Family fun

I don't consider our family to be one of those extremely active and super exciting families- we don't have tons of posts about all the activities we do.... but we aren't always boring either, I promise. So, here is a smattering of activities from our last week or so.

Mara had a play date with her friend Addie who is almost three, and the living room became the toy room, at least for an hour or two.

Ian likes to spend time with his little girl when he gets home from school, and Mara especially likes it when he shares his computer. I can't remember if they were looking at pictures or playing a game, but it looks the same, either way.

We had a giant piece of paper, so we drew a picture together. I drew the tree and the sun, so Ian drew a jet blowing up the sun. Mara blew up his jet, so Ian drew his pilot parachuting to safety.

It was fun family time for a yucky wet Saturday, that's for sure.

Last night Ian made teriyaki chicken for dinner (amazingly delicious) and then, he tried to eat mine! Of course, I protected it from his evil fork, but I had no protection for my own hand...so once the chicken was safely in my belly, I had to wash my hand.

And tonight, we decided to make BBQ chicken calzones, so we were in the kitchen cooking together. Mara wanted to help, so I let her help stir, and pat out the dough. She was a great little helper, until she started eating it....

then she was just helping herself :)

Everybody's doin' it...

So I guess I'll just be like all the cool kids and do an update of my own :)

(The scratch on her nose is still red, a month later! I wonder how long it will take to go away...)

Life is great, here in the brick house. Mara's growing and changing every day, I'm growing (in the belly region) and enjoying life as it happens, and Ian's constantly studying and SO ready to be done with academics.

A few weeks ago Ian took a break from school work to make a toy for Mara from a cool light up yo-yo.

Mara just loves it.

Cause and effect is so fascinating to a child of nearly 18 months!

Ian was using his noise-cancelling headphones to listen to his accounting "lesson" on the computer but Mara kept bugging him.

So he handed them over to her along with the iPod.

She's a huge fan of music, so she walked all over the house and loved having it all to herself.

She looks good, rockin' it old school, don't you think?

And of course, we took full advantage of both holidays last week. We made pie for Pi Day and cookies for St. Patty's day. Ian LOVES sugar cookies...but we had leftover pie crust, so we just rolled that out and made cookies!

We didn't have any cool cookie cutters, but we didn't let that stop us :)

Ian wished they tasted more like sugar cookies, but he still managed to eat most of them (before the pictures were taken, I might add!)

Mara wasn't quite sure how she felt about them.

But after a little encouragement...

she decided to give it a try.

Then she really dug in, just like the rest of us.

You want one? Don't even think about it- get your own!!

Pickles and Ranch

Sometimes Mara has wild cravings...

You would think that she was the pregnant one.

Even adorable babies bleed

She may seem un-naturally cute, but she still bleeds red.

Yesterday, she got REALLY excited to play with our neighbors soccer ball...until our uneven walkway reached up, tripped her, and bit her nose.

And this was Mara's first bandaid, ever. She earned it on a walk on Valentine's Day where she was having SO much fun, I don't even know when it happened.

The funniest part was that she was more concerned about that terrifying bandaid than the scraped knee that it was covering.

"Mooooom, get it off!!!"

In case you were wondering...

She's still makes me laugh.

She's still super cute.

She still loves her daddy.

She loves to play in the window sill.

She doesn't like it if you try to take "her" hat.

She's decided that the camera deserves a BIG smile...even if it hurts.

That, my friends, is dedication.

A snowman story

Mara has a favorite song: Once There Was a Snowman. When we ask her what song she wants to sing at the end of the day she instantly raises her hands in preparation. It's really cute when she does the actions for it, so we thought we would share.

Holiday Fun

We've been really busy these last few weeks, finishing up a semester at school and starting another one, enjoying the holidays, and trying to spend as much time together as we can. So we haven't posted... oops. Anyway, we just wanted to say that our holidays were fantastic, spending time with each other and with family has been refreshing. It made heading back to school less exciting for everyone in the family. But for everyone outside of Provo, we thought we would share a few pictures from the past few weeks.

Mara has recently managed to master climbing.

New pajamas for Christmas from Grandma.

Christen's brother Daniel and his wife came down to visit and Mara loved their suitcase (and them).

Daddy's textbook, "Robots and Manufacturing Automation" is also sooo exciting.

Hope everyone else had a great holiday, and that this New Year is as promising to everyone else as it is for us.