My own little sunbeam

If you can believe it people, Ava has left nursery in the dust and moved up to Sunbeams. She couldn't be more excited about singing time with the big kids. Her favorite part is singing with the piano.


Here is Reid. Just as cute and adorable. He wishes he could also leave nursery in the dust, but not to move up to primary. He would much rather be clinging to his parents. We have been really talking up nursery these past few weeks. When sacrament meeting had ended, I excitedly asked Reid if he was ready to go to nursery. "No!" was his instant response.


While driving in the car today, Ava and I were talking about heaven and Ava said, "I can't see Jesus, but I can feel his heart." Sweet girl.

A little bit of baking

For New Year's Eve my lovely sister-in-law made Oreo Truffles. They are to die for! I called them little drops from heaven. It was a sad day when the very last one was eaten. It just so happened that we had some new neighbors move in next door at the end of December. Perfect excuse to make more. So one afternoon Ava and I worked together and made more of those delicious heavenly morsels. Here's the recipe here. (I totally didn't add the vanilla. It doesn't need it.) This was the perfect recipe to have Ava join in on because she could do almost every step.

Here is my baking princess ready to get started and probably secretly hoping to sneak a few oreos for herself. Which she was successful.

I was so excited to pull out my food processor and grind up the oreos to a fine pulp. Especially since it has only seen the inside of a box for 6 months. But sadly it died somewhere between CA and our new house. I plugged it in and nothing happened. Nothing was going to stop me from making more of those oreo yumminess, so I pulled out my meat tenderizer. Here is Ava working on her half of the oreos. Ava loved getting to smash all those oreos! The tenderizer actually worked really well and got the oreos pretty darn fine. And plus I didn't have to wash the inside of a food processor container.


We mixed the oreos and cream cheese and had ourselves a little ball rolling contest. Ava rolled about half of the balls. And I quote, "Mom, all of my circles are the perfect ones." She insisted on re-rolling a few of my balls and she even had the nerve to give me tips on how to roll my balls better. Where does she get this from? Gotta love a little self confidence.


After rolling all the balls we popped them in the fridge to cool for a half hour. Which is just enough time to watch a little bit of Toy Story 3 (Ava can't get enough of Jesse).


After dipping the balls in chocolate, putting them back in the fridge to harden, here is the final result. Total perfection in bite size. Sadly, all of the Oreo Truffles have been eaten or given away. Josh and I have actually caught ourselves looking at each other at night and both wishing that we had just a few more Oreo Truffles left.

Family, family and more family

The first of our family rolled in on Dec. 17th and the last chunk didn't head home until Jan. 7th. Having family visit for that long did indeed keep us really busy, but we loved it! Sadly, pretty much everyone but Ava and Reid came down with a cold. So the first week was pretty low key, but once everyone got feeling better we got to do more activities. I think everyone will agree that getting sick during vacation completely sucks!

Here are all the cousins after reenacting the nativity story. This was a full on cousin production. The two oldest cousins read the entire story (super impressive) and the younger ones were the actors. Sadly Reid and McKay wouldn't stay still enough to be pictured.


Poor Anna was fighting a double ear infection, a viral and bacterial infection. So she wasn't able to be Mary this year, but Ava happily agreed to be her stand in.


After a fun night of festivities at the in-laws we headed home to open the kids new jammies and get all the preparations ready for Santa. Now before you start thinking what a horrible mother I am to let my son not wear any socks in the dead of winter, know that he did get slippers too but would not fathom the idea of letting me put them on. Luckily, he has since changed his mind and loves putting them on now.


Ava made sure to pick out the most perfect and yummy cookies on the tray for Santa. Only the best for the jolly old man.




I just love Max's expression in response to the younger cousins trying to participate in a game of Stratego. Actually, all of the cousins got along pretty well. It's really a shame that we live so far away from each other.


Much playing was had while everyone was visiting. We played lots of games, played lots of princesses, fit in a few games on the Wii, went to the Dinosaur Museum, and made a stop by Kangaroo Zoo.


Happily, my sister made a stop by too after Christmas. So my kids got to see all of their cousins during the break! Here is cute little Colely.


Reid saw Cole sitting at the table and wanted to join him. We had to keep a close eye on my little boy because he kept stealing Cole's food from off of his tray. I can't wait till the weather warms up and we can make trips back up to Idaho to see this little guy.


Excitedly we got to have everyone over at our house sometime while they were visiting. Yay! Here are the girls making good use of our barren living room. The girl cousins took great time and effort preparing their very fancy tea party. Saskia was the lucky one who got chosen to join the tea party while Kassie and I were in charge of making sure the little boys didn't ruin the party.


There you have it. A little snap shot of the fun that we had during Christmas. It has been nice being able to get back into a normal schedule again, but the kids sure miss their cousins. Reid still believes that his cousin McKay is still at Nana's house. It will be a little sad when we head back over to Nana and Grandpa's and find that all the cousins are gone. We sure did love getting to spend time with everyone. Hopefully the next time you come we'll have furniture in our living room!

Jesse Ava Claire Bunting

Here are Woody and Jesse watching a little Toy Story 3 for FHE. For a few days this cowboy hat wearing girl insisted we call her Jesse. But whenever we did she would make sure to point out that her real name is Ava and that she was just pretending to be Jesse. Later she decided that her name was indeed Jesse Ava Claire Bunting.


While my sister was visiting a few weeks ago Ava was telling them how she was Jesse, I was Buzz and so forth. Jared stated that he was Woody (if anyone knows Jared they know if anyone is the cowboy in the family, it's him) but sadly Ava responded, "No, my dad's Woody". Ouch. Poor Jared had to settle for being Mr. Potato Head, mostly because Krysten wanted to be Mrs. Potato Head.

3 cooks in the kitchen

Is it wrong to love your kitchen island? I am loving having this much useable work space. When the kids heard I was going to make some cookies, I had 2 very eager little helpers. After putting on their aprons, both kiddos pushed their chairs up to the island and were ready to help with the Christmas baking. Some of you might have noticed that Reid is wearing Ava's apron. Actually they are both her aprons, he doesn't care which one he gets as long as she gave him one.

Reid and I come from the same pod. He loves anything chocolate and anything sweet. Once the cookies were done, I gave one to each kid. After giving the cookie a few test licks, Reid took the cookie and shoved the entire thing in his mouth! It took a bit, but the kid was able to get it all down.

After dinner we took a few plates of cookies around to our new neighbors. Some of them were not home and Ava responded, "Do we get to eat their cookies now?!!!" I think we might need to work a little more on the idea that giving is better than receiving :)

This has nothing to do with making cookies, but I thought this was pretty funny. Sometime this afternoon Reid came over and stole my phone out of my pocket. He likes turning it on and off and pretending to call Nana. A few hours later I realized my phone wasn't in my pocket and went looking for it. I couldn't find the thing anywhere. Then I remembered my little boy had been playing with it, so I turned to him and asked if he knew where my phone was. He responded with a grunt (in Reidy language that means yes). He then took me over to the window and pointed at the plantation shutters. I open the shutters to find that Reid had stuck my phone between the shutters and the window. He was so proud that he remembered where it was.

Had a few minutes before church

Surprisingly, I had a few spare minutes before racing off to church to get a quick picture of the kids together. Aren't they the cutest things you ever saw?


Just this past week Reid has started to say cheese whenever I pull out the camera. I think that's the best Christmas present Reid could of ever given me!

It was cold, but totally worth it

Last Thursday the kiddos and I decided to take a trip to the city for a night of family fun. We stopped by Josh's work, then went out to dinner (Ava just loves when we get to eat at an actual restaurant), stopped by and saw Santa, and then ended the night with viewing the lights at Temple Square. That was the plan until we hit traffic on the way to see the lights. After driving around for at least 45 minutes, we decided to give up and go home. Total heartbreak. Come to find out that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert featuring David Archuleta started on Thursday. So with all the people attending that and everyone else who just wanted to see the lights, parking was impossible. Still wanting to see the lights, we drove up the next day at 4:45 pm (we were not messing around this time!). Found a parking spot within a block of Temple Square within minutes of arriving. After getting everyone bundled up, the sun had set and we were off.

Lucky. Too bad there wasn't enough room for me to sit there too. He looks so nice and warm in his cozy blanket.

Since Reid has been born Ava has only got to ride in a stroller one prior time. When given the option to walk or ride in the stroller, it was a pretty easy decision for Ava bug. Wouldn't you have done the same thing?

Ava loved getting to see the huge nativity on the temple grounds and also getting to see the statue of Jesus inside the Visitor's Center. It was just a really special night we got to spend with the kids walking around the grounds. This will definitely become a yearly tradition.

Awwww. How cute are we? Just a sidenote, since moving to Utah County Josh has been getting a lot of flack for wearing his BYU pride. Even Santa had a few words to say about it. Santa's a Ute's fan! Speechless. I guess he does like to wear red.

A jolly visit to the jolly St. Nick

I promise that there was no photoshopping done to alter this picture. She really is smiling and sitting on Santa's lap.

Here is Ava chatting it up with Santa. I think I might of even heard a few giggles coming from Ava. Wow. What a difference a year makes. (For those of you who don't remember Ava's previous visits with Santa, click here)

Ava made huge strides this year, but Reid was a different story. He regressed. He didn't even want to look at Santa's general direction. We decided to not force him to sit on Santa's lap this year. Mostly because there were little kids behind us in line that were also a little nervous to see Mr. Claus. I just thought a child screaming at the top of his lungs would not help to calm their nerves.