Easter Egg Hunt

We were lucky enough to be invited by "Nona" and "Papa" (my in-laws) to a fun Easter egg hunt and pancake breakfast this past Saturday. It was held at a park close to their house and is annual tradition in their ward (maybe someday our area's growth will slow down enough for some of these fun traditions to develop).

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We had a random rainy day in Arizona that morning and bundled the kids up before we left. It was so much fun to eat yummy pancakes, eggs, and sausage huddled together to stay warm. Then it was off to the field for the egg hunt. Maddie told me she was "freezing" but that didn't stop her from running around collecting as many eggs as her basket could hold. Robby, on the other hand, didn't quite get what was going on. When they yelled GO, he just stood there looking around. It took some encouragement before he was off finding eggs as well. We came away with a lot of loot at the end and the kids happily ate candy the entire way home :) They also had an Easter bunny there to take pictures with.....Maddie didn't want anything to do with that. She hid in my shoulder during the attempt at a photo-op. Eli gladly entertained my mother-in-law and several of her friends during the outing with big toothless smiles (my fave)!

Robby a little confused about what he's supposed to be doing :)

Maddie freezing cold, but quite pleased at her treasures!

Just like Daddy

March's Top Ten....

10. Going to my cutest ever niece, Kaylin's, 2nd birthday party. We had so much fun hanging out at their house eating yummy food and cake. Maddie even colored some pictures and wrapped them as a birthday present for Kaylin (we also brought a present as well :)

9. I have been going to the gym on a regular basis since mid-February and can proudly say that I am able to run 3-3.5miles straight without feeling like I might die.

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8. Robby has just learned how to say prayers before we eat and at bedtime. It is so cute to listen to him jabber in his own language. Normally I will sort of prompt him along and recognize several of the words that he repeats after me, with a lot of extra gibberish thrown in as well. I have noticed that whenever I say "Eli" he always repeats back "baby I-E"

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7. Maddie has LOVED how she has so many friends with birthdays in March. She went to three different princess parties and was in heaven when she got to dress up for them. She went as Cinderella, Snow White (Kailey's) and dressed up "fancy" for Makenna's. She tells me every day how she is going to have a "Belle birthday party" for her own birthday and get "Belle dress up." Too bad she only has 6 more months to go. I cannot wait to see her change her mind a dozen more times before the big day comes!!

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6. Playing in the yard is all fun and dandy....until you catch your 2 and 3 year old up straddling the fence between our yard and the neighbor's with big smiles on their faces. The fence is at least six feet tall and was scaled by climbing the pavers stacked next to it. Thank heavens no one fell/ was hurt. Note to self: watch kids much more carefully when they go out back to "play" and bug the husband about moving the pavers to a safer location.

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5. I am pretty much still head over heels in love with my littlest man Eli. His bright smile and big eyes can make even the worst day wonderful. He has the cutest giggles in the world and I love his babbling. He loves to have stare down contests while he babbles away. Just this month he has also developed quite the little ticklish bone. He laughs like CRAZY when I tickle his belly and feet! Ohhhh, I just want to squeeze him and love him all day long. Isn't there some way to freeze time to stop him from growing up?!

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4. I just turned 25 AGAIN (oh wait, I guess I am now 27). I was overwhelmed by the phone calls, chocolate strawberries, cards, flowers, and cake that I received by friends and family. It truly was a special day topped off with my special sister-in-law bringing out a fun birthday card, krispy kremes (super yummy) and a beautiful vase of flowers. THANKS TO ALL!

3. Earlier in March, we hosted something called a "Friendship Dinner" in our home. We had 3 other couples and their kids come over and eat dinner with us and play games. It is used as a way to get to know people in our neighborhood a little better. Ours was slightly chaotic with all the kids at the house, but so much fun! We had good food and good company; what more can you ask for?

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2. There are several phrases that have become a staple part of Maddie's day. Some of these include: "Why should I?" (to EVERY request), "I'm sorry" (immediately after a naughty act), "I am too busy" (when asked to help with something), "maybe later" (when asked to come for dinner) and "I just want to be sad and mad; I am not going to be happy" (as she is put in time out). But there is one phrase in particular which makes me smile when I hear her say it: "You/He never minds". She tells me this when she wants something that isn't hers. Robby will be screaming at the top of his lungs because she just stole his coveted green train, and she will still inform me that "he never minds" her taking the train. She also tells this to me when I specifically tell her to put a toy away. She will look right at me and tell me that I "never mind" her leaving the toy out. Gotta love it, or at least love the thought that she will soon come up with a new catch phrase : )

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1. With the downturn in the economy and a super strict budget now in place, I find myself with zero money to spend on my hair and nails these days (sad, I know). In exchange I am learning to do without, how to give oneself a pedicure at home and also the beauty of packaged hair products, aka hair dye. My mom and I collaborated and dyed my hair light blond this month. It turned out slightly yellow, but other than that turned out pretty darn good. I was so proud of us for saving some money this month on hair care.. YEAH!

9 hours

not to bore anyone else out, but it thrills me to say that eli slept 9 hours straight last night. hurray for more sleep for me!

Dirt Yard

So...how does one entertain themselves when their entire backyard is basically dirt and weeds?

Well lots of things:
1. pretend those ugly weeds are flowers and pick bouquets of them for mom
2. play hide and seek by hiding behind those same ugly weeds with your little brother
3. jump in and out of the partially dug trenches, courtesy of daddy
4. watch for lizards climbing the block fence
5. color with chalk on the small slab of concrete next to the sliding door
6. climb the stack of pavers on the side of the house and chat with the neighbor boy who encourages scaling the fence to join him in his yard
7. pick up dead birds off the ground and proudly bring them to mommy, who in turn screams like crazy and makes you wash your hands half a dozen times (100% true story)
8. eat 10 otter pops in one afternoon, which in turn results in a full belly before dinnertime
9. come in and out of the house so many times that the evening is spent pointing out the flies so mommy can kill them with the newspaper
10. and best of all, giving each other rides across the yard on our metal cart!

hurray for the beautiful SPRING weather!

LATE 2 year visit

Robby just had his two year check-up this past week (over a month late) and the here are the latest and greatest stats:

Weight: 32lb 20z (in the 90th percentile)

Length: 37.5 in (above 100th percentile)

He is continues to be a BIG boy with a big heart and an even bigger temper :) Like I continuously say, he is in the thick of the terrible two's. Aside from some of the unpleasantries associated with this age, there are some fun perks as well. He gives the biggest hugs and kisses now, especially after being in time out. He loves to scream all the way through prayers but as soon as we say amen he gets a big grin on his face and claps his hands with joy! He loves to jut out his bottom lip when he doesn't get what he wants. He loves to chase/ be chased by his big sister. He also loves it when she plays with him. Normally during the day I overhear him telling her "come pay (play) Sissie" or "Ma-ee (Maddie) les run." He still loves his blanket and pacifier and calls it "afi"- someday we may get rid of it....who knows.

It is so fun to see Robby talk more and more every day. Some of the fun phrases he now says include:

*"Daddy go bye-bye wook (work)"

*"I all done"

*"I see you"

*"More pease"

*"Hi baby, I lu (love) you"

*"Come pay ball"

*"Throw ball daddy"

*He now knows quite a few animal sounds and sometimes when we drive we play the "name the animal sound" game

*If Jesse is home in the morning when Robby wakes up, he usually volunteers to go in his room and will then go ahead and change his diaper. During the diaper change, Jesse loves to ask him what he dreamed about while sleeping. Robby has started copying his dad and when we are in the car driving I hear him saying " deam (dream) about cars, about trains, about balls, about planes, about trucks, etc."

*"No baf (bath), I pay (play)"-- this happens nightly

7 hours

congratulations mr. E!

your mommy is a happy girl after getting a solid nights rest.

he slept from 11pm-6am last night.

i could definitely get used to that!

Eli

10 weeks old and full of spunk

i just want to squeeze that little bum when I see this picture :)

he was showing us exactly how he felt about pictures

Dance Lessons

Last fall we signed Maddie up for dance lessons at a local dance studio called "Precision." This was her first official go at "lessons" other than swimming and at first I wasn't sure whether it would be a disaster or not. The first few weeks she REALLY struggled with listening to her teacher and would just randomly wander around the room, watching herself in the mirror, or hanging from the ballet bar upside down. Her teacher, Miss Michelle, would pick her up football style every now and again and bring her back to the rest of the class. Each week, after class, she would encourage me to continue bringing Madison to dance and tell me that it went a little better than the previous week. After several weeks of this, I started working much more and therefore I had others taking her to dance lessons for about six weeks.

When I finally made it back to her lessons I was shocked, elated, and thrilled to find that things had "clicked" with my little Maddie. She was standing in line, listening, waiting her turn, and dancing with the rest of the class. Not only that, but she had a big smile on her face the ENTIRE time and came out at the end of class bubbling with excitement about how well she listened to her teacher and proceeded to show me all her stickers she had earned in class. I am so glad we stuck with it and am so proud of my mini ballerina. I have to say that these lessons have helped immensely with her listening skills in an organized group setting and it's neat to see how much she has grown over the last six months. We cannot wait until recital time in May when she gets to dance with her very own daddy!

*fun pictures at dance lessons, courtesy of Jana (a fellow dance mommy)

2 months old

This post is a few weeks late, but better late than never :) Although he started out smaller than both of my other babies, he has sure been making up ground in the growth department. I tell myself that EVERY night when I seem to continuously get up to feed him! When he went for his check-up, the doctor was quite impressed that he had nearly doubled his birth weight and literally "jumped" up the growth charts.

Eli had his 2 month check-up a few weeks back and here are the latest and greatest stats:

12lb 15oz (60th percentile)

24.75 in long (75th percentile)

Caught It!

January Pictures

random-- i find that most of my pictures tend to be of the most random assortment. no stories to be told, no fun captions to mark them, just plain old pictures of my kids going about their normal life. but i actually LOVE to take pictures of our precious kids under normal circumstances and then look back and smile on the small & simple things of life. like the time i whipped out my camera to attempt to catch that heart-melting mile wide grin that Eli likes to put on display for me, only to catch the "serious" face each time I tried (1). or the time Eli was drunk happy after an extra long nursing session and wouldn't budge from his sleepy state, even with Robby and Maddie screaming and running around the couch pretending to be running from Monsters (2). or on a sunday when I was completely head over heels in love with the way Eli looked all dressed up in his big boy church shirt and pants (3). or when Maddie walked up to me and asked me to take her picture in her "pretty, pretty" outfit with good luck bear, proceeded to give me a totally sweet smile and then to top it all off actually looked at the camera with her eyes AND her head (4/5). or when i looked over at Robby during breakfast and noticed that he once again had his green train at the kitchen table and was trying to feed it his breakfast cereal and milk, with the most content look on his face (6). what a wonderful and sacred calling it is to mother these precious children and spend each day with them.

(1) I have been trying for the past month to get a picture of my little guy smiling. So far the only big grin I have managed to capture was on my phone (but I don't know how to transfer those to a computer??). This picture will have to do for now, until I can get a better one.

*note: i LOVE these mittens that my mother-in-law gave me for Eli to wear, they have SAVED his face from being covered in scratches!(2)

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February's Top Ten.....

10. The first weekend in February we went to the musical Lion King with my whole family (without kids). The singing was amazing, the costumes were the best I have ever seen, the babe slept the entire time, and we had fun company with us! The one bummer: we found at we had to pay for a lap child when we arrived. Yes...you heard that right; $24 for little Eli to sit in my arms and sleep the whole time. You gotta give them props for finding a way to squeeze a little more money out of people.

9. Going to the ASU Women's and Men's Gymnastics Meet with Maddie and Eli. We dropped Robby off at Nona and Papa's house and he had fun one-on-one time with his grandparents. We then met our good friends at In-N-Out Burger and ate dinner before heading over to Wells Fargo Arena. It was lots of fun and especially funny to watch Maddie doing her "nastics" in the aisle just like the girls on floor exercise. She is quite the wild child and I am afraid that most of the people around us were happy when we decided to make it a night.

8. This next one definitely isn't a top ten "good" thing to have happen, but is still noteworthy for the month of February. Robby mauled his little brother with one of his tow trucks after bath a few weeks back. I laid Eli down on the floor in the playroom long enough to run in the bathroom and hang up the bath towels. In that time period, Robby ran over to Eli and smacked him in the forehead/face with his truck. Poor Eli looked like we had beat him for nearly a week; I felt so bad that I called Jesse sobbing on the phone after it happened. Thank goodness his face healed quickly and he doesn't remember this incident. Needless to say, Robby went to bed EARLY that night (like 6pm) and I learned a valuable lesson: NEVER lay your baby down on the floor in the same room as his two year old brother.

7. I was able to go to Jamba Juice for some smoothies and gab time with my good friend/newlywed Carla. It was fun to sit and look at her gorgeous wedding pictures and talk about the good times together. It's always a fun night with that girl!

6. Oklahoma City vs. Phoenix Suns basketball game! We took our beloved Eli once again in tow and decked him out in full Suns attire. This time we watched them massacre Oklahoma City and witnessed LB's 41 point game: AWESOME (if you notice my double chin in the picture above, just reference down to number four on this list).

5. Taking Madison on a "mommy-daughter date" to the matinee showing of my younger brother's play performance of "Thoroughly Modern Millie." She sat so well during the play and was so interested in everything that was happening. On one part Millie picks a rose and starts singing. Madison announced that she was "so naughty for picking flowers...daddy would be so mad." *Hmmm...apparently Maddie does listen to what her dad says, she just hasn't quite mastered the part about obeying as well.

4. Being welcomed back to LA Fitness with brand new membership cards, after suffering a clothing meltdown on Valentines Day while trying to get dressed for our church's Sweetheart Ball.

3. One of my newest passions is making jewelry. I have inherited this love from my dear mother. I am officially blaming her for getting me hooked on this stuff. She is so crafty and has been doing beads for years, but just recently she has sucked me into this addicting new hobby. I went to a bead party this month and made an adorable new necklace for Maddie and one for my cutest ever niece for her birthday!

2. The reorganized park days in our neighborhood! My kids LOVE LOVE LOVE to be outside and so we have been so excited to once again have an official park day to meet up with friends and play. I now have Robby and Maddie both asking me every day if we are going to go "pay at pock pease" (in Robby's words).

1. We have been taken over by trains and cars at our household. This isn't an official "thing" that happened but is instead a daily occurence at our house. Robby has so many cars, trucks, and trains after hitting the jackpot on his birthday; that it feels like no matter where you look in our house, you will find one. I would try harder at keeping them in the box where they belong, but the thing is he is constantly playing with them. His beloved green train accompanies him at mealtime and occasionally is fed his own serving of food, they follow him over to the couch to watch movies, he always has a few outside in case he gets bored playing in the dirt. He even has to have several in his crib when he naps and goes to bed. Hooray for having a little boy!

Helping Daddy Wash the Car

Only in Arizona can you wear clothes like these in February, and run around & play in the water outside without freezing to death! (We LOVE our warm winters)

One of Robby's favorite things to do outside, is walk around with Maddie's pink lawn mower and pretend to mow the lawn, cement, rocks, and dirt "just like daddy." His other favorite pasttime would be to putter around in the garage with either Daddy or Papa in all the tools.

You've been tagged, now fill in the answers and tag 10 or more people... don't forget to tag me!!

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?..................Mike Spears at Red Mountain High School
2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?...............Nope
3. What was your 1st alcoholic drink?................................Never had one--ever
4. What was your FIRST job?...................................besides household jobs and babysitting, it would have to be my short stint at Arby's
5. What was your FIRST car?..................................1994 Nissan Sentra--I drove it all the way through college and beyond :)
6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?...................My sister
7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?...........My little E at 12:30am when he awoke me from a short slumber
8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?..................Mrs. Reese
9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?..........To Orange County, CA when I was 15 months old (thanks Dad for the info); I have flown WAY too many times to remember since then.
10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?........My sister Loriann who is older than me by 16 months and we talk almost every day. Besides her I would have to say DeeDee Smith and Kelly Bower that lived on my street in Bountiful, Utah; haven't seen or heard from them in YEARS.
11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?......My first I had was my 10 year old birthday party.
12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?...........Jesse sometime in the middle of the night as I whined about how tired I was
13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?..............My own wedding, besides that my sisters wedding (actually the only other wedding I have been in besides my own)
14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?..........Fed the babe
15. FIRST tattoo?......................................................I suppose permanent eyeliner if that counts
16. First piercing?...................................................... Ears--when I was 8.
17. First foreign country you've been to?.....................Canada or Mexico
18. FIRST movie you remember seeing?.................The summer movie fun one's at the local movie theater called the Sandcastle when I was a kid.
19. When was your FIRST detention?.............................I don't really remember ever going to detention: maybe I have blocked that part of my life out??
20. What was the first state you lived in?........................Utah

Tag your it: To anyone who wants to!!