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!

Wrappin' It Up

It's summertime and I can't believe how fast the school year flew by. Savannah has had a great year. She started a music class at the beginning of the year and I'm quite pleased with how much she learned. She had a recital a few weeks ago and she did a great job. Here she is with her teacher, Miss Melanie, and our little Mel-Bell (with such a clean face). And of course, Savannah finished up Kindergarten as well. Her class held a little Promotion Ceremony. It wasn't anything fancy, but her teacher presented her with a certificate of advancement to the 1st Grade. Jon wasn't able to come, since it was right during the middle of the day, but I was happy to have the help of my mom and 2 sisters, especially since Spencer was all over the place. We enjoyed some cake and Savannah got to leave school about 20 minutes early, which she loved. She has thoroughly enjoyed going to school and came home on the last day in tears because she didn't want it to be over and she already missed her teacher, Miss Born. Now I just need to figure out what to do with her during the day. I love having her home, but we're still trying to figure out things to keep her entertained and busy. Got to channel all of that energy into good and useful things.

The Gig is Up

Savannah's tooth was extremely loose today. With the way she was going, I figured that she would loose it tomorrow. But it seriously looked like it was just going to fall out of her head.She totally babied that tooth all day. I told her that she needed to twist it or at least let me touch it. But instead she went and got herself a paper towel, folded it up, and kept it in her mouth. She said it kept the tooth from moving and hurting. It certainly kept her quiet for a few hours. But then we went over to my parent's house and she picked an apple off of their tree. A few bites into the apple and the tooth was gone. Not only did it fall out, but it was no where to be found. We tried to convince her that she probably swallowed it, but she's still not sure. All she knows for sure is that her tooth is gone and it wasn't as painful as she thought it would be and it didn't hardly bleed at all. Of course we had to leave the tooth fairy a not explaining the situation; hopefully she'll understand! In the end, we have a very happy girl. And she had to remind me that she won...still no baby, but she lost her tooth! Even though, she told me this morning that if I went to the hospital on the same day that she lost her tooth, then it would be a tie. So I guess that I have about an hour or so left, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to make that deadline.

The Race is On

For those of you that are anxiously waiting, still no baby. The 20th came and went with no hope of our little guy coming. I am currently shooting for the 24th-26th. A girl can hope, right?

Well I told Savannah that we would have a race. She has her first loose tooth. So I told her that we would see if her tooth would fall out first or if the baby would come first. I know that that sounds ridiculous, because you would think that it would definitely be her tooth. But I'm telling you, that she has been claiming that that tooth was loose for the last 3 months. There were so many times when Jon and I would feel it and tell her that it wasn't loose and she would say that our fingers were too big and that we just couldn't feel it wiggle like she could. Well, it is finally loose, but it's been about the same amount of looseness since Wednesday night. I don't think that she wiggles it at all during the day. So it remains in places. In fact, on Wednesday she was practically in tears because she thought that she could feel a hole in her tooth with her tongue. I told her that it was just the space under the tooth and that it was just fine. But what would I know? It's not like I've ever lost any teeth. Nope, she wanted me to schedule her an appointment with the dentist. Luckily Daddy walked in about 2 minutes later and was able to resolve her fears. But the tooth still sits there. She is afraid to loose it, even though she really wants the tooth fairy to come.

So the race is on. Baby vs. Tooth. Feel free to vote for who you think will make their appearance first. Jon's dad says that it will hands down be the tooth, but I have my doubts, especially at the rate that the tooth is currently going...not that I have any room to talk though!

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.

Savannah's Nail

I know that I've become an awful blogger, but I've had some issues downloading pictures onto my computer and I really don't like posting without a picture to go with it.

Well, here is a before and and after shot of Savannah's little pinky nail, or maybe I should say an after and then a recovery picture. You may recall that she somehow managed to partially rip her nail off while riding/falling off of a bike. The entire nail didn't come off, but it was still connected on the outside of the finger. We had to wash it really carefully for about a week and a half. Then we just had to make sure that it was bandaged well so that the nail wouldn't snag on anything and come completely off. After a week of that, then we've just tried to keep a bandaid on it. It's been about a month and a half, but that little thing finally fell off yesterday. She was so worried that it would hurt when it came off, but it didn't hurt a bit. And I have to say, that we're all happy that the little thing has finally given up it's hold. We told Savannah to throw the nail away; instead, she decided to put it under her pillow and see if a Nail Fairy would come and give her some money for it. Jon and I had a good laugh about that this morning and informed her that we would all be rich if we got money for every nail or nail trimming that we had. But hooray for no more bandaids!

Savannah's Rough Week

Savannah has had a rough little time lately, mostly with causing herself physical harm. I'm not sure if it's a Kindergarten rite of passage, but Savannah seems to think that she has to master the monkey bars. She's getting very good at them. But she has also got some callused blisters going on. The week before she went back to school, she decided to peel off the skin on one of these blisters. It was not a wise choice. Her poor little hand was very sore and I wasn't quite sure how to keep the blister covered, since I couldn't seem to get a bandaid to stay across the top of her palm. It is healing relatively well and has required only a few trimmings of dried skin that continues to peel back.

That was on a Friday, the following Monday Savannah was playing at her cousin's house. She fell off of his scooter and the fingernail of her pinky finger snagged on something. She ripped half of the nail off. The nail didn't completely come off, so we've had to be careful to not let it snag on anything else. It did bleed quite a bit though. I think that we've kind of got it under control though. It requires a daily (or twice a day) cleaning and bandage change. We're trying hard to make sure that it doesn't get infected. I was pretty sure that the nail was going to fall off, but now I'm not so sure as to how it's going to heal. It's been a week and a half since this happened and I think that it is finally not causing her pain even when we change the bandage.

The Wednesday after her nail occurrence, it was bedtime and Savannah came out of her room crying. I was a mutual and missed this little exchange. But she told Jon that she was scared. He asked why and she said that she had swallowed a toy. This is a first for us. I think that I had told Savannah about 10 times in the 2 weeks prior to this happening to stop putting things in her mouth that didn't belong there...i.e. toys, coins, and everything else that's small. But she was now scared because she didn't know what was going to happen to her. She told Jon that it was a small toy. So he told her that she would digest it and then poop it out. She was still worried about this, but he reassured her that it wouldn't be a big deal, but that the toy was gone for good. I questioned her the following morning and found out that it was a small Polly Pocket accessory, so nothing to worry about, it was definitely small.

Not that this is a big deal, but on Thursday Savannah came home from school with a huge paper cut on the end of her middle finger. I think that by the end of the week we had about 3 bandages on her little hands.

And then to top it all off, on Friday night, Jon and I went and played games at a friend's house. Just as we're about to walk out the door Savannah says, "Mom, I just threw-up." Sure enough, she had. And being the awful parents that we are, we left her with a babysitter and a barf bowl. I really didn't think that she would hurl again, but boy was I wrong. Luckily, she's really good at getting it in the bowl. But I did feel pretty bad for our babysitter. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with a barfy kid while babysitting. But to top it off, before we went to bed that night, I checked on Savannah and she smelt just awful. Yeah, she had diarrhea too. I had to drag her out of bed and wash her all off. We got her sheets all changed, but she stayed up a little longer because she didn't want to fall asleep with wet hair. Unfortunately she drank some water at this time and then threw-up again. Jon was a great daddy and did a run to WalMart at 12:30 to pick up some Sprite and Pedialite. Too bad she had fallen back asleep by the time he got back about 15 minutes later. She was also very upset that she missed a birthday party and a primary activity the next day. But she was feeling much better by Saturday evening. Unfortunately for us, Savannah decided to share her fun stomach bug with the rest of us.

Savannah is finally on the up and up. I'm hoping that her little rough patch here is over. Now all we have to worry about is her little finger healing properly.

Learning a Lesson

What do you say to one of your kids, when they make a choice that they later realize was not what they really wanted?

Yesterday, Jon and I were going to a wedding. I knew that the ceremony would be short and sweet and it would okay if the girls wanted to tag along. So we gave them the choice and both Savannah and Melanie said that they wanted to go to the wedding. We all got dressed up and then drove over to Jon's parent's house to drop Spencer off. However, when we arrived at Grandma's house, Savannah suddenly decided that she wanted to stay there and play with her cousins. So Savannah and Spencer were left at Grandma's and Melanie got to be an only child for about an hour.

Jon and I came back to pick the kids up and Savannah was there in tears. She was so upset that she didn't go. Apparently she had changed her mind after we had left, but it was too late. So she was left behind. She was so upset. I tried to tell her that she was the one that had made the decision to not go and that it was not Jon or I's fault for her missing out. This only made her more upset. But it's a hard lesson to learn that it's your own fault when you make decisions that make you miss out on things. She still gave me a hard time this morning that we got to have cake and she didn't! Tough luck.

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.

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!