Go Canada!!!

Today was a rather tense day at our house while we were watching the U.S./Canada men's hockey game. Of course I was cheering for Canada and Reed was cheering for the U.S. And I have to admit that after seeing the U.S. beat Canada on Wednesday I was a little uneasy, especially when they tied it up at the end of the 3rd period today. But in the end the Canadians came through and won it for the gold medal!!! Go Canada Go!!!! I wish we could have actually watched the game - instead we watched the live stats on the internet and called my parents during overtime to find out what was happening. The medal means the Canadians received a record 14 gold medals - hurrah!! As a side note the U.S. did really well, getting the most total medals by quite a bit. Yea for the Olympics!

Auto repairs and home improvements

A couple of weeks ago I went to Walmart with the boys to get 4 new tires for the car and an oil change. This isn't my favorite thing to do but we usually spend the time in the toy department, pushing all the buttons on the various toys so at least the boys have fun. Then we do any grocery shopping I have. This time I set both boys on the bench in the auto center and gave them some goldfish crackers to eat while they watched the tv in there. I walked 15 ft away and was talking to a tire guy about new tires. Suddenly I hear Alan SCREAM. I look over and he is laying on the floor holding his nose. I ran over and picked him up and noticed his nose was bleeding so I started cleaning that up and trying to comfort him. Meanwhile Conner was having fun stomping on each cracker (they had spilled on the floor when Alan fell). He would squish each cracker into tiny crumbs and then he would move on to the next cracker and once in a while he would bend down and pick one up and pop it into his mouth. The floor was filthy but he completely ignored my demands to stop. While all this is happening I think 4 or 5 different auto center guys came to see what the commotion was. Once I finally got Alan calmed down he said he tried to jump off the bench. I guess he must have tripped or something. Sheesh. By this time I just wanted to leave but the car really needed tires (one was flat so I was driving on the donut) so I took the boys to the toy section and they had fun. I think the auto center guy was just glad when we left, he offered to clean up the blood and gold fish crumbs so that we could go. The rest of the trip wasn't too bad.

Oh, and while I am on the subject of blood, I managed to get all of the blood and grease out of Alan's coat. Hurrah! Shampoo is a wonderful thing. Alan managed to get blood (from the Walmart incident) and grease (Alan was putting boxes in the recycling and he ended up with lots of grease on his shoulder and hand, don't ask me how) on his coat in the same week...is this a normal 4 year old boy thing?

Now to home improvements. I feel like our house is sucking up all of our extra money. We replaced 2 more windows upstairs so now all of our upstairs windows are new, energy efficient ones. Then a few weeks ago after a big snowstorm we noticed the water was dripping off our roof and freezing on our sidewalk. The problem was that the temperature was about 20 F (-7 C) so it shouldn't have been melting. We had someone go up in our attic to look at our insulation and he said we had about an R10 up there and it should have at least an R40. He also said that we had a disconnected heating exhaust pipe up there, which was venting all of the exhaust (carbon monoxide) from our furnace into our attic. Nice. So we got a guy from our ward to come and fix the exhaust pipe. Then we paid a company to come and spray insulation in our attic. I didn't get any good pictures but here is one of the cloths they laid down to walk on. Alan really enjoyed watching them with their big hose.
And last but not least we bought a new fridge. Our old one was about 15 years old and it ran a lot. We are trying to cut down on our utility bills so we hope this helps.

Our old fridge

Our new fridge. It has a bottom freezer and it runs much less. And it is much quieter when it is running.

Brotherly Love

I had to post this story. For the last couple of nights Conner has been waking up in the middle of the night and he wants to get up. One of these nights I went in and both of the boys were wide awake. I picked up Conner and sat in the rocking chair to see if I could calm him down. Alan quietly said "Can I hear the song too?". I said "of course" so I sang them a few songs. By the end of it they were both still awake so I put Conner back in bed and told them both good night. Conner started to scream, he was so mad that I wasn't getting him up. I told Alan to be patient. After a couple of minutes of listening to Conner scream I hear Alan, in a very stern and authoritative voice say "Conner! Conner! Conner!" over and over until Conner stopped screaming. Then I hear Alan say quietly "Its okay Conner, I'm right here, it's okay". Then he talked to him for a couple of minutes and then it was quiet in their room. That was it - they both went back to sleep with no more fuss. I was so amazed and grateful. Even though Alan can be rough with Conner he really is a good big brother.

Our second Christmas

Last weekend we went to Grandma and Grandpa Bassetts house. They watched the kids for us while we went to the temple and then we had a late birthday and Christmas celebration. Mom and Dad took us to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate Alan's birthday. The kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I wasn't sure if there would be anything there for Conner to do, since he is too young to understand most of the games, but they had lots of the rides you see at malls - like cars and airplanes. Conner loves those little rides so he was in heaven - he probably went on 10 or more rides. Alan had a fun time playing some of the games and getting tickets, which he exchanged for a pack of skittles and a straw (sorry no pictures I forgot my camera). Then we went home and opened Christmas presents.

Here is Conner opening his present (a toy garbage truck). He loves it!

Alan got pretty excited while opening his present.

Alan is examining his toy microscope and trying to figure out exactly what it is. He really likes the little tool that comes with it. It has a magnet, a magnifying glass and some other cool gadgets.

Thanks again Mom and Dad Bassett for the gifts and for watching the boys while we went to the temple!

Now on to Valentines Day: Reed and I went to the stake Sweetheart dinner and dance. It was so nice to get out without the boys. The dinner was fabulous (chicken alfredo and roast beef and salad and baked potatoes) and then we danced for a couple of dances. Dancing isn't really our thing and the songs they were playing were kind of old so we only stayed for 15 minutes and then we went home to relieve our babysitter.

Making Cookies

About a week ago Alan went over to a friend's house so Conner and I spent some one-on-one time together. I decided to make cookies, since it has been a while. As we made the cookies together it occurred to me that this was the first time Conner has ever made cookies with me with out Alan. He thoroughly enjoyed helping with all the ingredients and not having to fight with Alan over who gets to put in what and who gets to stand where (I enjoyed it too).

Tasting the dough

Cheese!

I sometimes wonder if the reason Conner doesn't really talk is because he gets so little one on one time with Reed and I. Conner only says a few words, although he jabbers a lot - I just don't understand what he is saying.

Reed and the boys digging out our car after the last big storm.