President's Day

(Picture from Jan. 2011 of boys launching the rocket they built with daddy)

Me: Do you boys know why we celebrate President's day?

Boys from the back of the mini-van: Yes, there have been 44 President's, but this one is mainly about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Me: What do you know about George Washington?

Jay: He had wooden teeth.

Asher: No, he had rhinocerous teeth.

Jay: No, it was horse teeth I think.

Asher: No, rhinocerous. My teacher told me.

Jay: Pretty sure it was horse, b/c they didn't have metal back then.

Dear Toot Fairy

The cleanest nose in the world.

Asher was blowing his nose the other night relating to me how MUCH he didn't like boogers. He then said "Jesus has the cleanest nose in de worwld (world) right mom?" I asked him if he meant that b/c Jesus was perfect, to which he sighed, & jealously replied "Yes, because he didn't have ANY boogers."

We had a special family home evening a few weeks ago all about Mr. Asher Nickolas. We talked about his strengths and things we love about him and had a special treat. We're so thankful to have him in our family! Boogers and all.

p.s. Don't tell Matt I said boogers 3x in one post

Ridge the hanger-upper

Ridge cracks us up daily. He is a lot of fun and loves to help. He wakes up, dresses himself and puts his pj's away without being asked. (Unlike ahem other brothers.) A few weeks ago I started noticing clothes hanging up on the door knob of his bedroom. I asked Matt if he had hung up the clothes, which he hadn't and neither had Asher or Jay. Turns out Ridge likes to hang up his clothes at the end of every day. Pants and shirts.

It's awesome.


Today I was walking by and noticed this. Ridge had tackled his AND Asher's pile of clothes and had them all lined up. Now if we can just get him to teach his older brother this, magic trick we would be in business!

Painted doors!

News

Good news:
We got new garage doors! We love them but have to wait til it's warm enough to paint them a greyish color to match the house.
Bad news: I've been in a bit of a blogging rut. (shocking) The boys went back to school on January 4th, but have since only been IN school for 6 days. They went to school 2 days this week & 1 day last week. I can't remember past that. My brain is dead. Lots of snow days going on here, with more to come. :)
Good news:
Happily we are all healthy, cozy & warm having homemade cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate.

Bonus good news: Jay LOVES playing basketball & we love watching him play.

Sad news: We wish our grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles could be here to go with us!

The new doors. Imagine them a similar color of the house but still the white trim.

A tale of 3 Christmas's (prologue)

DECEMBER 2010 Part 1

Once a year Matt & I have a conversation that goes something like this.
Spouse 1: You know we've never stayed home & had Christmas day in our own house.
Spouse 2: I know, we've been married almost __ amount of years now, do you think it's time for us to grow up and start our own traditions & just stay home this year?
Spouse 3: Well, it IS one of the only times of year the boys can be with their grandparents, cousins, aunts/uncles etc.
Spouse 4: Yes, and the drive isn't that bad or we could A, B, or C...

You get the idea. We love to be with our Jenkins & Jeppson families for Christmas. So one of our traditions that we unintentionally started was to have multiple openings of presents. This year we had 3. One at home in Lee's Summit, one at Muffin & Punkin Jenkins' house and one at Meme & Papa Jenkins. Of course the boys love it. I'm still sorting through the mass amounts of pictures Matt took with his new camera. Here are a few to perhaps get me motivated to catch up.

Gingerbread houses. The kids love decorating these things, then it SITS on my counter for 3 weeks taking up space. This year after X amount of days I gave the boys 5 minutes to eat as much of their creation as they could. They of course loved it and went to town. Then we threw the rest away. Win/Win.

Decorating the tree

Ridge & Mom

While at the compound in Carlsbad N.M. my grandparents were kind enough to let us stay in their "Mother-in-law" apartment. The boys called it "Meme's hotel". It was awesome, and literally just a hop, skip and jump to my parent's house.

65-75 degree weather is perfect for cracking pecans.

Christmas Morning in New Mexico