Tree House Museum

This past week my baby sister turned a WHOPPING 23 years old!  So, we decided to celebrate by taking the kiddos to the tree house museum.  I had never been there before, but it really was a lot of fun!  Jack only got in one fist fight (which he won, but that's a minor detail we are not celebrating), so overall it was a successful couple of hours. 

Here's my little guy milking a cow.  I'm glad he got to do this since the other day he asked me if I thought he was going to be a farmer when he grows up.  I told him I wasn't sure and he said that if he is he wants us to build a farmhouse just like Grandpa Boyd and Grandma Mary's.  He's pretty cute!  My favorite parts of that statement is the fact that right now he still pictures himself living with Dad and Mom when he's all grown up.  So sweet!

Ella is a hard girl to capture in pictures these days since she's walking all over the place and super busy.  She loved the museum, especially the fish tank and a little bridge that she kept climbing up and sliding down.  She is such a trooper when we have busy, on the go days.  This particular day she only napped 20 minutes in the car the entire day.  That night we went to the ward talent show that the Primary Presidency I'm in was in charge of, so she didn't even get to bed until 10:30 at night.  A lot of kids would fall apart in this scenario, but she just copes and continues to be relatively pleasant to be around.  Don't worry though, most days we stay home and give her a nice baby routine :)

Jack is really into castles and knights lately so he loved playing with this toy set up.  He gets kind of an intense angry face when he imagines sometimes.  It's pretty funny.  He wasn't feeling super great.  His eyes were a little bloodshot, but I thought it was since he had been up at night coughing.  The next day they were bright red so I took him to the doctor for some eye drops.  I apologize to any kids at the museum that we may have given pink eye.  It's only fair really though since I'm pretty sure he contracted it from Kangaroo Zoo.

Jack, his cousin Brody, and Grandma Mary.  These boys sure love their Grandma!  She is always willing to listen to them,  read them a book, or try to teach them something new.  It's awesome because sometimes (or a lot of times) as a mother, I'm all talked out.  It's great to have Grandparents who love our kids and help us raise them!

Jack the photographer, Ella's fingernail

Jack has recently found himself quite taken with my camera and is capturing all sorts of Kodak moments around our house.  I was just sorting through my pictures and deleting literally dozens of shots, and I decided to save a few since they were making me laugh.  My favorite part of his picture taking is that he thinks every shot is hilarious and quite often says, "that's a tute one."  Here are a couple of my favorites!  Don't judge,  we're just being fun parents.

This one of Ella really is cute!  She's still obsessed with the dishwasher (and my purse!)

The funnier face you pull, the more hilarious Jack thinks his picture taking is :)

In other news. . . I'm not sure how it happened, but Ella smashed her tiny pinky finger which is literally not much bigger than a toothpick.  I remember her crying one day by our entertainment center so I'm thinking it happened then, but I'm not sure.  I just noticed one day that it looked like her fingernail was going to fall off.  Sure enough, a couple of days later it did.  If you are easily upset by gruesome fingernail shots then you should avert your eyes from the following pictures.

It was hanging on by a thread, but I couldn't bring myself to pull it off.

When it did fall off it was during nap time and disappeared, so I didn't get to save it for her baby book :) 

It has been off for a couple of weeks and has barely, barely started growing back.  I already have parent guilt that my baby girl is 14 months old and I have never painted her cute little fingernails, and now I have to add to it that if I do paint her fingernails it will just draw attention to her bum pinky nail.  I guess for now the nail polish will have to wait!

Our Mustache Bash

My younger brother, Brett's wife Sheree is due to have their first little baby the end of March, so we recently threw her a baby shower.  My sis-in-law Timari is a good party planner, so we followed her lead and threw a mustache bash.

Here's the family shot.  Ella was behind us eating lunch in her high chair.  Sheree's mom flew in from Albuquerque and surprised her at the shower.  So fun to be in on the secret!

Here's the happy, expectant couple :)

The babies were just trying to lick the chocolate!

I think Ella and Maggie are going to be good buddies! 

The shower was a huge success!  I'm so excited to have a brand new nephew literally any day (right Sheree?  It's only fair!!! :)  I can't wait to see what he looks like and find out what they are naming him.  I have heard absolutely no names thrown around so it will be a complete surprise.  It's kind of fun that way!  It's fun to see your siblings become parents, and Brett has a way of ruling with an iron fist when it comes to the nieces and nephews (in a good way!) so I'm excited to see him as a dad.  I know he'll be a great one!