Christmas letter 2013

As 2013 has come to an end,

We have some great news:  that you’re still our friend!

We did some new things.  We laughed and we cried (some of us more than others).

So now here we go!  Hang on for the ride!

Brad went to Salt Lake where he ran and he ran

His way down the canyon, the marathon man!

20 acres of land, we bought in the Spring

So some day we’ll build…for now just a swing.

Rebecca keeps cleaning the kids and the house

While people make messes; yes, even her spouse.

Piano and diapers and trips to the pool,

So kids are her life, but she is still cool!

Now Jake’s in 1^st grade, he reads like a champ.

Has not known a stranger, he sure likes to camp.

Likes Legos with Levi and makes Eva squeal,

He’s good at piano, but not glockenspiel.

The next one is Levi; he’s such a sweet boy.

Pajamas all day he sure would enjoy.

His adenoids out, so no more frustration

His nose doesn’t drip and no medication!

And now we’re to Eva, the cutest of all.

She likes to wear skirts and twirl down the hall.

She’s just 19 pounds of pigtails and spunk,

Her giggles and kisses will cure any funk.

And for the finale…what’s due in the Spring?

A new baby girl is what March will bring!

For those who are counting, you’re right, that makes four!

But don’t get your hopes up, if you expect more.

And so…Merry Christmas! And happy New Year!

If you do what’s right, no reason to fear.

For God sent His Son, to save the whole earth.

Now we think of Him, and His special birth.

Love

Brad, Rebecca, Jacob, Levi, and Eva

JONES

Eva turns ONE!!

About two months ago (just over, actually) my little girl turned ONE!  Hard to believe it's been a year since she was born!  As per our usual, we had a birthday party at home mostly with family and a couple of close friends.  I did do something out of the ordinary this time around and I made the cake myself...cupcakes!  I thought they turned out pretty good.  I even made the icing from scratch!  I took Jacob with me to get the party stuff and he was convinced that she needed a tiara that said "Princess".  There was another one that said "Happy Birthday" but being an awesome big brother, Jacob is convinced that Eva is perfect and she is a princess!

 

Here she is the morning of her birthday - look how long her pigtails are!

One year car seat photo...she is getting so big!

Eva loves to make silly faces :)

Welcoming one of her guests to the party.  Her friend is only one month older than her, but is definitely much, MUCH bigger than Eva is.  They are on quite opposite ends of the growth chart :)

We decided to open presents before eating cake so that Eva wouldn't get all dirty.

Getting a purse for her birthday - she had lots of help opening gifts!

Her first necklace!

"I can do it myself!"

All decked out with lots of jewelry :)

And a phone to go with the purse and jewelry.

Getting ready to blow out the candles!

What do I do with this cupcake?

Eva wasn't so sure about the whole cake smashing/eating thing.

I tried feeding her some, but she didn't seem to like it.

Then we just left it on her highchair and she only looked at it.

Finally we gave her one of her favorites...Doritos!  (Or as my boys call them, Storm Chips!)

Eva had such a great birthday party!  She got lots of new things, many of them more girlie than anything we previously owned.  She got lots of love from friends and family, it was so nice!


Since turning one, here are a few Eva facts:

• Eva weighed 15 lb. 8 oz. at her one year check up - yep, not even close to being on the charts!
• Some of Eva's favorite foods include:  strawberries, cheese, hot dogs, oatmeal, yogurt, bananas, Goldfish crackers, peaches, bagels with cream cheese, Doritos (we don't give these often - but she still loves them!), cheerios - to name a few.
• Eva is pretty much sleeping through the night.  She normally goes to bed around 8:00 pm and wakes between 7:00 and 7:30 am. 
• Eva takes a 2-3 hour nap most days.
• She can wave bye-bye, signs more, all done, eat, and drink.  She can also blow kisses.
• She has some sounds that I think are words.  She says:  yeah, dada, bye, poo (she will say this if I ask her if she needs to go poop in the potty and she does...sometimes we go in the potty, sometimes we don't), please (it sounds more like pees), nana (banana).  There may be more, but most of them are more just sounds and I'm not sure if they're actual words yet or not, but she and I both know what they mean.
• She is very adventurous and Brad often says Eva isn't happy unless she's dangling precariously from something.
• She's very tough and even when knocked down by siblings or falling down on her own, she doesn't cry much, if at all.

Eva is such a fun little girl to have in our home.  She is definitely busy and our most mischievous child (she loves getting into cupboard, toilet paper rolls, or pretty much anything she shouldn't), but we love her and all the cute, funny faces she does.

Love you Eva girl!

Funny kids

I was going through my pictures thinking I needed to write about Eva's first birthday, but I saw these pictures and wanted them on my blog first.

This picture was taken around Christmas.  Eva was given a hat and some sunglasses from some neighbors of ours who have two little girls that have outgrown these things.  Eva LOVED the hat and sunglasses.  Jacob always likes to be in pictures, so this is what we got!

 

Levi saw Eva in her sunglasses and he wanted to put on his goggles and hat to take a picture.  I love this one of Levi.  He looks so happy and I love his smile and blue eyes :)

Then there's Eva trying on her brother's hat!  There is a picture of me as a little girl with my Dad's hat on and this kind of reminds me of that picture.

One day  Eva was being especially cranky (not sure why).  I had a bit of laundry to do and an 11-month-old makes doing laundry kind of hard when they just want to be held.  So, I strapped on the Baby Bjorn and set to work.

 Levi saw me carrying Eva around this way and he wanted to "wear Bo like Mommy".  So, we rigged up a BoBo Bjorn for Levi.

 Levi loves this Carebear like no other!  I thought it was cute that Levi wanted to be like his Mommy and he wanted to wear his baby Bo while he helped me work.

Eva started making this cute face when she doesn't want anymore food.

 These are just some cute pictures of my kids that others may not care about, but I love them all and think it shows their personalities.  Love my kids!

Mom's birthday

My mom has the unfortunate pleasure of being born on Christmas day.  This means that most years, her birthday takes a backseat to celebrations of our Savior's birth.  So, this year, I decided that since she was turning 55, I wanted to do something special.  So, I came up with a plan to surprise my mom with a Branson girls' night with her and all of her daughters!  We decided we would take her to a nice hotel in Branson, Missouri, so we could go shopping at the outlet malls and just hang out and have some girl time.  My mom only knew that she and I would be hanging out on a Friday night.  She didn't know we were staying at a hotel or anything.

The nice daughter that I am, I made my mom drive all the way to Branson with me with her eyes closed!  It's about a 45 minute drive, so I think she may have been a little carsick by the time we got there, but she was a good sport.  I had previously sneaked into her house and stolen some clothes and things so she would have what she needed for our overnight date.  She quickly noticed that things were missing from her closet, but she just assumed that I didn't trust her to wear the right clothes on our date!  Anyway, we got to the hotel and I went inside to get a room key.  Then I took her up to our room, but my key wouldn't work!  Luckily, my sisters were waiting inside and we knocked on the door and they surprised us.  It was so fun to surprise my mom and pamper her!

We played some games and then put our bathing suits on and went down 4 flights of stairs and outside in the frigid air and over to the indoor hot tub.

Me, Angie, Vicky, Carley, and Mom

We had fun in the hot tub, but then we had to make the journey back to our hotel room.  Some of us thought the trek up four flights of stairs was worse than others did.

Carley's response to walking up 4 flights of stairs.

Vicky and I had on the same bathing suit...who wore it better?

 We tried to have a lot of Mom's favorites available.  Here she is with her favorite dessert:  vanilla ice cream with Nestle quick on top!

The next morning we went and got pedicures, but I didn't take a picture of everyone's toes.  It was so much fun and I definitely think we should make it a tradition!  Happy birthday Mom!  Thanks for everything you've done for us and all you've taught us.  We Love You!

10 & 11

So since it's January, I thought I should tell you what Eva's been up to in the last couple of months.  She's now 11 1/2 months, but I never posted about 10 or 11 months, so I thought I'd play "catch up" a little bit.

Here's the car seat pose - to me she doesn't look much older from 10 to 11 months - if anything, I think the shot of her at 10 months looks older than the one at 11.  Anyway, I think she's a cutie!

 

 

 Eva was born with quite a bit of hair and it's just kept right on growing; which is why most of the time it's fixed.  When I don't put it into some kind of a ponytail, this is what you get!  Crazy haired Eva.  I love it when her hair's in pigtails, but I don't want it to break off or be pulled tightly all the time, so I don't "fix it" every day.  This hair was probably after she'd slept in her ponytail all night and then I took it out in the morning to redo it. 

Something Eva has learned to do is turn on the water in my bathroom.  Almost every time I am in the shower, she will find her way to my bathtub and turn on the water just to feel it running over her fingers.  Luckily she's only ever turned on the cold water.  Even when I turn it off, she'll turn it right back on.  Sometimes I think she's too smart for her own good!

Some things that happened during her 10th & 11th months:

• We got rid of her pacifier during her 9th month, so it's totally gone now and she's done wonderfully with that transition.
• She learned to crawl down the stairs by herself.  We still keep the gate up because sometimes she has gotten to playing on the stairs and tumbled down, but she does know how to get down herself.
• Eva FINALLY stopped spitting up!  At about 10 1/2  months we decided to take her off her medication because she hadn't spit up in awhile and thankfully she hasn't really spit up since.  What a blessing that has been!
• Eva started walking!!  She took her first few steps on November 16th - just before turning 10 months.  By 11 months she was still crawling to get most places, but she could take 4-8 steps by herself.

Hopefully I'll be more on the ball for her one year post!  We think she's a doll and are so glad she's a part of our family!