Blessing Day

Eli was blessed yesterday and we had so many friends and family gather for the occasion. My mom made his blessing outfit. The inexpensive ones were horribly ugly and the cute ones were on average $150. The booties I guess were made by my great grandma and matched so perfectly.

We have been working on finishing our basement since June. It's finally done (with the exception of two uncarpeted stairs due to installer error).

Before:

On the left side is where the stairs are. Almost completely enclosed with a miniature doorway through which no piece of furniture could possibly fit. So we had that wall torn out. You'll see that below.

After:

See the wall is torn out so that it's not such an enclosed space.

I was very excited about how perfectly that book shelf fit in this space.

Guest bedroom:

What you see going down the stairs:

Going to the right is the finished space (obviously). To the left is the unfinished space where we have food storage and regular storage of toys, Christmas stuff, etc.

This is my shelf reliance system I got from my parents for Christmas. I'm excited to slowly be filling it up due to Harmon's case lot sale this month.

Because we finally finished the basement we could move the queen size guest bed out of Eli's room and I can finally share pictures of his room. I know my sister has been wanting see better quality pictures so she can tell what colors the walls are. So, Erin, these are for you.

Have I said that I LOVE how his room turned out? Really really LOVE.

Christmas and cute kids

We had a wonderful holiday break and two fabulous 4 day weekends together. Jared and Halle went to the Las Vegas bowl and cheered on the Utes...who did horribly. They got free tickets from someone at church and I'm glad Halle was able to get some time for herself and dad. She loved the Bellagio fountain and they stayed out until 1 AM!

We spent the night at my mom's house on Christmas Eve and Dustin and his family were in town. Someday they will move here, but their house has to sell first. Eli and Ainslee are 16 days apart.

Unfortunately Erin and her family couldn't be there, but it would have been especially fun to have Cameron in those pictures since he was born about 20 days before Ainslee. Someday we will all live closer than Alaska, Utah, and Texas and that will be a blast since our kids are all so close in age.

I held both of my baby boys on the recliner. Patch isn't a fan of crowds or kids (except ours).

The sweater hanging on the couch was the big winner the day before at my office's ugly sweater contest. Thanks, Mom!

Halle picked out these awesome sunglasses for Jared. What a hotty!

I believe on the inside it says Hot Lips or something like that. See the giant lips on the side?

Halle got a cookbook for Preschoolers that has pictures for the kids to follow instructions. We made green spaghetti (pesto).

I thought it was delicious, but I was the only one. We have also made blueberry pancakes (Halle also didn't like them, but loves blueberries and pancakes separately), and a banana chocolate shake (again, I was the only one that liked this). The rest of the recipes mostly include summer type fruits that are way too expensive now, so I think we'll have more fun in the summer.

The babies LOVED their Great Grandma Kline. There was just something about her that the second she held them they stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep.

We celebrated the new year by putting the kids to bed, me falling asleep on the couch, and Jared playing Star Craft. Fun, yes? I woke up as the clock was counting down at about the 30 second mark. Jared kissed me, I went upstairs and went to bed. So romantic.

Every year Jared gets Halle a fancy new dress for Christmas. I really love this year's dress and enjoyed doing Halle's hair so she was all gussied up.

Today Jared is in Florida golfing for work. Yes, for work. So I took some cute pictures of Eli to show off those chubby cheeks of his. Halle never had chubby cheeks. Eli is 2.5 months old. At his 2 month check up he was 11 lb 3 oz (50th percentile) and 23 inches (75th percentile). He's grown 5 inches since he was born; that's totally insane. His overall BMI puts him in the 10th percentile since he's so tall for his weight. At this age Halle was 8 lbs. and wasn't in any percentile since she wasn't on the charts.

This is Halle around the same age:

Fun stuff

We had a quiet Thanksgiving, just the four of us at our house. My turkey turned out amazing! The pumpkin cheesecake was crazy delicious as well.

We had a crazy snow storm that produced huge snow drifts in our yard. In some places you could see the grass and in other places there was 3-4 feet of snow. The pictures don't do it justice.

Halle was discovered asleep on the stairs. Sneaky girl.

We painted the basement using a sprayer. Wow. It took a long time to get all that paint off. I decided Jared will be very handsome when he's old a grey.

Jared wanted to make a creepy face.

On Wednesday Halle had her school Christmas program. She did so awesome. At some points I could actually hear her singing over all of the other kids. I think her favorite song was Feliz Navidad. You should ask her to sing it for you, very cute.

Eli is cute and has chubby cheeks. Jared recently told me that for as much as I didn't want a boy I sure do seem to like him alright. I do. I completely love and adore him. Here, let me inundate you with pictures.