We're finally here!!!! Here in Provo, with the gorgeous mountains and the gorgeous snow, its snowing RIGHT NOW!!! How cool is that! Well, we're mostly unpacked. After some crazyness on the trip over here and camping out at Bryce and Lisa's for a few days, we're mostly unpacked and moved into our teeny weeny little apartment. I hated it for the first two days, now i dont love it but i'm okay with it. Putting up the christmas tree (we propped our fake tree up in the corner and put half its branches on) and making pumpkin bread helped. This apartment feels like a church basement. Yuck. But at least it has a huge window, and we look out into a courtyrad with big pretty trees. Better than nothin. Stephen might get a job on campus as an early morning custodian. Ah, how the mighty fall!! Just kidding. We're going to be hermits and have mac and cheese for christmas. or maybe spaghetti, if we really feel like splurging! Scoot loves his new room, especially the window that he can look out from his bed. And the courtyard rocks, we have our own playground! I'll be able to sit on the porch with the baby and watch Scoot play. Oh yeah, baby. Ha! For those of you who dont know, we're expecting # 3 in July. Who knows what Heavenly Father is thinking, but we're keeping our fingers crossed for a girl! Muahahaha, we got out of Warrensburg with only 3 people knowing i was pregnant! HA! I'll put up pictures as soon as we can buy batteries for the camera......

Ah what the heck. Here's a few cuties!

Scoot never goes anywhere without his "entourage". 3 blankets, including his "blankie", Teddy Bear, Christmas Bear, Gingerbread Man, Bunny, Rabbit, and a dinosaur or three. He lugs them all around and makes cozy spots all over the house.

Jojo is a hands-on booklover. No pages for him yet!! This birthday card didnt last long.

I know, I know, its been forever since I've posted anythign, but to be hoenst there are no new photos and no real news! Just counting the days till we move, and me trying not to think to hard abotu the whole thing. Especially the 18 hour drive.....with Joe.....screaming.....*shudder* He has a two hour car limit, after that he just loses it. We shall see! Meanwhile, i feel very Christmassy this year, listenign to nice music a lot, just feeling that specialness, even if we arent doing much. Stephen only has 5 more days of work, wahoo!! Then the real work begins. I'll try to get some recent pictures up here soon.

Happy Holidays!! Stephen and I are insane holiday lovers, for us Christmas starts November 1st. Thanksgiving is just part of Christmas. We start listening to Christmas music today and put up our tree ridiculously early. Last year i think we might have even put it up in october..... we'll wait a week or two this year, too busy. Stephen has a PAID week off work in two weeks, thats probably when we'll do it. YAY!!!! I'm already listening to Christmas music this morning, and its chilly and super foggy outside, that helps it feel so cozy! Trick or treating with Scoot last night was tons of fun. He was a ghost!! It was kinda cheesy, and homemade, but oh well. He was very unsure for a few houses, but once he got into the swing of things he was making lifelong friends and telling everyone about the spiderwebs, which he thought were really cool. If anyone had their door cracked he would try to come in and visit. Such a sociable little thing!! He definitely got that from his dad. Jojo is in the kitchen talking to himself and pushing chairs around the floor. Scoot is wandering around finishing the last of his apple. Its just a good day!

Hooray for Jojo! It was his birthday Wednesday, we waited too long to celebrate so it was a little dysfunctional but he got his traditional spaghetti and cake, and great pictures! We love him so much, and hes so much fun. I think back to what life was like this time last year and it still kinda gives me the willies, but he is normal and healthy and happy! We can never thank our family and friends enough for their prayers and thoughts through those months. On to pictures!!

These are just plain pretty
this one is raspberry lime basil, it has lime cream and a raspberry in the middle!
these are just ridiculously cute

this one has chili powder in the chocolate, and its GORGEOUS
these roses are beautifulthis one is just so darn pretty and sparkly!

I have discovered a new love. I must be out of my mind. I am in love......with CUPCAKES!!!!! I was looking at random things in the MSN food area, and found a huge cupcake blog. I am now hooked. My new dream career is to work in a cupcake store. We're not talking plain old every day out of a box here, i want to make cupcake ART!! They've apparently become quite the new "thing" and the more pictures i see and the more flavor combinations i hear about the more i want to do it. I want to take a pastry (?) course in Utah, learn how to use and make ganache and crazy things, and make beautiful cupcakes!!!! Am i nuts or what?? Stephen sure thinks so. Heres a few of my favorites, and heres the blog link. http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/

Hooray! We got an apartment! We're so happy!! It was really stressful though, at one point i thought i had lost it, and i started yelling "no no no" at the computer and crying. Serious stressful stuff. But we got it, so i can breathe now. All we have to do is find stephen a job, maybe before we leave. Hey! My birdies are back!! I have two birdfeeders outside this window, i love watching my birds. Most of the interesting ones have left, for some reason, i dont know what the deal is, but i have a big family of sparrows that hang around, but they've been missing for a week or so. But they're back! Makes me happy! I hope my cardinals and chickadees and nuthatches and titmice comes back as it gets colder, i miss them.

My mom took these pictures when we were in Alaska. I dont know how she does it, she gets the bestest pictures of my kids. Always. Thank you mommy!! Poor jojo gets rashes on his face when he teethes...hes the worst teether EVER! It takes about a month for one tooth to come in, and last time it came in, then RECEDED and came in again! Ouch.

Have you ever noticed that big important emotional discussions/conflicts always happen in the middle of the night? Why is that? Last night I kinda broke down, stress of the housing situation and stephen always being gone and feeling like i couldnt handle being a wife/mother...so of course we didnt get to sleep till about 2. Yikes. But i feel better now! Besides the exhaustion, of course. Why cant stuff like that happen at a nice convenient afternoon hour? Ah well. I love my little boys, but i need to stop feeling like I need to be at their beck and call 24/7. Scoot needs to learn to play independently again. Any tips??? He used to....Anyway. Dont you hate it when you get all excited about an idea or activity and it fails? I wanted to rake leaves for Scoot to play in, so i borrowed a rake from a neighbor and got a great pile....and he came out crawling with little white bugs. One of our trees is infested. No wonder there are so many leaves! Anyway, that was a bust. Kinda gross and creepy too. We'll have to go over to the golf course and try. Stephen's going to ask for a whole week off work, PAID!!! He hasnt had one this year, and he totally deserves it, now we have to keep our fingers crossed that his boss, Lou, will be understanding. I love Lou, and i appreciate all he has done for us, epecially when Joe was born, but it will be nice when we move and stephen doesnt have an emotional obligation to his job. It looks all pretty and cloudy and Autumn-y outside, but its 75 degrees! Argh. Oh well, its supposed to cool off tomorrow. I'm making chili, so it better! Chili during warm weather just doesnt work. Hmmm, thanks for the tip Becca, just putting my thoughts out here instead of worrying about what people want to read is much more enjoyable!

Stephen has a garage band! Well technically it is a basement band. (He plays bass) He found a friend at church, Chris Larsen (he's a pilot) to play guitar and sing, and a drummer in the singles ward, Andrew....I dont know his last name. Andrew isnt here tonight but when he is it is LOUD. Its pretty fun to see these guys so excited. Scoot never sleeps when they're over, but Joe sleeps right through it. The sad part about all of this is it makes him miss his brother Mark even more, since they cant play together, so they're trying to work out some beast of a program that will let them have jam sessions live online. If anyone knows anything about such things, HELP!!!

So Jo was singing, here's Stephen Jr (for future reference, to distinguish him from his Dad, i will refer to him as Scoot, his nickname from my Dad. "Little Stephen" just gets old) He has always been fascinated with dancing, from the time he was 8 months old and used to sit in his packnplay in the living room with me, as i went through my Fred Astaire phase. He would just stare at the screen as long as they were dancing, in fact, he started dancing before he could walk! Sitting down! Maybe I'll have to post that video too....we'll see.....Anyway, his favorite song is "Steppin Time" from Mary Poppins, but heres "Me Ol' Bamboo" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Warning: its a little long!

WOW!!!!! I can upload videos!! This is so awesome, because my kids are at the stage where its hard to capture them in photos, but they're always doing such entertaining things!

Here is an example of Jojo's future musical career. With this kids lungs, we either have an opera singer or a rockstar on our hands.

All right, I'm still getting the hang of this thing. I heard blogs compared to journals the other day, and realized that since i am a lousy journal writer, but i am on the computer so often, i really should just use this like a journal! Might take me a while to get the hang of uploading pictures and things, so if this is rather dull for a while, bear with me! For those of you who may not know, we're moving to Utah so Stephen can attend BYU. Last night we tried to contract with student family housing, it was a disaster, they have this goofy system where they post the open apartments and you have to click them before the zillions of other desperate people watching the page get there.....needless to say, i missed the one i want, then got one we cant get into soon enough....sigh. So we're still homeless, waiting for more things to come available. Keep us in your prayers!

The Beginning of Blog

All righty, looks like its time to jump on the bandwagon. We finally got cellphones a few months ago so I guess a blog was inevitable, right? As families spread apart its really wonderful to find more ways to keep in touch. I love that I got Joe and Mark started on Instant Messenger, and introduced them and Mom and Dad to the wonderful world of Webcam!!! I just hope I can keep up with this thing....Jane and Becca, your blogs are awesome. Thanks for the inspiration.