Landon's First Pinewood Derby

Painting his car red like "Light n'queen"

Showing off his cool stickers (before he decided they weren't so cool and pulled them all off...)

Ready, set...

Racing to get to his car at the finish line

Front and center to watch all of the other cars coming in

Thanks IRS (really!)

Since Jordan was 'self-employed' for much of last year, I had checked into the rules for taxes and even called the IRS to see if we needed to pay 'estimated taxes' (where you pay in advance since you don't have taxes being taken out of your paycheck). They told me that for our specific circumstance we wouldn't need to pay, but when I went to file our taxes, it still showed we had a penalty of about $120 - I figured, lame, but probably nothing we could do. 

But, we just got a letter in the mail ( I panicked when I first saw it, just sure I'd messed up and we were getting audited again...) saying they'd refunded the penalty and today we got a check in the mail for the whole amount. Hooray! Who would have ever thought the IRS could be so nice?

No Veggies Please

I was thinking the other day how nice it is that Landon is not a picky eater. It's pretty rare that we have something for dinner that he doesn't want to eat. Telling Jordan this, I realized that our success in Landon eating so non-pickily is probably more just because I'm such a picky eater. I'm not such a fan of most veggies so it takes some real work to try to get myself to eat them (shredded squash I've found is pretty flavorless so I can hide it in lots of things). Sadly Landon's not just a great veggie-eating toddler so much as I need some help in the veggie-eating area! :) 

ANd just a funny thing -- I think that Landon must have seen something in one of his movies because one day he just started saying "Vegetables are not for Landon!" or "You like broccoli Mommy? ('Yep, I like broccoli')  Egh! Broccoli is not for me!"

Springtime happenings

Everything is just coming back to life around here. This is our little peach tree in the back yard -- 2 weeks ago and then 1 week later -- it seems crazy to have snow and springtime so mixed up with each other! Now this tree has bright red tulips opened up all around the base of it too. :)

We had a busy couple weeks with lots of fun visitors -- Drew came down from Washington to meet Ellie for the first time. He and Jordan got to have some good coding party time, so Jordan was especially happy. :) And Landon loved getting to play with Uncle Drew. April had a conference close by so we got to spend time w/ her too -- what a great aunt she is to our little kiddos! And, my Dad and Shauna even took some of their vacation time to come out for a visit from North Carolina -- it was great to see them and also all the other family that gathered together for their visit. Hopefully soon they'll be a little closer so we'll get to see them more often. :)

We've also just been loving the happy spring time weather. We've gone out on some fun rollerblading adventures along the rivertrail and such -- I'm still just loving our new stroller, especially now that Landon's gotten used to it. We found a perfect park the other day too - the old Oakridge school is being used for some Wasatch classes now and their playground is all fenced in and open to everybody after school hours. We had a great picnic and book reading time there last week while Landon was able to run and climb and we could just relax -- very fun! :) Yesterday we got started on our garden planting prep work too in clearing out the space in our corner and all.

Hooray for these beautiful days!

And here's some cute pics too, just for fun.

Tummy time w/ Daddy

Giggles -- a few days ago she had her first giggles just at Jordan being silly (rather than from being tickled :)

Reading his book to me and Ellie

"You don't take pictures!"

Showing off his dandelion finds

Trying out the walker

Oh, what a happy girl!!

Ellie's favorite way to sleep... (she's really not so buried as she looks, but she just loves that warmth and softness on her little body!)

Sweetly sleeps our little Ellie

3 Months Old

Oh how we love our little Ellie! She is just so happy with her little world and we're so happy to have her in our family. She is loving to look around and see everything and tell us all about it it in oohs and ehhs and ahhs, and she loves to sing along with those same sounds when we sing to her. She's getting so strong in holding herself upright and even surprised me by rolling over today when I left her on her tummy on the rug. We sure love her little smiles and giggles too! 

Thanks Drew for all of the great pics!

Back to the Track

Hooray!!

We finally went back to the track today -- my first time running since Ellie was born (really since I was pregnant w/ her even) and so happy to be back! 

I love little Ellie

I have a few minutes tonight while I'm putting Landon back to bed and back to bed... I know that I ought to be folding laundry (and get rid of the THREE batches of clean laundry sitting on my bedroom floor), or tidying up downstairs, or updating our budget or doing the dishes...

But Ellie fell asleep right by me here on my bed, and all I want to do is just sit and look at her. 

:)