Man I wish I had these pictures for "My kids are geniuses" post. Katelyn learned how to do this all by herself. Believe me, no one taught her how. This last one is such a sweet shot that Stephen captured, candle in mid-air as it's on on it's way down to smash a toe or two. Nice.

Go Broncos

Here is our latest family picture taken in Boise State attire. This was one of the pictures that semi-turned out with the kids semi-smiling. Gotta love picture day.

Katelyn and Preston

This was taken the day after Christmas. It's a little blurry, but too cute. Preston is almost bigger than Katelyn. Won't be long.

My Boys

This picture is just super cute. As you can tell, Preston is growing fast. He is officially 2 months old now. He weighs in at a whopping 14 pounds. He is in the 93% for weight and 43% for height. Weigh (pun intended) to go fat boy! Stephen weighs more than that, but we don't know his percentiles. We love you both.

Preston's new swing!

We got Preston a new swing because my old one broke already. This is right after Stephen set it up. Preston also really enjoys it.

My Kids are freakin' smart

Okay, Katelyn really is smart, but I have to joke a little bit about recent events. First let me say in her defense, she just turned 2 in August and can do the following.

-Sing her ABC's
-Count to 10 very well and to 20 semi-well
-Speak in complete sentences and they make sense, we can understand 95% of what she says
-Count to 10 in Spanish
-Knows her shapes, and colors for the most part. Can identify the numbers 5,8,6,2 and occasionally others.
-Says her prayers all by herself. A couple of days ago she prayed for the Bronco's. We got her trained.
-Can recite all the nursery rhymes on demand.
-Can sing in tune with most of the words over 20 songs.

Now for the funny stories.

-Apparently Preston is a prodigy. He speaks when we leave the room. Just the other day while Stephen was showering and I was in bed, he told Katelyn that he wanted her to get him out of the car seat and drop him on the floor. She told me, "Preston said Katelyn hold you." Right, I am sure he did.

-It has been very snowy here. We were leaving the library when Katelyn said she was eating snow. Okay, I thought. I look back and she is licking the snow off the bottom of her shoe. I freaked out and told her that was disgusting. Next thing I know, "This is disgusting," she says as she licks the bottom of her own shoe. Nice.

We love to clean! (Well..some of us do.)

Apparently, Katelyn's bored herself with making messes around the house and has moved onto cleaning up messes. Once Kendra taught her how to use a sponge there was no stopping her. Even after I got home from work she was finishing up the bathtub, spent a little time working on the floor and then polished off the toilet (for the second or third time). We're still working on her technique, but at least the desire is there. And it IS a free cleaning.

We even offered to pay her, though she wouldn't take our money. No, we didn't ask twice, and no, we're not going to twist her arm.

New hair do!

I got my hair cut and this picture doesn't do it justice! I don't even remember what the cut looks like because the style was so huge. It looked like a beehive from the 50's on top with the sides flipped out. I couldn't see because my bangs were in my face, but I figured it looks good enough to clean toilets, cause that's what I'm doin' today. And I don't have any make up on so please don't comment on my face. :)

Christmas Party with Santa

Katelyn has been talking for weeks about sitting on Santa's lap. She was the last child there to do it after some coaxing. For Christmas, she told Santa she wants "presents."

Take my picture

Thank you Grandma Mary for the beautiful dress.

So we must be doing too many blog posts, everytime we see an opportunity now we take a picture for the blog. Katelyn was catching on because we got her dressed on Sunday and commented on how cute she was and she said, "Okay, take my picture." Ha and Yikes at the same time.

Who's who?

Obviously the one with the pink bow is Katelyn, but seriously I think my kids do look alike at this age. Everyone says they look different, now yes, but when she was his age, I think they look very similar.

I've got a good man

Stephen came home from work early tonight and surprised me with flowers. Just because. I am so lucky to have such a great husband who is also such a great father. Kudo's to you Stephen. We love you.

We finally put up the tree!

We have been procrastinating putting up our Christmas decorations. For some reason, it doesn't feel like Christmas time. I knew I would regret it if we didn't decorate so finally we put up the tree last night. Katelyn's already taken down more ornaments (sometimes the same one over and over again) then we've put up. We reconsidered our decorating plan and moved all ornaments to the upper third of the tree. This worked well for about 30 minutes until Katelyn realized she can climb up on the arm of the couch and get any ornament she wants.

I've got to feed him...

Every night Stephen tackles Katelyn for bed and I am with Preston. Lately I've heard Katelyn say, "I've got to feed him!" This is her response to Stephen telling her she needs to get in bed. Well, a couple of nights ago Stephen took a picture of what she was doing. Ha. No idea where she may have picked that up.

The Best of Us

Apparently, we've been under-displaying the prettier side of our family in these blog entries. We'd hate to force readers to be subjected to too many pictures of one second-class family member. This entry is thus dedicated to the wonderful pictures of our family that don't include a smiley-faced, squinty-eyed dad trying to hold down one or both of the kids. Don't worry, he's still around, just holding the camera more and fake-smiling less.

Katelyn can have fun even doing nothing at all. All you have to do is ask her. This is her happy face.

It's hard to believe it took 6 shots to get this one right. They're all so pretty. After the Boise State game, Katelyn wouldn't talk about anything other then the fact that the "Broncos Won!" Even later that night, trying to get her to say prayers, all I got out of her was "Dear Heavenly Father, thankful for this day, bless Mom and Dad and Grandmas Grandpas and Ju-Ju. Bless Boise State Broncos..The End!" Hey, at least her prayers are longer then some of ours.
At four weeks old we're not sure how Preston had already learned to mimic Mom's smile for a picture, but there it is.

He's even fatter than he was before...

We were checking out this picture and Preston's happy face. Kendra made a comment on how "he" (Preston) looked so fat in this picture and, with the picture being a week old, was even fatter now. Stephen pointed out Grandpa was in the room, so she shouldn't be talking about him (Grandpa) like that. We're out of the will and now Preston only frowns. Thank you, Kendra.

Little Drummer Girl

Amidst protests from everyone else, Grandma fished Stephen's old drumset out of the toy closet so Katelyn could make some music. Everyone was finally dancing to the music in Katelyn's head, and it wasn't pretty. Dad was happy as a clam, and Katelyn couldn't figure out why the drumstick wouldn't double as a flute, no matter how hard she blew.