These Two . . .

. . . Are going to get in a lot of trouble together.


Watching TV together. Jacob is wearing a collared shirt backwards under his sweater. I think there are two other shirts under there too.

Jacob likes to tickle his brother. Colin? He doesn't like it so much.

Christmas Eve in their new jammies.

Jacob always asks if he and Colin can eat next to each other. This means that his chair and the high chair must be touching. Preferably with no leg room. Colin's high chair gets pulled everywhere. I am often required to sit in one of Jacob's chair formations so all our chairs can be touching.

Um, so little brother is loud and dramatic. I think this is for self-defense.

Jacob Loves His Dad Best

I was half asleep this morning while Blake was getting ready. Jacob was keeping him company, since that little boy wakes up as soon as he hears his dad in the morning. I had had a rough night with Colin, who usually is a great sleeper, but last night had decided 2:00am was a good time to be up.
I heard a little boy climb into bed next to me. I open my eyes to see Jacob's sparkling eyes and smiling face. He pulls in next to me and wraps his arms around me. After cuddling for a couple seconds, I try to wake up and respond to the sweetheart next to me.
"Jacob," I tell him, "Do you know you have handsome eyes?"
He thinks about this. Then responds.
"You want to go to work today? I way like Dad."

Tidbits of Fall

Jacob had a brief stint with layering clothes. I think he has about 4 sweaters on in this picture. We've now limited the clothing he can wear to 3 shirts and hidden his shorts since it's cold now. Maybe trying to hide that he is skinny?



We went for a drive up in the mountains to see the fall leaves, and couldn't help but get out for a few pictures. Jacob keeps asking to drive up again, but the leaves are gone up there.

Jacob turned 3! He was so excited.

Jacob loves to draw. He made all the invitations for his party with his friends. It ended up being a little crazy with a bunch of little kids over, but I think Jacob liked it. He had 3 parties for being 3--one with Blake's family, one with mine, and one with friends. He was ready for another one the day after the last one. We are grateful for all the friends and family who spoil him.


Colin loves his food. Here I was feeding him while having a dance party. By myself. He loved it a lot. It's nice to have a good eater after Jacob. Colin frequently out-eats him and its beginning to show.

See what I mean? Jacob is still taller, but Colin is definitely catching up. Jacob decided that he needed to help Colin eat his bottle. Colin wasn't sure about it. We switched to formula this month, and Colin also loves that. Fill his belly and he's happy.

Colin got to be a bear for Halloween. One of the meanings of his name is actually "little cub," and we've always liked to refer to our boys as our baby bears, so it seemed appropriate. Plus we already had the costume from Jacob. He hasn't figured out real crawling yet, but he is a pro at the army crawl. The faux belly on this costume gave him a lot harder time with crawling.

Jacob was a dog. He probably spends about 50% of his normal life as a dog named Mitzi, so we thought it was appropriate. He already knows how to be in character! He crawled around his Grandma R's office to get candy from the ladies there, and at his Grandpa S's office he performed a special puppy dance about 6 times. Lets just say it was a big hit.

Jacob got a bike from his Grandpa R for his birthday, and he has loved it. He went on a 3-mile bike ride with my mom, and has been riding in circles around our house. This week he was circling through the leaves in our backyard a couple hundred times. There ended up being a pretty clear pressed leaf trail by the end.

We are sad that fall is leaving soon!

Beautiful Boys

The Dining Room

Before:



After:



The dining room is finally done! Here are the things that we did in this room:

• Removed the wallpaper
• Scrubbed the walls
• Painted the crown molding and baseboards
• Painted the walls
• Created a stencil
• Stenciled the walls

The stenciling took a lot longer than I thought, but I love how it turned out.

Frog Creek

Jacob has been into making forts lately. They consist of collecting every possible linen found in the house draped over a larger object. He made the first one over his bed a couple of weeks back and named it "Frog Creek." We let him keep it up for about a week, despite the fact that it meant all of his bed linens (and often ours) were draped off the side of his bed. He decided he didn't need to sleep with covers or a pillow. Everything was sacrificed to Frog Creek.

I finally took it down because of the disgust that it caused in my heart every time I looked at the pile of blankets and thought about the collection of toys that were hiding under them. J cried. "But I love it so, so, so much!" He told me, barely able to get the words out between his sobs.

I finally finished my stencil job in the dining room, which means my mess got moved out. Into the living room. That's the next room on the agenda. Blake moved all the couches away from the walls so I could access them more easily. Then he took the large rug from off the floor and draped it over the tops of the couches, coffee table, and end table.

"Look, Jake! It's another frog creek!" He told our little boy.

I think he did it so I will finish the living room quickly. (Not really.)

Jacob even pushed his little brother in to see the fun.

In the meantime, I will continue to rescue my dish towels, bed pillows, paint supplies, and other odds and ends from the slum town in my living room that is Frog Creek.

Garrett Family Reunion in Duck Creek Village

Last weekend we attended a family reunion at Duck Creek. It was a very interesting village, where some of the roads are for ATVs only. In fact, in their 4th of July parade we attended, everyone rode on ATVs for the parade.

About 63 people squished into the lodge for the reunion.
Duck Creek is near Cedar Breaks National Monument, as seen below.

Colin has been shy towards strangers in the past, but for this weekend, he was fortunately very friendly to everyone.

Jacob, on the other hand, was not as friendly (at least not towards other little kids). He seems to be struggling with pushing and hitting lately. Even one of the 6 year olds that was there told his mom that Jacob was mean to him and had kicked him. Jacob didn't nap during all three of the days of the reunion, and that certainly didn't help things. Any tips for helping Jacob push and hit less?
The highlight of the trip for Jacob was throwing rocks in the lakes we visited.

On one of the days, the whole family hiked to Cascade Falls. The views along the trail were spectacular.

Overall, we had a terrific time at the family reunion, but it certainly felt great to get home yesterday and be able to sleep in our beds last night.