It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

It was so fun to decorate this year, mainly because Parker was so amazed by everything. When we put up the tree and plugged in the lights Parker whispered in absolute awe, "Christmas Tree." He loved everything as we put it all up. I set up two of our small trees and told him they were for him and gave him some ornaments to play with. I was hoping that he would play with them and leave the big tree alone. For the most part it has worked out great. Every now and then I catch him touching something on the tree, but he really has been pretty good about leaving the decorations alone and just looking at them.

Here is my table this year...

 And my Nativity... I LOVE my Nativity!

 'O Christmas Tree!

 I really liked how the tree turned out this year. I just wish I could find 'the perfect star' for it. I haven't seen any stars or angels that I love. (Oh, and hopefully we will be able to replace our nice 1980 couches this year.) Yay!

 My Grandma Jackson made these snowflakes. My mom brought one home for each of us after Grandpa J passed away. It made me happy to pull it out and put it on the tree this year.

 Parker with his trees.

 He has a really hard time leaving this decoration alone. The snowman has come up missing a few times and if I catch him with one of the ice cubes he tells me, 'Just looking, Mom.'

 GOOD NEWS!!! Santa was not a total creeper this year! He was actually very nice. Parker was a little nervous, but he sat on his lap and told him he would like 'Thomas.' Now hopefully the right one gets here before Christmas. The one he wants was at Costco. I went back to get it a few days later when he wasn't with me and they were completely sold out. Amazon said the delivery date was anywhere from December 16th-January 10th. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

I can't believe that I am saying this, but I was actually a little bit sad to see all the snow melt. We had so much at Thanksgiving, and now it is all gone except for a small pile on each side of our driveway from shoveling. I am hoping to at least get a little so we can have a white Christmas. It just isn't right to have green grass in the front yard right now. 

Family

During our time together at Thanksgiving we took a few minutes and snapped a few family photos in front of one of Papa's barns. There were a few minor problems... It was FREEZING... Logan was very uncooperative (running into pictures, eating snow, peeing in the snow etc...) and it was FREEZING!!! But we got a few of us all together, so that was good. Also, I wish I would have taken off my glasses. They are glaring in every picture. :( I need to order new contacts or get glasses that are coated with the anti-glare stuff.

Anyways, here they are.

Thanksgiving 2010

We spent Thanksgiving in Wyoming this year. Pokey had a lot of snow... But my parent's house had more! And it was soooo cold! With all the winter storms I was nervous to make the trip - you never know what to expect. Luckily the roads on the way weren't too bad. Going home was a different story, but we all made it in one piece! And we had a great time.

Here's the yummy feast that everyone spent hours preparing to sit and eat for 15 minutes. Haha!

 Rikki, Papa and I

 Grandma and I

A few shots of all of us around the table

It is my opinion that going to Wal-Mart any time after 10pm is risking your life... We braved their midnight Black Friday sale. :) Here are us girls getting ready to go out.

What a great blessing it was to be able to spend time together as a family. The last time we were all together was Christmas 2009... And if you'll recall we spent it all together puking (and pooping)... so this time was much more fun. ;)



Silly Little Boy

Little man comes up with the silliest things to say and do. He is (usually) so fun to be around. But sometimes I am totally mortified by the things that he says and does...

I had a salon meeting one morning and Matt was not home so I had to bring Parker to the salon with me. I had him in his stroller and he was eating some goldfish.

My coworker, Hailey, also had to bring her son with her. He is about a year younger than Parker and came over to inspect his snack. Parker was not okay with that.

He pushed him down, pointed his finger and said, "You go to your mamma!"

OH. MY. GOSH.

Where did he come up with that???

I was not impressed. I scooped poor little Jaxon up and gave him some goldfish to eat.

 But on a cuter note... Parker has become a little baker.

Anytime I am in the kitchen cooking he wants to help.

He loves to stir things together.

 He is also quite into reading these days.

He has quite a few books that he absolutely loves and will say the lines along with you as you read them. Sometimes he even 'reads' them all by himself. One morning I found him reading his 'Jesus Book' to Chief. 

 He also has a new love for shoes. I was cleaning out my closet and he stumbled around the house for quite awhile in my boots. He then asked me to take a picture of him, and of course I couldn't say no!

I love my little man!

Thank You

"A Veteran is someone, who at one point in their life, wrote a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to, and including their life. That is beyond honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer remember that fact. Thank you to all who have served, are serving, and will serve."

I copied and pasted this from facebook... I don't know who the author is.

Thank you, Grandpa, for serving our country. I love you so much.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to all of the veterans who have served, are currently serving, and will serve our country in the future. It makes me sick to think that people protest at homecomings and funerals of these great men and women.

I think it is important to remember that weather or not you support the war, you should still support these great people who are fighting for what they believe is right.

We owe our lives and freedom to them. May God watch over them and bless them.

Happy Halloween 2010

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

(I wish you could see Little Man's eyes a little better. The dumb mask kept slipping up.)

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Halloween weekend. This was the first Halloween that Parker actively participated in and enjoyed.

So last year I loved my sister, Rikki's, costume and called her pretty much the day after Halloween and 'claimed' it for this year. I'm so glad she let me, because I must say that I made a great Cruella Deville and Parker was the cutest little Dalmatian ever! I wish Matthew would have joined in the fun and gone as Jasper or Horrace, but he was a party pooper.  Oh well, we still had so much fun!

On Saturday we went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat activity.

 I wonder if  'coming out of the closet' about my smoking habit at the church Trunk-or-Treat will get me released from my calling... Hmmm....

All of us ended up at Milliard's after all our festivities.

Bikers, 101 Dalmatians and Tourists... Oh my!

(Paige, Nathan, Parker, me, Brooke and Anthony)

What a fun night!

On Sunday we went to over to our friends house to participate in the annual homemade doughnut festivities. Oh-so-yummy! And oh-so-bad-for-you!

Next year hopefully we will be home in the evening for all the trick-or-treaters. I've gotta say that the ones that caught us at home LOVED the Play-Dough and Silly Bandz that we gave out this year.

Silly little things...

So our little man is quite silly... He is constantly keeping us laughing. I just wanted to share a few of the things he has said to us lately...

I was driving and twisting a piece of my hair and from the backseat I hear Parker yell,

"Quit pulling Mommies hair, Mom!"

Little man was not happy about taking a nap, so he was in his room playing and looking at books. From the kitchen I heard him yell,

"Goodnight, Mom!"

I went to check on him a few minutes later and he had gotten in his bed, covered himself up, and went to sleep.

Parker associates all his colors with the tank engines from the shows about Thomas and his friends. It is so cute when I ask what color something is and he will tell me that the sky is "Thomas blue" and something else is "Hiro black" But it makes me giggle when he analyzes his poo and announces weather it is "Percy green" or "Toby brown."

The other day he tripped out at George and LaRae's house. Anthony was sitting behind him and he got up turned around and said,

"Not funny, Anthony!"

Anthony hadn't said anything when he tripped. LOL!

His new favorite way to pass the time and annoy Chief is to chase him around. I frequently hear him running down the hall telling Chief to,

"Wait a minute!"

Yeah, like THAT is going to happen! ;)

Matthew's brothers taught Parker to call mustaches 'creepies' while Tyler was growing one. If anyone asked him what a 'creepy' was he would point to Tyler or Nathan's lip. One day I was in Winco and Parker lost his sandal... I hadn't even noticed it was gone. We were standing in line at the check-out counter and a guy brought us his shoe. I thanked him and he turned to walk back to his cart. As he was walking away Parker said,
"Mom! CR-EEEEE-PY!"
And pointed at the man.
Of course the man had to have a bushy mustache! I hope he didn't hear Little Man. I was pretty embarrassed!

Gosh, I love our little man to pieces. It is so fun to be able to carry on a conversation with him. It is so exciting when he learns something new and understands it. I hope I will remember more of the cute little things he says and write them all down.

1st Trip to the ER...

Well, I guess we will consider ourselves lucky that Parker made it past the age of 2 before a trip to the ER was made.

I guess this would have been his second one, but luckily Grammie LaRae was watching him when he needed stitches and she knew exactly what to do to control the bleeding and took him straight up to her office... And let's face it, I am so glad I was at work during all that trauma... I would have been a wreck!

Little Man started saying, "Parker sick." on Friday afternoon.

(I LOVE that he refers to himself in 3rd person!)

But he was acting fairly normal, so I didn't get too concerned. He decided that it would be a good idea to skip his nap, so I chalked any extra clingy-ness or crankiness up to the no nap situation. We proceeded with our daily schedule. I even treated him to an ice cream cone from Sonic after leaving Fred Meyer because he had been such a good boy. He fell asleep in the car holding it... Super cute! But promptly woke up 45 seconds after arriving home.

Since he was acting fine I proceeded with my Girls Night plans...

(I'm feeling pretty bad about that. I hope little Em doesn't get sick.)

And Trisha and Dana came over. We had lots of fun talking and playing games. Matthew got home in the middle of GN and decided to take Parker out to his parents house to get in the hot tub. But he returned in 20 minutes. They went to the store instead to buy popsicles and Powerade. He said Parker was burning up and had the chills and kept saying 'Parker sick.'

Trisha and Dana left and we got little man's fever down with tylenol and a cool bath. He ate a few popsicles and fell asleep. He woke up once in the night with a fever and we gave him more meds and a cool bath to break his fever.

Saturday morning he was acting pretty good. He had a small fever but not as high as it was in the middle of the night. Matt was home, so I didn't cancel my appointments and went to work.
While I was at work Parker just laid around and his fever started creeping back up. Matthew took him into the Dr. just to make sure everything was okay and they were a little concerned because he was showing meningitis-like symptoms. They said not to give him any more meds unless his fever got to 102 and if he started showing any more symptoms to take him to the ER right away. They stopped by my salon on their way home and he was acting totally fine. He was running around and happy.
They got home and of course his fever got really high so Matthew gave him tylenol. I got home and he was acting normal again.
As the night went on he stopped turning his neck and was complaining about the light hurting his eyes, so we had Anthony come over to help give him a blessing and we took him up the the ER.
The first nurse who saw him said he was totally fine and we had nothing to worry about. We shared our concerns and she begrudgingly let us see a Dr.
Little man was still acting pretty good other than the neck/eye thing and his temp was still okay, so I think just to pacify us he ordered blood work and an IV. That was traumatizing! We had to help hold Parker down while they fished for his vein, couldn't find it, and had to re-poke him. Poor guy! (I was crying too.) After about an hour the nurse came in to check his temp and it was up to 104.5... See, we are not crazy! His blood work came back with a high white count and his oxygen level had gone down a bit.
Next came the chest x-ray! Let's just say that was HORRIBLE! They strapped him into the 'pigg-o-stat' to get the x-ray. It reminded me of the Willy Wonka tube. His arms were pinned above his head and he was screaming! Poor boy.
They determined he had pneumonia... What? Who would have thought? Gave him a high dose of amoxicillin, and sent us on our way.
What a rough night!

After we got his fever to go down he managed one of his little 'cheese grins.' 

Today is Monday, and I am so happy he is feeling better, and VERY happy he is taking his medicine better than he did with strep throat!
He was even interested in eating a grasshopper this morning. LOL! What a silly boy!

Steam Engine 844

We had the opportunity to make Parker the happiest little man ever!

Steam Engine 844 was coming to town and Matthew got asked to be the engineer from Green River to Pocatello. The next day his Dad and brother, Nathan, were asked to be the engineer and conductor from Pocatello to Nampa. Matt asked if we could ride to Nampa and they said yes. Parker was so, so excited to be able to ride a train. It was pretty fun, but I will admit that it was a super long day. We had to be there at 7am and didn't get to Nampa till about 3pm. By the time we got to our car, got it started (the battery was way dead... it took awhile to charge) and ate we didn't end up getting home till 10 that night. Yipes!

Parker and Grammie. Right after we got on the train.

Park and Uncle Anthony

(good thing for photoshop. anthony was flipping the birdl okay, okay. he was waving.)

Brooke, Anthony, LaRae, Me, Matthew and Parker. Waiting to leave Pocatello.

Up in the dome car.

Playing with Daddy.

FINALLY he fell asleep. We had a rough night before and he was getting a little cranky.

We made it to Nampa! Yay!

This may have been one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences for us. It was pretty exciting being able to ride the train and meet the crew. They were all so nice. They pretty much run the steam engine full time and are sometimes gone for up to 6 or 8 weeks at one time. They do a lot of Operation Lifesaver events as well as make appearances at big events like Cheyenne Frontier Days. What a life!

CFR 20-10

Same time, same place.

Every year over Labor Day weekend we have a family reunion for my Mom's side of the family. It is held on one of the homesteads that Papa grew up on. The theme was 'Stars and Stripes and Families are Forever.' It was pretty fun to decorate our camp with red, white and blue. I went a little crazy at the dollar store buying some pretty sweet decorations. Haha. My poor grandma didn't want me to throw them away when it was time to go, so she kept most of them in her trailer to put up next year.

We didn't take the dogs with us this year so it was nice to not have to worry about them up there. We just had little man to keep track of. We also got to meet Rory's girlfriend. She is super cute and seems like lots of fun.

I'm noticing a pattern of us being RETARDED and staring out family gatherings by running. This time it was the 2nd annual (meeks cabin) Dam Half Marathon. This year there were 18 crazies participating in the 1/2 and 11 crazies in the 5k. This is me at the finish. Yuck. I'm gross.

Who would have guessed and 80yr old would be completing a 1/2?

Here's Papa.. Crossing the finish. He walked and jogged the whole thing.

Rikki, Me, Papa, Caitlyn and Leslie

Misty was so sweet and came over to get Parker to help him make a bird feeder.

Grandpa reading to his boys.

Ugh! I need a new camera. Mine survived the Bear Lake baptism.

Rikki.

Leslie and Matt - playing 'Minute to Win It.'

Caitlyn - Minute to Win It.

Les - Minute to Win It.

Grandpa and Parker

The old homestead.

Tucker and Parker

Dogpile!

Leslie missed the blue memo.

Good times!

Can't wait for next year...

Same time, same place!