Murder Mystery 2009

Last night Dustin and I had a real date! We went to a murder mystery dinner, hosted by my awesome cousins, Aaron and Kristen. It was a blast! Dustin's character was the town shop keeper and I was a can-can girl aspiring to be an opera singer. It was so hilarious! We had a great time and thanks to Bekah and Adam for watching our little monster boy!

Funny Moments

This is just a few really funny videos. The first is Jacob saying please and thank you. He had lots of time to practice with Grandma and Grandpa Winn over Thanksgiving. The second video I took one day when Jacob decided to go to work like his Daddy. Unfortunately, he lost interest before I got him to say bye bye for the camera. The third video was Jacob "jumping." I just think it's hilarious when toddlers try to imitate adults, but don't get it quite right. Poor guy, his feet never left the ground. The last video was one I took of the kitten we got last month. I didn't know until after I filmed this that Jacob was putting his crayons in the trash right in front of me. Goes to show how much I was paying attention I guess. Still, it's funny. I hope they amuse you too.

Jacob's new favorite song

Jacob has just recently developed a love for the song "If You're Happy" Here are a couple of videos of him dancing.

Jacob's new friend...

Last week we decided to get a kitten to take care of our mouse problem at home. Jacob is fascinated with the kitten, and loves playing with it. I feel sorry for the kitten though. Jacob chases that thing everywhere. This was the first time the cat didn't run away from Jacob. Jacob got a kick out of watching the kitten chase the toy.

Pumpkin Day!

I love pumpkin season! I love baking them, eating them, and looking at them. I always have a pumpkin day each year. Sometimes it's closer to Thanksgiving, but I always have one. This year I went pumpkin crazy! I baked 2 pumpkin pies, pumpkin cookies, and a new recipe for pumpkin bars. The pumpkin bars ended up more like a cake, but that was fine with me, this recipe ended up my favorite! Dustin worked a day shift so after work, we took Jacob to a pumpkin patch. Of course when we got in the car it started POURING rain down on us. I chose a patch further in the valley and by the time we got there, it had mostly stopped, so I was glad for that. Jacob loved getting out and running around. He even found his own baby pumpkin. I've also included a sneak peak of Jakey's Halloween costume! He's a Yodeler! It's hilarious!

18 Months!

My boy turned 18 months on Sunday! Woo Hoo for milestones! Here are a few highlights from Jacob:

1) Nursery!! Boy is Momma happy about this one. I forgot what real church was like.
2) New words! Jacob is learning so many new words! He tells me to read to him all the time now and it's so cute! His favorite word is still DUCK and all birds are ducks, but that's okay.
3) Potty training: I haven't been as diligent on this as I should because the day care won't do anything with him until he is 2, but I still have the weekends to practice.
4) Jacob has FINALLY started giving hugs and kisses on demand! I LOVE IT! I take advantage of it as much as possible.


We've had a rough few weeks around here. Jacob has had a bad flu bug which he has lovingly spread to his daddy. I haven't caught it thus far and still have my fingers crossed on that one. I have gotten some awesome snuggles in from my little toddler. He is going through a book phase right now. He's not so interested in most of his toys, but he will rip every single book off the shelf, chuck it at me and say "REE!" Granted, he is less interested in the reading and more interested in the page turning, but that doesn't bother me. Notice this book is upside down in the picture...Just watch your step because my house has become a land mine.


Jakey doesn't need to be entertained much. He loves watching TV or just playing by himself. We love to stack and knock down blocks and play catch. He loves to climb on everything. Oddly, he only just barely figured out how to climb up on the couch. Maybe our couches are too high, I have no idea. But this is a new fave. Climb on the couch and make all of Mom's pictures crooked so she freaks out. OCD a little? Ah, and light switches. He can only reach 1 in the house and so far hasn't figured out how to flip it UP, just down. Goof.


Jacob loves food. Everything! His favorites are cheese, pasta, beans, bath bubbles, dandelions, and dirt. What can I say? He's all boy! All in all, Jacob is the sweetest little boy! He loves his Mama and Daddy! He loves his Uncle Matt! Uncle Matt is the one who taught him how to lick his plate by the way... We love having this little boy in our life! There I go, getting all mushy.

Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes

We are still working on getting Jacob to do these to the words of the song, but he's got the pieces! It's so hilarious to me to get him to say NOSE! TOES! NOSE! TOES! I could do that all day long.

What's your fortune?

Tonight we girls learned how to make fortune cookies! It was so easy! I was really surprised. We had a good time making these fun little cookies. My co-worker Genna needed them for a party she is having on Saturday, so Christina and I volunteered to help her make them. Here's a few pictures of them!

Warm and Cozy

Think of something warm and cozy. You might picture a nice bright fire, complete with your favorite blanket and hot coco. You might think of a perfect summer afternoon lounging by the pool. Not me...

Today we had our new furnace installed! This is a picture of our old one. It was definitely on it's last leg. When it turned on, it would shake down the whole house. And here's the new furnace! Quiet, efficient and quite pretty if you ask me.

Even the controls were old. Here's our old thermostat.

Our new thermostat is so high-tech that I don't dare touch it. It knows when I go to work and turns itself down. It knows when to turn back on. Dustin even programmed it to turn down during church.

We are loving having HEAT in our house again. These 30 degree nights have been a killer. Don't worry, Jakie has had a space heater. It's just Mommy and Daddy who have been freezing to death.

Long week....

Jacob has been really sick with the flu for the last 3 days. The poor little guy has been SO sick. It's so hard for me to see him when he's sick. On the up side, I have gotten more snuggles in the last few days than I have in months. He's had a fever between 100 and 104 up and down for 3 days and I was getting really worried. I debated on whether or not to take him in to the doctor. Last year when he got the flu bug, she told me that there really isn't much they can do unless he gets dehydrated. Thank heavens I could keep him drinking. He didn't eat much other than crackers for 2 days, but last night he ate some rice with a meat sauce and made his momma very happy. He seems much more his normal self today. Jacob is still a bit short-tempered so I can tell he's not 100%, but this is hugely improved, so I'm ok with the intermittent cry spells. With my boss being out of town most of the week, it's been impossible for me to stay home with Jakie, but we made it! I'm glad that it's conference weekend and I can just keep him home and not expose the other kids to his germs.

We've been cleaning out our basement and listening to conference on the radio today. We still don't have a furnace so we've been bundling up under blankets and sweaters. We are hoping to have the furnace situation figured out by the end of the week. It's been an interesting experience. I'll tell the story...about a week ago I woke up smelling gas in our house. Not a good thing. I had been having really bad headaches/migraines for a week before this, which is abnormal for me. Anyway, we figured out the leaking was in our furnace and turned off the gas. We had 3 leaks so it would have cost us $800 to fix our 30 year old furnace. NOT WORTH IT! We figure it will help us sell if we can tell the people we have a new furnace. Anyway, we've been getting a few quotes, but they have to come to the house and I'm not home during the day, so they have to work around Dustin's school and work schedules which is a nightmare. We have a pretty good idea now what we want to do, it's just a matter of getting all of our ducks in a row. So yeah it's been fun. Hopefully by the end of the week we will have some heat again!

Movin up!

Yesterday was Jacob's LAST sunday with me in Relief Society! After conference next week, the terror goes to NURSERY! I can't wait. No more dragging him off the piano, out of the curtians, or the music stand. I might actually get a chance to listen to a lesson again. He's a good boy, he's just in the curious, into everything stage and holding still for 3 hours (4 if we go to choir) is super difficult. I try to give him as much free reign as I can, but I can't have him disrupting the lesson.


My little guy is growing up!! He's learning 2-3 words a week right now. His latest include "baby" "toes" and "uh oh!" (ok, that one is not really a word, but it's still cute). I could have sworn he said zebra a few days ago, but I couldn't get a repeat performance, so it could have been a fluke.


Jacob has discovered flowers. It started with the dandelions. I pulled one up and blew on it and he liked that. So he started pulling all the dandelions up and eating them. I made Dustin google the little plants and they are not poisonous, actually quite good for you! Anyway, little did I know this would start a fascination with all flowers and he started pulling up my flower bed. Thank heavens it's almost winter and the flowers will die soon anyway.

He's a little goofball. We are having so much fun watching him grow!!

Happy Talk

This is a cute video of Jacob learning different animals. He's really good at pointing at the right animal, he's just starting to say the words. Most of the time this boy doesn't say anything, so it's been fun to hear him talk more. Here's a list of some the words he says:

Duck (du!)
Kitty Cat (kee cat)
Bye bye
mama & dada
yeah
no
wow
whoa!
more (mo!)
down (dow)
Shoes

4-Wheeling Family

We went for what will probably be our last quad ride of the summer. Dustin started school this week and the homework is already piling up. Still, we decided to go for one last ride. Jacob loves the Rhino and will do anything to get us to take him on a ride. We had to make a lot of stops because Jacob gets really tired with the helmet on the whole time. I'm completely paranoid about rangers after last year...Anyway, we had a great time and Jacob slept for 4 hours after. Poor little guy. As you can see, he even took a little snooze on the Rhino for a little while.

Little Climber

This is Jacob trying to climb into his walker. It is amazing to see how resourceful he is. He will use just about anything as a step to climb on top of other stuff.Now that he is climbing more, it means he can reach more things, which means we have to move more things out of his reach. He is always keeping us on our toes.

Hogle Zoo!

Today was our first trip to the Zoo with Jacob! He absolutely LOVED it! Jacob got really excited about the animals that he recognized. Mostly, monkeys, cats, birds, the elephant and rhinos. He also took off after one of their ATVs... He was also introduced to a new food! Corn Dogs! I swear he didn't even take it away from his mouth until there was nothing left. He had his first ride on a carousel and really liked that! He enjoyed the train ride at the end, but I think he was too tired to really react much. Anyway, here are some pictures from our fun day! Dustin starts school again on Monday so this was probably our last outing of the summer.

Blackberry CRAZY!

Dustin and I absolutely LOVE blackberries. Dustin had a bush in his backyard growing up and I just love all fruit. So you can imagine how excited we were to move into our house and have this monstrosity in our backyard. Our blackberry bush is approximately 40 feet long and 10 feet high. It literally takes over the back section of our yard. We have a HUGE yard, so we don't really care. Anyway, 2 summers ago, we chopped the monster down to the ground. We didn't have much in the way of berries last year (the monster was on recovery) but we have been bombarded this year! I went on a baking spree this weekend and made blackberry JAM, a blackberry PIE, and blackberry syrup for our pancakes. I almost made more, but I had to go pick more berries and I wasn't in the mood to tackle the monster bush. Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures of my Berry Mania!!