Tons of Fun!

(Look closely and you can see our little red headed boy peeking over the volcano edge in the middle)
One of the things I enjoy most about being able to be a stay-at-home mom is being able to plan and carry out all of those really fun sounding childhood experiences. So far, I have managed to have at least one "fun" thing to do every day (most of the time it is free cause we po')
I have joined my ward's playgroup that meets on Monday mornings. It has been a really good way for me to get involved with my ward, meet other moms with little kids, and get out of the house for some much needed interaction with peers for me and my kids. I love love LOVE living 3 miles from my family, but I also know that I need to have
my own friends, interests, and life. So far, I am really making that effort and we are having LOTS of fun and meeting some great people. On this past Monday, our playgroup went to Radijazz Indoor Playnasium in Austin (I actually drove all the way to Austin by myself, got there ON TIME, and got home without incident!! yippee! That is real progress since I have NO sense of direction AT ALL) Radijazz is hard to describe. It is all indoors. They have a regular playground type area with the tubes, a "seascape area" with slides and a squishy/bouncy floor and things for the kids to climb on like boats and ducks, and they have the volcano with slides down the sides and a big foam pit for lava. Guess which part my kids liked? Yep! We spent most of the time jumping in and out of hot lava--even Kate! Most people who saw her independence and fearlessness would immediately turn to me and say "she has an older sibling doesn't she" yep! Thanks to Dallin Kate is a feisty no-nonsense gal (she came with some of that honestly...he just helped it along). We had a great time playing with other kids and learning about new social situations. Dallin is really progressing with his social skills...still room to grow, but there is a marked improvement. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the other moms there as well.
Today we went and fed the ducks at the duck pond. Well...the geese mostly. Those suckas are nasty. They hiss and everything. They were pretty afraid of us today and didn't really stick around to eat for very long. It probably didn't help that Dallin and Kate chased after them with handfuls of mashed up bread shouting "Come back! Come back and eat!" Nana kept handing Kate the bread and Kate kept eating it--shoving in her mouth as fast as she could. She got really upset and started screaming and crying when the ducks ate some of "her" bread.



Funny girl. She did finally get it though and start throwing the bread at the ducks and into the water (mostly...she still snuck a piece here and there) Even Madison and Tammy came out with us and fed ducks/chilled in the shade. It was really fun. The best part was that when all the ducks swam off, all of these little turtle heads started popping out of the water and eating the rest of the bread. There were TONS of turtles. We started feeding them all of the bread that we had left and more just kept coming. There was one that was soooo huge that we thought it was a beaver at first...nope just a giant turtle. He even had little turtles riding around on his back. LOL We tried to take a picture of it, but I'm afraid you can't see it very well. It was super fun. I love being a full time mom!

Here I am pointing at the turtles in the pond. All of those
discolorations/rocks are actually turtles!

Oh No!

Kate is so adorable! She loves the book Llama Llama Red Pajama and when the Mama llama runs up the stairs she will gasp with her little lips in an "o" and say "oh no!" in a really cute Disney-esque voice. I captured a bit of this on video the other day while Dallin was sleeping and was lucky enough to catch her flipping through the book, pointing at the pages and doing it over and over. "(gasp- with lips in "o" and little fishy face) Oh No!" "(gasp- with lips in "o" and little fishy face) Oh No!" She cracks me up.

Look-Alike Meters

Ok so I found this on Lucy Dickinson's blog and thought it was fun and cool. You can do it for free on myheritage.com. I always hear that Dallin looks EXACTLY like his dad and that Kate looks a lot like him as well. I'm thinking...there has to be some of me in there SOMEWHERE so I thought I would give it a try. I thought the results were interesting. I was a little surprised that Kate did not look more like me and that Dallin did not look even more like his dad than 6% but maybe I weigh in their mannerisms as well. Weigh in on the great debate. Do you think the results were accurate?

Dallin's parent look-alike meter

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebs - Collage - Morph

Kate's Parent Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Blank family tree - Family history

Hairclippers Triumph Again!

Wait wait wait....let me explain.
Ummmm....ok so I have cut Christopher's hair before and done a pretty decent job over the years (after a somewhat bumpy learning curve). One thing I have learned is that Christopher has unusually thick hair. I mean if the clippers don't have a turbo switch on them then they don't cut it. It is like the hair of STEEL! For about the past year, I have decided that letting him go get his haircut is worth it since they have the time and equipment necessary to deal with his "special needs" and make it look good EVERY time.
Well, since Christopher now works nights he finds it "difficult" to find a barber shop open to cut his hair when he is awake and decided that he would borrow my parents' clipper set and have me give him a haircut. Ok, not my favorite but so far it is alright. I should have known better though when we discovered that the clippers did not have the Turbo feature. I kept trying and trying and the clippers wouldn't cut and wouldn't cut. Well...I got them to cut. Yep, a huge divet right in the middle on the front of his forehead. So he had a bunch of stubble surrounded by long locks of STEEL hair. We decided this was not recoverable and to go for a clean slate. Hence, the bald look. I don't think it looks too bad, but I'll bet that next time Christopher finds a barber shop that is open.
Kate is scared of his head and won't even touch it (but loves her daddy all the same). Dallin was pretty distressed at first and kept picking up all the hair off the floor and demanding that we put it back on. We were hard pressed to convince him that it had to grow back. After he was convinced he climbed up in the chair and wanted me to cut his hair so that it would "look funny and grow back" LOL Leave it to kids to be completely honest. We are grateful that hair grows back

A glimpse into the future: Christopher as an old man hee hee

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I thought I should write down some of the funny/cute things the kids have started saying as of late before I forget who said what when. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Dallin
Dallin has become so verbal that it is hard to keep up with his "Dallinisms" Consequently, most of these gems are from him for now.

• "Your bum is big! It is so huge!" --a special moment when Dallin walked in on me in the bathroom, pointed at my bulgy belly and bum and was laughing and giggling so hard that he could barely speak. I wanted to reply that it was because of him and his sister, but opted to just not allow him to see me in all my glory anymore. In his toddler innocence, he really wasn't trying to be rude, he was simply being honest...sigh. LOL
  
• "Smell me!" Most of you who know Dallin know that he inherited my strange behavior of smelling things and he smells EVERYTHING and I mean everything--food, dirty clothes,
  
  dog bums (see previous post). He has recently taken this to an all time high as he smells people and wants me to smell him too. LOL Oh well, what's a sniff between friends?
• "I made yellow in the potty!" Ahh the joys of potty training. As long as I remember to take him, he really does well and has relatively few accidents. He loves the color yellow, so instead of saying he peed in the potty or something normal, nope...he made yellow in the potty.
  
• "My arm hurt when you talked to baby" This is Dallin's attempt to get attention away from Kate. He feigns injury. Somehow, giving her attention physically injures him. Fascinating!
  
• "I lose" While trying to convince Dallin to play the quiet game, Uncle Willie was foiled again when Dallin gleefully piped up "I lose!" after only 2 seconds of silence.
  
• "I not filthy! I Dallin Kellogg" I told Dallin one day that he was filthy, and this was his rather clever (although to him very serious) response. He uses it any time you say "You are ___" He will always reply "I not ____. I Dallin Kellogg!" He is so sincere it is really funny. He also says his name with almost an Irish accent. All of his other words are standard American fare, but Dallin Kellogg has that Irish Brogue. LOL
  
• "I can't stop. It's in my story. Dallin scratches his butt" Ok so you have to be somewhat PBS savvy to get this one. Dallin loves the show Superwhy. The kids go into these fairy tale books and help to change the story and help the characters solve problems. The characters always have a problem because they HAVE to do what their story says until it is changed. Dallin scratches. He scratches A LOT until he bleeds. So I caught him scratching and told him to stop scratching his butt and this is the response I got--completely serious as usual. I totally started laughing but used my super mom powers to reply "Let's change the story! ZAP! Dallin STOPPED scratching his butt" It worked! YAY super mom!
  
• "You happy?" I get this question ALL THE TIME especially when I am angry with him or if he has just done something wrong and wants to know if he is in trouble. He will keep asking it over and over until you say "yes" Sometimes it makes me really mad, but I try to revert to "I am always happy to be your mom Dallin and I love you, but I don't like it when you _______ it makes me feel upset." TA DA! To which I usually get "You happy?" Grrr LOL
  

• "I slide down the slide and I fall down in the water" He will tell anyone who stops to listen to him for 5 seconds this like it JUST happened. This happened back in June. He went down a slide at 7 Peaks and splashed into the water and the lifeguard was right there and picked him up out of the water. End of story, but apparently it made a BIG impression because it is his high moment and low moment every single night at dinner STILL. When we have Sunday dinner at my mom's everyone always knows what is coming during high/low from Dallin and it is getting hard to stifle the giggles and/or act surprised. Christopher even has a joke about being a psychic at dinner time because he knows what Dallin is going to say. Poor Dallin, always in search of a good story.

• "I crying in my room and there was a fly in my room. The fly go zzzzzz" If you are lucky enough to escape the water story, then you will definitely hear this one. Again, he tells it ALL THE TIME like it JUST happened, and it happened back in June as well. He was in his room for nap and a fly was in there. He thought it was a bee and ended up huddled in the corner in his bedroom crying hysterically as the demon fly kept buzzing around him and landing on him. (Secretly, I think the fly was enjoying it). He waves his hand around when he tells this like it is flying. Sometimes he will even add that I was mad (I think he thinks that I am ALWAYS mad...at least the way he tells it). I was upset when I first came in his room because he was supposed to be sleeping. He conveniently leaves out that I immediately rescued him from the fly and gave him lots of loves when I figured out what was happening.

• "I made Mommy and Dallin!" Again with the potty training. I don't know why, but almost since he began pooping in the potty, Dallin started naming his poops. If it is a big one it is Mommy (I am so proud), the little one is always Dallin and sometimes others will get honorable mention (i.e. Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, Papa, Kate, and Uncle Willie) You know you are truly loved and accepted by Dallin when he names a poo after you. He also gets really excited when he does a larger poop. "Wow! That's a BIG one!" Then we have to look and confirm that it is indeed a big one. He even will call out and announce toots that he did in the potty after a smile and a giggle. "Grandma! Grandma! I toot in the potty!!" What is the obsession with poop? I think he got it from Uncle Willie (who gave him the books "Everyone Poops" and "The Gas we Pass the Story of Farts" for his second birthday)

• "Uncle is the BEST" In case you can't tell, Uncle Willie is where it is at. My kids (especially Dallin) ADORE him. He is firm and makes them mind, but he is also the first one to talk to them and play with them. He is so tender and sweet. He loves them unequivocally and they KNOW it. As a mother, it makes me love my brother even more than I already do and brings a smile to my soul that my children have such a great relationship with him and have another great male role model in their lives who loves them and who they love. When Dallin was asked who was the best at everything during Sunday dinner at Nana's, he responded without hesitation. He even responded that Uncle "Lilly" was the best aunt! LOL He then repeated over and over that Uncle Willie is the best! So here is a shout out to Uncle/Aunt Willie -- YOU ROCK! We love you!
• "Baby is my best friend" Dallin says this about Kate. It is very cute, but it would be cuter if he wasn't saying it A) because he wants someone to stop giving her attention since she is HIS or B)because Kate is in trouble and Dallin is trying to run interference by telling me she shouldn't be punished or scolded. At least he cares :)
  

• "My room is the prettiest. It has dinosaurs" When asked at Sunday dinner who was the prettiest, this was Dallin's response (smart boy!). Upon being probed to name a person, he looked annoyed and repeated himself. Never...ever...come between a boy and his dinosaurs. LOL Dallin, I love you!

• Not really a quote, but a side note. Dallin has decided recently that he does not like cheese! How could this happen? He used to LOVE cheese...ate so much of it I wondered how he could keep going. We all love cheese! Why? Oh sorrow! Where has the love for cheese gone? So now he won't eat anything cheese touches. Maybe next week the love for cheese will return and be replaced with something more normal like a hatred of lima beans or something. One can only hope...I am personally hoping for peas myself, but I try to stay impartial.
• Dallin is a real sweetheart and LOVES earning stickers on his reward chart to watch movies. He is especially good at helping take out the trash and switching over the laundry. Also, his latest obsession is Jack and the Bean stalk. Consequently, everything is a beanstalk, everything CAN be climbed, and everything MUST be chopped down to keep the giant away. Yes...we have had many time outs thanks to Jack!
  

Kate

• Kate does not have as many "quotes" since she is not yet as verbal, but she is growing so very quickly. She is now 16 mo old and is showing more and more spunk and personality everyday.
  
• She dances all the time whenever there is music. It used to be more of a high stepping stomp to the beat, but not it is one arm in the arm and running/dancing in big circles. She usually giggles so much she falls over.
  
• Kate LOVES to sing and you can often catch her singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" to herself in her room and especially on car trips (the trip to Texas had many hours of "happiness") You can tell when she is singing it not because of the WORDS but because she does all the little actions (clapping, stomping, hooray, even putting her fingers on her cheeks for the face will surely show it) I am hoping to get a video of her singing this song soon. She will also try and mimic any other songs and actions you care to sing with her. Dallin will usually help her with the words. It is really sweet.
  
• "Bye" Kate will say bye and wave whenever we leave anywhere. She will frequently either give kisses or throw kisses as well. She is such a girly girl! She has a BIG TIME southern drawl when she says it to so it sounds more like (Bah yeee) I do not know how she picked that up before we even moved , but there is is.
  
• "No" This is her favorite word to say. She says it all the time (which is funny because Dallin NEVER said it until he was much much older) She holds her lips in such a perfect tight little "o" when she says it and it is so short and almost staccato. I have even caught her practicing this word in her room and holding her lips just right so you can see her little lines framing her mouth when she makes the "o". She cracks me up.
  She also likes the word "don't" which is usally accompanied by vigorous shaking of the head but is not as much fun to say as "no"
• Kate nods and shakes her head. Sometimes it is so vigorous that she knocks herself over. She will also sign "more" and "all done".
  
• "Sorry" Kate was in timeout and when it was over, I asked her to tell me sorry. I began signing it to her so she could sign it back. She sat back in the chair, folded her arms politely in her lap, looked me straight in the eye and said "sorry" crystal clear! I think my mouth dropped open and Christopher (who had been watching in the living room) began laughing his head off. I had to try hard not to get excited since she was actually in trouble, but WOW!
  
• "Cheese!" and "puppy" New words keep spilling out of Kate daily now. She said "cheese" the other day for a picture and repeated "puppy" to me when she was playing with her dog toy. They are crystal clear, but almost never repeated so you have to be there to get it.
• "Don't Touch! No!" Papa was over at our house installing ceiling fans and the kids kept touching the pieces, picking up the fan blades, etc. We kept repeating "no, don't touch" so the kids went and sat down by the blades (Dallin informed us they weren't touching them). Then Kate took one finger and touched it and said "Don't Touch! No!" and shook her head vehemently. She kept doing this over and over (touching it EVERY time of course). It was really funny and hard to tell her to knock it off. What a smarty!
  
• "Elm! Elm!" Kate has entered the Elmo ("Elm") phase. She loves to help around the house and put stickers on her little chart so that she can watch it. Every time she puts a sticker on she says "Elm! Elm!" and she will run up to the TV and point at it and repeat it over and over until I explain (AGAIN) that she does not have enough stickers to pick a movie yet, she needs __ more
• Kate LOVES feeling pretty and having her hair done. She will pick out dresses for herself to wear and will actually come to me and sit still while I do her hair! I can't believe it! I remember complaining something awful, but she seems to just LOVE it. She will also dress up in pretend jewelry, shoes, anything. I laugh because she is so over the top girly. If you tell her how pretty she is , she will just beam!
  
• Kate is the biggest whiner of them all. It is starting to get a little better, but for a while it was nonstop whining all day long. It got to where I could almost tune it out like background noise. I found myself saying "Would you like cheese with that whine?" almost constantly. She did not think this was as funny as I did.
  
• Kate gives lots of kisses. She will blow kisses and just give them out pretty freely these days. She pulls her lips into a fish face pucker and gets a really good little kissy noise "smack". It is really adorable. Sometimes she will put her hand on top of her lips and do it to "throw" a kiss. She will give daddy kisses every morning when we put him to bed. Precious girl.
  

Our Summer Vacation

Whew! It has been an insanely busy summer-full of lots of fun and some sad goodbyes(not much porch sittin here Annie :). Christopher left at the end of May for a new job with Samsung in Austin, Texas. Before he left, we went and saw the "REAL" Thomas the Train in Heber and went to the zoo as a family. Did you know the Hogle zoo does not have a lion? LAME SAUCE! No tigers were out, none of the cool animals (except the elephants and giraffes). We had to convince Dallin that the mountain lion was Simba's mom. Kate also wouldn't sit in the wagon and she is such a light weight that when she fell out, I didn't notice and ran over her with it. That was a great mom moment...the wagon wheel on top of the crying baby in the middle of the zoo. LOL (She was fine btw)
The kids and I hung around Utah for a while longer after Christopher left. Dallin had BIG trouble with anxiety and panic over his dad leaving so I ended up quitting my job a few weeks later to get ready for us to move and be home with him (the diarehea, vomiting and night terrors stopped right away :) We spent a lot of time at Seven Peaks and the park. We went to Chuck E. Cheese a few times and even got to go up to Coalville and spend some time at Grandpa and Grandma K.'s house and ride horses(Dallin said "yeehaw" and flipped up his little cowboy hat he insisted on wearing), saw a llama farm, went swimming, and learned to poop in the potty!. We were able to see a lot of friends and family before we left and had a lot of fun. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone and leave what we knew, but we really feel the move to Texas will be really good for our family and it is turning out well so far.
Right before we left Will and Tammy had their first baby--Madison Rose Sharp. She is beautiful and wonderful. Such a little sweetpea. We are really enjoying getting to be around her so much since Will and Tammy left 9 days after baby Maddie was born to join the rest of us here in Austin and are temporarily staying with my parents (3 mi away from us)
On the trip here we got to spend some time in Bluff. It was a blast and we enjoyed every minute of it. There was lots for Dallin and Kate to do!! They played with the animals, rode the horse, jumped on the tramp, went swimming, rode the 4 wheeler and of course played in dirt. It was great to see Grandma, Aunt Nancy and Stacy before we left.
It took a long time to get to Texas with 2 toddlers, 1 newborn, Tammy who was still recovering, and mom and Will who got sick on the way--5 days to go cross country. We made it here about 2 weeks ago. Yippee! We are happy to be a whole family again (and to be out of the car!)
Now that we are in Texas and almost unpacked, I will be posting more regularly again. I hope to do another post within the week with pictures of our totally rad house and lots of info about our Texas experience! Please keep in touch! We miss ya'll!
Too many fun experiences to list them all and too many great pictures too. Here are some of my favorite pictures of our summer:

Dallin and "Dallin"
the alpaca. He decided this was the one at the farm that was him. Can't you see the resemblance?

Dallin and Mommy on the horse ride in Coalville. Dallin yelled "yee haw" with his hat

Kate and Aunt Gabby "riding" the horse. It was a relaxing ride for her. She slept through the entire thing.

Kate post horse ride.

Dallin wrestles with Grandpa

Kate crusin at the park in Coalville. Check out her rockin flops and pig tails. She looks so big!

Jenn helping Kate at Jumpin Jacks. She really enjoyed "jumping" though her feet never really left the ground.

Dallin at Jumpin Jacks

Kids on the tramp with Aunt Nancy in Bluff.

Dallin rides Aunt Nancy's horse bareback! Giddy up cowboy!

Dallin and Aunt Nancy on the 4 wheeler in Bluff. Have you ever seen a boy so happy? This was his absolute favorite thing.

Kate wearing Aunt Nancy's sunglasses. "Hello Hollywood!"

Bathing Beauty - Kate in the "pool" (horse trough) in Bluff. She was so tiny that when she would try to get up after falling over, her bum would start to float away without her giving her a face full of water. She soon mastered this however, and enjoyed being a fish with Dallin.

Ok Michael is on a treasure hunt at Aunt Nancy's for his birthday and Dallin...well...it IS what it looks like. He has found the dog's butt and yes, he has taken a whiff. Sigh. LOL "Look Mommy! It is the dog's bum! Ewww! What smells!?"

This is Kate helping with the farm chores. See how she is feeding the dogs? One handful at a time. She only tried it once before she committed herself to making sure that Indy and Misty were well fed dogs. Good thing they are so sweet. She sat there and dug in their food dishes and "fed" them by hand during their entire dinner while Dallin "fed" /threw hay at the horses. Yet another compelling reason why we would not do well on a farm. LOL

Grandma Faye meets Madison Rose. This is her 3rd great grandchild!

Dallin jumping on the tramp. I love this picture! Look at that tongue!

Dallin and Kate - "best friends" Dallin has started to take her by the hand and "lead" her where he wants her to go. Most of the time she doesn't mind unless he gets going to fast and she can't keep up. I think it looks sweet, and it is proof that at one time in their lives they really LOVED each other :)

Kate playing at the park on a pit stop during our trip to Texas. That is a look that says "I'm so big and talented! Look at me! Look what I can do!"