Stuff I've made

So, I had this idea when Alaina was using a pacifier, but I never found stuffed animals I liked for a reasonable cost. But this time, I just wanted one for Landon, so I looked up online where I could get Beanie Babies. Walgreens was the answer. I went to get one, expecting it to cost about $5. But Walgreens had some knock-offs for $1! Yeah! So I bought three. Gina was over when I was making them into Binky Buddies and I convinced her to go get some for Russell. And here they are:

The boys both LOVE them! They just cuddle right up with them and Landon, at least, goes right to sleep. I've noticed that Landon falls asleep faster if he has the guy to cuddle AND the binky than if he just has the binky. Russell loves to cuddle and chew on his. They're so cute!

They're great because the binky doesn't get lost as much and the baby attaches to the toy and the binky, but when the binky has to go, they still have the toy for comfort.

I should have posted these a LONG time ago, but with the holidays, they kind of fell through the cracks. These are the things I made for Christmas gifts this last Christmas:

I bought a wood lathe for Brice a long time ago and it just sat in the garage. When Christmas was coming we were pretty broke and I was trying to think of something I could make for people for free. I remembered the wood lathe and I got on youtube and learned how to turn. This was my first bowl made out of some cottonwood I found up the canyon.

The next one I made out of the other half of the same cottonwood log, but I was a little better and this bowl is thicker and bigger.

I'd gone to a woodworking shop in Provo (they are awesome!) to ask some questions about the first bowl and the guy gave me a piece of honey locust wood. With it I made this bowl:

William let me have a couple pieces of walnut from their tree and I used it to make a birdhouse for Brice's mom. I used cottonwood for the top.

With another piece of walnut I made a box for Gina and Toby. This was a fun gift because I used it to announce to them that I was pregnant. I labeled the wooden box "the oven" and put two little dolls inside. One of them said, "Gina's bun" and the other said, "Morgan's bun." Gina's face was priceless!

This is a WAY fun hobby and I need to spruce up the lathe table so it's more sturdy before I turn on it again. I've been wanting to get to it this summer, but haven't yet. I'm getting more motivated with the weather getting cooler. I really want to make some more stuff! It would be nice to make another batch of Christmas gifts before it gets cold because last year I was pretty freezing making these things in the cold garage in December!

Cooper-D-Stupor

Cooper has all sorts of nicknames: Cooper-D-Stupor, Cooper-Stee-Dooper, Cooper-Booper, Super Duper Cooper Pooper, just plain Stupor, and Alaina calls him Booper. It's a good name for him. He's such a goofy dog.

One day, we had him in the house and I went to go look for him. He was hiding in the laundry room:
Yesterday, Brice went to clean a mess he made in the bathroom with the pooper scooper shovel. Cooper is apparently scared of the pooper scooper shovel and went to hide... In the CAT crate!How he fit his big self in there is beyond me! And he was able to turn himself around in there too!

We plan to fix up a Cooper-proof dog run today but I'll have to try to get a picture of Cooper's signature pose: Front paws on top of the fence, big head peering over to survey the world below. So you'll be driving down the street and you'll see:
(I just went and took these pictures just now before the dog run is fully enclosed and Cooper can't get his big dome up over the top of the fence anymore.)
He's like Yertle the Turtle or something--ruler of all that he sees.

Wow, I'm behind!

I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted until I looked through the pictures on my camera and thought, "I haven't blogged ANY of these!!" So here we go. First I'll post the random pictures from the last little while and then I'll do a few separate posts about events or whatever I have pictures of that lend themselves to their own post. Okay, so in no particular order...

Alaina is adorable.

I love this picture of Landon cuddling his little mousie.

Alaina fits in Russell's clothes! Okay, well, Russell doesn't quite fit in this outfit yet, but Alaina got hers all wet or dirty or something and Gina loaned us this and I thought it was SO cute on her!

Shopping at Walmart, Alaina grabbed these off the shelf and started modeling for us. She's such a ham!

So, we pulled into the parking lot at WM and Brice saw this dog in the car and from the back, thought it was a lady. We had to get a picture. Can't tell you how many times we saw people taking pictures of Jax sitting in our car (always the driver's seat) looking all person-like. Wish we'd have been one of the picture-takers once...

People ask all the time how it is with 4 kids. Here's how it is:

They say not to cry over spilled milk, but sometimes, that's just all you can do. Everything else is relatively easy. It's Alaina who is the hardest due to her constant getting into things, lack of understanding and disobedience (she hasn't yet learned that she needs to do what mommy and daddy ask, which is rather hard to teach with a little sucker attached to me for a good portion of the day). Today, for instance, we were outside and she was dragging a toy vacuum towards the intersection by our house. Brice said, "Alaina, no!" She looked at him thoughtfully. He said, "You'll get a spankin'!" She said, "Okey," and headed out into the road.

We took the kids to the waterfall Brice and I had gone to for our anniversary.

Ryker was brave enough to get wet under it, but I think he rather regretted it later. Not so happy about being cold on the way back...

Little miss independent. Walking the log bridge all alone! I love Raelin in the background too!

It's a little blurry but I love this picture of the two of them with their heads together studying bugs. This is how they are most of the time, despite all the complaining I do about all their fighting. It's always one or the other.

My handsome man showing off his cheeser.

And my baby man showing off one of his first attempts at a cheeser. Trying to figure out how to coordinate all those muscles! He's mostly got it figured out now. And he's got way cute little dimples!

Look at that funny face! Love the eye brows, the little mouth, and especially the ears! He's only a month and a half old in this picture--look how well he holds that head! Which is funny because he's still such a squishy kid. Alaina was SO strong when she was born and Landon was pretty much the opposite--a complete mush ball. But he's growing fast!

Ryker's crane pose

Later in the evening, Ryker fell awkwardly between these two stumps and hit the back of his head. He's the only person I know who can fall forward but hit the back of their head. Poor guy.

We met my parents at this beautiful place called Daniel's Summit to hang out for the day at their campsite. The kids had a blast riding ATV's and playing. And getting dirty.

Ryker's sharpening Granddad's shovel. Where does he come up with this stuff? He just found a rock and started honing that edge! If it had been a proper medium, he'd have ended up with a pretty sharp edge! Where'd he learn to do that?

Why is it that kids never use things the way they were intended?

Landon's ever-present worried face:

Bunch of monkeys

Look how long he is!

Okay, well that's it for all the random stuff I had to catch up on. More to follow--stay tuned!