{ random / funny pictures never posted }

I've been going through all of our pictures and trying to organize them and came across a bunch of random and funny ones that should have been posted but never were. Some of these are from a long time ago....some are pretty recent.

We went for a walk to the park and took Orva out of the stroller to look at the ducks. We parked the stroller on the grass and a few minutes later I saw this out of the corner of my eye. Brad went on a rescue mission to retrieve it and discovered that the bottom of that pond is extremely slippery and the water smells extremely nasty. We provided some good entertainment for the many on-lookers present.



I don't remember anything about these picture. I do remember those cute cheeks, though.




There was some water left in the tub at my mom's house. The bath rug was hanging over the edge and Orva leaned over to try to play in the water and fell in...taking the rug with her. She was less than thrilled about the situation.



Unfortunately, this is Ford and not Orva. He was born early and we only had one boy blanket. We had to save that for public appearances, so at home, he was wrapped in pink.



Ford used to hold his pabby like this all the time. It was actually really nice - he kept it in very well.



Orva was sick and teething and miserable. These pictures were all taken on the same day. I promise I did let her nap in her bed that day, too.





Orva loved (still does, actually) putting on Ford's pants.



And here's my mini Brad...she looks EXACTLY like him in this picture.



Orva went through a stage where she LOVED snaps or buttons. She would empty the drawer with all of Ford's onesies and un-snap every one. Yes, I snap them (just the middle one) when I fold them. That drawer was her heaven for a long time.



Ford used to put his hand on the back of his head while he slept...for some reason it was always so funny to me.



Thank you to Addie who taught Orva how to dress up. She thought she was pretty stylish in this get-up.



Ford got a hold of a cupcake at a party we went to. He ALMOST got that hand in his mouth, but not quite.





"Shaving" with mom's lotion.



Playing "peepo".



Grandma Gibb gave these shoes to her and they weren't taken off for many days. We're experiencing a similar situation with a fancy pink dancing dress right now.




Ford slept in the swing for a few months...until he started to do this.



This was right after Ford was born...




His chunky thighs do nothing to keep his pants on...he scoots right out of them all the time.



I heard him hollering and went in to find this. Orva was nowhere around, so this was self inflicted.




We didn't know that Orva could open her closet doors...but apparently she can. She went to bed with no hat, and it was put away in the closet.



This was when I was barely pregnant with Ford and so, so sick. I walked in at the end of her nap and was very alarmed to see a nakey baby. I thought, "Oh no. Now is NOT the time to be entering the stage where she takes her diaper off by herself." Upon further investigation, I found the diaper in her bed and it had clearly never been put on (the tabs were still perfectly stuck down). I, in my sick and pregnant state, had changed her diaper and not put the new one on. I felt pretty foolish, but was actually relieved that it had been my mistake and not her learning how to take her diaper off.

* She had no clothes on because at that point, it was warm enough to be in just a diaper and putting clothes on was just too much work. Apparently, just putting the diaper on was too much work. *




I guess this was better than trying to drink Yankee's water (which is what Ford does).



She loved to lounge...this is how she always sat when she was in the cart or the stroller.

{ a big stink }

Orva's comment when she saw this was, "Baby Sferd did big stink!"



Yes, dear. He did indeed.

{ greener eating: redo }

So sorry to everyone who tried to check out Greener Eating only to find that my link didn't work. I fixed it in the last post, and here it is again:

Greener Eating

However, both the link in this post and the last are still only working half the time (no idea why), so if neither work for you, the site is just www.greenereating.com .

Enjoy!

* Thanks for the heads up, Erica!

{ greener eating }

I was looking at how out-dated my blog header and side-bar are and realized I'd never added a link to this site. My sisters, mom, and I have a food blog that we post all of our recipes on. It's nothing fancy, but very practical. It's all of the recipes we actually eat, day to day. Everything on there is vegan (no dairy, no meat) but even if you're not vegan or vegetarian the recipes are really good and very healthy. Most recipes are very low in fat or fat free.

Anyway - here it is:

Greener Eating

* You'll notice I post even less frequently on that blog than I do on this one...thank heavens for my sisters and mom who keep it up and running!

{ i forgot }

I was going to post this story about Orva last week with her update and forgot:

Last week was Testimony meeting in our ward and Orva was sitting on Brad's lap just playing, as usual. Apparently she was paying attention to all the people getting up to bear their testimonies, because all of a sudden she hopped off his lap and said, "I go say prayer now" and walked right up the aisle. She made it all the way to the stairs going up to the podium before Brad got to her. It was very alarming, and very funny.

I am of the opinion that children should not get up to bear their testimonies until they can do it by themselves, so she's got a ways to go. Had she made it up there, she would have said a prayer (that's what she thought everybody was doing - she doesn't know about testimonies yet), and it would have gone something like this:

"Heavenly Father, bless this day, and bless this home, and bless this Woody, and Buzz, and other-one-buzz, and bless this Jackson, and thank you Addie, and thank you Addie's house..." and on and on and on and on. She usually keeps praying half-way through our meals, about everything in sight. And she has the typical up-and-down praying inflection down perfectly. It's great.

Also to add to Ford's update, he's now pulling himself to standing and very pleased with himself about it. He also sounds exactly like Gus-Gus from Cinderella when he talks. It's hysterical.

And now, a couple videos just for fun (the Happy Birthday one is from a few months ago):

{ update: ford }

- 10 months old and very active

- Very mobile...but refuses to crawl. He does a very fast army crawl, pulls himself up to his knees (close to pulling up to standing), loves to scoot/crawl to a cabinet and then pull himself up and stay there and play on his knees.

- Thinks he's skinnier than he is and tries to fit in little tiny places and gets stuck. He often tries to retrieve a pabby or a toy that has gone under the couch or is in the back of a cabinet and then hollers loudly when he gets wedged. I usually laugh and take a picture before rescuing him.

- Growls all the time. Very loudly. During church.

- Loves to show off his tricks while he's eating. It makes for a wild time, trying to get spoonfuls of food in amongst all the clapping and growling and doing "so big!" and head ducking (being shy). It is very cute, though.

- Very wild dancer. He just rocks back and forth, but quite vigorously. He, of course, loves to dance while I'm trying to feed him and it shakes the whole chair. He'll dance any time he feels like showing off, but if he hears music, he'll stop mid-cry and start dancing.

- Loves Orva and follows her around all day. She spends her life either freaking out and melting down about it, or being smart and putting all of her things up on the table. It's either one or the other - never a nice in between of sharing.

- Definitely a momma's boy and very snuggly. I love it. He's very content and happy most of the time and when he does want to be held, I can just put him in our hiking backpack we have and he's thrilled to be packed around in that while I cook/clean/etc.

- Horrible sleeper - still wakes up at least once or twice a night just because (he's not hungry - I never have to feed him until morning). When he's sick at all, it's more like every hour all night long. Miserable. During his naps, he spends about an hour and a half playing, then twenty minutes crying, then thirty minutes sleeping. Thankfully, he's pretty cheerful despite his lack of sleep. His mother is not.

- So squishy and cute, but thinning out some. This is right when Orva started to thin out, too. I'm going to miss his squishiness.

- Loves the bath. He spent the first six months of his life absolutely hating it, but now he thinks it's great. We have this one little round guy that is a bath toy and he just loves it. He goes nuts over it every night (lots of growling and yelling and clapping and frantic waving of arms when he sees it). It gets dangerous, though, because he is perfectly willing to drown himself to get to the little guy. It's funny - we have a blue one and a yellow one that are exactly the same. He only likes the blue. Orva tries to switch it out for the yellow one and he'll have none of it.

- Grabs at things and lunges for things way more than Orva ever did. He has to have everything he sees. I almost drop him all the time because he tries to leap for things.

- Happily wanders all over our house. Our new house is much bigger than our old house so he gets lost all the time.

- Knows where all the cords are in our house and gets tangled in them daily, no matter how much I try to keep them safely tucked away.

- Love, love, loves his pabby. When I nurse him in bed in the mornings, I always have his pabby right there and without fail, he reaches for it behind his head and grabs it and puts it in his mouth. He'll take that over nursing any day. If he has two, he'll sit there and just rotate back and forth - putting one in, then spitting it out and putting the next one in.

And now, for some pictures of my squishy beast:











P.S. Coming soon: update on our house. Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath. You know how I am with blogging.

{ update: orva }

- 2 1/2 and getting cuter all the time

- Loves all things Toy Story - has a complete obsession with Woody, Jessie, Buzz, Other-One-Buzz (referring to the imposter Buzz in Toy Story 2), and Bullseye. They get prayed for daily.

- Loves Mary Poppins - we sing lots of songs about "Meery Poppims", "Burp", and "the babies" (Michael and Jane)

- Loves coloring - I print off pictures for her using various clip-art and she keeps a drawer full of all "mine pictures". I used to have to draw pictures for her, but it was getting difficult to draw all of her requests (Mary Poppins! Buzz! Horse! Owl! Again! More! A baby one!). She especially loves watching her pictures come out of the printer - "Here it comes! Off we go!"

- Talks nonstop. Really. No idea where she gets it from.

- Some of my favorite things she says - "mmm...delicious!", "that will be fun", "hmm...I can't find it", "no thanks, mommy", "I'll be right back" (I realize that none of these sayings seem particularly cute, but when she says them in her little tiny voice they're all pretty fabulous)

- Sings all the time...her favorites are "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home", "I Am a Child of God", "ABC". She knows all the words to them and although she doesn't always sing them in tune, she does have a very special singing voice she uses.

- Loves Ford, but he also torments her. He chases after her in his army crawl and she runs away screaming. The other day I heard her yelling and found her in the corner of my closet with Ford right there at her feet. She was saying, "No baby guy! Don't hurt me, baby guy! Don't hurt me!"

- In our new house we hear planes from the air force base fly overhead all the time. I've had to explain to her that they're nice airplanes, they won't get her, they're too far away, they're up in the sky, she can't hold them, etc. We have the same conversation every time she hears one (several times a day).

- Loves animals and always tells me what they say. Her pigs say a funny, throaty "honk" instead of "oink". Her butterflies say "Oui, Oui, Oui" (thank you, Fancy Nancy). Her donkeys say "Yee-haw!"

- Loves her jammies. We gave her some on Christmas Eve and since then that's all she wants to wear. Really - we wear jammies to the library, the store, everywhere but church. We've had to buy more so that I can keep up with the laundry. When we bought the new ones,she carried them around the store and told everyone they were her new jammies, but she couldn't wear them yet - "not until we get home!" When we had to give them to the checker, she laid down on the floor and sobbed. If I'm not careful, she'll pull them out of the dirty laundry (either her's or Ford's) and put them on. When I have to wash them, she says to herself, "You're okay. They be clean in a minute." (Side-note: when we go out, I put a clip in her hair and put shoes on and everything, hoping that people will know I do take care of her and keep her clean and clothed...she just prefers jammies and I'm not willing to fight her on it. But now I wonder if that's worse - if now people think I actually think her jammies are outfits. Oh well.)

- Loves her babies, and loves to put them in their little chairs. They don't stay on by themselves so I finally used rubberbands to secure them - hence the "hostage" situation (see picture below)

- If Ford is crying, she says, "Shh, shh, shhhh...you're okay. Mommy be right back."

- Loves to build towers...out of anything! Dishes/cups/pans, blocks, duplos, shoes, etc.

- Fractured her collarbone (fell off a chair in our kitchen...not a big fall, just landed wrong) about a month ago. We spent a lot of time laying low and watching movies, but she (thankfully) was a really good sport and healed pretty fast. She did not like her "big band-aid" and kept asking me, "where are mine other-one ningers (fingers)?" Even though she's better, she still likes to tell people about it. "I hurt mine shoulder. Don't like it coctors (doctors). Don't want to lay on table. Don't want it picture of mine arms. We be almost done." Needless to say, the doctors experience was pretty traumatic.

- Loves her daddy - spends her days saying, "Where's daddy? He come right back?"

And now (if you made it this far...), some pictures: