Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Tori thinks this is the greatest holiday ever - everyone wears pink, she gets to write little notes to her friends, get cards and candy from friends, and eat a bunch of sweets. One of our friends had a little valentine swap and these are a few pictures. Poor James had quite a cold so that's why he looks a little under the weather.

Above is a video of Tori and James on Valentine's Day. Tori and I made sugar cookies for our classes on Sunday. Unfortunately James had a fever and threw-up in the morning before church and John had a ward conference to go to, so we all had to stay home (poor Tori was very upset, but eventually got over it when I said we could still share the cookies with friends another day). I love in this video how Tori is determined to make James play with a toy and he is completely oblivious and just wants to look at his book.

8 Months Old

8 Months Old:

I'm not sure how big he is exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's over 20 lbs and super long!

He is such a big fun smiley boy!! James is now fully mobile. He army crawls like crazy everywhere he wants to go. He is a lot happier now that he can get to any toy he wants (and many things that he is not suppose to play with). The cutest thing is that he'll even pretend to crawl away from me - he'll keep looking back and smile as he tries to crawl away fast until I come and get him and then he just giggles like crazy. He actually laughs the hardest when Tori tries to go and get him. The best thing about him crawling is the look he gives me when he discovers a new toy (like when he found the magnets on the frig that make animal noises) - he just turns and gives me the happiest look - I can just imagine him saying, "Mom! Did you know this was here?!"

These three pictures are what happens now when I try and take a picture of him. He basically won't hold still and just crawls towards me until he can reach the camera, which he thinks is pretty cool.

The above video is of Tori and James with Tori trying to get James to clap. James wasn't feeling too well, so he is a little mellow in the video. He starts to get really cute at the end, but of course the tape ran out on the video camera.

I just thought this was a good video of James doing his army crawl. So fun!

Fun with Dad

John had a little bit of time off in January and these are just a few pictures of us having fun at the pool and the mall with dad. James wasn't so sure about the pool at first since it was a little cold, but he started to have more fun splashing after a little while. Tori loved going to the pool and probably would have stayed in all day long if she could have. Her favorite thing to do is to jump off the side of the pool into her dad's arms.

Above Tori and James are driving their race car and below Tori is on the carousel with John. The last Friday of every month the carousel is free after 5pm, so we go pretty often. Tori loves to get off and run back in line to get on again - I think our record number of times in a row is 8 or 9 (yes I was feeling pretty sick afterwards). I have been surprised at how much James loves the carousel now, too. I would have thought he was too young, but he claps his hands and kicks his legs and gets super excited every time we get on. I even let him ride on a horse the last time. He had fun, but he a had "death grip" on the pole (I was holding on to him the whole time, of course).

Comfy Cozy

Tori and James just looked so cute and cozy before bed in their feety jammies that I had to take some pictures. I sure am thankful for nice, warm and fuzzy pajamas this winter!

This is just a random picture from one of Tori's preschool parties that I forgot to post. From left to right: Tori, Hannah, Siri, Libby L., Libby A. We also just finished a parent-teacher conference with her teachers and they shared some cute projects that she had done at school. They talked about having dreams and goals and asked each kid what their dream was, here is Tori's:

"My dream is: The earth is a clean place." When asked how she can help her dream come true: "I'm going to give everyone a present with a rake in it, and we will rake together."