Friday, August 29, 2008

Five for Friday

1. Yesterday was odd. After taking all five kids to Costco (yes, people look at us strangely sometimes), Amy and I split the kids up to play at our houses. The only problem was that both my girls wanted to play with Aidan and neither Amy nor I wanted all the kids (too wild). Davyn was convinced he wanted to be with me. So Amy took the girls and A while I took Reagan and D. Can I just say, I love this boy? He played for hours by himself. One time when I went to check up on him, he was softly singing Old MacDonald to himself. So cute. I'm up for that trade any day. 2. Nothing like freshly laundered whites to snuggle up for a cozy nap. This is what I found after leaving the room for a minute this morning. So cute, bib and all.

3. I realized that I've been posting about Reagan and Savannah a lot lately, but this girly's been ignored on this blog. So here's to London -- the cutest and quirkiest girl ever! She so wants to be in kindergarten and can't wait for next year. Every day she sits down with us as Savy and I do her homework and she does her own "homework." Actually, I sometimes have to reign her back from giving Savannah all the answers.
4. Last weekend, Nate and I took Savannah to the Bass ProShops Outdoor World. London chose to stay with Reagan at Nate's parents' house. I just love this picture because it's classic Savannah -- dressed to a T, although I don't know how she got away with that skirt because it's rather short. . . Everyone in the store had to comment about her BLING. Bling on her purse, bling on her shirt, necklace bling. She's a BLING girl, what can I say?
5. Last, but not least, I have a new niece!!!! Paige was born Monday afternoon. Both she and Jill are home now and doing fine. Nate and I were lucky enough to get to see her that night so these pictures are of her when she was only 3-4 hours old. So cute. I can't wait to see what she grows up to look like. I'm also ecstatic that my girls (Reagan especially) will actually have a GIRL cousin here in the Valley.





Thursday, August 28, 2008

NieNie Day

Today has been declared "NieNie Day."

Anyone who blogs or merely looks at blogs probably knows who NieNie is by now. Stephanie Nielson has become an inspiration to numerous people, including myself, through her blog. I liked the way her sister put it --

"she made a career out of being a mom and housewife."

She loves life, the gospel, her children and her husband, Mr. Nielson, passionately. For proof of that, go here to Amy's favorite Nie post. I'm glad Amy found this one because I didn't sift through her blog to find the perfect, favorite post because, quite frankly, there are so many great ones. But this one definitely sums up the auro of her blog and her life.

She is one of the few people I know who would lay out clothing (yes, even skirts and matching shoes) to decide what to wear when her love came home from work or wears an apron when cooking. She is constantly doing fun, crafty things either with her children or on her own. In fact, my first introduction to her blog came because of an amazing armchair she re-covered. It turned out beautiful.

A couple months ago, Mr. Nielson became a pilot. A couple weeks ago, they were both in a very bad plane crash in St. Johns, AZ. The pilot died and Stephanie and Christian are both in Mesa trying to recover. For more details, you can go to cjane's blog (her sister). He has burns covering 30% of his body and she 80%. They both have much ahead in terms of surgery and recovery. She is still in a chemically-induced coma. Her family in Utah has taken their four children up there to live and my heart aches for the time that she will miss while recovering (this will take months) because, as we all know, kids change a TON in just six months. I ache because I know how much she loves those children. But I also know that Heavenly Father knows our needs and we become stronger through the trials we are given.

Now is the time to help this cute little family.

Design mom (another great blogger) declared today NieNie Day. In honor of this special day, bloggers all over the world are either auctioning something off on their blog, bidding on auctioned-goods, or writing special posts about NieNie.

To see all the awesome auctions going on today, go here.

To bid on one of Amy's awesome cakes, go here.

If you're a BYU fan, go here.

If you're a Maroon 5 fan, go here.

Or you can just click on the "donate to Nie" button at the top left of my blog to donate directly to the PayPal account.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Reagan - 4 months

Amy took some random pictures of Reagan a couple weeks ago and I loved them all! Since I'm not a good decision-maker, here are all of them.

Weight update: 16 lbs 2 oz!!!!

Monday, August 25, 2008

Reagan - 2 months (in May)

These were taken when Reagan was just a newbie and I just never got around to posting them. She has grown so much in just a few months that it blows me away!
Soon I'll post some that Amy took just two weeks ago.
And I'm almost done with her "birth story" post. Amy took some great pics for that also.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Mystery Solved

The disturbing problem of the disappearing socks during laundry has been solved by yours truly.

This picture proves that our washing machines have them hidden somewhere inside. Or they just eat them. My question is, how many socks can the machine actually take??? (because I have A LOT of missing socks) But whatever the answer, this is one sock that tried and failed.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Homework

There are a few disturbing things about this homework page - can you see them?
On the other hand, there are some good things too...



We'll start with the good:

1. Savy has improved her name immensely during just two weeks of school. Her name is very confusing with all the a's and n's. Before she would just throw them around anywhere and it only slightly resembled her name, but now she remembers the order and does it on her own perfectly. I love kindergarten.

2. She got all the lines right!

The not-necessarily-bad-but-disturbing:

1. She has $dollar signs all over her page -- should that be disturbing???

2. At Franklin, moms have to sign the bottom of their homework everyday. Notice that only two weeks into school and she's already trying to forge my name! This does not bode well for the next twelve years of school with my Savannah! =)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Queen and Show-and-Tell

Yesterday as I was making dinner, Savannah dramatically flung herself onto the couch and declared, or rather demanded:

"will someone get me a drink and a massage?"

(where does she get this stuff? It's not like I go and get massages all the time or make them my little slaves!!)

When I emphatically answered "no," she turned to London. Little sisters are always good suckers (just ask Megan how many dollars Amy owes her) and London did not let her down.

"London, pretend that you get me a drink and a massage because you know that I am the Queen."

"Okay."

Little sisters are great, aren't they?

And, apparently, I have a little queen in the house.

Then today, Savannah came home excited that tomorrow is their first show-and-tell. The rules are simple: no living things and no food, but when I asked her this afternoon what she's decided to bring, she matter-of-factly answered "London" -- London will do anything to get into kindergarten! They had spent the whole afternoon planning on how she would have a button and pretend to be a toy. I guess they really thought it would work.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Luna

The week before last I did not post hardly at all because I was either in major pain or majorly drugged depending upon whether it was the beginning or the end of the week we're talking about. The lovely results of a root canal that snuck up on me unexpected. Lovely, huh? So, I have some catching up to do because we did take a little weekend trip.

The weekend of the 24th, Amy and Jim invited us to Luna, New Mexico. They go there every year for the 24th of July parade and rodeo. Jim's parents both grew up in Alpine and Luna and so he has roots there. It was fabulous to get away and we loved the land - absolutely gorgeous.

Despite the mud and rain, the trip was great fun and we did get to enjoy the parade and rodeo without rain. It politely waited until afterward to come down so we spent the afternoon/evening in the toy hauler with the kids watching movies and we played a couples game that turned very entertaining. At one point, we were all laughing so hard that I thought the whole world could hear us. And there wasn't a lack of arguing either -- very entertaining, but both marriages survived the game despite some rocky moments =)

London loved Aidan's cowboy hat.
does she have it in her to be a cowgirl?
I don't really think so, but she does look cute!
Cousins heading for the parade.
Waiting for the parade to start. It's the cutest little 10-minute parade that doles out a ton of candy. The parade goes down the main street and then turns around again, with each float throwing handfuls of candy both times. And there aren't that many spectators.
There was A LOT of candy collected.
When the parade turned around, Jim and Nate were actually throwing candy back at the floats.

After the parade, we headed to the rodeo. Now the parade may be small stuff, but the rodeo was quite the large to-do. There were tons of people and it was totally fun. The cutest thing at the rodeo.
I was sad that none of our other rodeo pictures turned out.
We separated from Amy and Jim and took the scenic route home on the Coronado Trail. I've never seen this part of Arizona and, to be honest, I had no idea forest like this existed in Arizona! It was dense and immensely green. I loved it. It always amazes me that Nate knows Arizona 100 times better than me, a native. I think this summer I've seen more new places in Arizona with him than in my life. I love that he likes learning and seeing new places. He always comes home from a trip and gets out his atlas and studies the surrounding areas. He's like a walking map afterward. And, unlike me who forgets everything, the information stays in his head for future reference.
Lovely family picture. Not the best, but the only one.
We stopped at a scenic lookout just past Hannigan's Meadow and took pictures. It was fun and the girls loved getting out of the car for a few minutes.


The rest of the trip was spent with me self-medicating for my toothache. Nothing seemed to work so it was pretty miserable despite my interest in seeing new parts of Arizona. We drove through Thatcher and Safford which I have never seen either. I loved seeing the farmland which I never expected. I guess I can now say I've been to where President Kimball was raised.
Nate and I looked back and London sleeping and noticed her eye was open. Creepy, but funny so we had to get a picture to remember.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Kindergarten

DRAMA: 5 minutes before we needed to leave and I found Savannah changing her clothes! She will, if I let her, change ten times before deciding on the original outfit (I know her very well). So I told her no and that we needed to leave. And so the drama began . . .

In the car she was not happy to have a photographer presentand the situation did not improve once we arrived. She clung to me like crazy and I finally just had to leave her holding hands with Mrs. Cammack during the flag ceremony, looking like she was about to burst out crying. I'm not a mom who's worried about her - I'm more worried about her poor teacher because I know half of this is just Savannah-drama and she's really fine.
coming back from the flag ceremony
She escaped the kindergarten ranks to join mom and dad so Nate gave her a little pep talk and walked her to the classroom door where all the kids and Mrs. Cammack waved good-bye to many teary-eyed parents. I was not one of them. I am actually shocked that I didn't get teary at all, but I think it's because I was too confused as to why Savy was acting that way because it's really not her personality. All I can do is figure it was the morning clothing drama . . . girls!
This is how she came home:
Much better. Drama over.
She's most excited to learn to read.
They went to P.I.E. (P.E.) and not matter how many times Nate and I corrected her, it's still P.I.E. Oh well.
She went perfectly fine today and there was no clothing drama.
Halleluliah!