Florence Nightingale

Rylee knows that I'm a nurse and Jon's a fire fighter. Every night when she calls either of us while at work she asks, "How's your day going?" and "What did you do today?". We always tell her that we are "helping people". Rylee likes to pretend she is going to work.

Rylee - "I'm going to work now, bye, drive carefully."
Me - "What are you going to do at work?"
Rylee - "I help people like mommy and daddy." She then turns the corner leaving the room and then immediately walks back in and says, "I'M BACK FROM WORK! I LOVE YOU!" and comes over and gives big hugs and kisses. She then repeats this over and over again.We subscribe the the "LDS Living Scriptures". I have a lot of Book of Mormon and Bible stories in an animated video for kids to watch. Along with the scripture stories I get "Hero Classics". I showed Rylee the video of Florence Nightingale taking care of the hurt soldiers and she fell in love with Florence. Rylee saw our medical cabinet stocked full of bandages and other such items and wanted me to wrap up her limbs like the hurt soldiers in the video. When she had me wrap up her legs she would purposely limp around as if she was hurt. She is truely compassionate when someone gets hurt and jumps right in to help. She'll be a great nurse someday.

"Wrestling" - An Ode To Jessica

When Rylee was born 3 years ago, my sister Jessica knitted her a blanket out of velvet. She instantaneously fell in love with it. She would beary her face in it, wrap it around her neck, floss her teeth with it, and wrap her babies in it. I decided to ask her made Brody one when he was born. He also fell in love with it.Now that Rylee is older, she tries to pull Brody on it around the kitchen. The silliest thing they do with them is "bite wrestle" the blankies.As you can see they both have an end in their mouth and are wrestling.Brody trying to escape!This is one of the funniest things for Jon and I to watch. I love the love and bonding that is going on between the two of them.

Cooling Off

I love these two little sweaty children. They are truely Jon's children. Not only do they LOOK ONLY like him, but they metabolize like him. (Pictured here is their favorite way to cool off).To give you an idea of how hot blooded they are - Everytime we walk through the door I remind them to take their shoes off. Within two minutes Rylee has stripped down to her underwear and taken out her cute hair-do. Then she proceeds to attempt to take off Brody's clothes. When I ask her what she's doing she says, "Brody's hot, Mama." What can I say, she's hot.

LDS Missionaries

As you know, my younger brother is on a mission in Uruguay, which makes me have a little extra compassion towards them when they visit our house. (FYI - 2 years is up for Tom and comes home June 26, 2009)
If you are already a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, you may ask yourself, "What are missionaries good for?" (because we know what they can do for the non-member)I have found out they are good for mowing the lawn in a suit in 85 degree weather. I have been taking care of the lawn lately because Jon has had his hands tied with studying for the Captain's Test. They gave me the break I needed. They were so willing to give any act of service they could. I repaid them with 2 large bags of candy. (Jon appreciated that the most - ridding the house of the easter candy). I find it ever so funny that one did all the work and the other, well...he, appearently, was the supervisor.I cracked up watching this...mowing in a suit. What a great service they did for me that day! Thank you!

Easter Fun

Since our Ward didn't do an Easter breakfast like usual, we decided to join Mat, Aimee, Leah, Rebekah, and Emily at their ward Easter Egg Hunt and Breakfast. The girls and Brody had a great time.They were each alotted 12 eggs. And they're off!These smart girls didn't bother counting the eggs. As you can see Leah, Rebekah and Rylee came back with much, much more. Brody and Emily actually caught on and were in on the action as well. Here is Brody trying to sneak into the picture with the three older girls. Love the silly tongue action!They had a great time playing on the play ground with all the rest of the kids. Brody, the silly, wiggly, worm hates to sit still and just wants to RUN!Jon got home from work on Sunday and we all dyed hard boiled eggs together and attempted to talk about the real reason for "Easter", the Resurrection.How grateful I am at this time to remember what Christ has done for us. Without his selfless sacrifice, we wouldn't have a chance to change the mistakes we have made, and be better with each new day. Thank you, thank you.

Dress up...again.

Rylee put this outfit all together by herself, so I had to document it.I am so proud of her dressup skills. "All matching" she says!