App development/internships

Richard is up to some pretty cool things these days. He developed an app which you can download on Windows phones. It was approved by windows and he has had over 3500 downloads of it! Pretty sweet. It's an Advanced music player. Some of the awesome features:
1) To pause the music, simply turn your phone upside down (screen touching table/platform), to resume the music you flip it back over
2) To change songs, just shake the phone and it will randomly select a new one (you are also able to scroll through and choose a different song manually)
3) Changes background colors with each song.

He is starting 2 internships as well. The first one is at a place called appible, which develops apps. He is doing really well there and they are impressed with how fast he has done the project they assigned him. (It's a live wallpaper). The second internship is for the BYU-I bookstore. He is working on various projects for their website (employee website, not customer website). Currently he is developing a program that helps with inventory.

first haircut

I cut Elliot's hair yesterday for the first time. It turned out surprisingly well (didn't even have Richard around to help). He was not too sure about the electric clippers and started screaming when I started to go near his ears. Luckily I was pretty much done with the back by that point and finished the top with scissors. I distracted him with grapes and had him in the high chair while I did it. He looks so handsome and old now! No more baby, this kid is a toddler. (if only we could convince him to walk). Here's a couple pics, we'll see if they upload since I'm on the tablet. If they don't check facebook, they are up there already

Merry Christmas



Picture with Santa a few weeks ago

Kids decorating the tree a few weeks ago

 

Chrismas started bright and early here... at 8:30. We welcomed the late start especially since the kids woke us up at 2 am and then Elliot slept in our bed till morning. I'm sure in a few years they will be up bright and early, but for now we are happy for the late start : )

Baby doll and blanket from Gma & Gpa Hill

Stroller for the doll from Gma &Gpa Coplan . Later she had her new Jessie and Woody dolls in there too

Elliot loving his new toy story toys--Garbage dump type thing, reminds me of a car track. He also got some clothes, cars/trucks and his own water bottle (now they don't have to fight over Libby's)

All of us in our matching PJ's.

He doesn't look super excited, but he is :)

Libby seriously made out like a bandit. In this picture, we got her the clothes and the Cinderella/Prince dolls. The rest was from awesome family members. She is so happy!

We made this cool picture holder ornament, we'll add a picture soon. I just thought it was cool.

Saw this idea on pinterest, we"ll get reminded of Richard's mission every year

Another Libby-made ornament

What's on Elliot's head?

So I was playing around on picasa making a new header for our blog while the kids played happily with their new Christmas toys in their room. I decided to check on the kids and they seemed to being havin glots of fun. I noticed weird spots on the back of Elliot's shirt. It looked like Libby had wiped something on his back. When I asked her what it was she said "I didn't wipe it on his shirt, it was on his head" Looking closer there was reddish nastiness on the top of his head. "Libby, what's on his head?" "I just barf on Elliot's head." EWWWWWWWWWW. Seriously, it smelled like barf and looked like what I imagine candycane barf  would look like (Libby's main food source of the day was candy canes from Santa). Just thought I'd share this. The kids are now in the bath with Daddy's supervision and Elliot's hair has been thouroughly washed. I think a thourough inspection of our home must be done in case barf got anywhere else. Libby says it didn't, but I don't really trust her. Why did it have to be on Elliot's head? Gross.

Let's Dance

Elliot entertained us last night with his crazy dance moves. By the time we got the camera he was mostly done and Libby had gone to bed so his audience was not as good, but it was still ridiculously adorable. I think he felt powerful cuz he got us all dancing like him. He was dancing so hard he kept falling over (that of course did not stop him)



Elliot has a few words now, not sure if I mentioned that before. He says "mama", "dada", "baba" (bottle), "up", "uh-oh", and "doe ta" (don't touch). The rest is jibberish. He understands a lot though and often gets this mischievious face when he knows he is not supposed to be doing something. He can climb on and off of Libby's bed now and tries to climb everything. If one of us is laying on the floor, instead of going around, he just hops on over like it's no big deal. He is so close to walking. If he's holding on to something and I ask him to walk to me, he'll turn, grin, let go and sort of half step-half leap to me. It's pretty funny. He'll walk soon.

Sears Portraits = extreme cuteness

Took the kids to get their pictures done finally. These are the first professional ones of the kids together and I also wanted individual ones since Elliot looks a lot different now that he's 1! I love the way they turned out. When I went to pick up our portrait package they had a deal that I could get the whole CD with the rights and enhanced photos for $25 (normally $120). I couldn't pass it up since there were so many cute ones. Now I want to cover all our walls with pictures of my beautiful kids!

cute collage they made

Elliot faces

This is the one for our wall

Favorite of them together. (this was our package picture)

Libby collage. The pic of her standing is going on our wall too! I am so surprised that she smiled so nice for the pictures. For me she usually squints her eyes, scrunches her nose and does a weird smile. That sears lady was awesome!

Love this

And this one! I'm gonna get this printed too! happy silly kids

You would not believe how hard it is to get a 1 year old to stay put long enough to take a picture. Kept crawling away or spinning around in circles on the slippery floor. Funny kid!

kids say the darnest things

Libby's new phrase, courtesy of Charlie Brown's: It's the Great pumpkin:

"If you hold my hand, I'll slug you!"

I've convinced her to say "I'll kiss you" about half the time, but she knows slug is funnier. Gotta love the things they pick up.

So this is another post by richard, so it will be less interesting than the ones becky posts, but I will try to include some cute pics of kids at bottom.

So, I think I told everybody that i was trying to get an internship at the church for next semester... I did not get it. But I did get an internship at the school. The day i found out i didn't get the internship I decided to talk to the system administrator for the university bookstore and he said he needed someone to do C# development for some Sharepoint apps and do some upgrades for the bookstore website. So, that is exciting. Also the business that i am helping to start is in a competition with some other startups. we submit our business plan and will be presenting tomorrow. if we win then we get a $5000 grant and some possible investments.

ok, so here are some pictures that you may not have seen before.

 The snowman libby and i made

 i think he is having fun even if it doesn't look like it

 my family

 mom made elliot's hat

libby loves being buried

Birthday Boy

I love all his facial expressions, so there are a lot of pictures to capture them all.

What is this stuff?

still no too sure

what a ham!

Definitly not camera shy

 

his hair was caked in cake

Victory!

I still can't believe it's been a year since this guy was born! Elliot still seems pretty babyish to me, which I love. He is so cute and happy and silly all the time. He brings such joy to our family.  We went to Utah for the weekend to meet our newest niece Cassidy who got blessed on Sunday. She is such a sweet heart, I love babies. We also had a fun little party for Elliot since we were there on his birthday and were surrounded by family. I had the opportunity to go see my best friend Carrie's little baby Samuel that morning. He was born 14 weeks early at 2 lbs 1 oz, but is now up to about Elliot's birth weight. The day I saw him he was 3 lbs 8 oz, which is only an ounce smaller than the smallest Elliot got. It was really cool to me to really see how much Elliot has grown and how amazing his life has been. We are so blessed that he really has had no problems from his early arrival. He is on track developmentally and the happiest kid I know.

Elliot's tricks:
-"fives"
-claps
-touch down
-waves
-crawls like a pro
-walks around furniture like it's no big deal
-amazing dance moves
-jabbers away and squeals/screams like a girl....a lot
-stands for a couple seconds
-repeats "cracker" and says "mama"
-throws a ball pretty well

Elliot Loves
-mac n cheese
-baths
-pears
-bottles
-yogurt bites
-music (especially taylor swift)
-balls
-playing with Libby
-touch/feel books
-cell phones
-toys that make noise
-Daddy's hair
-being thrown in the air

Well, he loves a lot of things. I am also pretty certain that Elliot is the cutest little boy on earth! i love that these pictures capture his adorableness.

Trick-or-treat!

Libby getting her face painted

Showing me her butterfly

I think the kids are more excited about the candy than taking a picture

Guess who we ran into? THE PRINCE! Liberty was pretty excited and wanted a picture with him. We also saw a grown up cinderella which Libby thought was pretty cool.

Elliot the Dinosaur

I didn't get a pic of him (so I stole it from Facebook), but Zach aka: mini Nacho Libre came with us too and he was pretty much the coolest kid there. He moves a lot, so that's why this is a little blurry 

On Saturday, a business park in town had trick-or-treating, cider and donuts, face painting, and a creepy Witch who read stories to the kids. Libby enjoyed it. We didn't have the memory card in our camera, so we could only take a couple pictures. The Higginsons and Janelle came along too and we had a lovely afternoon together.

Yesterday we hosted a little Halloween party for Libby and her friends. It was pretty fun. I made some cool food: mummy hotdogs, ghost bananas, pumpkin muffins, cups of dirt (pudding/oreos/gummy worms) and juice boxes wrapped like mummies. We were going to do some games, but when your audience is 2-3 yrs old and they all have siblings who are babies and you are all squashed into a small apartment....it's better to just play with toys and eat snacks. It was a lot of fun though! Unfortunately I didn't take pictures except some of the festive foods on my phone after the kids left....

The weird thing is, today is Halloween and we didn't do anything. The car was in the shop till the afternoon and we are going to Utah tomorrow, and by dinner time Libby was have a meltdowns about everything...so we put the kids to bed and are sort of getting ready for the trip. I should probably wash bottles and clean up a bit...or watch a movie.

Snow day

It snowed a ton yesterday. Liberty loved it! Elliot seemed kinda neutral about it. He wouldn't eat it since it is cold, but he didn't really mind sitting in it. I think he enjoyed watching his Daddy and Libby throwing snowballs and having a fun time in general. Libby was burying herself in the snow and having a blast until she realized she was drenched to the bone and freezing. Then she was all about going inside for popcorn and hot cocoa. :)

Elliot :) He immediately took his shoes and hat off when I put him down

The best part about snow is eating some

Even Richard thinks so

I love Elliot's funny faces

and Libby's

i'm actually in a picture

Snuggling while the hot cocoa was being made. It was sweet, although Libby looks a bit creepy

My cousin Jill gets home from her mission in a week. Since we can't be there, we made a sign and took a picture.