Maris January Montage... with cameos by her siblings :)

And for your viewing enjoyment, a few clips of Maris from the last 6 weeks. You will see her moving a little, bouncing a lot, laughing, and even waving- she is getting really good at waving hi and bye, it's ADORABLE.  Also there's a bit of Owen singing the never-ending "Partrigeon in a Pear Tree" (Partridge/Pidgeon?? No idea!).  Good times.

Winter wonderland?

It's a good thing we took the opportunity to go sledding a few days after Christmas, because it HASN'T SNOWED since!!  it's so crazy, I love it but I'm terrified of the consequences of such an early spring!  Seriously we've had several 60* days already in FEBRUARY!?!?

Anyway, The kids all LOVE sledding and have no fear.

 Even Maris. She looked a little concerned during and after each sled ride, but didn't cry! Yay for her first time sledding.

 Also I'm loving Whitney's gap-tooth smile!  She just lost the other front tooth too so now it's even bigger. :)

 Whitney has been playing basketball- it's just a developmental league, they mostly practice and then have a short game at the end each time.  

She likes it, but Eric can hardly stand to watch because he thinks the coaching is so horrible!  I guess he's learned his lesson; he'll be volunteering to coach his kids every time from now on!

 I spy... the only girl on the court??  There are only 2 girls out of the 40+ kids in the 7pm session! Way to play with the boys Whitney!

She has greatly improved her dribbling and shooting abilities, and is starting to learn how to play defense. Now if the boys would ever pass her the ball, she might get to develop more skills in a game setting!

I volunteered at the Fun Run (jog-a-thon thing) at the school, it was so fun!  The laps were only 1/16 of a mile, but Whitney ran 39 and Katelyn ran 29!  They had a great time, so that was good.

 Whit happily running.

 Kate insisted on tucking in her shirt :) and had fun too.

There's been a lot of THIS going on... we are trying to get a couple of rooms finished in our basement before it gets warm enough to start working on the yard!  

 My little fashion-istas when we went to the mall to spend their Christmas gift cards!  They are into accessorizing and looking cute whenever we go somewhere lately. :)  And they pick it all out themselves, of course they don't want my advice!  But they are doing pretty good. 

 I've been park-hopping with these two lately!  It's been fun discovering several new parks. And Owen LOVES it if I play something with him, like Pirates.  Maris is just surprised and happy to be outside. They are adorable.

The birthday boy

Owen is THREE!  He seems so old, I can't believe it.  But also he has seemed so old for a while now, since Maris was born I guess.  So having him be actually three just seems natural!  

I feel a little bad because when the girls were 3 they had birthday parties-kind of. We invited a few friends to play at the park and had cupcakes.  BUT sadly Owen doesn't really have any friends!  Okay there's a couple of people I could have invited, but I haven't been feeling as socially needy so we haven't been hanging out with people, and he has his sisters to play with, so as a result he doesn't really care about having friends!  In fact when my new visiting teachers were coming over the other day I was trying to get him excited about meeting some new kids and he was like "I don't like any other kids.  I just want to play with Kate."  So... we'll work on that now that I have visiting teachers with young kids!  And I plan on doing home preschool with him in the fall.  And he does have one friend from Santaquin that I need to call.

ANYWAY, for Owen's birthday, since we weren't going to get together with friends, he wanted to have a "sports party" at the Provo Rec Center.  We did his cake the night before (Derek and Raycelan came over for it and FHE) and then Grandma and Kurtis came to the Rec Center with us for the party.

Owen's requested basketball cake!

And this was hilarious, he was blowing so funny trying to get his candles out!  He kept blowing with his lower lip stuck out, and when he finally got one it came back to life!  So Eric helped him out a little.

He wanted to open all his presents right when he woke up on his birthday, I guess that's becoming a tradition in our family!  It was fun because then the girls and Eric got to see it all before they went to work/school.

Cutie.

After we got the girls to school, we spent a happy day just playing with all his new stuff!  Airplanes, more train tracks, riding his scooter around the house, taking pictures of things... it was a fun day.  Oh and his big haircut; we'll get to that in a minute!

Here are his sports party pics.  First we played a little basketball, (you can see the girls in the background, and Kurtis was there too but escaped the camera).

Then we spent a large chunk of time in the indoor playground.  It was pretty cool, but I had to keep telling myself "it's his birthday, this is what he wants to do!" and not try to make him stick to the sports theme haha!  Silly me.

Then we spent a few minutes at the climbing wall before trying to get a raquetball court (the wait was too long) and attempting to run on the cool indoor track (apparently you are only allowed on if you are 14 years old and up!) and finally just spending the rest of our time in the pool.

I guess this is the only picture I took at the pool!  He was finally brave enough to play on this playground and not mind if he got splashed or sprayed, yay!  The girls loved the big waterslides and Eric and I challenged each other on the pool climbing wall, which I can now do because of my stronger PiYo arms. :)

It was a fun family activity night.  And Grandma had fun holding Maris. :)

So. The big haircut.  Owen has been refusing to let us cut his hair.  He hates it all- the clippers, the itchy hair everywhere, holding still.... (as if the boy needs anything else to make him itch!  He's had a really bad eczema flare-up on the back of his knees that has taken literally a month to heal!  He kept scratching and had open sores and we finally started wrapping it in gause and athletic tape and it is FINALLY better!)

He finally agreed to let me cut his hair for his birthday.  He did NOT want to go to a haircutting place even though I begged him, because I did not want to do it myself!  The 3 or 4 haircuts I've given him in his life have not been very successful in my opinion!  But he insisted, so I looked up cute haircuts and how to do them on pinterest, and went for it!  Here are the befores:

Side,

front/side,

front, and back.  So cute and blond but so long and usually scruffy and crazy!

and 45 minutes later here's after!

I'm very pleased to say that I like how it turned out!  I really wanted to keep it long enough on the top corners where he has these lumps- if it's short there it just sticks straight out.  And I wanted to be able to brush it to the side or spike it up, and I wanted the back super short.  So I only used clippers in the back, and did the rest with scissors and it pretty much worked!!! Yay.  I love how it looks like he has frosted tips because the ends are still white and the roots are darker blond.

Anyway, we love our funny boy.

Oh yeah, and a couple of his quotes from lately:

"Mom this is a walking stick slash sword" (as in walking stick/sword.  I love how he uses that "slash" correctly!!) and playing at the park with a steering wheel "we are in a house slash car"

"Mom you know that when your water breaks, then you are not pregnant any more." 

Me: uuuhhhmmm, yep, you're right! How did you know that buddy?

"It was on Studio C."

Wow, I guess he picks up more than I thought!  A good reminder to make sure even family-friendly shows are age-appropriate!  Not that that info isn't, it was just surprising to hear him say it out of the blue!

At a park:

Me: Are you playing with those girls?

Owen: Yeah, we're playing Realtor.  I'm their realtor and I'm finding them a house.  We're going to go see that one.

Really?  haha, so funny that they act out their experiences.

Also it was really funny when we saw his cousins Lydia in December and Jenna in January, Owen did the same thing with each of them while sitting at the counter eating.  He would say funny made up combinations of words and they would laugh, over and over again.  It was so cute and such a classic boy/girl interaction: if it makes a girl laugh, a boy will keep doing it!

A Very New Year!

This year has been new in many ways.  First- it's been the warmest January ever!  Super weird!  Second, the girls started their new school and our ward/stake boundaries changed.  So we are now in the Salem 12th ward, Salem West Stake instead of the Leland Ward, Spanish Fork West Stake.  We were just starting to get to know people....but it's definitely for the best.  We were meant to be in this ward at this time.  The kids are making friends, I get to teach senior primary, and Eric got called to be the scoutmaster again!  We were totally shocked, but he quickly got excited about it and is doing awesome.  Anyway, it has been a lot of changes for us!

The girls are at a new school, American Leadership Academy.  They have done great with the transition and are making friends.  It has gone SO much more smoothly than I thought it would! And  I love that they are only 3 minutes away.  And they get to wear red!  Fun!  They do miss Santaquin and their old friends though.

Now a bunch of random stuff.  Katelyn got stuck in the dryer.  She said she was going to pretend like she was stuck, but then she really got stuck!  I heard her say "uhhhhhh, help?" and it was really funny.

The girls let me do my favorite hairstyle on them, the french braid swirl.  It was actually Whitney's first time ever- she had never let me do it before!

A selfie by katelyn, thanks kate haha! classic.

Maris has been fairly immobile; she usually just sits in one spot and plays.  But slowly she is starting to move!  This was the 2nd or 3rd week of January, and she used to be sitting where Katelyn is-- but she got on her tummy and kept pushing herself backwards with her arms until she was all the way over there!  We were all so excited!  And then she's only done that a couple more times since haha.

Owen took this picture of me and Maris watching the Biggest Loser, and I thought I looked kind of cute in it so I'm including it :)

Then here's a few Christmas ones from Eric's phone that I missed, oops!

Our kids' first time meeting "Santa" at a church party...

 Owen wouldn't sit on his lap but he was brave enough to speak up and tell him what he wanted for Christmas; "train tracks".  And he accepted the candy cane. :)

 Maris and her sticky-up hair!  

 Maris and her cousin Jayda!  Of course Maris is stealing from her younger cousin!

 cuties.

 Christmas Eve.

 Christmas morning.

 Christmas Afternoon: Grandma and Grandpa Murray with all their grandkids!