Christmas came early this year to our house since we will be with our families on Christmas. It's nice having a young child who doesn't have a clue if it is really Christmas or not that day. It was a lot of fun having our fake Christmas. We only got Shawn a few presents, but he loved what we gave him.

The room before we started opening presents

These are the matching pajamas I made for us. I finished them about an hour before we took this picture. :)


This is Shawn's new lawn mower. He loves to push it around the house. After listening to it for a couple days I am beginning to wonder if it was a smart purchase.


The two of us spend a lot of time together


I wish you could hear the grunting that went along with this picture. Apparently unwrapping presents is a lot harder than it looks.

Shawn used most of the presents as a seat. Probably should have just given him boxes to sit on.

This boy LOVES chocolate and I just can't figure out where he got that from. :0

This playset we got him comes with two tunnels, a tee pee, and a tent that all hook together. It's loads of fun, but will be more fun when it isn't sitting in my living room.

Family Photos

We had our family photos taken about a week ago, as you can tell from the gigantic picture at the top of the page. Here are my favorites.

We couldn't get Shawn to smile for the posed pictures, but the smile sure came out when he saw his teddy bear.
Several people have told me that this is their favorite picture. It would be mine too...if my bum wasn't in it. :)

Not afraid to go off alone

Oh, how precious :)

Now that is a handsome kid if I do say so myself.

This is what happens when you have Christmas decorations at a low level and then take your eyes off a 16 month old boy.

The other day Shawn got into my drawer, pulled out my fuzzy socks and begged me to put them on him. He left them on for about three hours that morning, which is a lot longer than normal socks last on him.

First few days of December

It's not snowing or even raining. There was just a lot of moisture in the air from fog and it made our pictures look like this for some reason.

Shawn making sure this tree feels the same as all the others
For FHE we went and picked out a real Christmas tree. Shawn had a blast running around the lot, touching every single tree. We chose to buy a smaller tree and put it up on the coffee table in an attempt to keep the ornaments higher away from Shawn.

As you can see our plan didnt' work. He still could reach the ornaments we thought we put up high enough. This is all the glitter Shawn dumped out of one of the balls.

Shawn trying to wipe the glitter off his hands. Little did he know it was all over his clothes and in his hair too.

I thought I would just write about a couple new things Shawn has started doing. First of all refuses to sit in his high chair anymore. He thinks he is too old for high chairs. If I happen to somehow get him into it, he won't eat. He insists upon sitting on the normal chairs, without a booster seat. He can barely see over the table, but he will eat if we put him there. He just sticks his fork up and tries to stab at whatever is on his plate. Silly boy.

Shawn very happy to be sitting like a big kid

When I shower in the morning I gather toys and bring Shawn in the bathroom with me so I can keep an eye on him. The last few days he has opened the shower door and handed me my towel whether the water is running or not. This is his way of telling me that my shower has been long enough. (sorry, I am not going to add photos of this event)

Thanksgiving trip

Ever since Shawn figured out what the ipod is used for, he insists upon having it if he sees it.

We were able to go to Utah for the Thanksgiving break. It was so much fun being back in the Salt Lake area. Boise is a nice place to live, but I LOVE Utah. It will always be home to me. We drove down on Wednesday. That night we had a birthday party for little James, J.P., and me.

Thursday we had a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandpa Jensen's home. Everything was so good. The only problem was that Grandma lost a pin somewhere in the stuffing and nobody found it. Hey, it added a little element of mystery. We spent time with Jon's family that afternoon and then went to J.P.'s for a movie and snacks. We watched Elf, which all of us love. We brought beds to put all the babies down. However, they were so hyper none of them went to bed. Shawn gets pushed around a bit by his two older boy cousins, but he stands his own. I saw him try to push those older boys down and he would get a really angry face and shake his fists. I have never seen Shawn's temper so much as I did on this trip.

Friday Jon and I went shopping with all the crazy people at 4 am. It was totally nuts, but pretty funny. Jon and I just kept laughing at everyone. We did find some great deals though. Tiff, Jon and I went to see Twilight that night. My expectations were so low for the movie, that I actually ended up liking it.

Saturday I went to lunch with my good friend Jen. We went to the Garden Room in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. It was great to spend time together with just the two of us. Saturday night Jon and I went to see the lights downtown. Then my whole family went to the Osmond 2nd Generation concert. My dad's fiancee is the Aunt of the boys who did the concert. They were very talented. There was a surprise visit by David Archuleta. You should have heard the girls scream. He is the tiniest little boy, but he has an amazing singing voice.

Well, I have babbled on about our trip, but I loved it. It was really nice to spend so much time with our families and friends.

Shawn and Jon digging in Grandpa's sandbox

Happy Birthday to me

I had a great 26th birthday. Jon woke up early, decorated the house, and made me breakfast. I went out to lunch with some friends to Costa Vida. It was the perfect place because they have good food, but it was also loud in there so having 5 little kids wasn't a problem. That night Jon brought me two dozen red roses and chocolates. We left Shawn with a babysitter and went to dinner at a place called Cottonwood Grille. Neither of us had been there. It was really nice and the food was good. I also received some nice presents. Overall, it was a nice birthday. Plus I am now older and wiser since I am in my "late" twenties. :)

This is where we ate. The table we sat at was the middle table on the far left. When we were there they had white christmas lights in all the trees outside and around the inside. It was a great environment.

Surprise visitors

My cousin Jenae called me two Fridays ago and said that she and her mom were coming down the next day to visit for a few days. I was so excited. We spent most of the weekend having quality Jenae/Heather time which we haven't had enough of in the last few years. It reminded me of the good old BYU days when we were roommates. It was a lot of fun getting to know her cute little baby girl whom I haven't seen since she was a week old. It was a great visit and I am really glad they got a chance to come up and spend some time with us.

Jon met Jenae and I for lunch at Cheesecake Factory

Shawn just chillin' with his great-great grandma Call


Shawn trying to figure out how he feels about this little girl being around so much

"Mom do I really have to sit this close to her?"

"This is so embarrassing"

New pictures

I thought I would post some pictures simply so you don't have to be reminded of my birthday every time you look at our blog. I will be posting more soon.

Why use just one toothbrush when you can get so much more done with two?

Chasing Shawn through the tunnel so he doesn't go down the steps on the other side
Shawn LOVES the playground

He always has to take time to drive a little

I just thought this was a cute smile

Ready for potty-training?.....I wish

I used the toilet as a seat this morning while I was blow-drying my hair. When I was done I went to put the stuff away in the other bathroom. I came back to find Shawn sitting on the toilet seat I had just been sitting on. I had to take a picture. I wish this was a sign that he is ready for potty- training. :) I couldn't get him to come off the toilet so I left him there while I went to put something else away. Then I heard a bang, silence for a couple seconds, then screaming. He had fallen off the side, hit his head on the shower, and was laying on the toilet brush. I guess we are going to have to start shutting the bathroom doors again. (side note: we had to keep the doors shut while he went through a toilet paper eating phase)

The Hot Happenings of Halloween

Shawn was a tiger for Halloween this year. He would not keep the head on even for a second so we could get a picture.
We went trick-or-treating at Jon's office in the afternoon. Shawn quickly caught on that the buckets around the office had candy. He was running from one to the other loading up his bucket. He would just take handfuls at a time. We had to keep up with him to make sure he didn't deminish their supplies.

We went to my cousin Mike's house for a little party/ dinner. It was fun to see other people's costumes.
Then my friend Maria brought her two little girls over and we walked down the street to a couple ward members' homes to trick-or-treat. That is all we were able to do because Shawn was tired and ready to go home.

We put Shawn in bed. Put in a movie and waited for the trick-or-treaters. We had five kids come the whole night. That is the exact same amount we had come last year.

Another Halloween has come and gone and I cannot believe that we are already into November. Crazy!

Shawn sitting in his dad's office holding his bucket of spoils

Saturday morning we decided to quickly rake up the leaves before it rains for the next week. I thought Shawn was standing funny in this picture pushing his belly out. That leaf bag is so much bigger than him

Perfect example of what I am talking about

Yesterday after I wrote my blog entry I gave Shawn a piece of bread as a snack he could carry around. A minute later I see him walking around with his piece of bread in some tupperware. I thought it was so funny because of the blog I had just written about him being so proper. I had to take a picture and share it with you.

I just thought this picture was really funny

Like father like son

Shawn has a few things that I see he gets from me. However, the older he gets the more I realize that he is just a smaller version of his dad. Jon is a very clean person and likes things clean. Although Shawn is not clean himself, he wants us to be clean and organized. I have a few examples.
*I was folding whites the other day on the bed. I put them all away but left a couple shirts out that I needed to hang up. I went in the other room and started something else. Shawn came up and kept pointing to the bedroom. He made me follow him where he continued to point at the two shirts until I put them away and then he was fine.

*If I try to put his sippy cup on the ground so he can reach it he fusses and grabs it off the ground until I put it up on the table.

*He likes his food on a plate not just on his high chair tray.

*He doesn't like us to pick him up from his crib until he has carefully gathered his blanket and his teddy bear.

*When the phone rings he goes and stands in front of it and points at it until I answer it.

It is just really funny to me to watch the different things he does everyday. I love seeing his little personality. I love both of my boys and I think they are the greatest!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a park to see the colors. We weren't the only ones. The parking lot was full and every single spot in the park had a family taking their family portraits. We weren't the only ones there, but we were the only ones not wearing matching clothes!

Jon was watching Shawn and decided that getting all the toys out wasn't as effective as just putting Shawn in with all the toys.


Speaking of being like his dad. One day Shawn kept going to the computer chair and crying until I would put him up in it so he could pretend to type on the keyboard. This was fun until he starting pounding on the keyboard.

We get a ton of leaves in our yard so we raked them up and put Shawn in one of the piles. I wish you could see his face better. He is purely disgusted and didn't want to touch them at all.

This is a video of Shawn starting to like the leaves. He was throwing them over his head for a while before I got the camera so I missed the best part.

Who needs a gallbladder anyway??

As most of you know I went in for surgery last Friday to have my gallbladder removed. I have been having problems with it since I was pregnant with Shawn. The surgeon I went and saw said that if I was done having kids then I didn't need to get it out. However, I am not done having kids. He said that being pregnant makes it a lot worse and having the surgery during pregnancy can cause preterm labor or miscarriages. That convinced me to get it taken care of sooner than later.

The day of the surgery:

I wake up to Jon sick with the what we think was the flu. I call the hospital and the doctor to see if I should reschedule because of the odds that I would get sick also. They said to just go ahead with the surgery (a decision I bet was based more on not wanting a cancellation that late then really worrying about my recovery time). We decided to go along with it anyway.
We dropped Shawn off at my friend, Maria's, house with no promise of what time we would be back (what a friend :) ). We got to the hospital and waited to be taken back. About 2 minutes before I get called to go back, an inmate dressed in his orange jumper gets taken back with two cops following him. That makes me feel safe. At least I won't be alert and awake if anything happens. :)
They do all the preparations and finally take me back to the operation room where they strap me to a table and ask me if I am ready to go to sleep. I say, "sure" and then next thing I know i wake up in the rocovery room in a lot of pain. They quickly get me more pain pills and the pain lessens.
I am taken to another room where they let Jon come back to see me. Poor guy wasn't without his share of drama for the day either considering he had to leave the hospital for a while because he got sick. Luckily he made it back in time for the Dr. to find him in the waiting room and tell him how everything went.
So I went in for surgery at 2 and by 4 I am ready to go home. However, the medicine they gave me made my blood pressure really low so I was dizzy and weak. They watched me for a while and then sent me home at about 5:30.

My new visiting teacher brought us dinner. I don't know if she thought I had 10 kids or what, but she brought enough food to feed the whole ward. Maybe I will put it in my freezer and it can be my three month supply of food that the church tells us to have.

Anyway, I am feeling okay. Yesterday I decided to stop taking the pain pills because I didn't like how I felt on them. Now that those are out of my system and I am taking a little IBProfin, I am feeling okay. Jon went back to work and I am able to take care of Shawn. I can't stand or sit up for too long, but it isn't too bad. I should be ready to go for Halloween.
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has helped me so far in this event either directly or with your phone calls and prayers and thanks to those that I know are planning to bring meals for the next couple of days. You are all the greatest!

P.S. my gallbladder did not weigh 20 lbs. like I was hoping it did. Shoot!

Forecast for winter

Shawn LOVES to be outside. He definitely takes after his mom in that regard. If he had to be stuck outside or inside I think he would always choose outside. We have been going to the park almost everyday this summer. However, with the cold days we have been having we haven't gone out much. Yesterday it warmed up a bit so we went and played in the backyard and Shawn was so excited. I thought I would take a few pictures so you can all see him. I think it is going to be a long long winter for both of us. I know the pictures are all fuzzy. We are working on buying a new camera.




Shawn sitting on his "big boy" bike


Opening and shutting the gate never gets old


Running around on the grass (impressive for how uneven the ground is)
Shawn can't figure out how to get his bike out of the vines