The Bird

The Bird #1:


The Bird # 2:


The Bird #3:

Look closely at Brynn's hand and Bailey's malicious smile if you don't know what I mean. I thought this was really funny when I noticed it.



Here's a more appropriate picture :-)

Title

There's no title to this post because I'm going to talk about a bunch of different things that have happened recently and I couldn't think of a title.

Here's what it looks like in my family to try to get a good Christmas picture. Not an easy task.




We did get two pictures that will work, though. We are only planning on sending out Christmas cards to aunts, uncles, grandparents, our immediate families, and a few friends. Scott and I together have about a billion cousins, so we aren't planning on sending everyone one because it would cost us an arm and a leg, but if you'd like a Christmas card, please email me your address. We'd love to send you one.

Last weekend it snowed like crazy!! It's FREEZING here (like negative degrees at night)!! I know it's cold almost everywhere else in the US as well, but man it just goes from somewhat nice weather to freezing within days. It's reminded me of being in Rexburg and slipping on the ice constantly (so embarrassing) because our parking lot here is like pure ice.

It was snowing when I took the above picture. I don't think the girls liked getting snowflakes in their eyes very much.

Last Saturday was the 7th anniversary of our first date and the first date that Scott and I have been on since Bailey and Brynn were born. We saw New Moon, which I loved and Scott disliked very much. We also got a huge thing of Cherry Coke at the movie theater. "Coke reminds me of Christmas," Scott says. Scott and I don't drink a ton of caffeine so I was awake until 1am and he was awake until 3am that night. Nice one, Hubs. Not going to do that again.

Last Friday we took Hannah to see Santa at the mall. This is going to sound kind of creepy, but Hannah seems to have a special connection with older men (that give her candy). It's not creepy, though. She truly has a genuine love for Santa Claus (and for our previous two Bishops), and they seem to have a genuine love for her. I almost started crying when I saw her get SO excited to see Santa and hug him and tell him that she wanted a princess dress for Christmas (which she'll be getting ;). He seemed to be really excited to see her too.

Finally, here are a few random pictures that I took over that past couple of weeks.

I love that tiny ponytail!

Contests!!

Hey ya'll. We entered Hannah into a grouchiest child contest with a radio station here by submitting a photo of her. We'll win front row tickets to see Sesame Street Live if Hannah wins, so we're asking you guys if you have a few extra minutes to vote for her because I know she would love to go to this. Here's the LINK you need to click on and then press the vote button. Hannah is number 25. If you have more than one email address, you can vote more than once. Voting ends on December 7th. Thanks a bunch!!!

Also, my friend Cori has an etsy shop and is selling these really pretty floral accessories. She's also giving some away if we post a link to her shop and her blog. Since I want her to get some business and I want to win one of her items, I'm posting it on my blog. Here's the LINK to her blog if you want to win as well and below is the link to her etsy shop if you want to buy something.

FOUR MONTHS

Hannah (perfect lighting)

Brynn (too dark)

Bailey (too orange)

I wish all three pictures had the same lighting, but it didn't work out that way.

I guess it's become a tradition to put my girls in this red dress and take a picture of them on their four month birthdays. I'm going to print them all out today and put them on my wall. So here's what's been going on at 4 months.

As I mentioned in a previous post, both Bailey and Brynn were sick about 3 weeks ago. They haven't been sleeping very well lately and it has been very tiring. They were doing 7-9 hour stretches, but then started doing only 4-5 hour stretches after they got sick. Scott and I were often getting up 3 times a night. Then Brynn decided that she wasn't going to take a bottle anymore, so I had to breastfeed her all the time. Scott used to take care of her at night and feed her a pumped bottle of milk, but now we have switched because she just wouldn't take the bottle anymore. Then I was even more exhausted because Brynn wouldn't fall back asleep after I breastfed her at night. I'd be up with her for a long time, bouncing her. I felt like we were back at newborn stage again. We took them to the doctor's and found out that Bailey had an ear infection, but there was nothing wrong with Brynn. Thankfully, both girls have been doing much better these last few days. Brynn only woke up once last night at 3am and went right back to sleep after I fed her! I can definitely handle that!

Last week Brynn also rolled over twice and is very close to rolling over from her back to her front. She's a wiggly one. Bailey's just my big, chubby cuddle bear....not quite as wiggly.

We like to swaddle our kids really tight so they sleep better when they are newborns. This month we were able to train Bailey to sleep without her swaddle, which has been nice. Brynn has not been so easy to train. We are letting her sleep with one arm out during her naps, but it often takes her a long time to fall asleep and stay asleep. She'll get it, though. Well, she's going to have to because she's getting too big to be wrapped.

My girls are definitely growing up. They are too big for their 0-3 month clothes now. It makes me kind of sad to see them grow but happy at the same time. We also got rid of one of their swings yesterday because they no longer use them to sleep. It's definitely nice to have the space, but weird to know that they are growing up. Yesterday we went to their 4 month checkup. The doctor said that we could start feeding them solids if we wanted. I think we're going to wait until they are 5 months to start, but again, it's an indication that they are growing up quickly!

Here are their stats:

Brynn:
Weight- 12 lbs 6 oz - 22nd %
Height- 24.25 inches - 49th %

Bailey:
Weight- 12 lbs 10 oz - 27th %
Height- 24.5 inches - 59th %

We like to call Brynn "Pee Wee" (thanks to G-ma Julia) because she's the runt of the family. Both girls are a tiny bit smaller than Hannah when she was 4 months old. Anyway, so that's my update. As I've said before, this is more for me than anyone else, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

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.