FFF= Pajama Party

The boys are both doing their "silly" faces for the camera, They crack me up. These were taken about a week ago. This past week we have all been sick, UCK!! I think he have all just been passing around our cooties. Luke and Dew are doing OK today but me and Kolby are still not to hot.

We took Kolby to the Doctors yesterday, we found out (we had sort of figured it out on our own) that we have a BIG boy. Kolby is in the 90% for Height and weight. Hum.... I guess that explains why he and Luke weigh the same.

Be sure to check out http://kissthefrog4me.blogspot.com/ for cute PJ pics!

Kirsten!!!

I know that I have mentioned that Dewey's sister is stationed in Iraq. We worry and pray for her daily. I mentioned this to Luke's wonderful daycare and asked if maybe the kids could make a card to send to her. Well Jenny went above and beyond, she had the kids do this poster. It has all the kids hand prints with their names and ages. We sent it to Kirsten and she was thrilled with it. We just got this picture with her holding it. Thanks Jentle Jungle!!!!!

How to make a cool fort out of an ordinary entertainment center

By Luke Warner

Now the key to this project is timing and patience, about a week before you plan on having the fort is when you need to start the project. The place I found for the perfect fort just happened to hold about 100 of my parents DVD's. So I started out slow, several times a day I would pull out 5-10 DVD's and scatter them on the floor. Because my mom had to pick them up she started to think that having the DVD's in a place where I could reach them was maybe not such a good idea. Its key for the whole project to work that she think this, this is where the patience comes in.

After about a week I was pretty sure she had about given up hope of a nice organized DVD center. Now comes the timing........ I waited until she was safely in the bathroom at the other side of the house. Now I knew I had to be fast, even in the bathroom she would soon realize she was not hearing the normal screams and yells me and Kolby always make. So she would know something was up. Luckily I had Kolby's help, as I flung the DVD's out Kolby would scatter them around to make more room. It was a great team effort. I'm proud to say that by the time mom came out (maybe 5 minutes) we had all the DVD's out of the cabinet and were able to climb inside.

So with a little effort on my part I now have the perfect little cubby to sit in.

FFF= Favorite photo of the week (only one)

It was hard to pick only one. But I love this one of Kolby smiling. The super-cute chair he is sitting in was delivered yesterday. It was a surprise gift from G.G (Great grandma) in Texas. Thank you, grandma Kolby loves it!! She gave Luke a cute wooden chair last year, so now they both have the perfect place to sit.

Check out http://kissthefrog4me.blogspot.com/ for lots of other cute FFF posts

Birthday fun with toddlers

So.... finger painting with a 1 and 3 year was not near the fun I hoped it would be. I take that back it was plenty of fun for Luke and Kolby, me not so much. I had planned to have this little project outside but it ended up raining all day. So it was inside the house for painting fun. The actual painting part took about 6 minutes the cleaning up the paint off of every surface that little fingers can reach, grab, touch took about an hour. But this is our finished project.

Luke is holding Kolby's hand to try and keep him in one place. You can tell Kolby is not so hip on this idea. I took about 8 other pictures with Kolby in various places in the picture all of which involve him trying to run off.

Who likes cake?? Luke was so excited to help bake "daddies cake" I think he liked that part even more then the eating part. Now Kolby on the other hand was a wild man, he inhaled the cake and was laughing the whole time. By the end he was covered from head to toe in cake and frosting.

All in all Dewey said it was a great birthday.

Happy BIRTHDAY Dewey!!

I found these pictures from....gasp..... 18 years ago. (I know when you say the number it seems like a long time ago, but it doesn't feel like that long ago) My darling hubby is still 30 something. I love looking at these pics, he has always been fine as can be and is only getting better with age. (I promise sweetie)

So Happy happy birthday to an amazing man who I am blessed to call my husband!!

The boys have a surprise planned, I'll post pics when we are done.

Sunday fun

We have a beautiful walk/bike trail that starts at a park in town and winds its way up a canyon. It has warmed up here, Sunday ended up being a beautiful day.

Luke walked for the first mile!! We kind of thought he could do it as he does nothing but run all day long. Dewey wore the back back to carry him once he got tired. And I pushed Kolby in the stroller. He was happy as can be to just look around at everything.
Kolby has not quite learned "smile when there is a camera in front of you" but with the zillion pictures I take I'm sure it won't be long.

There is a playground at the park at the beginning of the walk. So after snacks we played there for a minute. Can anybody tell me why slides are so blasted hot. The first one Luke went down he yelled the whole way "TOO HOT, TOO HOT!!" Poor little guy. But as you can tell he had plenty of fun playing on the other toys.

Intended use???

I'm pretty sure this is not it?

I'm sure somewhere on the box it specifically said

"not meant for two children"....

or maybe

"don't let your child ride in the storage compartment"....

Never-the-less Luke seems to think it is the perfect way to catch a ride. As soon as I get the stroller out for Kolby Luke climbs right in the bottom.

And no I don't take them out this way in public, I have received enough dirty looks when we tried to take the boys out to eat. I don't need anymore for letting my child ride in a storage compartment. :)

But for around the farm it seems to work just fine. So intended use???? Nope but it works for us and the boys are not complaining, and luckily we live just far enough away from other homes for people to notice :)

Guatemala

I know this is very late, but better late then never :)

We were able to visit the Guatemala City Zoo one morning. Victor was busy so he had one of his assistants take us. He was wonderful, he spoke perfect English and was very helpful. The Zoo was really very beautiful. It was very green and shady throughout the whole park. I was so excited for Kolby to see all the animals...... he could have cared less. It was so funny he was far more interested in all the school kids walking through the park then the animals. But Dewey and I had a great time, it was so interesting seeing animals we had never seen before. Kolby made it about half way through when he fell asleep. The tree behind him in this picture is Guatemala's National Tree.

The day before we left Guatemala we were able to go to Antigua for the day. Victor picked us up from the hotel to take us on our tour. A little about Antigua......

"Spain divided the New World into three sections. The section now known as Central America was controlled by Antigua. Located in the Panchoy valley, the city was founded in 1541, after the destruction of Ciudad Vieja, by an enormous mudslide from the Agua Volcano.
Antigua was one of the first cities in the New World to use the Spanish grid design in the layout of the streets. Today, Antigua retains its original charm and still has cobble stones streets and Spanish Colonial architecture.
As the capital of Guatemala, Antigua was destroyed by the earthquake of Santa Marta in 1773. At that point, the government moved the capital to Guatemala City, where it is today. "

I LOVE Antigua, and hope to go back and visit again. It is an incredibly beautiful town nestled in a valley surrounded by volcano's. There is so much history there. The streets are still cobble stone. All of the homes and business come right up to the streets. They are all painted different bright colors. They have large courtyards in the rear of the buildings full of gardens and flowers.

We were able to tour a Jade factory. We had a tour guide there that took us through a small museum at the factory. It was fascinating learning some of the history of the area. I had no idea there were so many different kinds and colors of Jade. The workers at the factory still work with the Jade in the way they have for 100's of years.
Victor took us to the top of a hill where we hiked a short distance to a stunning overlook of the valley. Spain built a huge cross on the hill where it could be seen from far away. We were told they wanted to make sure everyone knew they were Christians. For this reason they also built numerous cathedrals. Some of which are still standing and in use.

We were able to go inside one of the cathedrals, the architecture was amazing. We just walked around in awe of where we were and the beauty that surrounded us.

Now you all know I LOVE LOVE my coffee. So thrilled was I to be able to go to a real live coffee plantation. It has been a working coffee factory passed down in the same family for a few hundred years. They have set up a small museum with the history and customs of Guatemala. We love all the celebrations, music and dancing that is part of their lives. The plantation itself was just beautiful, hanging vines with huge flowers everywhere. Huge trees and green everywhere. And they gave us some FRESH coffee, ummmm heaven. And as if it could not get any better they also train horses and have an arena set up that made Dewey drool. Yep we could have easily just stayed right there all day or week or longer....

By this time we were all hungry. Victor took us to the perfect place to eat. It originally was a home of a Spanish family. It has now been converted into a hotel and restaurant. A hotel that I really hope to stay at one day. We walked though some of the rooms and can I just say spectacular. There is a large courtyard with fountains and gardens in the middle of it all. The food was yummy!! Just perfect!! They had some dancers practicing in the room behind us and invited us to come watch. It was just a wonderful lunch.

It was an amazing day and the perfect way to end our pick up trip to Guatemala.

Our flight home was an adventure. Kolby was a WILD man on the plane. Who knew there was so much one little person could get into in such a small space. But we made it to Houston all in sort of in one piece. Customs was terrible, two different waiting rooms, almost two hours before Kolby could have his file stamped. But it was of course worth it, he is an official U.S citizen now.

Once we got through everything and out of the international area we had a nice surprise. My Grandma, mom and brother who all live in Houston were waiting for us. I was so glad that Kolby got the chance to meet everyone. Luke has met his G.G (great grandma) a few times and he just adores her. Kolby had not slept at all at this point but he was still very sweet with everyone. We all went out to eat for dinner then it was time was us to get on our plane to Las Vegas.

On our last flight Kolby finally fell asleep, he pretty much slept the whole flight. We landed in Las Vegas at 1am (which is 2am Utah time). My amazing hubby drove us three hours to get home. Kolby and I sorta slept the whole time. We arrived safe and sound at home about 5am.

Horse back riding!!!

This is Kolby's first horse back ride :) Luke flat refused to get off Beau (our Paint horse) so Kolby sat behind him. They only walked for a few feet, but Kolby was smiling the whole time.



Can you tell in the picture that Luke is the happiest kid around. He LOVES riding our horses. He had the biggest smile on his face while riding with Dewey. He was laughing and did not want to stop riding.



He is getting pretty good at sitting in the saddle and holding on to the reins. Dewey still holds on to whichever horse he is riding and walks them around the round pen. Luke looks so small sitting in the saddle I'm sure he if was not making his "cowboy" noises the horses would not even know he was there. I'm pretty sure it won't be long before Luke is riding by himself.

Wonderful Mothers Day!!!

I had a perfect Mothers day. In theory the boys were supposed to let me sleep in. But they both came running in and out every few minutes. Luke because he was so excited that he was making me breakfast and had to tell me. Kolby because he like to make sure he knows where I am. It was so sweet. All three of my men brought me a yummy breakfast in bed, pancakes because that's Luke's current favorite and scrambled eggs. Luke also made sure I had a cup of chocolate milk to go with my cup of coffee. I even got to take a long shower and read for a bit. The boys made me a cute card with their hand prints and their own artistic touches.

We took the boys to a park in town, they had a blast playing on the slides and running around.
Dewey spent the afternoon cooking dinner for us and grandma and grandpa. Our nephew Jerome, his girlfriend Nikki and her daughter Riley stopped by on their way through town. We all tried flying kites in the backyard. It was a crack up, kites are no match for our Cedar City wind. They stayed in the air for all of a few minutes before doing a nose dive.
We had a very nice dinner, then grandma gave the boys a bath so I could relax. She even got Kolby to sleep by rocking him.
It was a perfect day spent with my family. My hubby was amazing, he went to a lot of effort to make it a special day for me.

Happy Mothers Day!!!

Glitterfy.com - Glitter Graphics

FFF= Mommy and Me

Today's theme for FFF from http://kissthefrog4me.blogspot.com/ is "Mommy and Me"

This is one of the first pictures we have with me holding Luke. He looks so little and scared in this picture. It took him about a week before he would smile and laugh with us. But looking at this picture reminds how amazing it felt just to have him in my arms.

This is Kolby and I on a hill overlooking Antigua. This is one of the pictures from our pickup trip. This trip was amazing because we knew he was coming home with us. I'm sure I could not have handled leaving him again.

For some reason I was not able to upload any more pics. But in looking through all our pics I realized there are not a lot with me and the boys. I better start handing the camera off to others to take pictures.

Anybody sleeping??

Cus none of the Warner clan is.
Kolby has not really got into the swing of things yet. The sleeping at night part is not coming easy for him. I'm sure it will just take some time for him to get used to everything that is new and different in his life. I just hope I can keep it up running on fumes until he does :)
He's wonderful during the day. He is just a happy funny little guy. He runs around the house and yard chasing after Luke. He laughs and smiles at every one he meets. And he gives the BEST hugs, he wraps his little arms around your neck and squeezes. I really am just in awe that he is my son.

Bringing Kolby Home!!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Quick Update

Well we are all slightly more rested. The boys only woke up 5 or 6 times last night. Yesterday we drove to St George, Aunt Becca Uncle Dell, Steve and Sammie all came down. We went out to eat to celebrate Aunt Becca's birthday tomorrow, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I'm sure those of you that have tried it know that taking two toddlers out to eat is not the most relaxing thing in the world. :) Both boys LOVED swimming in the pool, they had so much fun splashing around with dad and uncle Steve helping them.

Today I think will be a day of relaxation!

Home safe and sound

We made it!!! We arrived home around 5am this morning. Can I just say my hubby is amazing! He was up for 24 hours with no sleep and still got us home all in one piece. We are all very tired but so thrilled to be home. Luke is loving having Kolby home, and Kolby is adjusting very well. I'll post pics tomorrow after we have a chance to sleep and think coherently :)
Thank you all for your support and wonderful posts!!!