Fab Five: Cousin Love, Water, Mr.Fixit, Coach, and Wipes

 

1. Cousin Love  I just had to take a picture of this before getting rid of it.  Our wonderful Valentine Pixies sent us a Piano Guys CD, candles, home made valentines, and had good intentions of avocados too. They got picked out my the food police in Hawaii. ;)  I just thought the homemade hearts were adorable. 

 (side note: We love the Piano Guys...if you don't know about them, then be sure to check them out on Youtube!)

 

2.  Water---it's a love/hate relationship.  Mostly love. Most of the time.  :)

 

3.  Mr. Fixit.  Projects on the list currently: filling holes and fixing dents in the walls and ceilings.  We're one step closer to painting.  

 

4. Coach.  Mark enjoyed helping the young men at church in their basketball season this year.  He was the assistant coach and had a good time.   They had some REALLY close nail-biter games.  The team that came back and barely beat them ended up winning the tournament.  Well done, boys and coach! 

5.  Wipes. They are just too awesome to leave alone. :)

 Happy Kid!

A Random Post of Our Doings as of Late

The little man loves his stuffed animal--Charley the Monkey.  He gives him loves by putting him by his neck and saying "awww."   He also says a high-pitched "ooo ooo ooo" for the monkey sound.  He has the duck "quack quack" down pretty well too.  Most of the time he can do the dog but we're still working on the other animals.  He loves making car, truck, train, and airplane noises too.  Adorable!

 

Lately, he's been doing this funny squinty blinking a million times smile when we take pictures of him.  It's so funny to see in person! The actual pictures just don't do it justice.   

 

 

Hello Harry Potter!  Here's Jax and his Firebolt.  He loves the broom and the dustpan.  Whenever I have them out, he plays with them.  So much for toys, eh? 

 

This is a regular occurrence.  There's just something about the dishwasher.....  

 

 This was a fun day.  I went and judged the Public Speaking portion of my niece's school-hosted Debate Tournament.  I really enjoyed it!  I wasn't involved in debate as a high-schooler but I enjoyed judging and seeing a little bit of what it's all about.  Public Speaking is such a great skill to learn!  We snapped a pic of Jax with us before Mark took him to Bass Pro Shop for a guy's outing while I was doing my thing.  Jax sure loves Maddie!  He just kept looking and smiling at her the whole time we were with her.  

 I'm glad I snapped some pictures of something we do regularly.  These are our regular walking and playing and the park buddies--Ariana and Samuel!  They live right around the corner from us and we've had some good good times with them!  We love going on walks to the park and letting the kiddos play.  Samuel is only two days younger than Jax, which is very fun.  Ariana gets to mother and take care of both of them, which is fun too :)

 

Still lovin' to swing!

Valentines day

 

It was BEAUTIFUL weather here on Valentine's Day so we spent a lot of it outside.  Jax loved the bubbles.  This is the first time I broke them out this year and he pops them and laughs his head off.  So cute!  

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I added the picture of the blossoms that came out recently.  I thought it was fitting for the day since they are beautiful hot pink.  :)

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Jax loves when da da comes home in the green truck.  He gets so excited and says "da da!  da da!  ck!(truck) ck ck."  Mark put him in the back of the truck for a few minutes and he was in heaven.

We went on a walk to the park together becuase Mark got home from work early! YAY!  

Mark was gracious enough to make us dinner.  On the menu was grilled chicken and spaghetti.  It was delicious and the candlelight added a little extra romantic ambiance.  He's a great cook, which has been a wonderful added perk to our life together :)  

It was a laid-back wonderful day. 

I sure do LOVE my boys!  

xoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxxoxo

Anniversary

 

We enjoyed celebrating our FIFTH anniversary recently.  We decided to go to Gruene to dine at The Gristmill and walk around to take a look at the little shops.  Mark ordered the ribs, which were excellent.  I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak, which is very unlike me, but it was tasty!  It was one of their most popular so I branched out--even if it is a Grandpa-type meal.  :)  

We couldn't resist trying on a couple of cowboy hats in one of the shops.  We had a wonderful time together and it's always fun to get dressed up for DATE NIGHT!

   

Thank you to the Reams Family for watching little Jax while we went out on our date night!  We truly appreciate it!  You should receive extra gold-stars for having to deal with a diaper emergency too!  

It has been a wonderful journey so far.  

We are like so totally in love times 5.  Cheezzzzy middle school talk. :)  Love it.

The Candy Man

He figured out how to open up his Valentine candy real quick!

Oahu

 Go Aggies!  After the girls did some shopping (so much fun), we all came together to cheer on our Aggies.  Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! :) 

 Christmas Canoe ride at PCC--one of my favorite things we did.  I talked about it on my Top Moments post but I wanted to mention that we were singing Christmas carols before we got going and Chris kept suggesting King Wenceslas but the guy in charge just kept ignoring him.  Ha! 

 Happy Birthday Lindsay!  This was an all adults DELICIOUS dinner at Hallewei Joes.  Mark, Geo, and Chris ordered the HUGE prime rib.  I think they all finished it.  All of the food was delicious!

 Pipeline Surfing Competition Finals--It was really cool to see the pros do their thang.  The kiddos loved playing in the sand. 

Manly, Girly, and Nerdy

 Fab 5 on Friday

 January 18th Edition

1.  (This is the Girly part) New Organizational Item: THE SPICE STACK.  Rated 5 stars by me.  If you don't have one, get one.  It's amazing how much space it opened up in my cupboard AND how I can find things so much easier now.

2.  This is the "nerdy" part.  I will leave it up to you to decide who is the bigger nerd of the family.  We both definitely have different nerd-styles. 
Books we've been reading:   
Mark just finished the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  It's a book made up of excerpts from his journals.  Mark learned a lot from the book and has given me the reader's digest version each day when he gets home from work, which I'm grateful for...both the shortened version part and the learning cool things about Dr. Franklin part--he really is an interesting and brilliant guy!  Mark has enjoyed listening to that on  his commute.   
Lacey--I just finished listening to Harry Potter 4 the other day.  So intense.  It makes me want to get #5 right now and start on it.   It somehow makes me feel a little bit better to listen and do my chores at the same time rather than sit and read but I do find myself just standing there not really doing much but listening at the intense times. :) I'm also in the middle of The Great and the Terrible, a series by Chris Stewart.  I read the first book and now I'm dying to read the second!  This is one of the negatives of living outside of Utah where the Mormon books are not so so abundant.  Our local library is working on getting it for me through Inter-library loan....but the first book took them a good two months.  We'll see if I can wait that long. 
Jax has really taken a liking to the Farm Animals pop up book that Aunt Anneleise gave him for Christmas.  He requests that one almost every time now (even above Freight Train). :)  I should probably find him more pop up books. 

Mark and I hope to read a few books together this year.  We started on Seven Tipping Points That Saved the World on our drive to Arizona but we haven't managed to finish it together yet.   Now that you know both of our nerd styles, any suggestions would be appreciated.  Is there a way to combine Harry and Ben Franklin?  :/  I'm thinking Historical Fiction might be our best route. 

3.  "Quack, Quack" the ducky towel has brought on new sounds from the little guy!  "Cua, cua, cua" is what we hear from him when he's ready to get out of the tubber.  He loves that specific towel.  It both makes me laugh and wonder.  He's catching on to more than I realize.  I better watch myself! 

4.  We (by we, I mean Mark) are doing some yard work around here.  It's typical yard cleanup...raking leaves, trimming trees, and composting in the garden box.  We now are proud owners of a real chainsaw.  It reminds me of Mulan [in her 'man' voice] "Uhh... I mean, uh, sorry you had to see that, but you know how it is when you get those, uh, manly urges, and you just gotta kill somethin'... fix things, uh, cook outdoors.."

Chainsawing definitely qualifies as one of those manly urge things, right?    

 

Disclaimer: This pic isn't of the new grande chainsaw.  It's the daintier one we already had for smaller branches. Just FYI.

P.S.  Doesn't Jax look like a little man in this picture??  He's growing up so fast.  He really enjoys being with Mark when he's doing his outdoor projects. Father-son bonding time :)

5.  We love FRIDAYS!!!!  Don't you?  Mark has every other Friday off because he's working a flex-schedule where he works an hour extra on the other days.  We have really enjoyed it.  Today is one of those off-Fridays!  YAY!  More chainsawing! :)