Merry Christmas!

We had a very nice Christmas! Savannah told all of the kids "don't even think about presents" when they woke up. But the girls rummaged through quite a few gifts before church. I was amazed at how quickly we managed to get ready! We had a wonderful Sacrament Meeting with some amazing music! The kids were quite anxious to open things afterwards.

Savannah's favorite gift was her American Doll.

Melanie says she loves her purse with accessories.

(And yes, the girls put their pajamas back on, so they could feel like they just got out of bed...definitely Savannah's ideas)
Spencer was happy with the toy cars that Savannah picked out for him...forget the Batcave that Santa brought!

And Owen loved everything! Especially his new chair and books. He was also quite fond of the Batcave box...just his size!

My favorite part was getting to Skype with my sister, Stacy, who is serving a mission in Rexburg, Idaho.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Party Time

The girl's birthdays are just 8 days apart, which means we have an ongoing party for about a week an a half. End of July = Party Time! Our sweet Melanie turned 4 on July 20th. We had quite a few visitors on her special day. Both Grandmas, aunts, cousins, and friends all stopped by and spent time with us, even bringing cupcakes. (We were without our family vehicle and kind of stuck at home, so we really appreciate everyone coming to see us!) The cupcakes were good, but Melanie only wanted to eat the frosting off the top. A few days later, we had a party at my parent's house for all of our July birthdays. I think that we ended up singing "Happy Birthday" 5 times. But the girls each had their own cake. My Grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday on the 23rd, right between my 2 girls. My dad tells me that I had 2 chances to name my girls after her. But my Grandma agrees with me, no one would want the name Nelda. It may not be the most attractive name, be we really do love my Grandma so much and I'm glad that my girls have their birthdays by hers! And of course we couldn't forget Ms. Savannah. She coped a little better this year that she was last, since her birthday is the 28th. I can't believe that she's 6! The girls had a few presents to open that night. As you can see, their favorite gift was their own Book of Mormon with their name on it. They also got pink CTR rings, which they love and we are continually losing and finding. My youngest sister crocheted a scarf for the girls, she also gave them some sunglasses, a purse, wallet, and some money. She then posed the girls and took their pictures with all of the presents that she had given them. The pictures actually cracked me up. We didn't do too much on Savannah's actual birthday, but we had a big party for both girls the next day. Unfortunately, I left the camera at home and didn't get any pictures. But we had a bouncy water slide again. That thing is so huge that we had to hold the party at my parent's house. We had about 20 little kids come. My mom and I were seriously sweating setting things up for the party. And then right at 3:00, when the party was starting, a nice monsoon storm blew in. The wind was blowing nicely and the kids were all cold. We had to ditch the backyard and head inside after about 30 to 40 minutes, when it started raining. Luckily, my mom has a bunch of toys that all of the kids loved playing with because I didn't have any back-up games or anything to keep them all entertained. The party was still great despite the crazy weather. And since we had the slide for the rest of the evening, we had some old friends come over and BBQ with us and let their kids have a grand time on the slide. Of course the weather was nicer that evening. But we had a great birthday week! I love my little girls! Happy birthday sweeties!

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!

Basket Sleepers

The girls came up with a fabulous idea last night to not sleep in their beds and sleep in laundry baskets instead. I told them that I didn't really care if they did or not, but it was quite funny to see them actually do it. It really made Jon crack up when he came and saw them. Seriously, he had to walk away so he didn't wake anyone up.It reminded me of when Savannah was a brand new baby. She was born here in Arizona, but we flew back to Ohio for school when she was just 2 weeks old. Unfortunately, we were given a used crib which was missing a few parts. We had ordered the parts before we left Ohio (when the semester had ended) and had them overnighted, but they didn't get there overnight. So we couldn't assemble her crib before we left for the summer. Our flight back to Ohio was 4 hours and the drive to our little town was another 2 hours after that. So we didn't get back to our apartment until late at night and we were too tired to try and assemble a crib. So our first night back in Ohio, poor baby Savannah had to sleep in a laundry basket, because we didn't have any where else to put her. Luckily, the next day, a bassinet that my mom had ordered for us was delivered. At least then we had somewhere to put Savannah. But I wouldn't recommend sleeping in a basket, unless you really have to.

Veteran's Day

Since Savannah didn't have school on Veteran's Day, we thought that we'd try to have a little fun. We took a little trip to the dairy farm that's just around the corner. We had a lot of fun, but man did it get hot pretty quickly! And I thought that it was November. I guess that that doesn't really mean too much here in the valley. We invited both sides of the family to tag along with us and got a small turn out from each. Here's a shot of all of the kids up in one of the tractors. Melanie liked climbing around on some of the tires that they had set up. Of course, Spencer loved that too, mostly because we let him out of the stroller. Here is all of us waiting to go on a little hayride, which is also a tour of the dairy. We were lucky to get both Grandmas to come with us! Here is my mom and the girls, once we finally got on the hayride. We enjoyed seeing all of the cows and learning lots about them. They have about 1000 cows at the dairy. Did you know that each cow gets 4 showers a day? They are given 2 showers before each milking, and they are milked twice a day. The thought may have crossed my mind that those cows were usually cleaner than my kids, but then again, we get a good whiff of them every once in a while over at our house, and they don't smell too clean then. We even got to see 2 little calves that had been born that day. Pretty amazing. The kids all loved feeding and petting some of the other animals. The girls really wanted to pet one of the sheep, but it was much more shy and so we had to settle for the goats. Melanie's favorite was petting the bunny. It just sat so still and let everyone touch it. That's definitely Melanie's kind of animal. To finish up Savannah got her face painted, a unicorn. And of course, we all got free milk. We had fun, despite the heat and the crowd. And hopefully we can go back to the farm some time when Daddy can come too.

Missionaries

My sister is currently serving a mission in the Tacoma Washington Mission. We always try to remember her in our prayers and the girls like to send her little emails and cards. I'm not sure what sparked it, but one day last week Savannah decided to make name tags for her and Melanie. They taped them on and then came running out and announced: We're Missionaries! I thought that they were just too cute.

The completed project

After lots of hours of manual labor, Jon did get Savannah's bed refinished. He completed it a little while ago, but it wasn't until this weekend that we got all of the bedding out and made it official. My mom gave us matching bedding for both Melanie and Savannah's beds that used to belong to my younger sisters. It's still in really good condition and of course the girls think that it's fabulous because it's new to them. It also took us most of the week to get the girls' room clean, so we were very proud of our final project. I think that Savannah's bed turned out great. She loves that she has a bed skirt and flat sheet, just like Mom and Dad's bed. Of course, she also likes the little decorative throw pillows too. Melanie really wants Daddy to get to work on her bed, so she can match Savannah. But she's happy with the throw pillows for now. We even got matching curtains to hang in the room. Those hadn't even been taken out of their packaging. Savannah was very excited that I let her help me iron them. And I think that they added just the right touch to the room. Now I just need to convince Savannah to leave them alone. She keeps taking the cute button ties off and letting the curtains just hang straight down. Silly little girl. But she was so proud of her new bed. Her and Melanie fell asleep in it together last night, and then Savannah was so excited to make her bed like a big girl, complete with pillows, this morning. I just hope that lasts.

Melanie's Sleeping Habits

I promise that this little girl has her own bed, but she hasn't spent most of her time in it this past week. Here she is sleeping in Savannah's bed. I think that they were happy to fall asleep together, but it was a different story in the morning. Savannah kept complaining about what a crazy sleeper Melanie is. Here she is sleeping next to my bed. I found her there one morning. By the time I took the picture, you can see that she is halfway under the bed. And here she is asleep on the kitchen floor. She was supposed to be in bed and was instead watching TV with Dad. Smart girl, laying behind the half-wall so Daddy couldn't see her.And these were all just within in the last week! Silly little girl, we've got to love you even if you are a crazy sleeper!

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!