Movies

We have been a little worried that Josh has been watching too many movies. He often talks about things from movies while he plays throughout the day. For example, he is convinced that the dragon from Shrek lives somewhere in our house and if Josh does certain things, like get his diaper changed, the dragon will come get us. However, if you ask him about the dragon, he will tell you that the dragon is nice and is Josh's buddy. Additionally, he occasionally will get really excited and start telling us that the Huns (from Mulan) are coming and that we need to "quick, run away." Although his ability to recall movies is quite humorous, we were a little worried that he might be watching movies too often. As I sat down to the computer to print out a calender on which Josh could put one sticker each day for the one movie he would be allowed to watch, Josh came over to me and suggested an even better idea. He said, "What are you doing Daddy?" I said, "I am printing off a calender for your movies." Josh then said, "Movie tickets?" and our new plan was born. If Josh helps out around the house he can earn one Movie ticket a day. When he wants to watch a movie, he gives us his ticket and he can watch the movie of his choice.

Yesterday, Josh made me realize that his ability to pull stuff out of movies might actually have a beneficial use. Our story starts off with the following tent Josh and I made in our family room.
On Sundays, Josh is only allowed to watch church movies and his favorite are a cartoon series that teach about the Ten Commandments. The films are about Moses and the Children of Israel and are set at the foot of Mount Sinai. After we built the tent, Josh said to me, "Daddy, it is a tent mountain." "It does look like a mountain, doesn't it?" I replied. Josh then declared boldly, "It is the mountain of God." In the movies, the characters are always talking about Moses going up into the mountain of God. I'm glad to know that he has absorbed a little bit of doctrine along with his entertainment.
In other news... Here is a fun picture we took yesterday of Maggie next to a picture of Josh when he was just a couple weeks younger than her. They're not identical, but there is definitely a family resemblance.

Maggie update

Just wanted to post a few more pictures of Maggie. She rolled over today for the first time from front to back. It's amazing that she's been with us for over a month now. Time keeps flying by.

1 Month Old

On Friday, Maggie completed her first month of life. She is doing great and Holly continues to recover much faster than she did with Josh. We got a great idea from our friends Rob and Mercedi to take a picture each month and post them on the side of the blog so everyone can see how Maggie is growing each month. So, here's month one.

St. John's Cousins

It was fun to have Jared, Jenna, Jacob, and Abbie come visit for a few hours this week on their way to the airport. Josh loves all of his cousins and gets really excited when he hears that they are coming to town.

In other news, I would like to give you a real-life reminder of why it is important to not leave home without your camera, as certain things need to be documented and shared with the entire world on one's blog. A man has got to be very confident to drive down to the DMV and order himself one of these babies!

BFFs

Maggie had one of her new best friends, Audrey, come over to play the other day. Maggie and Audrey were born two days apart (while their dad's were both studying for law school finals). Audrey's brother Eric has been one of Josh's best buddies since we moved to Phoenix over two years ago. Eric is two months to the day older than Josh so it has been a blast seeing the boys grow up together. Now we get to do it all over again. It will be fun to see how these two cute girls grow and change over the years. As you can see from this picture, they are already having a great time together.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. Here are a few pictures of our Christmas activities. Enjoy!



And here are a couple of more pictures just for fun!

The trick to blogging

So after having spent so much time blogging over the past two weeks, I have come to realize why some people (my sister Mauri) are more successful at this than others (yours truly). The trick is to write something every day or two so that you don't get three or four (or more) days down the road and realize that you, yet again, have to write a blog entitled or prefaced with something like, "Here are pictures from a bunch of different things," or "Please excuse my rambling on about numerous different topics."
My sister is great at blogging. She typically will post something every day or two and will have a post on one topic with corresponding pictures. I, on the other hand, find that I wait for two or three events to occur before it dawns on me to post something on the blog and then my post turns into a menagerie of rambling thoughts. That being said, please excuse the forthcoming nonsensical rambling.
First, I have been meaning to post this picture for a while, but since my posts have recently been focused on Maggie's arrival, I thought I'd wait to share this. Never has a truer description about an internet phenomenon been said.

So here comes all the little I have to say to the few of you who actually will read this.

During the past few days, some of Josh and Maggie's cousins have been in town to meet Maggie. On Friday, Josh and I went to the zoo with Jenna, Jared, Jacob, Abbie, Grandpa, Grandma, and our friends Thomas and Eric. The kids all had a great time.
Josh riding on the Carousel with Aunt Jenna. Uncle Jared, Jacob, Abbie, and Grandpa also took a ride.
The zoogoers. Jacob and Jared, Abbie and Grandpa, Josh and Dad, and Eric and Thomas.
Josh (on the right) and one of his best little buddies Eric enjoyed watching the fish.

Saturday was a big, yet depressing, day for BYU sports. Grandpa came over and picked Josh and I up to go to the BYU vs. ASU basketball game. ASU was favored, but BYU was winning almost the entire game until they lost at the end by one point after the officials waived off BYU's game-winning basket at the buzzer. Despite the loss, it was a great game and we had a fun time.
What wasn't such a great game was BYU's loss to the University of Arizona later that evening. Maggie got all dressed up to support the Cougs in her first exposure to BYU football, but unfortunately, she was one disappointed Alma Matter daughter. Interestingly enough, the first BYU game Josh saw (and went to) was BYU loosing to UofA in Tucson two years ago. Note to self: our kids introduction to BYU sports = loss for the Cougars. Sorry guys. At least Maggie looked cute. Go Cougs!