Thank You.

Jax' new favorite words.  He says them all the time.  I love it.  I love him.  Just can't get enough of this ball of energy.  He helps pick up the house.  Helps pick up his toys.  Throws his own diapers away.  Puts his shoes away.  Goes right to sleep at night in his 'big boy' bed.  So thank YOU Jax.  For being such a loveable little kid.  Love you tons.

Spring Break

JD's school schedule is a little different than the average school year, so we had Spring Break this week.  It was a... little cold.  But fun!  

First off was Washington D.C.  

I have been doing lots of genealogy work lately, and found some ancestors whose work was not completed.  So JD and I have been wanting to go get their work done for a long time.  It is hard being 3 hours away from the temple, especially when someone has to watch Jax nearly all day.  So we made sure to get a trip to the temple in while we were there.  We only had time to do sealings, but it was so great.  Wonderful to feel the spirit in the temple again.  It has been so long.

After dinner we headed out and saw many of the monuments in the night-time hours.  It was pretty cold outside, but a neat experience to see them all lit up like that.

We didn't get home til past midnight, then got up the next morning to head off to Amish Country.  Again, cold, but way fun.  We didn't take pictures, as most of the neat things we saw were just driving past people's homes.  

Things we saw:

Horses and buggies of course

lots of clotheslines lined with overalls and dresses

old rickety wagons being pulled by horses out in fields (with nice new trucks in their driveways! :)

grown men riding around town on little scooters

We also got to see some women hand dipping candles, and a store with thousands of bottles of jams, jellies, and salsas.  YUM!  Jax really liked all the jams, but also liked their shopping baskets.

And the biggest smorgasbord I have ever seen (maybe the only?) DOUBLE YUM!

(Sorry this is the only picture I have at the smorgasbord, but check out the cool picture behind!).

What a nice place to go to get out of the city.  Thanks, Calli and Matt for giving us the grand tour (with detours!) 

PS-If anyone else wants a tour, go ahead and come visit us, we'd be happy to show you around!

My dust pile can beat up your dust pile

The other day I cleaned the whole house.  Vacuumed under rugs.  Moved furniture.  Sparkling. Then I dumped my vacuum bin in the trash can [remember...bin, not bag].  JD came home and we were talking in the living room.  We come into the kitchen to find a mushroom cloud of dirt and dust covering every inch of my kitchen--with Jax in the middle of it dancing around, flinging the wad of disgusting dirt and dust bunnies up and down.  He was loving it.  It was so cloudy in the kitchen I could barely see to the other side (and my kitchen is small!)

Unfortunately, my camera was not charged, so I didn't get a picture of Jax doing all the damage with the dust cloud.  I only got a picture of PART of the dust pile after some cleanup and one of Jax in the tub (because we didn't know what to do with such a filthy little kid)!

It took my about 3 hours to clean my kitchen.  There was sicko dirt and nasty grime on EVERY.THING. We have a bookshelf in our kitchen that serves as a pantry and you better believe that I had to take every single thing off that shelf and clean each thing by hand.  Not to mention every nook and cranny of the washer, dryer, counters, and cupboards.  JD was very glad he had just put some food in the microwave and that he had his dinner hot and saved from the dust, since I couldn't really make dinner in the dustiness. Hooray.

In other news, a few hours after the dust incident, I was still cleaning up the kitchen, and look over to find Jax like this:

Apparently he can get onto the table.  Didn't know this.  And apparently he was thirsty.  Good Job, Jax.  Way to take care of yourself because mom is too busy cleaning up your last mess.