We've got talented siblings!!

We have had such a fun couple of days. On Thursday we took a little road trip up to Rexburg (which, I have to be honest, I was not looking forward to driving in the car for four hours - our family is a little road-tripped out!) to visit Jonathan's siblings at BYU-Idaho. It was SO fun! Our sister-in-law Sierra and Jonathan's brother Joseph are on BYU-I's Dance Alliance team, and Jonathan's brother Andrew is on the lighting crew. Dance Alliance is touring in Russia next month (which is really exciting, since both Andrew and Joseph served missions in Russia!), so they had a big performance of their program they will be performing in Russia. It was called "Journey of Life" and was just amazing! We were so impressed, and it was a really powerful program. The people of Russia are going to just love it! Click here for a little preview video of their performance (which doesn't even do the real deal justice!) - Sierra is the one shown close-up at the very beginning of the video. What talented in-laws I have! Joseph's girlfriend, Megan, was kind enough to watch James while we went to the performance - we were so grateful, and it sounds like he had a fun time!

We drove home yesterday, and then last night attended my brother's high school Concerto Night, in which he soloed on piano accompanied by the orchestra. We were SO proud of him - not ONLY did he look like a stud in his tux (I'll have to see if I can find a picture), but he played SO WELL. He was the very last performance of the night and was just AMAZING. We are so proud of you, Dude!

i heart high-speed internet - a.k.a. massive picture upload!

In celebration of the fact that we now, once again, have immediate access to *high-speed internet!*, I thought I'd post a whole lot of pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

These first few pictures show one of James' recent favorite activities - going outside! This kid LOVES putting on his shoes (a word he can now say, by the way) and going out and walking around on the grass. He loved the doggies and kitties at Nana and Grandy's house, and loves to just walk around and look at things.

Walking out the front door to play outside - I just love this picture

This is the day that James first discovered rocks. He held on so tight to them and got upset when I took them away at nap time.

Our cute boy

"Ball! Ball!"

Sweet little guy

Swinging with Mama, and not quite sure how he feels about it...

These next two pictures just go to show that random family traits get passed down - we couldn't help but think of Jonathan's sister Rebecca when we saw James in this position - she is notorious for falling asleep in interesting positions, but especially while praying!

Going for a walk on a COLD February evening...we walked down the Bosters' lane, and then said to James "do you want to go further?" to which he clearly shook his head "no." Smart boy.



Some pictures of my handsome boys...



Another outside outing (is that redundant?) - I love this picture of James pointing to the cat, because there is a picture of me when I was around this age, and I was pointing at a cat, too! Like mother, like son.

Gotta love James' outfit here...

Ok, so we drove back to Salt Lake from Oregon on Sunday afternoon. We had been there for about four months (wow) and originally had thought we'd be moving up in that area. We had taken multiple trips between Salt Lake and Oregon, for various reasons, so we had accumulated a lot of stuff. Lucky for me, my husband is an EXPERT car packer (is that a word?). You would not beLIEVE how much stuff we fit in our little Corolla on our way back on Sunday. Just to give you an idea, here are a few pictures...

This is the view of my lap. Yes, I was completely covered with stuff. Plus I had ZERO leg room. I was sitting on top of a couple of coats and blankets. Can you find my knee in this picture? I can't believe my legs didn't fall asleep on this six-hour drive.

Where's James?

There he is, the poor kid! At least he's happy in this picture. At one point he got really bugged by all of the blankets and stuffed animals stuffed around him. I can't say that I blame him, poor kid. Yes, it was quite the exciting and humorous trip.

This little iguana was sticking out of the diaper bag on my lap, and soon became our trip mascot. We named him Iggy.

EVERY time we drive from Idaho to Salt Lake I see this sign and WISH I had my camera ready to take a picture of it. Well I got lucky this time, and had my camera out and ready! Sadly, you can't really read what it says, but it says "MIRACLE HOT SPRINGS..." and then the good part at the bottom: "CAUTION: ALLIGATORS." Is this funny to anyone else? I just thought it was completely random! Alligators in Idaho? Who knew?

James in his stroller ready to go for a walk! This is his cute new face that he does. His daddy makes the exact same face sometimes.

So all of the stuff from our car got dumped in our family room in my Grandma's basement, so on Monday we were just trying to clean up. I was distracted, putting things away, when I turned around to find this:

James found our treat bag from our trip (which, sadly, we never even got out - it was stuffed under my feet and was not reachable), found the Pringles (barbecue flavored), reached his little hand in and grabbed a whole stack and started eating them. It was hilarious. He just loved them! One of James' new words is "delicious!" (although, it really doesn't sound anything LIKE the word delicious, but whenever we say delicious he mimics us, and at least it begins with a "d" sound!)

James loves yogurt. And now prefers to feed himself.

Happy New Year!

For New Years Eve we drove down to Utah to spend a few days with my family! We miss them so much, so it has been wonderful to spend some time with them! We had "Christmas" with them and exchanged presents when we got there. James has caught on really well to the whole opening presents thing. He peeled off little strips of the paper, and got SO excited when he opened his nice presents from my family! It was adorable. We had a fun night playing games, and my sisters even got awesome New Years Eve hats and tiaras, and sparkling cider, of course! What a fun night. What a year it has been - it has been amazing at times and hard at times, but overall we have been so blessed. Jonathan and I are optimistic and are so excited to see what this next year will bring to our little family!

We had wonderful weather for driving through Idaho, which we were very grateful for!

Our sweet, sleepy boy

What a loved little guy...

Opening presents with Grandma

Toys are fun for Grandpa's, too!

He just LOVED this teddy bear from Aunt Annie

My Dad gives the coolest presents to Jonathan - this year it was a model of the Nauvoo temple, which Jonathan immediately got to work on and finished putting it together within an hour or so!

James in his Christmas pj's

Midnight! Happy New Year!

Did somebody spike the sparkling cider??

Matching pj's made by my Mama

Home for the Holidays

Well, it seems there is so much to post about! No, we haven't found a better job for Jonathan yet but are still looking, and we are so grateful for the one he has in the meantime. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Utah with my family - we were supposed to go home on Wednesday but were able to get away a day earlier, so we decided to surprise my family! We showed up on the doorstep on Tuesday night and my Mom was so surprised that she screamed "what??!?" and my sisters all ran to the door screaming, and poor James got a little scared and started to cry, it was sweet and funny all at the same time. We spent a lot of time together and had so much fun, and stayed up way too late playing Wii Music every night. I went with Mom and two of my sisters shopping on Wednesday for new shirts for the whole fam, because we were having family pictures taken on Friday. We had a crazy fun shopping trip and found cute clothes for everyone, including the cutest little shoes for James!

We had a very yummy Thanksgiving dinner, as always, thanks to Mama. As is Gibbons family tradition, we watched the movie "White Christmas" on Thanksgiving night to start off the Christmas holiday.

(James helped Uncle Josh ask a girl to a dance! It was hilarious!)

On Friday we had family pictures taken and it was so much fun! Our photographer was Ryan Thompson, who also did our wedding photography and who does such an awesome job. The pictures turned out SO cute, and we also got some great pictures of just our little family and some of Jonathan and I that turned out way cute.














Since James' first birthday is this coming Friday (can you believe it?!?) my family had a birthday party for him on Saturday, before we left town on Sunday to come back to Oregon. What a fun party! James had a lot of firsts that day - he had his first pizza (totally liked it!), first chocolate cake (OH man, he just DEVOURED it, it was great), first cows milk (wasn't a fan) and first ice cream (surprisingly didn't like that either). We wore party hats and he opened so many fun presents from my family. He got some fun toys, a cute snowsuit, hat and mittens, and an awesome truck from my parents that he can push and walk with, ride on or pull like a wagon, AND it makes noises. James just LOVED it, he played with it for at least 35 minutes straight. And the funny thing was that all of us just watched him play with it for 35 minutes straight. Whenever it would run into a wall, he was SO determined to turn it around, he would just work so hard at it. It is fun to see his little personality blossoming like crazy. We sure love that kid!









We drove back to Oregon on Sunday and have been having a wonderful time with Jonathan's family. We got back Sunday night to find all the Christmas decorations up and we could see the Christmas tree lights through the front window as we pulled up - James LOVES the Christmas tree, he is just fascinated by the lights and the ornaments!


James has had a very exciting "first" in the past few days - he is now WALKING!! He has taken a few steps before in the past few weeks, but no more than 3 or 4 steps. On Monday night after Jonathan got home, the three of us were playing in the bedroom and James was SO tired, he fussing and crying and was playing with his truck and his toys. He started taking a few steps and was doing pretty well - he took about 13 and we were so excited! So we got out the video camera and tried to get him to do it again, but he was just so fussy. So Jonathan got out his cell phone and started playing James' favorite song on it (Viva la Vida by Coldplay - seriously, James LOVES this song!) and James started walking toward it because he wanted the phone so bad. He was crying almost the whole time he was walking toward it, but he took TWENTY-SIX steps!! It was so exciting! I guess James is officially a toddler now! I can't believe it!

Another first - today we turned James' car seat around so it is forward-facing (two days before his first birthday - close enough, right??) and he just LOVES it! He loves looking out the window and seeing what is going on.

Tonight was the ward Christmas party here and Jonathan's Mom was in charge of it - she has been working SO hard on it for the past few weeks, and it turned out so well! We have had some fun times helping her with costumes and such (oh if only I could upload a few pictures...). It was a Night in Bethlehem and they did it in a really cool old barn. The kids did a nativity scene, complete with real donkeys and other animals (that's what you get in the country! James LOVED the animals!) and they had a whole bunch of booths set up with food and it all looked so authentic. It was fun helping Jonathan's Mom get all ready for it and I ended up making all the signs for the booths and things. Check back for pictures, although our camera was doing some weird things...

So we are doing great! It is so fun to be here with Jonathan's family and it is so fun to see James grow, he is becoming a little boy before our eyes!