taking a bath

anytime i happen to open the bathroom door, maxson b-lines it in there with me.
first thing he does: throws one leg up and over the tub wall to get in.
he loves baths these days.
the end.

the cold: awesome and awful

10 things that make living in the cold awesome.

1. sometimes you get to wake up to this surprise wonderland of white out your window from a whole night of snowing. it is the most magical feeling.
2. layering clothes can be super cute. sweaters on babies at church. scarves on sweaters. wool socks coming out the tops of boots.
3. when your breath makes that white "smoke" when it's cold outside, it entertains your children.
4. you can stay inside all day cozied up in your pajamas under blankets and in slippers and no one looks at you like you're lazy
5. electric blankets help make your bed ultra hot so when you finally jump into bed it's like getting into a bed that just came fresh out of the drier, and continues to stay warm!
6. along that note, when cuddling with your spouse the excuse never comes up that "you're too hot" so cuddle on my friends!
7. cold winters mean you get to experience the maximum beauty of spring and fall
8. when it does snow you can go sledding, build snowmen, throw snowballs, walk around in the magical whiteness etc. playing around in that original snowfall is just so fun
9. there's a chance of getting snow days which means free day off school!
10. hot chocolate and hot showers truly do their job of warming up your body and you appreciate it so much more.

10 things that make living in the cold awful.

1. playing outside lasts 2 minutes and then your nose is numb and it's only kind of fun
2. playing outside for 2 minutes involves 20 minutes of getting ready to do so
3. when you run out to your car to grab something or next door to your neighbor's house (who you literally share a wall with) with no shoes on or a coat because it really doesn't take that long, your feet have begun forming frostbite and and your body is cold to the bone.
4. sometimes it feels like theres no where to play except in your house for the umpteenth day in a row
5. life is more expensive in the winter, i.e.: the price of winter clothes and the quantity of layers your must wear, washing more clothes because of all the layers, a higher electricity/gas bill, etc…
6. when you bring milk in from the car your hands have turned to blocks of ice
7. car seat straps are much harder to put on children that are marshmallowed up with huge coats
8. after a few days that pretty white snow turns into yucky black/brown snow on the roads
9. driving is more stressful because there's always the potential for ice on the ground
10. being trapped inside for 6 months, did i already mention this?

distractions

today i determined that life with a 1 year old is all about distraction.

life as follows:

1. here maxson, play with this toy while i change your diaper to distract you rolling around everywhere.
2. here maxson, here's some food to distract you from being so loud in church
3. here maxson, here's some sunglasses to distract you from how much you don't like being buckled into the car seat
4. here maxson, play with these pots and pans so you don't yell at me while i cook dinner/wash dishes
5. here maxson, run in this hallway at church instead of getting into that stranger's purse
6. here maxson, look at this cool, obsolete iPod so i can take my iPhone away from you
7. here maxson, let's pretend we can't find your toes to distract you from not wanting to put your pants on
8. here maxson, play with this train set instead of thrashing my computer
9. here maxson, hug this stuffed animal as i put you to bed to make you feel secure that i'm leaving you in your crib to go to sleep by yourself.

and the list goes on…

even with all these silly distractions, i would prefer to have them in my life than not, because with them, that means i have maxson, and life would not be the same without him

our weekend was great, how about yours?

8 pictures that make me very happy

thanks for all your well wishes from our trip last weekend.
it truly was a great weekend, just a few things were a little harder than expected


have i mentioned how much of a rockstar transitioned maxson is from car to crib? flawless most every time. so thankful for that trait
b. what makes sweeping better? the sounds of maxson giggling at casey being silly while taking a bath. music to my ears
c. smoothie sharing. that kid is pushy
d. the smolder 

a. & b. library time = new toy time for maxson
c. an every morning site for me. there's less of a chance maxson wakes up in the morning if casey does his post-shower routine downstairs in the kitchen rather next door to maxson's room in the bathroom. every morning there's deodorant, a razor, a toothbrush, and toothpaste on the table along side an ensign or scriptures.
d. johnson and johnson sends us gifts for being in dental school: the biggest mouth wash i ever did see and a nice notebook. maxson was impressed.

how to make five days feel like three 48 hour days

wow, what a crazy, long, exhausting past 5 days it's been. lemeeesplain.

thursday morning casey goes to school. all day long i clean the house, do 4 loads of laundry, prepare food, and pack for the weekend. 5 pm we begin our drive to indiana to watch our niece and nephew for the weekend. our 10 hour drive turned into 13 with AWFUL snow and wind conditions all along the way. casey only let me drive 45 min so he pretty much drove all night long up to 6 am without a break. i felt so bad for the guy (but apparently not bad enough in my sleepy state to do anything about it). we were so blessed we didn't get in an accident. even though i got to sleep most the time in the car after 1 am, once i woke up in the morning it felt like i hadn't slept all night or that feeling of when you have a terrible night with a newborn and even though your "sleep time" was 8 hours you were up at least every hour and you just feel awful. so that was thursday night/friday morning.

friday was so much fun because we got to see family! we snuck in a few naps here and there so we could survive the rest of the day but were still on the fence of being tired vs not tired.

saturday was really fun with all the kids together except that at 10 am i get a text  from casey saying he rolled his ankle really bad during church basketball and can barely walk…fun. so saturday is spent taking care of 4 children, it was a little exhausting to say the least. (but also really good for me to be able to 100% serve and attend to casey's needs for once instead of me constantly asking him to do things for me).

sunday. well sunday morning maxson was awake from 3-5 not happy for reasons i can only guess were teething mixed with sleeping in a different environment? not sure really, that was extremely tiring. we forgot to set our alarm for 9 am church. instead we woke up to all the children happily deciding they wanted to wake up at 8:10 (not complaining to that time at all). we slightly rushed to church. i say slightly because i was in no hurry to stress myself out of trying to get here on time. casey and i got there with the 3 kids i ended up getting there with 4 children in tow around 9:45. overall church went smoothly the rest of the time we were there since most of the time i only had to take care of maxson and i gave up that day went the easy route and just let him roam the halls most of the sunday school hour. after church we lost all 3 children at the same time in the building for about 15 seconds: maxson started running down the hall away from casey after i gave maxson to casey to watch, brielle was hiding behind the coats, and jaden had legitimately run off minutes earlier. and all this time casey can pretty much only stand there and be a warm body to help. the rest of the sunday only involved minor melt downs and casey was a tad more mobile with crutches.

sunday night cody and camille got home from their anniversary trip and we had the best evening with them. we stayed up until 1:30 am chatting away. if you know night-time-kimber well at all, that must have been a really fun night, i am very much a baby when it comes to staying up late and begin to get ready for bed at 11 almost always, the absolute latest i can stay awake is midnight. so it really was such a fun night with them.

we planned to leave when we woke up monday morning just as the day went, maybe max would wake up at 8 and we'd leave by 9:30? well after we went to sleep at 1:30 i was restless for the next hour for some reason. then at 2:30 am or so maxson starts coughing a bit and kind of waking up and a few cries here and there and we just stayed in our bed in hopes he'd get over and go back to sleep. by 2:45 i just didn't feel good with the different sounds he's making, they weren't his normal wake up in the middle of the night cries. so i check on him at the foot of our bed to find that he's thrown up :( i felt like such an awful mom. he was in such a sad state: pale, little head strength and body control, he couldn't control his eyes it seemed, it was so sad and scary. it didn't feel like the scene of a "normal" sick throwing up person so asked casey to give him a priesthood blessing. the next hour and a half involved cleaning up his sleeping area and him and packing up all our stuff to go, we figured that since we were very awake at 3 am we might as well all just leave. casey stayed cuddling max on the couch with a cup ready to catch anything that came out and it did. the whole hour and half until we left maxson went between sleeping and a state of sleeping/throwing up that was so sad.

we left around 4:30 am. i drove the first hour and half while casey took care of maxson in the back, i think he only threw up once or twice more and it was very easily contained with the cup and bib, the rest of the time they slept. casey then drove for an hour because i couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. really casey probably shouldn't be driving because of his very purple/swollen foot but i couldn't do it. i was out that whole hour in an instant, even if it was uncomfortable, i was so exhausted. the rest of the trip we switched off driving every hour so the other could try to get some sleep. somehow maxson always timed his sleep while i drove and his awake time while i was in the back with him.  i don't think i've ever been this tired in my life and had to keep going like this. SO TIRED. luckily we did have dad is fat by jim gaffigan to listen to while we drove to help keep us awake half the time, he was so funny. only a funny audio book like this truly kept us from falling asleep at the wheel. the very last 1 1/2 hour leg to our home maxson timed his sleeping while i was in the back with him. i woke up to feeling like a brand new person. what an hour of sleep does to you!!!!!! we made great time getting home in 10 1/2 hours. 

once we unloaded the car we headed to the urgent care to learn that casey has 2 fractures in his foot. yayyyyyyyyyy! not. he has a super intense moon boot he gets to wear around because of it. poor casey. we'll be going to a foot/ankle doctor this week to discuss what to do about it.

once max woke up from his like 3 hour nap in the car he was back to happy normal maxson with a ravishing appetite from fasting for so long.

so that incredibly long monologue is why 5 days felt like three 48 hour days

note to C&C: this trip was 100% worth all that pain we went through, we love love love seeing you guys

and here are the random pictures that go along with the trip
(i barely took any this trip seeing that we were so busy, but do know my niece and nephew were oober fun and we had a great weekend in indiana)
a. we reached 200,000 miles on our little car! good job corolla. this picture was actually taken at 199,999.9 miles at 9 degrees fahrenheit .
b. we made homemade pretzels twice while there. oh how i love thee bread machine. i'll share my recipe at some point.
c. flowers from casey as a pre-thankyou for playing video games all saturday night with friends (this was before his foot thing happened)
d. it was snowing beautifully outside all weekend so i wanted to take all 3 kids outside to play in the snow. ha, it was quite the exhausting adventure. this was the mess that ensued.

a. barney
b. sick maxson on the car ride back to nebraska
c. trying to sleep in the back of the car
d. either his shirt shrunk or his belly grew from the last time he wore this

a. at urgent care
b. his super sweet moon boot
c. & d. nasty swollen/bruised foot. the bruising is beginning to go into his toes nearly 4 days later

and these were just random pictures from today while i wrote this long blog post of our weekend. maxson has been obsessed with pulling up his shirt all day and finding his belly button or just pulling it up for fun. gosh darn it if it's not the cutest thing to watch today. look at how big his belly is!

and 2 random photos from our trip in az i hadn't put up
a. maxson on the slide at the park, my mom took this
b. the crown braids whitney did on our hair all week long whenever we begged her to do it. did mine turn out stellar or what? whitney is a pro hair stylist, seriously go get your hair done by her, you will love me for going to her (i can get you in contact with her if you want)

mostly making messes

more of the fruit explosion

seeing him with his milk and vacuum was just too cute

and now we begin the cheerio explosion

"nom nom nom, must stuff as much as i can in my face before she sees me"

and lastly he was NOT happy when i forced him out of the kitchen so i could clean up all the cheerios.

messes mostly make me laugh, and truly, it's fun for him to explore.
it's all learning to him.

frozen…in wyoming (christmas vacay part 6)

there was never really any fresh snow while we were there,

but we still got out there to play in what was left.

maxson loved sledding.

he loved walking in the snow/ice.

he loves being outside if it's cold or hot.

love that boy.

christmas vacay part 5

WYOMING!

wyoming was just grand getting to spending another week and a half with the cutler family.

some days everyone was there,

some days only the kids were there,

and some days we were the only ones there.

it was a relaxing end to our vacation.

we drove quickly yet safely up to wyoming to be with the cutlers for new year's eve.
that night we played balderdash which turned out to be a hilariously perfect game for that evening.
somehow we all made it to midnight!


we unanimously thought maxson looked hilarious with two halves of an easter egg on his ears.
tayli played with us in the snow.

more snowing

SETTLERS
man we had such a blast playing this game.
each game was so different.
i was a great persuader.
casey was a great complainer player.
tayli was a great trader.
karlee was a great sport, she literally had the worst spots every time.
and derek was barbaric, seriously that guy is ruthless.
we probably played at least 7 different games together and wish we could have played more.

we played a few other games that week including things and phase 10 twist

grammie and maxson.
a candle on brad's steak for his birthday.

cafe rio at brad's work for his birthday

maxson's phone radar has continued to reach breaking highs.
he's still obsessed with phones and putting them to his ears.
he loves it when they play music, he carries it around and just bounces to the music.
honestly he just loves to have control over them, ha.
after a little while he may take a little nibble on it too.
we pretty much never let him actually have the phone but his determination to find them is persistent.

great old tayli,
making us laugh real hard one morning.

grandpa and fran came up to wyoming for the shortest visit ever but we were ever so grateful to see them.
they returned from their mission to equador last fall and told us all about their adventures.
definitely got the missionary bug in us!




maxson begging for muffin from grammie
karlee being the awesome super aunt and vacuuming while maxson insisted that she hold him
(she got her braces off right when we left town sadly! can't wait to see that smile in person!)

"where's your hair?"

his throne.
not sure why i think this picture is as funny as it it because it's really probably not...

a little snow.
more of professor maxson.

he cuddled casey for a good 35 min after a nap one day, that lucky dog

smoothie hogging

more smoothie loving.
and smoothie not so loving when you tell him it's all gone.


wyoming was such a wonderful vacation for us.
we loved getting to be with the cutler family, they take such good care of us.

snow fun coming up next!