Jessica and the kids new ride

Jessica finally got her wish. I, Bryan, was able to find a sweet deal on a minivan at an auction. It is a 2003 Honda Odyssey EX-L/DVD. It's in great shape and has leather, heated seats, rear air, tinted windows, keyless entry, power sliding doors, a DVD player, CD player, A/C, cruise control, stow-and-go seating, power everything, it seats 7 people, and Jessica loves it. It's going to be great for traveling with all the extra room and once we have a couple more kids it will be nice to be able to have a place to put them. Basically, we're pretty cool now and all our friends are always asking us for rides now.

If manipulation had a face...

it might look like this(smashed nose and all).

Allow me to share a few recent conversations with Kate to demonstrate her efforts at manipulating situations to get things her way.

Let me set the scene. Last night around 5 p.m. I was kneading dough on the table to make pizza crust. A decent amount of flour is on the table. Kate climbs on the bench to "watch".

Kate: "Watch this mom."(flinging flour around with her hand)

Me: "Kate, hands down. If you throw it again you have to get down."

Kate: grabs more flour and flings it again.

Me: "Get down Kate."

Kate: while not getting down and smiling at me," Happy birday mom. You fabulous pretty fairy, whole vide vorld." (since Kate's birthday she thinks that saying happy birthday is just a nice thing to say. She doesn't yet get the celebration of birth part of it. She also thinks if she ends any sentence with the phrase "whole wide world" she is being complimentary.)

I thanked her for her nice words and got her down.

Scene two. This morning. I'm cleaning her dishes off the table. From behind me I hear her come into the living room.

Kate: "Mom I det ready all my self."

Me: "I'm guessing you are wearing your favorite shorts." I turn around to find her with her go-to rainbow striped gaucho pants that she tries to wear everyday. I don't know what I will do when I can't tell her it is to cold for them anymore. We will see them a lot this summer.

Me: "It is to cold for those today love. You need to wear pants."

Kate: "I look pretty in them. I wear them." and she marches back into her room.

Sure Kate, since you think you look pretty in them you can wear them. Who cares that it is currently 20 degrees outside. She is wearing jeans today in case you were wondering.

Scene three. Moments ago. I hear her yelling from the back so I go to check it out and find her on my bed. She is not supposed to get up there unless Bry or I are in the room because she cannot get down herself.

Me: "Kate what are you doing up there?"

Kate: "Jakey (she has been calling him Jakey lately) needs me. I better go. Hop me down."

Me: "You need to stay down from here unless mom or dad is here."

Kate: "I luv you mom. Hop me down."

If she is already starting to work on her powers of manipulation now, it scares me to think of how good she will be when she is a teenager. We may keep her locked in her room.

Please make it stop!

Sunday afternoon we went for a walk/bike ride. The ground and sidewalks were clear. It was chilly but not to bad. Monday we woke up to a lot of snow and it didn't stop ALL DAY LONG! Monday night Bry measured 14 inches in our yard and on the news they said some places in Logan got 20 inches. Crazy! We need to find a way to let Mother Nature know we are ready for spring. Sure, I know I live in Utah and snowing is what it does here, but the official start of spring is a week and a half away so I don't feel like it is to much to ask for the snow to stop. Here are a few pics of the kids in the snow and here is to hoping these are the last ones for a LONG time!

The kids in the yard. The day before there was nothing but brown grass.

Around noon we were cleaning the van off to go somewhere and this is what the top of it looked like.

The pompoms on her hat had doubled in size because they were so caked with snow. She looks pretty ticked about it.

No time for losers, Cause he is the champion... of IHOP

That's right folks, Bryan has done it again. He entered an eating challenge and won. This time it was the most pancakes eaten at in a single sitting at IHOP. His first try he ate 21. A few days later his number was challenged and beaten by a single pancake. Not willing to settle for second, he valiantly made a trip back before the contest was over and came away having downed 25 pancakes, although he said he could have eaten more, but he did it while he was on his lunch break and was late getting back to work. Regardless, that was enough for him to be victorious. So now he has bragging rights, a $50 gift card, and I'm pretty sure pancake batter flowing through his veins.

Jake's new favorite pastime

Jake is really into letters and the sounds they make right now. I sure hope that keeps up once kindergarten starts. He likes to tell us a letter and we are all supposed to say words that start with that letter. It is funny because doing this with him I'm reminded how tricky some of the letters are. For instance, the letter C sounds like a K a lot of the time. The word "one" and the word "won", they sound just the same. I love how eager Jake is to learn new things. Sure, I have my days when I have answered so many questions that I am ready to hand over answering duties to Bryan when he gets home, but I love it none the less. Here is a little video of Jake thinking of some words last night after dinner. Some times I wish I could freeze him this age. We love him.

We feel so safe with these two around