head hung in shame

Its been 2 months since my last post. I am a slacker. Now I'll try to play catch up. I'm gonna sort our family's happings by person.



NICK
Nick's hasn't been working much lately. He's waiting for the ground to defrost in New Mexico, so he's been home with me:) Its been fun. He's finished his entire honeydo list plus a lot more. With traveling around, we've let repairs pile up and he's finally had the time to work on them. He also build me a chicken coop. Our chicks will be big enough for it next week. I'm glad that when I say "Hey Nick I want a chicken coop." he doesn't think I'm crazy, he just builds what I want and wishes me luck. Nick turned 29 this last month.

the coop

DESTINY

After spending 7 months between trashy rentals, motels, and rvs I'm really glad to be home. Its fun seeing new places, but relaxing being home. When we moved from Bagdad, we didn't unpack anything so I spent a lot of time organizing our house. It was some serious spring cleaning. After rearranging the entire house, I had a crazy idea to paint the house. So I did our kitchen, family room, dining room, and living room. I'm done painting for a least a month:) I love to bake and didn't really do any since June so I've baked at any reason available. birthdays, presidents day, az statehood day. I also had birthday this month. The big 26 and yes I know I'm still young. In our family we get to pick out what we want for dinner on your b-day. Every year is the same. Nick wants steaks, Colter wants pizza, and I want Hawaiian haystacks. Nick hates haystacks so it's the only time we have them.

Kitchen... doesn't everyone keep bikes in their kitchen Living room aka home teacher room except we've never had home teacher over

Family room, of course Dora's on

COLTER

Is losing his toddlernes and gaining plain boyness. Loves to follow around daddy with his own tools. Questions everything I tell him. His prayers are great. They're not short, but hard to keep a straight face through. He usually asks his toys to be safe, that we can play mario, he can do his homework (he doesn't have any), thank you that we can bless the food, he and Brooklyn can play trucks, and it keeps going. Sometimes when Brooklyn and Colter are playing, Colter will help Brooklyn pray. Its too cute. He loves his CTR ring and wears it all the time. He's got a great imagination and is always finding something new to do. I can't believe that next year he'll be in school.

He made a pool out of this tub for him and Brooklyn to go swimming in

Pretending to be Brooklyn's baby

mugshot

BROOKLYN
Our monkey. She climbs and gets into everything. She turned 2 in Feb. and does have to many terrible 2 moments. She's such a special part of our family. She loves to be loved. She's always full of hugs and kisses. She looks up to Colter and will do anything he asks her to do. She loves chocolate, music, clothes, baby dolls and Dora. She has to have a doll in bed with her at night. When she's really upset, Dora will cure it.

Brooklyn with her birthday cake

Playing with one of her many babies

helping me bake. Taste testing is the most important job

I don't have anything to wear!

Brooklyn is the definition of a girl. Dramatic?Yes. Loves Dolls?Yes. Likes shoe shopping?Yes. Never satisfied with what she's wearing?YES! So here's a day with Brooklyn's clothes changing. The pictures start after her pjs in the morning.

Outfit #1 says I'm a Princess.

#2 No shoes, no pants no problem

#3 pink and purple are my colors


10 mins later #4 actually these pants work better

#5 who says you can't wear pjs at 2pm

#6 Her favorite. a swimming suit a size too small

#7 the combo of a dress & shorts are cute and practical

#8 Warm pjs are good for cuddling with Dad

#9 on second thought these pjs have a monkey on them

No wonder laundry is never ending.

Saying farwell to the mullet

Cutting Colter's hair has always been an easy thing. Get out the clippers and buzz away. It's hard to really mess up boys hair. Maybe that's why I've been putting off cutting Brooklyn's hair and letting her mullet keep getting longer. One bad clip and she'd have a GI Jane cut. So I finally got sick of her hair in her eyes and decided it was time. She did pretty good and it turned out ok. I still don't know what's in style for toddlers. Bangs, no bangs, long, short....

Before the cut

the back, it was long
afterwards, wet and curly

dry and and straight as it gets, man it looks so blond

She looks happy to see, runny nose cuts and all

Yabba-Dabba-Doo!

We had a great Halloween! It was kinda different where it was cold outside. Brooklyn didn't learn to say "trick 0r treat" but she learned the most valuable lesson, hold your bag up and people give you candy.
With that being said, I'll tell you about my fight with Spiderman. Now I'm not saying I don't like him. I mean anyone who can wear spandex and live a double life gets props from me. And this isn't a physical or mental fight(I would win both), its a creativity fight. A fight for Halloween. Growing up, I remember my mom making my costumes and when I was old enough me thinking of something (I was once Mary Poppins and made a darn good one). This year trick-0r-treating, we probably saw 12,492 Spidermans of course that's just a rough estimate. There was a group of 4 boys in front of us all as you guessed it Spiderman. Unfortunately Halloween has become this holiday of just going to Walmart and buying whats there, not being creative. I've seen many creative costumes, not all homemade. Some were soap, jelly beans, cactus, a dead golf man...there's so many. So here's how I fought the pesky spider this year.

Dressed for the cold weather

Pebbles and Bam-Bam

Brooklyn loving her fur bag

Colter's cheesy smile

Ok can we get candy now

What to do in Farmington

I've been slacking on my blog. We've done some pretty cool things here in Farmington and I'm gonna cram them all in one post. So here's what we've done and had fun doing them.
The air show: This is more of Nick's thing, but it was still fun. The best part was a girl went out on the wings of the pane while in the air and did stunts.
Four Corners: Cold and windy. Other than that it was cool to say you're standing in four states at once. And of course there was awesome fry bread.
The Great Pumpkin Patch: This was my favorite! It was a train ride to a pumpkin patch. The train went about 5 miles out of town and came to a farm with a free carnival for the kids where they met some of the Peanuts gang. Brooklyn was fascinated with Lucy and would follow her around. Maybe she thought she was a big baby doll. Colter loved the tractor ride. They played some games, went through a maze and got to pick out a pumpkin to take home with them.
Indian ruins: We went about 1 1/2 hours to some ruins that were built up in the side of the mountains. They were pretty cool. It was a nice day and we liked walking around. We wanted to go to some that were harder to get to, but having Brooklyn scale down 40 feet of ladders didn't sound good. Next time.
Playing in the snow: Last week it snowed about 6 inches. I think its the first time our kids have been in enough snow to play. I layered Brooklyn up so much that if she fell, she couldn't get back up. We're excited to have a winter with snow and get to go sledding and all that stuff that doesn't really exist in southern AZ.
Monster Trucks:We went to see monster trucks. Colter loved it and I think I'm finally regaining my hearing from it:)

Here's some pictures