So much fun in Utah!

Well Teagan and I have been having SO much fun in Utah at my sister Julie's house. She has a 2 year old, Kate, and twin 5 month olds, Scott and Austin. I hadn't seen the boys yet so I came up a week early for our family reunion so I could stay with them a while.

There are a LOT of pictures, I just couldn't pick because I think these 4 little kids are adorable!

Julie has a great play area for her kiddos and we had SO much fun with it. Julie got a pool so we put the slide into it and the kids played on it pretty much every afternoon. They were so cute together!

They played nice together most of the time. Teagan learned a thing or two about sharing and hitting this trip. I think we did about 20 time outs...yuck, but he is definitely getting the hang of things!
They played with legos pretty much every day which was super fun.

Except for when he attacked Kate, it was all in fun though, right?
We took a trip to an aquarium in Salt Lake somewhere and they LOVED it. Let me tell you that taking 4 kids 2 and under out is a BIG job. It would seriously take 15-20 minutes just to get in the car when we were both going fast.


Teagan loves his cousins Scott and Austin. He likes to pat their heads and tickle their toes, and steal their binkies. He liked to come help me talk to them to make them smile, it was pretty cute.

He LOVED Kate's babies, especially the first day.
He doesn't play with them like Kate does though, he is a little bit more rough!


He loves tricycles and was so excited to find out that Kate has one. He loved to just sit on it.I enjoyed being girly with my niece, Kate. She would come put on make up with me and I did her hair a lot. It was so fun to get to be all girly with her, she is such a doll!

We have had such a good time here. The kids have been so good, for the most part. I have learned that taking 4 kids anywhere is just rediculous, and I've realized how much I love and appreciate my husband. Even though I only get an hour or so each night where Zac takes over on baby duty, I've realized what a huge difference it makes. We are so excited to see him later this week! Tomorrow we're off to see Grandma Packer I and II and our other cousins. We can hardly wait!

18 Months!

Today I realized that Teagan is 18 months old! We are at my sister Julie's house right now so I don't have my camera cord to upload pictures of him so just be waiting for a very long post about our fun here in Utah!

Teagan is such a sweet boy. He is definitely boy and VERY wild, but he counters that with lots of hugs and kisses and just being cute! Here are our quick facts about Teagan:

~Teagan says mom,dad,car, all done, and please without hesitation or prompting
~Teagan has a variety of other words he'll say if we ask and beg.
~he loves finding animals in books and saying the sound they make. He recognizes birds, ducks, dogs, cats, cows, monkeys, snakes, and elephants
~If you ask Teagan how old he is he points his finger and says his version of "one"
~Teagan loves sitting on things, especially things that are alive, he always tries to straddle any dogs he sees at the park and cats at people's homes
~Teagan loves babies and dolls. He likes baby talking to his cousins Scott and Austin and petting their heads and loves to pack his cousin Kate's dolls all over the house
-Teagan gives open mouth kisses and the sweetest hugs
~Teagan can crawl now
~Teagan loves climbing up the ladders at play grounds and going down the slides, stairs are old news.
~Teagan loves to play in water and make big splashes and put the water on his head.
~Teagan is just like his daddy. He is always trying to make everyone laugh. One way he does this is by lightly hitting his head against things and saying "owww" while he rubs his head and then fake lauging...oh the joy of boys!
~Teagan is very attached to his bubba and blanket and must have them to sleep

There is lots more, basically I think he is the most athletic, sweetest, funniest, most loveable, craziest toddler I've ever met, we are so lucky to have him around!

Sleepless in San Diego

There have been so many milestones that I have been so excited for Teagan to reach. Crawling out of his crib is not one of them. At first I was just fascinated. I even tried to get him to do it on video because I didn't even know how he was doing it. We realized that since he had busted one of the bars out of his crib he discovered he could get through the hole. This was about a week ago, sorry about the whiny cry voice he likes to use.

Now he's got it down, he twists to the side so his hips will slip right through.

Every night we go in to check on him before we go to sleep and yesterday I almost stepped on his head. He had crawled out of his crib and snuggled up on the floor. I didn't even hear anything, he's like a ninja! It was pitch black in his room, the light is from the flash. We put him back in bed and he almost got through the night.

Then this morning I woke up to the sound of a fire engine and realized it was one of Teagan's toys...it was 5:45 AM!!! Are you kidding me? I just layed in bed and he played in there for an hour. Zac was up studying and said that he could tell Teagan was laying down with his blankets occasionally because he'd coo to himself like he does when he goes down for a nap. He didn't even cry in his room.

He was miserable all morning and has been down since 8:30.

Luckily, Teagan will be sleeping in a pack n' play for the next 2 weeks so we can put off solving our problem for a little while. Maybe we'll get him a big boy bed.

Funny Video, with a surprise ending.

Teagan has been licking his plate lately after dinner to finish it off. For some reason we found this funny, we probably should have discouraged it all along, obviously. Well last night the bowl ended up on his head.
Here's a video of the action:

The good news is that I'd already lost one large plate and one small plate from this set to drops, so that just evened it out, three place settings left. I have to say that I will now be using plastic bowls for him, don't know why he was using glass in the first place?!?!?!

A Good Tired

Reasons today was WAYYYY better than yesterday:

-We went to the Wild Animal Park which is VERY Teagan appropriate

-I used my "Love and Logic" skills and repeated the phrase "Would you rather push the stroller or ride in the stroller to the next animal" about 30 times which meant that Teagan didn't throw ANY fits about getting in and out of the stroller. He just made the choice and we moved on.

- Me and Teag both got a good nights rest.

-Teagan got some energy out climbing up every fence, bench, and hill he came across

-He got the rest of his energy out on the big jungle gym and water area

-I got to see a really cute mama and baby elephant. I watched the baby nurse and was SOOOO glad I'm not dealing with that right now. :)
-I pushed Teagan up and down every hill in that park, almost, and so I totally get to count that for my workout today.

-Teagan fell asleep within one minute of us getting into the car and continued to sleep for 3 hours.

- I am a good tired, which means I'll sleep well tonight, but I'm not grouchy.

Mostly it was nice to just go do something fun, get exercise and enjoy some one on one time with Teagan. He is such a little dream, especially when I have him all to myself. I love him to pieces. He is so happy and he's so fun!

Rough Day

Today was one of those days, I couldn't even do my "blah day" list because I wasn't at home. Me and Teagan took a little road trip up to Palomar Mountain where I'm helping host a girl's camp for my church (12-18 year olds) in a few weeks. I am doing a big treasure hunt so I needed to find places where I could hide clues later and I wanted to just check it out and get pictures for the other leaders.

It was supposed to be really fun. I packed hats, sunscreen, and a picnic for us to enjoy, but Teagan had another idea. He was a DREAM on the way there, hardly made a peep. Once we got there he got sick of getting in and out of the carseat and threw awful fits each time I went to put him back in. He just screamed and screamed. I couldn't not buckle him up cause we were driving on cliff edges and I couldn't drive the hour and a half home without getting my stuff done so I just let him scream. Let me tell ya, screaming wears on me quick! Even when I took a 1/2 hour break to just let him run and play he still went crazy when I put him in the carseat.

Well, when I finished we headed home and I was so excited because I knew he was tired and needed to sleep so it would be a nice ride. He slept for about 15 or 20 minutes and then woke up. He was good until the graham crackers ran out and then he cried the rest of the way home. I have NO idea what was wrong. When we got home he didn't want to eat, his diaper was basically dry and he would NOT take a nap. I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to be in the car seat.

On a happier note, I took him to the pool when we got home and he was back to his cheerful self. He giggled and squealed and loved his spiderman suit. Of course I told him "If you throw rocks in the pool we will go home," and within 15 minutes he threw in rocks so our pool trip didn't last long. He was pretty good despite the no nap situation, but I was struggling.

My plan was to put in Monsters Inc and forget about making dinner, but then these great 8 year olds asked if they could come over and babysit, my answer "ABSOLUTELY!!!" They entertained Teagan from 5-7 while I made dinner, did some laundry, folded laundry, and cleaned up the house. Those little girls are THE BEST!
They all ended up watching Monster's Inc anyways and Teag loved the company!

Tomorrow will be better for sure! Teagan and I will both get a good nights rest and Zac will be home earlier!

Horsey Ride

This seems to be a nightly occurance at our house. I think I have about 25 videos of Zac and Teagan playing with Teagan laughing hysterically...I love it

But then I go to order pictures of us and there are tons of Teagan and Zac and about none of me. It's not like I want to just look at tons of pictures of me, but it wouldn't hurt to be remembered as the mother and wife of the family. I always end up getting nose hair pictures like this one when I try to take pictures of me and Teag. Oh well, life goes on. At least you can see how symmetrical my nose is.

We are never short on pictures on this little guy with his cute little smile. I think he looks so old in this picture, kinda crazy.

Blah Day Packet

So me and my sister Julie put together a "blah day packet" for those days where at 7:45 am you're saying "it's going to be one of those days," a blah day. You know those days where you feel like you're not accomplishing anything, your child/children is/are being especially naughty and trying, you don't feel like doing anything, and it's just depressing.

This is what we've come up with when we feel a blah day coming on, to be honest I've been doing this daily, sometimes more than once. It is a way for me to just get going and not be lazy I guess...it is very simple:

1. Open all of the blinds and windows
2. Put on some FUN music, I've been stuck in an 80's rewind this week and I'm LOVING it! Dancing really helps!
3. Set a timer for 10 minutes and do a 10-minute clean up of the house.
4. Make sure your bed is made
5. Get on with your day

This seriously helps me so much. It makes me really feel genuinly happy; life is SO good to me. I don't know how those 5 little steps do it, but I've been more productive, happy, and a nicer mom and wife...weird. YOU should try it!

A for the day!

So we TRY to have a weekly "family night" where we basically have an organized family activity that doesn't involve the TV. By default we end up watching wheel of Fortune and just sitting around so we figure that once a week it's a good idea to have a little lesson that is already prepared. Sometimes our lessons are "churchy" and we teach Teagan stories from the Bible or Book of Mormon, and other nights we cover topics like love, smiling, body parts, loud vs soft voices, recognizing pictures of grandparents and aunts and uncles and so forth. It's great to have a time to teach Teagan the things that are important in life and have some fun while we do it.

I have to admit that I am super proud this week, usually I don't put this much effort in so I have to record the times that I do! I made paper bag puppets to tell the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den. Teagan LOVED it. He wanted to help "act" for the puppets and was squealing and laughing, good times! I WISH I had someone video tape it, next time we will. If you have kids I definately recommend "family night," it doesn't have to be a religious thing, just something to make fun family memories and teach your kids!
And here is Teagan on the night other than family night watching Wheel of Fortune drinking his milk by dipping his finger in. He loves this show!

Fun times at the Wild Animal Park

Today I headed to the Wild Animal Park Zoo with my buddy Nicole and her two little girls. We saw lots of fun animals and took a "Journey into Africa" tour bus ride. The highlight was definately the mini water play area. Teagan and the girls had so much fun playing in the water.

This is the only picture I took of the whole thing, it was so nice, especially on such a hot day! It would have been better if we could have kicked out the older obnoxious boys who were being crazy! You can see the little lost boy in the middle, that ones mine. :)

Teagan and London couldn't get enough of the alligator, it spit water out its mouth and these two were climbing all over most of the time, pretty dang cute!

Here is a little of the action and Teagan's "super excited squeal" that I love so much.

All three were pretty much konked out for the drive home.

Then this afternoon (after a 3 hour nap whoooo!) we went to the dollar tree (love that place) and Teagan got a little crazy over the dolls.

First he took them all off of the shelf and put them in a big pile.

Then he sat down on them....maybe we'll keep waiting for more babies until he can be more kind to dolls.

I just had to include this video. This is Teagan's super squeally laugh that I LOVE so much. Anytime Zac walks in the door he starts and doesn't stop until he goes to bed. Daddy makes this little boy go wild, Love it!