Nursery

Julian is finally a Nursery attending toddler! YAY! He stayed in Nursery the entire 2 hours and was happy when JD picked him up after church. I'm not exactly sure what changed to make it okay for him to stay, but whatever it was I'm grateful. Now let's just hope we can get him sleeping through the night regularly before the baby comes.

Random Events at the Anderson Household

I'm putting all of these random events that I think are cute in one post, I'm too tired to do more than one tonight. :)Julian loves doing what we do, he also loves to help. I was trying to get a photo of him sticking out his tongue while he was concentrating on getting the cookies on the spatula, I was just a second too late. He takes after his Father and his Grandpa Anderson, when they are concentrating really hard they stick out their tongues.
JD wanted cookies the other night, but I had accidently left a cookie sheet in the oven on top of the pizza stone (which usually stays in the oven). So instead, he just put his cookie sheet on top... it made me laugh really hard, but the cookies turned out great, I guess there is a method to his madness.

John-David got a Wii for Christmas this year and he also got Star Wars Force Unleashed. He loves the game, as does Julian. However, Julian has to have his own nun-chuck and he also makes the sounds that come out of the controller. It is so funny to watch. He loves watching the Jedi with JD as well. It's super cute.

The Many Faces of Julian

Julian loves hats of all kinds and recently found this one of John-David's. We had a fun photo shoot with him the other day and got some great photos. Enjoy!

For Joel'lene

Unfortunately somethings get passed on no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Julian saw JD drinking from the milk carton and he has to be just like Dad... so JD helped him out. JD is laughing because right before I took the picture this was our conversation:

JD: Why did you get the camera?

Me: I need to document this.

JD: No, my mother will kill me.

Me: I know.

Buddies

We had some friends over for dinner the other night and got a few great photos. Mark and Julian play really well together and are only a month apart :) They are both getting to the age where they are getting more adventorous with their play and are actually trying to pretend to be and do things. Julian loves dinosaurs and he and Uncle Barry roar and growl at each other a lot. Julian started crawling around roaring like a dinosaur and Mark quickly followed behind. Unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to get them both crawling and roaring at the same time. It was so cute! You can hear Mark though from the other room.

33 Weeks

I am officially 33 weeks pregnant with baby number 2. We still haven't decided on a name, but might be getting close. I think for now only our families will get the privilege of knowing before hand. All is well with the kiddo, but he's getting big. Last week I had an ultrasound and he was measured, as well as possible with an ultrasound. The kid's head is measuring 36 weeks and looked like he weighed about 4.5 pounds already. Average weight for a baby at 32 weeks is about 3.5-4.5 pounds. He'll probably be a bit bigger than Julian was at birth, but that's to be expected. We also got a 4-D utlrasound, hopefully it looks OK scanned. :)

Boys with Swords

Grandpa Anderson made Julian more swords for Christmas. Julian loves to play with them. This is the first decent photo I was able to get of him playing with his friends. Thanks Grandpa!

Hilarious

Some things just make you laugh, kids tend to do that to you. I was just looking at a friends blog and saw this post and both JD and I laughed really hard. This is purely for your enjoyment.

Life Lesson #45893 - Always check your child's homework ..........before it gets to school!!!
Note sent to the teacher the next school day with 1st grader... Ms. James: Sorry, That's NOT me pole dancing onstage in a strip joint! I work at Home Depot and that's me selling a shovel. (signed) Mrs. Smith

No Motivation

It's never a good thing when the dishes are overflowing in the kitchen sink, the kitchen floor is covered in spilled juice, beds are still unmade, laundry is going sour in the washing machine, friends are due for dinner in an hour and a half and you have absolutely NO MOTIVATION to get up and do anything. Am I the only one who has days like this?

What it feels like to have nothing...

Today I was listening to NPR. I do find it funny that at this point in my life I'd rather listen to talk radio (mostly) then listen to the music on the radio. I never thought this day would come. However, this is not the purpose of this post.

On Talk of the Nation, a daily show, they were talking with people who have lost everything. One guy moved he and his family to New Orleans for a new job just 2 months before Katrina. Another woman just recently lost everything because of the "Madoff debacle." They were discussing their change in perspective on money, life, and just stuff in general. The show was taking callers who have lost everything at one point or another in their lives and how they moved on.

What was interesting to me was how positive most of these people were about their situations. They laughed they made jokes and they generally had the same thing to say.

1.) Money isn't as important as we once thought.

2.) Our families really are all that matter in the long run, so make sure they matter in the short run too.

3.) Stuff comes and goes. Get over it.

4.) Look for the positive in every situation, otherwise you will not be able to move on.

It made me wonder though, do we have to lose everything we own in this life, all our money, all our temporal belongings to understand these ideas? I sure hope not.

Cupcakes

Julian loves cupcakes. We made some yesterday and between then and now, I've eaten at least a dozen. What can I say, I love cupcakes too. However, I left them on the kitchen table last night and when I got up this morning (because Julian was being too quiet) this is what I found:

Food Blog

I started a food blog. Mostly to keep my recipes organized and to help those random people like me to try things that we can't find information about on the internet or in the cook books we own (like drying Kiwi or making Craisins). Anyway... if you want to check it out it is http://gastronomistweekly.blogspot.com/. Feel free to let me know if there is anything you want me to experiment with or if you want me to find you a recipe, etc...

Perch Nursing Cover Giveaway

http://onmyperch.blogspot.com/

Perch is having a super cool giveaway for a Nursing Simply nursing cover. I get three extra entries if I make this post, so yay! You can enter if you'd like. Just follow the link above.

Julian's First Garage Band

Julian got a drum set for Christmas from his Uncle Nick and Aunt Becki. For his birthday last year he got a piano from Aunt Tasha. He's got a mini tambarine and maracas and now all he needs is an electric guitar and he will have enough to start his own band. The drums are an absolute hit with every child that walks through the door. This is what he and his friends Aiden, Lawson and Mark did for almost 20 minutes today. All of them were singing and bouncing and totally rocking out while Julian played the drums. They'd pick up other instruments along the way and some would play the piano, but they had their first official band practice today... now I know why my mother requires my brother have his neoprene pads on his drums when people are home :)

Super Cool Crayons

I've wanted to make cool crayons for a while, but I've never been able to find the right mold for them. Tuesday Julian and Lawson and I melted several old broken crayons and made these cool ones by pouring the melted crayons into chocolate molds. They popped right out, however I don't think I'll ever be able to use the mold for chocolates. There was a motorcycle as well, but it got dropped.

Depending on how adventurous you feel, you could paint crayon like you would chocolates so that they look more like a real train or bus or boat. Solid colors are much easier. Melting crayons in the microwave takes almost 10 minutes though, so just be prepared for a time consuming project!

Julian's Baby

Julian is starting to get more interested in babies lately. He brought me a teddy bear today and told me that his (the bear's) diaper was poopy and that it needed to be changed. We promptly found an animal who would fit into a diaper, changed the animal's bum and wrapped him in a "babank" (blanket). Only then would he sit down and finish watching his movie.

Some Photos

We wanted to get a few good pictures of Julian's new haircut. Enjoy :)

IT WAS SUCCESSFUL!!!

I am very excited, Julian stayed in Nursery for the last 45 minutes, by himself, without crying. In fact he had a great time!!! Hallelujah, my prayers have been answered and I am so grateful. Next week I'll try leaving about 10 minutes earlier than I did today and see how it goes. I'm so excited. He's also slept through the night for the last 3 nights, but for some reason I still am exhausted by 7 PM. Goddness me... what will I do with 2 little ones? I guess that's where husbands come in. I'm lucky that way I guess.

Congrats Adam & Andrea

Adam (JD's youngest brother) and Andrea have finally made it official. They are getting married August 7 2009. This will be the 4th anniversary in August for the Anderson Family. Way to keep up the tradition guys!

Julian's Haircut

I cut Julian's hair today. He hasn't had a haircut since July... JD said I looked like a wookie after I cut his hair, he had to sit on my lap, watch Shrek, and eat chocolate raisins in order for me to cut his hair, but it got done! He looks so much older with short hair. I lost my good mommy card today though cause I snipped his ear just a bit... he wasn't very happy.

New Year's Eve

We hosted our first New Year's Eve party this year. It was also our first New Year's Eve that made me feel old... I fell asleep at 11 PM and most of us had kiddo's so everyone was gone by 9 PM so that the kids to get to sleep. We had a great time. Julian was so tired, he only napped for about an hour and he and his friends ran pretty much constantly for almost 3 hours.
Lawson, Tyson, and Sara Oblad. Tyson and JD are in Law School together. They are great friends.

Tyson, Mark and Shannon Tripplett. They are in our ward, also great friends.

Sara Oblad (33 weeks pregnant), Tanei Henry (40 weeks pregnant) and me (30 weeks pregnant). They are both having girls, I'm having a boy. It's fun being pregnant with your friends :)

The Zoo

The last Wednesday of the month November-February is free at the Hogle Zoo. We take advantage of it as much as possible, Julian loves the animals. We went on New Year's Eve and had a great time. He got a little stroller from Grandma and Grandpa Bridges and wanted to push it through the whole zoo. We brought his otter backpack and he had a great time, he walked almost 2 whole hours! He slept well that night! Julian still has a ways to go :)The gorilla's were really cool.

Julian wanted to try and take the baby tiger with us when we left.

This is the best shot I could get of Julian and the animals. He was fascinated and wouldn't stand to look at me.

Kids Are Great

We've been having fun together as a family during the break. It's been great being home, JD gets to get the rest he needs, I am finally unwinding from the Christmas madness and Julian has stayed on his schedule which has been great. We've missed our families, but it was really awesome to have our first Christmas alone as a family.

We made chocolate chip cookies (I've been having intense cravings for all things sweet lately). Julian loved his - this is how he looked shortly after gobbling down his cookie.

Julian loves the snow and so he loves snowmen as well. He's been asking to build a snowman for days and here's how it turned out. He had more fun playing with his tool in the snow than he did building the snowman, but all is well. He has a great time watching his snowman every day. Oh the small joys of childhood.