He loves to help mop, especially when he can dress for the occasion!

 (Notice the bucket on the table. His favorite part about mopping is dipping!)

What do you do when you have a sad Max?  Put on 'Pepp-uh?!'

 Cole worked really hard on a Jupiter model and essay and got to present it in class. Nick and I were both able to go watch, which was really fun.  He did a fantastic job on his model, essay, and presentation, and he had fun passing out Jupiter cookies that he and I had made the night before.  I enjoyed the project because we were able to have fun working on the model and the cookies together. (Though he did most of the model and he really did do a fantastic job!)

Family scripture time!  Maliya is very into reading her scriptures lately and has been doing a great job of getting us all on board!

The other day Cole invited me to come and take an animal tour in his room and let me tell you, it was awesome.  That boy's imagination knows no bounds.  All around his room he set up little different 'exhibits' (made of blankets, boxes, laundry baskets, etc) that contained different stuffed animals.  When he brought me into his room he took on a professional voice and walked me around the room while showing me the exhibits and giving me interesting facts about the different animals.  It was so great!  I didn't have my  phone with me, so I asked him to go up and take pictures a little while later.  He'd already started to clean up but did still have part of the Lion exhibit left.  He took these pictures below for me (along with 4 slow motion videos:)).

Is he a cheesy doll or what?!

Max Selfie!

This year we celebrated Mother's Day the Saturday before.  I spent most of the afternoon running in between birthday parties (Cole and Maliya both attended parties), but also got a chance to go rock climbing for an hour, which was totally awesome.  When Maliya and I got home (Cole spent the evening at a friend's), we were treated by Madison, Max, Nick, and Uncle A and I was delightfully surprised by what they'd done for me!  They'd washed the suburban, bathed the dogs, straightened the house, bought me flowers and a gift (a big glass drink server, something I've needed but never asked for, Nick's so in tune!), and prepared most of dinner (I had picked up a rotisserie chicken on the way home).  It was FANTASTIC!  After gifts and a wonderful dinner, the girls watched a movie while Nick, Alex, and I played my favorite game (Carcassonne) and then the girls joined us for a round of our favorite family game (Telestrations).  It was an absolutely perfect day.

I actually got extra spoiled this year because they let me sleep in the next morning (Sunday, Mother's Day) and then did all kinds of nice things for me.  I have the best family!

Nick always picks out flowers that I love!

Maliya also surprised me with a gift she'd made at school. She worked really hard on it and was so excited to show it to me. I thought it was just fabulous. What a doll she is!

On Sunday we did FaceTime with Grandma and Grandpa G to wish Grandma a happy Grandma's Day and to watch her open the gift we'd sent her. It was a tupperware full of treats and little slips of paper that say different things the kids love about her.  She gets to eat a treat and read a paper every day for 50 days!  (My favorite paper was written by Madison: I love that you can walk up the stairs now. Sorry if you haven't gotten to that one yet Kim. I had to document it!)  We also sent her a sparkly stuffed fish with giant lips named Puckers.  The kids kissed it before we sent it and now, anytime Kim is missing them, she just has to kiss the fish and it'll be like she's getting a kiss from them. Cheesy, yes? But isn't that what Grandma presents are all about?

22 Months

Max tid-bits at 22 months:
-Is not quite as mischievous as he used to be, which is nice! (Simply meaning he doesn't get into EVERYTHING now, just LOTS OF THINGS)
-Has discovered that the word 'No' has meaning behind it and that it's really fun to say
-Has had a constant runny nose for the last 3 weeks. The boy is a booger machine
-Loves to feed anything and everything to the dogs
-Calls all dogs 'Bear'
-Figured out how to hit a baseball all on his own! Nick handed him a bat and put him in front of a tee and a ball and he swung and hit the ball with no coaching!
-Still loves to wear shoes, especially the girls' church shoes
-Still loves being outside
-Is a better meal eater than he was, though he still prefers snacking.  He loves to run into the pantry, grab his own snack, and run onto the patio with it.  Some favorite snacks are graham crackers, cheez-its, and goldfish ("ishy")
-Loves treats ("eee") and knows where we keep them.
-Is still obsessed with mints ("mix") (though he no longer chooses mints over treats) and still waits patiently next to the mints in the pantry with his hands clasped behind his back every time we walk in from the garage.
-Loves his sticker book but now only likes the Nemo stickers, the other fish are just blah
-Is good at telling us when he has "pooh" in his "bi-per"
-Loves watching shows
-Gets SO excited when anyone mentions watching Peppa ("Beh-puh"). He loves it.
-Likes to play with Legos, cars, our toy kitchen, and anything that his siblings don't want him to have.
-Loves to say that his food is "hah!" (hot)
-Can often be found wearing his hat from Grandma G, carrying a toy phone or some kind of pointer stick, and wearing a random lanyard around his neck.
-Loves to color! (kuh-rrr)  Especially loves to stand on my chair while I'm sitting at the computer so he can grab pens and pencils out of the cup on the counter and then color on whatever scrap paper I have lying around
-Walks around with his hands lifted up in question and says 'air go?' if you ask him where something is
-Makes us laugh a lot!

Sweet sister missionaries! 

(And our cute friend Braylynn)

We took this after videoing them going down the slide. We had to for their moms!  The sister in the lighter, peaches sweater was so funny on the slide.  She had to talk herself into going down and then talked and yelped on the way down!

 Max was SO sick for a couple of days. Poor kid. We think it might've been because of teeth. Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, he was just miserable. The one good thing was all of the cuddles I got!

Peppa was a good distraction when he felt the worst.  He loves 'Beh-buh!'

We held a bake sale w/ the Seaver's this past Monday. We did it at the high school during parent teacher conferences to raise money for the School of Life Foundation.  It was pretty slow (REALLY slow), but we ended up making $32, so the kids were happy!  And we had a fun time surprising Grandma Lexie and Grandpa Jack with this picture and a phone call.  They didn't know about the fundraiser and were grateful for the kids' efforts.

Cole decided to forgo a birthday party this year in hopes of getting the one and only thing he wanted -  a giant Minecraft Lego set.  We couldn't go without celebrating though, so the Sunday before his birthday, when we had friends over for a game night, we also sang to Cole and treated him to the homemade ice cream cake he wanted but didn't think he was going to get.  The Brady's also gave Cole a gift - a treat and a fun book. He, not surprisingly, finished the book that night and told me he was for sure going to read it again.  

 On his actual birthday he went to school with what has become a bit of a tradition, a giant brownie pizza. This year he ditched the Reeses and chose instead to cover it with Snickers, caramel, and chocolate.

We also decorated his breakfast spot for his birthday.  It was simple but that was ok with him. As long as Minecraft is involved he's happy.  

 We didn't have time to buy donuts for breakfast the night before so we let him pick out a juice instead and got donuts the next day:)

Cole talked Nick into going into work late (just like last year!) so that he could open his presents before school. He also woke up 25 minutes earlier than usual to make sure he had enough time.  He was thrilled to get a Minecraft Lego set and a Wings of Fire book from Grandma Lexie and Grandpa Jack, a Minecraft blanket and a book from us, and, yes, the giant, long awaited Minecraft Mountain Cave Lego set.  He was so excited, in fact, that he ate his breakfast super fast so that he'd have time to start building.  He was able to build for about 20 minutes and got quite a bit done!

Him trying to maneuver the giant box!

My favorite things about the 2000+ piece set is the instruction manual. It's thicker and bigger (like longer and wider) than our car manual!

Spring time fun!

Two weeks ago we went up to the Mesa for one last snow day.  We packed our snow gear and sleds and planned to play around for awhile. We found a secluded spot that we thought would be great but were disappointed when we discovered the snow was not at all good for sledding.  We could barely get ourselves down the hill on our tube. Luckily our sled worked a bit better, but not great.  We only stayed for an hour but we did end up having a good time and on the way home we got shakes from Freddy's so overall it was a good day! Oh, and nobody got hurt or ended up dead, despite the warning sign we saw (see below), so I guess it was actually a really good day!

A few more Easter pictures:)

 My favorite Max picture to date!