Russians are out for us!

For those of you who haven't heard, our Acura was stolen again last week. This is the second time in two months. In fact, it has just barely been a month since we got it back after all of the repairs the first time! The policeman that came and looked at it the first time said that Russians from Vancouver, Washington come down to steal cars, thus the title of this blog. Sorry if any of you are of Russian decent! Last time, our car was found three days later in an apartment complex a few blocks from us in Wilsonville with a couple thousand dollars in damage. We actually just hope this time to not get it back, as we now feel the car must be cursed! Either that or we are cursed, as the car has been broken into twice since October, and stolen twice since February! We'll keep you updated on any new developments in this area!

Animal Fun

For Family Home Evening last night, our lesson was on being thankful for animals. Landon chose the opening song - Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam. We told the story of the creation and of Noah and the ark, sang some songs about animals (In the Leafy Treatops, Old McDonald, The Itsy Bitsy Spider), looked at pictures of animals, and Landon's favorite, acted like different animals. We were cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys, and birds. We tried duck, duck, goose, but Landon didn't really catch on to that one. He wanted to play Ring Around the Rosies, so we ended up doing that a few times instead. It was a fun night.

Tulip Festival

On Friday, Landon and I invited our friends Rebecca and little Leah to go with us out to the annual Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. Landon sure enjoyed having a buddy in the backseat with him on the drive down to Woodburn. He and Leah kept laughing, but Rebecca and I weren't quite sure what the joke was! The tulips were amazing! There were rows and rows of gorgeous tulips, all different colors. They also had some fun activities for little kids, including a slide and little playground in haystacks, wooden shoes the kids could dance on a hard wooden surface in, and Landon's favorite, a water pump and trough type set up you could race ducks in (hard to explain - see the picture). It all went pretty well until the end when Landon was walking along the tulip fields and stepped right into a huge mud puddle! He had muddy pants and shoes, which didn't make him too happy. Luckily we were almost done by then! It was a fun first visit to the tulip festival.

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been awhile since we have posted on here! I thought I would put up a few pictures of Landon decorating some Valentine's cookies. He had fun cutting out the shapes with the heart cookie cutters. I frosted the cookies, and then he would put the sprinkles on top. I was supervising him pretty closely at first, but then I got a little lax, as you can probably tell from the pictures. When I turned back around, he had the entire table piled with sprinkles. I had to dump a ton off of the cookies too! It was pretty crazy, and we had to get out the vacuum when he was done, but we had fun. Landon was excited to show his daddy the heart cookies when Shane came home from work! We hope you all had a great Valentine's Day too!

Let it snow!

It is Friday night, and pretty much we have nothing to do. Tomorrow we're having Brycen and Lori Woodley over, but tonight, we're just kind of hanging out around here. Landon is racing cars on his track, and I am trying to get some things ready for a Primary activity in the morning.

This has been a pretty crazy weather week in Portland. I woke up Tuesday morning, turned on the news, and all that they were talking about was the snow. I hadn't even looked out the window, but when I did, I saw a few inches on the ground, with more coming down. Shane had gone to work at 5:15 for a Stake Priesthood temple session, so he had beat the snow to work, but he ended up coming home at noon because they said the roads were just getting worse. He even had to use chains for the drive home, and he was on the freeway! He said there were cars all over the road. On Wednesday, there was still a lot of snow and ice, so Shane worked from home again. It was really nothing compared to Utah weather, but they just don't have the snow plows and stuff here to clear the roads, plus the snow is really wet and freezes to the road easily. There's still some snow on the ground today, but it is pretty much melted off, and it has warmed back up to the mid 40's, so we're getting a little more back to normal, thank goodness. Landon liked the snow, but he didn't like it getting on his boots. He especially liked the snowballs, and kept wanting Shane to make more for him.

Landon's favorite song right now is "Life is a Highway." (I wonder where he got that one from?) He wants to listen to it over and over and over, and he runs around in circles in our living room while it plays, even yelling out "whoo" when they say it in the song. When it finishes, he looks up at me with his sad eyes and says, "more." Of course, I can't say no to that, so we play it again and he starts running around like wild. We listened to it five times in a row this morning before I finally got him distracted with something else. He also loves to race his cars. He wakes up every morning and says "race," so I set up his car race track, and he races his cars and even some balls down his bright orange track.

Landon also likes Shane to build him a little fort by his crib. Shane hangs a blanket over the futon from Landon's crib, and Landon climbs in there with a book or toy, or just sits in there and talks. He also loves counting these days. He has a number book he likes me to read, and he likes to repeat the numbers after me. The other night, in his bath, he goes, "free, four, five, six, seben, eight, nine, ten, leben (eleven)" I thought I was hearing things wrong at first!!!! It was crazy. What a crazy kid.

Merry Christmas!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We have spent the past week and a half at Shane's parents' house in Ogden. We have had a great time, keeping busy visiting friends and family. We arrived Friday, December 15th, and I spent the night with Jake and Stacey, then spent the next day wedding dress shopping with Becky. It was so much fun! Of course, she looked beautiful in everything, so it will be interesting to see which dress she chooses. That Saturday night, Shane and I went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, with Sissel as the guest singer. She is Norwegian, and Shane has several of her CD's, so we of course had to attened. And boy were we glad we did. It was amazing! It was by far the best concert I have been to in my entire life!

The rest of our vacation has been filled with family parties, friend parties and get-togethers, and of course some last minute shopping. We are glad that we were able to see so many of our friends and family. We have missed living closer to them!

Our Christmas Eve was a little bit different that usual. Landon had been sick with a cold/cough for a few days, with a slight fever as well, but he hadn't seemed too affected by it until he woke up from his nap on Sunday. He was feverish, fussy, and kept pulling at his ear and crying. We took him in to an urgent care clinic, where after two hours we finally left with a prescription for his cold and one for his ear infection. Unfortunately, it was almost 7:00 by then, and after stopping at five different pharmacies on our way home with no luck, finally headed home and started calling around to find one open on Christmas Eve on a Sunday night. There was a 24-hour Walgreens in Layton, so we hurriedly ate some dinner, left Landon with his grandparents to get ready for bed, and drove out to Layton. We got home just after 9:00.

Fortunately, Landon was feeling much better yesterday, and we had a wonderful Christmas. Landon figured out pretty quickly that the wrapped presents contained fun toys for him to play with, and he soon was excited to open the next one and see what other fun toy he got. He especially liked his new train set and his race track to shoot his cars down (and balls!). We spent the rest of the day at Shane's Grandma Brewer's enjoying vising with lots of family while there.

We love all of you and hope you also had a wonderful Christmas this year! We hope we get to see those of you soon that we didn't get to see this Christmas! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Jingle Bell Rock

We haven't posted for awhile on here, so I thought I would put something on tonight. Above is a picture of Landon with all of his cars lined up on the couch. He sure likes cars! After dinner tonight, Shane and I had a fun time watching Landon dance in the living room to Christmas music. He was pretty into it. He was jumping, spinning, and rocking back and forth. When the first song ended and went to the next one, he said, "no dat one," then "anoder one," until I found a song that he liked again. It was pretty funny. Shane took some video of it, so I will try to put that on our website tomorrow.
We have been doing well here in Portland besides that. The weather has been beautiful the past few days - sunny and in the mid 40's. Landon enjoyed walking around outside today, playing in the dirt and picking up leaves. He seems to be learning new words everyday. He says "pease" all of the time now when he wants something, and everytime we leave the house, he points to the wreath on our front door and says "weath." Aunt Becky was especially excited today when he repeated me saying "Beck" to her!
We had a fun time over Thanksgiving visiting my parents in Ashland. It was my first time home for Thanksgiving with them in ten years! Landon had a great time being spoiled by his grandparents and his Aunt Camille. Here is a picture of him with Shane's hat on backwards in my parents' kitchen.