Dancing

Here is a fun video of Ethan Dancing. He dances a lot and I finally decided to record it.

Not just for Exercise

Here is a video that I liked. It shows that although you buy something for a specific purpose that is not necessarily the purpose your kids will use it for. Thankfully it is like getting two things for the price of one.

Fun Pics 2

Here is Rene' trying her hardest to read and not let Ethan or I bother her.
For some reason Ethan loves his toy box. He will tip it over and know out all the toys then he will climb in and either stand in it or sit and play. Sometimes he doesn't take the toys out and just sits on top of them. Then yesterday I found him standing on the edge of the box with one foot the other foot was out in space balancing him and he was concentrating on watching his show.

and here is two more pictures that I liked.

Fun Pics 1

These are just some fun pictures from the last couple months. Above is Ethan using the numbchuck from the wii as a cell phone. Below is if Rene or I go into the bathroom Ethan tries to get us under the door.
Here is Ethan two best friends. They live next door and they all enjoy playing together.
Ethan likes to hide under the table I made and use it as a fort. He will drag toys there and play for up to 30 min at a time.
This next one is the last time I left tissues within reach of the baby.

Our Hole

This is our hole. We are so proud, we got a call today telling us that they were currently digging our hole which is great because it means that our house is now on the work list and should be done in March. Bad news is they told us that they discontinued one of our floor choices (Which we really liked so we have to go re choose it.

Food Storage Breakfast

On Saturday we made a breakfast with food storage recipes and items. I got the recipe for the pancakes from Syl. It is delicious and we all love it (including Ethan who can eats them like candy). We even used wheat floor in them so they were even more healthy. I would have made them sooner, but I had to find dehydrated shortening (my can actually says shortening powder). I had never even heard of that, let alone bought it. The recipe is flour (I used half wheat flour and you would never know - it takes that good), powdered milk, powdered eggs, powdered shortening, salt, and baking powder. Then all you do is add water. It's SO easy and SO good. We aren't the only ones who think so. Syl has given the recipe to most of the family and they seem to love it, too. We made pancakes and then tried scrambled eggs using the powdered eggs. Chris didn't like the eggs at all. I thought they were okay. And Ethan LOVED them. He ate all of Chris'. It was really fun to use our food storage and make something that we would actual eat (we might not do powdered scrambled eggs very often, but we did at least eat them).

Besides the pancake recipes, I have also been researching and slowly doing more food storage. I have always wanted to "do" food storage. But it always intimidated me and our apartment is too small to store a lot of it. But I have solved both of those problems! We will be in a house soon (they told us last week that it should be around March) and I found an awesome website that doesn't make me scared of food storage any more. Here is the link to it. You should check it out. This website links three separate blogs together that each deal with a different part of food storage. One for planning it, one for buying it, and one for eating it. This way you can focus on one thing at a time and then move on to others. I love it! I actually bought the recipe book for the "eat it" blog and I am going to buy the ebook from the "plan it" blog soon. They focus on the basics and then go into more details. I have started doing some of it and now I'm not as scared to "do" food storage.

Surgery

Well as many of you know I had sinus surgery in the beginning of November. I was healing fine and not having any major problems and then our family caught a cold. Now normally a cold will not bother me very much but this one really hurt. It felt like I had just had the surgery again and I was wiped out for a week. It was not fun. It actually did put my healing back several weeks and so my nose is still bleeding after a month. Now I know it is not pretty and that is why I have not taken a picture of it but so that I can keep working and doing stuff when I have a nose bled (which I get often) I stick a tissue up my nose. It helps. Well it has fascinated Ethan and if he gets hold of a tissue he will try to put it up his nose. Hence the pictures. He is just trying to be like dad.
On another note it is my birthday today and you know it is time to update your blog when every call you get wishing you a "happy birthday" also has an "update your blog" comment with it. So here. I will also be posting more now because our house is progressing more. But that is a different post.

House Update

Well I thought I should put on here the progress of our house because everybody keeps asking me. Well we have done everything that needs to be done on our part. We picked all of our colors and upgrades (and we didn't fight once over the choices, in fact we both really enjoyed it). We have got our loan approved and decided and every other little thing that we needed to do. Now the builders (Fieldstone homes) are getting the permits and will start building as soon as they come in (Usually about 4-6 weeks). All we have left on our part is to meet with the contractors when they ask us to and to go look at our house get built. So as soon as we have more than an empty lot we will take pictures and post them. On a side note I realized the other day that I now know the size of my Shop (the Garage) and I can now design it how I want to. Which is becoming the highlight of my week.

Completely different subject just so you all know I am having surgery on Friday. What kind of surgery you ask well think of my mother (that's right mom I blame you) and what she passed on to me and several other kids and what do you get. BAD SINUS'S. So it has now gotten to the point that I have to have sinus surgery. Oh well I look forward to being able to breath with both sides of my nose at the same time (I have not been able to do so since I was in high school).

Wired Monkey

We went to the UVU Kid Halloween Party tonight. Here is Ethan in his monkey costume. The banana was sewn into the pocket, but he threw a fit so I cut it out. He had fun looking at all the people and especially the balloons. He also had some cookies, some from mom and some from dad. Apparently he had way too many for a monkey his size. The video below is proof of what happens when you feed a monkey boy too many cookies. Imagine him laughing like this for two straight hours. Everything was funny and he was moving non-stop. We've learned our lesson. Only one piece of candy on Halloween Night. Otherwise we're in for round two of the Wired Monkey.

Lot

Well here is our lot. It is a corner lot so if you can see Rene' that is the end of our lot.

New House, Here We Come!!!

Chris and I are moving... in about 5 months! We signed the papers yesterday to start building a house in Springville. It will have 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths and be 1400 square feet. So it's not huge, but it will work great for now. Because it's new we get to pick out many things. I never realized how many choices we would get to make. We went to the Home Fitting Center yesterday after signing the papers and started choosing everything. Cabinets, counter tops, flooring, appliances, doors, paint, carpet, wall texture, door knobs, light fixtures, tubs, shower rods, mirrors, more light fixtures, counter tops, and floors, exterior light fixtures, stucco color, garage door height and color, front door color, window patterns, and more. This doesn't even count the landscaping or the interior decorating that will come later. Man we have our work cut out for us. But I'm loving every minute of it! We will take a picture of the lot, a corner lot... YIPPEE... and post it soon. If you can't tell we are SO excited. So stay tuned for more house building details.

Mexico 4 Dolphins

While at the aquarium we decided to swim with the dolphins. We got to swim and do stuff with them for an hour and it was the funnest part of our trip. We have a video as well as these pictures but I am having trouble with it so I am just putting these up.

Mexico 3 Aquarium

The next day we went to the aquarium that Itze' works at. Above are some really cool jelly fish. Then they had this snapping turtle that you could pet with a worker next to you to make sure you were doing it right.
Then we went swimming with the dolphins. Swimming with the dolphins was one of the funnest things that we did there. I will work on getting the pictures from it and the video up for you to see. After we swam with the dolphins we walked around the shopping area waiting for the dolphin show. The next picture and video are from the show it was fun to watch but I have seen a much better show at Sea World.
They had two sets of dolphins, one set from the Pacific and one from the Atlantic Ocean. We swam with one set and then the other set put on the show. It turns out that the dolphins that did the show have a really funny fact. The lead dolphin is racist and hates fat people. It will refuse to swim if a Black or a Fat man is in the pool. They have no idea why but it refuses and it convinces the other dolphins not to swim either. Maybe that is why we swam with the other set, they got a look at me and figured they should give us the dolphins that will swim.

Mexico 2 X'carat

One of the first things we did was go to a place called X'Carrat. It is a preserve that was really fun to see and go around in. They had 2 man made rivers that you can snorkel down and see a lot of cool stuff. Then around the park they had a lot of historic Mexican recreations. In the picture above I am standing next to the playing field of an old Mayan game that you play with your hips. Later that day we got to see them actually play the game.
Below is a picture of Rene' next to some parrots. They were everywhere. For those of you can't find them they are green and over her shoulder.
At the end of the day we went to there show and saw them put on this really cool play of their history. This is where we saw the hip game and then they also played a game that was like hockey without the skates and where they lit the ball on fire. It was really fun to watch.
X'Carat also had some manatees and Rene' loved them we watched them for a long time and them we got this video.

Mexico 1 The Hotel

If you don't know Rene' and I went to Mexico at the end of June. I thought I would finally put the pictures of that trip on here for you to see. These first two were taken from our hotel lobby. Because of the swine flu not many people were going to Mexico at the time and we were able to book a 4 star hotel for the price of a 1 star. This made it really fun for us and we were really glad near the end because our hotel room was the only place we had air conditioning.
Here is Rene' showing off our room and bed (Which was really comfortable).
The next two pictures are the view from our room. if you went out on the balcony and looked straight down you would see the bottom of the building and then 10 feet away the ocean started. We could not get any closer.
At night if we left the door open then we could hear dolphins playing. It was really fun because we thought that we were just hearing birds but Itze' my friends wife told us it was dolphins.
I forgot to say why we went to Mexico. My very good friend was getting married to a girl from Cancun. We thought that it was a good excuse for us to go. We were there for 1 week and we are very grateful to my mother and father for watching Ethan for us.

We are back

Well we finally have the internet again. It has taken us a while but in the end we had to get it for school when you have two online classes then you don't have a choice but to get it. so here are some pictures just for fun. No commentary just clean old fun.

Some Quick Catch-Up

Here is Chris reading Ethan his bedtime story.

I love this picture because they both are SO into it.
Ethan loves to read stories and we love to read to him.

Look at that cool hat!
Ethan also loves to be outside, which gives him plenty of opportunity to wear his hat.

Our Ward had a Luau, complete with a roasted pig and chicken and a wonderful pineapple drink. They roasted the pig in the backyard of our apartment. Our neighbor is from Fiji, so it was actually authentic food. Yum, yum. This was Ethan's first neighborhood activity. Notice the hat again!

Ethan has learned how to scoot. He can't crawl yet, but he can cruise around the house. In this picture he made his way under Grandma Barlow's cabinet.

I'll post some pictures of our Cancun trip soon. But until then, here are some to look at.

Apple Sauce

I liked Beckys video and I remembered that I recorded one as well and it shows his face pretty well so I put this on here so you can see.

Phone

We have kept our old phones for this purpose. When Ethan sees our phones he loves them and always wants to play with them. So I got out one of our old ones and charged it and gave it to him. He loves it. I tried to get pictures of him playing with it but our camera beeps when it is focused, he hears it and then stares at the camera. So imagine him talking to the phone and yelling at it. Because that is what he was doing before I got out the camera.

I hope you appreciate these pictures. They took me a long time to get them taken.

Weekend

This last weekend Rene' and I went to visit my parents. Sadly for my father this usually means I have a project, and to hold to form i did. So instead of a nice relaxing weekend he got put to work helping me. I hope he know how much I appreciate the help. Because of his genius and ingenuity my project came out pretty cool.
This is a cabinet for my computer. It is to protect it from an ever moving curious baby. I think it will work well.


I also think that this would be a good time to thank my brother David. Who were it not for him this computer would not exist. He not only put it together but he has been willing to give up his days off to fix it whenever I break it, and only he knows how often that is (because i am not going to tell you.). So to David, may he never screen my calls.