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!

Happy Anniversary

7 years together and we love each other more and more!
Can't you tell?

Happy Halloween!

We had a nice Halloween! To get into the holiday spirit we went over to Jon's parents' for some pumpkin carving! Melanie had no problem gutting her pumpkin. I thought that it was funny that she didn't mind getting her hands all slimy! Savannah didn't mind the slimy hands either. Jon was good enough to carve both of the girls' pumpkins. Melanie wanted the exact same face as Savannah's pumpkin, so that worked out pretty easy for him. And the pumpkins turned out pretty cute too. We even got to have yummy pumpkin waffles that night! Thanks Auntie! They were really good! We also decided to make a few Halloween goodies. Here are our Tombstone brownies with Nutter Butter ghosts. The girls had fun helping for about 2 minutes and then Jon and I were left to finish them. I think that they turned out cute though. The anticipated night of Trick-or-Treating finally arrived and the girls didn't want to be what they originally planned. So here is my cute little Superman. It was about the only costume that I could come up with that didn't require Spencer to wear something on his head; he absolutely hates that. Savannah was a butterfly again, which she was 2 years ago. And Melanie decided on the Indian costume, which Savannah wore 3 years ago. Melanie insisted that she was the Indian Princess from the Peter Man movie; so there's our cute little Princess Tiger Lily. Jon and I also pulled some costumes together. I found almost all of the needed clothing at Goodwill, so I guess that it was meant to be. Jon went as Handy Manny and I was Kelly the Hardware Store owner. Of course, no one could tell who I was without Jon and even then it was still difficult. Oh well, we still had lots of fun and the kids got mounds of candy.Happy Halloween!

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.

Workin' Hard

Savannah is majorly growing out of her little toddler bed and we have planned on getting her a twin bed for a while, but somehow we keep putting it off. But a few weeks ago, we inherited 2 twin frames from my parents. These poor beds are quite old and have taken a good amount of abuse, but Jon and I have high hopes for them. We are trying to continue our record of not having to purchase any bed/crib that we possess. Jon started sanding that weekend, but we've put off doing any more work on them these last few weeks. So Jon dedicated all of today to working on getting Savannah a new bed. That's what Labor Day is for, right? The poor guy sanded almost all day and is finally close to being done with just 1 of the beds. It still needs to be primed and painted, but at least we're much closer to a finished product now. Sorry Melanie, but it may be a while before we get around to sanding the 2nd bed. But the kids also took advantage of Jon being outside. The girls swam in the pool and totally loved it. Spencer tried to join in on the fun, but he had more fun just wandering around, trying to help Jon, and climbing on everything. As you can see, he also sat in the mud. I keep forgetting to buy swim diapers, so his poor little suit was totally sagging. But he had a fabulous time! Even when he's dirty, he's still so cute!

Party Week

We had so much fun this past week. We had play dates at our house 3 times! And if that wasn't enough fun, Savannah wanted her cousins to come over for a sleepover on Friday. I think that all of the girls had a great time. We let them all make their own pizzas. They turned out pretty good and Jon made one for us, which turned out great of course! We also watched Barbie and the Diamond Castle and ate a bunch of treats. Getting them to sleep was a handful, but Jon did a good job there as well. Here they are all asleep in the girl's room. I thought it was funny that Melanie ended up on the floor behind the mattress; I have no idea how she got there. And it was also really cute that Savannah was trying to snuggle up to Tabitha. We all got up at the crack of dawn! (If only that sun didn't come up quite so early!) We had some breakfast and then headed back over to our cousin's house for Audrey's birthday party. Auntie rented a bouncy water slide (from my cousin)! The kids all had so much fun on it! We stayed for about 3 hours and Savannah didn't miss a second on it. She didn't even want to leave because she knew that the slide would be gone when we came the next time. (If you're interested in renting the water slide, check out Arizona Air Bounce's website, or see their link in my sidebar.) Melanie was too scared to go down the slide, so she stayed in the house and played with Audrey's new birthday dollhouse instead. And I'm happy to say that Audrey loved the dress-up clothes that we gave her. Happy Birthday little princess! So, we had a jammed-pack, fun week.

Happy Father's Day

We had a very nice and mostly relaxing Father's Day. Savannah wanted to make breakfast for Daddy, but I knew that it would be impossible with 8 o'clock church. I decided to make some really easy Pilsbury Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls instead. That certainly made Jon's morning. Here's the kids right after church posing for a Father's Day shot. Unfortunately, Spencer was not very cooperative at church and that made for a slightly tired and cranky Daddy. But I had Savannah secretly wrap some gifts for Dad. She then went and hid them behind the couch, but then she couldn't wait for him to open them. So she went and told him where they were. Jon was very happy to open 2 candy bars and a new ladle. The ladle made him laugh because he broke ours last week during an attempt to sword fight with it. Savannah also made a card for Daddy, with a picture of her inside. After the kids had naps we headed over to Jon's parent's house for dinner. We had a nice simple meal of cold cuts, fruit with dip, and lots of salads...pasta, potato, and pistacchio. There was also a manly edible arrange made by my sister-in-law. After dinner we surprised our Daddy with his real Father's Day gift...a new 42" LCD TV. Savannah had told him that we were keeping a surprise for him at Grandma's house, but he really was surprised with what the gift turned out to be. I think he was half expecting to open the box and there be something else inside. But he REALLY liked it, which didn't surprise me at all...it's what he's wanted for a long time. We ended the evening with some wonderful home-made cheesecake with strawberries. Yummy yummy! We also went and visited my Dad for a little bit. We had attempted to make an iron-on t-shirt for him with a picture of the kids, but the picture didn't come out as great as we hoped. He was still a good sport though and said that it just looked like he had already washed it a few times. When we made it home, Jon insisted on hanging the TV up Sunday night so that the kids wouldn't ruin it. As you can see, they put it to work right away! Babe, I love you...even with all of your silly quirks! I hope you had a great Father's Day.