Birthday boy

This weekend we celebrated Ethan's second Birthday. His birthday was actually last Monday, but due to the fact that I got my wisdom teeth out last week we decided to postpone the celebration. It worked out that Valentine's Day became the day. We went to a Burger King in the area that has a really big (and clean!) play area. Ethan enjoyed hanging out with friends and family, and eating tons of ice-cream cake. His cake as you will see is Thomas the train cake, It is really blue, and made a mess going in.... and coming out in case you were wondering.

WOW! Its been a while

I can't believe how long its been since I last posted on my blog. So much has happened! Christmas was exciting with the snow and with a trip to the ER Christmas Eve for Ethan. He woke up with croup from his nap and our doctor insisted we go. It took us 45 min to and hour to get there with the snow and ice. Of course we all survived and now we are all healthy.
Last week I got my wisdom teeth removed and have been doing A LOT of laying around. I watched tons of movies and slept.
This week we are trying to get back to a "normal" life. And things can only go uphill from here.
Here are a couple of pictures from our latest outing at a park.

Snow in Portland?

I thought we moved here to Portland so we wouldn't have to deal crazy amounts of snow. well I was wrong. We got hit with what the media is calling the "Arctic Blast". The first few pictures of Ethan are from earlier in the week. The last few are from last night around 10:00 pm. Yesterday it snowed all day, and this is what it left. Today it is going back and forth between snowing and raining. Thus there is a thin layer of ice all over everything. We are just grateful we still have heat!!

Twas father who carved the turk..."

The Holiday Season is all about traditions. Some of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions are 1: Watching grandpa carve the turkey, 2: The smell of so much great food and making it from scratch with your family. 3: The spirit of the holiday. To give thanks for those who founded America. What a blessing it is to live in America and to be free!

Pumpkin Patch

We recently went to a pumpkin patch. While there wasn't much a of a good pumpkin selection, Ethan enjoyed the boat ride out and the train ride in. He liked it so much that he would lay on the bottom of the boat and get as close to the water as he could. I ended up taking him back later in the week thinking he would enjoy it just as much as the firs time.... wrong.

Talents

I've always wondered how parents could recognize talents or personality traits in their kids. It seems so young to determine a child as a dancer or a musician. Since Ethan has come into our lives I understand what other parents are talking about. Ethan has two strong interests right now. The first one is throwing balls. He loves it, and is really good at it. Saturday night Ethan even watched a baseball game with great grandma Janie for 30 minutes or more without becoming bored at all. Today Ethan and I walked to the park. He spent more time watching the tennis players play, than going down the slide or swinging.

As you will see in this video, Ethan's second talent or interest is music. In church his favorite thing is to open the hymn book and beat his hands. During one of the choir numbers of general conference this weekend, Ethan took a children's book and opened it like choir music and conducted the choir! This video shows his love at the piano. He plays it so gently and seems to be so interested.

Chicago

We recently (ok like 2 weeks ago) returned from a trip to Chicago. We stayed with some dear friends and had a bunch of fun. I think my favorite part was how well Ethan got along with Ben and Beth's daughter Genevieve.




Millennium Park is in downtown Chicago. The face changes in the background and at one point the mouth opens and water comes out.



Ethan and Genevieve enjoying playing in the water.






This is also Millennium Park, at the bean looking thing. It was really cool.



I just liked this one



This is the toad that Ethan touched and that Genevieve nearly kissed.



A day with Rosanna



John's mosquito bite



This is a park outside of Chicago, that was mostly under water due to Hurricane Ike. We were mostly bummed out about it because all the barbeque's were completely under water. We were hungry and had no way to cook our food and so Ben had to go to the nearest town to buy one. Nonetheless Ethan and Genevieve had a good time playing football.



how precious is this!!!

All in all it was a good trip, even if the hurricane ruined one day at the park, and John had an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite and had to see a doctor. It was tons of fun!