April Phone Favorites

and so it begins. This boy is pulling himself up on anything he can find! 

I know most of you are all "enough with the slide lady!" But seriously, I {love} this thing. I love even more that my eight month old can scale this thing like no body's business. He climbs to the top and yells "Ma! Ma! Ma!" sooooo cute!

This boy can EAT! I actually enjoy feeding him since he eats just about anything you put in front of him.

We went to Auny Missy's for our first pool time party. Manfred loved the water. 

I think he loved it even more that he girlfriend Zada was there with him. 

No one would look at me. Story of my life!

We then went inside where it was snack time. Zada was feeding Duke poofs. It was the cutest!

I made a house for Peanut's dog (it's actually Duke's dog but don't let her hear you say that.) She thought it was cozy enough to snuggle in. 

Packing has it's perks! I was weeding through my wedding cards, trying to only keep the ones with awesome notes in them when I stumbled upon an extra surprise. So far I have found over $100 in coat pockets, books, and other random places. Score! Thank you again Suttons! ;)

Manfred likes to brace his feet just like his sister!

E rocking her blanket as a super cape. 

How we have to play while Mommy is working/ packing. Duke likes to eat rocks and I just cannot devote the attention to watching him 24/7 so we seperate the kids. Yup, awesome Mom right here!

Another form of escaping her brother. She plays at the top of the stairs. These two crack me up. Holy Hannah! Where did April go???? Can we really be moving in a month?!?!?!

Laughter Makes You Young

 Nothing makes my heart happier than watching the kids play together. Duke laughs at E and E laughs back or does something silly to make him laugh again. It is wonderful!

 Hands down our best purchase this year for Christmas was our slide. Our kids cannot get enough of it! It is so nice to have inside where bumps and bonks are limited due to carpet. Plus it is usually too hot to go to the park so this is perfect! I would HIGHLY recommend one for all you S.A.H.M. 

 Hiding since Duke is slobbering on her.

 Another favorite activity of E's is taking all of her toys out the the toy box and snuggling with her blanket, Elmo and Ellie. While playing together is nice most of the time sibling bonding ends up in tears. This is where E gets away while still being in the same room. Manfred can't reach her in there. It makes me laugh.

 We sure know how to make a mess!!

 Another favorite activity is chase!! E grabs her blanket, puts it on like a cape and races around saying "I oh ast!" (I so fast!) and Duke chases her.

Everytime she runs by Duke busts up laughing. It is great!!

Once Daddy gets home, we like to unwind by reading the paper. I love it when E opens up the paper and starts "reading" it o us. This stage is so fun! I love my babies!!

Egg Hunt

 On Easter Sunday Jakob and I had an Egg Hunt of our very own. Sunday morning during sacrament meeting at church I noticed E was picking her nose. I leaned over and told her to top it and folded my arms for the sacrament prayer. Once it was over I looked at E and she was once again picking her nose. I told her to stop and asked if she needed to blow it. She looked at me a bit concerned and said yes. So we blew her nose and we once again sat quietly. A few seconds later once again her finger was up her nose and I mean almost to the second knuckle. Then it clicked. I had given her some crasins and I was sure one was up there. I picked her up and asked her if she stuck a crasin up her nose. With worried eyes she nodded her head. So I stuck my fat finger up there unable to feel anything. I tried my pinkie and there it was I could feel the bottom of a crasin. I told Jakob and we started laughing. How were we going to get this thing out? We tried blowing, no luck, it was too far and E wasn't grasping the concept of out instead of in. The ladies in front of us turned around. One of them said she had some tweezers. By this time Bishop was looking at us inquisitively. This is after all sacrament and we were causing quite the ruckas. I sent him a text and he started laughing on the stand. We got the tweezers and left a crying Duke with some friends in sacrament while we went to extract the crasin. Meet the Toblers, we are a gong show!!

This was her face before the extraction. I held her head while Sammi held her feet and Jakob braced her body while grabbing the crasin. It only took a second but the poor girl was traumatized. 

It was a jumbo crasin. It was a funny Easter Egg hunt. I don't think she'll be sticking a crasin up her nose any time soon.

Easter

Oh my word! Life has been crazy here! Between moving twice in the next three months, receptions, road trips, up coming weddings and caring for two children my blog has been SERIOUSLY neglected. I have fallen so far behind it is giving me anxiety. Soooo... it's back to business.

 Easter sort of snuck up on me this year. First it was super late in the year which just was strange and then a thing called life got in the way. I had visions of "baby's first Easter" photo shoots with Duke. Doing bunny crafts and dying eggs and none of that happened. In fact I totally forgot about Easter until the night before at 3:00 a.m. Thank heavens I had some random toys in my "gift box." I even raided the pantry to help fills Duke's basket. Yeah, I'm the greatest Mom ever. I know. Anyways... we headed up to Mom and Dad's for a BBQ. Homemade hamburgers on the grill beats ham any day!

 I love Mom and Dad's back yard. It's a little osasis in the middle of the desert.

The Burger Master.

E was pretty excited to be able to feed Daddy for a change.

Manfred's first Easter Basket. Some Puffs, bubbles and a hippo toy. 

Gosh I love this little man! That smile and those eyes melt my heart. 

At this point he had had enough and went to bed.

Ethnie's basket was Elmo Themed (of course.) Aunt Janet found this cute little basket for her (thank you.) She had books, bubbles a frog and Elmo stickers. 

She went straight for the stickers....

...and started sticking them everywhere!!!

We have started a tradition of writing reasons why we love/ are thankful for one another and putting them in our eggs instead of having chocolate. Hands down this is one of my new favorite traditions. This year everyone accept for me forgot so while we had cookies for dessert, they took five minutes to dig real deep and come up with reasons. :)

We stuffed them in eggs hid a few, and let Peanut go to town.

She was a bit confused when she found out there was nothing but paper inside. Trust me she doesn't need any more sugar! 

But that didn't stop her from hunting. She was pretty excited about it! 

Aunt Nancy was kind enough to give E some Elmo eggs. They were sooo stinking cute!

Sig really wanted to get into E's basket and E was more than willing to gather up that extra large Easter egg.

The best picture I could get of her in her dress. She really wasn't into posing for me this year. I loved her dress. Oma sure has good taste (thanks mama!)

It was a great Easter. The best part was spending time with family and reading reasons why we loved each other most of which were hilarious. I am so thankful for our Savior who paid the ultimate price, who died for me that we might live with him again. I am so grateful for his love and sacrifice.

A Growing Struggle

 Jakob and I are on the same page when it comes to plants; we like them but we are both pretty good at killing them. In our courtyard we would have had a little oasis back there but I didn't want to put in the time or money just to have everything die. This is Vegas after all and it takes a great degree of care to keep things alive. Which brings me to our roses. A phenomenon really. We never planted them they just showed up. We are currently just trying to give the trees enough water so they don't die but not too much so that they grow and require trimming. It's a difficult balance and yet despite our best efforts to ensure nothing else grew, up comes this beautiful rose bush. 

I love them and I'm glad that it struggled to survive.