so many things!

a couple weeks ago we blessed sara which meant we had lots of visitors!  james' dad's family as well as the bryan and annie clan came to town and we had such a fun weekend!

we all met at one of the church historical sites - the john johnson farm - and then we had lunch and played around in a nearby town called chagrin falls.  the kids loved playing together and of course i loved taking pictures!

scott was a little moody in this pic because i had just gotten after him for getting too close to the river.  he was still processing the lecture i gave him on how he could die if he fell into the water.  i love how smiley audrey was despite it all.

scott and caleb LOVED getting pushed around in the stroller.  i could complain about having had to push them all over the place but james had to carry sara all day in her car seat so he wins. 

here are my boys in the john johnson farm. this was a very cool room where the prophet joseph smith had many of the revelations that are in the docterine and covenants. it was a really neat experience.

and of course the group picture outside...

i really wish i had some better pictures of sara's blessing day.  unfortunately it was cold and really windy and sara was having an extremely rough day.  she was crying so much that i never even got a picture of her in her blessing dress!  she wore the same dress i wore when i was blessed so it was really special. i've been meaning to put her back in it for some pictures but that's going to have to happen later.  hopefully before she outgrows it!

well its finally spring in cleveland which also means its BASEBALL season!  i signed scott up for a tee ball league and even though i pulled him out because they ended up combining the 5-6 year olds with 3-4 year olds and scott was WAY out of his league... i still got some great shots of his one day on the team.

here scott is with his team and his coach.  (the first day was inside because of the rain.)

and here is scott .5 seconds later when his attention span came to an end.

i LOVE this picture of scott getting ready to bat.  he was such a little stud.

and here he is manning second base.  i kept telling him to stand up but apparently he was tired.

and here's our little sister sara.  what a big girl she is turning out to be!

i can't believe how much she has grown lately!  she is starting to feel like a real little girl instead of just a female blob.

this picture was taken on mother's day.  i feel like the luckiest mother in the world!

this is sara post-hair cut.  i don't have time in my day to figure out my hair and sara's hair so hers had to come off.  she does look a little boy-ish but we just throw a bow in there and its all good.

this was taken tonight while james played a computer game with the kids for FHE.   its still weird to refer to "the kids" and i can't believe we have two!

not to jinx us or anything but sara has slept through the night for the past THREE nights!!!  i can't even begin to express my excitement for this huge milestone! not to mention the fact that sara is out of our room and sharing a room with scott.  they are so cute in there together.

and that's not all... without being too much of a bragging parent i have to say that this weekend scott learned to open the car door by himself, get in and BUCKLE UP HIS CAR SEAT!!!  i LOVE it!  i mean, i know that i could use the extra exercise running around to both sides of the car to get the kids in but it is still so nice to not have to!

easter eggs and baby bunnies

for a kid who didn't know what an easter egg hunt was a week ago... scott is now an eXpErT at the sport!  between church hunts, neighborhood hunts and mommy hiding eggs all over the house, scott has found more eggs than a kid could ask for. 
first we had the church easter egg hunt.  we were going to have it at a park but it was rainy so we had it inside the church gym. 

still a screaming success!  as you can see, scott found a LOT of eggs!  (ok- he didn't really have to "find" them.  they were just scattered across the floor.  but still.)

then we had the very cool easter treat of having anne, brody and macie jones come up to play.  and of course we had to have our annual egg hunt with brodes.  it was still raining so they searched for eggs in scott's room.

he was so excited that you would have thought this was scott's first easter egg hunt.

but they didn't hunt very long.  they sat down next to the first eggs they saw and started devouring the candy.

then we gave brody his easter present (a giant chocolate bunny).

i think the high dosage of sugar made the boys go a little crazy and they both found themselves in time out - at the same time - in the same place.  i don't think they learned their lesson.

here's my scott with anne's macie.  i keep telling scott he's too young to flirt but he just can't help himself.

i love these two.

i love these 4 even more.

the next day was the westlake easter egg hunt at crocker park.  it was chaotic! 

and not quite as fruitful as the other hunts but scott was extremely proud of his two eggs.

here we are on easter sunday.  sara is wearing a cute dress that the kearns gave us (thanks kearns!) and fancy sparkly shoes that grandy gave us.  (thanks grandy!)   and the new bow that anne got us to help tame sara's wild hair (thanks anne!) scott and i have regular old clothes on but somehow they are special on easter sunday.

for easter dinner we had our friends derrick, crystal and linda over.  scott loves these guys.

and here's my little easter bunny.

i took this picture on the one of the sunny days we've had recently.  they are few and far between these days so when the sun is shining we run outside and soak in the rays!

sara? teeth? what?!

i realize that i put pictures up of scott and me going to the zoo every few months or so but its always so much fun and this time was sara's first time!  i really do love going to the zoo in the winter.  less people, less heat, and of course i get to see scott in his funny little hat.

scott was mesmerized by the gorillas and as you can tell sara was really into them too.

i can't get enough of this kid.

somehow we have been to the Cleveland zoo a handful of times in the past year and have never been to the Australian Adventure section.  it was so fun to discover this new spot, especially the enormous tree house!

scott was just a little excited.

posing in front of the lions. 

and this is scott and me in the movie theater (sara was sleeping somewhere below us).  i took the kids to go see the new Easter movie HOP. since both of them are free and it was a matinee it wasn't too expensive and it was fun to do something a little different.

the past couple weeks have been difficult for our little sara girl.  we weren't sure what was wrong with her so we took her to the doctor where she received a clean bill of health.  later that night, however, we realized that sara has TEETH poking through!  what???  she's not even 2 months old yet!  but apparently it IS possible.  she has her two "vampire" teeth on top poking through (yikes).  but james has been such a good dad to help sooth and comfort her during her rough time.  and i'd be lying to say that i'm not just a tiny bit jealous of how much sara loves her daddy.

a few days ago we went with our friends sarah and nick jones (and fam) to the Jump Yard.  we knew that scott would love running around and jumping on all the bouncy houses but we had no idea how much mommy (me) would love it too. 

here's scott and me inside one of the bounce mazes.  i had such a blast with this little scott man.  i felt like a kid again and let me tell you... it feels AMAZING to be able to actually move like this again!

mitchell and scott.  so hard to get them to sit still and look at the camera.

the other day when i was giving sara a bath scott pulled his chair up and started to help.  i keep waiting for him to get tired of her or stop being so cute with her but it hasn't happened yet.  (i'm keeing my fingers crossed.)

and here is the latest photo shoot (these were taken today which makes sara a day short of 8 weeks old.)

i was so excited because i FINALLY dressed her in an outfit that wasn't primarily pink! and i love even more how the blue in her shirt matches the blue in her eyes.

sara is smiling more and more every day but my favorite part about this picture is that sara is smiling at scott who was jumping on my back like a monkey while i was taking this picture.

at the end of the photo shoot i gave scott a wipe for a buger he found in his nose.  after wiping his hands off he took the wipe (and many more) and proceeded to clean off all of his toys, his table, the floor, the wall and anything else he could find.  when he was all done he threw the wipes in the trash and announced, "all done cleaning!"  (i'm glad someone will clean our house!)

scott & sara

this is a collage of our most recent photo shoots in no particular order.
this was last week sometime so sara is 5 and something weeks old.

this one was taken today so again... she's 5 and something weeks old.

this is scott with his buddy thomas waiting for the mall train to arrive.

scott in front of the very awesome (and not at all cheap) mall train.

scott unloading the utensil tray (never too young to learn how too work!)

i absolutely love this footage of scott and sara.  he is seriously such a good big brother.  he's so protective of her and always trying to help her be happy.   

sara was having some "tummy time" when i looked down and saw that scott had decided to share his toy plane with her.

yes, this was staged but he does it all the time. he loves giving his sara kisses especially eskimo kisses.

i love this shot. i was taking pictures of sara when scott snuck in with this determined glare.  i'm not sure if he was being protective of her or if he was mad that i wasn't taking pictures of him.

this was not staged. i looked over and saw scott carressing sara's face. luckily i had my camera in hand and ready to shoot.

this picture didn't turn out so well but i love that scott is holding sara's hand.

i was trying so hard to get scott to look at the camera but he was much too pre occupied with sara's hair.

again, not a great photo but i love that sara is watching scott with so much amusement.  she loves watching him and honestly gets cranky when scott leaves the room.

at least they're both looking at the camera...













p.s.  i am becoming increasingly aware of the fact that sara wears a LOT of pink.