The kids got letters for their names to paint. Brent wanted to do it with all of the cousins.
Luckily Natalie is crafty and had supplies.
Ava my cute little princess.
We played with Em one day and it is always fun to see her.
We also played with the Grooms:
The girls in my family went to lunch at Cheesecake Factory. I can't even remember the last time we did this.
I'm a proud aunt because most of the pictures in my phone from these few days when Laura was in town are of Emma.
We had fun!
Emma fell asleep in my lap.
More Emma pics...
Saying goodbye to cousins is always sad!
A video of Coen singing "Picture a Christmas" because he just kept singing it for a month.
Our flight back to Eugene was really early in the morning.
We made it back and saw that Santa had left a few presents at our house!
Elder Cook came to speak at our church so Brent and I got there early and got very close seats. It was awesome! He promised us that if we would do the new gospel study at home our families would be protected.
Playdates
Coen was proud of these snowmen at school.
Coen spelled his name (backward) in the tub!
Mommy time on Friday- he laid by me as I took a nap.
More playdate fun!
We drove to Portland to go through the temple with my secretary in Primary. Driving up you can see Mount Hood (see it in the left of this picture?) Ava is really fascinated and obsessed with volcanoes right now.
The group at the temple.
We were able to both go, thanks to my mom's friend Heather babysitting our kids.
Coen really wishes he could join in Ava's dance class.
We started sending Coen to school on Wednesdays this semester to help with busy season. Coen's school does chapel time on Wednesday, so when I picked him up, he was so happy and singing a bible song. Here's a video. He's singing "B-I-B-L-E, that's the book for me!"
Coen and I went to visit Ava at lunch. The night before she was so excited and told Brent, "guess what, mom is coming to my school tomorrow!" After school when I asked Ava if she liked having visitors at lunch, she said, "yeah, but I was kind of embarrassed at first." Haha, she is 5 going on 14.
We had our institute teacher and his family over for dinner and games.
It's kind of crazy to be done with church at 11am! Here are my cuties one Sunday:
Coen was so excited to play at the park during Ava's dance class. It's usually way too cold or rainy but I braved the 44 degrees and we played out there.
This video cracks me up because it shows how much Ava likes to do her own thing.
Coen, proud of his puzzles. Still one of his favorite activities.
Brent has class late two nights a week and then another night we have institute and the other night he has an elder's quorum meeting. So we don't eat dinner with him too much this semester and the kids really miss him. I thought this was sweet- Ava set out a place for Brent along with a note.
Ava was really excited to show me she learned how to do the black monkey bars at school. She is so tiny, she has to jump up to the first one- I'm not sure how she can do it, but she does!
My sweet boy. I am loving this age. He is so much fun and talking so much, but also still so little. He likes to sit in my lap and give me hugs and kisses.
Something funny is he thinks the lyrics to the song "Alone" go, "how do I get you a lar?" instead of "how do I get you alone?" We keep joking about what a lar is.
Early one Saturday morning, Ava wanted to do everyone's hair.
When I was doing my makeup, Coen asked to have eyeshadow on his eyes. I told him I didn't have time and he said "but I want rainbow eyeballs!"
We had our friends over and when Coen's little friend came down without her shirt on between costume changes, Coen looked at her and then said "you're really naked."
I often work for a bit after I get Coen from preschool and before we get Ava. I usually put on PBS kids and he watches for an hour. He is usually really good, but often, he calls to me because he needs things. This particular day he was yelling for me. I came down the stairs to see what he needed and he said "look what I can do!" with the little tupperware balancing on his knee. Hahaha.
Ava decided it would be fun to pretend they were at the beach. Coen was totally on board with it and they pretended to be jumping off a diving board.
We went to a social evening with graduate student families.
We had an unusually warm day with sun that felt heavenly. We met some friends at the park and enjoyed the warmth.
