a family that crafts together...

i've noticed that jack and i tend to get on each others nerves a lot lately, and i blame myself . the poor kid is mainly just bored out of his mind so he whines at me to get my attention. he doesn't really like to do anything by himself like play with his millions of toys, or play out back by himself and now he wants me to sit on the couch with him while he watches a show and i was going nuts trying to find ways to get him to entertain himself. then low and behold i was looking at my sister-in-laws blog and she had a blog by this lady with all kinds of crafts and things to do with your preschooler. i'm not normally the craft kind of girl but i was desperate and these crafts actually looked like something i could do and they were super cheap because most of the stuff she used was stuff i already had. so rather then constantly battle jack to get him to do stuff on his own i decided that these crafts would be fun for him and i might actually like doing them too. here is our first attempt.

it was awesome because all i had to do was cut out the stuff and then jack got to help squeeze the glue then he placed the windows, wheels and things and then i let him color it. my son doesn't have much of an attention span so actually getting him to participate in this was awesome.

here is the finished product. nothing fancy but made with love by my jack jack. i picked the school bus because one, it was something he knows really well and sees it everyday at school and two because it was something i could make without messing it up too much.


i truly think jack's favorite part was coloring his hands and feet more then coloring the bus. gotta love washable markers!!

another thing that is probably only exciting for me is that we finally managed to get jack over 30 pounds. i took him to his three year well child check up and found out that he weighs 31 pounds and is 37 and a half inches tall. this is a huge accomplishment because as we all know jack doesn't enjoy eating very much of anything, so 31 pounds is a huge deal for our family. and if i would have listened to jacks dr in utah we would finally be allowed to put jack in a front facing car seat. can you imagine? just so you know i checked with jacks rehab doctor about the car seat thing and they told me jack was strong enough to face forward a long time ago, so i'm not a negligent mother.

oh and by the way the blog that has all the crafts is www.notimeforflashcards.com check it out if you need some ideas. thanks laura for finding it.

birthday celebration

now that we live in arizona and it is still over 100 degrees i decided that this year for jacks birthday we would take him to our community "water park." jack still isn't really into anything in particular but he does love to swim so it was a win win. we had all of our arizona family come up to swim, bbq and celebrate with us. we were also very lucky to have my mom still here helping steph with the new baby. it was a great day and jack was extremely sad when everyone left to go back to their homes. thanks to everyone who came up we love you guys.

now is the time for the retelling of the days events...

jack is normally permanently grounded from playing the wii because that is all he talks about and wants to do. we thought that jack was taking his nap but he couldn't sleep because there was too much excitement in the air and he got out of bed and came down while john and others were playing rock band. so it was too late he already saw it so he joined in on the fun.



everyone that came up for the party at the water park.



the florez fam



loving dad and mom



here are all the arizona cousins together. this is the best picture we could get because of course kids being kids they didn't want to take a picture they wanted to play, except of course haylie she was great for her photo.





i'm probably a mean mom but even though it was jack's birthday i wasn't about to let him get away with not listening and misbehaving so i had to give him a time out, he was not pleased with that.



after his time out he was allowed to go and swim some more and he hopped right into the kiddie pool and became "one of those kids" who sits on the bubble blowers. i don't know why but it always gives me the creeps when kids do this. oh well what can i do, he isn't hurting anyone and he seems to be enjoying himself.



after swimming for a while we returned to our house to have the bbq, open presents and have the birthday dessert.

here we have lilly, max, katie and tyler. dang cute kids

jack taking in the mound of presents


this year for his birthday we got jack a play kitchen because he is obsessed with his cousin's. so john set up the kitchen the night before so when jack woke up he saw it and immediately started looking for the eggs like the ones tyler has. little did he know that i actually got him eggs but i was saving them for when he actually opened presents. so when it was time to open the eggs and he realized what they were he was so excited and had to immediately open them up and count them. as you can see by the big old smile he has on his face he loved the eggs. what a strange little man i have.



again i have a strange little man because the kid still doesn't like cake and still gags on it so we did ice cream cones again. all the kids were asking me what kind of cake we were going to have so i was really nervous that they were going riot when i produced the ice cream cones but luckily they all seemed happy with what they got.

i think jack really knew that at this point that this was his special day. he loved when we sang to him.

i just want to thank everyone who was able to come and share this special day with us. we love our jack and are so happy Heavenly Father sent him to us.

Holy cow i have a three year old

so to tell you the truth i'm extremely tired from the birthday extravaganza but i had to put a little something something to wish my boy happy birthday publicly and to give a little for the family and friends who couldn't celebrate with something to see. i promise i will do another post later with the full details with plenty of pictures and videos for all to enjoy.

but for now i just want to say happy birthday to the best boy in the whole world. jack you make our family what it is and i couldn't imagine a life without you in it. we love you very much and can't wait to celebrate many more birthdays to come.