Top Twelve...

So, I haven't posted for a really long time, which for those of you that know me, is nothing new. But I mostly haven't posted anything because we've just been kind of busy, so I have arranged the top 12 (I couldn't pick just 10!) things that have happened since my last post. I hope this doesn't get too lengthy!! Here we go (in no particular order)...

1. We went to Disneyland the last week of April/first week of May. It was really last minute, but we had a fabulous time. Bella had a hard time with it at first - it took a while to figure out that you have to get OFF the ride and stand in line again. You don't get to just sit there and ride over and over. When she finally figured that out, she was pretty good. We spent 4 days at Disneyland, a day at SeaWorld, a day at the beach, and a couple of evenings in Old Town San Diego.

I took this picture and originally Bella was in it at their feet. I cropped her out to show the creepiness that these two were! They never even paid attention to the kids in the picture with them, this was their consistent pose. It was hilarious!

Evan was, as usual, very chill for the entire trip!

2. Ryan took his 3rd actuarial exam. Hi studies his tail off for these and finally took it on May 13th. Things are always tense a couple weeks before, so it's always nice to have them over with. Scores take 6-8 weeks, so we're still waiting to find out how it went. Should be soon though. So, onto the next one, I guess!

3. Ryan's sister, Jenna, got married on May 22 to Alan Colver. We had a fun time with their wedding, and with my brother's wedding just around the corner, it was a crazy couple of weeks. Both had planned to have their receptions in the Jubber's backyard, so we spent hours and hours and hours cleaning it up and making it look acceptable. And then the weather was bad for both of them, so no weddings outside! They both turned out really great anyway. I didn't take very many pictures (shame on me!) but here's a couple.

My mom made their wedding cake. Props to her cause it looked awesome!

4. My brother, Ryan, got married on May 28th to Sarah. I was a lot more involved in the planning of this one, so I made sure I got pictures of all the decorations!

The candy bar

The centerpieces

The cake... again, props to my mom! One day she's going to pass this skill along to me.

Terra caught the bouquet, so she and Sarah posed together!

Gettin' a little loopy late that night while cleaning up...

5. Evan learned to sit up and crawl. Yay! Now he's all over the place, and don't we just love that! Oh, and I'm learning just how dirty my floors are! He's such a cute little bugger though and I love watching babies learn how to do new things. It never ceases to amaze me.

He even practices in his sleep!

He also accomplished all this right on schedule with anemia. Bella had it as well, and it really stunted her progress. Evan didn't seem to even notice. When we went in to his 6 month appt., the doctor tested him just to be sure since Bella was anemic, and lo and behold, poor Evan was low. I was surprised because he had been doing such a good job with the crawling and growing teeth and stuff. But we started him on some iron so he should be doing even more soon.

6. I have a newfound love for Call of Duty.

I know, I know, that's not usually what girls do. But they needed a fourth player one night, so I started playing and I found it to be kind of fun. I think about it a lot now. :) I need to get the Call of Duty out!

7. Bella has finally decided that she wants to learn. I know, this doesn't sound like much, but Bella has never really liked learning stuff. Oh, except for memorizing half the lines and all the songs from her favorite Disney flicks! But she now says most of the ABC song, counts to ten, and knows most of her colors. It may be an accomplishment late in coming, but I've come to learn that I have to celebrate whatever she decides to do because it doesn't come around very often!

8. Father's Day came and went again. Since we're a little bit broke, we didn't do much, but I got Ryan a few of his favorite treats and he didn't have to share them at all!! My mom and all my siblings pitched in to get my dad the Spanish Rosetta Stone. He's been wanting it forever so that was really fun. We went down to the British Import store and got Ryan's dad some of his favorite treats from there. It was a fun day.

9. I had another birthday! And I must say, it was one of the better birthdays. Which isn't saying much. It's just that Ryan has worked nights since we got married, and it's hard for him to get time off. So I usually spend the eve of my birthday by myself, putting kids to bed and stuff. Last year, I even made my own cake! This year, Ryan brought me some beautiful flowers (a day early just to make it a surprise!). Then he made me a cake all by himself. I couldn't have been more proud. He went shoe shopping to get me shoes for my present. Then we went and saw Toy Story 3 with my family.

The guys at work are sent home by seniority when it gets slow, and Ryan is second in line for that. So, when they went to send someone home, the guy who usually gets to go first let Ryan go because Ryan had told him it was my birthday. So he got to come home early and was home by 7:30. So we spent the evening together and just sort of hung out. I know these things don't sound like much, but I am usually the queen of crappy birthdays! I know that sounds like I'm whining, but it's true! Plus, since things have been kind of rough for us lately, it was really sweet for Ryan to go so far out of his way to make it a good day.

10. Bella started potty training!

So, this really is exciting! I put a picture of Tinker Bell because her panties are all Tinker Bell. It didn't feel quite appropriate to take a picture of her in her panties and post it all over the internet (!!), so this will do! She was getting into this pattern that every time her diaper was wet, she wanted a diaper change. She would follow me around the house telling me so until I did it! Well, this got annoying, so about a week and a half ago, I asked her if she'd like to just wear panties and not have to be wet anymore. She said yes, so I put some on her. We've tried days with panties before and it hasn't gone so well, so we've gone back to diapers. I figured this would be the same sort of thing but I thought I'd go for it anyway. And she's done so awesome! She's had a couple of accidents, which is to be expected, but overall, I think she's totally ready. And hooray for us, only one kid in diapers right now! Perhaps it's time to have another...

11. My projects

This is the quilt I made for my cousin for her new little baby girl. I made another one for a girl in my ward with exactly the same pattern, just different fabrics. I've always really enjoyed making quilts, and I'm currently working on expanding my sewing abilities. I'm working on another quilt for Evan, some bumper pads for his crib, a skirt, and a new dress. We'll see how they turn out! If they are acceptable, they'll probably show up on another post.

12. I joined Weight Watchers! I probably shouldn't share this with the world, but I'm kind of excited about it. Ryan's mom has been doing it for like 3 years and it's really worked for her, so that was kind of my birthday present from her. It's been all right so far. I gotta say, it's amazing how much I was overeating!! I LOVE FOOD. Yikes, this is gonna be so hard, but I'm really determined. I don't have a ton of weight to lose, but I do have some that I would love to get rid of! I'm already figuring out a lot about my bad food choices! I've never had a problem with the working out end. I think I do that more than enough. So it was always a mystery why I couldn't lose the weight. Now I know. Food is an amazing part of it! So, hopefully over my next few blog posts, I'll be able to report some good numbers!

Well, that's all. If you've stuck around for all this, congratulations. And as I always say, hopefully I'll get better at being consistent with this!

Melts My Heart...

This is what I found when I went to get Evan up this morning...

Ryan and I always talked about having 5 kids... or more if we felt like it, but at least 5. After being pregnant twice, I have often wondered if I can do it again 3 (or more) times. Things like this assure me that I can because they are just so dang worth it.

Oh Gosh! Are you kidding me?

This is what I hear from my two-year-old at least 10 times a day now. Can we tell what mommy says when something goes wrong?? And, when she does something that we should look at, she says "look at that". It's not so much what she's saying, but how she says it. Cracks us up every time!

So my poor bebe Evan got RSV a couple weeks ago. He started couhging and stuff on Thursday, and then Friday afternoon, he had a fever of 99.8. I called the doctor's office because I wasn't sure what was too high for a baby. The nurse said we should probably come in because RSV had been going around and if he had it, we would probably end up in the ER over the weekend. Lo and behold, he did have it. To avoid the ER, the doctor put him on oxygen. So Friday night, IHC homecare delivered oxygen. Evan was not happy about the tubes up his nose!

Luckily, he started to improve pretty quickly. the doctor had suggested a few things to keep him from getting an ear infection from all the congestion, but when we went back to the doctor on Monday, he had one anyway. I was pretty surprised because he had been really happy and hardly cranky at all. So, we started a round of antibiotics, to top everything off. This is what my kitchen counter looked like for a week and a half...We took him off the oxygen on Tuesday, and he has been just fine since. There was a possibility of coughing and weezing for up to 2-3 weeks, but after about a week, he was back to perfect. Through all of the trials Ryan and I have been experiencing, we've always been so grateful for our good health, and that of the kids. When this happened, it threw me for a bit of a loop, but I am so grateful that he got over it quickly and is back to being my happy, smiley baby. We've never had any sort of illness with Bella. This was our first ear infection! I have never had to take Bella to the doctor aside from her well-baby check-ups. So, with one sickness under his belt, Evan is officially my sickly child!!

On the same day that I took Evan into the doctor, Feb. 28th, I got a call from my best friend growing up, Kate, that they were going to be taking her dad off life support later that day. So with my baby sick and running a fever, I couldn't hold in the tears anymore. I cried for the man who was my second father throughout my entire childhood. The Lyngle's were my neighbors for almost 20 years of my life. Earlier that week, Steve had an aeortal (sp?) tear and then suffered a massive stroke. With no response to their tests or anything, they decided that it was time for him to go. My sister and I actually happened to be at the hospital visiting when he passed away. My favorite memory of Steve was one day when he came over to our house with a glass of vodka in one hand and the Book of Mormon in the other and was teaching us about "our religion". Sacreligious, yes! Very funny, yes! But seriously, I loved Steve and I have so many memories of him and their family throughout so much of my life. He will be so missed and remembered very fondly.

Needless to say, the last couple weeks have been kind of tough and a little emotionally draining. But we've kind of gotten back on track and we're still having fun! This is Evan, being pretty in pink...

Oh he's gonna hate that picture in about 15 years! And Ryan pretending like he's still sleeping with Evan squirming around on his back...

Not much to tell...

I have continually been accused of being a bad blogger. It's probably true. When the said accuser was accusing, I made the defense that I have nothing to blog about! Hehe! But seriously, nothing changes much for us. But to avoid being labled, I will put up a quick post.

Ryan continues to look for a job. I think this has by far become the lowest point in both of our lives. He's had so many come so close and then he doesn't get them. It's like the world is trying to play a very unfunny prank on us! So we continue to toil. I read an article in the Ensign this month about continuing to row. The family was in a similar position, probably worse actually, and she talked about how they just continued to plow through. So that is what we are doing. We've enlisted a lot of people's help, we pray, we fast, we pray some more, we think good thoughts really hard.

But there are so many things we're still grateful for and that make us happy. Like these two...

And as I mentioned, we've enlisted a lot of people's help. We are so grateful for these people who have invested a lot of time for Ryan with nothing in return. It's been hard because I'm the kind of person that likes to do things for people that help me, but I can't afford to, so we just say thank you... a lot.

We have wonderful families, we love each other, we love our kids, and what more could we ask for, right? Okay, so being able to afford feeding those kids would be nice, but I guess we'll try not to be so picky!

Oh, and good news. We have lots of weddings coming up that we're really excited about. Ryan's brother and his sister both got engaged in the last month. And my brother is also engaged. One is set for May 22, one for May 28, and the other is still deciding on a date.

I got Evan his own "piggy". It's a frog, and he already loves it. When I put him in bed, I just set it next to him, and he usually ends up like this...

But asleep. Or he just has his faced turned into him, all snuggled up to him. It's so cute! I love that Bella has had piggy to be her best friend. He is truly priceless, so I decided that each of my kids would get their own best friend!

Bella got a purse for Christmas from grandma, and she's usually not allowed to take toys to bed with her, but somehow this one slipped through one day...

Bella has two new favorite activities lately... swimming and ice skating. Well, the latter is actually more like putting on ice skates and then having daddy carry her around the rink. She lets him put her down every once in a while to pull her along. But I think they both have tons of fun doing it!

And finally, my sister-in-law gave us this little exersaucer for Evan, and it's been a big hit thus far. I put him in it one morning while I got ready, and this is what I came back to. Such a cute little guy...

Anyway, that's about it. I will try to be more diligent and come up with things in my somewhat uneventful life to make more eventful for those who think I'm not doing such a good job :)

Where did she get that??

So, I just have to share a couple of funny stories from Bella because they made me laugh so hard, and I just love what comes out of little toddler's mouths. The other night, I had a presentation to do online for my class, so I let Bella pick a movie and put it on for her in my bedroom to keep her out of my hair. She picked Sleeping Beauty. When I was done with my presentation, I went back to watch the rest of it with her. It was at the end, when Prince Phillip is trying to get to Sleeping Beauty to wake her up and the evil lady is putting all those obstacles in his way. Well, she zaps a bunch of thorn bushes around the castle so he can't get to it. Right as they started growing all over and Prince Phillip starts cutting through them, Bella says "Man, are you kidding me?". I thought I was going to die! Where did she get that from?

Then just today, I was in the kitchen trying to get Bella to come for dinner. I had told her to come sit at the table several times, but she just kept ignoring me. Finally, I stomped my foot and said "Bella, get over here right now". She finally figured out that I was serious, so she started walking toward the kitchen. As she was coming, she sort of laughed and said "you stinker". Can you guess what I call her when she's being difficult?? She's making it so hard to discipline lately, copying everything I say. It just makes me laugh, and that is not effective discipline! I sometimes count to 3 also, to make her do what I want. Lately, as soon as I say one, she says "two, three"! What am I supposed to do with that?? Luckily, she usually does what I want as she's saying two, three.

Anyway, we also got pictures of the two today. They were both kind of difficult, but we finally managed to get some decent ones.

Sorry, but it's true...

I have the stinkin' cutest kids in the world! You all can try to compete, but you can't! Lately, my amazing little family is all that keeps me going. I'm so grateful for my husband who puts up with me and loves me anyway. I am so grateful to Bella who has been our saving grace these last few months. She is absolutely hilarious like all the time. And her hair, oh that hair! Just looking at her when her hair isn't done makes us chuckle! And Evan gets cuter by the second. He's right on the verge of smiling and starting to talk, and I just love it when they start doing that. They actually start to resemble a real human being!! Anyway, I was just looking at these pictures and couldn't help but love my two little babies.