March in Pictures....

During the month of March...

I took pictures of this beautiful bride.

My cousin Mandy got married a few weeks ago in the SLC temple. It was a very cold and rainy day but we managed to get a few good shots in. She made a beautiful bride.

I made a Pinewood derby with this guy.

Our ward had an adult pinewood derby. Chris and I decided to try and win, we read up on all the tips online, we bought the best stuff to use, Chris ground down the axles.... ha... we didn't even come close to winning. We did have fun making it though, I did the paint job by hand with nothing to look at. It now is sitting in Kadens room on a shelf. He thought it was the best one there :)

I took pictures of this cute mom-to-be.

I got to take lots of pictures of cute little babies like this one.

We watched a few good movies.

Princess and the frog- cute

Where the wild things are- strange

Blindside- Best movie ever

We watched this little princess grow up too fast.

She has a definite opinion about everything and she is a very sensitive soul. She is starting to talk and picks up new words everyday. She has a definite affection for "bampa" (grandpa) and wanders around the house saying his name. She LOVES to watch our wedding video because she gets to see all of the people she likes on the TV, she gets very excited and says their names while pointing to the TV. She loves her blankie and will stand by her crib pointing at it til I get it out for her. She says "Dat Du" (Thank You) "Ba Ba" which means cup "ni ni" (night night) "bu bye" the names of grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, Kaden, Taycee and Hunter, "no, no" while shaking her finer, "where go?" and others. She knows she is the princess in our house and has the funnest personality. She is going to be my dancer. She walks around on tip toes a lot and when in the car seat she is always grabbing her feet and pointing her toes. She also gets her groove on to anything with a beat including cell phone rings.

We Laughed at this boy every day.

Kaden is such a crack up these days. He is starting to talk much better and I think he is quickly catching up from his 2 years of bad hearing. He picks up the funniest sayings and I have no idea where he gets them from. The other day out of the blue he said "mom your the greatest". He copies much of what Chris says, we were in the car the other day and Chris was frustrated with a driver in front of us at one point he said "woah lady!" Not long after that Kaden was yelling from the backseat "woah baby!" Often he asks "whats dat?" when I answer he says "your right it's a ".. and then copies whatever I say. Yesterday he was watching something on TV and asked "whats dat?" I didn't want to look up so I said "I don't know" he said "yep your right mom, it's a I don't know" He says dad with a new york accent now so it sounds more like "dee-ad" not sure where that came from and it drives Chris crazy. When he says no to you about something and you question him by saying something like "no?" he says "YES! NO!" He has become quite the protector of Taycee and gets very mad when I don't respond lightening quick when she is crying. He also thinks he is the boss of her and I often find him saying "no no Taycee go play with your toys". My goal is to have him potty trained by the end of next month. :D

I lightened my eye brows.

I went from the above...

To this....

We made lots of yummy banana bread.

We spent an appropriately unplanned and perfectly lazy 4 days in St George.

Taycee got really excited over some water at the library.

We played in the above mentioned water.

The kids drove around in this jeep.

Okay Taycee didn't really drive.. and Kaden can't seem to figure out the steering wheel thing. He is all gas.


We stopped to smell the flowers.

We walked around in beautiful scenery like this.

I snapped a few pictures of the beautiful scenery.

We spent hours jumping on the tramp, and played dead man about 50 times.

We went to an Easter egg hunt.

This was the line to get in.... we found a short cut.

Kaden got all of 2 eggs. The crowd was ridiculous. He loved it anyway.

We put on our own egg hunt at home.

He liked his lootShe liked it too.And that is the month of march documented by pictures...minus all of the school and work and craziness that happened somewhere in between.

What we've been up to...

Life is always busy but it seems that lately we have been especially busy. Our days have been filled with school, weddings, work, school, babies, family, kids, did I mention school? But as always there was a light at the end of the tunnel and we are currently enjoying our spring break in sunny St George. I promise a real post later when we get back... but for now, here are a few photos from the past week.


This is my cousins baby Bridger

This is our good friends the Broughs baby girl Chanel.






A very very cold rainy wedding day... but she was beautiful!

Bridger again

Photography

I am taking a fun photography class right now and these are a few pics I have taken for recent assignments.

15 mo.

This Beautiful Girl is 15 mo. old now. It is hard to believe that time goes by so fast. She is a bright spot in my life and I am so happy she came to be with our family.



Her check-up was today she is currently

24.14 lbs. - 67 percentile

32 inches long- 90 percentile

Head circumference 18.46- 48 percentile

So she just keeps growing. However her little active body is dropping some of that baby fat.

Here are some fun facts about her at 15 mo.

She LOVES to climb on things. She is getting quite inventive and I find her on top of tables, chairs, and beds all the time.

She loves to sit in things. She has a small toy bucket that she climbs in all the time. She will sit there for quite awhile content as can be.

She knows that she is the boss especially when it comes to Chris. She will do something naughty and look at Chris with this "you can't punish me I'm too cute" smile.

She was watching Land Before Time with Kaden and decided she should eat like a dinosaur too so all day that day she would only eat off her try with her mouth ( she wouldn't use her hands to pick up the food) every time she did it she would laugh at herself.

Her hair is getting so long. I can do real pigtails now, it is also very curly when it gets wet.

She points to thing and says "wah dat"

She LOVES to talk on the phone

She is going to be my little dancer. Whenever she hears music she shakes her hips and moves her shoulders.

Kaden calls her "Taycee Princess"

She LOVES cutie oranges. She will bring me the whole bag so I will peel her one.

She wants to be just like her brother. She copies everything he does. She refuses to turn around and go down stairs backwards because Kaden walks down them and she thinks she can to.

She is starting to point to people in pictures and say their names.

It is so fun to watch you grow and learn new things Taycee bug, WE LOVE YOU!

Dear Kaden,

I will always remember you as the little 2 year old boy dancing his heart out to "Bust a Move" on the living room floor. (Not as the little 2 year old boy who 10 minutes later dropped my very expensive camera lens)

Please remeber me as the mom bustin a move right along with you, not as the mom freaking out over the above mentioned lens incident.

Love,

Mom

My Birth-weekend and kid funnies

Well my birthday came and went again this year... funny how it always does that. And in true Chris fashion he made sure to make it wonderful. My mom took the kids for the weekend and were able to spend the weekend relaxing and enjoying a little "us" time. We saw 2 movies, Valentines Day and Avatar. We ate lots of yummy food. Chris cleaned the house while I did some shopping and I received a wonderful back rub. One of the best parts of the weekend was the fact that there was no homework involved. (which is saying a lot considering we are both in full time school)

Sunday morning I woke up to these beautiful flowers

along with some chocolates and tickets to the Paul Cardell concert. We went to my moms house for a yummy birthday/Valentines Day dinner that afternoon. It was a great birthday. Monday night our good friends Rob and Jocelyn watched the kids for while we went to dinner at Tucanos and the Paul Cardell concert. It was all wonderful. Thanks to everyone who helped out.

Kaden giving mom some birthday loves

Yummy Birthday Cake
Love this guy

On our way to the birthday party.

Moving on to funnier things...

Kaden is such a character lately. The other day he was sitting in the tub and with a panicked face looked at me and said "poo poo potty mom" we have had a few poop in the tub incidents lately so I quickly lifted him out of the tub and set him on the toilet. He sat there for a few seconds then squeaked out a little toot. He got the most excited look on his face and said "elephant mommy" apparently he thought his toot sounded like an elephant noise. And actually it kind of did.

Kaden is on a constant strike against clothing. Everyday I put his pants and shirt on numerous times. It will be a happy day at the Clayton home when summertime comes and I don't feel like a neglectful parent letting him run around without a shirt on. Last week I was doing some school work on the computer when I looked over to see Kaden walking around bare bummed. He was holding a yard stick with his diaper atop waving it around like a flag.

Kaden thinks that every time he lays down he needs a pillow under his head. The other day I had him laying down on the changer, he is much to large for his small changer now and his head lays on the wood frame. Kaden was not happy about this situation so he sat up grabbed a diaper, folded in up and shoved it under his head. He then looked at me and said "ok mom all better"

Kaden is on a dinosaur kick lately and LOVES anything to do with them. He would wear his dinosaur jammies everywhere if I let him. We recently purchased the Land Before Time and it has been played atleast 50 times already.

Kaden has figured out that he can get almost anything he wants by climbing on things. I often find random stacks of boxes and buckets stacked up against the counter or dresser. Especially when there are things like cookies on the counter. Every once in awhile we have to go looking for a missing kitchen chair and find it in his bedroom no doubt used to snatch a binki off of his armoire.

Taycee is getting bigger and smarter everyday. She tries so hard to talk, and every once in awhile says something that almost sounds like a sentence. She loves her brother and follows him around doing everything he does. She loves music and says "das" (dance) and shakes her little body every time she hears it. It is so fun to see how much she learns from Kaden.

Hope you all had a Valentines Day full of LOVE!

Change and Adaptation

Change is good. Change is hard. These are both phrases I have heard many times in my life. And I agree... with both of them. Some change is relatively simple and even fun. For example I recently asked my sister Heather to design a new blog background for me. She is very talented at creating things and jumped right on the task I now have this fun new background that is very symbolic of our life. For instance, the scribbling you see in the background is the same scribbling that is currently found in permanent marker on my front door. Like I said she is good at what she does. If any of you are interested in a blog make-over I can put you in touch with her.

-- back to change--

This fresh new look to my blog is a good change. A much needed change. However there are other changes going on right now that are not so fun. To sum it up in one word... school.

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I started a full semester of school at the U on January 11th. It has been a MAJOR change to our families normal routine. Being a mom of 2 children under the age of 3 is a feat in and of itself. Adding homework and classes and tests and projects and research on top of it all has made life... well... crazy. I spend every spare second listening to online lectures or reading textbooks or studying for tests. This week I have around 200 text book pages to read 4 hours of lectures to listen to and 2 tests to study for not to mention the lab work required. I am afraid my children feel slightly neglected and I know Kaden has watched way too much Super Why in the last few days. More than once I have asked myself if it is really worth it. To be honest with you I still haven't decided that it is. But I am not the type to quit once I have started so we are working on adapting.

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Last week I was really not feeling well and had a lot of school work to get done. Chris was an angel and volunteered to stay home on Wednesday and Thursday. He planned to just do his school work from home. I do that every day... not too hard.. right??? Ha. The days went something like this...

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Wednesday morning Kaden brought me his diaper. It was very wet and had a few brown marks on it. Kaden is always taking his diaper off these days so I didn't think much of it and got a new dry diaper to put on him. About 20 minutes later I found big brown lump of poop sitting on top of Kadens toys. We are working on potty training, apparently he understood the "don't go in your diaper" thing we just need to work on the "go in the potty" part. Chris swooped in and took care of cleaning the toys while I headed back to my school work in bed. A few hours later I got up to find one of my diamond earrings laying on the floor. Notice I said ONE not two, not one pair, just one single earring. My heart dropped, those were an anniversary present.. a VERY expensive anniversary present. I started the search, Chris joined me and about 20 minutes later we recovered the missing earring in the play pen. Crisis #2 averted. Chris decided to put the kids in the tub and let them play for awhile. He went to check on some of his work and came back to find the kids in the tub joined with about 100 Q-tips. Kaden had found the box and decided they all needed to go in the tub. We cleaned up that mess had lunch and tried to move on with the mounds of homework we both needed to do. Kaden came to get me about 15 minutes later saying "show me mom" which translated to "I want to show you something mom" He led me by the hand into the other bathroom where he had dumped a bag of fish rocks into the tub, little tiny blue fish rocks. Luckily he hadn't dumped them near the drain so we didn't have to worry about our drain being clogged. That night I had a class to go to but it got cancelled last minute so instead I headed to our young womens new beginnings. When I arrived home I could smell rubbing alcohol strongly as I walked in the door. It took less than 30 seconds for me to find orange and brown marker all over my bedroom wall. Then I found my closet torn apart, literally. My drawers were dumped out, shoes were all over the place, hangers were scattered anything that had a place was not in it. This ended Wednesday.

Thursday went better, and by better I mean that nothing expensive was lost, nothing white was colored, and no tub incidents occurred. However the house did get turned upside down in an attempt to keep the children happy and occupied so mom and dad could try to get some school work done. I don't know that my house has ever been that out of order. I had a class Thursday night from 6-9 when I got home once again I was greeted my a strong smell as I walked in the door however this time it was baby lotion. I asked Chris about it and he simply handed me the camera with this picture on it.

Kaden had found anew bottle of baby lotion and decided Taycee needed to bathe in it. The good news it that she liked it. They were laughing and having a good ole' time. No harm no foul I guess.

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After reliving these days I realize maybe coping is a better word than adapting. There have never been more "messes" at our house than there are now. They occur on an hourly basis. I put a baby gate up to block the front of the house so I can localize the destruction to the back few rooms. The bathroom doors are all locked so if you ever need to pee really bad at our house you will be doing a potty dance outside the door for a few seconds while you use the safety pin on above the door frame to unlock the door. Kaden sees me with my laptop and says "mommy work" regardless of what I am doing or what time of day it is. However Taycee and Kaden have found a new formed friendship because of their lack of attention from mom. Kaden will whisper for Taycee to come with him, I don't think he has discovered that we know that means there is trouble afoot. When I jail Taycee to the playpen so I can get 20 minutes of uninterrupted homework done Kaden climbs in with her to keep her company. Chris comes home from work and makes a special effort to entertain the kids so I can get a couple hours of real studying done. He walked in 20 minutes ago with a chocolate marshmellow shake and fries from iceburg and insited I take a break. So I blogged. A lot of change and adaptation is happening at our house right now and although it seems hard I think it is good. Only 98 more days to go.... but who is counting?