we love to see the temple!

We had a fun day today - we got to go to the Salt Lake temple and see my cute cousin Michelle get married! She and Taylor are such a cute couple and we are so happy for them! I always love going to the temple and remembering our own wedding day - I can hardly believe it's been over three years!

The happy couple...



James had such a fun time with Abby and Josh while we were in the temple. He LOVED walking around on Temple Square and he especially loved climbing on the temple steps and standing right next to the temple. What a cute boy! (Abby has some even cuter pictures, I need to get them from her...)

Calvin.

The other day, Jonathan gave James a "Calvin" hairdo...now all he needs is a Hobbes. (Or a haircut!)

chocolate chip cookies, etc.

Today I made chocolate chip cookies and we decided to let James have one, warm out of the oven and full of gooey chocolatey goodness. Here is the resulting boy (who, consequently, had a bath immediately following the cookie):



We went to the library today and James LOVED it. There is the cutest children's section, complete with tons of little couches and benches to sit on, bins FULL of picture books to read, and some neat toys. James had a ball. We then went to visit my family, and these pictures were too cute to not post...

James decided he wanted to sit in the fireplace. Don't worry, it is never used...

The little charmer somehow convinced his Grandma to sit in the fireplace with him.

Tickling "Unkins" Josh

Hanging out with Aunt Annie

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these next two pictures. And I love the boy! What a cutie. :)

Walking Man

Lately, James has had a fascination with shoes (or "oosh," as he calls them). He will bring us his "oosh" first thing in the morning so he can go outside and play! He LOVES to go on walks. Since we are staying with my Grandma until Jonathan's job gets started and we get our own place, James loves to walk down to my parents' house (about 2 blocks away). He can walk the ENTIRE way all by himself (which we figured out in "baby miles" is probably like a whole mile)! He is quite the little walking man! (I guess he gets it from his Grandpa Gibbons!) It can be quite the long walk, though, because he likes to stop and look at EVERY. LITTLE. THING! It is cute, though. Sometimes when we want him to go faster we say "go go go!" and he says it along with us and starts running.

Lately, he has started putting on OTHER people's shoes, too. He especially loves to go find Daddy's shoes and put them on and walk around the house.





And here are some more cute pictures. This one was taken in the car on our way home from Rexburg this past weekend. The kid slept almost the ENTIRE drive home, it was awesome!


The other day, Jonathan and I were in the family room and we turned around to see toilet paper strewn all across the floor. Surprisingly this was the first time this has ever happened (and being the first time, we thought it was cute and took a picture - I am sure that it will not always be so cute!).



So we are doing great! Since Jonathan's new employer had to run a background check, we have just been hanging out and spending lots of time together until his new job starts. We've been doing lots of reading and relaxing, and visiting with my family. Also, I am proud of myself for actually finally getting back into my piano practicing (it has been hard with a baby!), and I decided to learn one of the Chopin Ballades. The only reason I say this is to give myself more motivation to keep up with it - because since I've posted it on the internet, I'd better finish learning the piece, right? ;)

who's that cute boy? (plus, a priceless picture of my brother-in-law...)

Does this boy look familiar to anyone?

When my mother-in-law found this picture of Jonathan, I couldn't believe how similar he looks to James! What cute boys I've got. Here's a couple of pictures of James, to compare. I had to put the second one in because he's wearing almost the same outfit as his Daddy!



Here are some more great pictures of Jonathan as a toddler.




I couldn't NOT scan this next picture in and then put it up on our blog, it is just too hilarious. This is a picture of my brother-in-law, Benjamin. Looks like he was honing his musical skills even then.

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!

A new job!

I just realized that I never posted on here about Jonathan getting a job! It happened last Friday, only five days after coming back to Salt Lake. Anyway, the job is for a pharmaceutical company, and we are SO excited and SO grateful that things worked out so quickly after coming back to Salt Lake. Yay! :)

words.

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.

We're Back!

Well, for anyone who hasn't heard, we are back in Salt Lake! Long story short - we have decided to refocus our job search here, so we moved back a few days ago. We are so excited to be here and we feel so good about it. We know that we had to be up in Oregon these past few months for some reason, and we learned so much and had a lot of fun. We do miss Jonathan's family a lot! It was so much fun to be able to spend so much time with them. Stay tuned for lots of pictures and updates!