At last we can play outside!

I know these pictures will only interest me and maybe a few members of my immediate family but these are some of the things I want to remember. 

Spring is on its way and it's like we're breathing again. Playing outside is the boys' absolute favorite activity.

Here's William walking in his Grampa Parks' steps:

Or more accurately:

 (Throwing things over his head is William's idea of Fun)

Joshua is pretty much a pro this year:

As William gets older, he and Joshua interact more and more. I was looking forward to this day because I heard that's when my life was going to start being easier... Well we're not there yet, they do interact with each other a lot but it mostly involves tackling each other, climbing on each other's back, taking away each other's toy, destroying the puzzle/tower/lego set  the other was building, competing for pretty much anything and everything etc... 

So here's what the real baseball session looked like when I wasn't assigning turns:

I think this one deserves a zoom in:

No wonder today when I picked up William from MOPS (which I'll have to post about later cuz it's pretty awesome) the ladies who watched him asked how old he was, implying they'd like to switch him to the older class because he's bullying kids his age... Hem, hem... where does he get that?

And more cute pictures of the boys with their friend (and pretty much next door neighbor) Kent:

Our winter vacation... is it March already?

Boy I'm behind on this blogging thing. Hundreds of pictures are accumulating on my computer I don't even know where to begin.
One of the coolest things we did over Christmas break was to go visit Russell's family in Arizona. We left around 5pm a few days after my birthday and drove all night. Russell insisted on driving most of the way saying I should sleep so I'd be rested to take care of the kids when we arrived the next morning. Haha! Funny joke. I woke up in panic every time the car hit a bump, took a sharp turn, slowed down or accelerated... not my idea of a night of rest. Anyway, It took us about 14hrs to get there (and that's fast!)
We had so much fun there. Josh and William were entertained the entire time we were there. Not a minute to get bored, they had lots of play time with Gramma and Uncle Cody, new toys, new DVDs, a new house to turn upside down, a garden etc...

Fun times with Gramma

While we were there Russell's Mom took us on a family outing to the zoo. It was a great hit with Joshua.
What fun memories we created that day.

A tank full of sharks, Josh stood there mesmerized for a good 15minutes

Attempting to touch the stingrays, horseshoe crabs and starfish (he's braver than me, he actually touched the stingrays)

 A slow paced but interesting show

The long awaited felines. I don't think we'd ever been so close to a leopard before.

Riding a dinosaur on the carousel.

 A crocodile... ew! I'm really not a big fan of reptiles

 And feeding giraffes (they have REALLY long tongues!)

 William's favorite animals were the penguins. They were so playful. He kept following them on the other side of the window and was so excited to see them dive and twirl in the water.

We were also very lucky to be able to spend some time with Great Gramma Parks who was visiting her niece in the Phoenix area. It was her first visit with Joshua and William and they (especially Josh) fell in love with her. (Who wouldn't, she has to be the prettiest great gramma in the world). We had a great time visiting with her and her niece Christine.

As usual, Russell's Mom had the best birthday present for me. She sent Russell and I to a Swiss restaurant ("Le chalet") for a delicious meal. I had a very authentic raclette with cold cuts for dinner and a sugar and lemon crepe for dessert. Russell had a Salmon flamenkuche and a buckwheat crepe. It was heavenly, really!

I painted a portrait!!!!

If it's not a dream come true... it's close. No kidding, I never thought I was capable of painting a portrait of a person that would actually look like a REAL person... not to mention THE person.
And the best part is it only took me a few hours (2 evenings!)

It started with a Young Women activity we had at church over a year ago (when I was still teaching in Young Women-now I'm in primary). A woman in the YW presidency is a very talented painter and she gave the girls (and fellow-leaders) a class on water coloring. I loved it and it made me want to start my own project. Several months later I found a tutorial on Pinterest (of course) on how to turn a picture into a paint-by-number art (it's from this blog: http://theambitiousprocrastinator.blogspot.com that looks pretty cool by the way). And this week when I heard picnik was closing down (an awesome online picture editing program that's needed for this project) I decided to tackle the project (thank you picnik for closing down or I would have never done this).

So here's my very own tutorial for an awesome looking super easy portrait painting:

Step 1: Choose a picture with a simple background (not too many details). Edit the picture in Picnik or another editing software (I think Picasa would work). Blur out the background (using the Soften effect) and apply the posterize effect, set the detail at 0% and the number of colors as low as possible, or as low as you like (mine was 9 colors I think).

The picture before editing:

The picture after editing and printing on paper:

Step 2: Place a sheet of carbon paper (carbon face down) between the picture and the canvas you want to transfer the picture onto. Trace the different sections over the picture with a hard pencil.

Step 3: Uncover your canvas and retrace over the lines that are too faded if necessary.

Step 4: The fun part. Mix your colors and start filling in.

Keep the paper picture (or digital version) for color reference (or pick the colors randomly... could be fun too!)

And Tada! It would be clever to spray it with clear acrylic coating... but I haven't done it yet.

It is so easy a kid could do it. Actually I've seen a fun version for kids here. Except instead of turning the picture into a paint-by-number you turn it into a coloring sheet. Might do that for Josh when/if he starts being more interested in coloring.

Hapi hapi hapi deeeeee to you!

Although this video shows what a failure of a Mom I am-William's first memorized song is Sprout's TV's version of the Happy Birthday song-I'm too endeared to hide it. I wish he'd memorized a song I sing to him like the popcorn song, or I am a child of God... but "hapi hapi deeeedeee to you" isn't so bad after all. 

What's up?

This:

And this: (a "game" that Joshua calls the "we're making a mess" game):

and this again:

and again, and again, and again...

Christmas traditions

On this special day of Christmas, I'm truly grateful for my family, my friends and my Heavenly Father. For me this day is the happiest of the year, not only because of the presents and food overdose but because of the special occasion to celebrate the birth of my Savior. 

In a more secular perspective, I'm grateful for blogs and cameras (especially the hot new DSLR camera I got for Christmas!!). If it wasn't for this blog and the pictures, I know I'd forget all the great memories we've created this week-end. Since we were by ourselves for the first time this year, our goal was to create our own Christmas traditions. We managed to do quite a bit, but there's still a lot of cool traditions I want to try next year.

Fun things we did (and liked... but might not turn into a real tradition):

- Visit Santa, ride his horse carriage, take pictures with him

- Decorate cookies (I'd probably keep that one if I had girls... but the boys were not big fans)

- Wear matching Santa costumes on Christmas morning (I recycled our Halloween costumes and turned them into Santa costumes, I thought it would be a good idea to teach the kids we're all Santas... but it didn't work as well as I was hoping. Russ was a grinch the whole time, and Josh loved it but he sounds a little confused when he talks about Santa now.)

- Chocolate advent calendar

Fun things we did and would like to keep as traditions (at least I do):

- Caroling with friends

- Acting out the Nativity Scene for FHE

- Sledding/snow/outdoors activities (if weather permits)

- Singing Christmas songs before bed time

- Reading parts of the Christmas story in the scriptures every night

- Driving through the town to look at Christmas lights

- Eating tons of good food

- Ward Christmas party with Nativity Scene, songs, dinner and Santa

Things we had planned but didn't end up doing (definitely on the list for next year):

- pipe chimes / bells / playing music together

- Singing at a retirement home (the Primary had organized it and it was on my calendar but I spaced out)

- Spiritual Christmas program for our family (other than the one we had at church)

Other things I want to try next year:

- Different kind of advent calendar (scripture based or build your nativity scene)

- Involve the kids in gift making/offering

All in all, we had a great week-end and hopefully we've learned a few things so that next Christmas can be even better.

Another reason why this week-end was so cool is I tried snowboarding for the first time, and I liked it. We went to a park close to our apartment to do some sledding, Josh loved it, William hated it. When the kids got tired of sledding and wanted to play at the playground near by, Russell got my snowboard and gave me a snowboarding lesson. I was afraid we were going to meet lots of people we know there, since we'd chosen that park, and it ended up being true... but helpful. Joshua's cute friend Elsie was there and her parents ended up watching him and William while Russell was helping me. Afterwards they invited us for some delicious cinnamon rolls at their place and we had a very nice chat.

I was dreading having to prepare all the Christmas dinner by myself but Russell insisted he didn't want turkey, Ham or chicken, which helped reduce my work load a ton. I made Salmon tart, Russell's favorite green beans, potatoes (left over from our ward Christmas party I had in the freezer), foie gras (thank you Maman et Papa), a few other appetizers, a yule log... and that's it. Super simple, but tasty.

On Christmas morning we all dressed up as Santa and opened one present before church. Then we went to church for a very nice musical sacrament meeting. We opened the rest of the presents when we went back home, ate leftovers and spent the rest of the day talking to family on Skype and on the phone, and playing with the kids' toys (I had a blast with the legos).

I still want to emphasize that we missed our Family A LOT, despite Skype and the phone, and I hope we won't have to spend Christmas alone too often...
Merry Christmas to all! We missed you and we love you.

Graduation and Holiday fun!

There's been a lot going on in the last few weeks, but not much time to post about it so here it is all at once. 

The most exciting event was Russell's graduation ceremony. He finished his Master's classes in the spring but he had not defended his thesis, so he didn't graduate then. Now he is officially a Master in Communication. Congratulations Russell!!

And now that the semester is over we've had time for more Christmas fun: 

At the ward Christmas party. I captured a picture of Josh hugging his friend Sammy. So cute!

 At my friend Emily's Ugly Sweater Party (Sammy's Mom). She is the absolute best party planner. I mostly took pictures of the kids in their ugly sweaters (Josh won 1st place for the ugliest sweater), but the best part of the evening was singing Christmas carols while Emily played the piano. We also shared some tasty Christmas treats.

Playing with Daddy. My kids are lucky they have such a fun, hot-looking Daddy.

  Family Home Evening this week. It was totally improvised... as you can tell. Josh distributed the roles and he insisted he wanted to be a shepherd... 

And our 6th year anniversary was this Tuesday. Russell took me to a SUPER DUPER fancy restaurant in Boulder. Ah! Good food, I love it... mini appetizer, foie gras, fillet mignon... Yum! It was absolutely unaffordable, but delicious.

And today, we woke up buried in the snow. I was in charge of the Knitting Club so we had to go out. (Actually we could probably have cancelled it but I needed to occupy these kids and I'm glad we didn't cancel cause I got to hang out with 2 good friends while the kids ran around the Community Room.)

We played outside a little bit afterwards and "decorated" our wall. (Ok I did) 

The long-legged, skinny-tail creature is supposed to be a dinosaur.

I can't believe Christmas is in 2 days! We'll be home alone for the first time so we'll get to start our own traditions... kind of exciting. 

The birthday boy

Our big boy turned 3 this week. At last! I feel like he's been 3 for at least 6 months... Weird, but with his birthday being at the end of the year, a lot of his school friends turned 3 before him and it seemed his birthday was never coming.

What a joy this little man has brought into our life these last 3 years. I know I have moments when I wish I could relive the freedom and carelessness of my pre-Mom life for a few hours, but I can honestly say I have never been happier than since this sweet, cuddly, smart, mischievous, overly active tornado has come into our family.

Josh is a very independent and responsible child. He loves to be a big brother and boss his little brother around (which results in more and more fights since little brother is proving to have the same independent strong-willed personality). He is incredibly tall (40inches-just over 1m), and rather skinny (34lbs-15.5kg). He loves to eat (broccoli, soups, pizza, pasta, cheese, and basically anything I put on his plate), he has been potty trained since September. He can spell his name and is getting close to recognizing all the letters of the alphabet (capital). He loves to play with cars and planes, likes to pretend he's a pirate, or a tiger, or a race car. He likes to build "temples" with his blocks. His favorite song is ABC. His favorite books are 10 Little Ladybugs (he can read it by himself and insists on counting the ladybugs on every single page) and Horton hears a Who. His favorite TV shows are "Super Why" and "Little Einstein". He likes to add "ie" at the end of all his adjectives like:

I'm codie (I'm cold)

It's goodie - talking about a lollipop

It's hottie - talking about his halloween costume freshly out of the dryer 

I need a kissie

That's an eggie

Mom, give me a kiss on my headie etc...

He still speaks a lot more English than French but he's slowly adding some French vocabulary to his sentences:

Me: Joshua tu as tout mange? (Did you eat everything Joshua?)

Josh answers: I tout monge it.

Me: Josh, partage un morceau de fromage avec William. (Josh, share a piece of your cheese with William).

(He cuts a tiny piece with his nail).

Me: Non pas celui la il est trop petit. (Not this one, it's too small)

Josh answers: It's trou piti? 

He still likes music and dancing, but not as much as he used too. 

He likes to comment on everything, and make up stories, he calls EVERYONE friend and likes to hug his friends (mostly one friend in particular), he is very organized (slightly OCD), he loves to organize his cars in rows, he likes to label things and loves to enumerate. Recently he pointed at the poop in his potty and said: This is Daddy, this is Mommy, this is Joshua, this is William and one more.

Aside from Josh and Joshua, I like to call him Jo, Jobanjo, Joshy-Jo, Jo-loulou...

There's so much more I could say. This child fills my days with fun, excitement and an abundance of energy. 

 3 days old

 1 year old

2 years old

3 years old

We had a fun little pirate party for him last Saturday. He and his friends had a lot of fun fighting with their balloon swords and digging for their treasure in the bathtub. His birthday falls at a bad time (finals/end of semester, Thanksgiving/Christmas season) so it's always stressful to plan a party around this time. It was a very last minute thing, I HAD to ask Russell to help cut out the decoration when people started arriving (HAD to because I would never otherwise - he can not cut a straight line). But thanks to great friends we had a great time despite the lack of organization or the last minute decorations.

 pirate island cake

 pirate ship pizza bread

  Ahoy mateys!

 tattoos and snacks

 "look at that!"

And on Monday we had a second celebration with Joshua's preschool classmates. 

Phew... now we have 1 year to start preparing for the next one.