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!