ONLY in Arizona

I love ARIZONA! Only in this wonderful state can you go swimming in a warm pool in March. One of our fabulous neighbors invited us over for a fun little swim the other day, and we just couldn't resist. Now whenever Madison sees a pool, she tells us "I wanna go swimming pool." Just a few more weeks and then swim lessons begin. Summer here we come...

Easter Sunday

This is such a typical Maddie face when you tell her to smile :) She is with my dear Mother. She just loves her Grandma! If you notice she has a bandaid on her knee, she is totally our rough and tumble little girl. I don't think a day goes by without another "owie" being added to the collection.

I know that I have placed lots of pictures on this post...but I want to "slurp" my blog into an album at the end of the year, so bear with me. Even though I didn't feel well on Easter we still had a phenomenal day. It was so much fun to watch how excited Madison was this year.
I had already prepared Maddie for Easter. We had some fun neighbor girls over earlier in the week who decorated eggs with us and practiced going on Easter egg hunts. I even reminded her on Saturday night that she had to go to bed because the Easter bunny was coming to bring us candy. On Easter morning she was so excited to be able to go downstairs and find all the candy! We all went downstairs together and she went crazy! Maddie started opening all the Easter eggs that the bunny had left and wanted to eat the candy out of each egg before she continued on. We finally convinced her we needed to find her basket, and lo and behold it was in the oven!

After finding her basket we then resumed our Easter egg hunt around the house. What was Robby doing this whole time? Well the only thing he wanted when we went downstairs was his sippy cup of milk. As Madison ran around eagerly finding all the candy, Robert calmly sat and drank his milk. After finishing his cup, the only thing he wanted was some breakfast. Gotta love having a hungry little boy!


After a yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and OJ that Jesse prepared, Robby was finally ready to start looking for the eggs and finding out what they were all about. This was when I started frantically grabbing eggs and emptying their contents into a plastic bag on the counter. After a few minutes of this almost all the candy was safely out of the hands of the children.

Once they realized the candy was pretty much all gone, we began to enjoy the other fun toys that the Easter Bunny left. Madison and Robert especially loved the new sand shovels and toys that they were given and have already used them multiple times at the park this week!

Maddie found some flags as well inside the little plastic golf set that Robert got.

She loves to wave them around and say "I got a flag" over and over...Robby loves to play hide and seek and chase right now. He laughs like crazy when we say "I'm going to get you" and then chase him around the house.
After church we headed straight to my parents house for a fun Easter dinner with the family. This is my daddy and Robby posed for a picture. After visiting for a little while with my family, it was off to the Toronto's for more family time. The kids had fun going on another Easter egg hunt in the front yard of their house. Afterwards Madison was nice enough to go from person to person and hand out all the candy from the eggs so everyone got some!

Playtime at Our House

We have had an interesting few weeks at the new house. We started out with our sweet little Robby getting yet another round of ear infections: the pediatrician has now said that if he gets another in the coming month or so, we will be referred to an ENT for tubes. Following that, I got really sick with the flu and a kidney infection= YIKES. I definitely have to say that it is really tough when mommy is sick. Thank goodness for a great new primary doctor, a fabulous husband that was a trouper and helped out a ton, as well as an awesome mom and in-laws that each pitched in and watched the kids for a few days. I am happy to say that we are all feeling much better! Amidst all that fun, here are some pictures spanning the last few weeks.... when you can style your little boys hair like this, I think that means it is time for another haircut
Maddie is obsessed with baskets and loves to go through my D.I. pile and pull out the baskets I am donating. She then fills them with anything she can find...if all else fails she will even put her beloved "bankies" inside.
Maddie with her friend Cassidy playing with playdough. We sure love our playgroup we have in the neighborhood. I think I like it as much as Maddie because it means I get a break for a few hours most weeks.
My silly little girl playing on the couch before bedtime
Maddie loves to play dress up and always wants me to put some of her dress up shoes on as well. Too bad they are just a bit too small!

Our New Park/House

We are so excited to have a fun park just at the end of our street. We have already gotten good use out of it; and normally go almost every day. We have loved the beautiful weather the past few weeks!

Madison & Robert were really such good sports when it came to moving. They both spent countless hours in the car while I moved things from one house to the other. They spent lots of time running around the new place during the painting, unpacking, cleaning, you name it! Maddie even took a few naps on the floor of the new house when she would finally collapse from being so tired! (note- no pics of this because when I would notice there was no camera to be found, it was rather funny though. She never would actually fall asleep like a normal person...instead she would be sitting down and you could see her head slowly bobbing as she sat indian style until finally she would fall flat on her face with her head in her lap. Even now sometimes when I check on her in bed she can be found asleep in this position).

random info on the kids

I am taking a break from all the chaos to sit down and write down a few fun things about my kids.

funny/cute phrases that Madison says right now...

Mmmm I like ice cream/locolate, it's so nummy!
I need that
Where my pocket go? (in reference to my wallet)
I can't find it
I no want nap
Shake your booty!
I want watch movie
I all icky, yucky, so gross (during meal time)
I hungry
I all done
Look mommy, I made it (talking about crafts at Ariel's)
I playing with my toys
What you doing mommy?
Where daddy go?
Don't do that
I okay (after she falls down)
I sorry (proceeds to give us a kiss)
hold you (hold me)
poopers (purple)
I ate my food in my mouth, the food is in my belly (she lifts up her shirt and will proudly show us her belly)

Songs Maddie sings...

itsy bitsy spider
little einsteins theme song
jesus wants me for a sunbeam
popcorn popping
monkey & alligator song
twinkle twinkle little star
abc song
toothbrush song
no more owies~ my original masterpiece :)

Robby's vocabulary...

mama
dadadada
I (does this while holding the phone to his ear~ hi)

some random things Robby knows how to do...

clap his hands
give slobber kisses
give me five
play peek-a-boo
pulls toys in and out of boxes
pull pacifier out so he can cough, will replace once finished :)
stand up without using an object
bobs up and down when music comes on
repeatedly push the button on our ball toy
push Madison around on her car
gurgle laughs around all animals
slide down the stairs (semi-safely :)

we have a new bundle of JOY

that

is a

rather

LARGE

bundle of joy.

And no it is not a new baby. We just purchased a brand new house. It is all of about four streets away from our current home, in the same neighborhood, same church ward, but much larger. We are so incredibly excited to once again put in a backyard, decorate, paint, and make it our new home! Our life has turned just a tad bit CRAZY as we make the transition from one place to another, and we are loving every minute of it!

The BEST medicine

We are finally starting to recover from all the yucky sick bugs that have invaded our home this winter. What could be the best treat for that? Why a BEAUTIFUL spring day spent playing in our backyard of course! I was so excited to be able to put the kids in shorts/capris and just a shirt today that after Robby's morning nap we headed outside for most of the day. We simply played and enjoyed the warm sunny weather together which was ohhh so fun. We even sat on our little picnic bench and had lunch outside. After the afternoon kiddy naps I dragged them outside once again to enjoy the warm weather. We even loaded up in the wagon and took a nice long walk around our neighborhood. What a perfect day it was! The funniest part was that by the time we went to bed it had started raining outside. I am seriously so glad we took the opportunity to enjoy our perfect day.... I just can't get enough of this little girl. She is so funny. She is obsessed with wallets at the moment. She calls it her "pocket" and is constantly asking to play with our wallets. Maddie will spend all day pulling all the cards out and back in the wallet. The only problem is that she keeps losing my bank debit card...yikes! She absolutely insisted I put her hat on before we went outside and she absolutely HAD to wear her pink crocs as well. She has probably worn these shoes every waking minute of her life for the past two weeks. When she wakes up in the morning, she opens her closet and will pull out every shoe in there until she finds these shoes. She will then happily parade around the house in her princess pajamas and crocs!

And yes... it is official, Robby is now walking. I guess he really has been walking since around his first birthday a few weeks ago. But, just in the past few days he will actually purposefully let go of an object and walk away. He also will walk all the way across the room to me, instead of crawling. He tends to start out looking happy enough, but as he gets closer to me he starts to cry or whine and inevidently those little hands raise up in the hopes that he will then be picked up. Aahhh, he is just a tAd bIt of a momma's boy, but I seriously love it (most of the time :)

I guess I went a little crazy with the day and seriously pulled like half of the toys from our family room out onto the back lawn so we would have plenty to do! LOVE IT!! That's all I can say about his picture. I know it's a tad blurry thanks to my pro skills with the camera :), but this is such the Madison we know and love at our house! She was playing peek-a-boo with me during this picture. She would turn her head away from me and I would pretend like all of a sudden I could no longer see her. Then she would turn back and laugh like crazy when I acted surprised by her....so funny~

Robby has taken a new liking to the flowers in our front yard. While left all alone with them, he decided to try them out to see how tasty they were. Judging from the look on his face at the end...he obviously didn't like them as well as he thought!

How much of the world have you visited?

The Three Bros

I have one brother and Jesse has two: combined together that gives us three brothers. The neat thing about the three of them is that they all have birthdays within five days of each other. I am doing a combined post for all their birthdays today!!

The first of the pack is Benjamin, my younger brother. He turned eighteen last Friday on February 15th. I cannot believe he is already all grown up. It seems like just yesterday that he was born. His birth was quite memorable for Lori and I. When we were little we would always tell our mom that we wanted a little baby brother. We were thrilled when mom announced that she was pregnant. My dad was beside himself with excitement when Ben was born and he finally had his little boy. Lori and I were like little mommy's to Ben when he was a little baby, always wanting to hold him, change his diapers and take care of him. I remember making up little nicknames for him and singing songs to him. Ben was an incredibly active little guy (my little Madison is JUST like him in this way) and would always keep us on our toes. He would run around with a big grin on his face as he destroyed the house! He had several memorable accidents as a little boy:

1. Going down the basement stairs in his walker when the door was left open- thank goodness he mainly just scared himself.

2. Falling out of his high chair and breaking his arm- we have pictures from his 2nd birthday with him in a blue cast!

3. Stitches on Christmas when he tried to open up a puzzle box with a knife

4. Diving headfirst off the top of his bunk bed.

He used to love to experiment and make all sorts of potions with anything he could get his hands on. I still have an aversion to milk from when he sneakily had me try one of his potions that contained hairspray, perfume, milk, etc.

Ben is seriously so smart. He gets straight A's in school and already has a full ride scholarship to ASU to prove it. When he was younger he used to love to read the instruction manuals for anything electronic. He would learn how to do all sorts of things no one ever got around to reading about. He figured out how to put the child protective locks on our car and it took us a while to realize what had happened. He used to reprogram the TV and would play with our mom's cell phone and change all the options without her knowing it. Whenever I have a problem with anything malfunctioning he is the one I call (he has reprogrammed the remote to our TV several times for us).

Ben has always loved children. After Jesse and I were married for a few years, Ben used to tease us about having kids. He would always remind us that it is a commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. :) He was so excited to finally have a niece when Madison joined our family. Even still he is always up for babysitting for us- THANKS!!

Ben holding baby Madison

Ben holding Baby Robert (Robby and Ben share the same middle name- James)

This past summer we went to Hawaii with my family. Ben was kind enough to always ride in our car so that he could help out with the kiddos. He also stayed with us in Hawaii an extra 9 days so that he could continue to help out with our kids. He even babysat them for a night so that we could go on a romantic dinner cruise! Happy birthday Ben! We are so proud of you with all you have accomplished and for what is yet to come!!

Brett's birthday is the second of the group. He was born on February 18th and just turned 19 years old yesterday! Although I don't remember him when he was born :), he has always been so sweet to me from the day I met him. He is forever our "boo-hoo Buddy" of the family. Brett's middle name is Robert, so our little Robby has a lifelong connection to his Uncle Brett.

When Brett graduated high school last May, he ended up moving out to Queen Creek for a little while into a house with a few friends. It was so much fun to have him stop by from time to time and visit with me and the kids. He is always so kind and patient with them. He has even helped me tend them a few times when I have had activity days to attend to. He takes care of our lawn maintenance right now and comes several times a week to mow, blow and clean up outside. Madison gets so excited each times he comes and will stand by the window on her step stool and watch him work. After he is done outside, many time he'll come inside and hang out with us for a little bit. I sure treasure the chance to spend time talking with him one on one! As he is preparing to turn in his papers to go on a LDS mission, it is exciting to see him grow and mature in many different ways. We cannot wait to see the changes in him as he serves a mission but will also miss him so much! What a great example he is to my children.
Brett at his high school graduation last May
Brett and Madison in Colorado Feb 2006

Madison, Brett, Adam & Robby at the temple this past Xmas

Last, but not least there is Adam. He will turn 27, tommorow February 20th. Although he is far away from us right now in Boston, he is constantly in our thoughts and prayers. I always remind him that he is my older brother that I never had! Some of his baby pictures remind us a lot of our little Robby. They were both chunky little babies and are both very snuggly and loving. Adam has always been by far the most affectionate one in Jesse's family, and I love how he always gives me a great big hug every time I see him. He truly adds a fun little spark to Jesse's family and we always look forward to seeing him. Things are always a little more exciting with him around.

He is such a caring and thoughtful person. He always remembers to buy his mom flowers for her birthday, mothers day, etc. and one year, he even gave me a mother's day present just because. Jesse and Adam have a special relationship, being the oldest two in their family. They both served missions in Peru and can both speak Spanish fluently. Whenever Adam is in town, Jesse can always count on him to help out him out at the stores where needed. I love it when he calls me out of the blue just to say hello and he is constantly doting on and spoiling our kids! We can't wait to see him in a few weeks when he comes into town, and we are also excited to be able to go visit him in Boston in March.
Maddie giving her Uncle Adam a flower at his graduation ceremony from Arizona State University Dec 2006
Adam with Robby on Easter 2007

My poor SICK house

I decided I must document the yucky winter that we have had this year at our house. We have had sick kids pretty much constantly for the last 6 weeks straight. Here is Robby's long list of illnesses: ear infection, croup, stomach flu, upper respiratory infection, bilateral ear infections (both ears), chronic cough and NOW "erythema multiforme". Maddie has had: pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, ear infection, chronic cough and NOW influenza A and bilateral ear infections. I swear I try to keep our house as clean as I can and I try to keep my kids from eating food off the floor, and playing in toilets, and eating dirt outside, and well I guess you get the idea :) It makes me so sad (and tired) to see them sick constantly. It was almost a joke today, because I took Robby to the doctor in the morning for the latest medical condition where he has these horrible red welt looking patches ALL over his body. It turns out to be "erythema multiforme", which is caused by a virus that produces this awful allergic looking reaction to the skin. Unfortunately there is not a lot you can do about it, other than lots of Benadryl. Then later on, Madison woke up from her nap with a high fever and cough. So it was back to the doctor's office in the evening with her. One of the ladies that works at their doctor's office even recognized me and laughed about me being there earlier that day with my other child. It turns out that Maddie has Influenza A (respiratory flu) and ear infections in both ears. Sooooo, once again we are all back on antibiotics hoping for better luck this round. I might just go crazy if we don't get better soon! I guess the one light at the end of the tunnel is that I haven't gotten sick through ALL of these yucky bugs (knock on wood). I hope everyone else has healthier households than us and I especially hope that it warms up even more around here so that the sicky germs will begin to go away.