Keeping Up With the Joneses

Our brand new babysitter just quit because of health problems, so once again (this happens way too often), I am looking for a babysitter for Mason and Myles on Mondays and Wednesdays. So if anyone reading this has any Utah connections to wonderful , kind, attentive potential babysitters who will come to our house (and even bring their own child), please refer them to me for an interview.

Mason has been such a goofball. On Monday for "preschool" we made a chore chart for him. There are 4 things he needs to do everyday: brush his teeth, get dressed, pick up 3 toys, and do preschool. When he does them he gets to put a sticker next to the picture of him doing the chore. For the first few days he was so excited, but somewhere along the way he picked up from someone that chores are, well, a chore. So today he was complaining and saying "oh my gosh, I have so many chores to do, I work so hard". It was so funny. He is really loving the preschool we are doing in the mornings while Myles is sleeping. He can copy the letters in his name and loved writing them. This morning we had a new babysitter who will be with us for the semester. It is Jessica Wells, who is Scott's wife Annie's brother Nathan's wife (if you followed that, I'm impressed). Anyway, she came this morning and I was telling her about our rules and where things are, etc. And Ma...

While I was in Canada we had new kitchen floors put in. Anyone who saw our old linoleum knows why. It always looked dirty no matter how much I cleaned it, had dents and burns in it from before we moved in, and looked absolutely awful. I've wanted new floors for at least a few years and we finally decided to do it because (1) it may help the house sell better and (2) even if it doesn't, I'll be happier until it does sell. A few people have asked for pictures, so here you go!

We've had a fun week. First Mason and I went to St. George with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to see Les Miserables at the a beautiful outdoor ampitheatre and do some shopping. On Thursday I headed up to Canada with the two kids and my cousin Christina to spend another week in Waterton. Today we took a beautiful boat ride at dusk and saw a bear right on the shore. The picture above is of the Prince of Wales Hotel, a Waterton landmark, and as we were heading towards it Mason asked innocently "is that where you and daddy go to the temple?" The kids' very favorite thing about this trip has probably been picking and eating millions of saskatoon berries. The first time I gave Mason a cup to pick some for a cake. But none of them made it into the cup and he was just shoveling them into his mouth. Then Myles got ahold of a bag of berries and devoured them. Since then their Grandpa Goates has been taking them to pick berries a few times a day (which makes for disgusting...

We got pictures taken on Mason, Myles, and Elaine a few weeks ago and they turned out great! My neighbor Michele Reyes did them and did an awesome job!

We have a problem here. My 3-year-old eats like a 1-year-old and my 1-year-old eats like a 3-year-old. Here is sweet little Myles who wull only eat with a fork even if it means one macaroni at a time. . . And here is sweet little Mason who will hold a fork but use his hands to shovel in the food.

I've been trying to do "preschool" with Mason in the mornings while Myles is sleeping. So far we've done a lot of fun things and this morning I was trying to think of something new. He pretty much has his letters down, so I decided to work on numbers. We made sugar cookies in the shapes of numbers and he loved it. When it was time to ice the cookies, a bunch of the neighborhood kids were playing outside and I asked Mason if he wanted to play with his friends or ice cookies and he said "maybe my friends would like to help me decorate my cookies". So he went out and invited everyone over and here we are. . .an impromptu cookie decorating party. We had a fun time and some of the kids stayed for the rest of the morning to play. Where do you think the icing went? :)

With Scott and Annie staying with us this summer, we have had a lot of different sleeping arrangements. At first Elaine couldn't sleep in a pack-and-play and so she would sleep in the crib, Annie and Scott on the floor in that room, and Mason and Myles in the other room. Then we got a queen bed for the room without the crib and eventually Elaine learned to sleep in a pack-and-play with her parents. Mason has been sleeping pretty much wherever we put him (queen size bed, floor in Myles' room, floor in playroom, couch downstairs, floor in parents' room, parents' bed) and finally after a few nights of him always ending up in bed with us we were struggling for another solution that would have him comfortable (his Thomas air mattress broke last week) and close enough not to wake up the whole house when he gets nightmares and this is what we came up with. . . That's right, he's sleeping in our bathtub. Nice and close, very comfortable thanks to the couch cushions, an...

Annie and Scott went to Las Vegas this weekend for a well-deserved vacation and left Elaine with us. Annie has been pretty worried about leaving since Elaine is teething, having digestive issues, and is generally a mommy's girl. But they reluctantly left on Friday morning (after leaving us 3 pages of instructions on the proper care and feeding of a princess) and after crying for about 10 minutes Elaine has been perfectly happy since. So enjoy your trip guys!

Myles has been saying and doing the cutest things lately. He is turning out to be a real trouble-maker. This afternoon we were all playing downstairs and Mason ran upstairs to go potty. Marshall and I didn't notice Myles had followed him until all of a sudden Mason yells "aughhh!!!!! Myles stole my underwear" and Myles came running down the stairs as fast as he could laughing hysterically carrying Mason's Thomas underwear. He sat down in the corner and tried putting it on over his shorts (finally getting a little help from his daddy) and then when Mason came downstairs sans underwear, Myles just laughed and ran away from him. Marshall and I thought it was the funniest thing ever. He is growing so fast and talks a lot. Mason I can understand everything he says perfectly, but for some reason people other than his mother and brother don't get it. Yesterday he opened the pantry doors, pulled out a brownie mix, did the sign for eat and said "eat. . .this. . .plea...