My mom came to visit : )

What's a visit without funny pictures? He he.
My mom came out a week ago to Utah. She first stayed with her sister, Jean, for 5 days until Saturday when my cousin, Ryan, got married. Congratulations! Then we picked her up on Saturday from Jean's house in Layton and took her back to Logan with us. She leaves on Thursday so we've got a few more fun days ahead of us. She's been a lot of fun and makes me wish that my family lived closer to ME. I'm thankful she's able to come out and visit and to see the kids. She's a great Grandma too. Oh, and she loves to treat us to Cafe Rio! ha ha. I love you mom, thanks for coming!

So the for the life of me, I can't get a picture of Charlotte. 1. She refuses and 2. Her eyes are always closed because the stinkin' flash is so bright. So the bottle drinking up at the top is the best I could do. That's why right now, there are more pictures of me and Jack!

More New Years photos

Charlotte's progress.

Well, if you can believe it, Charlotte is making even MORE progress since the last walking video. The other day she walked from our living room into her bedroom. She just loves to walk and I'm so proud of her. We're so grateful for her amazing determination to keep on trying even if she falls down all the time. You should see her poor knees. I know that some parents aren't so lucky or still struggle with their kids but they will succeed. Just keep up the faith. Charlotte certainly is evidence of that.

I've got some pictures but blogger isn't able to do it. I'll add them later if I can. But I hope you enjoy watching Charlotte.

Jack

Not the most exciting video but Jack loves to try and bounce in the exersaucer. Doesn't really give much bounce but he sure tries in it!!!

New Years.

Jason and Jack

Melodie Wyatt and Jen Tippets holding Jason Wyatt.

Doug and Melodie. Jack and Jason are on the floor (2 days apart) and Kya Tippets in the background.

Gary and Brennon Tippets

For New Years, we traveled down to Orem to stay and celebrate the New Year with our friends the Tippets. We stayed over night in their house and we had fun just relaxing, eating, playing a game, watching t.v., eating, etc. Our friends, the Wyatts, came the next day to hang out. The men all went to see Valkyrie and the ladies stayed home, chatted, played with the kids, etc. Wade says to go see Valkyrie. I'm glad he was able to get out and enjoy the day. But yeah, it was nice to just get away for a day to hang out with our friends and to celebrate the new year. Thanks for letting us come and visit!

Charlotte and her love of books.

Charlotte has this thing for books. She loves to sit in her high chair and to read and read and read. She spends about an hour each time reading all of her books that we give her. Hopefully we can help Jack have a love for books too.

Olivia and cooking

Olivia gave me this yummy cookie mix for Christmas. She has helped me cook so many things while she was with us and so I just had to have her help me with the cookies too. Everyone ate them and loved them!! Thanks Olivia!! Maybe you should visit more often so we can cook more.

Gingerbread houses...sort of

Working hard on our gingerbread houses even though it was the day after Christmas. ha ha

Charlotte tried to drink the royal icing.

Decided eating it was easier.

My favorite "ginger bread house"...Becky's sleeping person in the sleeping bag. ha ha

The results...um, maybe next year we will do it again and do better....or maybe we just shouldn't.

Christmas Day....Warning: LONG POST

CHRISTMAS 2008

The Parkin kids! Olivia, Davis and Chandler.

Um, so is this where Chandler gets his eyebrow raising photo poses?

What's Christmas without the official ugly Christmas pictures?

Charlotte got this from us for Christmas. She loves putting everything in the nooks and crannies that this kitchen has to offer! Hours of fun for her.

The other main present she got was this doll set. 30 pieces for 35 dollars! We bought this and the kitchen for a great deal before her birthday...split the doll set between birthday and Christmas too. But she doesn't know the difference. She just loves it.

She looks so dang cute with this expression on her face.

Jack's blanket I made had extra material left over. I just made a scarf for Charlotte.

My friend, Kendra, made a Taggy blanket for her baby for Christmas and she inspired me to do the same! I had all the supplies at home too so it didn't cost anything! I'm so domestic! lol.

We didn't even realize there was a bow on the floor when we took this picture but it still makes Jack look cute.

Cuddles from Charlotte.

Wade gave me a tripod as a gift to me to use for our camera because I want to get better at taking photos and also this wonderful gift. This is me sitting on the edge of Cape Reinga. This is where the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean meet. It's an incredible place. This is a spiritual place for the Maori too. If I write about it, I'm sure I'm going to get my facts wrong so I'll leave that to Crystal or Wade to comment on.

I made this gift for Wade (along with a blanket). It is the same type of process/construction as I did with Jack and Charlotte's names in their rooms. But instead of letters, I put pictures on it. All taken by me (although the one of Jack was printed wrong...I didn't cut his head off! I'll replace it with a better photo print) and of course the handprints/footprints were hard to do. Charlotte enjoyed squishing her hands in the paint and printing a baby's foot by yourself is hard too. But overall, I love it...even with all the flaws.

Better look at the Taggy blanket I made Jack.

Charlotte's blanket that I made.

Jack's blanket that I made.

Chandler with his new football. Had to add this photo cause his pose was so cute!

Chandler had a serious infection this year. It is life threatening and so sore and painful. It's called MRSA (I think...pronounced mersa). He got this magna-doodle for Christmas and then all of a sudden he tells us, I hate MRSA...and shows us what he had written. Although so sad he went through it, it was so dang funny! Chandler says the cutest things...I'll have to tell you more about what he said later.

I wanted a really nice table setting for the Christmas dinner. I don't have a lot of table cloths but thought for the spur of the moment setting it came out pretty good.

I finally broke open our fine china! It was awesome.

Christmas dinner was dang good. We had ham, broccoli salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, funeral potatoes, green bean casserole, nice lettuce salad, stuffing and homemade rolls. For dessert we had razzleberry pie and icecream and cheesecake! Wade made most of the dinner. I only made the broccoli salad and rolls. I kept trying to help and make more but Wade kept telling me it was all under control!

Wade did such a great job for dinner. He is such a fantastic cook. Thank you, Wade!

We had a wonderful Christmas. We are so glad we had family around to celebrate it as well. Even though we didn't have a lot of money to spend on each other, the gifts Wade and I gave each other were the best ever. And I will always remember how I felt. I think from now on we will put an emphasis on homemade gifts for each other and the kids because they really do come from the heart.