Winter Wonderland?

We cut our Christmas vaction short just a bit due to the weather. We decided to get back to Utah while there was a break between storms. The roads were good in Idaho but to our surprise it was snowing in Utah. More snow to add to the dump they got the day before! So when we arrived home we couldn't even get in the driveway because there was already several feet of snow there! Ryan worked hard to get a pathway shoveled so Jaden and I could get in and get warm and fed, then he continued to shovel so the poor car could get nestled into the garage. He finished the next day and that's when we took these pictures. This was Saturday the 27th.

Yup those shelves are flat so you get a good side view of just how much snow we got!
That's Ryan up to his knees. He shoveled a path to the rabbit pen for me. Bless him!!

Yup, that's a snowpile about as big as Ryan! That just happened from him shoveling out the driveway! Lots of snow!

At least the mountains don't mind the snow. They're so pretty!

Christmas!

Christmas was soo much fun!! We are so blessed to have both Ryan's and my family so close that we can spend Christmas with both!! We spent Christmas morning opening presents at my parents with the elders and my grandparents.
Oh Christmas tree! Oh Christmas Tree!Jaden was so happy to see the car garage that he wasn't interested in opening any of his presents!

Didn't take him long to figure out the blocks.

Jaden loves the bows! They love him too and kept getting stuck on his Christmas Jammers that were a bit too big for him.
He wasn't sure what to think about Grandpa burrying him in the wrapping paper.

On Christmas Eve Santa came to the Yancey party. Despite all our efforts getting him used to the idea of Santa, he was still afraid. Though as soon as I had him back he pointed at santa and said "ho ho ho". Figures.

Christmas Card

For those who's e-mail I don't have or just didn't get it, here's our Christmas Card.

15 months

Can you believe he's 15 months?!? WOW! Time flies when your having fun! And boy are we having fun! Here's his new stats.

weight: 18 lbs 9 oz
height: 31 in.

He's still below the chart on weight despite how much he eats! His doctor suspects it's just cause he's so active but to be safe she is having us go to primary childrens hospital for some tests to make sure he doesn't have an actual condition that is making it difficult for him to put the weight on. We're also going to see a hand doctor while we are there to check out his weird pinky. We'll be doing this all in January.

Jaden can say lots of new words and will mimic about anything that comes out of your mouth so be careful what you say!

He can go up and down the stairs with ease so long as he doesn't get distracted in the process.

He thinks all stuffed animals a bears and he loves to growl at them while he snuggles them.

He prefers to be naked. The other day he unzipped his jammers and took off his diaper and peed all over his crib. Great!

He's fascinated with plugs and tries to pull them out all the time. (This is a no no but he seems to manage it a lot regardless)

He knows what he's not allowed to get into but will watch to see if I'm looking and smile and do it anyway. Or will keep pointing and asking if he can even if the answer is no every time.

He says Ho Ho Ho! Though it sounds more like Oh! Oh! Oh!

He thinks he should play on the computer and I should not. This is probably my biggest battle with him and has severly cut down my computer time.

Basically he's a happy healthy little boy and we love him tons!!!

Anniversary

Yesterday was Ryan and my 4th year anniversary! I can't believe it's been that long already! We took Jaden over to Jeremy and Jessica's for them to play with while we went on one of our oh so rare dates.

We started out with dinner at Jonny Corino's. That was so good! I even got italian sodas, they were free refills so I had 3. The waiter just kept bringing them out to me in different flavors for me to try. He was so great! Dinner was so good my tummy is rumbling now just thinking about it. Mmmm

After dinner we went to the Capitol Theatre where we saw the Nutcracker! The theatre was so lovely. Very fancy. The ballet was amazing. What talented people! They made it looks so effortless! I took ballet for a semester and it was anything BUT effortless! Those ballarinas were sooo pretty! The dancing and the set work was all top notch! Ryan even enjoyed some of it!

What has been effortless is my marriage with Ryan. I've heard how marriage is hard work and there's a lot of give and take, but Ryan and I seem to have such similar views that we just glide along with ease. I love just sitting with him and holding his hand. I love how he still looks at me with that spark in his eye just like he did when we were dating. I love how he loves me completely and unconditionally! I love him more everyday and couldn't imagine life without him. He's the greatest husband and father that anyone could ever want. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I'll take it. . . and keep it forever!!!

Vacuum helper

Jaden saw me vacuuming and went and got his to help. We never showed associated it with our vaccuum, but her figured it out anyway. It was so cute. He was doing it a lot more before we got the camera out, as always

Dancing

This is an old video of Jaden dancing and we just got around to compressing it. It's not very good since he gets distracted by the camera, but you get the idea. He loves to dance whenever he hears music.

Snow Day

Yay! We got some real snow!

What is this cold white stuff?

Okay. . . now what do I do?Whoa! This slide goes faster with snow on it!
Umm mom, I'm getting cold.

Wait, we're done already?

Decorating for Christmas

We finally got around to decorating for Christmas on Wednesday. It was a little different this year having a toddler in the house. Such as we had to put the tree in front of the railing instead of the window cause Jaden likes to climb up on the back of the couch so if we moved it over by the railing that would be trecherous. Other changes in decorating took place as well, like I only got to put up about half my decorations.

Here's Jaden helping daddy put up the tree.
Here's our tree. yup its only decorated from the middle up.

Heres the majority of my decorating. I had to cram as much as I could on these three shelves that Jaden can't reach.

At least our computer monitors are festive!

Ward Party - The good and the bad

So as you may or may not know, I am the Activity Chairman in our ward. This means I have to do an activity every month for up 75 to 200 people! this is exhausting! The most challenging activity is the ward Christmas party because we're almost guaranteed every one of those 200 people will be there! This year I planned a Christmas Breakfast for dinner.

The Bad:
~The stake scheduled us and I didn't know it, so we had to have our Christmas party the next week after Thanksgiving!
~We could only fit two griddles in the kitchen without blowing a circut.
~One of my major committee helpers had a concert so she couldn't be there. I never heard back from another of my committee, and the couple on my committee never showed even though they said they would. Ahhh! I only had 1 commitee member to help.
~The lights we were suppose to use to decorate got left in someones car and they would not be back in time for the party at all.
~The paper for the table that I thought we had in the closet. . . wasn't there.
~I was stuck cooking pancakes in the kitchen the whole night.

The Good!:
~It's now all over!!! I can get on with getting my own home ready for Christmas!
~We found pre-cooked bacon Yay! That was going to be the hardest part!
~Anticipating the need for help, I asked Brother and Sister Nielsen. She then asked the Stoddards and Sister Smedly. I had a wonderful team for set up, and running the kitchen!
~Brother Hansen brought some lights we could use.
~The Heidenthallers had several rolls of printing paper in the basement they let us use! (He works for the churches printing company)
~The Stake had a bunch of new bowls and a heated server! Perfect!
~The Nielson's watched Jaden the whole evening and fed him. AND he was good the whole time!
~We had a really good turn-out!
~We had the perfect amount of food!
~I got to stay in the kitchen the whole time. So at first I thought that was a bad thing, but when I went in to check on the food, I remembered I hate crowds! I hate Noise! I hate screaming children running at top speed and getting into things they shouldn't be getting into. The kitchen was a plesent place to be after all.
~Everyone helped clean up and we were walking out the door at 8. (it started at 6. Perfect!)

As you can see we had more good then bad thanks to the wonderful, helpful people in our ward. It turned out to be a success I would say and hopefully I will NOT be doing it again next year!

Hope you all have great non-stressful ward parties!

Box Hand

There ya have it! Just get him boxes for Christmas! He loves it!

Color My World Video

Color My World

The other day there was a paper on the floor and Jaden knocked my pen off the desk and tried "drawing" on the paper. Course the pen was closed so he just got frustrated. But this made me think Jaden must be old enough to color! So yesterday I brought his highchair in the livingroom (so he didn't think it was mealtime) andput him in, gave him a piece of paper and a crayon. I showed him just once what to do with it and he went right to creating! Never once did he even think to put the crayons in his mouth. Yay!

He colors with his left hand but only because his right thumb MUST go in his mouth! He did switch hands to make hard marks on the paper.

Jaden's masterpieces displayed on the fridge.

Hey theres a cool looking face on this one blue dots for eyes nose and mouth with a swig of orange for hair. Do you see it? My boy is so talented!

Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving was great! We went to Blackfoot on Tuesday so we got to spend quite a bit of time at home with our families!

Wednesday we ran some errends, I went to Curves with my mom (lots of fun!) and Ryan went to I.F. to check out an electrical company there, just to see if it was a company he may be interested in in the future when we move back home. Then Ryan went and got new tires for the car and fix the snow tire on the truck. We keep getting nails and screws in our tires, where the heck are these things coming from? Then we went and renewed my drivers license. Yay! and we kinda chilled the rest of the evening I think.

Thursday we had our two Thanksgivings (one with each family) and played games with my family then over at Ryan's brother's house.

Friday we left Jaden with Grandma and Grandpa Yancey and went with my family to Pocatello where we did some shopping and went and saw Twilight! It wasn't as good as the book, and Edward wasn't even close to hot enough, but it was pretty good. Ryan even liked it!!!

Saturday we went through the temple. It was Cory's first time. He's starting him mission next week! We're so proud of him. More on that later. Anyway, my Grandma Potter and Uncle Ken came from Boise so there was a few of us. It was great to be in the temple together as a family. We missed you Jer and Jes! After the session we had Prime Rib in the temple cafateria. Mmmmm!!!!

Sunday we went to church with my parents. Jaden ran a muck as usual and my mom took him out in the hall where he decided the door hinges tasted good. . . yeah I know, weird. Then we gathered up our stuff and headed back here. (With Cory's Playstation 2! He won't be needing it on his mission. Yay for us!)

Now what you really want. . . Pictures!!!

Here's my Dad carving the Turkey. Mmmm smoked turkey!

I don't know if you can see Jaden's face, but boy is he excited for all the food!

A roll in each hand, a turkey on your lap, and great grandma! Now THATS Thanksgiving!

They said we'd be eating turkey, is this not what they meant?

Jaden with a turkey feather! (Mom has turkey with lollies for the feathers. Jaden always points at them and says "Mmmm")

Jaden and Daddy riding that cow!

I love the drive from Idaho to Utah (Not the drive really, but the view!) I took this picture out the window. Look at those sunrays! So pretty!

14 Months

Can you believe my baby is 14 months old? I sure can't! Though as I may have mentioned before he does seem to have hit his terrible twos early.

So what's this boy up to now?

Well he's had his first hair cut. Nothing astounding. I just used the buzzer while Ryan tried to keep him occupied. I did manage to get a ribbon around a lock for his baby book!

He will only say "Uh Oh" and "All Gone" on command but he mimics words all the time.

He waves bye bye . . . when he feels like it. Usually after Daddy is out the door.

He will pull his blanky over his head and babble something that I'm pretty sure is suppose to be "Where's Jaden" Then pulls it off and says "boo" or "doo" or "bu" never know what he's going say but we get the idea.

He will feed himself with a spoon if you put food in it then give it to him. Put the food in front of him and he'll just mash and smash it with the spoon.

He's gotten even more jelous of the computer lately. Much to my displeasure. So sometimes I will give him a turn. He will push the mouse around and push the buttons and type on the keyboard one key at a time.

His favorite toy is his Daddy. One of the fun things daddy does is put a ball in his mouth and then blow it out and it flies across the room, I know, not real sanitary, but Jaden thinks it's hilarious and will keep bringing over the ball and blowing on it.

Speaking of, he will blow on his food. He knows if the food is hot mommy and daddy blow on it. So he blows on it too before putting it in his mouth. Sometimes he blows on his bananas before eating them too. Just to be sure!

He sometimes walks around backwards just for the fun of it!

He can open shampoo bottles and unscrew my chapstick. Yeah that's a problem!

He can climb up and down the couch like he's a monkey. Not just up the couch but ALL the way up! He loves to sit on the top of the couch and watch out the window. Here's some pics with him showing daddy the cool stuff out the window.

So theres more, but I can't even begin to write it all down, it would probably seem boring to you anyway, but every day he does something new and delightful or sometimes something new and annoying but his curiosity is at a high and nothing is going to stop this kid from doing EVERYTHING!

Giddy up! The video!

What dirt?

This morning Jaden was being a bit too quiet in the kitchen so I went to check it out. Yup he got into the dirt again! and ate it! again! How do I know he ate it? . . . .

"What dirt Mom?"

giddi up!

Well look who figured out how to get up on his horse all by himself!

He had so much fun rocking on it until he realized he didn't know how to get down.

Out the window

Jaden really enjoyed watching the snow fall out the winder yesterday!

All Gone

What's all gone? you may be asking. Well nothing specific, but It's Jaden's new word. He will hold out his hands to the side of his shouldours palm up and say "All Gone" or close to anyway. It's funny to see. I'll try to get it on video, but he hasn't been cooperating with that lately.

Happy Halloween

Are you done looking at Halloween pictures yet? Well I decided to do a mini photoshoot on Halloween to get some good pics of Jadens adorable costume. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but he proved to be rather difficult. I think I got a few good ones though by bribing him with candy.

This one he came running straight for the camera. Guess he was ready for his close up.

Trick or Treating at the Nielsen's! Jaden picked out some Yummy airheads! Mmmm as Jaden would say.

They had this cool blow up thing in their front lawn. The witch would come up out of the cauldren and go back down. Jaden wasn't quite sure what to think of that.

Mmmm the yummy spoils of trick or treating!

Halloween Carnival

Our ward Halloween carnival! My activities commitee teamed up with the YM/YW and primary to make a kickin' carnival! Each group had "booth" So YW had 3 YM had 3 activities had one and Primary had 1. This included our cakewalk, a fishing game, darts at balloons, nerf darts at targets, pie eating contest, beanbag in the Jack-o-Lantern, and others!

We also had people bring their carved pumpkins to show off. These are just a few there were TONS! And all were soo good!
Our cake walk was a great success!
Ryan entered the eating contest but was only half way done when a giant 17 yr. old won!

It's okay. This is one satisfied pie eater!

The primary did a photo booth. Look! We even got Jaden to sit there for half a second.

One with Mommy too!

There was a great show out and I deem the whole thing a great success. Next activity is Nov. 15th. Sheesh, I better get crackin'!