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.

The Family Party

My parents came down last Friday to visit and celebrate Alan's birthday. Before they came we warned them that we were forecast to receive 10 inches of snow in the next 2 days but they came anyway. For Alan's birthday we gave him a bike. We were going to wait until Saturday when we had his family party to give it to him but when we heard the forecast we decided to give it to him early so that he could ride it before the snow arrived.

He was pretty excited about the bike.

We took him out to ride and it was already starting to snow, but he still enjoyed himself. I'm glad we did it then because now there is about a foot of snow on the ground.

The next day my parents took us out to eat at the Golden Corral. Then we came home and had a little party for Alan.

Alan is opening a present from his friend Zachary. I love the look on his face!

Alan, Conner and Grandma playing with the trucks.

My dad setting up the art easel they gave Alan. It has already received much use.

My dad was sticking his hand through the gap in the easel and Conner was laughing and running away before he got tickled.

Then we had birthday cake. I make a construction site out of his cake and used the chocolate cake and rolos as dirt and boulders for the dump truck.

Blowing out the candles. He eventually got them all.

Alan had a great birthday. We love having him in our family - he is such a sweet little boy.

The Friend Party

This year I decided to do a friend party for Alan. I kept it simple - he had 3 friends over for an hour. We played 3 games, had cupcakes, opened presents, and then there was about 5 minutes left for everyone to just play. It was a construction party so all of the games were "construction" games. The most popular was the wrecking ball (shown in the 2 pictures below). I attached a ball to a string and then the kids took turns knocking over a pile of empty boxes (we pretended it was a building).

Another popular game was the treasure dig. I buried Rolos (because they have gold wrapper) in a container with wheat in it. Then the kids pretended to be a digger and they looked for treasure (Rolos).
I also did a bean bag toss into a dump truck but that one didn't go over as well.
Then we had cupcakes. Alan wanted blue and pink frosting and we put little construction vehicles on each cupcake for the kids to take home.
I also found some toy hard hats at a party store so each kid got one of those, although they didn't wear them for very long.
The party boys with his friends: l-r Mara, Alan, Cade, Alex
All in all Alan had a lot of fun, but I don't think I would do it every year.

Here are some funny things Alan has said in the last month:
"Lets peel our eyes" - he and Reed were looking for me in a store. It is kind of funny to hear him try to use phrases like "Lets keep our eyes peeled".

"Okay, shows over" - Reed was giving a F.H.E. lesson on missionary work. He was showing pictures from his mission and we were talking about missionaries and how he would go on a mission when he gets older. He seemed really distracted during the lesson and when we announced that it was over he says "Okay, shows over" and stood up and walked off. During treat we showed him a globe and we talked about where some of his relatives have served and he pointed out where he was going to serve and then he talked about it for more than a week, so I guess he was paying attention after all.

"Mom you're a genius" - he just said this out of the blue one day.

"Its waffling!" - Alan was playing with is toy top and as it spun it started to wobble. Alan announced in an excited voice - "Mom, it's waffling, its waffling!"

According to 4 year old Alan:
favorite color: pink
favorite movie: Bolt
favorite song: Love of Holy Ghost (I don't know what this is, maybe a song from primary?) and Happy Birthday
favorite food: Chicken nuggets (also apples, pears, marshmallows and licorice)
friends: Alex, Mara, Cade, Zachary
What do you want to be when you grow up: I might be a construction worker, or a daddy. I don't know what I will be.
How many kids are you going to have: Maybe 4
Where are you going to live: In a tall building where we used to live, that is called Great Falls. (He is talking about the apartment building that we used to live in when we first moved here)
Where are you going to go on your mission: Maybe New York (he has also said Kashmir, French Guiana, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic)
favorite book: the book that Cade just gave to me, full of different books.
What do you like to do: watch movies and play with Alex
What things make you happy: when I help Conner climb all the steps at McDonalds
What makes you sad: when Conner is not happy and crying and grumpy. When he is crying I have to plug my ears.
Favorite toy: the motorcycles that I got for Christmas that race down the thing.

The good and the bad of snow

The good things about snow:
1. It makes the world look so much prettier than when it is bare and brown.
2. There is a cozy feeling you get from sitting by your window, sipping hot chocolate while the snow drifts down.
3. It provides many fun out door activities - sledding, skating, making snow angels, and building snow men.
About a week ago it started to warm up here so Alan and I decided the snow was perfect for making snow men. After we finished one Alan decided we needed to make our whole family in snowmen. So here are the final products: l-r Daddy snowman, Alan snowman, Conner snowman, and Mommy snow woman.

Milk cap eyes, a carrot nose, a pine cone mouth, stick arms.

The bad things about snow:
1. It is hard to play outside when it is really cold.
2. When it melts everything turns into a muddy, slushy mess.
3. When it melts, and then refreezes, it gets very slippery and falls are hard to avoid (just ask Conner).

The boys and I were out in the back yard playing during the warm weather. Conner slipped on some ice and fell face first onto the icy ground. The poor kid didn't even put his hands out to break the fall. I saw him fall out of the corner of my eye and then I heard him SCREAM! By the time I got there blood was pouring out of both nostrils. I took him in and got him cleaned up and then I surveyed the damage: 1 fat upper lip, a scratched nose, a bruise on his forehead with a scratch on top of the bruise and two bloody coats. Nice.