Owen's Blessing

On August 1st we were so happy to have all of our family come to our ward so we could bless Owen. Jon gave our little Owen Glen a wonderful blessing. It was nice to have everyone come and support us. We even managed to get ourselves a decent family picture. I love my little Owen. He is a happy little guy and brings so much joy into our home. I know that this isn't the best picture, but I am amazed at how quickly Owen is growing and changing. He is quick to smile and getting close to laughing. He can easily put a smile on anyone's face.Love you Owen!

The Beach

At the end of April, Jon ran in his 2nd Ragnar for the year, in LA. I decided that I didn't want to just sit around here at home, while he was out having wild, crazy fun. So I talked my sister into coming with the kids and I to LA. We stayed with some friends from law school, which was so much fun (I know that Jon was jealous that he barely got to see/visit with them). But the highlight of our trip was going to the beach. Savannah was the most excited to go. She ran down to the water right away and started playing. Unfortunately, it was very windy that morning and so it was quite cool. And of course, about her 2nd or 3rd trip down to the water she tripped and got all wet and sandy. This made her upset and she whined for a good long while because she was cold. She did get over it towards the end of our stay though because it started to warm up. Melanie was quite the opposite. She insisted that she wasn't going to get in the water and so she wouldn't even wear her swim suit to the beach. But we'd only been there for about 20 minutes when she decided that she wanted it on and was down playing in the water too. She had a great time and was a good helper on our castle! Spencer loved everything about it...being outside, the water, and the sand. No matter what I did, he was always sticking his face in the sand and he constantly had it in his mouth. We seemed to be continually trying to wipe it off of his tongue. But he loved every minute of it.My sister, Andrea, just wanted to build a sand castle. After a little time in the water, we spent most of our time working on our castle. It was complete with moat and had towers in the corners where the water could go under them. The castle was basically 3 boxes stacked on top of each other. But it took us quite a bit of time to accomplish it. And it was a miracle what we did get done, because we kept running into this little problem...Yeah Spencer, he was all over the place and oh so helpful. Here he is sitting in our moat. But overall we had a great time and can't wait to go back again. Here's our little crew down by the water. Bet you didn't know that my girls are pirates! Arrrr!

October Break

So the girls loved Disneyland so much that we decided to go back for October Break (along with about half of Arizona). It was certainly a little more crowded than we had hoped for, but we still had a fun time. Of course we took just a bunch of pictures, but what else do you do when you spend 4 days at the happiest place on earth? So I tried to narrow it down to just some of our favorite and least favorite moments.

Savannah's favorites: Seeing all of the characters. There were so many out, we probably did pictures with less than half of them. Princess Aurora is one of Savannah's absolute favorites.Since it was Halloween time, then they had a bunch of villains out too. She also got a picture with the Old Hag from Snow White. Melanie's favorites: Her absolute favorite ride was It's a Small World. We went on it 5 times! She really just loved it! We went to Mickey's Trick-or-Treat Party on Friday night. Melanie loved that she got to sit in the stroller and people gave her handfuls of candy. Her absolute favorite part was getting to see Cinderella that night. We looked for her all week and finally found her at 11 pm on Friday night. Melanie was so happy that she couldn't even take her eyes off of Cinderella. Melanie also does an excellent job of picking out exactly what she wants at Disneyland. She picked out a Minnie Mouse Polly-Pocket kind of doll. She absolutely loves it and was so happy that I let her play with it that night while we were waiting to watch the fireworks, that we ended up not staying around for.My favorite parts: I love Snow White. I was totally happy to actually get a picture with her this time. My only complaint, I think that we saw her 3 or 4 times, because they just released her movie. And of course I loved when Spencer finally fell asleep on our first day there. Yeah, he didn't take a nap and was awful for the last 4-5 hours or so.And you have to be totally impressed that we managed to get Spencer to sleep on the 2nd day while we waited in line. Unfortunately, this was a short lived victory. He woke up the second I tried to put him in the stroller.Jon's favorites: Getting into the main park an hour early for one Magic Morning. You can't really tell, but they were the only ones on this ride! It was nice to be able to go on about 5 rides in 25 minutes! Everyone's favorites: Hanging out with old law school friends and their girls that we don't get to see nearly enough. We were so happy that they would let us stay with them and then come and go with us to the park a few of the days! We all loved the parades. Got to love that Pixar Parade. Where else are you going to see flames coming out of a baby's head and think that it's totally cool?Jon also commented that he thought that the army guys were pretty cool. Then the Celebration Parade at the Main Park put Mickey and Minnie right in front of us. Definitely a nice way to see them up close and personal. And the parade was so interactive that Savannah loved it. Melanie was kind of scared to death, but she was that way a lot on this trip. I ended up holding her during the parade because the characters were a little to close for her comfort.
Our least favorite parts: Standing in line! It's always such a pain and Spencer always ups the level of difficulty.Oh yeah, did I mention that we went on It's a Small World 5 times? Some of us were a little sick of it by the last time or even 3 times before that. We also hated taking sleeping children back into California Adventure for the Trick-or-Treat party. Yes, we were the ones taking sleeping kids back into the park. Yeah it was fun, but Melanie slept almost the whole time and refused to go on any of the rides. Thankfully, Spencer stayed with our friends and was asleep the entire time we were gone!And Melanie claims that she was excited to see Aurora again, but it was just too funny, because look at her little face. She's thinking: "Aurora, get out of the way. Cinderella is standing right over there!"

It was such a tiring and fun trip. We were glad that the kids pretty much done with the colds that they had the week before, so we could enjoy everything. I think that this is the only picture of all of us together. We had a good time, but I think that it will be a while before we venture back again.

Snowflake

I have an aunt and uncle that live in Snowflake and I haven't been up to visit them since Savannah was a baby. So I decided that we would stop there on our way home from New Mexico to try and break up our trip. The weather was wonderful and we had such a great time. Savannah got to ride my cousin's horse, Spliff. She totally loved it! Melanie was forced to also ride and cried the entire time. She later claimed it was fun, but wouldn't do it again. I was surprised that Melanie really wanted to hold their baby goose though. Savannah liked the goose too and it kept following her around, to which she said, "I'm not a mommy goose!" The kids also loved jumping on the trampoline. I just loved the how green everything was and the cool weather. I also took the kids over to see the Snowflake Temple. It was so beautiful outside and we all loved it. Melanie loved the waterfall and all of the pretty flowers. Spencer just wanted to get into everything...the dirt, the water, anything he could. Luckily, Grandpa followed him around and kept him out of trouble.Savannah was a little disappointed that she didn't get to go inside, but she still really enjoyed walking around the outside. As a quick side story, Savannah stopped to look at a bug and so I stopped with her. My Dad and sister took the other kids ahead and when we turned to go and catch up with them a snake had come out of the shrubs onto the sidewalk! It totally scared me and so I grabbed Savannah's arm and pulled her up onto the planter. The snake took a look around and decided to go back into the bushes. It was yellow with black stripes. Needless to say I was a little paranoid about the pretty flowers after that. Here's Melanie touching the temple, like President Monson told all of the children to do! And I need to tell Sarah thank you for riding with me all the way to New Mexico and back! She made this trip possible, since I did it without Jon. The girls loved spending so much time with you! And here's me and my Meli! Other highlights of the trip included playing dress-up with cousins. And of course, roller skating in the house. Who could ask for more fun than that? We all loved it and only wished that Jon had been with us.

Random May Pictures

At the beginning of May our family went to the zoo and did their First Annual 5K and Family Mile Walk. Jon went earlier than us and ran in the 5K and then we came when he was finishing up and he walked another mile with us. It was rather warm that day and there weren't very many animals out yet. But the girls really had fun playing on the water pad afterwards. Savannah wanted a picture with her namesake sign before we left. Of course, Melanie wanted one too, even though Savannah insisted that it wasn't her name. I also went a got a pedicure for the first time. I went with my sister and we took the girls along too. They had a fun time. I thought that my nails turned out great. It's amazing to watch them draw such a detailed little flower on your nail (or at least I was quite impressed with it)! And Melanie was so happy to get a little flower on her nails, with a pink jewel inside it. Savannah was proud that she was the only one to get her fingernails painted, and they turned out mighty cute too. We also spent a little bit of time over at my brother's house. Spencer had a lot of fun just roaming around their small yard and especially playing on this little car. It was pretty funny to watch him push it around and try and ride on it, except when he decided he could also stand up on it. I guess that's because he's a boy! And last but not least, here's a funny shot of my three little monkeys. Spencer is so funny, because he'll go and sit in the Bumbo when the girls sit in their chairs. He's really glad that Grandma got him his own chair for his birthday! They're all so cute! They're favorite time to sit in their chairs is for Family Time and they look so funny all lined up listening to Jon and I. I just feel so blessed to have each one of them. They are all so sweet and try hard to do what's right (okay, maybe not Spencer) and I love them dearly.