Days with 2 year olds can be long.  Today Matthew took off his diaper in the playroom and peed on the floor.  Then went to his sisters room and climbed up a bookshelf and got down her scripture bag and took out her lip gloss and chap stick and tore them to pieces making a huge mess all over himself.  Highlighted his pants and luckily didn’t do anything to her new scriptures.  Church on Sundays is 1 to 4pm.  The exact time he naps everyday.  When he gets home he crashes.  I took a picture of him asleep in the guest room bed.  The room is located just as you come in from the garage and Brad took off his shirt and told him to take a nap.  Sure enough a couple minutes later we checked and he was out. I never look at him asleep so I thought he looked so still and cute.  Not how I often see him.

He does do something that I love.  Whenever Ali or Jackson are on the computer, he climbs on the chair behind them and watches everything they do.  He loves it and they don’t seem to mind him hanging on them.  Since the computer area is in the kitchen I see this scene many times in the afternoon and it makes me smile.

Our new house came with a garden area.  Thank goodness, Brad was not interested in making me a garden area.  This will be my first garden and I just don’t trust myself to plant seeds and have things grow.  So I started the seeds inside and I will transplant in a couple weeks when it is spring.  It has only been a couple days so nothing is growing yet.  We planted pumpkins, zucchini, tomatoes, rosemary, dill, giant sunflowers, and chives.  I am not even sure they will grow in these pots.  I sure am hoping.  I like how they look in the morning sun while I make lunches for school.

Brad takes trips to BYU a couple times a year to do recruiting for his company.  The event in February is always a ski day at Sundance.  Brad bought Ali a plane ticket so she could go with him and have a fun getaway just the two of them.   They had a great time with all her cousins and grandparents. 6 days of being special and just having fun.  2 new cousins came just weeks before the trip so she was able to hold brand new babies Molly and Cash.  She also got to spend a day on the slopes with her Dad learning to snow ski.  It was a special time for her I am sure she will always remember.  Jackson is already excited for next year when it will be his turn.  I think I’ll have to join in that trip to go skiing.  I think half my childhood was on the ski slopes at Sundance.   Ali did a great job skiing and she said she only fell once.  Brad came home with about 3 pictures on the camera.  I was super annoyed, I was hoping for tons of pictures for her to remember her trip.  Luckily Brad’s sisters and the Grandma’s came through with a couple more pictures.

We started to get snow the day after my birthday.  I took some pictures thinking it was pretty and would melt soon.  It continued to snow throughout the day and into the evening.  As the pictures go on, you can see what we woke up to the next day.  Record breaking 12.5 inches had fallen in a 24 hour period.  School was canceled, Brad worked from home and we all played in the snow.  Brad and I were trying to save our ever green trees.  We lost half of one to the weight of the snow.  We knocked off the snow to help them survive.  Part of my backyard that I love are the 9 huge trees so I was sad to see one of them break.   I helped Ali build a big snow man.  I think she played outside for close to 3 hours.  I kept waiting for her to come inside because she was freezing but she didn’t.  And the best part is it had all melted within a day or two.  No brown snow.  It was really beautiful.

I got pictures of Ali and Matthew but Jackson ran off and I never ended up getting him with his stuff.  My kiddos don’t love candy.  I let them eat it whenever they want but they just don’t care.  They usually have a couple pieces and that is it.  I just found Christmas stocking candy in both Ali and Jackson’s rooms so I didn’t load them up with candy for Valentines day.  Ali got some earrings and a necklace, a book, and heart socks.  Matthew got 2 books and some pool toys.  Jackson got a bag of army men, book and a water launcher for the pool.  The most important part was hugs and kisses from mom and dad.  They don’t need anymore stuff.