New Crafty Center

Jim just finished my craft cabinet he's been working on for me. He built it out of a couple of old doors he found at thrift stores and

I LOVE IT!

There's still a bit of tweaking to do, but for now all my craft stuff looks to much nicer than it did before.

Thank you Jim! Thank you for being so creative, kind, and manly. I love when you build me stuff.

Many cute crafts are waiting to be made right here.

Quite a WHAT?

Tralee loves to sing. She loves to make up her own songs, substitute words in songs she already knows, belt out the old classics, she just LOVES to sing. Sometimes Jim and I scratch our heads at some of her lyrics. For instance, she likes the old classic, Mary had a Little Lamb. She says it's a "purple" song. Purple and pink songs are songs she likes. Orange and blue songs are songs she doesn't like (don't worry, we're still Boise State fans, apparently our daughter just doesn't like their team colors). While in the car the other night she was singing the purply song Mary had a Little Lamb and Jim and I had to ask her to sing it again to make sure we heard her correctly. She's sang it a few times since, and the lyrics are still the same. Instead of:

". . . its fleece is white as snow" Tralee sings,

". . . its fleece is quite a hoe."

We're sure it's just a technical oversight, and we're trying to fix the lyrics in Tralee's version. Until she gets it right, Mary's lamb's fleece seems to be a little scandalous.

Tralee said a few other things lately that got us laughing. After she got out of the tub the other night I rubbed lotion on her as she was crouched down in her towel. I asked her to, "stand up straight please" so I could get to the areas that weren't accessible to me in her crouched position to which she replied, "I don't want to stand up straight. I want to stand up small."

The other cute thing Tralee told me was, "I'm not upside down, I'm up-side-up."

Not to be out-sillied by his sister, Hunter had us laughing yesterday when he hid behind the Christmas tree, started grunting like he was lifting a grand piano, and through one of the grunts said, "I pooping." Yeah, we were rolling. Sorry if you don't like poop-talk. It's a regular topic in our household. Hunter fits right in.

What did we ever do for entertainment before kids?

Tralee's Letter to Santa and other Christmas-y Things

A few nights ago I sat down with Tralee and asked her if she would like to write Santa a letter. This is currently the extent of Tralee's letter writing capabilities if asked to do it all by herself:

So, I offered my secretarial services and asked her to dictate to me what she would like to say to our laugh-his-belly-like-a-bowl-full-of-jelly gift giver. The following is what Tralee asked me to write. I only helped a little to get her started. 97% of the letter is all Tralee, 3% is me helping her along.

Dear Santa,

How are you? My name is Tralee. I'm three. Santa, thank you for giving us presents. I measured for you. I want a baby that goes like this (jumping). I would like Hungry Hippos. I also would like a talking doll. I need an alligator, hungry and it eats some food. I want two pillow pets and some dancing shoes. Thank you.

Love,

Tralee Marie Jacobs

I'm pretty sure Santa knows what most of this stuff is, and if Tralee continues to be a good girl she'll get most of it. When I checked with the cookie-and-milk-loving-papa-elf he was scratching his head a bit at the alligator request. We're also not sure what Tralee measured for him. Perhaps the width of our heat vents, since we have no chimney for him to come down in. St. Nick was also touched that the first thing Tralee said was, "thank you." Such a sweetie!

A sometimes very ODD girl, as you can tell by these pictures she took of herself on our computer, but a sweetie none-the-less.

As for Hunter, when I checked with Santa, he had some good ideas for our little guy. Can't wait!

In other Christmas news. We've been reading from a book my Grandma gave us when we were first married. There's a scripture, story, and song for each day leading up to Christmas. We've never done it before, and I really hope we start reading from this book every year, cause it's quite exceptional. The kids don't really get all of it, but it does bring the spirit of Christmas into our home.

I'm really enjoying this holiday season. It's the first Christmas in two years that we're not moving. We actually put up a tree (a REAL one that smells HEAVENLY), lights, and other decor that were all but forgotten the last few years. It's a wonderful thing, this time of year! I lurve it! Hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as our little family.

Oh My Stinkin' Cute!!

I was watching some old youtube videos of my babies and came across this one from a little less than a year ago. I forgot just how cute and chubbalicious Hunty was! He was a CHUNK!! Those cheeks. OH! Those cheeks!!! I miss them! I also miss his toothless smile. Why do babies have to grow up so fast? At least I have this video to look back on when I miss just how chubby those cheeks were. I mean, they're still pretty cute and kissable (I'm averaging about 10,000 kisses a day), but now-a-days they've transformed into a little boy's bouncy cheeks, not quite as fat, squishy, and cherubic as they once were. Again, still kissable, just not as babyish as they used to be. This video almost (almost) makes me baby hungry. Enjoy.

For the Birds

On our drive home from the SLC airport a month ago, we stayed overnight in Logan to catch a few winks before returning home. On our pit stop, we visited first dam to feed the ducks and geese. Holy cannoli were these fowls aggressive!! Luckily, none of them were mean-spirited, just VERY VERY aggressive! It kind of felt like we were in the movie The Birds, only the birds were ducks and geese, and instead of pecking you to death, they just trampled all over you to get more food. I finally told Tralee to sit on the table and toss them crackers, so she could gage the feeding situation a little better without having her shirt/pants/hands/shoes nibbled upon by the greedy geese. Even with the overwhelming amount of feathered friends surrounding us, we still had a blast. Tralee didn't want to leave.

I promised her we'd come back, and I'm sure we will. . . one day.

Snowman Make-over

Most of our drive back home was uneventful, then the snow started to fall. It fell the last half of our trip. By the time we got home, we weren't all that surprised to see white fluff all over our yard and driveway. We did the typical thing you do when there's an abundance of snow, we played in it!!

Our first creation was this giant snowman.

He lasted a day until Jim decided Snowster needed a make-over, so he transformed him into a Christmas Elf/Garden Gnome type thing. We like to look out the window as cars slow down to gaze upon him. It's also fun to see the kids walking home from school. They usually stop at the end of our driveway and make funny faces at our little dude. I think I'll name him Halwid Meriment Gleevesglinger. We'll call him Hal for short.

Here's Hal's juicy double pictured below.

When Jim's out of town, I'll be glad to have Hal as a back-up man of the house, that is, unless of course, he melts. Which he probably will eventually.

And. . . We're back!

We're back from our St. George/Las Vegas vacation. I took my camera, but forgot the card-thingy (memory card) at home. Whoops! So, not a whole lot of pictures to document our trip. However, we did get some on our phones, and we DID take our camcorder (is that what they're called now-a-days?). Sooner or later I'll get an awesome video up here for all to see. Until I get the super-awesome video done, here's another video of us on our way up to St. George. My favorite parts are when Tralee sings something about a time-machine (I didn't even know she knew what a time machine was), and when she says, "I don't want to take a picture, cause I'm a kitty cat." Enjoy:

As for the rest of our trip, we did the typical Thanksgiving-y things on our visit:

- Ate lots of yummy food

- Visited with family and friends (Adrienne and her girls, some friends of Jim and Adrienne's from Canada, John, Cassi, and their two -soon to be three - little ones, and Sue, Dan, and their million kiddos -- really just five, but after three kids I tend to loose track).

- Shopped (I showed Adrienne the joys of coupon shopping)

-Got my hair and toe-nails done

- Golfed

- Swam

- Ate some more

- Sewed

- Ate

- Cooked

- Shopped again

- Ate

- Watched movies

- Relaxed

- Played Wii

-Played with our cute nieces and nephews

- I think I forgot to mention that we ate

- Figured out that my android phone can be used like a kindle, and LOVED it! I read some "books" while I was vacationing. Cool beans!

- We also ate

All and all, it was a good trip. Poor lil' Hunty got sick the last few nights of our visit. He was puking all over and it made me sad. I don't like it when my kids are sick. Why can't they just be healthy all the time? I know why -- something about opposition in all things and it builds up their immune systems -- but still!!! I don't EVER want my kids to suffer in the least, and it really sucks when they do. Mostly they're happy healthy little munchkins, and I'm THANKFUL for that. So very very thankful for the cute little beings I must teach, protect, and nurture. I'm thankful that I get to be their mom. How lucky am I? Like, the luckiest person EVER!!

I'm also lucky that I get to hug my strong, handsome, virile, manly-man of a hubbster whenever I so choose. Really, it's a treat because he's so very comfortable to snuggle. I know I've mentioned that tid-bit of info before, but seriously, Jim it the MOST COMFORTABLE person to fall asleep on. Jim's like the sealy posterpedic/temper-pedic/sleep number/high falootin-ist of people to catch a few zzz's on. In fact, I think I might just go give it a go. I'm tired. The kids are asleep in bed, and Jim is watching a little boobtube downstairs. I might just go join him, and maybe fall asleep right there in his arms. Try not to be jealous. Really, don't be, cause he'll probably fart right when I start to dose off. It's the price I pay for marrying a manly-man.

It's good to be home.