Happy Birthday NATHAN

Here are some facts about my sweet little Nathan:

He was born in Florida, and became so used to the sun, that he has NEVER in his life had a sunburn. His skin is just as pale as the rest of ours, but he does not burn.

He HATES sprinklers. You would think that with his first year of life being spent at swimming pools and the beach 3 or more times a week he would LOVE the water but no. He could actually swim when he was 18 months old. He would go between Bryan and I, but now he will not get off the steps of a swimming pool, and HATES getting wet by sprinklers.

He is AMAZING on the computer and other electronic devices. At the age of 2 he could not only navigate simple websites like PBS for hours without help, but he could also pull down the past URLs and find different websites to visit, not just random ones, but he would say, I want Nickjr.com and he would pull down the options and pick Nickjr!

He is a medicine junkie. Once he drank an ENTIRE bottle of children's Tylenol. I called my doctor who said I had to take him to the ER. I did, where they asked his weight, called poison control, told me he would be fine, then charged me over $300. ERGH! So the next time when he drank an entire bottle of ibuprofen, I saved myself the $300 and called poison control myself and had them tell me he would be fine. (I swear I keep my medicine out of reach, he is just VERY smart and can open child proof lids!)

He is SUPER observant. Nathan will not only notice when I buy a new shirt, shoes etc, but will comment on how nice it looks on me when I wear it. He will also notice if I change my make up and ask if it is Sunday. Not only that!...but he notices when other people like his Aunt Andrea has on new clothes too. When we go shopping together Nathan will tell me "Oh MOM!! You HAVE to buy that shirt it looks SO good on you!"

(this was what the men (and bunny ear addict) did during the party)

This is a video of his favorite present, no joke. He actually did not get any toys for his birthday, (other than webkinz) He really does not play much with toys, I spent a long time walking around Toys R Us and found NOTHING that I thought he would like, so he got other things, like Cars sheets, a singing Mario toothbrush and his own toothpaste and of course a Wii game.

I LOVE my Nathan and could not imagine life with out his funny comments and his sweet smiles..HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Christmas at the Davis'

(in case your wondering...yes it is spelled Davis' not Davis's or Davises, it is also easy to just say the Davis family, which is what I do most often)

I had a WONDERFUL Christmas. I think it was possibly the most stressful Christmas season for me, but turned out to be a wonderful Christmas day. Bryan worked a lot but was able to get Christmas day and the day after Christmas off. I think it was one of the first times that we just stayed home and didn't do anything. It was peaceful and fun. I usually take some pictures, but was not feeling it so we didn't end up with much, but here is what we have:


On Christmas Eve everyone opens one gift (PJ's of course) The kids finally caught on this year and knew what it was before they opened it (it is about time, we have been doing this for 10 years now) Here is how they turned out:
On Christmas morning the kids woke us up around 6:45 (not to bad, although it is getting earlier every year) They get to break through a paper wall that blocks off the room with the presents (a Davis family tradition that my kids LOVE)

At the last minute we decided to go ahead and wake up Ashton so that he could join in the present opening....he was not to happy about it:

This is the only picture I took during the present opening....at least it was a cute one right?

Here are a few of the themed presents that we got. They got matching pillow animals, hand made from Grandma and Grandpa Tucker:And Matching aprons, hand made from Charlotte and Peter Later. (and yes, that is my awesome vacuum in the back, I figured it was in the blog enough to be in one of our family photos right?)Here is a little video of the breaking through of the wall. When Bryan was growing up they used newspaper for the wall. We don't get the paper though and have a large roll of butcher paper so that is what we use. It works ok.


Hope you all had a GREAT Christmas and have a very happy new year!

Begining the Catch Up

So I have several posts to do, what with Christmas and Birthdays and such, and I wasn't sure where to start so I decided to start at the beginning and do them in chronological order, so here goes:

The week before Christmas my kids had their first piano recital. They had been practicing extra hard (I hear the songs in my sleep now) and I was SO proud of how well they played them. Luckily we are close friends with not only the piano teacher...aka Aunt Andrea, but also her other students, so the recital was a small affair at our friends house.

They had some soft cozy lighting, which made for a more intimate setting, but terrible video, but I knew grandparents would want to hear so here are the dark videos:



They did SUCH a great job! I will be glad to go from Christmas music to regular songs (I think) but will look forward to next year when my kids will once again fill my house with the sounds of Christmas!

A Tag and a Story (aren't you lucky?)

Ok, so I knew this tag was out there and I have been meaning to check the 4th picture in my 4th folder to make sure it was something good, but never got around to it and I was just tagged by my friend Alicia so here you have it. It is nothing spectacular, but does go with a crazy story.

We lived in St Augustine Florida for 2 1/2 years while Bryan attended physical therapy school. It just happened to be the worst two hurricane seasons in recent history. Every late summer and early fall the elders quorums would be called out time and time again to do hurricane clean up. Most of the time it was cutting up fallen trees, or patching roofs, but this picture is of the clean up to hurricane Katrina.

Bryan not only had to do regular clean up, but because of the flooding they had to gut houses. He told me the horror stories of cleaning out houses where you could tell how high the water had come because the mold was that high on the walls. He told me how belongings were scattered not only throughout the house but down the street. He told me how the smell was so overwhelming and the sadness of telling people that their homes were not salvageable.

Even through all this loss, he was able to also tell me how grateful people were when they showed up to help, how awesome it was to see members of the church come from all over and sleep on the church gym floor and surrounding land, bringing their own food and supplies because all stores and restaurants in the area were wiped out. He told tales of service, love and gratitude. We did not get hit by that hurricane, but I will never forget Bryan coming home and wanting to get rid of all our stuff, because he had realized that's all it was, was just stuff. He had seen these people lose all their stuff and it made us both realize that stuff does not matter. What matters is family, friends, and faith.

It reminds me of the scripture found in Matthew 6:19-20 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. What a valuable lesson to remember during this wonder season.

Here are a few more pictures (sorry they are blurry, for obvious reasons he did not take our good camera with him): This first one is a typical trash pile after cleaning out a house: This one is what all the trees and bushes looked like: And if you look closely at this one you can see some steps that used to lead up to a building, and as you can tell the building is just gone.

Oh yeah and I tag my two brothers, Barlow and Gordon and Brandee G.

Just your average trip to the post office....

My children have been on a 2 hour delay for school every day this week. While in some ways it has been wonderful (you know...more time with my kids, no not that I can sleep in longer, shame on you for even thinking it) But it has caused a few hiccups in my Christmas preparations. The worst hiccup came with shipping my Christmas presents though.

I am pretty paranoid about getting things shipped on time. You would think this would motivate me to get all prepared and shipped in the first week of December, but somehow I seem to cut it close year after year. This year was no different. I had planned to do my post office run on Monday, but because of the two hour delay (and a lot of wasted time playing intellectual games like Cake Mania) I had to postpone my trip until Tuesday.

I had everyone ready to go before I took the kids to school (oohh, everyone clap for me...I can get everyone ready to go by 10:30) and went straight to the post office after the school. When I pulled into the parking lot. As I got out of the car I realized that I had not brought a coat for either one of my boys that I still had with me. Now the dilemma starts

*It is only a few feet to the door of the post office....they will be fine with no coat
BUT-I am wearing a big heavy coat so everyone in the post office will think I am a TERRIBLE mother for wearing a coat myself and not putting one on my babies

*Maybe I should just drive home and get their coats
BUT-I live a whole 10 minutes from the post office....what a waste of time (not like computer games...stop judging me) plus Ashton's coat is in the washing machine.

*Ok, my car is messy enough that there HAS to be SOMETHING in here that will work as a coat
BUT-but NOTHING, this never fails. When my car is messy enough I can usually survive for days.

I realized quickly that there was a baby hoody in the car as well as my heavy black jacket (ok, so I can not blame only my kids for leaving stuff in the car) I put the sweatshirt on Ashton and roll up the sleeves on the black jacket for Nathan and into the post office I go, and of course the line is HUGE.

I patiently wait and surprisingly enough my kids behave great and before I know it I am at the front of the line, then I am at the counter shipping my packages. During the transaction an elderly gentleman comes up to me and hands me a pen. OK I thought, I didn't drop a pen, but thanks. Quick smile to the old man and back to the shipping. A few seconds later a woman comes up to me and hands me a pacifier and a "woman's item" Hmm...now I am wondering where this stuff is falling out of. It was obviously mine. Oh well, that was kind of embarrassing, but back to the shipping. It was not until the third visit from someone in the HUGE line handing me another "woman's item" and a receipt that I take the time to turn around to see Nathan had removed my black jacket and was spinning it around, and thus spreading the contents of the pockets all over the post office floor, giving EVERYONE in line some good entertainment.

Oh well, my shipping was done, my kids were warm enough and the post office even had plates of cookies sitting out for us to eat. All in all I will count it as a successful trip to the post office. Hope everyone I had to ship to appreciates it! Have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

My Baby gets Baptized

Wow, my first child has reached the age of accountability, and chose to be baptised. We are SO proud of him. He has become a very responsible child that I can count on to help me out when I need him and lead his brothers and sister in good righteous ways. I am very happy that he has chosen to enter the waters of baptism and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We chose to do the baptism in Utah so that all of Trevor's grandparents could attend. He has several family members come including his Great-Grandma and Grandpa Bodily, Uncle Barlow and Aunt Andrea and their family, Uncle Bill, Aunt Bethany and her family, Uncle Danny, Aunt Sarah and of course his Mom and Dad and siblings.

The baptism went great....all three times. That's right, the first time the wording was a little off, but because Bryan and both witnesses had only done baptisms in Spanish and apparently the word for "by" and "of" is the same in Spanish, no one caught the mistake until Bryan and Trevor had gotten out of the font to change. So back they came and tried it again. This time it seem ok, but once again, when they were changing, the witnesses decided to have them try one more time (as they were changing Trevor tried to tell Bryan that he had read it wrong....guess he was right) So back they came, into a half drained font and did the baptism one more time. This time Bryan read the words slowly and deliberately and got it right.

Congratulations Trevor....We LOVE you!

For Example....

In case any of you were not clear on how the pinata thing worked....Andrea and I decided to demonstrate:

Andrea chose to show the traditional style, and I am clearly showing our new found technique