January 2013

Melia had fun playing with her cousins in January.  A few of them got to stay past the Christmas vacation and into January.  We wish they all lived closer!

Here's Melia dancing with Vienna.  I am thinking they are quite possibly "getting married" in this picture.  That's how Melia plays getting married--holding hands and dancing in a circle.

 Cousin hugs!!

 WE LOVE COUSINS!!

 Evera loves to think he is a big boy!  Here he is mopping like mommy!  ;)

 I wish he could really help clean the whole house!! :)

 Evera loves to climb, and when we got out the ladder to take down the Christmas decorations, Evera was right ready to climb.  I turned my back for a second and he was all the way to the top!  He is such a monkey!!

 Back when Melia was a baby Mike and I bought cloth diapers and decided to go that route with her.  Melia only pooped once a week and so cloth diapers were relatively easy with her.  Evera on the other hand poops 4+ times a day and so I've tried and given up on cloth diapers on multiple occasions with him.  I decided to give it another go in January.  Dispite the fact that they can be a pain in the butt to clean out, he sure looks cute in his cloth diapers!  :)

 Look at that cute little bummy!

 Here he is doing ring around the rosies with Melia!

 They always have so much fun together!

 They're such crazy kids, and are truly best friends!

 Evera is a stinker and whenever Melia gets out her "schools set," Evera goes for the markers and colors all over himself (as you can see on his legs in this picture).

 I was called as a primary teacher in December to the Valiant 8 class.  Those are the kids 8 turning 9, but in January I got a new set of kids and quite a few of them had yet to be baptized because the timing just hadn't worked out at the end of last year.  It was fun to get to attend all their baptisms.  I made each of them a little plaque like this for their baptism.

 Melia and Evera love to do art and I thought it'd be fun to let them paint.  I covered the table in place mats and taped them down.  Then I got lots of paper out and taped that down too.  I put the kids' "hasmat suits" on (bibs from Ikea), and filled an icecube tray with water.  Then I let the kids help me put drops of food coloring into the slots of water.  They loved doing watercolor!

 Isn't Melia such a beautiful girl?  I adore that face!! 

 Mid January we had a crazy ice storm.  It rained but the ground and everything around was so cold that the second the rain would touch anything it immediately turned to ice.  It was INSANE.  Here are some pictures of our cars covered in a sheet of ice.

 Melia thought it was pretty neat.

 Here's an icy headlight. It looks wet, but it's not, it's completely solid.  It was crazy to feel the bumpy ice all over the cars.

 Here's my cutie posing for a picture.

 Here's the back of the car.  You can see the icicles hanging down, especially by the license plate.

 Unfortunately the ground was also a complete sheet of ice and Melia's cowboy boots didn't do the trick in creating a good level of traction and she fell down.  Here she is crying.

 I hurried over to help her up and unfortunately not even my Merrills had the right level of traction and I went down HARD.  I hurt my shoulder, knee, and elbow all really bad.  OUCH!  It seriously was a BAD storm!!

Evera has been in a "throwing things in the toilet" kick.  Melia thought it was pretty hilarious when she found her flashlight lit up under water in the toilet.

 Evera is obsessed with technology and screams if he sees you with a phone or tablet and you won't give it to him.  He LOOOOVES to play on my Google Nexus.

 As I told you in a previous post, Evera just goes and goes at full speed until he crashes.  This particular night he was crying at the back door because Chief was outside and Evera wanted us to let him in.  Finally we let Chief and within seconds Evera was sound asleep (still at the back door).  He finally calmed down once we let Chiefy inside!  :)