Mila's Daydreams

I saw this on designmom today -- Mila's Daydreams

While her baby naps, this mom dresses up the scene around her - so creative. Here's one below, but it was so hard to choose (rockstar? elephant rider? butterfly, 50 foot baby?)

UP!

Happy Landon

Landon is happy when he can...

Climb, run, twist, play, ride his bike, jump or dance

Listen to stories, play pretend

Read books, watch his favorite movies

Draw, color, paint, cut and glue

Learn new things, talk about things

Be a helper, protecter, obeyer

Happy Ellie

Here is Ellie with all the crucial ingredients for a happy girl --> soft baby blanket ("baby"), Landon's Buster("Bwoof-oof"), pacifier close by ("digga"), and milk ("baba").

Ellie was sick for a couple of days so today we were just loving to see our baby girl happy and cheerful again. And she had her first day in nursery!

New York City Fun

We were welcomed home last night with sporadic Pioneer Day fireworks all the way home from the airport. We had a great trip - Jordan loving to spend time with his Animoto friends and getting some good work done while I played with the kids at the hotel and nearby attractions. :)

About his new Animoto shirt for the family party-- "This is my new favorite shirt! My Toy Story shirt and my robot shirt are not my favorite shirts anymore -- this is my favorite, favorite shirt!!! ...will you take our picture?"

A New York City Day

Today I...

Woke up to a skyscraper sunset

Had a Dunkin Donuts party and acrobatics show (courtesy of Landon Brough) and general run around and play time at a dock area on the Hudson River.

Played pretend.

Started reading The Ladies Auxiliary during naptime.

Took Landon and Ellie on a huge long New York City adventure -->

A subway ride across the Hudson

A bus stop wait watching the dozen cranes working at the World Trade Center site

A long bus ride through Manhattan with lots of kind people and a kind businessman making faces and playing tricks to entertain Landon and Ellie

A trip to the Central Park Zoo in the crazy, crazy heat!

A 'sticky-icky-chicky' popsicle break

Watching a street performer humpty dumpty puppet show

A walk to and trip through the FAO Schwarz toy store complete with some dancing around on the 'big piano' with Landon and Ellie

Phewph! Tired kids!

Then...

A Taxi ride down to meet Jordan near Animoto after work

A Subway ride to Hoboken

A fun (late) dinner at Johnny Rockets - a nice familiar spot from our last Hoboken stay

A lightrail ride back to the hotel

And Phewph again - kids to bed!

A long happy adventurous day. Landon was amazing in obeying and being a trouper just walking and walking through the crazy heat! Seems unbelievable that I could take these two out for such an adventure. Tomorrow's schedule is relaxing and recuperating though. :)

(From I LEGO N.Y.)

Preschool Prep

I've been thinking more and more about starting to teach Landon real preschool. I had some time last night, so I worked on some lesson plans (mostly just for practice and to really organize how I would do things -- the outline from everything preschool was super helpful) and then did a trial run this morning which turned out to be really fun. Today our theme was New York City. (Here's the lesson plan)

Ellie played along pretty well while we made New York City skyscraper pictures out of rectangles, counted the levels of skyscrapers and ordered them shortest to tallest, danced to "Boy from New York City", practiced writing N's, had circle time, center time, snack time... a happy preschool time morning :)

Sillyness in the news today :)

Such a funny story on KSL today of these 2 BYU students and their motorized couch.

Reminds me of my Alta days - looking out our back window and watching people ride around the parking lot on a couch-towed-by-truck. I'm sure this happened at least a few times with that huge parking lot back there.

More home-selling fun

A map overlay from google analytics for all the people who've looked at our site for our home so far:

We also had one person from Munich, Germany check it out via Facebook. Probably not our most promising lead... :)

Creative Advertising

Things have been slow in our home-selling, so we've been brainstorming and trying new things to get more exposure for it.

Yesterday and today we put up a targeted Facebook ad. (We put in the parameters of who we wanted to advertise to which narrowed it down to a group of about 8,000 that might see our ad over in there facebook sidebar).

In these 2 days, we had 73,224 views of our little ad and 54 visits to our site from there. (Our high per day before was 13 which was double the next highest day of 6.) Of course, it may be that they were just curious and none of those 54 people are actually looking to buy a home, but it was a pretty fun experiment still!

I don't actually use facebook (and I'm sure I would probably never click on an ad from there...) but it seems like a pretty neat way to advertise to a specific audience. And it was nice to be trying something else to feel like we're making progress in our efforts to sell our home :)

Dancing

This week at the library we had the best storytime I've been to (and I really love storytime!) The storyteller danced out an African folk-tale as she told the story, stopping throughout to turn on some music and let the kids recreate (through dance) what had just happened - an elephant stomping through the forest and trumpeting his trunk, a cheetah racing around and creating a whirlwind, a turtle tickling himself out of the belly of a giant python... It was just so fun and energetic and helped me remember how much I really love dance. So the last few days, we've had some dancing time (usually as part of our playing pretend, like the storyteller did) and it's just been so fun. Landon loves to race around and Ellie loves to jump and I'm happy for the quick little energy boost of exercise.

4th of July Fun

With Independence Day on a Sunday this year, we ended up having a fun 3-day weekend full of celebrating.

Fuzzy pic of cute early-morning Ellie with her mommy-made 4th of July shirt :)

A visit with Jenny from Arizona

Provo's downtown arts festival

Barbecue with Grandma & Grandpa and Parker & family (so fun to have little kids running around with Landon and Ellie!)

Landon and Breezy throwing pops over the backyard fence

A Sunday visit from Grammi & Grandpa and April and Heather

Some morning time adventures biking and rollerblading

Balloon Festival (though the balloons didn't launch due to the wind...)

Macey's french toast breakfast

The grand parade

Fireworks in front of the driveway

And a bit of the big firework show seen through the tree from our bedroom window while Ellie sweetly slept.

A happy time with lots of family and events. :)

Growing up!

I got a phone call today from a little voice with a "Can Landon play?" and Landon got to go play at the Leavitt's house - in his words "I got to play with Joseph and Dallin with no grown ups!!" (meaning mommy or daddy didn't come along for the play-date). Such a growing-up little boy!

And just funny - when I asked Landon about what he did he said they played trains...but later at dinner he started talking about another story of their playtime - something about stairs and beds and "I could fly!!!"

:)

Landon loves to be good, obey and protect our family from mean guys :)

Outside playing with "Hammery" (Landon's name for his water bottle toy), and his table slide in the background :)

A few nights ago while we were reading scriptures, Landon asked for a toy. "If I'm just sitting I will wiggle and wiggle, but if I have a toy to hold I will sit nicely!"

Yesterday Landon found an open package of jumbo marshmallows in our island drawer, and immediately asked me to put them up on the fridge. "If I see them in here, I will eat them. But if they are up on the fridge, I won't!"

Last night at dinner at the pizza restaurant, Landon was running around a bit and came crashing into us at the table. When he had to sit down, Jordan was talking to him about how he needs to be softer because he has such a big strong body... and Landon said "Each day I am waiting and waiting for the mean guys to come, (then something like 'so I can get them') but they never come!"

(And just funny -just now when I asked Jordan if he remembered exactly what Landon had said last night, Landon said this "I think I was looking for mean guys at the restaurant. And I think when I came to the table I was still looking for mean guys and I thought Mommy was a mean guy and I got her...")

Latest Mormon Message - on Motherhood

Happy Independence Day!

It's so happy to celebrate with these two kiddos. :)

Summertime floating by...

In between house-related busyness we're having some fun times :) Here's a couple of fun pics.

Landon on the boat ride at Orem Summerfest a few weeks ago (on a not so summery evening.) Tonight we went down to Provo's arts festival and had a fun time eating snowcones and browsing for a little while.

We spent a day at Bear Lake with all of the Brough's - canoeing, kayaking (Landon and April above), visiting, jet-skiing, splashing in the water, playing games and just having a fun relaxing time.

A happy birthday celebration for Jordan - with a cake decorated with lots of squiggly's by Landon :)

Jordan's new ride

Jordan's been super excited about this great little scooter. I rode it when we went for a bikeride/scootering adventure and Landon was passing me up on his bicycle, but even if not too fast it really is fun to ride around. Great to have another adventuring mode of transportation too :)

Our girl :)

We sure love this little Ellie

who loves things to be just the way they are supposed to be. Drawers shut, doors closed, toys cleaned up, hair pulled back, shoes on, pillows neatly placed, blankets in the crib...

who loves to play and tackle and tumble and giggle and cuddle a bit and dance and jump and read and color and clean up

and eat creamies or frosting off of cupcakes or cheerios or raspberries or grapes or anything yummy with just the right presentation

and most of all be close to Daddy or Mommy or Landon. :)

Ellie's almost to nursery age and it seems impossible that we'll give her up to somebody else for a couple of hours each Sunday - our little Ellie???

Oh, we love her so!