4

4 years ago today, I made the best decision of my life!

I can't believe another year has gone by already.

I am so blessed to be married to my best friend.

We got a babysitter and went out to dinner.  

After dinner, Scott got me some new PJ's and I bought lipstick for the first time! Only a man who truly loves his wife would sit and watch me try on 50+ colors and act like he's interested... and I made him get some new jeans! I really love my husband, so glad he's mine for forever!

Christmas decorating...

We decorated our Christmas tree this year for Family Home Evening...

(to read about what that is, go here).

Since we're leaving to go home (yipeeeeee!!!) in a couple of weeks, we

decided we wanted our house to still have the homey Christmas feel, so 

we decorated a little earlier than usual.

Christmas is getting to be so much fun with our little family.

I love watching Avery's face when she's learning about new things and

she was so excited to help decorate the Christmas tree. 

All day, she'd say to anyone who'd listen..."When my daddy gets home from school,

we're going to decorate my Christmas tree!"

Jax had his fun thinking that we had a bunch of balls to play with, he's such

a little man! If he sees anything that resembles a ball, he's all over it.

Avery patiently brought Scott each ornament, one by one..

good to know she can be patient if she feels like it!

"This whole box of balls is for meeeee!"

Balls hanging from a tree??? Too tempting!

Magic.

I love his toothy grin...but I hate how big he looks in this picture!

Caught him saying his first official word...BALL!

He tries to squish his massive head through that crack multiple times a day!

Partners in crime!

Lately these two have been pretty good at getting into trouble together.

They seem to know where to find trouble..They found the Halloween candy that

had been forgotten about in the hall closet and made sure to shove as many pieces in their mouths

as possible before mommy noticed. Avery was so nice to even take the candy out of the 

wrappers for Jax. They're best at making the BIGGEST messes together, 

how is this happening already??! They get along pretty well until Jax decides

that he wants what Avery has and starts ripping it out of her hands or pushing

her out of the way. Luckily Avery is a great big sister and tries

her best to share with him. I really don't know how people do this with more than

two kids!

November

This month is almost over and I've only blogged once! Sorry family! We've had a pretty low key past few weeks, I swear my kids have gotten sick every Tuesday or Wednesday this month, it's been crazy! And they can never both get sick at the same time. One or the other will have whatever virus for a few days and then as soon as one is feeling better, the other has it. So we've been stuck at home a lot. Thank goodness for Hulu, Netflix and Play Dough. I also don't have a working computer anymore, so until mine is fixed, I have to use Scott's whenever I get the chance.  We are counting down the days to get away from anything that has to 

do with Law School. This semester has been the hardest so far, Scott has been

so busy with school and work, but we're so proud of him 

and can't wait to have him all to ourselves for a few weeks

and spend time with our families!

Pictures of our sick days....Avery wanted to ''be happy", so she tried her hardest to look

like she was being happy for the pictures, poor girl.

Jax hardly never falls asleep without being nursed or rocked by me, so when
I saw him all cuddled up with his daddy, I knew he really wasn't feeling good.

Thanksgiving 2011

This year my goal for Thanksgiving, besides cooking an edible meal for our friends, was to get pictures of our family on the holiday. I succeeded in getting pictures of food...but not of us, oh well. 

We had so much fun with our friends, the Sorenson's again this year. It was laid back and fun, which was exactly what we wanted! They are in Scott's class and in our ward and Avery calls their boys her best friends, she even loves watching Spiderman now because they like it so much.

We were in charge of the turkey, and I'll admit I lost some sleep thinking about that stupid

bird defrosting in my sink for 2 days...but Scott did an awesome job.

It was seriously the best turkey I've ever eaten! My rolls turned into bricks...but I think

that's what you get when you attempt to make rolls for the first time while making 5 other things at the same time....so maybe I'll get some practice in this next year and be ready for rolls and pictures of our

family next time!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Scott made the pies...this one is Chocolate Silk.

Pumpkin...baked by, Scott Boyce

Scott made this too...Lemon Meringue 

Please tell me everyone's kitchen looks like this while they cook....

Our list of things to make!

My sweet hubby getting his hands dirty with my bricks rolls...

The amazing turkey that made me lose sleep!

Early Christmas?? YES!

I've never blogged about a giveaway...but I've been wanting one of these bad boys for a looooooooooong time...and if I won, I would probably pee my pants!!

You can enter too, go to LMM to enter!!

Halloween 2011

 Halloween was so fun this year dressing up my babes! 

This was the first year that Avery has really understood that it's Halloween

and what she gets to do for it, so all day she talked about going 

trick-or-treating. Having kids on the holidays is so fun, we love it!

We went to our ward's Halloween party, but didn't stay very long.

It was outside with a fire pit which was fun to cook hot dogs

and marshmallows, but not fun trying to keep Avery out of.

Jax fell asleep on the way there...so he was grumpy and we didn't stay very long.

But look at those cheeks, I kiss them all day long...maybe a little too much 

since he's started pushing my face away, sad, huh!

Then on Halloween, we went to the Botanical Gardens by our house with 

Katie and Logan. They had a little trick-or-treating, story time and crafts.

The kids had fun, and Avery and Logan look too cute holding hands all dressed up.

We stayed in our townhouse community to 

trick-or-treat. I love that I don't have to worry about safety here! Avery got waaaay too much candy!

And then we skyped with my family because it's my mom's birthday

and she wanted to see her grandbabies! 

Can you guess what Jax's favorite treat is??? He's obsessed with suckers....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANA!

Fall Break 2011

Scott gets a fall break every year to help students prepare for finals.

He was able to work this break, so we didn't see much of him,

but he was home earlier because he didn't have any meetings,

which was amazing.

We didn't go anywhere, but there is so much to do in Omaha

that we had a lot of fun when he was home.

There's so many things that the kids and I do all the time that Scott 

has never gotten to do, he just hears about it. 

So we decided to show him some of the places that we like to go to.

We took him to the duck pond so he could see how crazy those 

geese were in person! And they didn't disappoint!

We also went to the Children's Museum which I didn't realize was open on

Saturdays and now that I know, I'm sure we'll go more often

as a family.

We also went to Vala's Pumpkin Patch and spent all day there, and still didn't get to see everything!

Now that fall break is over we are counting down the days until 

Christmas vacation, when we get to have daddy all to ourselves for

about 5 weeks!

 VALA'S 

Everyone that we know talks about this pumpkin patch! We didn't get to 

go last year so soon after having Jax, but we've heard about it 

so much that we really wanted to go this year, and it was awesome!

There was so much to do, Avery and Jax loved every minute of it.

We watched pig races, jumped into hay, rode bikes, looked at animals,

watched a magic show....and so much more.

We are definitely making this a tradition while we live in Omaha.

Playing in the corn seeds

was probably the best part of the day for these two.