason's grandpa.  It is just in with the memories and now we laugh about it...love fun stories and memories!  (And it is fixed now!)




Jori watching her 1st fireworks!

Jaydon loved playing with his cousins all night
and they slowed down enough to watch the fireworks.

Jaydon with his "fireworks" and his new favorite, Bumblebee.

Jaydon and Jori on the 4th

Me and the kids on the 4th

We also took the kids to the Treehouse Museum.  It was a lot of fun and Jaydon was really excited.  He played for a long time and thought it was really cool.

Jaydon by Utah

In the oval office

His favorite-the fireman truck.  (Jori's least favorite!)

In the tee-pee

We also went to Idaho Falls to celebrate my dad's birthday and have a get together with my siblings.  We went to a swimming place in Pocatello and then to my parents for a hawaiian themed evening.  The had yummy food and the house decked out all hawaiian and later that night they had a movie outside for the kids.  Jaydon jumped off there trampoline and ended up braking his arm.  I thought he was maybe being a little over-dramatic about it, but after the weekend we took him in and sure enough, it was broke.

Jaydon taking a bath with his arm wrapped up and
in a sling.  He had this for a week, then a cast.

Jori at 11 months-almost a year!

We went to the Cache fair and had fun there too.  We were trying to come up with things Jaydon could do since he had to quit swimming lessons and couldn't get his arm wet.  We got him tickets and just as he thought he had picked his 1st ride to go on, the guys said no.  Yep, can't ride anything with a broken arm...they don't want to be responsible for anything I guess.  He was pretty sad and started to cry..but he did get to go on the tractors and that was pretty cool.

Jaydon "driving" the tractor.

Jaydon in the wheel

Jori just chillin' at the fair-of course she has
Jesse, and that is all she needs to be happy!

Jori getting the princess treatment from her big
brother-who knew!

Crawling around and into everything now! 

Jaydon and dad reading.

  It has been a fun summer and Jaydon is about to start preschool once again!  He is excited and ready for it to start.  We go to the library and joined a few summer reading programs and he has learned a lot about animals this summer.  He told me he is going to teach the kids about animals, what a smartie pants!  As much as we love summer, we are looking forward to the fall and the fun stuff we can do then.  And hopefully I will play less catch up and so we can remember what we do!