Family photo shoot

So last Friday we decided to get some family portraits done. It was FREEZING so Mikey was not in his usual, smiley, cheesy, picture-taking mood. But I think we still managed to get some good ones. They will not all be available for another two weeks, but the photographer put a few teaser pictures up today on her blog. Look how cute! http://photosbysamantha.blogspot.com/
She was great and we really loved working with her. She was great with getting Mikey out of his freezing, grumpy mood. Anyway, you can be sure that I will put up the rest when we get them!

Teach them in their youth

So the other night at dinner, we were trying to get Mikey to calm down enough to say the prayer. He did his usual: kind of stop what he's doing and hold one forearm with the other hand, then as we're saying the prayer, take a bite or two of food while we finish. I often have my doubts about him always "getting" the prayer thing. But this time AFTER the prayer he got out of his chair. We immediately started in with, "Mikey, where are you going?" "Get back in your chair." "It's time to eat." But he continued around the table over to Luke and grabbed both his hands and tried to cross them. So then, while holding both of his hands, he bowed his head a little and started mumbling another little prayer. When we finally realized that he was trying to get Luke to also fold his arms and participate in the prayer, we quickly bowed our heads and joined in. Now every few prayers or so, Mikey goes over and tries to help Luke pray, too. Looks like Luke will have a big brother who looks after him and keeps him in line. :)

4 months old!

Luke was 4 months old last Monday and he is as cute as ever! (As you can see below)

He smiles at everything and it's so much fun. He now always wants to be sitting up and does not like being ignored. He is grabbing things and putting it all in his mouth and is so close to rolling over.

(I just thought it was so cute when he fell asleep with his arm up like that.) At the doctor on Wednesday he was 17.15 lbs 25.59 inches

Boys aren't cute

Conversation with Mikey in the car:

Me: Mikey, are you tired?

Mikey: No

Me: Mikey, are you cute?

Mikey: No! I'm a boy!

Me: Oh. What is Luke?

Mikey: Luke is cute!

Mikey does a lot of watching and learning and often fawns over Luke the way we do. It's so cute to watch. He certainly loves his little brother and Luke smiles more and more in response to his big brother. Unfortunately, we didn't get the best of what went on in this video because Luke was grinning ear to ear at first and we missed it. It's still pretty cute, though.

The State Fair

So we went to the state fair.

And here we are...

...with cows

Say cheese.
Okay seriously, though. We went to the state fair a few weeks ago and it was great. Mostly probably just because we were with our favorite firends and ate funnel cake (for the first time--I know, can you believe it?). Mikey loved a lot of the animals, though actually not the cows. He suddenly didn't want to get out of the stroller when we were around the cows, but we made him :)
Of course he and his girl were the cutest couple there. :)

3 months!

Okay, so he was actually 3 months old two weeks ago. I'm always a little behind. But these pictures were all around the 3 month mark. I can't believe how fast time is flying! Anyway, here is my little cutie...

This is, hands down, my favorite picture of him to date. Just look how cute!

This one's a little goofy, but man I love him!


Mama and Luke playing footsie.

Luke actually has Moss feet and Mikey has Bastian feet--completely different, but I love all their feets!

Just a cute little mug.

Everybody say "CHEESE"

All my happy boys :)

So I was trying to get dinner on. Mikey had just woken up and was grumpily sitting on dad's lap when Luke started fussing (and was probably hungry). So I plopped Luke on dad's lap and thought they could all cuddle until dinner was ready. Well, I guess you can see how everyone felt about that. (Okay, so dad was just trying to match the overall mood set by his boys.)

Oh, Mikey...

So I guess first I should explain that Mikey calls just about every toiletry product "lotion." This includes such things and mousse, hairspray, shampoo, liquid soap and of course actual lotion. He also thinks that it is almost always supposed to be put into your hair (one would assume from the mousse confusion). So anyway, one evening, after bath time, I was lying with Mikey in our bed watching a show before bedtime. I fell asleep. Suddenly I heard Lance come upstairs calling for Mikey and I jolted up. I could hear the panic in his voice as he could not find him. I immediately joined in the search and one of the first places I looked was into the pitch black bathroom behind the door. After turning on the light, this is what I saw:He was crouched in the dark which tells us that he was quite aware that he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. And yes, that is baby shampoo. He had been pumping it into his hands and rubbing it into his hair.
It was one of those don't-let-him-see-that-you-think-he's-funny moments because we were sure trying not to laugh. Though it was annoying to have to wash his already clean hair again. Funny kid.
I just thought this picture was funny. This particular evening he really didn't want to put a shirt on so we didn't make him. He was quite relaxed that way.

Yay for Lance!!

Congratulations, Lance! This weekend Lance completed an Olympic triathlon. Due to a series of unexpected delays and troubles (more on that later), mama, Mikey, and Luke arrived a little late so we did not get shots of him diving into the water or jumping on his bike. But we did get the bike-to-running moment.

Here's Lance rolling in on the bike.
Getting ready to start the final leg
And off he runs! (I had the camera zoomed in so I could get the previous shots and then suddenly he was running at me so this shot was a little close up)

And he crosses the finish lineAll done. Yay! It's all over! (Thank goodness)

As adorable as this picture is, it is here to actually show the burn on my face from unexpectedly being in the sun for 4 hours on Saturday, of which at least 1 1/2 was spent walking to and from the shuttle and standing in line waiting for the shuttle. The circumstances were not quite as we thought they would be for the spectators at the triathlon. What we thought to be an easy shuttle ride to a shady, grassy park area to wait (and quite kid friendly), actually was a shuttle ride to a spot on the road a mile away from the starting point. The trek to the starting point was partially along the race track which left me pushing a double stroller and a big bag of toys for Mikey to play with in grass, half on asphalt, half on gravel dropping off the side down into the lake. Luckily I (barely) made it without falling off the edge, but then we found it was not a grassy area where we all waited and watched, but gravel on the side of the road. No playing for Mikey and sitting in gravel to nurse Luke wasn't ideal. It was a little rough, but the boys were surprisingly good considering the circumstances and it was so fun to see daddy. (Next time I may leave the kids at home, though.) Way to go Lance! We're so proud of you!

Happy Anniversary to us!

That's right, folks. We've made it 4 whole years. It was actually a month ago now, but like I said earlier, I'm playing catch up right now.

So we took ourselves up to the beautiful Park City to celebrate. You may notice that we had our kids with us. And that is true. We stayed there for two nights so we had Mikey for one night and then took him to my sister's for the second night. (Thanks, Heath!) Luke, of course, stayed with us the whole time (since he's nursing and all.)

Mikey got to ride the Alpine slide with each of us and loved it both times.
Luke enjoyed just hanging out
Finally (almost) alone (you can see little Luke peeking out back there), we went out to celebrate Lance learning to love sushi, I mean our Anniversary by getting sushi. It was some of the best sushi we've had. (I worked on him for 3 1/2 years and now he loves it as much a I do!)

Being Clean...

Takes a lot of work with two boys, one of which is two (and yes, I know it will only get worse). But we try to have fun getting there. Luke pretty much smiles any time he gets attention. Bath time is no exception.

I know, he's getting huge!

Did you know that ham is spelled M-I-K-E-Y? At least when the camera is on.

(see comment above)

And I don't know what it is, but I just love this picture.

I Wanna Be Like Mike!

Okay, I know I am way behind with this. I have quite a few posts backed up over the past month so I'll be trying to catch up in the next few days.

First, I thought I'd get Luke's two month stuff up before he turns three months next week. (Man time flies!)

Well Luke is definitely trying to keep up with his big brother. As many of you may remember, Mikey was no little baby.
At two months Mikey weighed in at 15 lbs 8 oz
At two months Luke weighed in at 14 obs 6 oz

And they were both 23.2 inches long
I think the extra weight must have been in the head. Mikey's was 42 cm while Luke's was a mere 40 cm.

And both were 100% cute!

Guess what Mikey found...

Yep, my makeup. It was in the middle of the afternoon when Mikey was laying in our bed to watch a show. He usually doesn't fall asleep by himself for naptime, but it's been known to happen and it was nearing that time. So when it had been quiet for awhile we thought it just might have happened. Finally Lance went upstairs to check. He was not asleep.
Instead he had my makeup out and this was the beautiful makeup job he had done. I guess I could be worried that my son wants to play with makeup, but he kept referring to himself as Spiderman while we were looking in the mirror and trying to wipe it off.

A Blessed Day

Today we had Luke's baby blessing in our ward. It was a wonderful day and Lance did a wonderful job. We missed all family and friends who couldn't make it, but we sure enjoyed those who could. Unfortunately for me, I only had a few moments to enjoy the post-blessing festivities since I had to run back and teach Relief Society for the third hour.

Mikey is normally quite the man on camera, but in the few minutes we had to snap a family shot he was NOT in the mood. What a cute family anyway :)

Hey guess what! Those are MY boys :) What a lucky girl I am

Heather and Ben

Luke is thoroughly enjoying his party

All the men! (Sorry Herb, if you're going to pose like that, I'm going to post it :)

It's so hard to say good-bye

Guy Smiley

Luke has been flashing little smiles for a while, but he has just started to give us smiles for long stretches of time alowing us the chance to snap a few pics. And what a cute smile it is!

This one is actually the beginning of a smile since he opens his whole mouth to smile. I love it.

To the Zoo!

Well Mikey took his first visit to the wonderful Hogle Zoo with some of his cousins

Being the animal lover that he is, he appeared to thoroughly enjoy his visit. It was also an improvement from the last zoo visit at Busch Gardens in Florida in that he has learned to loudly say good-bye to each animal so that he can see more animals instead of crying after leaving each one, not understanding he'd see more in just a few minutes.
Though very recently Mikey has discover fear. He has suddenly started to deem things "scary."
Therefore, these pictures that we going to be of Kate and Mikey ended up with only Kate since Mikey didn't want to get too close to the giant gorilla or the giant elephant.

But hey, rocks? Now those aren't too scary