Presents From Gma and Gpa Anderson

On Josh's actual birthday Grandma and Grandpa Anderson's present came in the mail! Awesome timing!
He got a new Pigeon book (best one so far), an outfit, and a garbage truck!

This was his expression when he saw the book :) He LOVES the pigeon books!

And the garbage truck!

I decided to pick some cupcakes up from the Cocoa Bean and make it a little celebration (or just a good excuse to get some of the best cupcakes ever!).

This is what he has done ever since he opened the garbage truck. Seriously, 4 days later, he hasn't touched another toy since! I never knew filling a little garbage can up with torn up cardboard and dumping it into the truck could be so much fun. Apparently it is :)

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa A!

French Fries

You know you never eat out when you give your 3-year-old and french fry and after he tastes it he looks at you like, that was the most amazing thing in the whole world, and then a couple minutes later he asks if he can have more of "those yellow things" HA! I laughed so hard! He doesn't know what a french fry is!

That same day I gave Benson his first taste of a fry...he thought they were the most amazing things in the whole world too! After the week this poor little guy has had, I should have ordered him his own and let him eat them all. He's such a trooper.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Decorating the Christmas tree was so much fun this year! Josh was really in to it. I let him put all the ornaments where ever he wanted, and they all ended up in one spot, so we've slowly moved them around the tree. I couldn't wait to get the tree up this year! If we hadn't had Thanksgiving at our house I would have put it up the middle of November. It's so much fun having a sparkling tree up to look at. I think it makes everyone in the house happier.

THREE!

My little Mr. is 3! Every year I say the same, I can't believe I have a ___ year-old! And every year I'm honestly shocked! Three is an even bigger shocker than the past 2 years though. Josh suddenly seems like such a big kid. He's definitely not a baby anymore :( I'm going to write a post later all about him and what he's up to, but I have to do a few things first, so I'll just post about his birthday party.
We had a little party for him the weekend after Thanksgiving while the family was here. He's at an age where he cares about having an actual party and he was really into what kind of cake he wanted, so I decided we better do it while his cousins were here since he doesn't have a lot of friends yet. He went back and forth between wanting and tractor party and a firetruck party. I pushed for the tractor party because I knew I could throw something really simple together quickly.
The party started by going swimming at the hotel Luke and Jana were staying at, then we had a bbq at our house and then cake. Josh was way excited about his dump truck cake! I think it turned out pretty cute for 10 minutes of work.
It was fun having everyone here to celebrate Josh's birthday, and to help him feel special on his big day!

More on Josh as a big three-year-old later...

Thanksgiving 2011

This years Thanksgiving was extra special for us because we had it here at our house! It was SO SO fun having Beau's entire family (minus Kody of course) in Idaho with us! It's rear these days to get all of us together, so it was fun spending 3 whole days relaxing and hanging out, just enjoying each others company.
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner was tricky cooking everything here and with only one oven, but we all pitched in and pulled it off nicely! It was delicious if I do say so myself!

The adult table, Thanks to Tierra for decorating it.

Kid table. I covered the table in craft paper and gave them crayons, and Jana brought little boats filled with candy. I also made little turkey finger puppets. It was really cute and fun, but did not look like this for more than 20 seconds after they sat down. They loved it.

This was so funny. Of course by the time I grabbed my camera to take the picture they had moved, but after dinner we were all sitting around looking at the Black Friday adds and I looked over to see all the kids totally exhausted and cuddling on the floor. Kate was the community pillow and she loved it.
That night all of us girls went Black Friday shopping. We hit up Toys R Us first while we waited for the mall to open. We got in the store and started picking a few things up and then realized that the line to check out started at the front door and wound around the entire building...so we dropped everything and left. There was no way we were going to wait in that line for hours and miss the doors opening at the mall. We totally scored at the mall though! Tons of great deals on clothes and shoes for everyone. We shopped until 4 am and then headed home to get a few hours of sleep. It was really fun introducing everyone to the world of black Friday shopping. Can't wait until next year!

Rara's Glasses

Doesn't get much cuter than this!

Frestival of Trees

We went to the tree festival with our good friends Steve and McKenna. We always have a blast with the two of them! The festival is small here but there were some cute trees and really good food. It was a pretty sweet little FHE.

Another Pinterest Find

Yet another awesome activity I found on pinterest that was a huge hit with the kids. Pipe cleaners and a colander. Josh loved making designs, and Benson loved eating the pipe cleaners.
Total hit!

I think this winter is going to be so much better than the past 3. With all the activities I find on Pinterest and the fun toys both kids will get for Christmas, I'm sure we can stay pretty busy.

Stabilizers

Today we were out in the hall at church and an elderly man using a walker came walking by. I was holding my breath as I watched Josh observing the man very closely just hoping he didn't say something embarrassing to him. After the man was a good 10 feet away Josh looked over at me and exclaimed, "Mom, that boy has stabilizers!"

Haha! This kid eat, sleeps, and breaths all things tractors!

Growing Up

This morning when josh woke up and climbed in bed with me, he snuggled up and whispered, "mom, I'm gonna grow up soon, and when I grow up I'm gonna dress up like a fireman!"

Maybe it was just the way he said it in his sweet little voice, but I thought it was the cutest thing I've ever heard.

I hope he doesn't grow up soon! I'll miss sweet conversations like this :) However, I am glad he's setting his sites a little higher, because last week he told me that he wanted to be a garbage man when he grew up.

Family Pics 2011

I'm really excited about our family pictures!
We had a girl from Rexburg named Vivian Mathias take them. I liked what I had seen of hers and she was priced so well that I thought I would give it a shot, figuring we wouldn't be out too much if it didn't work out.
I was pleasantly surprised at how many good shots she got, because let me tell ya, it was NOT easy keeping these boys from crying. Benson never did give her a single smile, and Josh only gave a few. They were both SO cold and miserable!
I loved the location and the fun fall look! We had them taken in The Gardens on BYUI's campus.
Our outfits did coordinate until we got there and it was way colder than we expected so we just had to throw on whatever coats we had with us for the boys, but that's ok, I kinda like it.
Here are just a couple of the cuter ones that she edited. She gave us around 200 unedited pictures, and now that I have photoshop, hopefully I'll be able to edit some of them. It may take a while though, I just got a mac and photoshop last week and it took me a half hour just to figure out how to open a picture up in photoshop! It is most definitely not the easiest program to learn on top of learning how to run a new operating system.

I really like this one, even though Benson was being a grouch :)

Isn't that the prettiest apple orchard you've ever seen!?

Halloween

We got to celebrate Halloween a few different times this year. Holidays like this get better and better the older Josh gets. This year was the first year he understood what was going on. He totally dug being dressed up, and Loved trick-or-treating. It was really fun watching him! The Fam at the Roberts' halloween party!

Cute little mummy

Getting ready for Trunk-or-Treatflexing!

Flexing again.....He l.o.v.e.d the built-in muscles Trunk-or-Treating (we forgot his bag so he carried our bowl around...haha)

Benson munching on some candy...or just the wrappers, but he was totally ok with that.

The second Josh got in the back of the jeep Benson pounced all over his candy! Josh was not having it!

Josh and his best buddy Jace

Halloween night, all ready to go trick-or-treating!Spiderman and Captin America!

Toes...mmmmm

Bens LOVES chewing on his toes! It's super funny to watch, but can make diaper changing difficult.

Both feet at once!

Today

Josh started gymnastics today! He LOVES it. All day he's been telling me that when he gets bigger he's going to be a flipper :)

We had family pictures taken. It was pretty much a nightmare! It was FREEZING! Neither one of the boys would smile because they were too busy shivering or crying because they were cold. Blah! Why do I even try?

Josh just started singing his abc's out of nowhere! Didn't even know he knew them. Little smartypants.

On the way to gymnastics this morning Josh yelled out, "look at all the trees! They're naken!" (because the leaves have fallen off)

Benson is going to take off crawling any day now. He spends at least 70% of the day on his stomach/hands and knees trying to get moving.

It's been one of those days! Other than in the car I haven't sat down since 7 this morning and I am tired!! I need to blog about Halloween but it's going to have to wait another day. It's 8:30 and I am off to bed. Wish my poor husband could come with me...the homework has just started for him tonight :(

Pumkin Patch...Again

We went to the pumpkin patch again, but this time we went with Jerrica and Jace. The boys were so cute together and so excited to be there. They had so much fun!