Hammin for the camera

So, it used to be kinda difficult to get the kids to smile for a picture.  All the sudden though since Sanna learned to ham it and say "CHEEEZ!" the boys all the sudden love getting their picture taken too.  Still the majority of the pics are of her, but what toddler doesn't steal the show? Am I right?! Don't mind the messy faces...

She put on Grizwald's boots all by herself.  Looking good!

The look in her eyes in this next one... kills me, she is a hoot.

So grateful for our new couch.  I don't know what we would have done without it these last few weeks.  Brent can study there for hours and it is so much more comfortable to lay on... which I have been doing quite a bit of lately with my mono.

Todays words to add to the list that Sanna now can say are, "sowy" (sorry) & "piyo" (pillow)  She's kind of obsessive about having a pillow behind her back when she's sitting at the couch. She'll freak out until she has it just right.

Oh, and p.s. we're still a no-go on school and even church was cancelled today.  That was a WHOLE week of school cancelled. Tomorrow is cancelled too because the ice didn't melt enough today.  Come on ice.... MELT!!!!  (Chico and Brent are loving it so they'd be sad to hear me talking this way) 

Oh, and p.p.s. my mono is still kickin my butt.  Nausea and fatigue have been terrible, so bad that Brent was starting to tease me that maybe I was pregnant and he was pretty convinced he was right until I showed him with a calendar how that was utterly impossible. :)  My lymph nodes are swollen causing some discomfort but I can live with that. I just wish the nausea would go away.  Oh and another annoying symptom that thankfully hasn't been as bad today is upper eyelid swelling.  It felt like I had been sobbing for an hour when I hadn't cried at all... and that feeling lasted for two days straight.  Glad that went away! I was reading in one of Brent's textbooks yesterday about mono symptoms... some people have it A LOT worse than I have it so I'm just grateful mine isn't a severe or extreme case.

Mono & Snow Day

Last weekend I started feeling "off" (mild fevers, extra sleepy, swollen lymph nodes all down the side of my neck).  It was on the same day my tooth got broken so I figured it was probably just related to that.  Sanna started having fevers Monday evening all night and it turned out a girl in Sanna's nursery class came down with strep and they had been together in nursery (before they knew she had it) so we were worried she was exposed.  So Tuesday I decided to take her in to the doc.  Since I wasn't feeling well either I asked them to test me at the same time.  Sanna's was a virus. And mine was "mono", also a virus.

My friends in my ward have been so helpful, taking good care of me, bringing in dinners and offering to help where they can.  The Lord is really blessing me because my case doesn't seem to be as bad as I've heard it can be.  Granted I'm exhausted and taking care of Sanna while she's sick is hard even when your healthy so that was really hard, but I'm pretty good at putting off housework and taking it easy when I need to. ;)

We got snowed in yesterday! It's about an inch of snow out there but it shut down the schools for Monday and Tuesday! I guess with how freezing cold it is out there, the ice is super bad so it's not safe to drive.  I'm going a bit stir crazy but hopefully the ice melts soon so I can get out of the house!

 I took some video of Sanna and I playing the piano together.  She likes to sing along in her cute toddler voice.  It's so sweet. These pics are after she didn't want to play piano anymore, just wanted to show off how good she was at standing and dancing on the piano bench.

Griz got his Orangutan all dressed up for a school picture, he brought the stool out into the front room and sat him on there and asked me to take his portrait.  This cute kid and his "ape". Yes, he calls it an ape and an orangutan.  He knows its an ape, not a monkey. Smart kid. :)

Sanna wanted a turn to say "cheese". 

I was trying to get her off the bench which made her really ticked off. She has started this new thing where every once in a while when she is very upset she will suck all four of her fingers.  It's like a variation of what  Griz does, like she tried it out to copy him one time and then decided she liked it.

And then lastly Griz's turn.  Silly kids.

So I got my tooth fixed last Monday... good as new! (I'm not allowed to eat apples or foods like that with my front teeth anymore though, the dentist said it could break the filling off) 

I told Griz to come pose in the selfie with me to show that my tooth was all better (he felt so terrible that he had broken my tooth).

  

And then we started taking silly pictures of each other... here are a few...

My scarf is a fun accessory apparently. :) 

Griz took this picture.

And now, pictures from the snow day that shut the city down for drum roll please...3 days!
I guess since snowstorms aren't that common out here they don't have the snowplows to take care of the scary roads. The ice is pretty bad out there I guess so inside we stay going slightly crazy having a blast! The neighbors downstairs started sledding on some bin lids, Griz thought it looked fun so I sent him out there.  Chico saw it and thought it looked fun and joined too.  Eventually Sanna and I made it out there too. I only lasted a couple minutes. It was SOOO cold.  My fingers were in pain for 10 minutes after I came in. I can't imagine how my poor kids ankles were feeling!!! (Time for new snow pants it looks like!)
(These first three pics are from the warmth of my bedroom)

(these next four pics are from when we joined them)

Sanna went sliding way faster than she was comfortable with.

The fence and pokey branches at the bottom were a little annoying. :)

Last night the kids were doing there obligatory trashing of the house right before bed, we had the camera out for a different purpose (taking pics of a product we think we were scammed on) and so while I had it in my hands I turned to them and took this pic...

 then I told them to say cheese...

 they all said it in unison, even Sanna, it was quite remarkable actually! And adorable.

I sent them to bed finally. Sanna was in such a cute mood that when she climbed into bed with Griz I just didn't have the heart to make her come down.  She was laying like a little angel with the BIGGEST grin on her face.  

Chico was acting like a ninja. It was so fun and funny and cute too.  He loves his drawing pad.  He creates cool pictures and he loves practicing his math and words.

One cute thing Sanna learned the other day is how to say "off" and "on"

out with the old, in with the new

The last few weeks it has seemed we have been experiencing a lot of new things, pretty normal I guess when you're settling into a new place.

Got some new headphones to make studying a bit easier for my sweetheart...

Sanna is modeling them for y'all...

Using my new smoothie maker that I got from my parents for Christmas... yum!

Picture of new snow... that's about the most snow we've seen this whole winter...

This was a new experience for us... Griz shoved a big piece of foam up his nose, and had it in his nose most of the day.  I was helping him brush his teeth that night and he had his head tilted back and by some miracle I saw it and remembered him mentioning something about it.  We got out the pen light and luckily Brent was able to see it well enough to remove it.

This is Brent's new life at home...

Got a new couch (no pictures yet but it's still a super exciting new thing for us YAY!!!!!)

Griz decided I needed a new look... amazingly enough it is somewhat captured on film, here is how it happened

So in case the video wasn't clear, Griz punched 

my phone into my mouth which in turn broke my tooth.

No, that is not a picture of Jim Carey from dumb and dumber that you see above

It is indeed a picture of MY mouth.

I went in today and had it filled (no dental insurance so it cost a pretty penny) but it looks normal again.  Unfortunately it is still sensitive danggit.

Enough about THAT, a few things about the kids...
Chico is totally blossoming in his academics all the sudden.  I think his new school is challenging him better and he is just really showing such improvement in just the short time we've been here. I'm so grateful that we were able to have that change, his new class is so much smaller than it was in Utah and they are giving him so much more of the attention he needs so that he can catch up to where the other kids are at. He woke up early this morning and instead of asking to watch a t.v. show on netflix he grabbed his pad of paper so he could practice his two digit addition.  He is also constantly telling me historical stories he heard in school. I'm loving it!

We have been talking about outer space a lot lately. Griz stays quiet and listens and observes while we talk.  So on this particular occasion, we were talking about how the earth orbits and spins, Griz went outside without telling us why and stood there on the porch looking at the sky.  He came back in and whispered to me, "the earth don't spin around".  He is such a cutie and so confident. He is quieter about the things he knows but I love it when he will tell me the things he has learned from wild kratts and what not.

Sanna is talking more and more.  Some new words are "cheese" (as you saw in the video above), "more",  and now my mind is blank.  I will add more as I think of them. She thinks she is a big kid and eats like a big kid (sometimes more than the boys).  She is daddy's little girl and she's got him wrapped around her finger. :) Honestly though, she's got us all wrapped around her little finger.  She's the one who runs the show around here. :)