Busy 2 Weeks

The last two weeks have been busy for us. We had Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt Stacey come stay with us for an entire week!!! (They were here for our cousin, Dane & Katherines wedding.) Caiden LOVED having them here. In fact, he and Grandpa (Ba-pa) are bust buddies. Whenever we were going somewhere, he just had to be in the same car as his Ba-Pa! We ended up doing some fun things! We went to Phoenix Zoo for his Aunt Staceys birthday and they both got to ride the carosel! What fun.

We had a yummy birthday cake for Stacey
And Stacey got to have her picture taken with the beautiful blushing bride, Katherine.
Grandma, Grandpa & Stacey left to go home to Utah just 2 days before Christmas. We have missed having their company this last week! But we got ready for Christmas and had a nice low key, quiet Christmas morning, which was nice because I had worked Christmas Eve & was exhausted when I got home @ 8:00 in the am. We opened presents & then I went to bed. Here is a picture of my two boys! One of Caidens most favorite things right now is the movie "The Polar Express." So I just HAD to get him the book for Christmas. He was excited when he saw the front cover, but didn't really care much more about it after he saw there were more presents to open.
One of his favorite presents, and the one we got the best reaction from him, was his new guitar. He has been walking around for the last two months acting like anything is either a guitar or a gun. I kid you not, this kid can imagine a stick or even a straw is a guitar. Now he has a real one to play, and he LOVES it!

Today was His SECOND Birthday!!!! I can hardly believe it has already been 2 years! He hasn't been feeling well so we just had a small little party with just the three of us. (seriously, this kid has been crying over ANYTHING and EVERYTHING all day long! He has a bad double ear infection, so I really can't blame him for not feeling well.)

His Birthday cake Before....

His birthday cake after...

All he wanted to do with the cake was to blow out the "fire" and to eat a few finger fulls of frosting. When we asked if he wanted to eat some cake, there was a resounding "NOOO!" So we didn't even bother cutting into today... Maybe tomorrow.

LET IT SNOW!!!!

On Saturday we decided to head up North to experience the fabulous snow that dropped over the week. My cousin Becky & I were going to go during the week, but we decided to make it a family affair. We started by visiting the cabin they are building with their family. There was a little sledding right next to the cabin & the boys got out to sled.

I was happily surprised to see that my son LOVED the snow!!! It was all we could do to convince him that he needed to share the sled (which wasn't even ours by the way) with his cousins.
He discovered pretty quickly how a snow ball fight works simply by watching his Dad bean his Mom with several snow balls! :)

He even tried to start a snow ball fight with his cousin Gage. Gage was not too fond of that idea.
We finally got him to share the sled! Though Jack wasn't very excited about being in the freezing cold snow. It was, afterall, about 25 degrees outside... BRRRRR!
Caiden was even adventerous enough to try the steep hill on his own! This is just the start of the hill before Dad got him lined up & let go. He was yelling "WOO-HOO!!!" the whole way down. Caiden even made a snow angel after watching me! (I did have to help him move his arms up & down however!) And of course, he just HAD to eat some of that delicious cold stuff!

We tried to get a family picture, but Caiden would have nothing to do with it. He just wanted to keep playing. This was the best shot we could get.My Husband REALLY wanted to load the bed of the truck to take snow home...So we surprised the neighborhood with a small sledding slop (seen in the very back) and introduced them all to snow ball fights. None of the kids had ever seen, let alone played, in snow before. We rang their door bells & left a big block of snow on their porch while we quietly waited & surprise attacked them when they came to the door. It was great!!!

This video is my first attempt, I really wanted to post it because I found it so halarious. Caiden layed in this pile of snow for at least 5 minutes, just swimming & digging! He was LOVING it. Hopefully it loads OK.

The last few weeks have been very busy for our family as we have been "spring cleaning" the entire house. Why? you ask. Because we have put our house on the market and will be moving (hopefully sooner than later). It is AMAZING how much clutter/junk you can collect over the years! We have filled the garbage can, gone to Goodwill & DI and taken loads to our storage unit multiple times. And I am certain that after the move, when we are unpacking things, we will ask ourselves "Why did we save this & bother packing it all the way to Utah?" Such is life I guess.

We went to dinner the other night & bought my son this cute ginger bread cookie, the only problem was that the bakery had used so much food coloring on the frosting. His lips, teeth and tongue were black for about an hour after eating it! It was hilarious. My husband even took a bite and gave our son a kiss on the forehead.

We also had the scouts over the other night helping wrap boxes for donations for charity that our ward collected at our ward Christmas party. He loves it when the cub scouts come over. He thinks he is one of the boys. He had a great time getting in the boxes & jumping up yelling "BOO!!!"