March 2010

March consisted of only a few things, but oddly enough took up a large amount of time. I was on the Blackfoot Jr. Miss committee again this year and was in charge of the Self Expression routine (not just me, my friend Misti helped choreograph it too) and Ticket Sales, along with a bunch of other last minute things that seemed to come up. I helped the girls at their early a.m. practices, Monday- Thursday from 6- 7 a.m. They also put together a "Jr. Mister" competition this year, which Doug and I attended and helped a little with, and a "Little Miss Day Camp." The theme was "The Streets of Italy" and the program took place on April 10th. It was great group of girls and they all worked hard. I always enjoy getting to know the girls and not only working with them, but having fun with them, as well as the other committee members. Here's a group shot of the girls:

And I couldn't talk about March, without mentioning St. Patty's Day. That silly leprechaun turned our potty water and our milk green that morning and Blake couldn't stop talking about him all day. Our friends the Pearsons came over for a green dinner, which consisted of green wraps, green jigglers, green chip dip, green cupcakes and green frape! Yum! I'll admit, some food just isn't as appitizing when its colored green, but once you get over the food coloring, its just as yummy!

March also brought the 2nd Ward Pine Wood Derby, hosted by the Elder's Quorum. This is when I learned that there are callings in the church that you aren't set apart for. My calling was "Elder's Quorum President's Wife" and my duties consisted of making sure everyone had invites, a food assignment, and putting together the main course: BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. Don't worry, I had the meat catered. :) Anyway, we had almost 60 people there and everyone seemed to have a good time, especially those there to race their cars. Doug's car didn't get put together until the night before and then he ended up dropping out after the first round anyway, so another car could take his spot. That's okay... there's always next year!

Doug and I also celebrated our 4th Anniversary on the 31st of March. Boy, time flies when you're having kids, remodeling a house, going to school, working on the farm and having fun! Becki watched the boys for us the weekend before and we got to go out to dinner and then headed down to Lava Hot Springs to sit in the hot tubs to celebrate. It was a great date and I think we both enjoyed a few hours without the kids!

Let's Back Up a Little...

Boy, when you let your blog go for almost 4 months, it almost seems impossible to catch up. I thought about just skipping the last few months and picking up starting today, but then I'd miss blogging about a whole slew of events! Let's back up to January.

Boston Morgan VanOrden was given a name and a blessing on January 3, 2010 by his father, Doug, in the Blackfoot 2nd Ward. His unlces, grandpas and great grandpa all stood in the circle. He was given a beautiful blessing and looked so handsome. After church, we had a nice family dinner out at my parent's house to celebrate Boston's day. Boston started smiling when he was about 6 weeks old and hasn't stopped yet. He has such a sweet spirit and is such a calm baby. We are so blessed to have little Boston in our family.

January and February also consisted of a little thing we like to call Church Ball. Doug put his counselor Chad in charge of getting our ward's team together and mentioned "if you can't find enough players, call me and I could probably come." Well, putting a team together was a little harder than they thought it might be and Doug became a regular. Thursday nights after dinner, we would load up the boys and take them over to the stake center to watch a little church ball. Doug's comment after their first game: "I thought I was gonna puke!" and after the last "I know we lost, but that was fun tonight." I enjoyed watching Doug pretend to take the game seriously, so he wouldn't disappoint those that really were serious, and chatting with the other church ball wives. Sorry, no church ball pictures this year, maybe next winter.

And let's see... another big change in January. After 2 1/2 years, I was released as the Primary Chorister and they called me to be the Ward Choir Director. I wasn't extremely happy about the calling at first, but its not near as bad as I thought it would be. The only difference between the two callings is the level of music i'm conducting and my choir members listen to me and don't pick their noses while we're singing! We have a choir made up of 8ish faithful members and then there are those that read music well and practice with us once before we sing and help us sound beautiful. I attended a stake conducting class in April and I'm starting to feel like I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll learn from experience, right?

I'll post about the living room in another post, but I think that's it for January and February!

Primary Talent Show- January 2010

I know, I know, I'm way behind on blogging, please forgive me! I've been wanting to post these videos for a while and i'm finally getting around to it. Every year, our ward holds a Primary Talent Show for the kids to perform their talents. They held that talent show in January. Since Blake is officially in Primary, he got to be in the Talent Show as well. Doug and I have been trying to memorize the family proclamation ever since we were challenged to last fall by Elder Clark at our stake conference. We figured Blake was awfully young to work on the family proclamation, so we started to help him memorize the Articles of Faith. So for his talent, he planned to recite the First Article of Faith. He got up on the stage, got so scared and wouldn't say it. We settled for trying it again later and here's how it went the second time around:

Besides working on memorizing his Articles of Faith, he enjoys going to Primary and has had a great Sunbeam teacher, Heather Sellers. He looks so cute all dresses up in his white shirt and tie and he always takes his scripture bag with his Book of Mormon with him to church. Blake loves learning about Jesus and tells us about Him all the time. He will spit out a sentence like... "Ya, because we needa be nice like Jesus."

Two months old...

I can't believe my baby Boston bear is already two months old. He's graduated from newborn diapers and clothes and seems to be growing up so much already. Boston has discovered his smile. There is nothing better in the morning than a huge smile from him. He's also just barely starting to "coo" and use his voice. We carry on the smallest of conversations, and he loves the attention and eye contact. I took him to the Dr. yesterday for his 2 month check up and immunizations and he weighed in at 9 lbs. 2 oz. Thats two pounds in two months. We couldn't ask for a healthier little man. He sleeps from about 10 p.m. until 6:30 a.m. most nights, and we feel so spoiled that his sleep schedule is so good. We love Boston and the sweet spirit he brings into our home, and look forward to the milestones to come in the next few months. Here's a few pictures we took today and a video from a few weeks ago. Enjoy :)

Oh there's no place like Home for the Holidays....

I know, i've been slacking on the blog a little lately. Who wants to put down a sweet little baby to blog? Not me! But I thought I'd better catch up before I forgot all the fun details. So here goes...

December seemed to fly by. The boys and I stayed at home a lot while Doug finished up the semester. We had a few Dr. appointments to finish up, but other than that and a little Christmas shopping, we enjoyed our time at home getting to know Boston. Doug's birthday was on a Monday, the 21st, so we spent the whole weekend celebrating. Blake got to spend Saturday with Grandma and Grandpa VO while we did our Christmas Shopping, went to dinner and saw Avatar. And then Monday, Doug and Blake went over to the Willows to help Curtis with his eagle scout project, and then the whole VO family headed to Rupes for a little dinner and back to our house for pumpkin roll, so yummy!

On Christmas Eve, he headed to Poci to see a movie, The Princess and the Frog. What a fabulous movie, Blake loved it. Going to the movies is a fun tradition that the Campbells always did, and we enjoy keeping up the tradition every year. We stopped at home and packed an overnight bag and headed out to Doug's parent's house. We ate yummy food, read through the Christmas story, sang hymns, opened a few gifts and watched White Christmas. Doug and I took the hide a bed, Boston slept in his bouncer next to us, and Blake slept downstairs in the bunkbed in Curtis's room. Santa came down the chimney, ate some cookies and left some presents.

We woke Blake about 6:30 a.m. and we all went in to see what Santa left us. He brought Doug and I a video camera, Blake got a train table, and Boston got a teddy bear (just what Blake told Santa Boston wanted) and a few toys. The gifts were opened in a matter of minutes and Blake made "breakfast" with his pretend food (thanks Jackson and Marcus) for all the uncles while they played on the Wii, while some of us fixed some real food. We played games and took naps while we waited to skype with Mom, Dad, Becki and Pablo. We got to webcam with them for an hour and enjoyed hearing about all their wedding preparations they'd been doing in Chile.

We headed home that evening and unloaded all the toys and gifts. I didn't hesitate to sort through toys and that night a picked a few that Blake doesn't play with anymore and added them to the donate pile. The 26th was Saturday and we spent the day taking down Christmas decorations and preparing the living room for the upcoming remodel. We spent the next week tearing out trim, priming, texturing, priming again, painting, and getting ready for the new floors. Don't worry, we did take a break to celebrate the New Year. All of us stayed up late at our friend's the Pearson's playing games and Rockband. New Year's day we spent at my parents house and Saturday the 2nd we went out to my cousin's wedding reception and had a great time with family. The next day was Boston's blessing, i'll post more pictures about him and the blessing later. And the new floors went in on Monday. We finished up the trim work, touch up paint and got our living room back together in no time. Oh yes, somewhere in there we squoze in painting the bathroom, too! :) It was a busy holiday and we enjoyed every minute we got to spend with Doug while he was on vacation from the farm. More pictures to come fromt he baby blessing and of our recently finished rooms.

Boston's Newborn Photos

I had arranged for Boston's newborn photos long before he arrived and when he was just 7 days old, we made a trip to Idaho Falls for his photo shoot. They were taken by Caralee Case Photography and she did a fabulous job! Check out her blog, http://caraleephotography.blogspot.com/ and enjoy these beautiful picutres of baby Boston! We love our sweet little man!

Blakeism...

Isn't that the term blogging moms use to describe the cute things there kids say? I think so.... Here's a few hilarious things Blake has said the last few days. This kid makes me laugh out loud every day! We love him so much!

Blake (with his blanket around his head): Mom, do I look like a shepherd?
Laura: Yeah, you do look like a shepherd.
Blake: Well, I need some sheep to guide!


Laura: Blake, you're so smart.
Blake: Well, there's smart, and then there's Kmart smart.

Maybe this kid has been watching too many Christmas shows and commercials, but it sure makes some hilarious comments come outta him!