I'm in Love!

Friday came and I couldn't stand the thought of staying home and cleaning again. I was trying to think of something that we could do and then I remembered all of the baby animals that the zoo just received so I decided that we were going to go and see them. If you know me, you know that I am definitely not a spur of the moment kind of girl, so this was big for me. It was a sunny, but very cold day, but I didn't care. We were getting out of the house! I took Meg and Will and we went by ourselves and it was so fun. The zoo was basically empty so my kids were able to run around and jump and explore without having me scared that they would be lost. They were so happy and it made me so happy watching them. We didn't have anywhere to go or be so I just got to play with them. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in daily chores that you forget to just have fun. We had a great time and I fell in love with my cute little kids all over again.

It's a...

GIRL!!

Baby Girl Alvord is due April 7th. We had a feeling that this baby would be a girl so we weren't too surprised about the news. Megan has said that she is going to have a baby sister ever since we told her that there was a baby in mom's tummy. She kicked me in the stomach early on in my pregnancy and my mom told her that if she did that the baby would turn out to be a boy. She is very careful about doing anything to my stomach now. I fell down the stairs at about 12 weeks and Megan was so concerned. She said that I needed to be more careful because "It be a girl then I be happy, it not be a girl I not be happy." Needless to say, she is very excited about the news. She thinks that her baby sister is going to sleep in her bed with her and that her name is going to be Emily Elisabeth (from Clifford) so we'll have to break the news gently to her over these next few months that might not get everything that she wants. We are so happy about the news and are extremely grateful that our new little girl is growing healthy and strong. Now it's time to think about baby names!

This is Halloween

This year we had a very interesting Halloween. As a mom, you always picture these perfect holidays and then are surprised and disappointed when your kids don't cooperate...at least I do anyways. Months ago I found the cutest Halloween costume of a cupcake that I was going to make for Meg. I LOVE homemade Halloween costumes and have vowed that I will always make my kids' costumes. I am sure that will change when I have three kids because this year, making two costumes about killed me. I showed Meg the picture of the cupcake costume and then told her that she would be a cupcake and will would be a sheep. At that point she made her mind up that she would be a sheep too. After giving her a guilt trip, begging, bribing, tricking I realized that it is no fun wearing a costume that you don't like and so I gave in and let her be a sheep. Stay tuned for next year's costume. I am determined that the cupcake costume will be made for someone. I worked on those costumes forever. I bought out every craft store's white pom poms. When we went to St. George I even made Dave stop at Roberts to see if they had any. Dave wasn't able to go to our ward Halloween party this year and I didn't have Will's costume finished when the party started so I wasn't able to go to that. My parents took the kids to their ward party and they wore the costumes then. Halloween came and Will missed his nap so our Halloween was filled with sobs and lots of requests for candy. I knew it would be a bad idea to even attempt to get him into his costume so he didn't even wear it on Halloween and didn't go trick-or-treating or anything. He was coming down with a cold and is almost over it so when he is in a really good mood one of these days I will put them both in their costumes and will get a picture of them. In the meantime, these pics will have to do. Meg had a great time trick-or-treating though. They were gone a long time and I got a little worried about them. She ended up with a lot of loot. She looked so cute, if I do say so myself. Will looked cute too, even though he cried when he had to put the costume on. All in all we had a fun day.

Meg was showing her muscles here because she carried some of the pumpkins in by herself to be carved.

This is the only time Will was happy all night. He would see the bowl of candy and cry and cry until he got a piece.

My angry little sheep.

Meg was actually just posing with her hand slightly in the pumpkin. We had to make her do it. She did not want to get her hand all slimy.

My happy little sheep.

Working hard for the candy.

My Night as a Teenager

This past Saturday night I lived as a teenager. I went with two of my Young Women to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour...is that weird? I really wanted to go and knew that Dave definitely would not want to go so one night at Young Womens I just threw it out there and asked the girls if anyone wanted to go. I didn't get much of a response so I just gave up hope. About a month later one of my sweet young women called me and said that she had been saving her babysitting money so she could buy a ticket. We called my advisor to see if she wanted to go with us and one of the other girls in my class and it wasn't going to work out for either one of them. I thought that would be totally weird if I went with Megan (one of the girls) alone so I lost hope again. Then she decided to buy Katie (the other girl) a ticket for her birthday. Talk about a great friend. Those tickets were pricey. The concert was great, the dancing was amazing, the dialog was super cheesy but it was really fun. I lived my night as a teenager until Katie asked if we could stay after to try to get autographs. I tried to be cool and said yes, but I really didn't want to. I was so tired...after all it was 10:30 when the show ended. Then, I knew I was old.

Katie and Megan (two of my wonderful Miamaids)

Nielsen Family Reunion

This summer we took three trips down to St. George. I think I had probably been to St. George a total of three times in my life before this past summer, but we had fun all three times. The most recent trip we took was a couple of weeks ago. We went down for the Nielsen Family Reunion (my mom's side of the family). I love the fact that I am still in touch with my aunts, uncles and cousins. It's kind of sad because I don't think I would recognize any of my cousins from my dad's side of the family. I love my family so much. We drove to St. George once Dave got off of work on Friday. The last time we went down Meg bit on the cord of our portable DVD players and put a short into it so we thought we would just drive down and the kids could entertain themselves. WRONG! About 45 minutes into the drive they were fighting and screaming and we found the nearest Walmart and got a part that we needed to make them movie work. I can't imagine how anyone survived road trips back in the day. We made it down in time to have dinner with my parents and Brian and Kara. I bet they were sad that they waited for us because our kids were crazy!



The next day we met up with the rest of the family and went hiking. We had a really fun time. We had lunch together and sang karaoke. I busted out my knowledge of Brittney Spears and did a little number with my cousin Candice and then Dave and I sang Love Shack. That night we went to see Thriller at Tuacan. Meg sat down the row from me with my mom and my mom did a great job of making sure that she knew everything was pretend. She loved watching the dancing. Will wasn't too bad either. They were both so tired and fell asleep about 30 seconds after getting into the car. We drove home the next day. It was a pretty short trip but was a lot of fun. Thanks Diane for planning such a great time!!

18 Months Already!

Time has flown by since my little guy came into our family. Will is such a wonderful addition to our lives. When he was younger he was so mellow and laid-back. Not anymore! He has changed so much in the last couple of months. Sometimes Dave and I look at each other and ask, "What happened to our sweet little angel?" He is very active and loves to climb, jump, run, yell, throw things, etc. He is all boy. I always thought it was weird when people would say that, but it's true. He is so much different than Megan was at his age. Right now he really likes cars and balls. He actually has a pretty good arm. Dave thinks he is athletic...and does not attribute that to himself. When Meg was potty training we bribed her with Cars from the movie Cars. Then I got a little into collecting them myself, so we have a really big bin of them. That is one sure fire way of making him happy. When you get the bin out of the closet he starts giggling and gets so excited. He carries them around everywhere. One of the monumental things about turning 18 months is that you get to go to nursery. Meg went so easily and I always looked at the parents whose kids wouldn't with pity. Now, Dave and I are those parents. His first day of nursery I was so excited. I took him into his class and the teachers weren't there yet. I have to set up for Young Womens and have to do that pretty quickly after sacrament is over so I don't have much time to waste. Some other dads were in the class with their kids and they said that they would stay with the kids until the teachers came. Big mistake! About 5-10 minutes later a lady in my ward brings me Will who is bawling and said that she found him wandering the hall. He had tripped and hit his head and was crying. So, after that moment he absolutely will not go to nursery. It's horrible. We don't know what we're going to do. I'm sure one day he'll be okay. We'll see how long it takes.


Will is a pretty small little guy. At his 18 month check up he weighed 23 pounds (50th percentile) and was 32 inches long (25th percentile). Meg was always in the 95-97th percentile in height and weight so it's weird to see this lean little guy running around. He is awesome and we wouldn't trade him for the world...well, maybe on Sundays but that's the only time. We love you Gus!

My Big Preschooler

This year Meg started Preschool. She was very excited to go to school. She was also very excited that she was going to get to ride a school bus to school. The only problem was that she doesn't get to ride a bus to school, so we had to break it to her gently. She seemed to accept the excuse that the busses are broken, until she saw them driving around as we were on our way to school. Oh well, you can't have everything. I'll show her this post when she is on high school begging not to have to ride the bus and see what she says.


She goes to Magic Moments Preschool in Riverton. Her teacher is Ms. Amy. She loves Ms. Amy and always wants to surprise her with her completed homework. She has a lot of fun friends in her class...most importantly her cousins Annette and Jocelyn. It's really fun to be able to see them a couple of times a week. So far she talks A LOT about a boy names Beau. She always tells me things that he says. After her first week or so of school she told me that she had said "hi" to a boy in her class and I told my mom. My mom asked her about it and she very adamantly said, "No, he said "hi" to ME!" She is so funny. I have been able to help out a couple of times with the class and she does pretty well. She normally has a tendancy to get a little distracted, but I can tell that she tries really hard to be a good listener. She is learning so much (writing letters and numbers and is learning a lot in spanish). We miss her a lot when she is gone. We are so proud of our little smart preschooler!

Happy 3rd Birthday Meg!

To all of my loyal blog readers (Aunt Diane and Aunt Kellie) I have finally decided to update my blog. We had a great and busy summer. Some of the most fun was had at Meg's 3rd birthday party. She had been looking forward to her own party after going to many friend and cousin's parties over the months. She really was excited for her birthday so I wanted to make it special. For awhile there she was into My Little Ponies and so we decided to have a pony party for her. We had two horses come and give rides. Their names were Snickers and Cookie Dough. We had A TON of 3ish-year olds attend. We also had one very "lucky" 9-year old who Meg requested be there-my cousin Jack. What a good sport he was to come and help...and he even rode a horse in the end. We had pony rides, games like horseshoes, pin the tail on the horse and a pinata. It seemed like everyone had a great time. I think I only heard one kid cry, but everyone was really good at waiting their turn and sharing.



Our little Meggie Bug is such a special part of our family. She has an EXTREMELY large personality and is a lot of fun. She loves to ding and dance. She knows most songs that come on the radio and has "her parts" that no one else can sing (those are usually the chorus). She is generally a pretty nice big sister. We love her so much and can't imagine life without her. Happy Birthday Meg!!!

Road Trip

Dave took a look at the calendar the other day and couldn't believe that summer is almost over. He decided that we needed a little more fun in our lives and planned us a trip to Jackson Hole. My parents and their friends get together every year at Bear Lake so we went up on Friday night and stayed there. We had a fun time sitting by the fire, roasting Laffy Taffy (not as good as roasted Starburst) and playing with Dave's laser. It was so funny because that night our kids were so tired. Dave kept trying to get Meg to come out to the fire with him but she got some milk and layed down in her makeshift bed on the floor and pulled the covers on herself. Will climbed into his pack-n-play by himself and went to sleep. We were planning on playing on the beach on Saturday but the rain decided that we would just head up to Jackson early. We hung around town for awhile and that night went to see Grease at the Jackson Hole playhouse. It was AWESOME! Our kids did really well until the very end (or at least I think it was almost over) and we finally took them home before the play was over.

The next day we headed up to Yellowstone. I had never been before and it was really neat. The way they warn you so much, you expect that you are going to see charging buffalo and bears trying to eat you all over the place. We didn't see one animal...well, we did see some squirrels but that was it. We went to Old Faithful. It was so neat and very stinky. We kept telling Meg that Will had a stinky diaper and she thought that was really funny.

The next morning we were going to go on the alpine slide in Jackson and then head home, but we had all had it and decided to head straight home. The kids did really well with all of the driving (thank goodness for portable DVD players).

It was so fun to spend some quality time with my little family. I am so lucky to have an adventurous husband. He makes our lives so much more eventful and fun.

Here Meg is waiting for the play to start. There was a lot of weird antique furniture in the lobby that she liked to play on. I hate antiques. They remind me of ghosts...which I'm scared of.

We are patiently waiting for Old Faithful to spout.

More Waiting....


And finally!!!!!

More stinky geysers. Dave was bound and determine to find out how hot these really are. He secretly snuck down by one and dipped his hand in. I told him that if he was arrested we would be leaving him there.

Pioneer Day

This Pioneer Day fell on a Friday which was really nice because Dave had a 4-day weekend. We were going to be very ambitious and were planning on going to the Days of 47 Parade. I was trying to get Dave to sleep out the night before to get us a spot, but he wasn't really into that idea (I probably would have felt too bad anyways). He thought if we left at five in the morning we could find a pretty good spot. After really thinking about it, I decided that we were crazy for thinking that our kids would do well there. We got up and went to breakfast instead. We watched the parade on tv for awhile and played. Meg and I went to Classic waterslides with our cousins and Dave and Will stayed home and took a nap. We came home and took a trip up the canyon with our cousins for a campfire and dinner. It was a great time. Will was especially good by the fire. Once I told him "No" he didn't try to touch it again. Meg LOVES playing with her cousins so she had a wonderful time. We were home and in bed in time to hear fireworks going off in our neighborhood. Gotta love the life of tired parents.

Give this guy some food and he'll be happy all night.

We had a lot of fun with this butterfly net.

Viva Las Vegas

Last weekend Dave was going to go to Las Vegas for a training seminar. The weekend before I was gone to girl's camp so I was bummed to be apart again. Plus, my parents are out of town and my sisters-in-law were having a girl's weekend so I was feeling like I was going to be super lonely. Dave came home from work on Thursday and we had dinner and I told him how lonely I was going to be. His flight was going to leave in about three hours. He checked to see if there was room on it for us and there was! So, we tagged along with him for the weekend. It was a little rough getting there, but we made it late Thursday night. Friday morning we took Dave to his seminar and then went to the aquarium at Mandalay Bay. It was a lot of fun and they have a lot of sea life to see. I thought it would be fun to show the kids the lions at MGM so I started walking over. It didn't look too far away, but as I started going it started to seem farther and farther away. It was about 110 degrees (I really don't know how people can live there). We finally made it and checked out the lions. By that point I was exhausted so we finally went back to our hotel and relaxed until it was time to pick up Dave. We ate at the Bellagio that night. The kids loved it. We watched the fountains and then headed back to the hotel to go to bed. The next morning we took Dave back to his class and then we went over to Circus Circus. It was actually pretty fun. The kids were a little too small to ride the rides but we looked around and played some games. We watched some circus acts and then picked Dave up from his class. We had some time to kill before our flight left to go home so we found a splash park and let the kids play. All in all it was fun spending time with Dave and showing the kids around Vegas. I'm not planning on going back for a long long time though.

Will and Dave having fun at the splash park.

Meg waiting for the fountains at the Bellagio. We bought those shoes she is wearing in Vegas and she LOVED them. She kept running around saying that they made her run fast. When we were waiting in line for dinner she kept showing everyone her shoes and telling them that they were new. It was so fun.

Will loved being in our hotel room. Here he is enjoying a pancake and jumping on the bed. He was in heaven.

Thank goodness we found the splash park. Meg finally got her clothes wet after much poking and prodding. She wanted her swimming suit on but I couldn't dig it out of the suitcase. We kept telling her that it was okay, but she was really weird about it. I think she finally got too hot and just decided to do it.

In the picture, Will is getting his diaper changed on the grass at the Bellagio. He was so fun on this trip and was as happy as could be.

It's Independence Day!

I am doing this blog for journaling purposes only, seems that it is almost a month later. We have been EXTREMELY busy lately. We just got done with our Girl's Camp. It was awesome! I still haven't put all of my stuff away from that though and we have been home for almost two weeks. That's what basements are for, right? Anyway, we had a pretty low key 4th of July this year. Both of our kids were super cranky so it made for a really fun day. We went to my parent's neighborhood for their annual parade and breakfast. I had to wake the kids up to go...that's never a good sign that your day will go smoothly. My mom pulled them in the parade and then we had a little breakfast. It was my cousin Jack's birthday so we went to his house for a party and then we went home. I taught Young Womens the day after and I came up with this great idea to stitch "pray" onto a pillowcase for each girl. I really didn't think it would take me very long, but ended up taking me about 20 minutes per pillowcase and I had 27 to do. I worked on those things all day Friday, the rest of the day Saturday and then Sunday morning. They turned out really cute though. The girls really seemed to like them...some even brought them to camp with them. They in turn tiedyed them which was a little alarming, but I figured I had given them to them so they could do whatever they wanted to them. I was kind of bummed though. Oh well. We grabbed some dinner and then got a few fireworks to do at home with just us. It was actually pretty fun. Will got a little scared, but his tiredness was working against him too so he was kind of whiney. Meg really liked them though. Then, we put the kids to bed and I stayed up until one in the morning stitching. Great fun!


I am so grateful that we live in a country where we are free. I am also very grateful to all of the people who are willing to serve in the armed forces. I definitely wouldn't be able to have my husband in harm's way and I respect those families so much. God bless America!!!

Dairy Days

My friend Stacy told us about Dairy Days that Thanksgiving Point holds each year and we decided to go. She was sick and missed out on the fun though. It was a great time. Both of the kids were in love with the animals. They had a lot of baby animals there and it was really fun to see them all...I'm a total sucker for baby animals too. I had been bribing Meg all day with a horse ride and she was so excited up until the point that she was actually supposed to get on the horse. She freaked out and cried almost the whole time. It was so strange because she is never really like that. She did say that she wanted to ride a red horse so maybe the horse that she got wasn't what she had in mind. Will rode a horse too and loved it. We had a great time though and will definitely go again next year.

Meg was having a pretty long conversation with this llama.

Will loved being free to roam around and he loved looking at all the animals.

This baby cow was a huge hit with my kids. He was really hungry too and kept eating our stroller, people's clothes, a little girl's hair.