All about Joshua - UPDATED WITH ANSWERS

Joshua is getting to the point in his development where he is soaking up everything and lots of times he says the funniest things.

Today at Costco he was so excited to tell me there was sign that had the letters O-P-E-N. We were talking about how that spelled 'open' and what it meant. By the end of our trip if you asked him to spell open he would or if you said what does o-p-e-n spell he knew it was open.

Ryan came home and we showed him our new skill so Ryan was teaching him how to spell Dog. Joshua was really enjoying this and was asking to do more words. Ryan asked what word he wanted to learn and he said Clouds. How random is that? He is such a cutie.

The other day we saw a Fire Department truck that wasn't actually a "Fire Truck." It was a little shorter than a regular truck and didn't have hoses or anything, but it was pretty big and bright red. I pointed the Fire Truck out to Joshua and he said, "that's not a fire truck!" We were both traveling down baseline, so after a minute or two, Joshua says, "Mommy, the not firetruck is following us!" What a character.

One last story, we are trying soooo hard to get Joshua completely potty trained. He doesn't have any wet accidents, but he refuses to poop in the toilet. (He actually refuses to poop anywhere, so it's doubly hard.) Anyway, this morning I was asking if we going to poop in the toilet today and he said, "Hmmmm, maybe later mommy." We might be guilty of saying that to him sometimes. It's so funny how his mannerisms and behaviors point out some of the things we do as parents that we didn't even realize.

Here's a little Joshua quiz.
His speech skills have greatly improved but there are still a few words he can't quite say. (some of these he can say now, but couldn't for a long time.) See if you can guess what he means..

1. Passerants - Passengers
2. Prencils - Pretzals
3. Frencils - Freckles
4. Asselsauce(thought I'd throw you an easy one) - Applesauce
5. Misses George - Curious George
6. Misstry - Sesame Street
7. Clipperd - Clifford the big red dog
8. Morna- Morgan

Easter Weekend... Finally

Well, here goes and I'm going to keep it short and to the point. . .

Saturday morning- Easter Egg hunt at Grandma Bennett's ward
Saturday late morning - Grandma Becky's house for a b-day party and some family time
Saturday Afternoon - Back to Grandma Bennett's house for another Easter Egg hunt!!
Saturday 5:30pm - both kids are in bed for the night because they are exhausted!

Sunday morning - Church
Sunday Afternoon - Easter bunny comes during church with a Thomas basket for Joshua and a dress-up basket for Morgan.
Sunday late afternoon/evening - Easter dinner with my parents.

Wow, what a weekend! We were exhausted!

Now, here's a gigantic slideshow of everything I just listed.

Another zoo trip

I'm really excited to post about all the Easter festivities so I better hurry up and finish catching up!

March 25 we went to the zoo my Cousin-in-law Nanna and her two boys. She had never been to the phoenix zoo, so obviously Taisei hadn't either. I was so glad that I got to be the ones to take them. Joshua and Tai get along really well together. Here are a few highlights...

Tai has an awesome "cheese" face.

We took the kids on the carousel at the end of our trip. Tai was having a pretty good time.

My kids however, aren't so sure.

Here's a random picture from my Visiting Teachers visit. While we were saying a prayer, I heard a noise and Morgan had pulled the bag of cheerios off of the table. She and Eliza were pretty happy about the arrangement though. We like Eliza, she has about the same amount of hair!

Grandma's birthday

Next stop on the catch up tour is my Mom's birthday. This has to be a prime example of how grandkids make you young again because she wanted to ride the paddleboats at Kiwanis park and then the kids played at the playground.

Our Evil Lair

I had a whole other post written, but who knows what happened to it. Perhaps it is for the best as it contained the phrase "blog your face off."

Here is the reader's digest version as I don't want to have to retype the whole post.
1. My FIL had a laser in his screen printing/embroidery shop
2. He and I were the only people allowed to harness the awesome power of the "laser"
3. It came to my house to live and I LOVE it!
4. It has taken over my laundry room and the medium to engrave on has taken over my house. (We need to improve our project completion skills)


Here is the laser and the exhaust fan. It will make your insides vibrate in an uncomfortable manner if you are in there too long.


Here is the laser and the computer that controls it. The computer is tucked behind the door, so I'm pretty much sitting on the dryer to try and get a shot of both.

I'll post some pictures of things I engrave as I feel the urge.

Dreams fulfilled through my kids

I have been wanting a nice wood play kitchen for ages! Problem being that I was not prepared to drop the serious coinage required to get such a gem. I however hit the yard sale jackpot on Saturday. I was helping my sister at her community yard sale and decided to take a drive around the neighborhood. Well about 10 or so houses up the street, I saw a lady and her daughter selling the kitchen of my dreams for $30. This was really the only thing they were selling. The little girl was saving up to buy a doll. {Yikes, expensive doll}

I jumped out of the car and said, It's mine, I'll take it, here's your money!
I paid and then realized there was not a chance it was fitting in my car. I had to call my sister's friend to drive down the street with her truck, and then I lucked out because my parents were stopping by and it was able to fit in their CRV. Otherwise my kitchen would be having an extended stay in Goodyear.

It's huge, and heavy, and I LOVE it!!! I was asked about 3 times where I was going to put it in my house and the answer is, it doesn't matter, I'll make it work! {It doesn't have an official home yet, but we're working on it.} It may kick the sofa table out of our house.

It needs a little bit of TLC as the little girl wrote on it a little with pen, and one of the knobs on the sink is missing. A $225 kitchen for $30 is my kind of deal!

I realize that I could have just blogged, "check out the kitchen I got for $30." Where's the fun in that though?