Monday, June 29, 2009

Another laugh from Landon

Anyone who has spent any length of time at our home will recognize Landon's blue "fuzz". He has his 'soft blue blanket' on his bed which he pulls little balls of fuzz from to help him go to sleep. (Some have questioned how this blanket still exists with all the fluff that has come off of it...)

Last night, we were hiding from a monster :) under this blanket (Landon, Ellie and I) and Landon said something like this...

"Our family is hiding from the monster -- Mommy and Ellie and Landon and Daddy, err... (picking up a piece of fuzz) This will be Daddy (then speaking w/ a low voice) "I'm Daddy and I'm so strong from eating a broccoli!"

Blog Changes


Hello my blogging friends,
Here's some good and bad news on some blog changes for me.

A little bad news --
Since I mostly just like to write about my sweet little kiddos, and I'm not sure (but am often told) that it is a possible danger to put their pictures and stories out there for the world... I decided it's time to make this a private blog. So, you'll have to sign in w/ your gmail account to read posts here on my blog -- I know that's a pain -- I hope I don't lose you for it! :)

And now some great news--
With the programming genius of my husband, any of you who use feed readers like googlereader will still be able to get feeds from my blog, even when it goes private -- hooray! :)

If you'd like to keep on reading about our little family's day-to-day happinesses, please let me know and send me your email to set it up. (You can leave a comment here, or email me at debrajeanette@gmail.com)

And if you do use a feed reader and want to get my posts through it, please tell me and I will send you a link that will let you do that. It will be a unique link just for you that you can enter as a new subscription in place of debbie.broughs.net on whatever feed reader you use. (Way to go Jordan for figuring this out!)

So, in a few days when you go to my blog (via debbie.broughs.net), you'll see something like this -->

If you've forgotten to send me your email but still want to keep up with all of our fun, you'll still be able to w/ that comment box over on the left, or if you're already all set up, you can just click on the text in the middle which will take you to my blog. Over on the right will just be a list of recent posts.

So there it is. I hope you'll all keep reading even with the change -- it's so fun to share all of our happy days with you here!

--Debbie

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Playing around w/ Omnigraffle

Last time we went to the library, we got a game from the PERC center that had you match states w/ pictures and such. Since my geography skills are terrible (In a conversation w/ Jordan recently, he thought I was joking when I asked about Australia 'And where is that in relation to us?') I decided to work on learning where all the states are while I played with Landon. For some extra help, I even found a fun game here too. :) And now I know where they all are! In just the last couple of days I've heard things in conversations or in the news or on the radio about where things are happening, and I've actually been able to picture where they are talking about --feels pretty cool!

(This pic. is my new desktop background that I made for the next little while so I don't forget all I learned. :)

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Rice Cereal Adventures


Jordan: "Do you want to try some?"
Landon: "I'm Landon and I'm not Ellie and I can not eat that baby food."

You can't tell from the picture (fuzzy lens...) but that bowl is full to the brim w/ dry rice cereal flakes that I found Landon w/ on his way to Ellie.

Today, Landon saw me dumping out the extra of Ellie's cereal before I took her upstairs to put her down for a nap. I came down to find him fill, add water then dump the very last bit of the rice cereal into the sink (already filled w/ an entire box worth of bowlfuls of rice cereal.)

But he was proud of himself for being such a good little helper so I couldn't help but just laugh and show Jordan. :)

Some fun Birthday Pics

Jordan's cake requests -- 'a homemade cake, cut in a cool shape...maybe lemon... you know I love berries...' Here's what he got -->Don't worry -- he couldn't guess what it was either. Hmmm...not a clock...It's a unicycle! And a very delicious one too! :)

Winslow took a break from painting the house in Logan to come down and celebrate w/ us and even took us all out for a delicious dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant 'The China Lily'
A tired little girl, just resting w/ Daddy at the end of a happy day -



I didn't realize that our camera lens was super dirty, so these are all a bit fuzzy...

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Happy Birthday Jordan!

We had some great J-for-Jordan and L-for-Landon shaped pancakes this morning and more celebrating to come for a happy 31st Birthday! :)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

5 Months Old


Every milestone that Ellie reaches seems to sneak up on us and take us by surprise. You're rolling over already?!? You're finding your toes, trying to sit up, playing peek-a-boo, moving your little body around to get to what you want, grabbing at and playing w/ toys, trying out rice cereal, wanting to stand on your little feet... all these things already?
Ellie is just so happy to be a little baby that we have no eagerness or anxiousness for her to be reaching the next steps... but she is just growing up beautifully 'all by her big self!'

Things she loves --
cuddling close, making cute eyes and faces, sleeping w/ mommy & daddy, singing songs w/daddy, landon playing w/ her softly, tickles...

Things we're loving --
Most of all her total absolute sweetness. And her smiles and bright shining blue eyes and squeels of delight and oohs and ahs...

Sweet precious girl!





Monday, June 15, 2009

Orem Summerfest

We had our Friday date night with our family at the Orem Summerfest. This is so fun, because it has all of the great booths and things to see like Provo's Freedom days, without the crazy 4th of July HEAT.
Enjoying some fun food
"I want to pick one of those red ripe strawberries!"
"The Jeep says, 'Please climb all in me'"
(Looking over to the ferris wheel and other rides as soon as he sat down in the air-med helicopter) -- "I want to go in those!"

Melting Daddy's Heart

Melting Mommy's Heart


A few days ago, I was driving home with Landon and we had a conversation something like this --

Landon: I will not be a tiger or an elephant or a lion or a monkey or a different elephant
Mommy: You will not?
Landon: I will not be all those things.
Mommy: What will you be then?
Landon: Just your Landon.


Sunday, June 14, 2009

Service Auction Cards

I made this set of cards (and some strawberry freezer jam) for a service auction that our ward did for enrichment last week.



(I'm super excited too for the services that I bid for-- a knitted dress for Ellie by a friend in the ward who does amazing work, babysitting from another friend, and help on a sewing project from an expert seamstress -- Hooray!)

Logan Fun

Logan is one of my very favorite places. A few visits with my roommates to their grandparents home there when I was in college endeared me to the town. Knowing my love for it, Jordan took me on a day trip adventure there once when we were dating (complete w/ a soaking wet canoe ride...) And now I have even more fun memories of visiting there w/ April. Here's a couple of pics from our fun stay last week.



April made us feel right at home and had everything set up to greet us w/ such a friendly welcome. (She even had a great basketful of toys and books for Landon to play w/ in his room and lots of stuffed animals propped up on his bed -- and a sweet bright little yellow bed set up just for Ellie too :)



Watching the ducks at the Willow Park Zoo -- not the best picture, but it was a really fun little zoo. They had lots of birds -- ducks, pelicans, parrots, a peacock (In Landon's words "There was a turkey with lots and lots of feathers!!), an owl and eagle. etc. and some turtles, deer, a snake, some monkeys, and a bobcat. The one memorable thing for Landon though was the mosquito that I brushed away from him when we were looking at the bobcat. April got quite a workout lifting Landon up to the top of the fence at each spot to see the animals inside. :)


I got to take Landon up to see and walk around the Logan temple. He especially liked the fountains...


A visit to Logan doesn't feel complete without a trip to my favorite restaurant, the Bluebird.


Since I didn't have work around the house and such that needed to be done, I got to relax and read during Landon and Ellie's nap time! I hadn't read this in a few years since it first came out, so I was happy to read it again. (And, it was so fun to read that I'm reading it again now w/ Jordan! :)


Yoga


I've been going to our ward's Yoga class for the last little while on Saturday mornings -- super fun. We have a couple of girls who teach the class for us and do a stellar job. It's a great, tough workout, and I always leave feeling so refreshed and rejuvenated and excited about exercising and eating healthy foods. Hooray!

Friday, June 12, 2009

What we've been up to

Jordan to San Francisco for a day-- to the google developers conference to help out w/ an Animoto booth (he left early that morning and was back around midnight that night!) And, he got a pretty cool phone just for attending.

Fathers and sons campout -- Jordan and Landon had a fun time playing by the fire, sleeping in a tent, and playing w/ flashlights while Mommy and Ellie had some fun girl time at home.

Jordan to New York and the rest of us to Logan -- Jordan spent a week out in New York and had fun getting to see everybody at Animoto again and spend some time working together in person w/ the other guys. April was a HUGE help to me all week in playing with and taking care of Landon and Ellie.

A new dryer! Our dryer has been clinking and squeeking and creaking like crazy since we moved in (really, really crazy sounds!) and almost always had to be run twice to dry a load. Then, it started to catch our clothes and so the laundry would come out w/ burn marks and/or holes... so we finally found a good craigslist deal and got a new dryer!
(Unfortunately, today I pulled out the clothes to find big blue spots all over everything and a completely blue dryer drum from a crayon that had gotten run with the load...)

Working in the yard -- having fun this year getting to do a little more fine tuning type of work now that lots of the overgrowth is taken out and we've planted the trees we want and such. (Jordan did get to take down an aspen though -- he's joked about wanting to plant a new tree each year just because it's so fun to get to pull them down...) Our garden is starting to grow too which is so fun to see. (Tomatoes, carrots, squash & zucchini, chard, potatoes, and lettuce) And, our peach tree has LOTS of peaches on it too. :)

Sleep -- Jordan took Ellie for a night and part of another this week to let me sleep and it made such a huge, huge difference. I had so much more patience and fun even and felt like I could tackle all of those projects that have been waiting for just a little more energy!

Tumbling class - We put Landon in a 'Tumbling Tots' class hoping it'd be a good way to give him some direction for all of his energy. He has fun running and jumping and climbing and diving, but it's a bit of a work out for me to try and keep him w/ the rest of the class (5 sweet little girls!)




Monday, June 1, 2009

Flowers, flowers, everywhere!


Picked by my sweetheart from our yard yesterday :)