Happy Birthday Erik!

First off some silly around the house shots. The other day I made putting the kids laundry away into a fun ride and exercise for me. I loaded them into the laundry basket and their laundry and zoomed them into their rooms.

Erik loved it! Jillian was happy, but I think a little nervous about my crazy driving-she's holding on pretty tight here :)

Erik is 4 years old now!! 

Wow, we can't believe we have a 4yr old son. Time flies when your having fun :)

 This years theme:  SPIDERMAN!

 Grandpa and KK got him a Spiderman dress up costume.

 He wore this to bed and almost all the following day. I insisted on him changing before we went to the store-I know, such a mean mom ;)

 Spiderman PJ's from Grandma Ava and Papa-which Erik HAD to try on right after opening, this is the first time I've seen Erik wear the same pj's several nights in a row.

 Puzzles, swords, a disc gun and new airplanes were his other loot.

 We got him a basket ball game that we think is a little over his head since mom and dad can't successfully get the ball launched into the basket-but Erik has found other ways to enjoy this toy, thankfully

 Erik took the biggest breath before blowing these candles out, I should have recorded it. Apparently blowing 4 candles out takes a lot of work. :)

 And to top the night off, my brother gave Jillian her first taste of Sherbet. She LOVED it of course. But will she eat her fruit and veggie baby food? NO, thanks Uncle Dave!

Happy Birthday to our sweet Erik! He's had some nice big brother moments lately: today he washed Jillian's face after she was done eating, he helped clean her at bath time and, as always, makes her laugh by being silly. We all love Erik!

New House

So here's a short photo tour of our new house.

First Erik's room.

 We really like to read bedtime stories on his window seat. And it's so nice that he has his own closet twice the size of the closet he and Jillian used to share. What to do with all that space...

Then the Kitchen:

 the before                           the after

Can you see the difference in the kitchen pictures? New handles! This was our first home improvement to change the handles on the cupboards and drawers. It was hard work and got pretty frustrating.

Next

The hallway to our master bedroom(on the right)

The FAMILY ROOM oh how I've been wanting 2 living spaces and I'm so glad we have this in our house. 

The living room. New couches, we love them!

 A view from our front door seeing the living room and dining room. 

 We put the Christmas tree up on Black Friday 

 Erik LOVED helping decorate and has lots of fun playing with our extra lights, he'll take them to different rooms and plug them in, yeah not the best toy for a kid. He's got lights around his window in his room. We are getting into the Christmas spirit!

So that's our house! We've been here one month now and love it! We're almost done unpacking and getting the yard ready for winter. It's fun to be a home owner!

Halloween Festivities

First things first, for Halloween you've got to pick out pumpkins. 

These are the 2 we chose. We had a FHE planned with some friends to carve the pumpkins, but since Erik was itching to decorate them, we made paper faces first.

This was a great FHE with our friends, we started with a Doughnut eating contest! Awesome!

We split the crowd up into 3 heats, kids, dads and moms.

 The kids. 

Erik wasn't sure he wanted to compete at first but then he caught a whiff of that sugary doughnut and dug right in.

 Dad's showing the kids how it's really done, with no hands.

 And me in the mom competition. I didn't eat it the fastest, but I sure enjoyed the krispy kreme.

Erik's got excellent Sunbeam teachers. A couple weeks ago he got "reverent glasses" 

His teacher said they walked reverently around the church w/their glasses on. We had some fun with these.

 I think we all look great in the reverent glasses. :)

The last part of October was very busy, packing, getting paperwork ready to close on the house, getting costumes ready for Halloween, buying appliances and coordinating the move-whew, can't believe we got it all done!

 We were so busy we almost packed Jillian up in a box too.

Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen love sending Erik a Halloween card, but this year Jillian got one too!

 They BOTH loved the cards! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen!

Now on to the costumes!

 Here's Pebbles Flinstone

 And a "scary skeleton" Well actually he's just sad about something-I don't remember what.

He really went as a Red Power Ranger. Here's the sleepy ranger in the car on the way to my parent's ward Trunk-o-treat

 The whole Flinstone Family!

 Power Ranger and cousin Bumble Bee

 At OUR ward's Trunk-o-treat

They set up this great backdrop and took pictures of each family's costumes, what a great idea!

 Pebbles enjoying some candy.

 Erik, Paul and my mom handing out candy. Erik enjoyed giving hand fulls of candy to each kid-he's so generous.

 On Halloween night we went trick-or-treating around our new neighborhood. We had fun, but got cold. I remembered to get this Pumpkin picture just before bedtime, what cute pumpkins huh

 These pictures are post move pic's. Some rice split in the box it was packed in, I wasn't sure what to do with it, but Erik knew just what to do! Out came his dump truck and front loader and he was in heaven. And there was rice all over the floor-good times.

 Yesterday we decided to start on some yard work. Paul and Erik used our new rake to rake up some leaves in our yard. Erik was a BIG help, he even dragged this bag of leaves to the garbage all by himself!

Oh that tree next to Erik we lovingly call it our Christmas tree, it's huge! We're considering having a tree lighting ceremony for it in December.
More pictures are coming of the new house, right now we're still unpacking and I need to find the charger for our camera-I wonder what box that'll be in...

Good News

Well we've been busy getting things together to buy a house and it looks like we'll be closing on our loan this week!! So by next Sunday we'll be living in 

THIS HOUSE!

 We took these pictures when the offer was accepted on our house, we can't wait to move in! When we do, we'll post more pictures of the interior.

 This is a 6 month old picture of Jillian. I got her this shirt for the cold autumn weather, looks so cute on her, especially with that ring of drool down her front. :)

 And here's a picture of Erik at 3yrs 10months, in his favorite Spider Man shirt.

 In other news Erik can now do head/hand stands, at least on our couch. What's funny is when I took this picture, my camera oriented it with Erik's head up-since it looks for faces in the image, but technology was wrong, that face was supposed to be up-so-down(that's how Erik used to say "up side down")

 Getting ready for Halloween! We made paper pumpkins the other night. Erik made this blue one all by himself-cut the pieces and taped it himself! I was way impressed. I did help him with the "stem" and the moon.

 Our little family of pumpkins. We plan to carve pumpkins with some friends tomorrow night, we'll post pictures of those later.

 This was Jillian's first time in the bath with Erik and she LOVED it! Even when he splashed her, she just laughed. She is quite the fish, well both our kids are. We went swimming with my mom on Friday night and Erik was on his own with a kick board, just kicking away and enjoying the freedom of going his own way and not holding on to us. Then Jillian was dog paddling! I was shocked! My mom held her tummy to the water and Jillian started splashing and kicking-she was happy in the pool for an hour. I'm so glad our kids like to swim as much as I do :)