This year for Christmas we were pretty excited about Avery because she would actually enjoy some of the toys we got her! Last year we really shafted her and just got her a couple of dresses and little toys. We just figured, "She won't remember at six months anyways!" So this year, at 18 months, we went a little crazy. Last year it was "poor Avery" and this year it was "spoiled Avery, poor boys!" haha No they still got plenty! Here was their loot:

Avery:
- Disney Princess Fisher Price Castle, (including little people Ariel, Eric, Belle, Beast, Cinderella, Prince, Snow White, 7 dwarfs, Rapunzel, Tiana, Jasmine, Alladin)
- A Play Kitchen
- A Princess ride-on toy
- Princess dresses (Belle and Ariel)
- Minnie Mouse dress
- Books
- hair bows
- Shopping Cart and lots of food
- lots of clothes!

Caleb:
- Bey blade stadium and beyblades (the newest Japanese toy that has actually kept them pretty entertained) They are like these tops with zip cords that you pull to start them. You "battle" other people and their tops to see whose spins the longest.
- Chapter books (trying to get him to read more!)
- Clothes
- Basketball
- Razor Scooter
- A couple lego sets

Caleb:
- pretty much all the same stuff as Gabe and a Power Rangers toy and dart board thrown in

We had a pretty good Christmas! Pretty low-key for sure. We just went to the Ashton church with Josh's family on Christmas Eve morning for a brunch and had a little white elephant exchange. Josh and the boys went over to Grandpa Park's to help her with something in the afternoon (stacking firewood maybe?) and I went home with Avery. Then we were all tucked early waiting for Santa!
We video taped the kids as they came down Christmas morning. Maybe someday I will figure out how to post a video on this blog! Until then, here are some pictures! (NOTE: The husky shown in this picture was a dog that we were dog-sitting for a neighbor, not our dog, though Josh wished it was!!! ;)

I totally forgot to ever blog about this! Truth be told, I am adding it in now that it is September 2014! lol I just wanted to say that YES my mom did come visit and do some fun Christmas shopping with me in early December of 2013. ;) Here are the pictures to prove it!

This year for Halloween Avery was a Spider, Gabe was a SWAT team guy, and Caleb was some sort of white Ninja with padded muscles (he always is a sucker for the costumes with padded muscles!) It was kind of a bummer because the week before Halloween it was sunny and high 60's! We were outside in short sleeves, the sun was shining, it was beautiful! I have some pictures here I took of Avery in the yard in a yellow short-sleeved shirt walking around. Then less than a week later, on Halloween, it was raining and about 35 degrees. Such a bummer. No one even really saw Avery's costume that night because we had her all bundled up over it! The boys didn't seem to mind the cold though, and went to both the ward trunk or treat in the rain from about 6-7, then our neighborhood trick-or-treating until about 7:30 or 8:00. They both filled up their pumpkin buckets at the trunk or treat, emptied them out at home, then got another half-pumpkin full in our neighborhood. Caleb, unfortunately, has no self-control whatsoever, and has had what I assume is candy-induced diarrhea for the past three days. I have finally taken it and hidden in from him.

Here are some pictures of the kiddos! :)

I had to post these pictures of little Avery all dressed up for church. She only let us take a few before she was reaching out like, "Okay enough! Get me off here!" These were on October 20, 2013, so she is about 15 months old.

So this year, the girl who took our family pictures last year raised her prices from $100 to $150 and gave you 25 pictures on a cd instead of 50, so we decided to not use her again. Instead, we had our friend, Stacey, come out to the same place we went last year and snap some pictures of us! :) Here are some of my favorites!

So I swear, it has gone from Summer to Winter here in Idaho. it has gotten down to freezing at night lately and it has been really windy during the day. I wish it would just stay in the 60s for the next two months! Then it could be in the 40s and 50s in December and snow for about a week around Christmas time, then go back up to the 50s in January and be 70s to 80s from March to August. Is that too much to ask?!?!

Since I wrote last - the boys started school at the end of August. Gabe is loving the social aspect of it and my neighbors will comment on how they passed by the playground and saw Gabe surrounded by girls.... uh oh.... haha. He lost his first front tooth right at the end of Summer and he just barely lost his other front tooth! He wasn't ever missing two completely at once though because the first one is already mostly grown in. He loves playing outside with friends and being the one to make everyone laugh. It's a bummer its getting colder now, so less fun time playing outside. He is also a great helper when I need someone to entertain Avery for short times here and there.

Little Miss Avery is finally proving that she can, in fact, walk! For the past month or so, we have known that she could, because she took her first steps with - CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS - the BABYSITTER!!! My friend, Stacey, was watching her and got the first steps on video on her phone as proof. But then she came home and it was like, she was perfectly content to pretend it had never happened! I think she just still needs to build up the confidence. But the past couple of days she has actually walked from one end of a room to the other all by herself. She just has to be in the mood to do it. Otherwise we will try and get her too and she just smiles and sits down like, "No thanks, I don't feel like it today." Her hair is getting sooo long! I love it. It curls in the back so I don't even realize how long it really is until I am giving her a bath and it covers about an inch down her back! She is like the little baby on Breaking Dawn that ages at lightening speed and looks about 3 when she is 6 months old! haha She is also really tall and has four teeth on the top and bottom, so she is really looking like a little girl now - which is really why she should be walking!!! Haha I think it is confusing to people! :)

Caleb is our little emotional man. He is so funny without even trying to be funny. I was telling someone the other day "Gabe tries to be funny and knows when he has people's attention and milks it.... Caleb is just funny, especially to adults, without even realizing he is saying anything funny." Then he sometimes even gets mad when we laugh at him because he thinks we are teasing him! But he really is just such a funny kid. He is also a BIG little kids. I am hoping he likes football someday because I think he will dominate. I also should say that he is doing really well in kindergarten. Things seem to come pretty naturally for him, so I am pretty relieved about that!

So, not much else new to report! The kids have been off from school all week for Spud Harvest break. (Idaho's break for the farmers to be able to hire local kids to harvest potatoes!) I am thinking in the future we should really use this time every year to plan a family vacation!

I have been super-busy with my Etsy shop! September was my best month so far and I thinking it will start to finally plateau hopefully. Maybe I sound crazy but I think there is a point where I say, "I am busy enough... I don't want to sell any more...." and I think I hit that point in September. I am torn too because I keep getting ideas for things to create, but then I am like, "But I don't want to get busier!!!" so I think I should just focus on the easy things. However, the wedding things have been the biggest seller for me lately! I kind of fell into doing these wedding programs, which started at the request of a previous customer, and then I just posted what we had created (with her permission of course) and these programs have been selling like crazy! I should really thank her for getting me into it! :) It is nice to finally be starting to feel like we have some room to breathe with our monthly budget. I feel so lucky to be doing something I have always LOVED, but haven't really pursued since college. Now I not only am doing what I love, but I can do it from home, when my kids are at school or napping and make more than I would working at a normal eight hour a day job! It's amazing. I love you Etsy! :)

That's all for now! Here is a cute picture of the kids at Grandma Rhodes' pumpkin patch!

Well today Avery is officially 13 months old! I haven't taken any official 13 month pictures.... I may stop with that. She is STILL not walking!!! I took her to this "Mommy and Me" swim class for the past two weeks and I had signed her up for the "Walker's class" ages, 1-3.... however she was not walking. It didn't really matter though since we were in the water the whole time. When it was time for her to practice jumping into the pool to me, I just held her hands while she stood there and kind of lifted her in to me with a little jump action. She loved it and pretty soon was just walking into the pool again the second I would lift her out. She loves the water. She started to associate me getting my swimsuit on with it being time for her swim lessons and she would start crawling to the door as soon as I had our swimsuits on like, "Come on! Let's go swimming!!!"

Caleb only has one more gymnastics lesson for the Summer and Gabe finished soccer the first week of August. I can't believe this is the last full week of Summer vacation. They start school on the 28th. For Caleb, I had requested afternoon kindergarten with Mrs. Jensen (Gabe didn't have her but he had a teacher that isn't there anymore, but Mrs. Jensen took her place and  the same aide is there, and our neighbor's kids had her and said she was good.) However, apparently when the new principal took over this Summer (the old one moved to the high school) they decided to throw out everyone's requests because Caleb was assigned MORNINGS with Mrs. Sutton (the opposite of what I requested) and my new neighbor who had requested mornings, was assigned AFTERNOONS with Mrs. Jensen! We were both like, "Seriously?! Is it give people the opposite of what they asked for day???" So we went over to the school and tracked down the secretary and told her to switch our two boys straight across. That should be easy enough right? She said she would, so hopefully that all got squared away. I am showing up with Caleb in the afternoon next Wednesday. Gabe got a teacher named Mrs. Baird. I don't know her at all so hopefully she's good! He did get put into the same class as his best friend, Carter, so I think that's all he really cares about.

That's all I can think of for tonight! I will need to find some pictures to post. Oh yeah. Josh and my 9 year anniversary is tomorrow. 9 years! Whoa. We should really start saving for a Hawaii trip next year.

Here are also some pictures from our trip to the zoo that we took for Avery's birthday! I think now I am FINALLY caught up on my blog from the events of the past 3 months!!! Phew!