apparently i have no more room to upload photos on this blog.
and google is trying to get me to buy storage.
has anyone else had this problem?
if i don't want to pay, do i just need to start a new blog?
ugh. so lame.


yesterday our power went out for a few hours before church.
it was a pain in the butt.
it's one thing to go without power. but it is a whole other thing to go without power with kids!
we were trying to figure out how the heck to warm holden's bottle.
and chet was so broken-hearted that the christmas tree lights were 'broken'.

since we have had emergency preparedness on the brain, i started to worry.
what if this is it - what if we never have power again?
i'm way too whimpy to live a cold, miserable life!

it's winter so, with the power out, our apartment temperature was dropping [very slowly, but dropping nonetheless!].
i was wrapped up in our warmest blanket, huddled around a dozen tea lights, wearing our christmas stockings to keep my feet warm.
i really need to buy socks!
and bigger candles.
tea lights don't produce much heat. like, at all.
and while i'm all bundled, chet is walking around in only a pair of undies! haha.
and matt is making fun of me.
so ya, i'm whimpy. but i can't help it!
and i can't help but wonder why we even get monthly bills from our gas company because they obviously don't do much for us!
and i'm wishing we didn't have an apartment entirely furnished with not-real-wood ikea furniture that will do us no good if we try to make a fire with it...
but, of course, matt is being completely level-headed through all this:

pam: what if the power never comes back on?
matt: pam, where does idaho get its' power?
pam: umm.. i don't know. wind?
matt: [dissapointed look] ...coal.
pam: ok. so?
matt: don't you think we would have had some warning if coal supplies were running low, or getting cut off?

blah blah blah.
i have seen plenty of movies about things like this.
and i know the government would keep such bad news a secret, in hopes of preventing an uprising.
duh.
so, i win.
well, not really. the power did come back on!
but i did eventually get matt talking about the teensy possibility of the power never returning.
and we came to the agreement that it would be smartest to eat tank sooner, rather then later.
tank wouldn't be very satisfying as is, but he will only get skinnier as time goes on.
haha poor tanky!
please don't run away, tank! we won't actually eat you. ever. we know that you eat your own poo...

our friends just had a brand new baby girl so we went over to meet her.

her name is luna may. and she is so teeny.

holden looked HUGE next to her! it made me kinda sad.

it was the first time that i really realized that holden isn't a newborn anymore.

not even close! he will be 5 months old next week.

when did this happen?!

he is growing up, oh so fast.

holden is so easy to make smile and he has started laughing lately too.

we love it. it is absolutely impossible not to smile when he flashes you one of his goofy grins.

he likes to practice sitting and standing. he is getting so strong!

he had another check-up with his doctor today, and the doctor was very impressed with how strong he is. especially for such a little guy.

holden is 12 lbs 2 oz (3%) and 26 inches (70%).

what a string bean!

the day after we made our 72 hour kit, we found out that our ward would be having an activity at the cannery this weekend.

what are the odds?!

we thought the timing was just too perfect for us not to go. so we went. and it was great.

i know that a friday night of canning non-perishables and touring the bishop's storehouse with two kids - all while wearing hairnets - might not sound that great,

but it actually was a fun night.

holden was a peach. he just sat and watched us work.

chet walked around wearing a big 'pinto beans' sticker on his shirt, moving empty boxes and stocking shelves.
and when he got bored of that, he drove his lightning mcqueen toy back and forth along the shelves until it was time to go.

[we honestly couldn't ask for nicer boys.]

matt and i got to know some new people in the ward and officially start our food storage.

we now have 12 whole cans!

after we left the cannery, we hit up target to buy a sled.

there isn't enough snow to go sledding yet so, later in the weekend, we made our way out to the sand dunes to do some sand sledding.

chetty loved it!
and i loved the fact that we were sledding WITHOUT snow.

although getting 27lbs of toddler up a sandy hill is much harder then up a snowy one.
we were really wishing we had a bigger dog that could pull chet up the hill.

good for nothing chihuahua...

another fun thing we did this weekend was we took chet to 'wreck it ralph'.

i didn't have any desire to see the show, but was pleasantly surprised by how cute it was.
and on our way out of the theater, we got photo booth pictures.
man, those booths are so not built for a family of 4!

{chet's smile is really hurting these days!}

back in the day, when we were deciding what to name chet, his nurse told us to be careful with the name chet.

she thought 'chet' had the potential to sound like a bad word if we weren't careful.

i kind of saw how she might think that, but didn't totally agree.

so we went with chet.

and today, we found out that the nurse was right after all.

matt asked chet, "what's your name?"

and chet answered, "!@#$". (or at least that is exactly what it sounded like!)

haha. so funny!

we learned all about pirates at the library last week.
really useful stuff.
arrrrr.

while chet was making pirate crafts, i was eavesdropping on a couple young moms sitting next to me.
they were talking about their passion for food storage and emergency preparedness.
they were intense.
one girl even mentioned that all she wants for christmas is a wheat grinder.
i thought she was nuts!
a wheat grinder? you honestly can't think of anything more fun to ask for?!
but, as i continued to listen to them, i started to see that they were actually so smart.
and i started to get nervous.
we have absolutely no food storage.
partly because we have very little space for it in our teeny apartment.
but also because i suck at grocery shopping. like, worse then you probably think is possible.
we would have a hard time surviving a couple days on what we have in our cupboards.
i have just always imagined us booking it back to calgary, and mooching off our families, if something terrible happened in the near future.
(so bad, i know! but it's true.)
unfortunately, that plan doesn't sound as good after listening to those girls.
what if gas was impossible to find?
you can't walk to canada!
and we don't own a jerry can. or ever have any cash that we could use to buy gas from a person.
we would be in trouble!
i won't even go into the details of all the other things we are missing, but just know the list included super basic things like a flashlight. and matches.
so i went home and told matt that our lack of preparedness made me a little nervous.
and we agreed that making a 72 hour kit would be a good start.
so we researched some ideas, went to the store to stock up on supplies, and packed our "kit".
but, in true matt & pam fashion, we have overpacked.
and somehow our kit weighs as much as me!
haha there is honestly no way i could move it.
so it's not super practical... yet.
it is a work in progress.
i hope a disaster doesn't strike rexburg anytime soon because life would still really suck if we had to live off our 72 hour kit.
but at least it would suck a little less now that we have it.
i am proud of us for making a start. yay us!

for the record, i will still never ask for a wheat grinder for christmas.

i actually want taylor swift concert tickets for christmas.
but we still don't know where matt will be working when she is on tour. and the tickets go on sale next week.
poor me :(
matt says i should exercise faith and purchase tickets in the city where i hope to end up.
but i'm not sure that is how it works..!

~pictures~

 holden is such a weirdo! he arches himself backwards when you are holding him.
i think he likes to be able to see more, but it looks so uncomfortable! 

i bought chet some beads and tricked him into making me a necklace.
if any grandmas, aunts, or cousins would like a piece of custom chet jewelry, let me know. really! chet loves to mail things.
 all we will need is your address.

not quite ready for the bumbo!

chet's nursery leader informed us that he hid under a table during the lesson today.
 what? why?!

well, it turns out chet was scared because they were learning about the holy ghost.
oh chetty!

looks like we have some room for improvement when it comes to teaching chet about the gospel!

today was the primary presentation in our ward.

but our ward doesn't have any primary age kids.

so technically, it was a nursery presentation.

with 6 nursery kids. of which chet was the oldest.

so it was top notch stuff :)

since the nursery kids are too little to participate in the program on their own, this turned into a family event.
matt, holden, and i joined chet on the stand for the meeting.

we kicked off the program with the 6 families singing an unrehearsed musical number.

it was so bad!

picture the worst musical number you have ever had to endure, and then imagine something worse... and that was us!
not just because we sounded bad, but we also lost our spot a few times and had to stop to re-group. oooh so bad.

i couldn't even look up at the congregation!
what an awful way to start.

luckily it got much cuter from then on..

each family was asked to introduce their child and then give a little talk on an assigned topic.

our topic was keeping the sabbath day holy.
i gave chet's introduction.
it should have been no big deal, but i was shaking. i absolutely hate giving talks.
then matt gave the talk while i helped chet hold up pictures and props to show the ward.
we were so impressed with how well chet did - such proud parents!

it is actually so insane that we are already at the point in our lives where we have a kid in a primary presentation.
we. are. so. old!


[he started the day out with a tie..]

my mom came down to visit this weekend. 

it was so fun to have her here. it always is.

the boys got good and spoiled by grandma.

and matt and i got to get away from our kids for TWO date nights.

best. weekend. ever.

we went out for dinner and a movie both dates.

friday we saw pitch perfect. saturday we saw taken 2.

[can you guess who picked which movie?!]

it had been over 5 months since we had been to a movie without chet. and it was nice.

[no offense, chet.]

i don't usually like to do dinner and a movie on the same night because i think movie treats are a big highlight to a movie. and, if you go out to dinner first, you aren't hungry for treats.

[#firstworldproblems]

but we wanted to squeeze in as many date-y things as we could, so i sucked it up and watched the movies without popcorn!

turns out the lack of popcorn actually made it easier to hold hands with my incredibly handsome date (and i really like holding his hand) so it all worked out!

a couple other highlights from my mom's visit are:

she brought us a ridiculous amount of canadian halloween candy.

[i always forget how much tastier canadian chocolate bars are until i get my hands on one!]

while matt studied, my mom and i spent an afternoon shopping in idaho falls.

we got to see some of the photos from my parents' trip to israel.

my mom made us a 'real' sunday dinner.

chet was introduced to the 'cars' movie.

we hardly had to change any diapers, wash any bottles, feed our children, or fold laundry.

so spoiled!

aaand... she got us to take lots of pictures :)

[matt is embarrassed of his girlie crossed legs in this picture!]

[what would we do without pinterest and all its clever ideas?!]

thanks for making the trip, mom. you are welcome back anytime.

but the sooner the better!

and dad - i wish you could have come too. but thanks for being willing to go wife-less for the weekend... again :)

matt registered for his final semester yesterday.

and the job search has already begun.

ahh!

i can't believe we are so close to being done school.

it's kinda scary!

some people have asked where my comment bar is.

it's gone.

just because.

don't worry, i can still go back and look at all the nice comments that were left in the past. and i LOVE them all. thanks!

now for a bunch of random pictures from my phone:

chet likes to wear his snow boots, even when there isn't snow.

i guess it is good practice..

is this necessary?

holding holden. (that's a tongue twister).

ready for church.

our first born.

i mixed corn starch and water for chet to play with. chet thought it was too messy. matt and loved it. seriously try it, that stuff is nuts!

at the library - trying to indoctrinate chet with potty training books.

it's not working.

bath time.

we finally went to sammy's. i was excited to get a REX-BURGER [simply because it has such a clever name] but turns out it has spam on it. sick.

nice shirt matt.

a leg kicking party.

one day chet pointed to the water tower and said 'water tower!'. umm... yes, that is a water tower. where the heck did you learn that?!

fall time at porter park.

peek a boo!

snug like a bug.