We call him trouble

So, Jace has been a stinker lately. He's been doing things that he has never done before. Such as this...


After breakfast this morning, he climbed up on the kitchen table.

Then, later in the day I was making some yummy strawberry freezer jam. I went into the bathroom to find this...


I counted a total of 12 things in the toilet including tilex, shampoo, bubble bath, a toy boat, a book, toilet paper, etc. At least he didn't try to flush it. Silly kid.

Anyways....so, last week, we had family pictures done with Lance's family. We all pitched in and got pictures done for his grandma's birthday that is almost 90 years old. Sad to say, none of them looked great. Between all the little kids and Jace screaming, there wasn't one picture with everyone looking at the camera. Here are a couple good shots they did get of Jace when he wasn't looking.


This is a picture of Jace taking off running and Lance running after him. It turned to be a good picture though if you ask me.


Just another cute picture they caught of him running. This kid was not happy at this photo session unless he could run.


This picture could have been really cute if they would have angled us differently. Oh well....what can you do? So, yeah...no group pictures and it was mainly because of Jace. It seems like in every picture, somebody was looking at him or laughing at him (mainly me). We have still yet to get a really good family picture. If there are any photographers that can perform magic and make my 2-year-old smile, then we could use you. Trust me, it's not an easy task.

So, Easter is now over. Crazy! Time flew by. Can't believe it's already the first week of April, and get this, it's snowing outside! For Easter, of course we did egg dying the day before. It didn't prove to be easy with a toddler. He wanted to put the egg in the dye himself. He didn't want help. Of course, we didn't let him do it himself to avoid a stained table, so he was mad at us the whole time.


Here's daddy helping show Jace how to color on the egg and put it in the dye.

On Easter morning, we gave Jace his own little Easter basket. He was pretty excited about it. He only looked at it for a minute though and then went on to other things.


We got him a lawn mower too with his basket and thought he would be so excited about it. Right now though, he could care less. Oh well.

After conference, we headed out to West Valley so that Jace could do an egg hunt at Grandma Rowley's.


He got into it for a little while. After only a few eggs though, he was done. All he could care about was that he was outside which meant he had space to run! Have you picked up yet that Jace likes to run? And he's not a slow kid either. I can barely keep up with him (but I also have the excuse of a bad foot. Ever since I broke it 2 years ago, I'm not very quick on my feet).

After eating dinner and everything with the Rowley's, we headed over with my family and played an egg game and the kids got Easter baskets.


I'm so mean. I made him stand with me for a picture, but he wasn't happy about it!


He was funny. In his basket, he got 2 motorcycles. He also got the bunny mask. He wouldn't wear it on his eyes, so he pushed them up on his forehead and wore them there the rest of the night.

So yeah, Rowley's are doing pretty well. Just living the life with our crazy troublesome 2-year-old, but loving every minute with him! Hope everyone else had a nice conference and Easter weekend as well.

Girls, girls, girls....

Jace has had a busy week with friends. On Monday, he got invited to his first Birthday party. Of course, it was for a 4-year-old girl in our ward, but we went anyways. The whole theme of the party was princesses. There were princess games and songs and decorations. There was even dressup, oh boy! It was okay though because there were boys there too and boy dressups. The first thing in the dressup that Jace went for was the necklaces. Someone has to teach my son right! Of course, Jace could have cared less about anyone being there. As long as there was food and running space, he was completely happy. Anyways, I have to laugh at this picture because he's sitting at a table surrounded by girls with a princess tablecloth and he is not happy! It wasn't about the girls. It was about the food not being there yet.

On a side note, someone just asked me what ended up happening with our car. The insurance ended up totalling it (hooray)! and we got a nice white 2006 Nissan Altima to replace it. We love it so far. And we got a warranty on it that lasts us like 6 years I think. We're really wishing we would have had a warranty with the Jeep because we only had it for 3 years and it caused us more problems than you can imagine. Then, of course, the Jeep gave us one last hoorah when the radiator went out the week before it was totalled. Oh well...what can you do.

I know I don't blog often. I guess our lives are uneventful. Jace is growing like a weed. I was looking at him playing with some other kids today and I couldn't believe how tall he is! Then, I picked him up to change his bum and he felt like a tank. When did he grow? He's just changing daily. He's talking so much more. He still loves cars. He's happy as long as he has cars or trucks to play with. The other day, I held up 2 options of a drink. One wrapper was blue and the other red and when I asked him which one he wanted, he told me blue. I'm just so surprised as to how he comes up with these things! It amazes me. He just comes up with them out of nowhere. Like the day I told him to say thank you and he said you're welcome...Ahhh...I love him! Anyways, I'll try to be better about taking pictures and posting more often! We're still alive!

Trials make Me Stronger

This past week has been one pretty crazy week. To start off, a week ago last Friday, our car had some problems coming in to Salt Lake to go to work. We knew we needed a new radiator because of a very minor leak in it, but it began to worsen, so we finally had to take it in. So, as you can imagine, we paid quite a chunk of money to replace the radiator and a few minor repairs that needed to be done. I was happy as a clown having a new and improved Jeep and having heat that worked like it should and just everything like that. It was like I had a new car!

Then, less than a week later, everything changed. I was driving into work with Jace heading over to my mom's house to drop him off. I went to turn left into the neighborhood making sure that the cars heading the opposite direction had completely stopped. When I went to make the turn, a girl driving in the shoulder slammed into me. Yeah, not fun at all. Luckily, Jace and I were in a Jeep, so we were okay, but that doesn't mean both of us weren't scared out of our minds. Luckily, it was the passenger side that was hit and both Jace and I were on the driver's side. So, our poor Jeep that we just got fixed a week ago is looking pretty yucky now. We have no idea yet if it's totaled or if it's fixable. We have no idea what will happen with the insurance because the other driver made up her own version of what happened and I know it's to cover her butt. I guess we'll see what the insurance decides on. Anyways, it's over now for right now and hopefully we'll know more tomorrow about what will happen with our Jeep.


Here's what the other car looked like after hitting me.


And here's my poor Jeep. How sad. The pictures don't even do justice of how banged up the Jeep really is. The doors were completely knocked out of place. One of the windows popped out a little. It even cracked the metal in one spot.

I just want to say how incredibly blessed I feel right now. I know without a doubt that the Lord is watching over our family. We've had a lot of trials, but we've been able to overcome them and I'm so grateful to know that. My little brother just went through the very same accident like a week ago and he was able to walk away from it just fine. I can't even express how incredibly lucky I feel that Jace and I are fine and that nothing worse happened to us. I just think back since Lance and I got married and we really are blessed. That first year we were married, Lance's appendix ruptured and he went a week with it like that without knowing that's what it was. I'm so lucky that didn't kill him. The next year, I fell down the stairs carrying Jace. I came out of that with like 4 or 5 broken bones in my foot, one of them being broken into several pieces. I'm lucky Jace didn't get hurt being as young as he was. Our basement has flooded several times since we moved in and hopefully this year, we can fix the problem for good. But each time it happened, we were able to catch it before it caused too much damage. We've had our share of car problems and all that stuff. I'm not mentioning this stuff to make anyone feel bad for us. I'm mentioning it to say that our family is so blessed. We've had our trials and each one we've been able to overcome as difficult as they are. Sometimes we wonder why we were meant to move to where we are, but we know that we are supposed to be here for some reason. Maybe it's to have these trials and learn and grow from them. I don't know, but we know we're here for some reason.

I just want to brag about my wonderful husband now. The day after my accident, my husband surprised me at work with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. I know it was for Valentine's Day, but it just brightened my day having them brought to me at work. My husband is not the average guy. He doesn't order the typical roses for Valentine's Day. He likes to do a variety and I just love that he likes to be original and honestly, I love the variety of flowers.


I know it's not the best picture, but I couldn't get it to load from my camera, so it had to be taken with my cell phone.

I love my husband so much. He's always been supportive of me and my decisions. I suffer from anxiety and he's always been there to help me through it and calm me down. When I was in my accident, he only cared about me and Jace. He didn't care what damage was done to the Jeep or how much it might cost us. He really proved to me that Jace and I are more important than any material object. I'm so grateful to have a husband that works so hard for our family and goes to school at the same time. He's so funny and can bring a smile to my face any day of the week. He has his quirkiness about him like making up his own songs and talking to himself. He's so knowledgeable on any topic you bring up with him. I just love everything about him. Happy Valentine's Day Sweetie! I love you so much!

February Fun

I know, I'm really a slacker with blogging. There's just nothing exciting going on lately. I haven't been taking pictures of Jace because he just won't look at the camera. He runs when the camera comes out of the case. We haven't been up to much lately. Jace is just as cute as ever and I can't get enough of him. He's starting to act terribly 2, but I'm pretty okay with it because he's the cutest kid. He's starting to talk so much more and have conversations with me. A lot of it is still jibberish, but oh well. He loves music. His favorite song by far is "Have you Ever Seen the Rain" by CCR. He loves to sing along with it and will ask for it to be played over and over again. He actually had about a week where he wanted to use the potty, so I finally bought him an Elmo potty. He would only go once a day. Now, he's kind of dropped the idea and doesn't want to do it anymore. That's okay, he's still young. Today, we were at the store and he knew where the underwear aisle was because we've looked at it before to see what kind there were when we do want to put him in underwear. He led me right to the Elmo pairs and asked for them. Maybe one of these days I'll break in and buy him some.

Also, something new is I applied to work at my old job, the place I worked before where I am now. I got the job. It was the hardest decision to make because I don't mind my job now and I just never thought I would go back to my previous job. Anyways, at the end of it all, I decided to take it. There were so many pros and cons of going back, but after talking it over, it just seemed like the right thing to do right now. If I had my choice, I would just stay at home with Jace everyday, but unfortunately, that just can't happen right now.

Last night was our annual Superbowl party with my family. It's one of those things that we look forward to every year. The girls usually do some sort of craft while the guys watch the game. Jace got to play with his cousins and he had a blast. And he was so good. There were no tears from Jace hitting them or anything like that. Unfortunately, one of the nieces and nephews were sick. But there was one healthy one for Jace to play with. Let's cross our fingers he doesn't get it! One thing about the Superbowl this year that we've never done before is a game to go along with it. My mom made up a chart with all of our names on it and a bunch of numbers. At the end of each quarter, whatever the score was, whoever's name was by those numbers got a prize. The other game they did was everyone filled out a paper beforehand with our guesses about what would happen during the game and then at the end, they added up who got the most and they got to pick a prize. There were questions like "will the national anthem be longer that 1 min 42 sec or shorter" and "who will the MVP thank first" with some options. Anyways...I outbeat my whole family and got 8 out of 10 questions right. I told my family that I know more about football than they think. Of course, they didn't buy it. Lance about gave in when I told him that. Anyways, we had quite the choice of food items. It's like thanksgiving, but with a whole ton of junk food. My mom said that next year, they're not doing that. I told her it wouldn't be the Superbowl without all the food.

So, anyways, this year, the girls did a Valentine's craft. I've really been enjoying doing crafty stuff lately. I never thought I would be crafty. So, here's what we did last night.

I think it's the cutest decoration and one thing I don't have hardly any of is Valentine's decorations. I went out today and bought the ribbon and I had to watch a youtube video on how to tie a good ribbon. I think it turned out pretty cute. Now, I have a St. Patrick's decoration to do. I've been wanting to make a heart wreath for my front door, but everywhere I go either doesn't have a styrofoam heart or is sold out. I guess that project might just have to wait until next year.

Anyways, here are some pictures for the Superbowl.


Okay, this picture is kind of from the Superbowl. I decided I was going to take dessert since I knew there would already be a lot of other food. Well, I wanted to make a pie for my dad because our car broke down the other day and he came and rescued us. Anyways, I got a food processor for Christmas and I really wanted to try it out with a pie crust. I tried it last year without a food pro and it didn't work. So, I put it to the test again this year and it turned out perfect! I was sooo happy! I accomplished something that a lot of people can't do. Well, it was almost perfect. I still am not sure how to make the fancy edge of a crust.


Jace and Cambree were such buds last night. They share their dinner and they watched movies together. Then, later in the night, Cambree was sick with some sort of stomach bug. Woops....guess I should have kept Jace away and not let them share their food.


They're so cute. I love that they're so close in age.


Brynn wouldn't let me get by without taking a picture of her. She was the only healthy child there besides Jace.


Here's sicky Dillan. He was my bud last night laying on my lap so I could scratch his back. He wouldn't pull a real smile so that's why I have a grumpy face. I was trying to match his but he managed to pull out a small smile.

Anyways, it was a fun night last night with the fam. I look forward to next year (unless my mom won't let us bring all the food).

Mommy's Little Helper

Jace loves the vacuum cleaner. He greets it when we get home from somewhere and he'll even tell it goodnight at bedtime and put it to bed in the closet. I just think it's the funniest thing. We got him a toy vacuum for Christmas and he'd still rather play with the regular vacuum. In fact, we found a broken vacuum that someone put on the side of the road and I picked it up because I knew Jace would like it as a toy. But, he still likes our vacuum that we use for cleaning. He's always been a little scared of it when we're actually vacuuming, but I think he's starting to warm up to it. In fact the other day while I was vacuuming up the living room after taking the Christmas tree down, he came and took it from me and decided he would vacuum for me.






So, I guess that's one chore I no longer have to do because I've got a kid that is more than happy to do it for me!

No Naps

Today, we started 1:00 church. We have been really concerned how this is going to be considering that is right when Jace takes a nap. So, anyways, today was the first week of later church. Jace did very well throughout church. I knew he had to be tired. Tonight, I made dinner and Jace was in the highchair. Lance went into the bedroom after eating and I came in to check the computer. Well, all of a sudden, I realized it was too quiet and Jace wasn't telling us he was done or anything with his food. Sure enough, I went in to check on him and found this...

Poor kid fell asleep while he was eating his dinner. His head kept falling onto his sippy cup and he would just lift it right back up still asleep. I guess Sundays routine are going to be church and then bed at like 7:00.

Christmas Time is Here

Okay, so Christmas has now officially passed and it's 2010! Happy New Year everybody. We had a fabulous Christmas and I can't believe it's already over. It just came and went so fast. For Christmas Eve, we went to Lance's parents. They ordered Papa John's pizza (the best!) and we watched Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch. Then, we sang Christmas carols. Well, I played Christmas carols and everybody else sang. We also went to my brother's house for a little while and Jace got to open up his Christmas pajamas.


They're flannel Thomas the Train pajamas. It's so crazy because they're size 3 and the top almost doesn't fit him. Can't believe how big Jace is!

Lance's parents also decided to give Jace his presents that night because they just couldn't wait until the morning to do it. The favorite thing he got from them is a snow shovel his size. He pushed that thing around the entire rest of the night and still pushes it around our house. We keep trying to put it out in the garage, but everytime we go anywhere, he manages to find it again and bring it back in the house. Crazy kid. That night, after Jace was in bed, Lance and I decided to exchange gifts so that we could focus on Jace the next morning. Lance got me all of my stuff to do canning this year. I did some canning last year with his mom and had a blast, so now I have all the stuff to do it this year!

Christmas morning was a little interesting. We let Jace sleep in. Luckily, he only slept until about 8:00, so we didn't have to wait all morning for him to get up. He's never been that interested in opening gifts. We gave him his stocking first of all and that may have been a mistake. He got chocolate in his stocking and wouldn't open any gifts until he got to have some candy. Therefore, all of the pictures of him opening his gifts, he has chocolate all over his face. I guess Lance and I had waited long enough to give him his stuff that we weren't patient enough to wash his face before the gift opening. It was hard getting Jace interested in opening his stuff. But once we showed him to unwrap it, he actually got into it. He would open one gift and then wanted to play with it and wouldn't open another gift for a little while.


The main thing Jace got for Christmas is a vacuum. He has an obsession with vacuums. He says goodbye to our vacuum when we leave and it's the first thing he greets when we get back home. In fact, if you ever come over, you'll probably see our vacuum cleaner out because Jace won't keep it in the closet. The vacuum is named Dusty, but Jace calls it "Busty" because he can't make the "d" sound. We were hoping that him having a toy vacuum would solve our problem of him playing with our normal vacuum cleaner, but he knows the difference. He would still rather play with the big vacuum over his toy one. Funny because he's scared to death of the vacuum when I'm vacuuming the house.

Playing with the vacuum after he opened it.


He was so excited about it that he made us take it to Christmas breakfast.

Like I just said, after our house, we went to Lance's parents for their annual Christmas breakfast. Lance's aunt and uncle and cousins came over to eat and then we sang Christmas carols again. Lance's little cousin is about 5 years old and Jace had a blast with her. She acted as a little babysitter for Jace.


They just sat together the whole time and watched a movie together. It was the sweetest thing.

After breakfast at Lance's parents, we went back to my brother's house with my family and opened more stuff. By that time, Jace was tired and he didn't have as much fun.

Anyways, our Christmas was great. Still can't believe it's over. And now it's a new year and a new decade. I'm very interested in seeing what the new year brings. I still haven't set any resolutions. I'm not sure if I will to be completely honest. We hope everyone else had a great holiday season as well!