We had the funnest time ever this past week!! Aunt Bethany brought her boys, Evan and Dallin to visit with us. We were blessed with AMAZINGLY beautiful weather. Not a drop of rain, and sunshine everyday. The kids spent most of their time running around in the backyard. We did manage to shove all of them in the car one day and head to our favorite playground in Portland. The kids played for hours and we had a fun picnic lunch.
Why is it that kids love playing in the sand/dirt the most? Probably because it makes moms craziest since they get so dirty!
Evan is the cutest, most mischievous little boy ever! Between him and Arwen, they played lots of fun, silly games!
I love Dallin! His silly little tongue is always out of his mouth! It was so fun to listen to Dallin say, "No Shosh." He was pretty good at keeping Joshua in line!!
Like always, Joshua is just happy to be around!
These two are the best of buddies! There was never a dull moment! Thanks so much for coming Bethany, Evan, and Dallin. We think you are the greatest! We miss you lots!

Your guess is as good as mine...I took pictures off the camera today so I could blog about our fun cousin visit and found 7 or 8 of these...Joshua in a white plastic chair on the TOP bunk in the boys' room. He must be the King of the Universe!! What a silly little boy!

Joshua is the happiest, cutest thing in the universe! He always has the biggest smile on his face and is so fun to be around! He and I did a little photo shoot with the cowboy hat yesterday. He just kept running around, yelling, "Cheese!!"
He was going for the artsy pose here...just showing us his pouty lips!
Here he is just care-free and loving life!
And here's a cute little one of Larkin. Whenever Josh would run away, I would snap some of her. I like this one because she does this with her lips a lot and I think it's pretty darn cute! If you scroll in on her eyes, you can see that they are the most outrageous color blue ever! And I thought for sure she was going to be brown eyed like Josh.

We had the most beautiful weather here this weekend...in the mid 60's! Aaron and the kids spent lots of time working on making our yard pretty. Larkin had her two month doctor appointment yesterday. Since we were in Portland for it, we decided to spend the rest of the day playing there.
The kids had tons of fun playing hide and seek behind all of the huge trees!
Here's a cute little picture of us looking into the BRIGHT sun...especially bright for us Portland vampires!

Joshua loves to push around Arwen's hoards of babies in the shopping cart. What a sweet, good Daddy he will make!

Noah almost made me pee my pants tonight. He grabbed one of Joshua's diapers and stuck it on his head and told me he was wearing "ear drones" because he was ignoring all of us. He said this way he didn't have to hear anyone cry.
His shirt pretty much explains it all!!
These pictures will make him proud someday!!

"Yeah...Noah made this look so fun. I just feel like I have diaper on my head."

So, this is my latest and greatest creation yet. I found a new recipe for a chocolate mousse cake. The other ones we make are really cute but I didn't like how they tasted too much. This cake was SO yummy!! What a fun dessert to have on Valentine's!
Good old Joshua enjoying his dessert!!

I caught Josh trying to be naughty the other day. He likes to stick his little piggy toes over the edge of the railing up at the top of the stairs. Luckily his is dome is too big to fit through the bars!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

This was our engagement picture...it was February in Utah and it was so COLD. You can tell by our rosy cheeks and noses...and Aaron's ears :) Anyways, Happy Valentine's Day Aaron!! I love you so much.

Aaron fixed Noah's hair and took his picture in the beautiful weather we've been having on Saturday while the girls and I were at Ballet.Always up to no good!!
We were reading about when Jesus visited America today in 3rd Nephi. We asked Noah how Jesus was able to do amazing things like make earthquakes and mountains and stuff. He said,"Jesus is magic." True enough!!

Noah loves scary stories and movies with witches and monsters. It's all fun and games until you ask him to go and put something away in his room and he FREAKS out because there is "something" up there that will get him! He won't go up until someone turns the light on for him. We have a book that has pictures from all of Tolkien's books. Noah loves to look at Gollum from LOTR. So we tell him stories about him from the book. The other day Noah told me a story about Gollum. Here it is:
"One night I looked out my window and I saw Gollum. He was in the garden (no, we don't have a garden!!) and he was pooping in the garden. He was pooping in the grass, in the garden. Yeah, he was pooping in the garden. In the grass, in the garden. Then he climbed on the house. He pooped on the roof. Then he climbed in my window and ate Shosh. (That's how he says "Josh.") THEN he ate Larkin and Mama and Daddy and Arwen. Then he GRANDMA 'DELL...Oh No!!" (She was Noah's old nursery leader.
Quite the story, huh? It was so funny up till stinking Gollum ate Shosh. Noah is glad that Shosh lives on the bottom bunk so that the monsters under the bed will eat him first.
Quite the vivid imagination, wouldn't you say!

Larkin sure is a doll...the only problem is I can't get her to sleep very much at night!! She has no troubles sleeping all day. I always keep her in the same room as us...which is ALWAYS really noisy, but she sleeps SOUNDLY just about all day. Jen, when can I start sleep training her? Is it two or four months old? I sure hope it's two...maybe that will help!!

Well, I just stumbled across these awesome pictures taken this last weekend. We didn't have enough room in our car for everyone while Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen were visiting, so I decided to stay home and "rest" with Larkin. Too bad I had a funeral for church to plan and didn't get much resting done!! Anyways, Aaron took everyone to Multnomah Gorge.
Arwen can be so darn cute when she wants to be...don't be too deceived though...there's a tantrum always on the brink of erupting in her that you could hear in China!!
This pretty much sums up Noah lately. He's so stinking naughty. He tells these amazing stories...too bad they always have the word "poop" in them at least five times! I'll have to write up his "Gollum pooping in the garden" story later. It kept me in stitches!
Here's good old Grandpa Willy and Noah "Willy" at one of the waterfalls. I swear this was one of the only pictures of Noah NOT sticking out his tongue! I guess his ears sticking out make up for it :)
Arwen and Old Man Willy get along so well...they always spend so much time together when we are all visiting. He wrestles and tickles her to death...which she loves! He spent hours up in Ar's room with just her reading her stories and playing.
We sure do like it when Grandma and Grandpa come to visit!!

Noah has a bad habit of sneaking out of his room multiple times at night. When asked what he is doing, he always says he has to go to the bathroom. ("There's no way a little boy can pee 3 times in 45 minutes," I told Aaron last night!!) Anyways, when we woke up this morning Noah came down with a blue mouth. He found these crazy little food coloring pellets that you can put in the bath to make fun bath water colors. (like the dirty kids don't color the water a beautiful brown by the time they are done!! That and they are in there to get clean, not come out with the faint hue of blue!) Apparently he thought they were candy and when he realized they weren't, he spit it out all over his mouth. Well, Arwen found the pellets in Noah's room today and brought them to me with a gross look on her face and a blue tongue (you think maybe my kids are candy addicts??) and told me they were not candy. I explained what they were and told her to put them in the garbage and go and wash her blue hands. I was in the middle of cooking bacon and didn't notice Josh swipe the "candies" from the trash can. He brought them into the bathroom with Arwen. Here is what I found:

"Let me see your hands Joshua. Why are they wet and blue?!"
Yup...my sweet little boy LOVES to play in the toilet! Every time I look in the kids' toilet upstairs, there is a toy floating in there! What a gross little thing!!

Today was Larkin's blessing day!! It was so nice to have Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen with us.
Here's Grandma and Grandpa Nielsen with all the kidlets.
What a little Daddies Girl...
But only Mama can get the best smiles out of Larkin!
Such proud parents. (Aaron thinks he looks like the old man in that old time picture...the one where he is holding a pitch fork. Funny!)
My favorite thing about this picture is Joshua...so laid back!! That's just exactly how he has been about getting his spot as "baby" in the family replaced by a littler baby! Noah was so excited to see Larkin in her white "princess "(dress) this morning. He said she was so beautiful!
Grandpa Willy and Daddy with the new little princess!
This is my favorite little picture of Larkin thus far. This is one of the sweet little faces that she makes all the time. Grandma Nielsen thinks she was born looking very wise...we'll have to see!

Larkin's blessing was really neat. Aaron blessed that she would be a compassionate person...especially when dealing with her own children. She was also blessed with a good sense of humor...Aaron said, "Uh oh...she's gonna need compassion and a sense of humor when dealing with her children because they are gonna be BAD!" Let's hope not too bad :) I didn't catch the rest of the blessing because a little Josha decided to be bad and I had to chase him and keep him from joining the blessing circle!