Christmas magic

We spent Christmas Eve at Lance's parents this year. Pizza for dinner and a nice warm fire. Jace in his new pajamas. And now for the winning shot of the night....one of the greatest pictures ever (taken by sister-in-law, Tara, on her phone)!


Need I say more?

Oh Christmas Tree

Lance and I finally finished decorating our living room last night. I got a good start earlier in the week, but thought Lance might like to help out a little. Anyways, I asked Jace to go by the tree and he happily did and gave me a cheese.





Besides finishing the decorating last night, I also made some of this:

and this:

and this:

Okay, so my variations of fudge don't look nearly as pretty as the ones in the pictures, but they sure are yummy! Today we're off to our first Christmas party of the season. Only like 19 days until Christmas now...yikes!

Mr. Destructo

I know I haven't posted in awhile. To be honest, there's hasn't been anything really exciting that has happened lately. However, the other day, I went into the bedroom to get Jace only to find this...


Yes, that is a big hole in the wall, and no, I don't know how it got there. I don't know if Jace just had a bad dream and kicked the wall or what he did. Like mother like son I guess. I used to put holes in my door and wall when I was young because I would throw tantrums. The thing is, this happened during the night somehow. I didn't hear a bang or anything so who knows what happened?

And just because I can't blog without a cute picture of my little boy. I made Jace a cape last year for Christmas and I decided to put it on him. Well, when I pulled out the camera, it was like magic! He smiled and said cheese.


Please excuse the mess in the background. This was taken right before Thanksgiving and those are all of our ads from the newspaper. Between Jace and 2 dogs, of course the paper didn't stay in neat pile. I didn't want to try and move Jace and risk him not smiling again for a picture! I love this little boy sooo much!

Hey Chuck!

This year for Halloween, Jace was Charlie Brown. I loved it and I think a lot of other people liked his costume as well. I just love the fact that nobody else is Charlie Brown. Honestly, I've never seen another kid dress as Charlie Brown for Halloween. The best part was the costume was so easy and my kid looks just like him! So, let's start with what everyone wants to see first. Pictures of Jace in his costume. My sister-in-law's sister came up and took some pictures of kids in their costumes. So, of course, I had to take Jace over. Even though I know Jace won't sit still or smile, I figure it's still worth a try to see if we can catch a pose of him in his costume. Even though Jace wouldn't hold still or smile, I really think she did a good job!


Here's my little Charlie Brown holding his Charlie Brown


I put a pumpkin on Jace's lap hoping that he would like it and that it would keep him still for a picture. It worked as far as making him stay where he was, but he didn't like it if you can't tell by his face.




This is the only picture she managed to get of him smiling. I just wish his head wasn't cut off.


I like this picture because it almost looks like he's posing. And you can see his whole costume.


Now, for the Halloween celebrations. On Friday night, we went to Grandma Rowley's and carved our pumpkins.


I put Jace on the table to clean his out. He had no interest in it at all. I stuck his hand down in it and he got mad at me. I have a pretty clean little boy. He doesn't seem to like having yucky stuff on his hand.


He loved taking the lid off his pumpkin and then putting it back on.


Here's the 3 Rowley boys doing pumpkins together.


The finished product. Jace's was the BYU one. I decided to do something easy for his, but even though it was the easiest, I messed up on it the most. It had a lot of toothpicks holding it together because I didn't take the time to sit and think about what a B and a U looked like. Mine was the middle one and Lance's is the other one.


Derek and Tara were going to a Halloween party and Jace was still in costume from going to me and Lance's works, so we took a picture of the only ones that were willing to dress up.

On Saturday, we took Jace trick-or-treating in downtown Tooele. It was a fun little activity to do with him. He got a little inpatient with the places where the lines were longest, so we bypassed those ones.


Me and Jace walking downtown Tooele.


A closeup of Jace. He was mad that Lance was taking his picture, as always.

After that, we headed back to Grandma Rowley's for her annual chili in a pumpkin bowl and then Grandma Rowley took Jace to a few houses down her street. He loved it! Anyways...our Halloween was really great this year. Can't wait for next year.

Jace's Birthday

Wow, what a week. Jace celebrated his 2nd Birthday last Sunday with family and friends. I loaded all the pictures onto our PC and lo and behold, the PC completely died like the next day. We have a 90 day warranty on it and luckily the 90 days weren't up yet, so we're able to send in the computer and get a new one. The bad news is we lost the pictures on that computer. Luckily, Lance thought to buy a backup hard drive and moved the majority of our pictures onto it, but not all of them were there, so all of the recent pictures are pretty much gone that were on there. The good news is that I save all the memory cards we have and can load them again. So, anyways, yeah. I hope I've blogged about everything recent in case there are some pictures we don't have. Lance bought his own mac for school, so he generously has let me use it to blog about Jace's Birthday and everything that has happened in the last couple weeks since our Vegas trip.

Last Saturday, since we had Lance home, we decided to get up and go to what's called the Pumpkin Walk out in Grantsville at the Benson Gristmill. I wasn't sure what it was all about, so we decided to go. We actually got invited to go on Friday with some ward members, but Jace had his doctor appointment, so we didn't make it. So, I made Lance get up and go with us instead.


They had this wagon full of pumpkins. It was a great location to get some pictures. Now, if only all the people weren't in the background.


Here we are on the little short hay ride. Jace loved it.


Then he got to pet the horse at the end. I was so worried about Jace pulling its hair.

They also had some little booths that the kids could go trick-or-treating to and where you could also buy stuff. It was a fun cheap little activity to do while Lance was home.

On Sunday, we were able to celebrate Jace's 2nd Birthday. It worked out because we had to go out to West Valley for a baby blessing, so Grandma Rowley let us just use her house for the party. Then, nobody had to travel.


Jace has a thing for choo choo's lately, so I decided to put my attempts at making him a train cake. I think it's pretty good considering I've never made and decorated a cake before. Plus, everyone knew what it was supposed to be which is a plus.


I thought Jace might have been excited about opening presents this year. I was very wrong. He could have cared less about the presents until I opened them and gave them to him to play with.


Here he is with his Birthday cake while everyone was singing to him. He didn't like the candles though. He just kept saying "all done" and wouldn't blow them out. It was a little windy then anyways. The wind blew them out.


Here's my big boy eating his cake all by himself.

We were glad it was able to work out and we could spend the day with so many family and friends.

On Monday, it was Jace's actual Birthday. Lance had to work and then he started his second semester of school. I thought Jace deserved to do something fun on his Birthday, so we went up to Layton to feed the ducks with Sarah and Dagny.


This is to show how close they were to us. It was a little scary having geese honking right in our faces begging for food. I was waiting for them to attack us for food at any given moment.


Jace was scared of them at first. He hid away up on this ledge where they weren't and just cried. It wasn't long before he was down running through the middle of them though.


Then the kids got to play on the playground. As you can see, Jace prefers going down the slide backwards.

The one thing I wanted to do for Jace's Birthday was take him to the zoo. He's never been and I just thought he would love it. Lance wanted to go too, so we decided to head up there yesterday. We met Sarah and Noah there. When we planned it, we had no idea that it was trick-or-treat day at the zoo. We were a little worried about it being so crowded, but it worked out. It rained on us while we were there, but it was still so much fun, and as I suspected, Jace loved it.




Here's the cute baby elephant with its mommy.


I know this is extremely disgusting, but while we were there, the mommy elephant went to the bathroom and the baby thought it was her play toy. Yeah, gross.


I just loved the penguins. They were so cute. They just stood there and looked up at the people that were watching them.


Here's the baby giraffe with its mommy. Again, so cute.


This tiger cub was so cute. It just sat in one spot overlooking the bridge where the people were. I can't believe how many babies were born this year at the zoo!


I can't believe I got this picture. i wonder if Jace looked at me because the alligator was his favorite animal or what. He NEVER looks at the camera.


This picture came out just a little blurry, but at least we got a good picture showing what he thought of the carousel. He absolutely giggled throughout the ride.

The train was closed due to bad weather. That was pretty sad because I think Jace would have loved it.


Here's Jace and Dagny in their Halloween costumes. Jace was Charlie Brown, but you can't see the shirt because of his jacket and it was too cold for him to wear the shorts.


I can't believe we managed to get Jace to do the gorilla arms in this picture either.


Here's our whole family posing as gorillas.

That's the end of Jace's Birthday adventures. I think he enjoyed celebrating his second Birthday. I know I did.

One last thing to end this post. I laughed when Jace did this last night.

We were at my nephew and nieces' house and it was time for them to go to bed. Well, my niece, Brynn has a couch in her room. When we went in to put Brynn to bed, Jace grabbed a blanket and went and layed on her couch. I think he thought that since they were going to bed, it was his bedtime too. So, we shut the door and he stayed there. My niece just said to me "now I won't be scared anymore!" I thought it was the cutest thing ever! Jace was going to just sleep over with her if he could and Brynn thought that having Jace in the room with her would make it less scary. Jace loves his cousins so much.

What Happens in Vegas....

This last weekend, my whole family was able to take a trip together to Vegas. It was a few months ago that my mom told me that they and my brother's family were going down for the BYU game. I told them they couldn't go without us, so we decided to turn it into a whole family thing. So, this past weekend, we headed down. Vegas isn't my idea of the ultimate family vacation. In fact, I'm not a fan of Vegas at all. The casinos are terrible and there are too many people there. But it was pretty fun anyways. We spent a lot of time in the pool because we were in an environment warm enough to actually go in an outdoor pool. Unfortunately, I got there and discovered my memory card for my camera wasn't working, so I didn't get a lot of pictures on my camera until the last couple days we were there. My dad had his camera, but I need to borrow it in order to get the pictures of our family off.

Day 1:
We left at 7:00 am and headed on our way. It was a long car ride, but it was successful. I was very worried about Jace being able to handle such a long ride, but he was so perfect. It couldn't have gone any better. We got to Vegas and unpacked and then decided to hit the pool. Me and Jace went out with my brother's family and the water was freezing. So, we didn't stay there long. That night we went to this:


and it was freakin' amazing. It was a very clean show and just a blast. Jace stayed with my mom at the hotel because he was pretty tired from such a long trip. Lance was just cheering all the through the show and I just sat there with my jaw dropped for most of it. I was amazed at some of the things people can do. The picture of the 2 men pretty much shows you some of it. There was also a crazy hula hooper and men flying in the air on ribbon type things (a little scary!) There was also a juggler that played Fur Elise on a keyboard by juggling balls. He was the host of the show. In fact, here's a video I found of it on YouTube. He's considered the world's fastest juggler.

After the show, we got dinner and then called it a night. I guess we just weren't into the night life in Vegas. Let me just mention that we got really lucky with our hotel room. Our room had a huge closet. I meant to take a picture of it, but of course, I forgot. Anyways, it worked out perfectly because the hotel provided us with a portable crib (like a playpen) and we decided to just stick it in the closet and make it Jace's own little bedroom. My mom thought we were kind of mean doing that, but it worked so perfectly. Jace slept like an angel and in the morning, he would just push the closet door open and wake us up. My brother and sister didn't have the big closet, so when we told them we put Jace in the closet, they just didn't get what we meant by that.

Day 2:
We got up and got our free breakfast. Our hotel we stayed at was actually in Henderson Nevada. I loved it there. There weren't casinos or anything and it was smoke free. And they provided a great continental breakfast. So, another way to lower the expenses in Vegas. After breakfast, we went to a small chocolate factory, Ethel M Chocolate Factory and Botanical Cactus Gardens. The factory was really small, but we got to see a little bit of the chocolate making and even sample some. Right outside of the factory was the cactus gardens. It was fun walking through and seeing all the cactus, another joy of the warm climate down there. We got pictures there, but of course, they're on my dad's camera. Maybe I'll have to do another post when I can steal his camera.

After the factory, we headed over to the Silverton Casino to check out the aquariums there. We were all about free activities in Vegas. Yes, this was a casino, but it was cool to see the aquariums there. After the aquarium, we went to a buffet. What's Vegas without a buffet? Then, we headed back to the hotel for naps and then some of the family went to the BYU game. Me, my mom, my sister, and my baby bro stayed with all the kids while everyone else went to the game. My hubby texted me during the game and said that they thought there would be more BYU fans than UNLV fans. I asked him in the end and he thought it was pretty even. BYU, of course, slaughtered UNLV I think 59-21. Every time BYU goes to UNLV, they win them. My dad said the coach of UNLV would get fired because their team never wins.

Day 3:
We finally got a memory card for the camera!

And here's how happy I was that the memory card worked!


Here's Jace right after breakfast hanging out in the hotel lobby while daddy continued to sleep.

Another pic of my cute little man.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Stratosphere. If you don't know which building that is, check it out.

My baby bro was looking forward to going up to the top and riding the rides up there. Let me just say, scary! I was almost talked into going on them with him, then when we went to buy tickets, I chickened out. I still rode up with him to the top to play photographer, but there was no way I could have handled the rides. My little bro had his fun though and I had my fun watching him.

Does it really look like I'm in Vegas in this picture?


Here's the view from the top of the Stratosphere. I went to the wrong side, so it's not the strip.

Here's Tom on the X-Scream. Basically it's a giant teeter-totter that propels you 27 feet over the edge of the Tower, 866 feet above the ground. Yeah, scary. It's supposed to look like you're going to fall. Tom said it was lame, but I know I would have been scared.
Then, he went on the big shot.

Yes, basically the rocket at Lagoon, except for it's 1000+ feet from the ground. I hate the rocket anyway. Why would I want to be up that high from the ground?
Then, the last ride he went on was Insanity.


A massive mechanical arm extends 64 feet over the edge of the Tower and spins you at a force of 3 Gs for a truly mind-bending experience. That's only some of the description. It also hangs you at a 70 degree angle, so basically you're looking almost straight down at the city. Yeah, scary! I was so lucky to get a photo of Tom going at full speed because it was going fast. I just had to keep shooting pictures and hope that one of them was Tom. Thank goodness for a new camera that could take pictures fairly quickly.


And here's me and my baby bro up at the top of the Stratosphere together.

After the Stratosphere, we went and picked up Lance to take him to the one place he wanted to go.

Yes, In and Out Burger. He was so excited to go there.

He just stood there anxiously waiting for his number to be called so he could get his food. He could have sat, but he was just too excited to try the food.

And here we are with our yummy burgers! Yummo.

After lunch, we went and swam some more. Later that night, me and my mom hung out in the hotel while Lance went to a couple more places he wanted to go. First they went to the Las Vegas Temple.



I love how beautiful temples are when they're lit up at night. The temple was much bigger than I remember it.

Then, they went to Fremont Street. They do like laser shows on the ceiling.

Day 4: the final day
The final day, we basically had breakfast, went swimming 1 more time, and then headed home.

We did make 1 more stop for my hubby. He saw the Dunkin' Donuts sign and just had to try them out. So, he was happy. He got to try 2 places he'd never been before.

Jace was very exhausted from the trip. He was out like a light before we even got out of Vegas. He slept until St. George and didn't sleep for the rest of the trip.

We rented a car for the trip and rode with my parents to cut down on gas prices. This is to show the tight spaces in the back seat of the car.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. Our trip was a lot of fun, but we're so glad it's over. It feels so good to be back in Utah again.