Birthday

Before I get to the birthday I wanted to show a picture of Maggie and how she sits. If she can not get her leg out then she gets very upset. But if you giver her room to move then this is what you end up with.
Her cake provided by Grandma and Grandpa Barlow.(Because I was to lazy to make one that day)
She just blew out the candles. (with my help) and she is really happy. When we first gave her a piece of cake she had no idea what to do with it. She figured it out pretty fast.
She not only figured how to eat she figured out how to make a mess with it and still be cute.
She really enjoyed her cake.

Sunday Activitys

So I don't have any pictures but I thought that I would share what we did this Sunday. I don't know about all of you but I find it hard sometimes to think of things to do on Sunday's with my kids. Well I don't know if it is appropriate but today Ethan, Maggie, and I ambushed Rene' with snowballs. That's right Snowballs. They are not real snowballs they are just soft fluffy white things that you can throw as hard as you want and they don't hurt. Anyway while Rene was talking on the phone to her mom the three of us decided to attack. It worked really well, I would throw them and Ethan would fetch them, with Maggie in the background sucking on them. (to make them seem more life like.) It continued to work until Rene' finished her telephone call and then the war was on.

With each of us hiding beside our side of the bed, we attacked each other with no mercy. The battle raged on between us and helping to keep things even was Ethan, allying with who ever had the most snowballs. In the end we decided that the winner depended on how you look at it. If you look at who got hit the least then Maggie was the winner. If you look at who was on the winning side the longest it was Ethan. Either way all we know is that Rene' and I didn't win. But we sure had fun.

Our first first

So I know that I missed a week, Sorry. Last week was the first day of Ethan's joy school. He was excited to go but I would have to say that Rene' was much more excited for him to go. She had all of his cloths picked out (then found out they were going to paint and abruptly changed them). She talked about it non stop with him for days before hand.
The first day Rene' asked me if other kids had backpacks. After I responded to the affirmative she immediately ran to the store to get Ethan a backpack, even if it does go to his knees.
Today Maggie got to try a chocolate animal cracker. We thought it would keep her busy while we ate dinner and well.... We were right.

Just for those of you wondering it is an animal cracker not poo. On a side note we are trying to potty train Ethan and as part of that he gets to watch daddy use the potty. So as I was peeing Ethan looks at me and asks "what are you doing daddy?", "I'm using the potty" was my response. His next question immediately comes "what happens when the poop comes?" Needless to say I had a very hard time keeping the pee aimed straight. I did reassure him that when the poop comes I sit down on the potty.

What do you do.

What do you do when you are bored. This is what my father and I did. I wish that we could say that we came up with this on our own but we just duplicated what someone else had done.

Vacation

So last week was the last week of summer school and I was excited for my two week break before fall semester starts. I made a list of all the things that I needed to get done and when I should do them and then Wed morning I wake up and I can not move. I was so sick I couldn't move, think, or sleep. Basically all I could do was lay there and be miserable. I was sure that I had the flu and a sinus infection and a small sore throat on top of it all. I called my brother David and he graciously came and picked up my kids and watched them for the day. By the end of the day I was not any better and was feeling a lot worse so I arranged for my Mother to come up and watch my kids for the next day. When she got here the next morning things had gotten worse. I still had all the other problems but now the sore throat was the worse sore throat I had ever had. My entire throat was on fire all the time. Well my Mom looked at my throat and made me call a doctor. To make my long story a little shorter. It turns out all I had was one thing and the was Strep Throat. Apparently it can make your body act like it has the flu and it can inflame your sinuses. It can do all of it. Who knew. I have had strep before and it has always been nice and stayed as a sore throat but not this time. It was a very bad case of Strep and after being on antibiotics for 3 days I am finally able to eat something. I can't eat much but I can eat something. On the plus side I have lost 8 lbs.

In the midst of all this I was able to get my grades and all of them were great.

Some photoshop

I my class I had to work with photoshop and so I thought I would share some of the pictures that I put together. These are my favorites.

Commercial for class

I had to make a commercial for class as part of a group. This is the commercial that we made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Fjy4F9rG0

Ethan's Pics

So the other day Ethan asked if he could take some pictures. I said yes and then started doing some homework. After about 10 min he asked to see them and so I took the camera and to my surprise he had taken well over 100 pictures in that 10 min. Lets just say i am glad it was not film. Anyway I have decided to post some of the pictures that he took. If you imagine about every angle taken of each of these subjects then you can picture all of the pictures he took.

So first lets just say I am really glad that my fly is not down.
Ethan almost documented the entire episode of sid the science kid. You could make a flip book out of the pictures and watch the whole thing.
Lots of pictures of Maggie and strangely enough a lot of close ups of the furniture.

Posting

So time flies when you are really busy. For those of you who don't know I am going back to school to get another bachelors degree. I am getting it in Business/Marketing Education. It will take me 2 years and then I will be lisenced to teach 6 different subjects. Well we have been able to get all of my classes on the same days so that we don't have to have our kids babysat very much. The kids have really noticed that I am not home and so the days that I am home this is a good representation of what it is like. They climb all over and won't leave me alone. Which makes it a little difficult to get things done but that is okay I would rather play with them anyway.
Here are two pictures of Ethan playing with his cousin Kambri. They are the same age and so they enjoy playing together, or fighting together, it is interesting how one will generally lead to the other.

For Ethan's birthday he got a big boy bed. He was so excited he got to watch me make it and assemble it. He talked about it straight for about a week. A little disclaimer is that Ethan got his bed a month before his birthday. It was done so we went ahead and gave it to him.

I like what Jen is doing and so I thought I might try it. It might help me realize how much time passes. I don't know how long I will be able to keep it up but I am going to try. (Jen is posting every sunday using the blog as a journal) I also hope this will make sure that I take more pictures of my kids.

Playing together

Isn't it nice when they play together.

Portfolio

Hey all it was recently made known to me that I should have an online portfolio for all of my work. So the easiest way that I new to do it was to make a blog and use that. So I did. Please feel free to check it out at http://christophersportfolio.blogspot.com/

General Conference

So ever since Rene' and I got married we have been making coffee cake for General Conference. For all these years we have never been able to get it right. The topping would always just stay on top and not sink in. Well I am happy to announce that on our 14th try we have been successful. THE TOPPING SUNK. It was delicious. Apparently you need to accidentally freeze your butter and not refrigerate it and you have to have your electric beater beaters in the dishwasher so you have to beat it by hand for FOREVER. So if you make coffee cake and can't get it to work try messing up and it might turn out.
Another tradition or really just something I liked to do and always ended up doing was playing with legos during Conference. Well I can also say that that is continuing. Rene' and Ethan built a castle to hold his tennis balls and his lego man.

Apparently the castle wasn't strong enough to hold up against the monster Maggie.

She cremated it while we all took a break to eat coffee cake. Lets just say that Ethan was not happy

But she was

"Pickles"

So kids really do say the darn-dest things. Tonight Ethan has wanted pickles. It started about 9:15 pm when we asked for a pickle. So I gave him one. Then he asked for another one. So I gave him another one. When he asked for his FIFTH pickle, Chris asked if he wanted something else to eat instead of just pickles. Ethan thought for a second, then said, "Two pickles!" ...You guested it, we gave him two pickles. Chris gave him the first pickle and Ethan said, "One pickle for me." After Chris gave him the second pickle, he said "Another pickle for me!" It was SO cute. I'm always surprised at how his mind works and what he can connect together. So if you're hungry tonight, grab a pickle. Ethan will be eating them, too.

Tradition anyone?

I was telling my mom about my Valentine’s Day experience and she just laughed. So I decided to share it with everyone and maybe give you some comic relief, too.

It started a few days ago as I was walking through the store and looking at all of the Valentine’s Day “stuff.” I wanted to do something fun for my kids, so I looked through the aisles and tried to decide what to get and if it was really worth it when I realized two things. 1 –My kids wouldn’t even know the difference. 2 –Did I really need more toys and candy?

I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to spend any money. Some of my favorite Valentine’s Day memories where making heart-shaped homemade pizza. I’ve been wanting to make homemade pizza for a few weeks anyway, so this was the perfect time. I decided that I would do it on Sunday because I would have more time then if I tried to do it on Monday after work.

Sunday turned out to be quite the day. Chris made a quadruple batch of chocolate chip cookies so that he could take some to his home teaching families. He had to leave for choir practice before they were done, so I finished baking them. As soon as Chris arrived home he woke up Ethan so he could go home teaching. (Chris takes Ethan as his companion because it’s really hard for him to go with his assigned companion.) Ethan was extremely grumpy and we were trying to get him happy and ready to leave when our friends from Salt Lake called and wanted to come visit. –I was fine having them come visit, but let me just say my house was NOT in order for company. I agreed as long as they were okay with coming to a messy house and trying my first homemade pizza ever.

Our company arrived about 6:00 and Chris was supposed to be home about that same time, but he wasn’t. They watched Maggie while I started pizza (I wanted to start it sooner, but I was holding Maggie so that she would stay asleep –she was really grumpy after church so I didn’t dare lay her down).

The pizza experience was quite the adventure. I made the first batch of pizza dough (it took me forever to get the right amount of flour so it wasn’t sticky) and it was super thin and still wasn’t enough to cover the whole pan. So I washed the measuring cups and bowls and started again; this time making a bigger batch that I hoped would make two pans worth. It turns out that it was way more than that. So I had one “thin crust” pizza and one “super thick crust” pizza, plus a huge ball of dough left over for another pizza. At this point it was about 8:00 and I didn’t care about having a heart shaped pizza, just that it would get cooked so we could eat dinner. –Did I mention I was going through his adventure with company and no husband to help entertain them? And I think I used half a bag of flour trying to get the dough right!

Chris and Ethan finally got home and the pizza finally got done. It actually turned out great, two hours later than I wanted, but still good. The next time I make it will hopefully be without company around and in a clean kitchen. It turns out my kids are too young to even know what was going on… no surprise… but I’ll sure remember it. And all of this for the sake of a tradition!

More Pictures

I don't know why but the first picture always goes sideways on me and I don't know how to fix it sorry. Anyway here are some more pictures.
Ethan created this fort on his own during a Christmas party, I guess he was bored.
We had all of Davids kids down the other day for a sleep over. These were there sleeping arrangements. It went over quite well.
Ethan is always wanting to play and to hold Maggie so today I thought I would grab there picture as he was holding her. Luckily I got both of them to smile.

Internet

Well we finally got a different internet service provider so we should be able to update our blog more often. Here is a little preview. These are not in any order I just picked some at random.