Cuttin' Wood

Chad's parents have a wood burning stove to help heat their home, and it's Eigsti men tradition to go out several times a year and cut wood.  Even Chad's grandpa, well along in his 80's still enjoys helping, though he wasn't along this time.  This was a special day though, because it was the first time that Luke got to help.  He even took along his toy chainsaw, just in case.  He was a trooper, because it was pretty chilly outside that day!

Luke's Birthday

Well, since we already had the big birthday party, Luke's birthday was a pretty low key event.  But we still had ice cream to celebrate, of course!  I don't know where 4 years has gone, but it's flown.  This boy keeps us on our toes, and always has.  He remembers everything, learns quickly, and loves his preschool.  He loves to play games, loves Lightning McQueen, loves being outside riding his bike, and still loves all things tractors/farming.  He is such a bright little guy and can be so considerate of others.  Happy Birthday, big boy!

 Since he's pretty into playing games, we got him this great game for his birthday called Spot It.  To play, you have to try to find which picture on your card matches the card on the deck before your opponent finds their match.  While we were playing:

Luke: This one matches!  But what does it say? 

Me: What do you think it says?

Luke: without prompting, sounds out each letter like 4 or 5 times, then gets this excited look on his face and declares, "STOP!  It says stop!"

Me: looking at him with disbelief that he just read a word by himself!

We do not practice that or work on that at all!  Guess Word World is coming in handy?!  He is so interested in letters, rhyming, and all of that pre-literacy stuff.  I'm not complaining!

New Bench

I've mentioned before that my hubby has mad skillz, and here is his latest creation!  We've been needing a bench by our back entryway for a while now, and my biggest preference was that it would have storage...and be pretty, of course.  Voila!  Isn't it beautiful!?!  I've been eyeing that fabric at Hobby Lobby for years, trying to figure out where I could use it (the options were minimal since I myself am in no way crafty).  I love it!

 And now my lovely assistant will demonstrate its storage capabilities:

 Look at all that storage space!  I have the best husband ever.

The Birthday Bash

Today we had a little party to celebrate both of these adorable boys' birthdays.  We kept it in the family, but since all aunts and uncles were out of town, it was a grandparents' party!

 Adam's basketball cake

 Luke's baseball cake (Can you tell that's what it's supposed to be?  Luke requested a baseball, but I was in the mood for strawberry cake, so just tried to be creative!)  When I was picking the design for his shirt, I asked him if he wanted a baseball on his shirt too.  To which he replied, "hmmm, I'll take a tractor."  He's gotta cover all of his favorite things I guess!

 The birthday crew

 4 generations of Eigsti men!

 Great Grandpa and Grandma Eigsti

 Grandpa and Grandma

 Mimi and Papa

 Happy Birthday boys!

 

Happy Birthday Adam!

Our sweet Valentine's baby turned 2 today!  I can assure you that this child is a ball full of energy and joy.  He has just recently hit his "language explosion" and now tries to talk all the time!  Yay!  He is even starting to put 2-word phrases together.  It is so fun to watch him do this and surprise us with new words in his vocabulary every day.  He loves tractor rides with Grandpa, getting chicken eggs with Grandma, going to the "fun beach" (as he says) with Mimi and Papa, and trying to keep up with all of Luke's antics.  He loves the color blue and laughs when we read the book Llama Llama Red Pajama.  He gives the sweetest little kisses and has a wide range of hilarious animated facial expressions.  He is a social little butterfly and likes to be involved in everything we're doing.  Oh yeah, and he's a wee bit strong willed and has a killer pouty lip.  We love you, Adam!  Happy Birthday!

 I adore his birthday shirt!  Stop over at my friend Lindsay's etsy shop or search "Blue Yodey Boutique" on facebook to check out pictures all of her work.  She makes the cutest stuff!  Stay tuned to see the one she made for Luke's birthday - love it!

We went with a Dairy Queen cupcake for today's celebration.  This weekend when we have a little party for both boys' birthdays, he'll have his real cake!

Cancun

Well, I've really been slacking here.  In early January, we went on an amazing trip with Chad's family.  His parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary last year, and to celebrate they took all of us kids and grandkids to Cancun, Mexico!  I wasn't sure how the boys would do flying, but they loved it and did great (despite us missing our connecting flight on the way home!).  On our very first flight, Luke was really taking it all in and I asked him, "Luke, isn't it cool that we are above the clouds?"  To which he replied, "Yeah, but where is Jesus?".  Love it!



We got there late afternoon, and Luke could absolutely not wait to play on the beach.  One of my favorite things about this trip was just watching the wonder and joy of our children as they experienced the ocean for the first time.

 

 

 

The waves were pretty strong and it took him about 3 seconds to get knocked down by one.  A little wave therapy was needed after that.

 The kids had so much fun getting to play with their cousins every day!

This is the only picture I have of us all together as a family!  We went to dinner at a local restaurant and the wait staff went gaga over Adam.  He started imitating them saying "hola!".

The boys were so excited to get so much Daddy time.  Adam especially was glued to Chad's hip.  He had to be with him all.the.time.  Mommy was chopped liver.  If you look closely on the picture below, you can see sand all over Adam's face.  That happened because Chad walked away from Adam and I briefly and Adam couldn't handle being away from him.  He flopped himself down in the sand face first and threw a little fit.  Daddy came back to rescue him eventually.

We are so grateful to Chad's parents for taking us on this trip.  They are so generous, and it was fun to make these lifelong memories with them!

 

Rockin' Out

I can't resist posting this.  Half-time of the Super Bowl rockin' with Beyonce.  If Luke wasn't sick on the couch, I'm sure he would have joined him.  Love this kid!  (By the way, he totally gets his moves from me.)

A New Low...

I have mentioned before the difficulty we have with our last name in public.  Well, here's the latest story we have to share.  We got a pretty good laugh about it...hope you do too!  Chad wrote the following to share with some of our family, and I will share it with you as well.  Brace yourself for this one...

I was at a tire repair shop after church today to drop off the car to fix a tire. The nice man behind the counter asked me my name. I said, "Chad E-I-G-S-T-I" (spelling the name instead of saying it of course). He studiously wrote down each letter as I spelled it out for him. After I finished, he stopped and looked over at me as if expecting me to keep going. I said, "that's it". His look began to harden into total confusion. I peeked over the counter at the piece of paper he was writing on so I could understand where we had gone wrong. As God as my witness, this is what I saw:

E-I-D-S-G-5

Don't adjust your lenses folks, you are looking at the NUMBER 5! It is hard to remember what all went through my mind as I looked over his interpretation of our family name. My first thought was pity for a man who had obviously forgot to listen when his mother told him not to stick the the Q-Tip too far into his ears. If you go in past the second knuckle, you have gone too far!
 
Have a wonderful day.
 Sincerely
Chad Eidsg5 

Use What You Got {A Lesson from Adam}

As a speech therapist, I won't deny that my wee one Adam is a wee bit behind in developing his expressive language skills.  However, the boy understands everything and daily finds ways to use the skills he has to be a part of the action!  Here they are putting on a concert for us:

Christmas Joy

Christmas brings lots of joy...and lots and lots of pictures!  So to reduce my picture anxiety, I decided to focus on just a few things that brought our children the most joy this season.  One would certainly have to be helping decorate the tree!  We cranked up the Christmas music, did some dancing on the living room floor, and made our tree beautiful.

 It was so nice, we did it twice!  This year, we also let the boys have their very own Christmas tree, which they were extremely proud of.  And, because they were allowed to play with and rearrange their ornaments (shatterproof from the dollar bin, thank you Target) as much as they wanted, our tree was left untouched for the most part.  Clever Mommy, thankyouverymuch.

 Luke's Papa works at a retirement home, and each year they have children/grandchildren of staff put on a little show for the residents.  This year, Luke was a shepard and he did a great job!

 While we try very hard not to make gifts the focus of Christmas for our children, there were many gifts that made them excited.  Here I picked the ones that have seemingly been the favorites for the boys.  When people ask Luke what he got for Christmas, he usually mentions the legos he got from the Ayottes, or the remote control truck from his Mimi and Papa.  But for Luke, the unmentioned favorite would have to be Berenstain Bears books.  My brother found him some of the old classics (the ones I grew up with!) from a used book store and he was thrilled.  He has asked to read them every. single. day. since he received them and "reads" them to himself during his quiet time in his room. 

For Adam, it would probably be his John Deere tractor he got from his Grandpa and Grandma.  You can see him waiting in anticipation here as Grandpa helps get the tractor out of the box.

Adam still doesn't have a ton of words, but "tractor" is one most people can understand!  He plays with it daily.  And when he's not playing with them, he likes looking at pictures of tractors in books!

We hope you all had a very joyful Christmas!