Alright, I'm going to brag in this post. I apologize, but sometimes you just can't help brag about your kids when they do something that you think is so smart. If it annoys you when people brag about their kids, don't read on. I don't know if Hannah is smarter than any other three year old, nor do I care, but sometimes I just can't believe how smart she's gotten in the past three years. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a 3 foot teenager or something.

Lately she's really been into coloring and doing puzzles. She colors for hours a day sometimes. She always wants me to color with her, though, and she observes the way that I color. She's gotten REALLY good at coloring just in the past few weeks. She almost always stays in the lines and often gets the colors right for what she's coloring (ex: no blue faces and pink hair, although she does this occasionally). I looked at one of her pictures the other day and was surprised at how well she had colored it. Here it is:

She also signed her name at the bottom. It's not perfect, but I can tell that it says Hannah. Keep in mind that this child just turned 3.

And she wrote my name.

As I mentioned, she's also really into puzzles. She has a 25 piece puzzle that we like to time ourselves with. I can do it in 1 minute, 37 seconds. She can do it in 3 minutes, 10 seconds. I'm afraid she's going to catch me and beat me pretty soon. She's also into doing puzzles on the computer. She's really good at the computer and can move the mouse, click, and drag things. I'm sure that's normal for a three year old, but it's just so cute to watch her tiny little hands work the computer. We had to put a password on our computer so she would stop getting on it. Here's a video of her (it was actually taken over a month ago). I apologize for my hacking cough.

She also says things that are very smart. She asks TONS of questions (literally). She probably asks me hundreds of questions a day. Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated with her because I don't know the answer to all of her questions. She'll ask things like, "Why is that girl's hair short," "Why is this book blue," "Why are your eyes brown?" Sometimes my answer is, "Just because." The other day she kept asking me question after question and I said to her, "Hannah, could you please stop asking me so many questions?" She said back, "Well, Sid the Science Kid tells us to ask a lot of questions." I started laughing and remembered that asking questions is how she has become so smart.


While I'm bragging, I might as well get it all out. I am very proud of myself because I've lost 9 pounds in the past 4 weeks. I only have about 8 more until my pre pregnancy weight. I'm having a "Go Me" week. Scott's lost 5 pounds without even working out. We should have done this whole "eating healthy" thing a long time ago. If you have any ideas for healthy meals, please leave them in a comment or email me. maralar@hotmail.com. I'm running out of ideas for yummy healthy dinners. I'd be happy to email you some of my ideas if you'd like, too. Okay, so I'm done bragging for now. Hopefully I won't do it again for awhile because I know it can get annoying.

A Much Needed Re-Boost

BEST FRIENDS!

This week all three of my babies are sick. Boo. Bailey and Brynn have it much worse than Hannah does. I feel really bad for them. Two nights ago was exhausting. Bailey got up every two hours, coughing and sniffling. The next day I was a bit grumpy and having a debate in my head whether or not I wanted another child. I know it's ridiculous to think about having another child right now, but I think about it all the time (not getting pregnant right now, just thinking about the future). It's a constant battle in my mind of weighing out the pros and cons to having only 3 children. The reason I think about it so much is because if these girls are my last children, I want to enjoy every minute of it. Some days I feel like I just can't wait for them to get older. Don't get me wrong, I love having them as babies SO much. They are so sweet, but some days I'm just exhausted taking care of them. Some days I feel like I've lost myself. This is what I usually look like.


Hair pulled back tight and no makeup on. I'm lucky if I put makeup on twice a week. Actually, I'm lucky if I brush my teeth and put on deodorant everyday. Sick, I know, but sometimes there's just not enough time for me to do these things. Then I look at myself in the mirror and think, ' Man, I look like an old, saggy mother.' So anyway, I was having a rough day the other day and then something great happened.

I got over six hours of straight sleep last night!!! That hasn't happened in probably 6 months. Even when I was pregnant with the girls I had to get up every 2 hours to go to the bathroom. I have actually been really blessed because the girls sleep really well for me.....usually somewhere between 7 and 9 hours straight and then another 3-4 hours after that. The problem is, they go to bed at 7pm, so they are usually getting up around 2:30am or 3am. I usually don't go to bed until around 11pm, so I was only getting 3- 4 hour increments of sleep. Anyway, last night Brynn slept for over 12 hours and Bailey slept for 9 and a half and then another 4 hours after that. I went to bed last night at 10pm and didn't have to wake up until 4:30am. It was just what I needed to re-boost my energy. I love my girls so so much!!

Halloween, etc, etc,

I have a few things I would like to blog about but I'm just going to put them all in this one blog because I don't feel like writing 3 different blogs. First off, Halloween. We had a wonderful Halloween weekend, complete with a scary Halloween meal (which we actually had tonight for dinner).

We had a dead hand,

scary mouths with sharp teeth,

and mummy hot dogs to eat.

Last night was an awesome night. We stayed around here (rather than going to my sister's house like we usually do) to go trick-or-treating. I was worried that it would be boring for Hannah to go trick-or-treating without her cousins, but she actually had a lot of fun and the night turned out great. Before each house I would remind her to say "Trick or Treat" as soon as the person would come out the door, but she'd always forget to say it. I think seeing the bowl of candy would always distract her. After we got home from trick-or-treating, we built a fort and let Hannah stay up late to watch a scary movie with us. After 20 minutes into the movie, she decided she didn't like it so we finished off the night with an episode of Dora.

I didn't dress up the babies this year because they were in their stroller the whole time anyway, but they did wear their Halloween outfits.

Hannah was, of course, a princess. She had to have a purple princess dress. She's VERY picky about what she wears.
I'm posting both of these closeup pictures of her because I just think she is beautiful, and I couldn't decide which one I like better. She literally has the longest eyelashes I have ever seen. If you noticed that she's wearing a different crown in these pictures, it's because these two were taken last weekend at our ward Halloween party and the other one was taken last night.

This is Hannah and her friend Jill. My friend, Wendi, made that adorable witch costume. She is so talented!

Okay, onto item number 2. Today we went up the canyon and went for a walk up to Bridal Veil Falls. In the almost 6 years that we have lived here, we've never done this before. Sad, I know. We're only 15 minutes away from this beautiful waterfall and we've never gone up to see it. It was a beautiful day and Hannah had fun playing in the water a little bit. So here are a few pictures of that.

If you blow up the above picture, you'll see a tiny Scott and Hannah.

I'm going to miss all of this beautifulness (just made up that word) when we move away from Utah next year.

Finally, onto item number 3. Scott and I have been eating REALLY healthy over the past two weeks (except for this weekend). Everything we eat is whole grain, natural, organic, etc., and we've also been eating tons of fruits and veggies. We've had tons of turkey too: turkey burgers, turkey sausage, turkey fajitas, turkey kabobs, turkey pepperoni pizza. I've also been going to the gym 3 times a week and have done Zumba, which totally kicked my butt, and a hip hop dance class. I've already lost 5 pounds, and this week I was able to squeeze into my size 6 jeans! They were tight as a spandex glove, but at least I was able to button them. I'm hoping that it's not a fluke and that the weight will just melt off me if we keep this up. Either way, it feels really good to be healthy. I do miss my nightly bowl of ice cream, though.

We've been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks with family in town. First we had Scott's dad here for Hannah's birthday and then we had the rest of both of our families here for the babies' blessings. We miss family a lot sometimes, so it was nice to see everyone.

It's become our tradition to go to Hee Haw Farms every October, and this year was no different. We took Hannah and the girls to this little place and loved every minute of it.

Above is Hannah, Grandpa Sprague, and Brynn

Hannah has grown quite a bit since last year

This past Sunday we blessed the babies in church. Let me just tell you that there's nothing hotter to me than my husband giving our children blessings. I'm not much of a crier, but I couldn't stop the tears from coming as my husband took both of our girls in his arms and gave them both very sweet blessings.

Here's our family at the luncheon afterward.

I really wanted to crop the above picture (actually, I'd really like to crop myself out of this picture.....as I've made clear in a previous post, I'm grossed out with the 15 lbs that I still need to lose) but my husband just put Windows 7 on our computer which wiped away my program that crops pictures. Oh well. This is me, my mom, and my three sisters with the babies. This was pretty much the only picture I got of anyone at the luncheon. We had a lot of family there but I'm lame and didn't get pictures of anyone else.

Beautiful blue-eyed cousins

I tried to get a good picture of the girls in their blessing dresses, but this was probably the best one I got. Bailey was not a happy camper.

Thanks to those of you who came out for the blessings. We really appreciated it and loved seeing all of you.

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH DEAR.....

Today my baby turned THREE years old. I can't believe it. Time has just flown by. I swear just yesterday she was a baby, and now she's a sassy little three year old. Today she had her first birthday party with friends and I think she really loved it. I let her pick out the theme- The Little Mermaid. I was surprised considering the fact that she is in love with Barbies right now, but I think she chose The Little Mermaid because she had just watched the movie that morning. We had 7 of her friends come over and we ate pizza and played "Pin the Flower on the Ariel" and had a pinata FULL of candy. Here are some pictures of the party.

The table decorations

The cake- totally turned out lopsided and my cake decorating kit broke on me in the middle of it. Let's just say that I was really frustrated last night. Oh well, at least Hannah liked it.

The birthday girl

Getting ready to blow out the candles

The kids playing with balloons

Opening presents

All of her candy from the pinata

Her friends (minus 2 of them who were late because they got lost) eating pizza

Here are a couple of videos from her party.

P.S. That pinata was a bear to bust open. Scott actually ended up doing it because none of the kids could.

Say Cheese!!!

I love these girls!

Poor Brynn

So, who do you think looks more like Hannah?


This is what Hannah looked like at the same age that they are. I don't know. She doesn't really look like either of them to me. She had no hair. I can definitely see Bailey in her with that round face and chubby cheeks but I think that she and Brynn have similar noses.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I am 95% sure that Brynn is going to have brown eyes. They are extremely dark and I can even see dark golden flecks in them. Although I LOVE blue eyes, I am excited to have one child with my brown eyes. I'm still not sure about Bailey's. They could go either way at this point.

Frustrating

Here I am 2 months after having my twins and I'm still a good 15 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight. I was hoping that breastfeeding twins would help me lose all the weight quickly but it looks like that isn't happening. I HATE the stage that I'm in right now because I can't fit into most of my pre-pregnancy clothes. I think I have one pair of jeans that I'm able to squeeze my hips into but my disgusting belly hangs over them. I can't fit into hardly any of my shirts either. So where does that leave me? Yeah, I'm still wearing some of my maternity stuff and I HATE IT!. The maternity pants fall off of me because they're too big. So I'm in this sick in between stage where my maternity clothes are too big but my regular clothes are too small. I don't want to go out and buy new clothes (which would then be called my "fat clothes") because I am hoping to lose all of the weight.

To speed this process up, I decided to get a gym pass. I've never had my own gym pass before (although I have been to gyms many times). Tonight I went to the gym for the first time in years and realized that I am SO out of shape. And I also realized something....I hate exercising. My legs are burning, my knees feel like they're about to crack, and I start to get a cramp in my stomach. I always feel good afterward but when I'm actually doing it, I just can't wait to stop. Back in high school I ran track my Sophomore year. I remember it being really hard at first but then I grew to love running as the semester went on. I certainly hope that's the case here too.

I took a picture the other day and thought about posting it as my "before" picture, but I was just too disgusted with it. Hopefully I will lose all of my weight and then I can post a before and after picture (although I'm sure I'll post a picture of myself on here when the babies get blessed in two weeks). Anyway, I'm excited to start exercising again. And sorry for using the word "hate" so much but I'm frustrated.

P.S. I'll post some more pictures soon of the babies. They are so stinkin' cute!