First week of January 2016 - a 20 year Anniversary!

Ah...The fun when you come home from vacation... you know, unpacking, getting back to a normal routine.  THEN, add in the craziness of a Christmas morning tornado that has been waiting for you for a week.  UGH!

Can you even find the little girl in this messy picture? :)

Peter put his new pancake batter bottle to work and made some special pancakes for breakfast (see Max's smiley face?)

Emmalyn loves her new castle

Back to school

Visiting with Maxwell at school (I don't remember why I was there...reading to his class?  bringing his glasses he forgot?  who knows)

I made homemade chicken noodle soup and rolls!  I was proud of it.  :)  That's more cooking than I normally do.

Little miss hanging out on her new chair

Maxwell's 2015 year in review

Max's self-portrait "A Litl Boy Maxwell"

I love all the little notes he comes home with or makes for us at home

Working on his math workbook

Cheerios - - good for many things including math

video - Max doing addition and subtraction

On January 7, Peter and I celebrated 20 years of being together.  On January 7, 1996, Peter asked me to be his girlfriend for the last time and the rest is history...  To celebrate, let's remember what we looked like back then.

Here are the two of us before we went to his Homecoming that fall.

Us at Husky Howl - the girl's choice dance around Halloween at my high school

Brittany picked Maxwell up from school because he was sick.  He had a 101.8 fever and ended up throwing up at school while he was at the front desk.  (He wasn't eating his lunch and that isn't normal for him so his teacher asked if he was okay, felt his head and he was hot and she sent him to the front desk to be checked for a fever.  He had one and while he was up there, got sick. )  I had small little signals that should have added up and I should have known he was sick, but of course I didn't put them all together and figure it out beforehand.  He had a small fever the night before (he felt a little warm to me) and then this morning he wanted to cuddle with me in bed, which never happen.  And then as we were leaving to school he said he was cold.  I thought, "hm...he might have the chills" but he was acting fine other than that so I took him to school.

Video - Emmalyn playing while counting with dad

Emmalyn is talking soooo much!  In her bath she talked basically non-stop.  It's fun to see what she says.  She was playing with balls and said "ready go" when she was throwing them.

Maxwell gets annoyed she she copies what he says.  She's really skilled at annoying him when they are in the car.  She will annoy him just by looking at him or she will keep saying his name over and over.

She now calls him "Mass" which also bothers him.  He wants her to call him MaX.  I explained to him that she can't say "x" yet.

Emmalyn can count to 10.  She will sing all the time and most of the time you can understand what she's singing.  She likes to sing ABCs, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Shoo Fly - Don't Bother Me, and the songs in our Kindermusik Animal Serenade book (She also says the words that go along with it).  She will also say some of the words when reading her favorite books.

The best place to party in Vegas? At home!

When we got back from the Grand Canyon we had fun hanging with Grandpa (Nana had headed to SLC).

Sheba is such a sweet, mild dog that even Maxwell likes her (and he does NOT like dogs).  She's very popular with my kids.  :)

Emmalyn watching Grandpa through the glass table

That night I figured we could go down to the Freemont Street Experience.  I've never been there and thought it would be a fun way for Maxwell to experience "vegas".  Boy, was I wrong!!!  Maybe it would be an okay place to go in the daytime but at night? Not a place for kids.  There were multiple times we distracted Maxwell so he wouldn't notice something/someone we didn't want him to see.  I quickly realized this was a bad choice and we decided to just drive down part of the strip and look at the lights instead and then go back and go night swimming.

The minion was one thing that we let Max look at.  Ha!

Walking back to the car with his buddy

Happily swimming again.  He had a great time swimming

Max's selfie.

The next morning was our last little bit of time in Vegas.  We made the most of it!

Grandpa got out the karaoke machine.  Maxwell loved it.  He rocked "let it go" from Frozen.  :)

Grandpa introduced him to "Puff the Magic Dragon" and he caught on quickly.  It was special because I remember my dad singing that song to me as a child.

Video - Maxwell karaoke'n "puff the magic dragon"

Enjoying a little snack

Last round of golf

I think Sheba will be happy to have her house back to herself

Max caught his dad napping

Playing the piano

Hanging out listening to Grandpa play the piano

Emmalyn ticklin' the ivories with her Grandpa

More Karaoke

Grandpa taking Emmalyn with him to go get stuff for lunch

Video - My dad is really great at getting his grandkids involved in helping.  Here, he's got Emmalyn helping him make lunch.

The glass table is very cool to this toddler

We've been spoiled to spend the last 10 days with Grandpa and Nana.  It will be hard to not be around them tomorrow when we wake up.

I've enjoyed the late night talks, the family time, and watching my kids with their Grandparents.

It was a smooth flight home.  Gotta love it when the baby sleeps during the flight.

Baymax came home with us.  We weren't sure we would be able to get him through security but we did!  He rode in the overhead luggage bin.  :)  He got a badge sticker from the TSA Security guys just like Maxwell did.

It was late when we landed (like 10 pm) and Maxwell was wound up.  He would run ahead of us in the airport and then drop and do some pushups.  It sure brought smiles to the faces of travelers around us.

Video - airport pushups

jumping over the lines while we waited for baggage

Day 3 - Caribbean Cruise March 2015 - Cozumel, Mexico

We were excited to hit our first port - Cozumel, Mexico!  We took a cab to a resort with a pool and a beach.  Sorry for all the pics but I love too many to cut them out!

Family pic

Lola, me, Emmalyn, Peter, Aja, Jaxton, and Payton (Maxwell was the photographer)

Emmalyn immediately wanted to investigate the sand

Maxwell did NOT like walking on the sand and so he sat on his chair to play in the sand

Peter enjoyed the free wi-fi.  (I didn't even bring my phone - I am unplugged baby!)

Her investigation inevitably led to eating the sand despite all my efforts to stop her.

Sandy face

Then we all went down to play in the sand/water

Emmalyn and Payton

Payton was so excited to have found a little crab

Emmalyn and Jaxton

Oh no, she ate more of the sand!  Gross!!

This time she wasn't happy about it

Aja caught me in the act of capturing Emmalyn in the sand

Lola playing with Emmalyn

I thought she would enjoy standing in the water but she DID NOT

It's so much fun having this crew around!!

Lola, Tawny, Jaxton, and Payton

Maxwell was loving the time with his cousins.  (See the stamps on his hands?  One of the prizes I brought on the trip were some stamps and he was all about them whenever we were in our cabin.)

Eventually everyone left the beach and headed for the pool while I worked on getting Emmalyn to take a nap.

Aja and Peter

Maxwell did awesome swimming around and rarely came up for a picture

Maxwell and Payton

Trying to get all the kids together was hard because Maxwell kept going under water

Caught him!

Success!!!  I got her to sleep.  She was so sweet and perfect.

Up and ready to have more fun

This is the excitement and joy she showed when she saw that I was getting a bottle ready for her:

The gorgeous beach

Snack time.  I made PB&J on the boat at breakfast and brought it along.

Maxwell enjoyed taking pictures when I would give him the chance

Maxwell jumped a little on the trampoline

Cool Dude Jaxt

Play the catch the ball game I brought

Best buds

Love this girl!!!

Time to go - she's tired again

First we grabbed a snack.  Maxwell enjoyed his kid friendly tropical smoothie

Emmalyn was stuck in her stroller but we gave her some fries and that kept her happy.

Tickles work to get great smiles

Back on the dock.

That's our boat - the Norwegian Jewel

On the way back onto the ship the staff had a party to welcome us back.  I've never been on a cruise where they did this, it was great!  They had an area with chairs for people to rest, juice and water, fresh baked cookies, and the staff was lining the path cheering, giving high fives, and even gave Maxwell this balloon sword.

Super cool right?  Well, it ended up being a huge embarrassing moment for me.  So I was trying to help Maxwell and so I was holding his drink of juice and my drink of water.  He had grabbed a cookie but then dropped it because he was also holding his sword.  I knew I should pick up the cookie and so I tried to quickly bend down and snatch it up and keep moving forward so that we didn't hold up the line.  Well, when I bent down, I forgot that I had the juice in my hand so as I grabbed for the cookie, I dumped the juice out all over Maxwell.  It was awful.  I felt so bad and sooo embarrassed because the crew and passengers around had seen my idiot moment.  Maxwell was in shock I think so he didn't get overly upset that I had spilled on him but was upset about his dropped cookie and now spilled juice.  Ugh.  Good job Kallie, way to handle it.  I am such a klutz.

Dinner in a different dining room tonight

Emmalyn was on the end of the table and being pretty good and garnering lots of attention from passersby... and then I smelled poop.  Well when I picked her up, I could tell it was bad.  Peter held her and I could see she had blown way out of her diaper.  I wasn't about to deal with a blow out in a public bathroom so I had to take her to our room but the fastest way to get there was an elevator.  Of course we couldn't have an elevator all to ourselves.  I totally apologized to the poor people that had to ride in the elevator with me and stinky Emmalyn.  I just kept my hand on her shirt on her back the whole time because if not, who knows where else the poop might have gone.  It was AWFUL to clean up.  Such a mess.  By the time I made it back to dinner everyone was done and I was past my limit.  She hasn't had a blow out like that for awhile, why now!?