Will is growing up today he told me that the underwear I gave him to put on were "lame" then later on he told me I wasn't his best friend anymore, Elmo was. I'm tempted to tell him "why don't you ask your best friend Elmo to do it" when he asks me for more milk or to help him get on the potty we'll see how long their friendship lasts!

Christmas Time!

I'm excited about Christmas this year. I organized myself a little bit more this year, last year I was only worried about making sure I got the right presents for everybody and I felt like we missed out on all the fun Christmas activities. So this year I made an advent activity Calendar so that I make sure that not only we have fun but we help Will learn the true meaning of Christmas. Some of the activities we have done so far are making glitter pictures. (sorry for the near nakedness he is wearing underwear you just can't see it) This was a hit with Will because he likes "being shiny" as he puts it.

We visited the Christmas fair at our stake center where they had a live Nativity with a real live Camel it was pretty cool the adults were more excited about the Camel than the kids. This is a community activity so in the chapel they had choirs from all over salem performing songs and in the gym they had a huge display of different Nativities it totally gave me Nativity envy since all I have is a small one with just Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.
They also had a activity for the kids called a journey to Bethlehem where they could dress up, play in Mary's Kitchen (a tent full of rice), make ornaments, listen to the Christmas story, play with child proof nativity scenes, and work in Joseph's workshop. Will had so much fun and we were all impressed with the creativity.

We decorated the house and Christmas tree. When I pulled the Christmas Boxes out I was amazed that Will got excited about the stuff he even grabbed the snowman door hanger and yelled out "my snowman!" apparently he remembers a little of last year.

The first thing we did is actually a tradition that we have done every year which is go through our clothing and toys to give some away to people less fortunate. Last year Will willingly handed over books and toys, but this year at first he was a little upset to give away some of his stuff. Its kind of funny because the stuff we gave is stuff that I have rarely seen Will play with so if I would have gone through the stuff myself Will probably would have never noticed, but we feel that Will needs to learn how to give on his own in the end he willingly said goodbye to his old toys.


Thats what We've been up to so far hope everyone is having a great Christmas season!

Projects (This one is for you Melinda!)

My sister Melinda told me I should make a post about some of the crafty projects I've done so I've decided to finally do it in honor of her birthday. Happy Birthday Mel! I try to be crafty but 9 times out of ten the projects in my head do not turn out the way I want them to. I like looking at other blogs and doing their tutorials and I have a higher success rate of projects turning out when I do that. I found a tutorial on the Samster Mommy blog about how to make felt fridge magnets and had to do it, it took less than a day and it turned out to be something that Will plays with daily. I didn't do the same stitch that she uses mostly because I'm lazy and tried it but it

took so long that I changed it up. Well after seeing Will play with these magnets day in and day out for two months I decided to get him a magnet board so he didn't have to stand in front of the fridge all day so I purchased a white board for him so that he could use dry erase markers on it and as well as use his magnets on it. Then one day I was letting Will color a black piece of paper with chalk and I thought that if he likes chalk so much we should get him a chalk board since I read so many craft blogs I have seen the chalk board paint used on everything and decided to try it on the back side of the white board and it works so good! Then I was checking out the craft activities for kids on dltk-kids.com and decided to laminate some of the rhyming game pictures for will because they are really good for speech development so I put magnets on the back of them for the white board too. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday so I decided to make Will a Thanksgiving magnet to play with. I couldn't really find anything that I wanted to make on the craft blogs so I used my own ideas and made Tom the Turkey. He has different accessories that can be changed up and his feathers can be plucked. Will loves him so much which always makes the project worth doing! So those are a few of the things I've Been up to.

Thanksgiving

We went to Roseburg for Thanksgiving to be with the Nyleen side of the family. It was a nice trip the roads were clear the whole way and its a very pretty drive. I didn't know very many people from the Nyleen side so it was nice to meet Bo's Aunts and cousin. It was funny because this side of the family takes their dogs with them where ever they go so there were tons of little dogs running around for Will to torture. There were two that are not really kid friendly dogs so he got nipped a little bit which I actually think is a good thing because Will is fearless around dogs and will walk up to any dog and try to play with it so I think it was good to learn that not all dogs are going to like being played with. Bo's Grandma gave a tour to Carly, Will and me of Kim's house and on the tour Will found out that they had a cat shut in the bonus room so she wouldn't get demolished by the dogs and made it his mission to free the poor kitty. He would sneak upstairs whenever I had my back turned and try to free it I finally had to tell him that the cat couldn't come out because she was in time out which immediately ended the mission. I only took one picture while I was there because we were having so much fun. Will loved the little dog Coo she was such a good dog. Up until now he really hasn't had that much interaction with a little dog so the first time Coo hopped onto his lap he started laughing so hysterically that Coo hopped right back down and wouldn't come back up until Bo was sitting down with Will. We had to leave pretty early because Bo had to get up at 4 am for Black Friday so we left at 5 and he was in bed by 7 so I pulled Will's mattress out to the living room and he and I watched movies and ate oreos until we fell asleep.

I FINALLY have a camera!!!

Last July when I went to the beach with my family my camera randomly stopped working. Seriously one minute it was fine and the next minute it went blank and said "lens error". I took it home and researched the problem and found out that unless I wanted to spend more money than its worth to have an expert fix it I was pretty much screwed. I told Bo we needed a new camera and he told me we can just use our phones. Have you ever tried to take a picture of a three year old on a camera phone? Its not easy! 90% of the pictures I take turn out blurry and if you take pictures when its even a little bit dark they turn out really grainy. Well after four months of whining and complaining Bo broke down and bought me a camera! I told him it was what I want for Christmas and yesterday he worked a 13 hour shift at his Best Buy and Radio Shack locations so he had plenty of time to look at the Black Friday deals and brought me home a camera. He even wrapped it, of course his form of wrapping is covering the box with duct tape but its the thought the counts. He gave it to me and left so I'm not sure if I was supposed to save it for Christmas or open it today but I opened it because its better to ask for forgiveness than permission right? So here is a picture with my new camera he wanted me to take a picture of him with his new horse the Great Grandma Nyleen gave him. Hazel works at a shop to help raise money for the VA so she is always getting things for Will. When we went down for Thanksgiving everything Will touched she tried to give us it was pretty cute.

Halloween and Fall

I love the fall and I'm so happy to be able to experience fall in western Oregon. I love the vibrant colors every where we go it just makes me so happy! The other day we went to the park in just sweatshirts and I got a text from someone in Idaho saying that it had started snowing in Rexburg. I am so happy not to be there for the winter! We came home from our visit with my family the Monday before Halloween for a couple of months we had been talking about doing a star wars theme for Halloween so I went to work and in just two days I came up with our costumes I was most happy with the fact that I just used fabric I had around the house so it was definitely not expensive to make them. When I started trying the stuff on Bo little by little he looked at me and said maybe we should wear name tags so people know who we are, but once I was finished he was happy with how it all turned out. Bo went as Obi Wan, Will went as Yoda, and I went as Queen Amidala. We had fun we went up to Portland to hang out with friends for Halloween. Saturday we went to the Mt. Scott Ward trunk or treat with the Zeller family and afterwards went to Red Robin it was fun. Will had a hard time asking for the candy but after it was dropped in his bag he would say thank you. The next day we went to Hillsboro to see Bo's grandparents and then to Beaverton to see our friends the Jacksons their two boys and went trick or treating with them on their block. Will did really good yelling trick or treat and going door to door. I was impressed with the neighborhood he got multiple full size candy bars and one house gave out playdough. We were having such a good time then half way through tick or treating Bo turned to me and said "I'm not feeling too well" by the time we got back from trick or treating he had to run to the bathroom so the night was cut a little short he was feeling so bad that he asked me to drive. That was a little scary I hate driving anyways but this was the worse because it was an area I had never driven in and it was dark and raining and Halloween so it was busy, but we made it home safely and after puking all night Bo was perfectly fine in the morning besides the fact that he says he doesn't know if he'll ever eat kit kat bars again since that was the last thing he ate.

Michelle Got Married!

Michelle Got Married!

So I haven't posted in a while. I really wanted to but I went home for 2 1/2 weeks to see my little sister Michelle get married and while I was gone my computer broke it was a sad day and made me very grateful for my computer nerd husband who spent a couple a days looking at it ordered a part and got it back up and running.

I drove to Vale with my Mom because Bo was only able to get the reception in Vale off not the wedding in Utah. On the way we stopped off in La Grande for a potty break and to visit my Grandma Kaaen. It was so nice to see her and I was very happy to be able to show her how big Will has got. Will and I had a lot of fun on our little vacation Will was super happy to be around kids and pets every day plus he had a backyard he could run out to whenever he wanted to and a trampoline which he spent hours on. Will loved walking to the school to say "Hi" to Grandpa and to pick the girls up from school Brooke and Aubrey were so nice to him always willing to play with him and baby him. When we got home from all our travels we opened the door to our apartment and he asked us where Brooke and Aubrey were and still asks us everyday if we can go see them. Will loved to hear my Dad play his guitar every time he'd start to play Will would grab Aubrey's pink guitar and strum along with him. We also got to see all of Will's cousins he sometimes got a little overwhelmed when we were around everybody, but was super excited to be around tons of kids and just to be able to goof off and be crazy.

The whole reason we went down to Vale was so that we would be able to go to Michelle's wedding. So a week after we arrived in Vale we drove down to Logan Utah to see the big wedding. It was fun and very tiring to do all the activities crammed into such little time. I became very grateful for my husband on this trip because it was very exhausting to be the only person watching Will and trying to entertain him at the luncheon, reception, and all the pictures we had to do. I'm happy for Michelle and Jeff, I just hope that Jeff knows what he has gotten himself into. :)