Musical Moreys

Love Hunt

2012-02-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

For FHE this week, we went on a love hunt. We sang "Jesus Said Love Everyone" and talked about pictures in the Gospel Art book that show what some people in there love (ie. Joseph Smith loves the scriptures, Mary loves baby Jesus, etc. - simple things that Tan could understand). Then we went on a love hunt around the house. Each person took a turn taking a picture of something they love and it couldn't be the same as someone else. Tan took his own pictures, which is why they aren't framed very well. I think it's cute and he was so proud of himself! These are iPhone photos which is why the quality isn't that great.

This was actually at the end of the hunt, but Eli and I both LOVE our little fam!

Eli LOVES:

Russia

Sara

Doctor stuff

His favorite cereal

Sara LOVES:

My kids

My bright and happy table centerpiece

Scriptures

Music

Video chatting on the computer with family

Kenzie LOVES:

Toys!!!

Tan LOVES:

His train set

His music player

His flashlight

His favorite bear, Cameron

Chips

Past Couple Weeks

2012-02-05T19:24:00.000-08:00

For your enjoyment, a hodge podge of photos taken mostly by my cell phone or Eli's cell phone, and a couple from the mac, over the past couple weeks!

This is RARE! Especially in the middle of the day! They were wiped out from a morning of running errands.

Playing in the foam pit at the open gym. Kenz has this really funny raspy laugh she does when she is playing and she kept doing it here. I think she loved it!

My errand buddy while Tan was at preschool. She loves to put up her feet and lounge while I push her around in the shopping cart.

My birthday date (a few days late) with the kids. I had a free entree at IHOP and Tan got this ginormous pancake and ATE THE WHOLE THING!!!! Sometimes it is like pulling teeth to get him to eat, but I didn't have to tell him to eat more, AND he ate 2 pieces of bacon on top of this. When we got to the car I heard from the back seat, "mommy, I'm still hungry." WHAT???!!! Way to go Tanman!

I made this little red bolero for Kenz and she looks darling in it!

Kenz hangs out around the house in leggings and a onesie and I think it's just the cutest thing ever.

Tan's very homemade looking, made from daddy's old shirt, super Tanner cape

Tan let me throw him really high into the foam pit at the gym and earned his very own Ben and Jerry's ice cream cup. He ate every last bite!

The king sitting in his throne at an ENT appt (and I love how Kenz is headed for the cords in true baby fashion! ha ha!)

Tan goes to a gymnastics class every Tuesday. He has been 4 times and he still won't do any of the activities unless I do it with him. He can be really shy and that takes priority over his desire to participate. But once he is comfortable, he is VERY comfortable and acts like spunky, no inhibitions, Tanner!

I decided that it was time to update the picture frames around our house now that we have 2 kids. I actually haven't updated this frame for 5 years. Oops! This one is a work in progress.

This past Friday, I took the kiddos to Church Street (after our IHOP date), to see a light and music show. Tan was scared of the loud music and Kenz danced to it. But he liked the lights in the trees that are up year round! It was fun walking around in the crisp January night.

Remember on a previous post how I said that we are having a really wet winter? Here's the park area behind our house one day last week. And this wasn't even at its worst!

Cutest little sunbeam! Tan is the youngest primary kid. It melts my heart to see him participating with all the big kids!

"Look mommy - I'm like Makenzie!" (She often pulls her headband over her eyes and he thinks it's pretty funny.)

Our bush/tree I picked out for my birthday. Hopefully it grows taller and resembles a tree more than a bush!

My birthday lunch at Pizzeria Uno. Two of my favorite things - peanut butter cup dessert and pizza. Mmmmmmmm!

I finally decorated Makenzie's room. Yay! We've had almost all the stuff because I wanted a neutral gender nursery so Tan had all this decor as well. After switching rooms this summer, redecorating has just been low on my to do list. I like how bright and colorful the nursery is!

Cute Kenz roaming around at church

Tanner's family portrait - mommy holding Makenzie, daddy, Tanner

And Makenzie took her first steps today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone for making my birthday so special last week! I loved all the phone calls, texts, cards, gifts, and skyping. Thanks to some of my friends, I was able to go on a morning run (in 20 degrees - whew!), go on a lunch date with Eli and pick out new running shoes, have dinner and yummy peanut butter pie made for me. I felt so spoiled! It was a fabulous day! My favorite gift was a wonderful letter Eli wrote me. It was exactly what I wanted that I didn't know I wanted!

5 degrees

2012-01-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

We have had a funky winter in Vermont. Last year, our street and backyard looked like this. This year, it has been rainy and icy with the occasional snowstorm. Most of the time it rains, then freezes over night, and then stays frozen because the temperature drops the next day. Then it starts to warm up and thaw and we have massively huge puddles all over the city. It was crazy to see our playground sitting in 3-4 inches of standing water last week, in the middle of January. So the winter is unusual for Vermont, but the temperatures have been semi-typical (and when I say typical, I mean compared to our one other winter in Vermont!). There is also a few weeks of freezing cold temperatures where the high never gets above 10 degrees all day.

It snowed a couple weeks ago, enough to actually go sledding. So we waited for the temperature to go up from a high of 9 degrees for a few days after the snowstorm, to a high of 28 degrees. Heatwave! Ha ha! We called up our friends with kids that have been wanting to go sledding too and met up with them at the Burlington country club for some golf course hill sleddin. When we got there, the air was cold, but the wind made it FA-REEZING!!!!! It took twice as long to thaw my hands as it took to take these pictures with my mittens off. Tan was not happy about being outside in the cold - he's the lump under the black blanket in the picture.

I went down the hill a couple times, then I took Kenz with me (she didn't even crack a smile - I guess she doesn't understand the exhilaration of flying down a hill on a piece of plastic yet!). We tried to coax Tan to go (he loved sledding in Colorado over Christmas), but he didn't want anything to do with it. Eli wrapped him up in the blanket, covering his face and everything, jumped on the tube, and went down the hill. And Tan tolerated it! When we got back to the car and started warming up, I check the outside temp on Eli's phone: "22 degrees, feels like 5." I'm sorry to our friends who came at my assurance of "oh it's going to be so much warmer than the past few days!" Their girls all seemed to have a blast though, regardless of the cold.

I have learned to just live with the cold and not hunker down in my house. One day I needed to run a bunch of errands so I bundled up to kids in hats, mittens, and big coats and we went from store to store, braving the whopping temperature of 8 degrees. It took a while getting the kids in and out of the car with all the winter gear on, but I was happy because it was an adventure! It made me laugh when I went to get gas and the little door to the gas tank was frozen over. I had to run inside the gas station a few times for boiling water to melt the ice.

And yesterday I went for a run in 20 degrees and it was so refreshing! But next time I'll remember to wear ear warmers and gloves.

Mommy school!

2012-01-31T16:59:00.000-08:00

My friend, Erin, and I started doing "mommy school" twice a week. It's so fun! We each take a day to teach our sons. The kids love it and we both love being able to teach and also getting a little bit of time each week during our babies naps and while the boys are at pre-school to get things done. And it's a good teaching outlet for me! I really miss teaching so I'm glad to have something like that, even if it's small.

The first week we talked about following the rules. As part of that day, the boys made cookies without following the recipe and here's what their "dough" looked like:

After they made their version of chocolate chip cookies (they finally decided that egg shells didn't belong in cookies, but kept in things like pepper and massive amounts of salt), we made real cookies by following the recipe. They turned out flat, but that's because a lot of the flour was flipped outside of the bowl while the boys were stirring together. At least they looked and tasted like cookies, albeit a little on the flat side.

This week, we talked about snowmen and melting. Jack and Tanner made these cute snowmen on skewers and were so proud of themselves for putting it all together with frosting:

And they practiced coloring inside the lines (Tan wasn't really interested in that requirement!), sequencing, tracing numbers and writing their name

Erin has done lots of fun activities with boys as well! Our mommy version of "preschool" is a big hit with the boys! They LOVE it!

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar???

2012-01-31T16:24:00.000-08:00

Kenzie stole the cookies from the cookie jar!!

And she's very proud of it!

(How can you resist gooey chocolate chip cookies??!! Especially when you've never experienced the sheer joy from devouring chocolate!)

Cabin Fever

2012-01-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Ever seen Muppets Treasure Island? My favorite part is when everyone on the ship breaks out into song and dance to "Cabin Fever." Well, last Sunday I slipped a disk in my back (ouch!) and have been homeridden (and couch/bed ridden) for the week. I couldn't pick up the kids unless it was absolutely necessary, I couldn't bend over, I couldn't really do anything without my back screaming at me. (Eli saved me during the worst day and took care of the kids instead of getting in much needed study time. Thanks lovey! And thanks to my awesome friend, Erin, for coming to my rescue when I was in so much pain I couldn't even stand it and taking the kids to her house for a while. That saved me!!!!!) I'm feeling a lot better today, though it's not completely healed yet. But after a week of being isolated inside our house and not able to do much, we (I guess just Tan and I), have pretty bad Cabin Fever!!!! The Muppets hit it spot on when they sang:

I got cabin fever it's burning in my brain
I've got cabin fever it's driving me insane
We got cabin fever, we're flipping our bandanas
Been stuck at sea so long we have simply gone bananas

This song popped into my head after this happened:

I had just put Kenz down for her morning nap and turned on a movie for Tan. I laid down on the couch to watch it with him and fell asleep. I woke up to Tanner sitting on the kitchen counter (which he knows is off limits!) with his hand in the sugar cannister. He didn't go for the candy that was in plain sight - nope, he went for straight up sugar. I walked over to get him off the counter (who knows how many dips of the hand he made into the sugar?!) and noticed something wet all over the counter. Looking at his underwear was evidence enough that this 3 year old little stinker had peed ALL OVER THE KITCHEN COUNTER. N.A.S.T.Y!!!!!!! And he didn't even care! He just kept dipping away! He is potty trained so I have no idea why he would have done that. It's the cabin fever!!! "Been stuck at sea (or at home!) so long we have simply gone bananas" Don't worry, I cleaned it up VERY well and Tan and I had a little chat about big boy behavior vs. baby behavior. During his time out for it, he ripped up a book, which is something that he has never done before. Needless to say, we got out of the house today and went to an open gym so that he could just play, play, play! And now we are all a little happier (and saner!).

And for your enjoyment, here's "CABIN FEVER!!!!"

I just couldn't make a post and leave Makenzie out, because she is so stinkin' cute these days! Well, when hasn't she been incredibly cute?! Biased, maybe?! She just turned 10 months old and is waving and saying "hi." It's so so darling! And it was her first word!

How-To ideas for increasing gratitude!

2011-11-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

I spoke in church yesterday about gratitude, specifically how to have a grateful heart. I wanted to share with all of you a list I compiled from LDS talks and devotionals of "how-to" ideas for cultivating a grateful heart. Since it is Monday of Thanksgiving week, today would be a perfect time to pick ONE THING (Don't overwhelm yourself!!!) and work on it for the week. See how it will make your week better and make you so much happier! And it doesn't require any crafting or preparation! Just pick something and start doing it. One last note - Make sure it is something you feel you can do. A couple weeks ago, I started out by trying to keep a journal and that lasted for one day. I’ve never been a good journal keeper so I chose something else to try that worked better for me.

1 Keep a gratitude journal. Record daily or several times a week 3-5 blessings or “tender mercies” you have felt or experienced, such as good health, a positive relationship with someone, improvements, or lessons learned. Include your thoughts and emotions about them rather than just cataloguing them. This will help you relive and savor the experiences and will help you notice blessings in your life on a daily basis.

2 Write thank you notes. Buy or create thank you cards to keep on hand. When someone does something nice for you, write a note of thanks as soon as possible. Even an email will do! The point is to acknowledge quickly and kindly the act of kindness. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like receiving a thank you note!

3 Express gratitude to those who you have never properly thanked. For example, parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, teachers, coachers, employers. You can call them on the phone or write a letter or email. Be specific about the details of kindness toward you and how it affected you. This will lift both you and the person receiving the gratitude.

4 Create a gratitude catalog. Make a comprehensive list of all your blessings. After listing obvious blessings, shift to “smaller” blessings such as running water, a phone call from a friend, and so forth. You do do this on a regular basis - daily, a few times a week, once a week. You could make your list on a google document if you use a computer for a lot of the day, on a piece of paper posted on the fridge, in a little notepad carried in your purse, or on your handy dandy smartphone.

5 Express prayers of gratitude. This has two parts. The first is to remember to start your prayers by expressing gratitude. This is my favorite part of praying because it helps me realize every single day that I truly am richly blessed and that all my blessings come from Heavenly Father. A song that I have been listening to constantly, as it is on my Thanksgiving playlist, is “A Thankful Heart” from the Muppets Christmas Carol. I love the line that says “And every night will end, and every day will start, with a grateful prayer and a thankful heart.” The second part is to regularly dedicate an entire prayer to your expressions of gratitude. Don’t ask for anything. Be specific; go beyond the obvious. See how exhaustive you can be. Discover the truth in the lines “And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

6 Repent and open your heart. Let go of negative emotions that bind your heart. Anger, resentment, and bitterness stunt our spiritual growth. Elder Wirthlin said, “You can repent of uncleanliness. That is the miracle of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Begin the process today.”

7 Verbally express gratitude for your blessings throughout the day. Verbalizing really does make a difference than just thinking about it. There are so many little things every day to be grateful for. When you first become aware of a blessing, your feeling of gratitude can be strengthened by immediately expressing thanks out loud. You could even keep a list of these things on a google document if you use a computer for a lot of the day, on a piece of paper posted on the fridge, in a little notepad carried in your purse, or on your handy dandy smartphone.

“Lots of people complain. Most people complain about their problems, but miserable people are different-they complain about their blessings. If their car breaks down, they complain that it isn't new. If their waitress is slow, they complain and withhold a tip. If their cell phone drops a call, they complain about their service. That’s like complaining that you missed a call on your miniature computer attached to your ear, which is connected to a multimillion-dollar satellite circling the earth hundreds of miles away, thanks to the work of many talented scientists.They're like the people in the Old Testament who got free food from heaven and said, "What? Manna again?" By contrast, happy people are grateful to have a car, thankful they can afford to eat at a restaurant, and stoked that they have a cell phone. Most people in the world don't have cars, can't afford restaurants, and have never sent a text message. Happy people count their blessings, while the miserable complain about theirs." John Bytheway and Jeffry Larsen

8 Make expressing gratitude a family tradition. Before family prayer each night, or at dinnertime, share with each other blessings you noticed throughout the day. You can just take turns verbalizing them, or you could have each person write them down on a piece of paper and put them in a "blessing" basket. A fun idea might be to read them aloud once a week, possibly as a Sabbath-day activity.

9 Eliminate ungrateful thoughts and complaining. When something happens and you want to complain, immediately find something to be grateful for. I worked on this for the past couple weeks. Here’s one experience I had: Our son, Tanner, is a horrible meal eater outside of our house. We were at a community event and he wouldn’t eat. I was getting frustrated with him. Instead of expressing that frustration and making him and myself unhappy, I caught myself. Instead, I said to Makenzie, “I’m so grateful that he will eat meals at home.” It was a simple statement but it changed by whole outlook on the situation and released my frustration. I have been noticeably happier by recognizing my blessings instead of complaining when something goes wrong.

10 Think of your talents and spiritual gifts. Pray with gratitude for these gifts and ask for ways that you can use one or more of them to bless the lives of others. He has given you these gifts for a reason and will use you to bless lives. Also, choose one of your talents that you would like to cultivate and come up with an action plan to increase your skill in that talent.

11 Endure trials well. It’s easy to recognize our blessings when things in life are going well. But having gratitude through trials will have a greater positive affect on you during times of hardship and help you gain greater perspective. President David O. McKay observed, “We find in the bitter chill of adversity the real test of our gratitude.” We learn from Nephi in his great afflictions during his journey through the wilderness. He said, “I did praise him all the day long; and I did not murmur against the Lord because of mine afflictions.” Make a conscious effort to thank and praise God during hard times. There are definite blessings to be found during these times. This past May, Tanner was hospitalized because of his asthma. As I was following the ambulance that was taking him and Eli to the hospital, I said a desperate prayer to Heavenly Father. As part of that prayer, I asked that I would focus on my blessings throughout this experience. Eli and I did just that and it made a world of difference in the way we felt throughout the whole ordeal. There were many blessings and tender mercies that happened that helped me know Heavenly Father was aware of us. Elder Robert D. Hales expressed that, “Gratitude brings a peace that helps us overcome the pain of adversity and failure.”

12 Open your arms in service to others. We render thanks to God by loving and serving those around us. The blessings that come from opening our arms to others are among the choicest this earth has to offer.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

I'm grateful for my two little happy darlings and wonderfully amazing hubbaloo!

Oh hi blogging world!!!

2011-10-30T20:21:00.001-07:00

Hello blogging world!!! I have been on a blogging and facebook hiatus for a while as a detox from the virtual world. Last week I sent a link for our family photos to my mom who forwarded them to my aunt. My aunt said that she was glad she got to finally see a few pictures of us. So it made me realize that I probably should utilize my blog more often so that our family scattered all around can see what we Vermonters are up to here, and how our cute kiddos are growing up. I seem to seek out lots of extra things to add into my life and make me even busier than I probably should be sometimes. So journaling and blogging about all of our summer and fall adventures has been put at the bottom of the to do list for the past few months. (And I am so wanting to physically cross it off my list, or many lists, that float around my house and google docs!) Now I finally have some free time to spend sharing photos and stories with you, so get ready, because Eli and I love taking and sharing photos! But you'll have to wait a few days because my dad is visiting from Colorado right now (yay!)

So I'll just leave ya with a link to our fall family photos for now: http://delightfulphoto.blogspot.com/2011/10/whata-post.html. The photographer is a good friend of mine and I think she is just such a wonderful, fun, creative, and talented person (and she's from Colorado so that makes her even cooler!). And we love their cute fam and are so glad that they moved here. Anyways, I think the pics are pretty darn awesome, primarily because I think our kids are so stinkin' cute. Isn't that one of Kenzie just to die for?! Love it! I can't wait to see the rest.

OH and Vermont is just finishing it's fall color show, which has been INCREDIBLE. I love what my friend Christy told me: "Jesus was showing off when he created Vermont." Christy, I totally agree! It is breathtakingly beautiful here and the colors are so vibrant and varied. When my sister, Kristie, was here visiting, I kept saying words to describe how beautiful everything was and the words became cliche. So we started thinking of words in other languages to give new expressions to the amazingness all around us. It's like being in a storybook, everything is just stunning. Christy got some awesome photos and you can check them out on her blog: http://bryanandchristyclarkfam.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-state-is-prettier-then-your-state.html

Is everybody watching The Sing-off on Monday nights?????? You totally should! It's so good! And it's super good because my future brother-in-law is in the group from BYU, Vocal Point. Check him out singing the solo for Footloose: http://www.nbc.com/sing-off/video/week-5-vocal-point-performs-footloose/1362716. He's the soloist who sings really high and totally rocks! That reminds me, my sister is getting married!!!!!! Aly and Ross Welch are getting married in Littleton, CO in december and it's gonna be so fun to celebrate with them! And it's going to be so fun being with my WHOLE family for an entire week. That hasn't happened in two years! The house is gonna be crazy with 5 little kiddos under the age of 3 running/crawling around. And we can't wait!

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeen!!!!!!

"A fair is a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord"

2011-09-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

Oh Templeton the rat, thank you for your fair song in Charlotte's Web because it will forever pop in my head when I hear the word "fair!"

The Champlain Valley Fair comes to Vermont the week before labor day. We drive by the fairgrounds many times a week and Tan always talks about seeing the "piggies" run at the fair. I loaded the kids in the jogging stroller, threw on my running clothes, and ran the 1.5 miles to the fair. Instead of paying $10 for admission, I took advantage of the lunch deal and went between 12-2 for free. Sweet!

We cheered on the cute little racing pigs (my favorite part of the fair!)

Tan got to drive a firetruck all by himself. He is WAY into firetrucks and firemen right now so he was in HEAVEN!

(Having fun is serious business for the Tanman.)

We saw lots of cute little animals in the Old MacDonald barn.

I always feel so overwhelmed trying to make a decision about

what to eat at the fair. If I'm going to spend money, it needs to be worth it! Well, I went cheap and got something for Tan and I to share instead of buying both of us something a

nd doubling the cost. We had fried dough nuggets. Very fairish. I really wanted the onion rings but my super picky 2 year old would never eat those!

Kenz enjoyed the fair while loungin' in the stroller. She got really excited when she saw the animals, especially the ones that moved a lot!

Isn't she just darling! I adore my little kenzie koo!

We also saw a juggling family, which Tan somehow remembered from last year without me reminding him. And on my run back home, I popped into a store and found a way cute vase to go on our new kitchen table for $1. Love deals like that!

We'll see ya next year, fair! Tanner will be talking about you everytime we drive by the fairgrounds until you come back again!

Summer lovin', had me a BLA-AST!

2011-09-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been a total blogging slacker this summer. BUT, I have an explanation for it: Eli was out of school for 2 whole months and we played, played, played. Seriously, we had a B.L.A.S.T! But now . . .

The sun has set on our summer of fun with Eli.

(Isn't Lake Champlain gorgeous?! It's only a few miles from our house!)

We have all kinds of memories stored in our brains to pull out when the winter is dark and cold, and Eli is busy studying crazy hours. (Don't get me wrong, I love the winter. But this summer has just been so wonderful and perfect!)

Memories of adventures around Vermont . . .

. . . and Colorado.

And doing lots of summery things like eating incredibly drippy ice cream cones (called creemees in Vermont).

And growing up so much.

And lots of lovin' each other!

(Kenz doesn't look too happy about this hug. She's learned to brace herself when Tan gives her hugs. He tends to squeeze and pat a little too hard.)

Now the future doctor Morey is back in school and plugging away on his road to MD.

(OK, so this isn't Eli, but isn't Tan so darn cute in these scrubs that are oh-so-giant for him?!)

And now that the summer is over, I have the mega task of sorting through our massive amount of summer pictures and somehow journaling and finding a way to show them online to our families and friends. I'm excited!!!! Wish me luck!

P.S. I should probably update my blog sidebar to include our daughter! Ha ha ha!

Evolution of Dance

2011-08-05T18:51:00.001-07:00

I love this dance so much:

So if you want something fun to do (and a good workout), recreate it!!

P.S. Thanks Kris for being our coach! And it's a good thing the kids were way upstairs and we were in the basement. They totally couldn't have slept through us practicing this ten million times in a row.

We're alive!!!

2011-06-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family!!! I can't believe it's been over 2 1/2 months since my last blog post! We have been so busy for the last few months! Here's a quick recap and you'll know why I haven't had time to share any pictures or stories about the kids for a while:

Month of March: Kenzie's first month of life, Eli was super super busy with school, I was recovering from my C-section, Tan spent half the month with Gra Gra (my mom) while she was here helping and other half getting used to all the changes in his life.

April: We watched General Conference during the first weekend in april and it was wonderful! We spent a week in San Diego during Eli's spring break. We went to his brother, Ali's, wedding and now we have a new (and very beautiful!) sister-in-law, Nikki. We spent the rest of the week hanging out with Eli's mom and Ari & Christian at the beach, the zoo, etc. We didn't do too much because Kenz was still so new. But it was so fun to be with family, even if it took 2 entire days of traveling to get there and back from Vermont. We had to run to catch our connections many times! When we got home, we celebrated Easter and Tan loved all the candy, of course! The end of April had HUGE rainstorms in Vermont that caused major flooding all over. Tan definitely got in some good puddle splashing time!

May: We blessed Makenzie Ella on May 1st and it was a beautiful blessing and beautiful day. Her middle name is a combination of my grandma's Eleanor and Stella, and Eli had a great grandma named Ella. Kenz looked like a little precious angel! She wore my blessing dress so it was really special for me to dress my little daughter in it. My sister, Aly, came to visit us on the 7th and Tan spent a few of those days in the hospital due to a bad asthma attack where he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and spent half of his hospital stay in the pediatric ICU. Maybe I'll get around to telling that story later. Thank goodness Aly was in Vermont during that time because she took care of Kenzie a lot while Eli and I were at the hospital. Kenz loved the aunt bonding time! But I also did some Vermonty things with Aly so that her trip out here was worth it, things like a visit to the Ben & Jerry's factory, participating in singing time at the Von Trapp Family Lodge (it was started by the Von Trapp family when they came to Vermont after they left Austria), sampling cheese, apple cider, and maple syrup, eating at "farm to table" restaurants, and visiting Joseph Smith's Birthplace. We even got to sing in my ward together on mothers day! Aly and I flew to Colorado with the kids while Eli stayed at home because he couldn't miss school. We spent the next 11 days with the entire Archer clan, minus Eli :(. It was heaven! Tan had a blast playing with his cousin Wes and Kenz liked meeting all of her Archer aunts, uncles, grandpa, and 2 girl cousins. There was lots of baby time going on in the Archer home! On the way home, the kids and I missed our last leg to Vermont and spent a night in a hotel in New Jersey. It was an adventure! We had a fun memorial day - we watched a parade, I took the kids for a run with our new awesome stroller, Tan played in the blow up pool with his friends, and we had a BBQ with many of our friends.

June: We spent last weekend in Palmyra with our friends, the Clarks, and we had a fabulous time seeing the sites and hanging out. We loved sharing spiritual moments with our children and being in the place where the Gospel began. I really do know that Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in the forest we call the Sacred Grove. The spirit permeates the whole grove, even when it's pouring rain. It was a fun, short trip. And I love our friends and road tripping with my little fam! On Saturday we are going to Boston for a family reunion type of thing with Eli's extended family.

Whew, so our life has just been a whirlwind of adventures for the past few months! Those things combined with normal life have made life pretty busy for all of us. The weather has FINALLY warmed up so we spend a few hours outside everyday. Tan is learning the joys of blow up pools and water toys! We have really missed the sunshine and warmth so we are making the most of it before the cold sets in again in September! It was a BRUTAL winter and spring with tons of snow and rain and cold. So we desperately need a good summer so that we will stil be in love with Vermont!

The kids are good and cute as ever! Tan will be 2 1/2 next week! He is still spunky, fun, sweet, intense, loud, creative, musical, a stick and dirt lover, and happy. He is constantly singing and making up songs. We are thankful that his asthma is under control right now and hopefully it stays that way. None of us want another hospital stay. The goal for avoiding that is keeping him healthy and away from any sicknesses. Kenz is 3 months old and is a smiley guru right now and makes the cutest little happy noises ever! She started sitting in her bumbo at 2.5 months so she is ready to look around and discover her world. But she still has some newborn-ness in her and wants to be cuddled and rocked - I LOVE it! I wish that she would never grow out of it. She is such a chill and calm baby and brings so much joy into our family. Tan adores her and wants to be next to her all the time. I'm excited to watch their relationship develop.

WOW that was a long post. Sorry everyone! And here comes lots of pictures. But you know us, we love photos! They are out of order because there are pictures from our nice camera, our point and shoot, and Eli's iPhone so the file names were grouped together by camera when uploading them. Happy summer everyone!!!

Beautiful

2011-03-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

I could look at this photo all day!
(P.S. I don't mean to brag, but I did her photoshoot and caught this and some other cute shots of our little gal! Usually Eli does all the awesome photography but he is so super busy so I just decided to do it myself. I did have to take about 200 photos to get like 20 good ones though!)

Trends

2011-03-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

Now that we have two kiddos, here are some trends I notice in babies that Eli and I produce:

They look almost identical
They gain weight fast! Kenz is already 10 pounds at 3 weeks old. That's 95th percentile! Tan was the same way and remained chunky for most of his first year. We'll see if Makenzie goes as skinny as he does when she eats mostly solids.
They sleep well at night. Once we put them down as babies, they sleep soundly and just wake for a couple feedings and fall right back asleep. We are lucky parents!
Sucking on a binky calms them down when they are upset.

I love both of our darling little munchkins!!

Our little darling!

2011-03-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

I just spent lots of time posting pictures of Makenzie on facebook and I need to go to bed. SO I'm going to put the link to those photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2432392&id=17813562&l=bc90c7093d.

We just adore her! She is just beautiful! And she looks SO much like Tanner did when he was born but has more feminine features that set her apart from him. And she has brown hair and darker skin. She is super calm and chill. She definitely can cry hard but only if she's really upset about something. Tanner definitely has more of an intense personality than she has so I think that she is going have more of Eli's disposition than mine. She is such a good sleeper (during the day and at night) and she loves to snuggle. She usually ends up in bed with us every night and sleeps so well because she is a little snuggler. She is just a doll and we love her so so so much!

Happy St. Patty's Day!!!

2011-03-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

Baby Makenzie

2011-03-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the world Makenzie Ella!! She was born on Wednesday, March 2nd at 12:34pm in Burlington, Vermont. She was delivered by C-section and everything went very well for her and mom. We are so blessed to have her in our lives and already love her a ton! Here are a few pics with more to come soon!

Tanner couldn't go to the hospital because of strict visitation policies due to the flu season, so he had to wait for 3 days to meet Kenzie. This picture was taken right after he met her at home. He already adores her and kept saying "HI!" in the cutest high pitched voice! He wants to hold and touch his "little sister" all the time. So cute!

Future Doc

2011-02-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

This past Friday was Eli's white coat ceremony. What is that, you ask? Click here if you want some background! It is basically a rite of passage for a future doctor as he/she starts practicing and interacting with real patients. My good friend, Nicole, watched Tanner and Erin's kids so that we could go kidless. And it was SO nice to sit and listen and ENJOY! I felt like such a proud wife watching Eli get his white coat and hearing the amazing speech about what he would go through in the next few years as he works with patients. It was really inspiring! And I wasn't the only family member in attendance - almost ALL of my fam and Eli's fam watched via live video stream. They probably had a better view than I did since I was on the balcony and they saw the video of the students up close. Eli and I are so grateful for the support and encouragement he received from the family through texts, phone calls, and emails after the event. We didn't expect everyone to watch it! THANKS FAM - you're the best!!!

Here's his class thanking all their friends and family members. It made me think back to all the times Eli and I brainstormed essays for applications and practiced for interviews together. He's doing all the work and I'm along for the journey! Eli is on the far right edge in a white shirt.

The "cloaking!"

My brother, Doug, caught this awesome screenshot of Eli popping his collar - I love it!!

There he is in all his white coat splendor

Eli's med school class - UVM 2014

What a good looking future MD!

Eli and me in all my pregnant glory! I was wearing tall heels - I'm not normally that tall. And I'm not sure why I wore those heels when I am that pregnant because it was painful walking back to the car.
With his friend, Dave

The wifeys! I'm so grateful for my good friend and neighbor, Erin! There are a few other married couples in Eli's class, and I think there might be 2 other kids of students besides the 3 (soon to be 4) between Eli and Dave.

This picture cracks me up because the man taking it apparently really wanted the full tower in the photo!

Not sure why I'm including this, but we both look so random and funny!

Way to go Eli!! I'm so proud of you!

OH and you can see Erin and I on the news! Click here to see us at about 38 seconds in. We are on the left side of the balcony. I wish that our husbands, the actual med students, were on the news. Sorry guys!

Gym time with a side of chocolate fondue

2011-02-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

I found a local gym that has open gym time and Tanner is free since he's under 3! It is seriously the most awesome place in the winter time! We took Eli with us on his Monday off this week and Tan loved playing around with dad. Eli can sure do more with Tan than I can right now! The first time I went, a lady told me to take it easy or I would give birth in the gym. Ha ha ha!

I love this picture because you can see Tan's little bum crack! Climbing in a foam pit is tough!!!
For Valentine's Day, we celebrated by having chocolate fondue and it was DELISH. Tan saw the marshmallows on his plate and forgot about everything else! OH and Eli surprised me with a dozen red roses!! He hasn't done that in a while, and I don't ever expect him to because it is expensive, but it was so sweet and now they are hanging on the wall in our bedroom.

I had to include this picture because it is evidence that there is a 2 year old in our home! I love it!!!

Get your craft on!

2011-02-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

One of my nesting instincts as been making hair accessories for baby Kenzie. I have no idea why but I guess that having a little girl is bringing out the crafty side of me which usually is nonexistent. Ha ha! I have spent WAY way way WAY too much time looking at ALL kinds of gorgeous bows online and wishing I could spend money on them. To satisfy my bow making urge, I found tutorials online so that I could make my own! I found a random box of craft supplies I didn't know I had, got out my hot glue gun and needle/thread, and tried to be a little crafty. (It's sad, but I even dream about bows - seriously, it must be the pregnancy dreams combined with the nesting instinct!) I haven't made nearly as many different styles as I want since my supplies are limited. But it has been fun to try these out! I am really really itching to try this next: http://www.simplyvintagegirl.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/29/tutorial-how-to-make-lovely-fabric-flowers.

I can't take credit for the 2 actual ribbon bows - my mom made those and I can't quite figure out how to make them on my own! I have a particular style in mind that I want to try that doesn't have the tails hanging down, but can't find a good tutorial. So my mom and I are going to figure it out when she is here to help with the new baby!

This is my favorite and was SO easy! I really love the vintage style.

This is like a little ray of sunshine!

I made matching ones for Kenz and me! HA ha - I know, cheesy. But cute!

I need to find a cute little embellishment to put in the middle of this one but I like how dainty it looks!

My first attempt at rosettes. Hopefully I will get better with time!

I love polka dots!!!!!! (Courtesy of my fabulous madre)

Besides a few crochet headbands my mom got me, I ordered 5 colors of these darling stretchy and shiny headbands from Etsy: Here's a link to the Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/listing/66029716/new-choose-5-interchangeable-soft.

My friend, Christy, helped me sew this carseat canopy and I love how it turned out! I just need to add some ribbons and buttons to the handle part.

I am finally feeling like I can move on with my life and that I don't need 10 million bows made before Kenzie is born! I have many many years to make them! What I really need to do now is pack my hospital bag!!

Update on us!!

2011-02-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

The last couple posts have been just pictures and our extended family keeps asking how we are doing here in Vermont. So here's a brief update about us:

ELI: Eli is really busy with school right now. He loves what he is studying and is doing well balancing his studying and family time. He leaves for school at 7:20am and comes home at 6:30pm. He spends the next 1.5-2 hours hanging out with Tan and I and then studies until 11. (I do dishes, clean the house, work on projects, etc. while he studies.)

At UVM, the students take one class at a time instead of multiple classes with multiple finals at the end of a semester. So he takes many "finals" throughout the semester, pretty much every 2-3 weeks. He loves being able to focus on one class for a while and be able to study it really well without having to divide his time (and brain power) between different classes and topics. It makes sense from a learning standpoint! He just finished his class called Attacks and Defenses and starts his Nutrition, Metabolism, and Gastrointestinal Systems section tomorrow. We love test days because he finishes around noon and then we get to play as a family that day. We don't look forward to tests, though, because he usually has them on Mondays/Tuesdays and has to study on Friday nights and all day Saturday. So he studies a lot but is learning A LOT!!! I can't believe how much he already knows. He is well on his way to becoming a fabulous doc!

Along with the class, he has time to practice clinical skills where he works with standardized patients. These are people who are paid to act as patients while the med students "practice" on them. Eli has his white coat ceremony this Friday and then will start going to actual medical practices to learn and utilize what he has learned in clinical skills. I'll post pictures of Doctor Morey next week sometime so everyone can see how awesome he looks in his doctor coat!

Between the 1st and 2nd year of medical school, the students have the summer off. They use it to do research, shadow doctors, go abroad, etc. Eli is involved in an organization called ITW which stands for Imaging the World. This is what the website says about it:

"Using a newly designed training process, local health providers learn to capture high quality ultrasound scans that are transmitted via the web to medical volunteers around the world. Within hours potentially lifesaving diagnoses are returned, offering never before available options for treatment. ITW’s integrated educational platform is essential in combating maternal health, trauma triage and many of the critical issues facing all developing countries."

The lady in charge of the organization is a faculty member at UVM and spoke to the students about the program in the fall. He immediately was drawn to the program because it combines radiology with public health - two things he loves. And they go to Africa which he thinks would be awesome. He met with the lady about getting involved and she wanted to involve him more than just as a volunteer during the summer in Africa with a group of med students. She needs someone with public health knowledge to write a document called an IRB, detailing the program and the benefits in the public health world. She learned that he has his masters in public health and needed someone to write this document. And there are other things that he can do to get involved more, I just don't really understand it all! Haha! He was surprised at the offer to get involved that much! He was hesitant at first because it would mean that he has to dedicate time to it now through the summer. That would mean that he would be even busier than just his normal "studying busyness." But, after thinking about it, he knew it would be worth it and has jumped right in! So from now until the summer, he is going to be writing the document and working with the team on logistics. Then he might go to Africa in the summer, for at least a month. I think it's the coolest opportunity and I'm really excited for him!! He gets to combine medicine with public health and medicine, and go somewhere super awesome. Tan, Kenz, and I will just go chill with my parents in Colorado, which we will all love. So everyone wins!

Anyways, here is a link to the organization for any of you that are interested (probably just his public health buddies!): http://imagingtheworld.org/.

SARA: I am almost 37 weeks pregnant so I'm at the end of this pregnancy!!! I have scheduled my C-section for March 2nd, a week before my due date, a mere 2.5 weeks away. YAAAAAAY!!!! I am SO excited to meet this little girl! When I was pregnant with Tan, I didn't want him to come until after his due date because I needed to keep teaching and finish all my lesson plans for my maternity leave. Now that I don't have to do something like that, I just want the baby to come now because I can't wait to hold her and kiss her little face.

The nesting instinct kicked in after Christmas break and all I want to do is clean the house, which is abnormal for me because I don't usually like to clean. Eli LOVES it because he loves a clean house! Another way my nesting instinct shows itself is in bow/ribbon making. For some reason, I dream about making bows and think about it all the time! It has really become an obsessive thing that I can only attribute to nesting because I don't usually have strong desires, especially during my dreams, to be crafty. But it's been fun to make cute fabric flower bows and little ribbons for Kenz. I feel like I'm 7 again and playing Barbie! I have found some awesome tutorials online for all kinds of different bows and flowers.

I feel a lot more uncomfortable with this pregnancy than with Tanner. Maybe that's because I have more time to actually think about it this time. First pregnancies seem to be much more exciting! I didn't really care how uncomfortable I was because it was all new and it all meant that I was getting a baby. I'm getting a baby this time as well, but now I just want the actual baby and not the pregnancy pain! Ha ha ha! Anyways, I'm at the end - Hooray! I'm also excited to not be nauseous anymore and not have to take a sleeping pill everyday for my nausea. That will be nice!

TAN: He is such a spunky, energetic, and fun little guy. I'm just amazed at how much he knows at the mere age of 2! They grow up SUPER fast - it's crazy! He loves to play at "Tanner's house" and really can entertain himself all day with his toys. He is pretty good at playing alone so I spend my days playing off and on with him while I get other things done (and relax my pregnant body on the couch). He LOVES to sing and definitely has inherited Eli and my love and ear for music! He can often sing on tune and he picks up words to songs very quickly. It's so fun to watch! And he uses everything as a microphone and knows that a microphone makes your voice louder. Ha ha ha! We have to talk often about beautiful singing, not screaming singing. He loves to play with "little guys" which can be anything from playmobil people to game pieces for a board game. He likes to use them for imaginary play and I love watching him learn how to pretend. I could go on and on and on about him and how stinkin' cute he is! He is my little sunshine and is Eli's besty bud. I'll really miss the time I've had with just him and am aware that life is never going to be the same again. So I am trying to make the most of my time with just my little Tanman.

Makenzie: I think that is how we have decided to spell her name. She loves to move and groove inside of me and I love every minute of it! Oh and her middle name is going to be Ella. It is a fusion of the two grandmas on my side: Eleanor (Ellie) and Stella. And Eli has a great grandma named Ella who was a great person.

WHEW, there's the update on us!

Christmas in Houston

2011-02-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

We spent Christmas in Houston with Doug and Dana's little family. It was so fun to get away from the snow for a little while and play outside! I spent a few days staying with Doug and Dana and then we stayed with my parents, Kristie and Aly at a house rental right on the ocean in a city called Kemah. Doug and Dana don't live right in Houston - they are south near NASA since that is where Doug works. Eli and I got to have a night away without Tanner (my first night away from him ever!) at a hotel on the beach in Galveston. We had a blast spending time with my family. Since we weren't in Colorado like our usual Christmas, we just spent all of our time together and not split between friends and other things we generally like to do when we go to Colorado. We miss my fam and can't wait to see them again! We won't all be together for a long time because Aly is going on a mission and we can't all get together before she leaves. So Skype will have to do for a couple more years!

Anyways, since there are too many pictures to post here, I put them in an album on Picasa so that my family could download the ones they want. Here's the link so that you can see them: https://picasaweb.google.com/113216177353375523936/ChristmasInHouston?feat=directlink. There are a lot, but hey, it was Christmas!

S.N.O.W!!!!!!!!!!

2011-02-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

When we moved to Vermont I kept telling the native Vermonters how much I loved it here. They always said, "Just keep thinking that during the winter!" Now I know why! We have gotten SO much snow this winter and the temperatures have dropped to below 20 degrees most of the time. But it is BEAUTIFUL! We don't see the sun very often and it is almost always very lightly snowing. It's like living in a snow globe! There are snowplows out all day. I've never seen roads be cleared so fast - it's amazing! There are even little snowplows for the sidewalks that are so cute. Yesterday, most of the country got hit with severe weather and Vermont was no exception. We got dumped on! When the sun came out today, Tan and I braved the massive amounts of snow and had so much fun playing in the snow! I must have looked so funny out there being 8 months pregnant and throwing a 2 year old into the big piles of snow and falling into them myself. It felt good to focus on something fun instead of how uncomfortable my body is starting to feel. Here are some pictures from the day:

Our apartment! SO much snow!

He's attempting to climb the mountain of snow in front of our house!! Good luck Tan!

Tan couldn't walk in the snow because it was so deep so he liked walking on the sidewalks where the plowed snow was taller than him.

Our street - it looks so Vermonty and happy in the sun!

My cute little snow boy!

I love how small Tan looks amongst the massive amounts of snow.

Near our house, the snow has built up from it being plowed into these piles and then freezing. I like to call it the Himalayas!

What a fun day! Now I have to go apologize again to Eli for letting Tanner's face get sunburned. Ooops!

January

2011-02-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

Oh what do you do in the winter time, when all the world is WHITE and FRIGID?!

We do crazy things with our hair and then act crazy together!

We do fun crafts with our friends!

We takes lots of baths (this was after playing in the snow so some of the red on his face is due to being cold and some is a sunburn - oops.)

We read books and even learn about cool Book of Mormon heroes like Captain Moroni.

We play in the "magic" steam from the humidifier.

We spend time looking super cute!

We wear slippers around the house

We play with "little guys" from an adult game: We put them on our fingers, have them tackle each other, and use them as mini bowling pins.

We eat sweets like shakes, marshmallows, and hot chocolate (this is probably why I have the pregnant face and don't like having pictures taken of me)

And we celebrate birthdays! My birthday was at the end of the month so we had a really fun dinner/game party with our friends. It was my friend Sara's birthday two days earlier so we had a combined party and she made a super yummy chocolate cake! MMMM!

Eli made me breakfast in bed and it was delish. Thanks lovey!

We do lots of other fun things together that I haven't taken pictures of: dancing, singing, coloring, playing with playdoh, Skyping with family, playing with lots of toys, making forts, learning letters and numbers, taking naps together, playing in the sandbox, playing the piano, dancing around in the dark with glowsticks, visiting Eli at school, reading books, etc, etc, etc!!!

BRRRRRRR!

2011-02-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

I have many update posts to do, but I just wanted to say that we are alive and haven't frozen yet in the frigid Vermont winter! It really has been quite cold (in the negatives sometimes and almost always below 20 degrees), but the almost constant snowfall makes for some beautiful wintery scenery. I'll post more updates soon!

This is our buildingThis is the street we live on in The Fort
This is the park inside The Fort, a street away from ours.
Which ones are the real mini-wheats?!
Braving the cold to take some wintery photos!

Lake Powell

2011-01-29T11:52:00.001-08:00

Back in June, we went to Lake Powell with my family. We took SO many photos and I finally sorted through them all when I made my parents a photobook for Christmas. So here are 2 links to the albums of pictures that I posted on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2423583&id=17813562&l=171c4bc924

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2423597&id=17813562&l=0d9e647a57

It should work for anyone, regardless of if you have a facebook account or not. It's fun to look back at the pictures while it's snowing outside right now and remember how fun summer is! We had a blast!

Two!!!

2010-12-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to our bestest little buddy in the world!!! We just adore you and are so glad that you are part of our family. You keep us laughing and entertained all the time! And you keep us on our toes with your spunky little personality. Thanks for so many fun memories in 2 short years Tanman! We love you!!!

Technology

2010-12-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

Why do I absolutely love technology? Because this is possible:

We missed the army peeps over in Germany - I wish there was a good family Skype time for them. It's hard enough getting the rest of us on at the same time when we live in 3 different time zones! Yay for Skype and Tokbox!

Family...

2010-11-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, we celebrated Thanksgiving in Utah with my fam:

(Don't mind my ginormous body and face - I was 3 weeks from delivering Tanman!)

Last year, we celebrated with Eli's fam in Arizona:

And our turkey was deep fried and the best turkey I've EVER eaten, hands down!
This year, we are celebrating with our new Vermont family! We have always been with family on Thanksgiving and I thought I would be sad and lonely without them this year, but instead, I am excited to be with our friends who have become like family to us. Along with SO many things I'm grateful for this holiday, I'm grateful for amazing friends who have really made our new life in Vermont so good and happy.

Christmas Party ideas PLEASE!!!

2010-11-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

Eli and I are in charge of ward activities and we need some ideas for what to do during our ward Christmas breakfast. What are activities you have liked at ward parties? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!!! THANKS!!

Happy Halloweeeeeeeen!

2010-11-01T06:14:00.000-07:00

We had a fun month celebrating Halloween! This past weekend was packed full of Halloweeny activities. Tan really got into the holiday this year and loved that I let him eat candy a lot. Now I need to hide it because he totally knows that it exists. Here are some pics from our weekend!

This was at our Ward Halloween Party! We were in charge and had a blast planning and running it! Eli and I were grapes and Tan was Mickey. Tanner looks so sad in this picture. He had a rough night following us around as we ran the party. He hated that we couldn't hold him. My favorite quote by him that night was "mommy, balloons all done."

We went trick or treating on Saturday night since Halloween was on Sunday. We are so grateful to many of our neighbors for letting us come to their houses when it wasn't even Halloween yet! Eli was the door greeter on Saturday night! Tan passed out treats on Sunday night and took it quite seriously.

Our cute little trick or treating crew on Saturday night

I love how all the kids are at the door and Tan decided to park it on the steps and reach his bucket out as far as he could!

This is Tan with his little bestie, Jack!

With his spoils

Probably his 10th sucker of the night, no joke.

Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!

Emotions

2010-10-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sad, Sleepy, Excited, Happy

Happy Fall!!!!

2010-10-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

Click on the next 2 pictures to see Tan's face better - pure JOY!!!

Click on this to get the whole panoramic effect

Today was the big ultrasound, and....

2010-10-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

It's time to introduce the word "sister" and "girl" into our house!!! And baby dolls, ribbons, PINK, etc, etc, etc!!! McKenzie Morey is cookin' divinely in her luxury accommodations! She even waved and said Hello to us as she chilled in her bubble, feet crossed and everything. And she gave her momma a few good kicks, just to make sure they knew she was gearing up to play in a few months. She's got to keep up with her energetic and feisty big bro!

We are THRILLED!!!

Apple Picking at Shelburne Orchards

2010-09-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

"APPLES!!!!!!"

Macintosh - Sara's fav! SO white inside

Goofy Kid!

Excited Face!

Cider Donuts - probably one of the the best kind of donuts ever!

Fresh Apple Cider!

Hugging his friend, Ana

Hugging his friend, Jack - ha ha ha!

We love Vermont and doing Vermonty things like apple picking!

Our good friends and next door neighbors, the Larsens! We love them!

Enjoying the evening!

A gorgeous end to a fun day!

Tan Tan Tan Tan!

2010-09-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

This post is all about the Tanman!! He is so stinkin' cute these days! I just adore him and love spending my days with him. His newest thing is counting to 14 all the time. He has the cutest little voice when he counts! He still loves balls and cars and "digging trucks" that we see everytime we drive anywhere. He loves his friends Jack, Ana, and Ethan and is starting to interact with them. He is super attached to me and won't let me be more than 5 feet from him in public. Eli has spent the past 6 weeks in nursery because Tan is having a major difficult time staying there alone. He loves to make faces for different emotions: happy, sad, excited, mad. He LOVES "sticko" and coloring. He loves playing outside and going for walks in the "fodist" (forest). He is also a high-energy, feisty kid! We have used the time-out consequence a lot recently. But he is also so sweet and gives random hugs when he feels so inclined. Eli and I still tell each other multiple times a day how cute he is and how much we love him! Here are some recent pics of the Tanman...

Posing for the camera!

Loves for daddy

Eating "crunchies" (soy nuts) with daddy

He splashed his milk and wasn't too happy about it getting all over him

When we laughed, he relaxed and thought it was pretty funny, too!

He loves to make all kinds of ramps for his cars

"Splashin" in puddles with his new Mickey Mouse rainjacket!

Handsome and ready for church!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture! I could just eat him up!!

Love at Home

2010-09-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Back in May, Eli and I teamed up with Aly to sing the song "Love at Home" during our ward Mother's Day sacrament meeting. We made it even more of a family affair by having Eli's amazing pianist cousin, Nichole, accompany us. And since our blog is called the Musical Moreys, it's about time that we post a video of us singing! We have sung together in every single ward we've ever lived in, but we've never actually recorded us singing. I LOVE this song! It has beautiful harmonies and a gorgeous piano accompaniment. Also, it was so fun to sing with Aly! The three of us spent a lot of time together in the past couple years so it was nice to put our voices together before Eli and I were separated from Aly by many many miles. (Tear!)

This recording was taken BEFORE sacrament meeting so we weren't being irreverent or anything! Here are a few disclaimers before you watch:

1. I am like majorly distracted during the last 2/3 of the song. People kept coming in because sacrament meeting was going to start. But we wanted to get the whole song recorded so that we could show our moms for mothers day. So I am super distracted and not very presentable, but things were much better during the actual performance!
2. You can hear lots of background noise because people were coming into the chapel. Someday we'll get a good recording!

Holidays bring fun things!

2010-09-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago, Santa brought us this little bundle of joy ---

(Doncha just love Tan's face in this pic?! Oh, the expressions of newborns are so entertaining!)

Next year, a little green leprechaun is going to bring us another cute n' cuddly little person!

See:

YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!! We are super duper excited to keep growing our little family!!!

It's been pretty hard hiding this tummy! I can't believe I'm already the size I was with Tan at 5 months and I'm only 3 months along. Sheesh - people were right when they said you pop out much faster after the first pregnancy! If I keep growing at this rate, I'm going to tip over at 7 months!!

Favorite moments from this pregnancy so far (good and bad!):

Finding out that we were pregnant the morning after a super fun day at Disneyland!
My clothes getting tighter RIGHT AWAY. I'm gonna be needing those stretchy band pants much sooner than I thought!
Tanner saying "Hi Baby!" and kissing my belly all the time. And Tanner pointing to his own belly and saying that there is a baby in there. Ha ha ha!
Living in the bathroom and throwing up all day and night. You really notice when the toilet needs to be cleaned when you spend so much time with it!
My hero, Eli, taking over housework and taking care of Tanner while I was a good-for-nothing blob in the house.
Discovering that Unisom and B6 work miracles! I'm not kidding! Seriously, I took them both for the first time on a Saturday night and was able to sing a solo in church the next day (I was asked DURING relief society to sing a solo in Sacrament meeting a hour later! Yikes!) I was really weak and shaky after not being able to eat anything for days, but at least I was able to do a lot more than lay on the ground in misery! YAY for drugs!!! Now I take 2 Unisoms (sleeping pills) and 2 B6 vitamins a day - one set in the morning, one at night - and I pretty much feel normal. I still have nausea and weakness but I can function and that makes me happy! I just wish I could exercise. Every time I try, my body remembers that it is in a constant state of sickness and isn't happy with me.
Having lots of people offer me their prescription meds for nausea. I loved the thought but just couldn't bring myself to use their drugs illegally since I am married to a future doctor!
Packing and moving while being sick - quite the adventure but Eli's sister, Ari, totally helped A LOT!! Oh and being able to fly across the country instead of drive was a total blessing.
Crazy food aversions and cravings - I didn't get much of that (or nausea) with Tanner.
Daily naps during Tan's naptime (Due to the whole sleeping pill twice a day thing!). Oh and CRAZY CRAZY dreams from taking extra B6. And I can consciously make decisions in my dreams which is super cool!
Seeing the baby on the monitor with it's cute little, few centimeters long, profile. SO cute!

Bring on Baby #2!!!!!! Debuting sometime around March 8!!

Vermonters!

2010-08-16T05:10:00.000-07:00

We are here in Vermont!!! And it is BEAUTIFUL!!! Seriously, so green and lush and just really picturesque. See: (click on it to make it bigger)

Eli took this photo of Lake Champlain which is right next to Burlington.

We have loved our first week and a half here. We absolutely LOVE our apartment. It's so spacious and bright and welcoming. (I'll take pics later and post them once we are completely moved in.) There is a playground right out our backdoor which Tanner loves. We also have awesome friends who live next door and across the street - we feel so blessed to have them so close! We already feel at home here and have fallen in love with the city. My drive to the grocery store is like driving through the Rocky Mountains. It's just so green and hilly and untouched. I love it! And the area isn't as small town as I thought it would be. We have pretty much every store we could ever need and there are lots more people than I thought there would be.

Eli's school is in Burlington, which is the biggest city in Vermont. We live in a city 5 miles north of Burlington called Essex Junction. (I love the names of the cities out here like Winooski and Stowe and Waterbury!) I like being out of the "big" city because there is more greenery in our city than in Burlington. The bus picks Eli up right in front of our apartment and drops him off at the door to the medical school. Pretty sweet set up, doncha think?! He'll love that in the winter when he doesn't have to wipe off a buried car and drive in the snow. I'll be the one in my boots and coat getting the car ready to go to the grocery store!
We have played a lot in between unpacking. Here are some of the things we have done so far:

Meals with friends
Walks in the forest nearby (or fujist as Tan calls it)
A visit to a large farm nearby called Shelburne Farms. It is a working farm where you can see how cheese is made, watch cow milking demonstrations, etc. The farmhouse is over a hundred years old and is a beautiful structure. Check out the pictures at the end of the post! We even bought a season pass so that Tan and I can go play at the farm with our friends whenever we want!
Spent a day in Montreal, Canada. I felt like I was back in Europe! Everyone was speaking French, the signs were in French, and the buildings were in the European style. It was a fun city to explore and we'll be back lots more since the nearest temple is in Montreal. (We have to use a passport to go to the temple! Sa-weet!)
Tan and I walked around Church Street Marketplace which is a downtown pedestrian street with shops and restaurants. Right now there is an art thing going on with cows. There are statues of cows all over and companies decorated them however they wanted. Tanner's favorite thing was touching every single cow. I liked eating my nutella crepe as I people watched. (Vermont isn't stuck in the lastest fashion - it's pretty much just anything goes. I like that because I don't feel like I have to dress well to fit like I felt like in Salt Lake and Provo!)
BBQ's at the school and by Lake Champlain with Eli's classmates. They all adore Tanner. There is one other LDS family with kids in Eli's year and one family with kids the year above us (both live right by us). There are a couple other kids of students but not many so Tanner was a commodity and all the girls were tickling him and just doting over him. He totally turned on his flirt face around them!
Eli went through his first week of school which was orientation and today is his second day of actual classes! I'm a proud wifey! He's going to do great!

Enough chit chat, here are some pictures from Shelburne Farms, Montreal, and Church Street Marketplace!

Church Street Marketplace

This picture would look a lot better without the crane in it. If I was all powerful maybe I could have asked them to move. But I'm not so what can ya do?!

Montreal, Canada

Pedestrian street in Montreal

There were horse-drawn carriages all over this part of Montreal and the pink was my favorite! I wonder how that man feels surrounded by so much PINK!

Love love love my boys!

Watching this tractor at work was Tanner's favorite part of the day!

Shelburne Farms

The farmhouse

Authentic Vermont cheddar cheese - yummers!

We walked through those woods to the top of a hill overlooking the lake for a picnic lunch. Again, just gorgeous!

Love this! Ha ha ha!

All my boxes are packed and I'm ready to go!

2010-07-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

The apartment is empty...
The truck is completely loaded with Momo attached to the back...

We are headed to VERMONT!!!

We move a lot (This is our 10th move in 4 years!) but it is always with mixed emotions. Tan and I were lucky enough to fly to Denver yesterday and wait while Eli and his sister, Ari, drive to Vermont. Then we get to fly to Vermont - I don't envy them for the long drive but they will have fun together and probably enjoy not having to entertain a one year old! As we flew over the Salt Lake Valley and over the mountains, my heart ached for the memories we've made in Utah over the past 5 years together. We have come and gone and moved all over, but a large chunk of our time has been spent in Utah. I'll miss my friends (it's always awkward saying goodbye because when you are in the middle of packing you are stressed and not really thinking about the fact that you won't see these people again for a long long time.) I'll miss being near almost all of our extended family. I'll miss driving by the Salt Lake temple every day. I'll miss the beautiful Avenues that we spent the last 7 months exploring. I'll miss drives to Utah County to visit aunt Aly in Provo and friends/former students in Payson. I'll miss how cheap everything is in Utah compared to Vermont.

But we are headed to a new adventure and we are very excited! Eli is finally going to be a doctor-in-training (WHAT??!! We've been waiting for this for so long and it boggles my mind that it is actually happening!) We have friends in Vermont already that we are excited to meet! We have an entirely new part of the country to explore. We get to be bona fide North Easterners for the next 4 years. We get to live on loans and continue our frugal lifestyle we have been living since we got married. We get to eat FRESH maple syrup and fresh Ben and Jerry's ice cream. We are living near a beautiful lake with mountains in the distance - that is my paradise (except that we can't really go boating because of the whole poor thing)! We get to live in a place with seasons still (I LOVE seasons and don't know if I could live somewhere without them). We get to experience extreme cold but also extreme fall beauty. Those are just a few of the things I'm excited about!

Anyone and everyone is welcome to come visit! We have an extra bedroom and would love to show you around Vermont. Come in the fall and see how beautiful the "fruit loop mountains" are! The invitation is always open (and you can explore other cool cities like Boston on your trip to the East Coast).

Happy Trails to Eli and Ari as they drive across the country!

P.S. Thanks to all the friends and family who helped us pack, load, and clean! We REALLY REALLY appreciate it!!!

2010-07-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have so many pictures from our adventures this past summer - it's overwhelming to go through them! Who knows if I'll even get around to posting them since we are moving in two weeks and then Eli starts school and can't spend as much time editting photos (I can do it but I'm not as skilled as he is).

Anyways, I found this picture amongst the thousands and couldn't believe how grown up my little Tan has become. There's something about eating an apple all by yourself that makes you look much older than a baby!! And he really is growing and learning so fast. I utterly adore him! The other night as I peeked at him before I went to bed, his eyes were blinking so I whispered to him, "Can I snuggle with you?" And he whispered back through his binky, "yes." So I grabbed him out of his bed, sat down in the rocking chair, and watched as he snuggled into my body and fell back asleep. My heart swelled to bursting, almost like the Grinch! It was SO SWEET! He is my best little friend!

OK back to doing something productive!

Shout out!

2010-07-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a shout out from San Diego!! We're having a blast!

Whirlwind!

2010-06-21T14:17:00.001-07:00

Life has been a whirlwind of activities and trips lately! We have been on-the-go and have packed and unpacked many times in the past month. I inherited a restless spirit from my mom and have rubbed off on Eli. I just like to be busy all the time! Here's what we've been up to for the past month:

Sang in church for mothers day. Eli, Aly, and I sang a beautiful rendition of "Love at Home" and were accompanied by Eli's amazing pianist-of-a cousin, Nichole.

Spend a weekend in St. George for our anniversary (see previous post).

Spent time playing with friends in our neighborhood.Exploring - doing what one year olds do best!

Visited Payson and the site for the new temple (2 blocks from where we used to live!)

Spent a weekend with Eli's brother, Ali, who came to visit from California. And played my brand new piano!!!!! A gift from my lovey for mothers day and our anniversary! I'm SO excited that I can play and sing at my own house now!
Drove to Lake Powell and spent 7 days there! It was the most incredible trip! Oh man, I miss it just thinking about it. I never worried about Tanner (he was afraid of the water) and he slept, played, and ate so well while we were there. Hooray! It was super fun hanging out with my family - I love love love them! (We did miss Andy and Paige though.) We haven't downloaded our pictures from Lake Powell yet because there are SO many. Just Doug and Eli took 2300 pictures combined in a week. Now we get to sort through and delete all the bad ones! We'll post some good ones sometime soon.Drove from Lake Powell to Denver. Dana and I drove in our car with the little boys and listened to 8 hours of the show Caillou from the backseat. It was fun to chat with Dana on the drive! She is one awesome lady!

Spent the next three days celebrating with my friend Christine. She is getting married in a few weeks! I went to her bachelorette party in Downtown Denver, helped Eli do a bridal photoshoot for her, and went to a wedding shower for her.

Spent a week in Colorado with papa and gra-gra. (Wes went back home after a day and Tanner really missed him.) During the week, Tan played with grandma all day while I nannied a couple boys. Tanner just loved being at grandma's house and playing in her yard. She is one awesome gra-gra! Eli spent the week in Atlanta on a business trip.After 10 days in Colorado, our little family drove over the mountains and back home to Salt Lake. We spent a few days playing with Tanner's toys that he missed while he was gone for so long.

This past Thursday, we celebrated Tan's 18 month birthday and played with some new toys. He even blew out a birthday candle! In the afternoon, we drove to the Salt Flats (2 hours from Salt Lake) and had a little photoshoot there. It was a pretty cool place!

On Friday morning, we drove to Goshen to visit Eli's old mission comp/college roommate and his family. (Goshen is a small town southwest of Payson.) We spent the weekend chatting, playing games, eating yummy food, watching Tan play with their 2 kids, and visiting a Lavender farm. We spent two nights there. Well 1 1/2 actually. Tan decided not to sleep one of the nights and so we packed up and drove home at 4:30am early Sunday morning. Crazy kid!

On Sunday we celebrated Fathers Day by going to City Creek canyon, a canyon that is literally 5 minutes from our house (why hadn't anybody told me about this canyon?!?!). We had a picnic next to the river with Lenny and some friends. Tan played in the dirt and with all the bright green caterpillars all over the table and hanging from the trees. We played a super fun game of croquet - dirt style! Dirt croquet was different than grass croquet - it created lots of funny outcomes!

WHEW! I feel like I need to take some deep breaths after reading that! We've done a lot in the past 3 weeks! But we can't unpack just yet - we are going to California this Thursday. We're driving to Vegas and walking around the strip that night. Then we'll finish the drive the next day to San Diego and meet up with Eli's fam - Ari and Christian (the hosts), Risa (mom), and Ali (the brother who lives northeast of LA). We'll spend 10 days there and then Tan and I fly to Denver for more time with my family and for Christine's wedding (I'm a bridesmaid!). Eli will drive home by himself, work for the week, and then fly to Colorado that weekend for the wedding.

After that we can stay put for a little while. A couple weeks after getting home from CO, we're going to a weekend long family reunion in Idaho for Eli's family. And then we pack up the following week and move on Friday the 30th!! Before you know it, we'll be in Vermont! We are all driving to Vermont - me and Tan in our car and Eli in the truck. Tan and I get to stay in Colorado for a few days while Eli drives the truck with our car attached to the back all the way to the upper northeastern part of the country. And then we fly out and meet him! A few days later, he starts medical school and we get settled into our new life in Vermont.

SO, all of you Utah family members who are reading this, I need to see you ALL before we move at the end of July! Our time in Utah is coming to an end because we probably won't come here to visit since my parents live in Colorado. So we need to get together at least one last time before we leave! OK??? OK!

I hope you all are having a fabulous summer!

2010-06-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

Check this out: http://embracethis.co.uk/

Go Public Health!

Seriously, who wouldn't want to wear their seatbelt after seeing this?

The SG

2010-05-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

We took a last minute trip to St. George this past weekend and had a total blast! It was super fun to go on our own little family trip! We celebrated our 4 year anniversary and took Tan along because we knew that he'd like the trip. My aunt and uncle are so nice and let us use their house for the weekend. The weather was perfect in the mid 80's, which was a welcome change from the 50 degree weather we've had in Salt Lake for the past few weeks. Here's a few things we did while we were in sunny St. George:

Stopped at the grave sites of my ancestors in Fillmore (on the way to St. George). I saw the graves of my great grandparents and great aunts/uncles, and further back than that. One ancestor, Ruben McBride, was in Zions Camp and he had a beautiful headstone. Eli talked me into stopping at the cemetery and I'm really glad we did! This headstone is my grandma Ellie's (my dad's mom) parents.
Walked around Brigham Young's winter home (the yard was gorgeous!)
Hiked on petrified sand dunes and played in real sand dunes (Eli will post photos from his sand dune photoshoot with Tan soon.)

Played at the outdoor water park with a man made shallow river for kids. Tan loved it and liked being around all the other kids (it was crowded)! He especially liked picking up all the shoes laying around and walking off with them. (I LOVE his face in this picture!!!)

Visited the St. George temple and Visitors Center (there was an art display with wonderful pioneer paintings)

Spent a lot of time OUTSIDE!

Had fun chatting, playing, and doing crazy things like sticking raisins to boogers on the drive down and back!
We also went out to eat - that's one of my favorite things about vacations - and went swimming. Well we tried, but Tan didn't like it at all. He used to love it and now he cries so hard when we put him in the water. Why???!! That doesn't bode well for our Lake Powell trip coming up.

We had a fabulous trip!! We came back to Salt Lake refreshed, happy, and full of smiles!

The Shaving Man

2010-05-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

I captured these 5 shots of my little buddy shaving after his bath one day. He even learned from me how to inspect the shaving job afterwards.

Tulips, tulips everywhere!

2010-05-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving Point has a tulip festival every year and since we've lived in Utah now for 7 years (5 for Eli), it was about time that we headed on over for some spring time fun! Here's what we did:

Saw lots and lots and lots of tulips! My favorite are the orange and red ones (there are even some right outside of our apartment right now!),

Played peek-a-boo through mommy's hair

Rolled sideways across the hill (down is too scary) while saying "weeee" the whole time and ending up in the dirt next to the tulips.
Worked it with mommy's glasses
The tulips didn't take all the spotlight. The daffodils were also gorgeous! (Don't you just love how the sun is shining on the flowers in the bottom left?!)
Worked on our balance while playing "chase" on the hill
Ran from daddy
Played with his brand new ball, courtesy of grandpa lenny
Ate super delish kettle corn and discussed how to make it turn out so good (Lenny used to make buckets filled with popcorn when Eli and his siblings were growing up so these two men really were trying to figure out how to get the flavor and shape of the popcorn just right!)

Smelled the flowers

Took some "sit-in-front-of-the-flowers-in-a-cheesy-family-photo-pose" pictures.

Watched the sun set over the beautiful gardens.

I told Lenny while I was there that I wished everyday could be like this! We chatted, played, relaxed, and soaked in the gorgeous springtime blossoms.

My son, the flirt

2010-05-02T22:25:00.001-07:00

Aly called me from a park in Salt Lake asking if we could meet her. The whole way in the car Tan kept saying her name so I know that he was excited to see her! Well, Aly was with her two cute friends, Liz and Stacey:

After a few minutes of kicking the ball around and warming up to these girls, he had completely forgotten about Aly and me and began flirting with them! He seriously wouldn't even give Aly or I the time of day! He would kick the ball, turn around, and grin so big like "Did you see that?" He was being a complete show-off! He started getting really excited because he falls a lot when he's really excited, which the girls thought was hilarious and just egged him on.

Tan turned on his inner FLIRT and kept giving these faces to the girls:

Aly and I were just watching and laughing through this whole flirt and show-off charade that Tan was putting on. Is flirting innate? Who knows! But Tan was sure good at it, especially for a one year old. What am I going to do when he's older???!!! Yikes!

By the end of our playtime at the park, he was finally loving on his aunt. He just adores her!

I had to add this picture cuz I LOVE the contrast between the giant trees and my teeny tiny little man. He is just explorin' this awesome world!

Celebrating!

2010-04-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

We had a blast celebrating Eli's graduation! The first day was warm and beautiful, perfect for outdoor pictures. The second day was rainy and cold, which Tanner actually loved. He went straight for the puddles! Eli spent his masters program with a great group of friends and we all partied together on Thursday. There was lots of talking, hanging out, and good grub. And then at the graduation when Eli actually walked, all 7 of his names were announced. (For those of you who don't know, Eli has 7 names that make the acronym Gazelem - go look it up in the Book of Mormon. His names are Gabriel Arcangelo Zeezrom Ezra Laconia Eli Morey.) I was thrown back to Arapahoe High School graduation when the same thing happened and everyone chuckled. The reaction was the same this time! I love my uniquely named guy! Congrats lovey love!

After lots of "peas, peas peas, peas" (please), Eli finally reached in the water to get Tan's rock that he threw in the water.

Oops! Forgot there was a giant hood back there!

Tan's activity during Eli's graduation pictures: playing in the dirt and sticks. SUCH a boy.

Tan loved Eli's tassle - playing with that was the only way to get him to smile for pictures

So cute!

I love this picture! Eli is running down the hill while pushing Tan in the stroller. This is the hill we walked up and down A LOT during our undergrad dating days. Oh the memories!

Eli's Public Health cohort!
Here's what Tan did during graduation. And guess what I did? Followed him up and down stairs and rows for two hours while taking occasional pictures. The life of a one year old!

Master Eli

2010-04-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

As of today, Eli is officially Master Eli! I'm so proud of him and how hard he worked to get his Masters in Public Health degree in a year and a half. And he made some incredible friends along the way.

2 degrees down, 1 to go!

More pictures to come!

In the Leafy Treetops . . .

2010-04-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

. . . the birds sing Good Morning!! And it is a G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S sound! SPRING IS HERE!!! Winter really pulled an ugly ending by snowing off and on for weeks. But now the trees are blossoming (we sing Popcorn Popping everytime we go outside and Tanman loves it!) and there are tulips everywhere! Yesterday it was almost 80 outside so we spent a few hours playing and flying kites with friends. Tan and I both got sun-kissed cheeks! Welcome back sun!!! We have missed you!

When we go outside, we spend time climbing other people's steps,

walking anywhere and everywhere,

smelling and (touching sometimes) newly blossomed flowers,

and kicking/throwing the ball.

With spring's appearance, I have fallen in love with the Avenues in Salt Lake. The trees are huge, every yard has tulips, the grass is turning green, the air smells wonderful, people are dining al fresco on porches and at cafe's, kids are playing outside, people are biking and jogging, and the feeling is a-buzz with new life and excitement! It is FABULOUS!!! We'll miss this area when we leave so we are trying to enjoy it now!!

One thing I realized yesterday is that I can't wear my BYU shirt outside! We live in the heart of Ute territory which is apparent by all the flags and Utah paraphenilia on all the houses and apartments. Oh and I finally jogged into the cemetery 2 blocks from our apartment where two of my grandparents are buried. I haven't visited their graves since we first moved in 4 months ago. I wandered around (it is a HUGE cemetery) and couldn't remember where they were! It made me so sad to think that I didn't know where my own grandparents were buried. But then I realized that it's ok because they continue to live in heaven and so I don't need to dwell on their bodies laying in their graves. Thank goodness for the plan of salvation!

Anyways, happy happy spring to you all!

P.S. Isn't this picture hilarious?! Tan is trying to hug his cousin, Wesley, last week in Colorado. Wes didn't like it AT ALL as evidenced by his facial expression and squeal of displeasure. But Tan continues to hug until someone pulls him away! Ha ha ha! They are so funny together. Tan is aggressive and Wesley is timid so Wes got lots of toys taken away from him. I guess it's time to start learning about sharing! Tan adores "Weth" (he has a lisp when he says "s") and will be so excited to spend a week in Lake Powell with him next month.

P.S.S. I know I need to cut Tanner's hair (he is growing some girly looking locks - check out the pic!), but he HATES, I repeat, HATES when we touch his hair. What do we do????

P.S.S.S. Ok this is the last thing - Eli sold our old camera and lens and, after a couple months with just my 5 year old digital camera, finally got his new camera and lens! I'm excited for good pictures again! The pictures above are the first ones from the new camera (except for the Tan hugging Wes picture). YAY! It came just in time for Eli's graduation tomorrow. Way to go Master Eli!

"Green" Day and "Hippity Hoppity" Day

2010-04-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

"Green" Day, as we said to Tan, was celebrated by eating green egg omelets and green jello. Not much but still fun! Eli's dad, Lennox, joined in the festivities and even wore a little green!

For Easter, we played with bunnies and sang "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" all week. Eli, Aly, and I decorated eggs. We had a playground Easter Egg hunt and Tan totally didn't get it. Here's what happened:

Me: "Look Tan! There's an egg by that bush! Go get it!"
Tan: "No." Then he picks up a stick or a rock.
So I go pick up the egg.
Me: "Tan, put the egg in the basket."
Tan: "No." He grabs the egg. "Ball!!!" Then he throws the egg and all the candy spills out onto the sidewalk.

Even after that experience, I still hid plastic eggs for him around the house and hard-boiled colored eggs for Eli and Aly in high places. Surprisingly, he actually hunted for and gathered eggs in his basket!

He did well hunting until an egg broke open and he discovered that candy was inside. The hunt stopped dead in its tracks! So mommy finished the hunt while Tanner ate lots and lots of sugar. I just realized that we don't have pictures with him and his basket. Oops!

You know you're a mom when you have goldfish crackers stuck to your clothing. (Thanks Eli for never telling me it was there and taking pictures of it instead!)

After watching 3 sessions of AMAZING General Conference and hearing from "Mons" or "Mon Mon" (President Monson) as Tan calls him, Eli and I met up with Lennox and actually went to the last session in the Conference Center. We only got the tickets the week before: the Executive Secretary in our bishopric literally just handed them to me out of the blue! Apparently Lennox wanted one (he's in our ward) so the bishopric decided to let Eli and I go as well. How nice of them! And Aly was so nice to watch Tan and drop us off. I'm especially glad we got to go since we'll be all the way across the country for the next 8 General Conferences. I always love being in the conference center because I feel unified with the rest of the Church and feel the spirit so strongly when the Prophet enters the room. It's something everybody should experience once!

After that, headed to the Gehrke's for some annual Easter egg rolling and an incredibly delicious turkey dinner with amazing rolls (my mouth is watering just thinking about them!). Good food, fun times, and good company!
Aly spent the whole weekend with us which we all love! Tanner has the funniest name for Aly - he says the "A" without the "ly" and adds "ss" at the end. You put it together and imagine how we react when he says her name! It's pretty hilarious! Especially when he yells it really loud when the windows are open so that the rest of our apartment complex can hear. Ha ha ha!

Happy Easter from the Morey's! Hopefully our bright colors will encourage spring to stay and get rid of all the random snow storms we've been having!

Where's the camera??!!

2010-04-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Tan has discovered the camera! My favorite pictures are when he has his eyes closed like this because the flash is bright. Ha ha ha!

This pic makes me giggle when I see it! The flash and the way his hair fell made him look like Einstein! (Eli sold our old lens and is looking for a new one so we have been using our point and shoot for a while as you could probably tell from the not-as-good pictures in recent posts.)

Of course he needs a turn!

Wow, he actually did a good job!

The best part of life - eating

2010-04-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that Tan has become a pretty good eater! We still struggle with pickiness sometimes but he is a lot more open to trying new things. But he won't eat very much which is why is such a skinny minny. And he won't eat anywhere except for at home in his highchair. Going out to eat has become an issue as he only wants to walk around and say "HI" to everyone! Here are some cute pics of him eating recently!

He thought it was funny to put black beans on his head

He is a sugar fiend! Ok ok ok, he didn't eat THAT much cake in one setting - I staged it. But he really does like sugar which is totally my fault because I love sugar so I often share with him. While my visiting teachers and their kids were over, I set out a plate of cookies and the other kids hesitantly took one and most didn't even finish theirs. On the other hand, Tan kept sneaking behind my back to where I hid the plate of cookies from him and stealing more and walking quietly away from me so that I wouldn't notice. Sneaky little devil!

He makes a mess most of the time, but not ALL the time!

I had to include this picture of Tan and Wes in Colorado while celebrating my dad's birthday. I love the boys have no idea what we all were laughing about. And I love how scrawny and white Tanner looks! Ha ha ha! When we go to Lake Powell, Wesley will just get tanner and Tan will burn. He got my skin and not Eli's easier-to-Tan-than-Sara's skin.

Tanner bo banner, fee fi fo fanner

2010-04-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

This post is all about TANNER! Here's just a glimpse of what he is like lately:

He tries to push anything and everything around the floor and sometimes he'll fill up a container with things around the house. Then mommy gets to play by putting everything back where it goes!

He likes to wear these doggy slippers that jingle when he walks - so fun!
He loves his room, especially his bed. He doesn't even let me get through one bed time lullaby anymore before he starts saying "bed, bed, bed" and I have to put him in his bed and say goodnight. Once there, he snuggles with his Care Bear (his chosen favorite stuffed animal) and his dog named Boo boo. Occasionally I'll snatch him out of bed before I head for bed and cuddle with him in my own bed for a while.

Not the best picture, but he loves to play in the laundry hamper thing and especially loves it when I sneak up on him and tickle him while he's in there.

He can be tender sometimes but most of the time when I give him hugs and kisses throughout the day, he squirms and pushes away. So it makes those occasional hugs and kisses SO worth it when he actually decides to give them out!

He has an obsession with hats - not with wearing them, but pointing them out everywhere he sees them. Unless the hat has a strap around his chin, it doesn't last more than 5 seconds before he pulls it off. He clicks his tongue everytime he puts a hat on and I have no idea where that came from but it is certainly cute!

Within the last month he started saying "cheese" for pictures and giving me a cheesy smile. That's my boy!

Yep, he's definitely one. I'm surprised that he's actually only ever done this once. He is really good at obeying and following our directions and limits (most of the time).

I'm so proud of this pic I captured! He loves to give me letters through this mailbox and then I read them and slide them back through the mailbox. He then reads them in the cutest jibberish ever!

He loves to climb on EVERYTHING!!

He watches out our big kitchen window while he eats and points out all the cars, dogs, and "baps" (bikes).

His favorite activity is throwing balls and spends most of his time doing that! He won't leave the house unless he has a ball to take outside, even if we're just getting in the car.

There's a million more things about the Tanner man that makes him so insanely cute and fun to be with all day!!! He is saying lots and lots of words and can really communicate with us most of the time which is super fun! We love our little munchkie!

Lions and tigers and bears, OH MY!

2010-04-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Another activity we do often is visit the Hogle Zoo which is also nearby. It is definitely nice living downtown where everything is so close! It's fun to take Tan there because we visited that zoo a lot growing up in Utah so I have memories of things like drinking out of the lion fountain and measuring my body length against the length of a gorilla. And we're blessed that Eli's job is M-Th so we get 3 weekend days with him! That will change very soon when he starts med school and Tan and I will spend many nights and weekends dad-less for the next 8ish years (yikes!). So we are taking full advantage of time with daddy.

Tan's favorite thing to do there is play on the rocks, in the mud, and with sticks - he just peeks at the animals and then moves on to more exciting stuff!

My favorite thing is the baby elephant - he's just so dang cute! I loved the baby giraffe as well, but he died due to "Failure to Thrive" 2 weeks ago.

Our sweet little man sharing his yogurt puffs with the penguins!

Even though there was glass in between them, he was determined to share his water with the monkeys (his favorite animal at the zoo).

Balls!

2010-04-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

During the winter, we spent a lot of time at the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum since it's only a couple of miles away. Tan's favorite thing there is the ball section because there are TONS and TONS of balls! Before going to museum, our conversation goes like this:

Me: "Tan, do you want to play at the museum today?"
Tan: (enthusiastically) "BALLS!"

In the ball area, there is a tube that has a little opening. When you lift up the opening, air gusts out and you put a ball inside so that it will go up the tube. Tan loved putting the ball in, but he wouldn't lift the opening up enough so the ball would usually spit back out at him. He laughed hysterically!!!

The decision is MADE!

2010-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

After lots and lots of researching, talking, asking questions, and praying, we have decided to move to . . . (scroll down with a drumroll!)

BURLINGTON, VERMONT!!!

We decided by asking Tanner if he wanted to live in snow or sun and he said "SNOW." So that's where we're going: to the northeast to live in the snowy world of Vermont! Ha ha ha - Just kiddin, just kiddin. For reals, we both received individual confirmations from Heavenly Father that Vermont is where we both KNOW that we need to be. So you can all come visit us in the fall because fall in Vermont is supposed to be incredibly gorgeous!!!! Someone Eli met in Vermont called the mountains the "Fruitloop Hills" because they were so colorful! (http://www.bga.org/meetings/2000/fall10.jpg)

Eli took these pictures while interviewing in Vermont 2 years ago:
Here's some info about Burlington, Vermont:

Largest city in Vermont with a population of about 40,000
There are three colleges in the city so it has a vibrant atmosphere
The city is on the banks of Lake Champlain with the Adirondrack Mountains and Green Mountains nearby providing beautiful scenery from the city (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Burlingtonskyline.jpg)
Neighboring cities have cool names like Winooski and Essex Junction (which is where we are probably going to live)
UVM is ranked in the top 10 for Primary Care in the country
Relatively low crime, lots of festivals and cultural events
Ben and Jerry stores everywhere! (birthplace of Ben and Jerry's)
Church Street market is a quaint downtown shopping district: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Burlington%2C_Vermont.jpg
The government is Democratic and Progressive
There is a great abundance of snow and cold weather in the winter - time to invest in good snow gear! But the rest of the seasons are wonderful
Many opportunities to visit farms and orchards: Maple, berries, pumpkins, apples, etc, etc, etc.

The distance from Burlington to nearby areas:
1.3 hours from Sharon, VT (Joseph Smith's birthplace)
1.5 hours from Dartmouth (Hanover, NH)
2 hours from Montreal, QC (the closest temple to us)
3.3 hours from Boston, MA
3.3 hours from Ben and Kristie's family (Eli's uncle, aunt, and cousins in Berwick, Maine)
3.7 hours from Ottawa, ON 4 hours from Portland, ME
4 hours from Quebec, QC
4 hours from Fort Drum, NY
5.5 hours from New York, NY
6.3 hours from Palmyra, NY
6.5 hours from Rochester, NY
6.8 hours from Philadelphia, PA
7 hours from Toronto, ON
8.5 hours from Baltimore, MD

So if you want to come visit us, you can go to any of those places as an addition to Vermont!
We're heading out around July 30 - Here we come Vermont!

Happy, Joyful, Excited . . .

2010-03-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

I am just so happy today! I think it's a culmination of a few different things:

1. It is getting warmer outside which means that we aren't cooped up in our little place as much. Definitely a YAY!
2. I am SO excited about our summer trips to two of my most FAVORITE FAVORITE FAVORITE places in the entire universe: Lake Powell and California.

Lake Powell is with my fam and it'll be fun to see Tanner play in the water and sand all day long. That is like paradise for him.
And California is where Eli and I spent the first three months of our marriage. We lived in Orange right next door to Ari and Christian and just had so many fun adventures while we lived there. And we went to the beach A LOT! This time we will be staying with Ari and Christian in San Diego and I'm excited to see them and explore that area. What I'm most excited for about that trip is the length (like 10 days I think), much needed time with Eli's family, the BEACH, and a day at Disneyland for free! We did the Give a day Get a day program through Disneyland and volunteered with the Special Olympics so now we have a free day at the Happiest Place on Earth and that makes me ECSTATIC! I am listening to the music from the fireworks show this very second and I can hardly wait to get into that wonderful place! I get so giddy when I walk down Main Street in Disneyland and I hope Tanner will be excited, too! He's learning some of the Disney characters through pictures and books and his favorite is Mickey so far ("Mi Mi" he says). I was at a friend's house the other day whose son has a Mickey doll and Tanner would not put him down. He kept hugging him and taking him everywhere around the house, even getting him smeared with dirt (sorry!)These vacations need to come soon because I can't wait any longer!!!!

3. This amazing lady spoke at our ward Relief Society dinner last night:
Kristen Oaks was single until her 50's and then married Elder Oaks and she is just the most optimistic, kind, and loving lady. Her talk was informal because it was just a room full of about 40 ladies. It was very touching and I soaked up every little thing she said. The message that spoke to my heart the most is the fact that we (human beings) have an obligation to love on another. I had been thinking about that a lot prior to this dinner and what she said just pieced together everything I had been thinking about. And how do we love each other? We become friends with people, we learn about them and find out what their needs are. We say and do kind things for them. We live by the Spirit so that we can know how to love and serve others better. It was an amazing talk and just made me feel so happy!

4. I am loving our ward here. The dinner last night was in a beautiful mansion on South Temple, a couple of blocks from our little place. It was a great setting to chat with the women in my ward. I'm excited to spend more time with them!

5. General Conference is coming in less than 2 weeks! This brings SO much joy to my soul!!

Transitions...

2010-03-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

This is a transition year for most of our family members. We've moved 9 times since getting married so we definitely know that moving is exciting because you get to explore a new place but it's also hard because you're leaving a life that you built behind. Our hearts are with our sibbies (and sibbies-in-law) that are packing up (some on their own, some with moving companies which we are totally jealous about) and heading to a new adventure! From earliest to latest, here's where they are goin:

Kristie is taking a break from snowy cold weather in Colorado and is headed to the desert in Phoenix where she is going to be working at the Arthritis Foundation. She is on her way right this very second!
Andy graduated from Ranger School (BIG Hooray! It was quite an accomplishment!) and he and Paige are headed for Germany. The army base is in Baumholder, a little city an hour east of Luxembourg. They leave tomorrow!
Ari and Christian are headed south to San Diego. They have been living in Irvine, CA so they will still be Californians. We're excited to take a family vaca to visit them there!
Doug is graduating from the University of Arizona with his PhD in Planetary Science (he is too smart, seriously) in May and has taken a job with NASA in Texas. So he, Dana, and little Wes are moving to Houston! Pretty soon they're going to be hanging Texas flags EVERYWHERE!
And then Eli, Tan, and I are moving at the end of July! We still don't know where we're going for sure yet, but hopefully we'll know within the next month. Eli's waiting to hear from the University of Colorado at the end of this month. In the meantime, we are weighing the pros and cons of living in little Burlington, VT...... or metropolitan Norfolk, VA.
So different but both good places!

Happy Moving Everybody!!!

The big surgery day!

2010-03-10T10:11:00.001-08:00

Friday, March 5, 2010 - Tanner's hypospadias surgery (Here's a link for info about the surgery if you didn't see the blog prior to his surgery: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003000.htm)

Tanner woke up later than usual (he woke up screaming in the middle of the night and needed to lay with us for a while - I wonder if he sensed something was coming?) and ate a breakfast of jello and apple juice. He couldn't eat normal food but it didn't seem to bother the little guy! He even had time to play at home before we left.

We drove a mile up the street through the snow to Primary Children's Hospital. I had taken Tan there the day before to walk around so that he would be comfortable on the day of his surgery. He remembered these giant moving fish and loved watching them. The hospital was so welcoming for kids!

I love how he is looking at me through the glass in this picture!

We checked in at same-day surgery and waited while Tan played with all the toys. This was the last time he could play on a straddle toy for a while!

Getting his ID anklet on - he's a little concerned about what the girl is doing to him!

He walked into the hall and found a "parking lot" for these toy cars so of course he pushed one up and down the hall.

He started to get tired and hungry while we waited and started yelling at the simplest things.

Weight: 23.1 pounds

Height: 29 1.2 inches

Head circumference (I don't remember!)

Getting his blood pressure taken on his ankle

All dressed in his cute little hospital outfit! Doesn't he just look darling?! Checking his vitals

Proud of the munchkie! He didn't cry or fuss at all during his physical exam!

Never seen one of these toys!

The nurse gave him Versed through a nasal spray. This drug is the "date rape" drug (the same one I had when I delivered Tan). It made him relax and forget what was going on so leaving us to go back to surgery wasn't hard. This was the only time he cried because he didn't like the nasal spray!

Within 2 minutes MAX, he lost his scowly face and got a goofy look on his face. The videos below kind of capture it, but it was hilarious to watch! He was giggling at everything and was just so loopy. I'm so glad he got that medicine because it made the transition to surgery SO much easier!!! He would have freaked out when he left us if he hadn't gotten it!

After putting him in the wagon (that's how all the child patients at the hospital are wheeled around - so cute!) and walking down the hall with him for a minute, the anesthesiologist took him through the surgery doors and we were left to wait.

I cried a little right after she took him through the doors but knew that he was in good hands. I really liked the doctor and anesthesiologist! We waited and chatted in the waiting room and ate lunch in the cafeteria. After 2 hours, Dr. Wallis came to talk to us. The surgery went great! He also spent some time talking to Eli about medical school and tried to give some advice about how to choose a school - such a nice guy!

I headed back to the post-op room where Tan was just barely waking up. A nurse was holding him and all he was wearing was a diaper. He definitely looked pale and he had an IV in his foot, but other than that, he looked good! He heard me and groggily reached for me and was asleep within 2 seconds of me holding him. We had a nice little cuddle for a while which is more than I can say for the mom and her screaming child next door (poor mom - I bet she was stressed out about how to calm her son down after surgery).

We moved to the recovery room where Eli joined us. Tan was more awake now and wanting to walk around. It frustrated him that he couldn't move because of his foot IV and because he had to have an oxygen mask in his face. His oxygen levels didn't go up for a while so we had to secretly sneak the mask next to his face while he was looking at books.

When we were finally allowed to go, Tanner tried to walk around and was super tipsy. He was so confused about why he couldn't walk! So the nurse pushed him around on her chair. He kept staring into space like he was stoned and we just kept laughing!

All ready to go home! It's like drive thru surgery!

The surgery hasn't slowed Tan down that much. He still plays and walks around, and keeps his same sleeping and eating schedule. He even sleeps all night! Sometimes we forget that he just had surgery! But we need him to help him recover so we have been reading lots of books and watching lots of movies to make sure that he rests his body.

The worst parts of his recovery have been diaper changes (painful for Tan), random bladder spasms (ouch!), and giving him 3 different medicines multiple times a day. But he is healing and is just as happy as can be besides those 3 things. Overall, the whole surgery experience went really well and Tanner reacted superbly to everything!

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes! We are so grateful that everything went smoothly!

Here's a video of Tan in the recovery room:

Here's a video of him looking "stoned" in the chair

YESSSSSSSSSSS!

2010-03-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

I had two Napoleon Dynamite YESSSSSSSS moments today:

1. Tanner is w-e-a-n-e-d. That's right folks! After 14 1/2 months of nursing, I finally decided to wean the little crazy guy. I would have kept going but my milk supply started diminishing drastically recently and my metabolism slowed down to it's pre-pregnancy rate (which means that I actually have to work out now and start eating less. DARN! I loved the almost 2 years of eating lots and not exercising.) So since nursing wasn't making me thin anymore and Tan is so squirmy when he nurses, I just called it quits, cold-turkey style. The YESSSS moment is that he is actually drinking full bottles of whole milk - I don't even have to sneak some breastmilk or formula in there like I've had to do before. I am super glad that I got so many good months to bond with Tan while he nursed because I would have been really sad had my milk supply dried out sooner.
2. We went to Great Harvest today, which is the absolute BEST bread store in the universe. I LOVE IT!!!! (Yep Celeste, I still buy it! I remember our conversation during college about spending money on a gym membership instead of pricey bread. Nothing compares!)Not only do I like it because it brings back good memories of getting cinnamon sticks after YW basketball games and many other yummy things supplied by GH in our house growing up, but the bread really is just SOOOOO good. It is moist and thick and MMMMM, my mouth is watering just writing about it. We have always lived near a Great Harvest except in Payson and Baltimore and oh how I missed it! Want to know what my favorite part of GH is? The free samples when I buy a loaf. In Provo the samples were teeny tiny and made me wonder if it was even worth shopping there anymore. But in Salt Lake, they are H-U-G-E!!! It definitely makes it worth my time and money to get a sample of some bread of my choice. Mmmm mmmm good! Since a loaf is kinda pricey, I switch off getting loaves from there and the grocery store to validate spending that much on bread. If you haven't been there, go to there website and find out if there is a store near you. I'm tellin' ya, you won't be disappointed! Amazingly good bread = YESSSSSSSSSS!

Tomorrow is Tan's big surgery - Yikes! I know things will be just fine and I'm really not that worried, I'm just a little nervous for my little one year old to be put to sleep for 2 hours with anesthesia. Hopefully his body reacts okay to it. Tan's biggest problem will be the fact that he can't eat anything except apple juice and water from midnight - 9:00am. And then he can't eat anything until his surgery at 12:15pm. That means he will miss his morning bottle, a big breakfast, a snack, and lunch. We might have one grouchy kid on our hands! Wish us luck!!

To end this post, I have to share a way cute Tanner moment. Tanner has become very attached to Eli recently, enough that he asks for him ALL day and even waited by the door for him to come home yesterday (thankfully he showed up within a few minutes because Tan would have been so sad if he didn't come through that door soon). And he already is really attached to me (he had major separation anxiety back in December). Anyways, last night after Eli read him a story before bed, I took him and started giving him his bottle. Eli left and Tanner freaked out. So then Eli held him and tried to give him the bottle. I left and he freaked out. We tried to switch multiple times and he just didn't like when the other parent left the room. So with the lights off, Eli hugged Tan to his chest while sitting on the rocking chair and I knelt down in front of them and hugged them both. Tan put one arm around my shoulder and the other around Eli's. He put his head on Eli's chest and his face right up next to mine. We hugged and rocked like that for probably 10 minutes. It was so sweet and I definitely cried! It made me stop and think about how grateful I am for my little family and what a blessing my boys are in my life. I love them mucho mucho mucho!

These waffles are from V-day but you're feelin' the love, right?!

Under the Knife

2010-03-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

This little crazy guy:

Is going here on Friday morning:

For his hypospadias surgery:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003000.htm

I'm so glad it's an outpatient surgery so that I can take care of my little munchkin at home afterwards. I'm looking forward to getting this over with because we have known since the day he was born that he would need this surgery. I'm not looking forward to seeing him get put to sleep with the anesthesia and wake up afterwards wondering what happened to him. Poor little guy! He just won't understand what is going on and that will be hard for all of us.

When we get home, Tan gets to eat all of his favorite things (including chocolate!) and watch lots of Baby Einstein and Mormon Tabernacle Choir (his favorite for some reason) and do lots of cuddling with Eli and I on the couch. We'll keep you posted on how the surgery and recovery goes!

Life before Tanner . . .

2010-02-17T20:35:00.000-08:00

. . . looked a little bit like this: (except for the chipmunk voices - I can't figure out how to get our cell phone videos to upload onto blogger without making us sound like alvin, simon, and theodore. Sorry! But you get the gist!)

My mom and dad are SAINTS and they not only gave me the gift of a day of skiing for my birthday (which was at the end of January), but my mom spent one of her days in Utah last week watching the Tanman while Eli and I went skiing! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU mom and dad!!! We had an INCREDIBLY FUN day together and it helped remind us of our days before Tanner and our awesome friendship that has been dormant for a little while since the little man joined our fam. (We love Tan and are SO grateful that he is basically the center of our lives, but we miss US time. Does anybody else feel like this ever?)

Anywho, we had a total blast skiing at Brighton all day. The snow was powdery and falling lightly all day, and the slopes were uncrowded since we went on a Friday. And the chili baked potato lunch (that's actually only half of what we ate - we went all out and had a HUGE lunch since we never get to go skiing) was bueno bueno bueno! Here are some cell phone pics from our fabuloso day on the slopes:

This is what happens when you try to take kissing-the-cheek pictures while standing backwards on a slope:

I kept laughing...

...so Eli did this.

It's actually fun to reminisce back to childhood and put snow on our faces!

Love, love love!

"The Snowboarder face" - But what does a snowboarder face actually look like??? Who knows, we weren't snowboarding anyways!

Excited to Ski together ALL DAY LONG!!!!