The Remedy

I found the remedy to taking cold, hot-showers. (You know, when you take a hot shower in the winter and you are freezing the whole time!!?!??)

DRINK A CUP OF HOT CHOCOLATE RIGHT BEFORE YOUR SHOWER!!!

It is very cold tonight. I didn't plan this, but I drank the hot chocolate and immediately took my shower. I was so hot from the hot chocolate that I wasn't cold at all during the shower! It was a perfect shower! Try it! I know most of you who read this blog live in cold, snowy places!

Favorite pictures

Ok, Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last couple of weeks. Jacob as been getting himself stuck lately, as you can see in a few of the pictures. We were taking family pictures for Mom and Aubry's projects and Luis decided to make things fun :) The rest are jst pics I like!


Jake's first Quesadilla! He loved it. Unhealthy, I know.














Silvia made Jackson these fleece camo jammies for the cold weather, last week it was in the 40s. Now it is back in the 90s... crazy! Jackson today had a rash all over his body and the only thing I can think of to cause it is the fleece... I forgot to wash it before he wore it. ??? He is pretty itchy, but the benadryl helps.

Technical Difficulties

Sorry for no posts lately, I have tried for the past few days to post with some pictures and I keep getting an error. I am going to try it from a different computer tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I felt like we cooked all day! We ended up with just the 6 adults and 2 kids plus 2 missionaries... and we had baked 9 pies :) I guess Lew was expecting a family to come to dinner, but they didn't. So, we had a lot of leftover dessert. The missionaries left with 2 whole pies and lots of leftovers for the week. We definitely have plenty of turkey leftoever. Half of this bird plus the leftovers from the La Joya ward Thanksgiving dinner! I ate way too many carbs, that's for sure! Tis the season to gain weight!!! Can't wait for Christmas...

School Time

Jackson and I have started "school time"!!! I am so excited. I bought Jackson a preschool workbook for his bday and have been very anxious to start the lessons. I love the book, it goes from tracing lines to alpabet to numbers to phonics... it is so awesome. Jackson loved it too! He was so sad when we had to stop. He wanted to color all over it, but I had to tell him that it was for school time only, and if he just wanted to color, he could use his regular coloring books... for playtime. HE WAS NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT! He did so well! He goes a little too fast, so it's hard for him to stay in the lines... we will work on that. First we traced the lines with our fingers, then I held his hand while we did it together. Then, I let him do it on his own! On the page that has 5 lines, the blue and purple are all Jax. I am so proud of him... considering this is his first attempt ever!

A Mother's Worst Nightmare!

Almost...

I was in the living room with the boys and Jake crawled off into the hallway. Then Jax came running in yelling "poo poo, poo poo!" I said, "ok, let's go!" thinking he had to go potty! Well, on my way to the potty I passed Jake in the hallway with a handful of dog poo in each fist!!! I freaked out and ripped open his mouth! LUCKILY... there was nothing inside! Jax had come to warn me that Jake was playing with the dog's poo! I was so busy freaking out that I forgot to yell at Xela for pooing in the house! I was so disgusted! I sanitized Jake's little hands like CRAZY! It was so nasty! Parents with dogs... watch out! I got lucky this time that it didn't end up in his mouth... I probably would have passed out!

Jacob is walking!

Jacob is nine months and has been ready to walk for a while! Here is a clip of his adorable walking! He is so brave and pretty soon will be a pro. It is so early! Jackson didn't walk until he was 12 months. I really do think that having an older sibling to watch helps younger kids to hit their milestones sooner. Love that my little guy is walking!

Happy 3rd Birthday to Jackson!

Jackson turned 3 yesterday. He had a lot of fun! We had 3 of his friends over in the morning for a little party. The boys painted "cars" and only one of them put it on in the end. They were still cute and they had a lot of fun painting. They also played with balloons and we had lunch and cake. I decorated a Lightening McQueen cake, and Becky also pitched in. I put the cake in the fridge over night... didn't know that's a bad idea, so the icing cracked, but Jackson still yelled out "McQueen!!!" when he saw it! Silvia also decorated one for the family but we didn't end up eating it because Papa Lew took us to Dairy Queen for ice cream! (Jackson's favorite!) We will probably eat it tonight! Very fun day for Jackson!

The iPad

Papa Lew has an iPad and Jackson loves to "help" when they are playing a game. He loves to play Yatzee with us. We let him roll the dice by touching the cup on the screen. He gets the biggest kick out of it and is so sad when we put it away! He cries and cries. Sometimes though, he steals a turn and touches it before we are ready and we loose a roll! All of us have lost many points thanks to Jax... especially Papa Lew. I know these pictures look similar, but his expressions are just sooooo cute! I love this little guy!

TV and Infants/Toddlers

I found a study that showed that infants and young toddlers learn 6-8 fewer vocabulary words for every hour of TV they watch per day! I read about it beacuse of the Baby Einstein video recall last year. I wish I would have known about it then, because they were giving full price refunds for any BE dvd! Oh well. The article explained how Baby Einstein was sued by child advocate groups for claiming their dvds are educational... when in fact, they have been shown to damage children's verbal development!!! I couldn't believe when I read that because I have recently thought that BE may have contributed to Jackson's speech delay (and that's why Jake hasn't seen a single one and never will!) The characters and puppets don't talk at all, just squeal and a voice says words for the children to associate with a picture. But they never use sentances or anything. The article just validated my concerns! Jake doesn't sit down and watch TV but he is around when Jax is watching and I know it is going to become more difficult to keep him away from the TV as he gets older. I think I am going to have to cut back Jackson's TV time. We don't have actual TV channels, so I let him watch one movie per day, usually. So about an hour to an hour and a half. I think I need to stop doing that and start doing more creative things with him instead. I am going to try to get some preschool workbooks. I need to be more proactive and do crafts and things. Maybe movies will become a weekend treat. I don't know... just ideas.