Scott + Maran = 3 Cuties

November, December, January

2012-01-17T20:27:00.013-07:00

Here's a little update of what's been going on over the past three months. I will start with what's going on now, and then make my way back to Thanksgiving. I used to be really good about taking pictures of every little thing that went on in my girls' lives, but I don't know what's up with me lately. I've been too lazy to lug around my big camera with me, and the camera on my phone is not the best. So, you will be getting mediocre photos today.

January:
I've put Bailey and Brynn in a little Mommy and me gymnastics class. It's just once a week, but it's fun for me to see them doing activities, because it's usually Hannah that gets to do all the fun stuff (although Hannah does get to come with us and participate too). They both really enjoy the beam and the parachute that we get to play with.

And I've put Hannah into swim lessons as well. She begs me all throughout winter if we can go swimming, so this was the best that I could do. Plus, she's learning how to swim better. Win win. Here she is practicing floating on her back.

Last Thursday, I really started potty training Bailey and Brynn. I wanted to have them trained by Christmas, and I tried, but I failed. I didn't know what I was doing with two of them. My cousin recently gave me a book on how to train your child in 3 days. It was a rough, messy, three days, but Bailey got it down. She's had one accident since last Saturday. Brynn, on the other hand, took a little longer. On day 5, I told her that I was done with this training, and that I would put her back into diapers if she didn't go potty in the toilet (because I had put them both in underwear while I was training them). She didn't want to go back into diapers. When Brynn wants something, she will do it. She's a stubborn one. So the next day she didn't have any accidents, and she's been doing really well since then. I even ran a few errands with them yesterday.

December:
December is always a fun month because of Christmas. Before Christmas, we took the girls to a Christmas princess festival, where they got to dress up like princesses and participate in a little princess play.

For Christmas this year, Buddy the elf (from The Elf on the Shelf) made his first appearance to our house. I didn't get a picture of him, but he'll be around in years to come. For those who don't know who he is, it's a Christmas tradition where an elf appears in your home at the beginning of December to see if you are being naughty or nice. Every night he reports back to Santa, and then he comes back to our house and hides in a different place. The girls had a good time trying to find him every morning, and sometimes he would even bring them little presents or a note from Santa. He went back with Santa to the North Pole on Christmas eve, but he will be back next year, I'm sure.

Here are a few pictures of Christmas day. We had Scott's mom with us this year, but unfortunately I got the stomach flu on Christmas eve and felt sick still on Christmas day. So I, again, didn't get any really good pictures because it was hard to move from my spot on the couch. And later that week, I passed the sickness onto Scott, his mom, and Hannah. Here are Hannah, Bailey, and Brynn dressed up for church. I, obviously, stayed home.

And here are a few pictures of them opening up their presents.

The girls always get PJs on Christmas eve, so here are their new PJs.

And here are the girls eating the ginger bread house that we made.

Other traditions that I didn't get pictures of: eating lasagna on Christmas, drive through Christmas lights in Springville and at Thanksgiving point, watching all of our Christmas movies, and leaving out cookies for Santa. Hannah also had a preschool Christmas performance, which I got video of but no pictures. Next year, I hope to be able to take the girls on the Polar Express train for Christmas.

November:
Here are the girls playing in the leaves! There's really nothing more fun than a pile of leaves.

And here are a few cute pictures of the girls.

For Thanksgiving this year, we went to California. I forgot my camera, so no real pictures of the meal. Here are Hannah and Grandma working hard in the kitchen, though.

And our car hit 100,000 miles on our trip. Definitely picture worthy.

Here's my dad being hilarious in his monkey mask.
And I got to go out to breakfast with my beautiful friends. I miss them.

Other things we did that trip that are not pictured: went to a bounce house with my dad, went on a girls date to see Breaking Dawn with my mom and sister, went to the park, visited my sister in Minden, NV, and Scott and I got to go on a date to Lake Tahoe for a day. It was a really fun trip!

October

2011-11-01T14:35:00.010-06:00

October was a busy month. And it went by super duper fast. Here are pictures of a few of the things we've done (in no particular order, of course. Again, too lazy to change the order of my pictures. Why does blogger make it so hard?)

Starting with last night....trick or treating!

Hannah was a fairy from the Barbie movie Fairytopia. Bailey was a pirate (which was Hannah's costume from when she was two). And Brynn was a witch. Neither of my girls kept their hats on last night, though, so it was kind of hard to tell what they were. Even in these pictures, Brynn's hat is drooped so you can't even tell it was a witch's hat. Oh well.

We went trick or treating with my cousins, so these are Hannah's second cousins.

This is Bailey's excited face.

You may be sick of these pictures, since this will be the fifth time I've posted about Hee Haw farms, but it's tradition. I must. So here's Hee Haw farms, a fun pumpkin patch/corn maze/farm activities place that we go to every October.

The girls thought it was fun to bury themselves in this corn box.

And I also went with Hannah on a preschool field trip to a different pumpkin patch.

These are the kiddos from her preschool, though not all are in her class.

And Hannah finished her gymnastics class and won a medal. She was very proud.

Cute little girls patiently waiting while their sister performs.

And here are pictures of our yearly spook-tacular dinner. Spider 7 layer dip, mummy dogs (without the eyes), Jack-o-latern carrots, bloody cups, mummy pizzas, and fruit salad. And our dessert, which is not pictured, were tombstone cupcakes.

And finally, my beautiful cousin, Amy, got married and asked Hannah to be a flower girl. Hannah was more than happy to do it. My mom and step-dad drove up for the occasion and stayed with us for a couple of days.

Brynny

Hannah, the flower girl

My momma and step-dad with the girls.

My beautiful sister and her hubby with my girls.

Bailoo

I had to take a few pictures of Hannah by this gorgeous tree. I love fall colors.

The bride with all of the flower girls.

The end.

"And it's Also My Birthday"

2011-10-12T21:43:00.008-06:00

( Quote from Tangled, which you probably wouldn't know unless you've seen it a bajillion times like I have.)

Happy 5th birthday to this little girl!!!

We had a "Tangled" birthday party for Hannah last Saturday. She had about 15 little friends here. I tried to save money by making most of the decorations, so don't mind the homemade looking stuff. I think Hannah really liked it, and I suppose that's all that matters. I wish I could say that I came up with all these ideas, but I didn't. I found a lot of them on the internet.

Here was the cake. It's supposed to be Rapunzel's tower, but Hannah made sure I knew that it didn't look exactly like the tower in the movie. Hey, it was easy, and it somewhat represents a tower (despite the fact that it was a bit crooked). Good enough, I'd say.

Here are the goody bags for the kids.

The kids really liked drinking out of those fancy cups on the table.

I got this Pascal template from Disney's website to make Pascal blowers.

I also found these flags here on the internet, printed them out, and glued them to that yarn.

I was going to do a "Pin the Something..." on this Rapunzel but decided at the last minute not to, so it just became a decoration.

Onto the party....

The kids started off by coloring a Rapunzel and Flynn Rider picture.

Then we went outside and hit a Flynn Rider pinata with a frying pan. I think the kids liked doing this the best.

Then we played tug of war. It only lasted like a minute, though.
The birthday girl hitting the pinata.

Then we went inside and opened the presents (Hannah's favorite part). And we sang happy birthday and had cake and ice cream.

And here is Hannah on her real birthday (Monday) with a yummy cheesecake. Ok, yummy to me but maybe not so yummy to the kiddos. Why don't kids love cheesecake like I do?

I'd say she had a pretty good weekend. And to top it off, my mom and step-dad came into town on her real birthday. What can be better than having her grandparents here on her birthday (maybe having ALL of her grandparents here)? I can't believe my little girl is 5. Can time please stop? Seems like just yesterday I was kissing her little chubby cheeks for the first time.

Preschool, Bikes, and Haircuts

2011-09-05T13:54:00.007-06:00

Hannah is going to be the star of this post. She started preschool two weeks ago. Last year I did preschool with a few other ladies, but all of their kids have moved on to Kindergarten. Hannah was the only one with a fall birthday, and therefore, the only one who had to wait until next year to start kindergarten. I didn't know what to do for preschool this year, especially since I wasn't sure if we were going to be moving or not. Luckily, I got her into this preschool at the last minute. It's with a lady here in Provo who has been teaching preschool for years and years. It's called Hidden Treasures preschool, and Hannah got a shirt and a tote bag to show it off! She loves it so far. I'm so proud of her for being such a big girl.

She also learned how to ride her bike about two weeks ago without training wheels. I've tried a few times before to teach her, but she was always scared that she was going to fall off and scrape her knees. She hates getting hurt (and sometimes she acts like a baby when she does...... shhh don't tell her I told you that). I'm really proud of her for getting the hang of it so quickly this time and for being brave. Here's a video of her showing off her sweet skills.

And finally, she's been asking me for months now to get her hair cut really short. I didn't want to do it because she had such long, beautiful hair, but I caved in. It will be nice not to have to style it every day now. I think she looks really cute with it short. And she loves it.

Before:

During:

After:

Tomorrow she starts gymnastics! She is so excited!

Summer Time

2011-08-20T14:40:00.009-06:00

So yeah, this summer has been busy. So here's an update about what we've been doing.

Scott likes his new job. He's keeping really busy with it. It's a new company with only a few employees, and the good thing about it is that it's growing really quickly. This could be very good for us if Scott grows with the company. Some nights he has to stay longer because he's got so much work do. I'd say that's pretty exciting!

He also turned 30 at the end of July and was extremely surprised at the surprise party I threw him. I didn't get any pictures of it, but I invited as many people as could fit in our apartment and we ate J Dawgs hot dogs and had birthday pie. And then we all played Dance Central for awhile. It was fun watching the kids get their groove on.

Remember how a couple of posts ago I said that we were going to be moving soon? Well, that didn't happen. We were very close to moving out of our apartment, when we decided that it would be best to stay here and save a little money. And we bought a second car instead, so now I'm not stuck inside all day. So my dreams of living in a nice house and having a big backyard for the girls to play in is just going to have to wait until next year (hopefully). It's okay. My cousin recently moved right across from us and her daughter and Hannah have become attached at the hip. Things aren't so bad here, I suppose.

This summer, Bailey and Brynn sort of started potty training. They have both gone potty in the toilet, but after our trip to California, Brynn no longer wants anything to do with the potty. That trip messed my girls up in several ways. Bailey also will no longer go to nursery on Sundays. She used to do excellent but has decided that she needs her mom or dad there with her. She is terrified of it now.

My girls have also spent a lot of time getting into more mischief this summer. Pancake mix everywhere!! And this wasn't the first time. Actually I think this happened 3 different times. You'd think I would learn to put my pancake mix in a different spot where the girls can't reach it. I don't know what it is with my girls dunking their heads in stuff, but apparently they like it.

I wanted to post this fairy that Hannah drew because I thought she did such an amazing job with all the detail. She's my little artist.

Brynn is probably one of the funniest children I know. I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but she stuffed a bunch of toys down her pajamas and came out of Hannah's room looking like the marshmallow man. She thought it was pretty funny.

On to our trip to California.... ( I forgot my camera so I didn't get a ton of pictures. Only a few with my phone).

Luckily, I had my sister and her family drive down with me so I wasn't completely alone with three kids. Here are the kids in the salt flats here in Utah.

Bailey and Brynn were obsessed with these swings at my mom's house.

Hannah and my friend's little girl, Montana.

Bailey, getting into my mascara.

The forth of July was fun, but I missed being with Scott. It was nice to just watch fire works in front of my mom's house. I haven't done that since before I was married.

My momma and Brynn

Here we are in our red, white, and blue gear.

The girls turned 2 at the end of July! I can't believe how big they are getting. Here's Brynn on her real birthday.

And here are Bailey and Brynn eating their Dora and Boots cupcakes. We had a small party for them in California (mostly with just grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins). I kind of felt guilty about not doing a big birthday bash for them, but we did one last year. And I'll probably let them have a friend birthday party next year. Hannah was 3 when I first let her do a friend birthday party.

Here's Bailey on her real birthday.

We took the girls to Chuck E Cheeses for their birthday. I think they had fun!

After California, we had a Meyer family reunion (this is Scott's step dad's family). Hannah had fun making new friends.

This is a picture of the girls with their birthday presents. They are both obsessed with cats and dogs, and since I can't get them a real one right now, I thought this would be the next best thing. These are puppies that bark, walk, and whine.

And Hannah got a new big girl bed! I felt bad for her because she's been sleeping in that toddler bed since she was two. We were planning on getting her a big bed when we moved, but since that didn't happen, we decided now was the perfect time. And I spent several days painting that dresser. It looks good, but I think it was a mistake for several reasons that I will not list.

And finally, what's new with me? I dyed my hair red! Oh wait, you can't tell? Yeah, neither can I. Dumb dye in a box!! I wanted something different and this is what I got. Oh well. I'm going blond next time!! At least my husband looks hot with a beard.

I hope your summer was great! Love, my silly kids

Playing in the Rain

2011-08-18T15:52:00.001-06:00

This summer has been crazy busy, and I've been wanting to post about it for awhile now but my camera chip doesn't seem to be working well with my computer right now. Every time I try to upload pictures it freezes the whole computer. Boo. For now, you'll just have to deal with this cute video taken with my phone. It has rained a lot here in Utah this summer. This was taken a few weeks ago of my girls playing in the rain and in a puddle that they love to dunk their heads in. I would have never let Hannah do this when she was their age but I've become a bit more relaxed with these girls. Wanna dunk your head in some puddles? Go for it! Why don't you go ahead and play with some scissors while you're at it.

Sew Easy

2011-06-06T10:35:00.002-06:00

I wanted to make my living room different colors. I bought fabric to make teal and white pillows. After buying it, though, I decided that I didn't really like the fabric. Instead of returning it, I decided to attempt to make my girls some clothes. I've never made anything really hard before. Last year I tried to sew a dress using a pattern I bought, but you might as well have given the instructions to me in Chinese because I didn't understand a word of it. I'm a beginner and I don't know any of the sewing lingo. I've had to sort of teach myself how to sew, with a little help from my mom over the phone and tutorials online. The only things I've made are curtains, aprons, and pillows (which are all super easy). I really enjoy sewing, though, even if I'm not great at it. So anyway, I decided that I would make Brynn and Bailey some 4th of July dresses with the white fabric that I bought. Pillow case dresses are probably the easiest dresses you can make. So that's what I did. They look kind of like togas. I wish they weren't so loose.

Then I decided to try something harder for Hannah with the teal fabric. I was inspired by Cori's skirts to make one similar for Hannah. There are about a billion mess ups, but I think it turned out okay for my first try. Now that I kind of know what I'm doing, I think I will try to make one for myself.

I'll probably make Hannah a flower to match for her hair.

Anyway, I realize that these aren't much to brag about, but it was fun and I'm just the tiniest bit (or a huge bit....otherwise I wouldn't have posted this ;) proud of myself for learning how to do it.

A Job!

2011-06-04T01:11:00.004-06:00

Well, it's 1:13Am and I'm tired. But I'm making sure my daughter falls asleep before I go crawl back into bed. All of us have colds right now, and Brynn has never done well with sleeping while sick. She's always been my worst sleeper of the three girls. She's stubborn, but I don't mind taking care of her, even if I am a bit grumpy (Ok, a lot grumpy) when I don't get much sleep.

Anyway, I thought I would drop a quick update while I'm making sure she falls asleep. Scott finally got a job after 5 long, tearful months of searching!! He actually got it a couple of weeks ago, but things have been crazy around here and blogging has been the last thing on my mind. But we are staying in Utah for now. Neither one of us was expecting this, but we are grateful that he found something. We'll be moving in a few weeks so the commute isn't so long, so packing and cleaning will be taking up most of my time over the next few weeks.

Just thought I'd let you all know the good news while I have a minute. And now I'm going to bed.

Spring Pictures!

2011-04-28T13:52:00.005-06:00

Ever since Hannah was a baby I've been taking pictures of her in her spring/Easter dress. I'm not the best photographer, especially of little girls that won't cooperate very well. And I don't really know how to use our editing program either. But, I still think it's fun to take pictures of them and the place we went today was beautiful! I love all the gorgeous flowers. Too bad I didn't know this place existed until a couple of days ago. Anyway, here they are!

Below was the best one I got of all three of them. Hannah's got her "constipated" smile. Hannah has a beautiful smile, but sometimes when the camera comes out she pulls this smile. And Bailey is turning around, so you can't see her face very well.

Videos

2011-04-15T20:43:00.003-06:00

It's been awhile since I've posted videos, so here are a few. Brynn finally started walking all the time! Yes, she's 20 1/2 months and I've been wanting her to do it for about 6 months now, but I'm still really proud of her. So I caught a little bit of her on video and a little bit of Bailey counting to 10.

This next video is cute to me. Just watch.

Remember me telling you about how EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. the girls sit down to drink they spit? Well, here's proof. Little stinks!

The Fashion Bug

2011-04-04T20:46:00.003-06:00

Fashion Bug- Someone who looks at fashion blogs and really wants to get a new wardrobe.

Yes, that would be me. I've got the bug. It's contagious. The past three months I've been obsessed with looking at fashion blogs. My two favorites are Kendi (I found her blog through someone else) and Cori, who was one of my closest friends in high school. I love both of their styles and I've learned a lot about fashion.

Since I've had kids, shopping for myself has not been my top priority. When we do go shopping for me, I usually end up getting something for my girls instead because the stuff that I really like is super expensive. Plus, they're much cuter than I am. These blogs have really inspired me, though, to take care of myself. I know that when I feel like I look good, I feel better on the inside, which makes me more confident in my everyday happenings and makes me a better mom. I don't think it's a good thing to constantly be spending tons and tons of money on yourself, but I do think it's important to make yourself feel pretty, however that may be. One of the first things I'm going to do when Scott gets a job is go shopping for myself. Selfish? Maybe, but what can I say, I've got the Fashion Bug and I'm itching for a new wardrobe.

Hannah looked so cute today, I had to take some fashion pictures of her. She looked so grown up with her hair in a side bun (which looked way better this morning than it does in these pictures) and her new rose earrings.

Striped Cardigan- Children's Place, Boots and Dress- Old Navy, Leggings- Target,
Floral Embellishment- made by my friend Cori, Earrings- Icing.

Holidays

2011-04-03T21:44:00.010-06:00

I love holidays. It's so much fun planning them and seeing the faces of my three girls when something special is planned. On Valentine's Day, my girls woke up to balloons and streamers in the front room and kitchen. There doesn't seem to be anything more exciting to my girls than a balloon. Apparently they are the best things on earth. So for Valentine's they got helium balloons and mouth-blown up balloons.

The above was breakfast. Heart pancakes (which are not pictured). For dinner, we had a fancier decorated table with a table cloth and a pepperoni pizza in the shape of a heart, thanks to Papa Murphy's. Scott and I got to go out on a date the Saturday before to a BYU basketball game and then out to eat.

Each girl got some candy, a stuffed animal, a balloon, and a note naming off 10 things that Scott and I love about each of them. I hope to make that a tradition and keep them until they're adults.

Hannah got some chocolates and a rose from her friend Ammon. I have a feeling that this is the first of many that this child will be getting in her life time. I must admit that it was really cute to watch them exchange gifts. Hannah just colored him a picture, but Valentine's Day is a girl's holiday anyway, right?

On to St. Patty's day.....

(Pics are kind of out of order, but I'm too lazy to change it)

Shamrock pancakes for breakfast! Let's face it, you can pretty much do anything with a pancake. Egg pancakes for Easter?? I think so.

Leprechauns love rainbows, right? So we had a rainbow cake for dessert.

Corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes, rolls, and salad. Oh yeah, and a green drink (sparkling apple cider). I didn't dye the mashed potatoes green this year. I figured we had enough food coloring for the day with the cake, pancakes, and green drink. I wanted to get green St. Patty's day plates and cups but apparently St. Patty's day is not a big deal in Utah because I couldn't find them anywhere. Come on, people, where's your Irish pride?

Mmm..... food coloring and chemicals. Delish!
(Actually this cake was really delicious, if I do say so myself.)

Here's the leprechaun catcher that Hannah and I made. I think he really liked it.

Yup, he did like it, and we caught him. I think he especially liked the rainbow that Hannah painted for him on the inside of the box. He even left us some gold chocolate coins. We left him some rainbow Trix to eat so we could catch him. Unfortunately, he turned to stone before he could eat any of them. Don't worry, that night he turned back into himself and ran away. We'll see you again next year, Pat.

Hannah wore this same dress last year for St. Patty's Day. Apparently it's the only all green item she has. Good thing it still fits!

Hmmm....let's see. How many pictures does it take to get all three of my girls' eyes open? Forget all three of them smiling.

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3

Take 4

Take 5

Take 6

Take 7

Take 8

Take 9

Take 10

Take 11

Take 12

13!! It takes 13.

Apparently the flash on my camera is extra bright. Thank heavens for digital cameras. Otherwise I'd be going through a lot of film right now. Happy really belated holidays!

Mischief

2011-03-10T21:47:00.004-07:00

I must say that 18months to about 2 1/2 is one of my favorite ages so far with my girls. There seem to be pros and cons to every age (up to 4 years of age, because that's all I've experienced so far), but I like this stage because the things that my girls do are just so cute. It's so much fun to watch them learn new things everyday, and I love their little voices and the way they pronounce words. They aren't quite throwing huge tantrums yet and they don't talk back to me, so that's a plus as well. I love their big bellies and short little legs. I could just kiss them all day long.

One thing I don't like about this stage is all the mischief they get into. Hannah didn't get into a ton of mischief when she was this age. She had her go to mischievous activities, like playing in the toilet or with the buttons on the dvd players, but she was never into climbing or drawing on herself or coloring things she wasn't supposed to color. She always seemed mature for her age, and she still does. Bailey and Brynn, however, do like to climb and color on things, including themselves. They've ripped or colored on about half of our kid books. Sometimes they feed off of each others mischief, and they help each other. Another part about this age I don't particularly like is that they don't seem to understand the word "NO!" Maybe they understand it, but they choose not to obey it. In fact, they seem to think it's funny to do the opposite of what I tell them. They are still cute, though, and I have to laugh at them sometimes. Like I said, even if they do get into everything, this is still one of my favorite stages.

This bookshelf is one of their favorite places to hang out.

Brynn loves to wrestle. She likes to jump on ALL of our backs if she can.

Bailey doesn't like it so much.

Bailey likes to put this basket over her head and walk. She thinks it's pretty funny.

Just another day in the Sprague family.

Bailey loves to jump on Hannah's bed.

And Brynn loves to climb onto Hannah's dollhouse. Maybe she wants to be doll?

This one they seemed to plan out together. Sneaky little girls.

Yup, those are little girl made mustaches.

I can't wait for them to figure out what scissors can do.

Earrings

2011-02-19T21:28:00.004-07:00

Hannah has been begging us to get her ears pierced for awhile now. I wasn't too excited about the idea because I thought she was too young. "But some of my friends have their ears pierced," she'd re butte. (She's exceptionally good at rebuttals.) I hate it when that happens. You say they are too young to do this and that but so and so does it, so we must do it as well. My response is usually that our family does things different than another family, but I couldn't find a good reason why not to let her get her ears pierced except for the fact that I just didn't want her to.

Maybe it was my own experience that scared me a bit. I couldn't get my ears pierced until I was 8. I have sensitive ears, so naturally they decided to get infected and close up. I had to get them re-pierced a couple of years later. Then in high school I got a second set of piercings in my ears and a third piercing in the upper part of my right ear. So painful. That last one closed up a few months after I got it because I couldn't handle it anymore. I only wear one set of earrings now, and sometimes I have to take them off if I've worn them too long because my ears start to hurt.

So my experience with earrings has not been the best, but I love to wear cute earrings as long as they don't kill my ears. I told Hannah that maybe she could get them for her fifth birthday. Then with all the whining and attitude that I've been getting from her little 4 years old personality, I told her that if she could go 7 days without whining, throwing a tantrum, and being disobedient that I would let her get her ears pierced now. She had to prove to me that she was old enough to get her ears pierced. I actually wasn't expecting her to be able to do it. It seems almost impossible for a 4 year old to be that good for that long. It took her two weeks to do it, but she did it. She was very good for those 7 days, and I am very proud of her for being such a good girl. I don't expect her to be perfect, but I do expect the attitude and whining to go down a notch after this little experiment. (I'm making it sound like she is a naughty little girl, when in fact, she's usually a good girl. Four year olds can be difficult sometimes, though, right?)

So today she got her ears pierced. She was very tough.

Some Firsts!

2011-02-17T22:39:00.003-07:00

Here are some videos of a couple of firsts for the girls. One of Bailey's first sentences is seen in this video.

And last week, Brynn took her first steps!! I'm so proud of her. She's getting better and better each day, so I'm thinking in the next month or so she'll be walking all the time.

Please excuse the messy house. It's always the messiest right before bed time/right after dinner. I like to call that time of the day, "The perfect storm."

My 18 month stinkers-

2011-02-03T19:25:00.005-07:00

I can't believe these little cuties are already 18 months. Man, it goes by so quickly. Last week was their first week in nursery. They both did well, but I was in there with them the whole time, so I guess we'll see how this week goes without me.

For some reason, all three of my girls have been late walkers. I'm not quite sure why that is. Both Scott and I walked before all of our girls did, so I don't know if it's genetic. Hannah didn't walk until 16 months. I remember thinking that she was pretty late because all of her friends were already walking. I thought for sure my next baby would walk sooner. That was not the case. Bailey started walking at 16 1/2 months (right before Christmas). She's now practically running everywhere she goes. Brynn, on the other hand, is still not walking. I will speak on that a little later. Here's a little bit about each child:

Bailey-

weight- 23 lbs- 31%
height- 30.5 inches-19%

Just this past month Bailey probably tripled the amount of words that she knew. She can repeat almost anything we say in her own little Bailey pronunciation. She's starting to put two and three words together as well. She loves to say "Hello" whenever someone walks in the room. She loves to play bite us on the cheeks, throw away her own diapers, and she thinks it's hilarious when she closes her eyes while walking. She also loves closing doors on Brynn's face and stealing toys. If she doesn't get her way, she usually throws a monstrous tantrum, but only for a few seconds. She's usually a very pleasant child to be around. She's also not as much of a "Momma's girl" as she used to be, which I'm grateful for. Now that she can walk, she doesn't need me to hold her all the time like she used to. She loves to burp and toot at the dinner table. She thinks it's pretty hilarious. She also made up her own little song that goes, "Toot, toot, ahhhh......toot, toot, ahhhh" over and over again. Brynn also likes to sing that song now too. And finally one of her favorite things to do (that she learned from Brynn) is to spit out her water or milk. Both girls do this at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's very subtle, too, so you don't notice it sometimes when they're doing it. They will take a sip of their drinks and just out of the tiniest opening in their mouths, they will let the liquid drip until it goes all the way down their chests and into their diapers. Even though it irritates me, sometimes I can't help but laugh at them because they think it's funny.

Brynn-

weight: 21 lbs 13 oz- 15th %
height: 30.5 inches- 19th %

As I mentioned before, Brynn is still not walking. I knew she was going to be a late walker since she was about 9 months old. She's been late with almost all of her gross motor skills. She didn't sit up until she was 9 months, didn't scoot until 11 1/2 months, and didn't start pulling herself up to a standing position and walking along furniture until about 15 months. Now she can walk with her walker and she can stand up in the middle of a room by herself, but not for long. She's also been into climbing on top of things lately. This morning I left the dryer door open and found her sitting on top of it a few minutes later. The doctor said today that he wasn't worried about her because she has been consistently progressing. He said that he thinks she's so late because she's a twin. That happens more often with twins than with singletons, I guess. Maybe Bailey stole most of the nutrients in the womb or something? However, he suggested that we have someone come out to look at her, just in case something is wrong. So that is what we will do. Everything else about her is normal. She does talk, but not nearly as much as Bailey does. She loves doing hand signs, though, and loves to sing and dance. Her favorite word is probably, "this." She points to everything and says, "this" when she wants it. She also loves to give strangers the crusty look. Don't get fooled by that look, though. She's a very funny little girl and she actually laughs a ton. Her laugh is very contagious.

I love the fact that these girls are finally starting to play with each other. The other day I was actually able to do my makeup and hair without an interruption. Usually I get interrupted by Brynn screaming because Bailey took away a toy from her or Bailey slammed the door on her face. When Brynn does decide to walk, I think there will be more bullying coming from her end. Unfortunately she's the underdog right now. But anyway, it's exciting to get a few minutes to myself these days!

Just in case....

2011-01-29T21:22:00.003-07:00

In case you didn't already see this on Facebook, Scott got his diploma in the mail this week! WOO HOO!! It means it's definitely official that he's graduated! A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into this little piece of paper. Okay, maybe not a lot of blood and sweat, but I would say tears, money, sacrifice, hard work, etc. went into it.

We don't know yet if he'll be walking in April. I guess it just depends on where we are then. So graduation gifts, cards, or hugs will now be accepted by all. :-)

I have a dream....

2011-01-20T21:30:00.006-07:00

I thought it was pretty fitting to title this post what I did since it was Martin Luther King Jr. day on Monday. I do have a dream. I've had it for about 7 years now. My dream, however, is a bit more selfish than Martin Luther King's dream.

I want to live in a house!!!

My husband and I have been married for almost 7 years now (WOW- I can't believe it's been that long). In those 7 years, one of us has always been going to school and we've always lived in apartments. Not just any apartments, but apartments that are generally in the basement and are really dark and a little depressing. I want a house with big windows for the sun to shine in, a big backyard for my girls to play in, more than one bathroom, and enough room to fit all of our furniture and toys in. And while I'm naming off things that I want, I wouldn't mind granite counter tops, a jetted tub in my bathroom, and stainless steel appliances.

How disgusting and selfish am I? So many people live in houses the size of tents (especially in places like Africa), and I am dreaming of a huge house with all these extra "things" that I probably don't need. However, now that my husband is done with school, I can almost taste us living in a new house (although I'm sure it won't have many of these things in it.....maybe sometime in the future). It's right there on the tip of my tongue and it tastes delicious--maybe like a piece of hot pizza oozing with cheese, pepperoni, and sausage or a chewy but soft chocolate chip cookie. Or maybe like a juicy steak with A1 and cheesy potatoes, a Cafe Rio pork salad, or banana cream pie with whip cream on it.......or pretty much anything with whip cream on it. Sorry for the food references, but I'm currently on a diet and these things sound delicious to me right now.

Anyway, one of the things I absolutely love to do when my husband gets an interview is look for houses online. I could look for hours and I usually find a house that I love and that I picture my girls running around in.

One of my FAVORITE places to look for a house was in a town in Idaho, called Sandpoint. My husband had an interview there in December. When I first heard the job was in Idaho, my first thought was, "No thanks." I went to BYU Idaho for a couple of semesters and one of my worst memories there was walking to class at 6:30AM, uphill, pitch black, and absolutely freezing with my friend on crutches whose ankle was broken from slipping on the ice. Idaho is COLD. However, Sandpoint is northern Idaho, and from the pictures I googled it looks absolutely breathtaking.....but probably still freezing. It's right on a crystal clear lake with huge houses that each have their own personal boat dock. I didn't even care that there are only 8000 people in the town and that the nearest mall was about an hour and a half away. I found the PERFECT house and I wanted to move there.

Want to see it? Here are some pictures:

It has its own little river in the backyard and a canoeing dock. Seriously, its own river?? And look at how big those windows are in the family room......oh, and that beautiful stone fireplace. Could this house get anymore amazing? I was drooling over it. I could picture us going canoeing everyday and eating dinner and sipping on hot chocolate on that lovely little table on the deck. Okay, so maybe the river would be a bit dangerous for my little ones, but still, it's practically perfect in every way. Unfortunately, the company Scott interviewed with said they were going through a "hiring freeze" and would call him again in February. Scott was very happy about this. He didn't want to move to Idaho. I, on the other hand, was a bit sad. I suppose it could still work out, but we're hoping something else will come up soon.

So yes, maybe I am a bit selfish for wanting my family to live in a nice house, but I can dream, right? Someday......

Christmas

2011-01-06T20:08:00.008-07:00

I thought this year for Christmas that we were going to be alone for the first time. I was kind of sad about that, but I'm glad that we ended up having most of our family in town for the holidays, which was so much fun.

Also, the day after Thanksgiving I got to see my friend Maren, who I haven't seen for two years. She and I grew up together and were best friends for the longest time. It was so fun to see her and her sweet family. We also got to see a little bit of the lights at temple square with her. I say "a little bit" because my kids were such monsters the entire time we were there, so we had to leave earlier than expected.

I really wanted to get a good family picture while we were there, but it didn't happen. This one is weird. Brynn wouldn't keep her head straight.

Now let's move forward a bit to Christmas Eve. My girls all got to open up a present, which were PJs. Brynn's face is funny in this picture. This is the crusty look she likes to give these days.

We thought that Santa would want something different than chocolate chip or sugar cookies this year, so we went with these snowman cookies instead. Hannah liked decorating them with Grandma Julia (who was in town with us for Christmas).

I think Santa liked them, even if they were a little big and disgusting after the first three bites.

We also left some carrots for his reindeer.

Christmas morning before all the presents were opened

Bailey and Brynn didn't really care about their presents. They just wanted candy canes.

I made these aprons for my mother-in-law and Hannah.

Such a cute picture of Grandma and Hannah.

Playing with all their sweet new toys

Bailey loves kissing her pet horse. We named it Maximus after the horse in Tangled. By the way, Hannah, Grandma, and I saw that movie on Christmas day. I've always wanted to see a movie before on Christmas but never have. I LOVED that movie. I thought it was the best one Disney has made in awhile (not including Disney/Pixar films).

Hannah got this kitchen

and this dollhouse for Christmas.

Here's Hannah's little Nativity Graham cracker house.

The day after my mother-in-law left, my father-in-law came into town. Hannah loved doing puzzles with him almost the entire time he was here.

I also got to see my mom and all of my sisters for Christmas (but not on Christmas day). I love spending time with family during this season. I'm grateful for all of the Christmas presents we received this year and all the presents we were able to give. I already can't wait for Christmas next year. Here's hoping Scott will have a job by then.

Pictures from the past month

2011-01-05T22:08:00.005-07:00

Poor baby fell asleep like this with her throw up bowl. She never falls asleep on the couch.

Hannah loves spinning the girls around in our office chair. I love Brynn's face in this one.

And this one...

Again, poor child falls asleep on the couch because of that dang tummy bug.

Want your kids to help out around the house? Hannah loves sliding on her knees in her swimsuit while washing the kitchen floor (just like I did as a kid). Fun for her, and it gets a little bit of work done for me.

Giving kisses

And more kisses.

It snowed, and Hannah looks cute in this picture.

I love it when Hannah leaves cute things on our pillows, like this drawing of Scott.

Cute pictures of Bailey and Brynn by the window.

Visiting Santa! I knew Bailey would be terrified of him.

And it snowed again....a lot.

Our snowwoman.

There was even enough snow to make a snow slide. I didn't make this...my neighbor did, but Hannah had fun sliding down it.

The Letter K

2011-01-05T20:41:00.006-07:00

I was trying to decide if I should make one ginormous post and write about everything we've done or break it up. I think I'll break it up, so we'll start with preschool. Again, feel free to steal any of these ideas if you'd like.

I had the letter K this time, and I was trying to come up with something we could talk about for most of the two hours, but kangaroos and koalas just weren't cutting it for me. I couldn't find a lot of activities to do with those things, so I chose to do kings and kingdoms (and queens for the girls). I read a book about kings, castles, armies, and kingdoms. I bought sand from Home Depot and had the kids find jewels in the sand so they could glue them on their crowns.

They like finding things, so I knew that would be fun for them. After they found jewels and glued them on their crowns, they made sand castles and had little army men and flags to play with so they could build a kingdom.

Then we had kids "pass the king," which they passed the king around in a circle and as soon as the music ended, whoever had the king got to sit in the king's chair with the king's staff and control the music.

I also had them color our kingdom's banner and hang it on top of the castle. We named our kingdom "Kingdom." Such creative kids. ;)

After that, the kids practiced writing Ks and colored a king.

Then I read a story called "Tea For Ruby," about a girl who's supposed to have tea with the queen, but the queen ends up being her grandma, so they have a tea party at her grandma's house. So, we had a tea party.

These cookies aren't the cutest, but the kids liked them. Crowns and castles....delicious!

We also had cheese, turkey, crackers, and chocolate milk. I let them pour their own "tea" into their tea cups. They loved this!

I wish I had gotten pictures of the second day, but we mostly just talked about fire safety and practiced stop, drop, and roll. We also made some really cute Christmas crafts. The end.

Busy Busy Busy

2011-01-04T22:11:00.004-07:00

Whew! It feels like it's been forever since my last post. I think a month and a half is the longest I've ever gone without writing on this thing. December was a very busy month for us. The girls were all sick for almost two months off and on with a tummy bug that caused horrible diarrhea and vomiting. Sorry if that's too much info, but it was so ridiculous. I was really worried that something serious was causing my girls to be sick. They went the dr.s several times to be checked and Hannah got tested for many things and almost got her tummy x-rayed because she was throwing up for so long, but we chose not to do it. The doctor told us that he thought it was just a bunch of different viruses, which I know were going around here. I think it's finally over! We haven't had throw up or diarrhea for about 3 weeks now.

I also spent many nights planning for preschool again. I think I over-plan for those kinds of things because I spend hours upon hours planning and shopping for preschool. Again, thank goodness it's not my day job, even if I do enjoy it. I also spent many hours sewing Christmas presents and making Christmas bears, doing Christmas shopping, etc, etc. So, you can see why I was kind of busy, right? Sorry that no one got Christmas cards this year from us. I always send out Christmas cards, but we literally did not have a minute to take a good family picture this year. But thank you to those of you who sent us Christmas cards!

Not only was I busy, but my husband was also extremely busy. I felt like a single mother because when he was home from work or school, he was studying for his final exams. But I must say that I am SO proud of him, because he FINALLY FINISHED SCHOOL!!!!! He has graduated, and I can't wait to get that certificate in the mail to make it official. So not only was he studying for his finals this past month, but he was also applying tons for jobs and had a couple of interviews in between there. We are still looking for a job but hope that something good will come our way soon. If you know of any statistician or analyst jobs in your area, please let us know.

Okay, I was going to post pictures tonight, but I'm tired. This mostly just turned out to be a post of how busy we've been. Sorry about that. I will post some pictures this week, though, of what we've been up to. Nighty night!

Fall Pictures

2010-11-15T20:16:00.005-07:00

I took some fall pictures of the girls today, and I wanted to share a few. All three of my girls have had serious tummy issues over the past few weeks. In fact Hannah's in her room probably puking as I write this (which I didn't know she was still sick until after I took these pictures). Poor thing. So, I'd also like to write a little bit about each girl and their current personalities, for my own record, and for a tribute to them and what they've had to go through for the past few weeks.

HANNAH LEA

Hannah is such a good little girl. She's smart, funny, artistically talented, and loves being a mommy to anyone who will listen. The only trouble we usually have with her is her constant whining. Scott even told her if she could go a whole day without whining, he'd take her to Pirate Island. She has yet to do it, but she's come close. She also loves playing with friends. The first thing she asks every time we come home from picking Dad up at school is if she can knock on her friend Ammon's door and play with him. She loves coloring and doing art crafts and often takes her time doing it because she's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to that. She still loves asking question after question about anything and everything. Sometimes I think she loves hearing herself talk. She's really been into knock knock jokes lately. Her favorite one is "Knock Knock." "Who's there?" "Interrupting Cow." And then before you can say, "Interrupting cow who?" She yells, "MOOO!!" at the top of her lungs and laughs hysterically. She loves babies and loves to pinch their cheeks and necks. She's usually a great little helper around the house, except when it comes to cleaning her room.

BAILEY MARIE

Out of all three of my girls, Bailey is my biggest "Mama's Girl." She always wants me to hold her, and she often won't let anyone else do it unless I'm not in the room. It's flattering but can get a little difficult considering that fact that I've got three kids who are all in need of my attention. She follows me where ever I go throughout the house and pulls on my pants until I pick her up. She's also my best sleeper, and my little teddy bear. I could just kiss those delicious cheeks all day long. She loves to eat food off the ground, and she loves climbing out of her highchair and onto the table. It doesn't matter how tight I make her highchair straps, she still manages to get herself out of them. She has a favorite book that she brings to me everyday and wants me to read to her. She also loves walking around with her walker and bonking into things. She's a very picky eater, and she won't touch any vegetables that I put in front of her. Thank goodness she loves fruit. She loves doing things she's not supposed to do, like go under the office desk and pull on all the wires. She thinks it's pretty funny. Her little Bailey grin melts my heart, though, so I can't get too mad at her.

BRYNN ELIZABETH

Brynn loves life. In fact, she loves it so much that she doesn't want to miss a single thing. She often has trouble falling asleep, even when she's exhausted because she loves to be where the party is. She laughs at the silliest things. Tonight Bailey tooted really loud, and Brynn thought it was the funniest thing in the world. She loves trees and flowers and laughs any time she sees them. Today she was playing in the leaves and kept throwing them on herself and she thought it was so funny. Hearing her little laugh always brightens my day. She's usually pretty good about playing by herself. She likes to be in Hannah's room and play with her toys. Some of her favorite things to play with are rubber bands, Polly Pocket shoes, my wedding ring, and all other types of jewelry. Her favorite thing in the whole world, though, are balls. She LOVES them, and she can spot a ball from a mile away. She also loves to bite, as I've mentioned before, and pinch and pull hair. All three of my girls love music and they love to sing!

Here are few of my favorite pictures from today:

Dance Recital

2010-11-11T22:04:00.005-07:00

Hannah's dance class is over. She liked it, but I think she'd rather do gymnastics. Her dance class was right next to a gymnastics class and I would often find her staring at the kids in gymnastics. She keeps asking me when she'll get to do gymnastics again, so it looks like that's what we'll be putting her in next time.

Today was her little recital. The girls are so cute, and they actually did really well for being so young, but I couldn't help laughing just a bit at their dance. :-)

Here she is with her teacher.

The Letter R

2010-11-09T19:33:00.004-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we had preschool twice last week at my house. It was a bit crazy, but we made it through. I had been preparing for this for about a month. I went to at least 10 different stores trying to find what I needed for preschool and for some reason I couldn't find little toy alligators ANYWHERE!! I looked at Dollar Tree, Walmart, Target, K-Mart, two party stores, Honks dollar, and Family Dollar. I realize that's only 8 stores that I just named off when I just said I went to at least 10, but I also went to other stores to get fabric and felt. Anyway, it was very frustrating. So we went without the toy alligators.

Most of these ideas came from my sister, and you are welcome to use any of them to teach preschool or just to teach your little ones if you want.

The first day we learned about reptiles. We started off by talking about what makes a reptile a reptile. I told them that most reptiles hatch from eggs, so we played a little game and had Easter eggs with little toy reptiles in them. I played some music and whoever the music stopped on got to open an egg and reveal the reptile (This is where it would have been nice to have a toy alligator....grrrrrr). After we did that, I told them that we were going to focus on only three of these reptiles: turtles, snakes, and alligators. I read them books about all three. I let them paint turtles out of paper bowls. We played "count the number of bugs a turtle can eat" by telling the kids a number and having them count out that many toy bugs. We also learned a new song, "I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor," and I had the kids get inside a big snake that I made. They loved that game! I also had them pretend like they were in a swamp and someone was "it" (who also carried a stuffed alligator that I bought at DI) and they had to tag each other. The kids had so much fun playing these games and doing their turtle craft.

Here's the boa constrictor

The turtle bowls

The kids painting their turtles

The next day we learned about rainbows. I had the kids go outside with me, and we made a rainbow with a glass jar, water, and the sun. I also taped a bunch of rainbows around our complex and had the kids find them. They loved catching rainbows! Then we read some books about rainbows and I had the kids do 4 different rainbow crafts: a rainbow kite, a rainbow bracelet made out of Fruit Loops, a "Things I love..." page with pictures of things they loved glued onto a rainbow, and a page where they could trace the letter R. Then we did a rainbow experiment where we put food coloring into a bowl of milk and added a drop of dish soap. Finally, we went outside and played with our rainbow kites.

Here's our "Rainbow Room," where all the crafts were done.

The rainbow kite

Hannah and Maille at the craft table

The rainbow treats

And the rainbow fruit

I wish I had gotten pictures of everything, but it was just impossible. If I turned my back for one second on these kids I would end up losing their attention for awhile and someone would start wrestling someone else. I think the kids had fun, and I had a lot of fun planning for these two preschool days, but let's just say I'm glad that being a preschool teacher is not my day job.

Now I have to start thinking about the letter K for December. Hmmmmm......

Halloween

2010-11-04T19:12:00.005-06:00

Wow! Do I really have absolutely nothing to do tonight besides watching The Office and fold laundry? It's a miracle! I feel like I've been so busy every night for the past two months. In the month of September my girls were really sick and teething, so just about every other night one of them was waking up after bed time. They are finally back to their normal schedules (although Bailey is still sick, but this time with tummy issues....I'm wondering if she's lactose intolerant but praying that it's just a bug). Anyway, then the month of October I was busy every night preparing for my turn to teach preschool and preparing for Disneyland and preparing for Halloween. Just about every single night I was out shopping, or cutting, or coloring, or sewing something. So here I am with not much to do and updating the blog about Halloween.

We had a great Halloween this year. Hannah wanted to be Belle, her current favorite princess. Bailey and Brynn were both Minnie Mouse. It's fun to dress them the same, but I think next year I'll let them be something different from each other. Scott and I were Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

Here in Utah County, when Halloween falls on a Sunday, every one goes trick or treating on Saturday. I'm guessing because they want to keep the Sabbath Day Holy?? I don't really know if trick or treating counts as breaking the Sabbath, but either way I'm fine with doing it on Saturday. It was really cold, though, and we had to quickly go trick or treating when we got a short break in the horrible rain storm. We were only out for about 40 minutes before Hannah decided she was cold and wanted to go home to eat her candy.

Before Halloween, Hannah carved her own pumpkin. She got a little bit of help from Scott, but she carved most of it herself.

Brynn's and Bailey's pumpkins are below....

Since we didn't really celebrate Halloween on Sunday, I thought we should at least have a spooky dinner. We invited Scott's cousin and his wife over to eat with us.

We had brain melon, carrot eye balls, cheese stick fingers, and black witches punch with a deformed looking hand in it.

Best of all, though, we had copy cat J Dawgs hot dogs (a yummy little restaurant here that serves pretty much the best hot dogs I've ever had) with all of this stuff . I was going to do mummy dogs but our oven wasn't working.

And we had dirt cups for dessert....

I hope you all had a great Halloween!

2010-10-30T16:48:00.002-06:00

I missed these girls while we were gone. They're so stinkin' cute.

Please excuse the muffled voice. I was sitting right next to a vent.

Disneyland!

2010-10-27T22:13:00.010-06:00

Okay, I have a lot of videos and pictures, so bare with me here. We took Hannah to Disneyland for her birthday, and we had a blast! It was a looooong car ride, though. We first took Bailey and Brynn to my sister's house in Arizona. It was a beautiful car ride there. We went over a canyon and saw lots of beautiful fall trees. The only problem was that we were on a one lane road almost the entire time and it was really windy (Is that how you spell that? I guess it can be used as two different words). Hannah gets car sick so she threw up in the car. Poor baby. The girls were really fussy, too, so that didn't help. We finally made it to my sister's and then left the next day for Anaheim. That trip was a bit easier since Hannah just played or watched a DVD the whole time, but it was pouring rain for most of the trip. We got to our hotel and went out with some friends for dinner who live there. The next day it was off to Disneyland!! So here are the pics and videos.......

Here we are walking to the entrance on the first day!

Later that day we met up with our friend, Wendi, and her two kiddos. It was so fun to see them. Hannah misses her friend, Jill, so much.

It's definitely a small world

Hannah and Jill

Wendi and I watching the kids play in Toon Town

The Tea Cups

The next day, Hannah insisted on getting her face painted. She had people staring at her and commenting all day. I think she felt special!

Us on the ferris wheel

Meeting the characters:

This next video was Hannah's first time meeting a princess. She was star struck. I don't think she said more than 2 words and she forgot how old she is.

Dance Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hannah got a balloon that she took a picture of. Unfortunately, it popped on our way back to my sister's house. Scared the crap out of Scott and me because it was midnight when it happened. We thought our tire blew, but luckily it was just the balloon.

Hannah's all time favorite ride.......THE MATTERHORN! We went on it 4 times.

The ride home was horrible as well. We could tell our brakes were going out by the awful grinding noise that occurred every time we hit the brakes. Luckily we made it to my sister's, but we had to stay there an extra day to get them fixed. Overall, though, I'd do it again in a heart beat. I can't wait to take Bailey and Brynn some day!

The Birthday Girl!

2010-10-13T22:15:00.006-06:00

Hannah turned 4 on Sunday! FOUR!! I can't believe how fast this child has grown up. I love this child to death, but I'm crossing my fingers that this year will be a little bit easier than last, and that the whining and tantrum throwing will start to cease.

Last year she was into Ariel, this year it was Belle. She wanted basically the same cake that she had last year, but with Belle instead of Ariel.

The next day, she tried on her new nails that she got as a present. So cute!

Her birthday was on a Sunday and we chose not to go out because we wanted to keep the Sabbath Day Holy, but we did go out the night before, and I surprised her by having her cousin spend the night on Saturday night. If you've been checking my blog for the past three years, then these next pictures will be no surprise to you. We've gone to Hee Haw Farms every October since Hannah was a baby. So this is where we took her on Saturday before we picked up her cousin. I really like this place for little kids. They even had a corn maze this year that we tried to get through, but after about a half hour, we decided to go back to the start because it was taking too long to find the finish, and I was starting to get anxiety. I didn't get a ton of pictures this year, but I did get some videos. I will post more videos of this tomorrow and add it to this blog if you want to watch them.

The Corn Box:

Hannah Then:

Hannah Now:

Us on the hay ride:

A couple of videos from Hee Haw Farms:

My Dancing Queen

2010-10-07T11:13:00.002-06:00

Hannah started a ballet class on Tuesday, which she loves to far. They didn't learn a single dance step (in fact, they spent half the class stretching), but I think Mr. Mike was trying to teach them how to follow directions and how to find rhythm. It's only a 5 week long class, but I'm trying to see what Hannah is interested in. She took a tumbling class in the summer, which she also loved. I guess we'll see which one she likes better, so I know what to put her in in the future.

My mom bought this adorable tutu for Hannah's birthday. She's lucky because she's gotten to open two of her presents early (her bike and now this).

She's not too excited about having a boy teacher, but she's just going to have to deal with it.

I think she's the only brunette in the entire class.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to watching her over the next few weeks. Maybe she'll fulfill my dream (right after being a stay at home mother, of course) of becoming a dancer.

Another Favorite!

2010-10-04T21:18:00.005-06:00

I feel like Oprah here giving away a few of my favorite things (with the whole peanut butter playdough and sausage casserole too). This is currently my favorite youtube video. Not that I'm on youtube that much, but I listen to this song almost everyday and my girls all love it too. I almost like it better than the original songs. I think this guy is really amazing but kind of cheesy in some of his videos. I guess he'll be on Ellen on Thursday, so you know what I'll be watching!

Hannah's Sweet New Ride

2010-09-30T21:48:00.004-06:00

Hannah's been begging for a bike lately, especially since her friend Ammon just got a new one. She asked her grandma for one for her birthday. Ask Grandma, and you will receive. I think I want one just like it!

And because these girls are so cute, I just had to take pictures of them while I was getting a couple of Hannah riding her bike.

My Christmas present, 3 months early

2010-09-28T23:07:00.005-06:00

Do you remember when video cameras used to look like this 20 or so years ago?? One of my best friends growing up had a video camera like this that carried VHS tapes. This thing was huge and bulky to carry around. I realize that they still have cameras this big and even bigger for movies, but personal video cameras have changed quite a bit.

Meet my new video camera (which also happens to be my Christmas present that I got a bit early so we could take it to Disneyland with us).
It's the size of a cell phone, and there are no tapes involved. There's a tiny chip that is placed on the side that stores all of my videos. I love modern technology! If there's one piece of electronic equipment that I don't mind spending money on, it's cameras. Pictures of my kids are important to me, because that is what I will have left to look at when I'm old and gray and missing my tiny ones. But anyway, it also takes still camera shots, but as you can tell from my previous posts with blurry pictures, it doesn't take the best pictures. In fact, seeing blurry pictures now is like someone screeching their nails across a chalk board (SO ANNOYING) to me. I'm used to my nice Nikon camera and its perfectly clear pictures, but unfortunately I can't lug that thing with me everywhere because it's huge. So this will be a nice substitution for now, until I can get a video camera and a still camera in one that has awesome pictures and video. This thing takes awesome videos, and it's even water proof for all those times I will be scuba diving in the Great Salt Lake. That was a joke. Won't be doing that anytime soon, but it might be fun to take under water next year when Hannah really learns to swim well.

I wanted to test out my new camera, so here are a couple of videos of the girls.

Why don't babies ever do what you want them to do on camera? Oh well, they're still adorable.

I think I've dealt with enough poop......

2010-09-26T22:50:00.003-06:00

to last me a life time. Want to hear my FIVE (yup five) stories of poop that I've had to deal with in the past few weeks? If you have a queasy stomach, don't read on.

In case my girls read this when they're older, I don't want them to be embarrassed, so I will just use the letter B to represent the baby. This way, you don't know which one it is. It could be one or both of them that I'm talking about.

Story #1:

This was the first incident, which also happened to be the reason behind writing the "Chaos" post that I wrote a little while ago. So B and Hannah are taking a bath together. B poops in the tub (pretty typical thing to do as a baby). Hannah starts freaking out. I pull Hannah out first because she's freaking out that she's going to get poop on her. I turn around to get B, and I'm too late. She's stuck a piece of poop in her mouth. I grab her, rush her to the sink and start rinsing out the poop from her mouth. It's all over my hand and I'm about to barf because it stinks and it was just in my baby's mouth.

Story #2:

I'm changing B's poop diaper when Hannah slams the bedroom door on the other B, which then makes her wooden door sign fall off and land on B. B is crying, so I run over to her to make sure she's not hurt. I forgot that I had already unfastened B's diaper, so when I come back to her to finish changing her diaper, she's playing with the poop and has it smeared on her face and hands.

Story #3:

I pick up B, only to realize that she has poop squirting out of her diaper and onto the floor. Then the poop squirts out even more and smears onto my shirt.

Story #4:

I take B out of the tub to get her dressed. I leave her (naked) to get the other B out of the tub. When I come back in the room, B is under her crib. She comes out and I put a diaper on her. I smell poop, but I'm not sure where it's coming from because her diaper is clean. I just put it on, for crying out loud. I look under her crib, and there lay a nice sized turd.

Story #5:

Hannah goes poop in the toilet. I helped her wipe her buns, but both of us forgot to flush it. You can imagine where this story is going, right? So, while I'm getting B dressed, the other B is in the bathroom. I go find her, and of course she is twirling the poop around in the toilet like she's mixing some sort of turd stew.

Reading these stories actually makes me laugh now, but while I'm going through it, I am so grossed out. And I'm a little worried that my kids are going to get worms or something. Do you see why my life is chaos? Shame on me for letting this happen FIVE times.

And here's one of my favorite quotes by our dear old President Bush that goes along with this.....

preschool

2010-09-22T20:56:00.004-06:00

The past couple of weeks have not been my favorite. Back in August, Hannah's two best girls friends moved away. I felt really bad for her because I know that she missed her friends. Every once in awhile she would say to me, "Mom, I don't have any friends," with a really sad face. She does have friends. She's got her little friends at church and she's got a ton of boys that live near us that she plays with. She hasn't had a girlfriend over in awhile to play Barbies with, though. I was looking forward to her going to preschool and making some new friends. The preschool that I was trying to get her into didn't get back to me until 2 1/2 weeks into September (I was really annoyed with them). She didn't get into that preschool because there were too many kids that signed up, and I was really bummed. I had even bought her a back to school present and new school clothes. Then on top of being annoyed with that, all of my kids have been sick for the past 3 weeks and all three of them got ear infections this week (So yup, been to the doctor 3 times in a week and I may need to go again). The babies also got some sort of eye infection, which has now been passed to me. So we've all been a bit grumpy over here.

Anyway, there are a few women from church who are doing a preschool, which is what we did last winter. I was afraid that it was too late for Hannah to add to the bunch since they started two and half weeks ago, but the women were so kind to let her join.

She's all over her sickness, and today was her first day of preschool. She had a great time, and she loved the present that I got her (a necklace and matching ring). She's even sleeping with them tonight. Besides the fact that my babies are still sick and my eye hurts, today was a great day.

The Bangs Family

2010-09-19T22:11:00.007-06:00

Last week I cut Bailey's bangs. She has the perfect hair for bangs because it's straight and it grows forward. Then yesterday, Hannah and I also got our bangs cut. I was really nervous because I haven't had bangs like this since I was 9 years old. At first, I hated it. It's growing on me, though. And I like the fact that it's something different. I get bored of the same hairstyle over and over.

Hannah just got some side bangs. It doesn't matter what I do to her hair, she always looks cute. I cut Brynn's bangs too, but they don't really look any different. This picture of her is actually before I cut her bangs, but I couldn't leave her out so I had to post a picture.

Now I just need to get Scott some bangs........

Before:

After:

(And I had to add this one of Brynn, too, because I think it's cute that every time she goes into Hannah's bedroom, she ends up with bling around her neck. She loves necklaces.)

Peanut Butter Playdough and Sausage Casserole

2010-09-15T23:10:00.006-06:00

Yes, there are two of my favorite things, and if you've never made them before, you are in for a treat! I've known about both of these things since I was a kid because my mom made them for me, and now I pass them down to my little ones, who also love them.

Playdough is so much fun for kids, but you know what makes it even better? Edible playdough that is filled with peanut butter goodness. Here's the recipe:

Mix:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup corn syrup
1 1/4 cups dry milk (comes in a box)
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar

It's really sticky at first but once you get it all mixed together, take the dough in your hands and try rolling it into a ball. It becomes less sticky, and you can play with it and eat it at the same time! It is a little greasy but so good! Ah, brings back good memories of being a kid!!

Second comes the sausage casserole. I could eat the whole pan of this by myself, but I refrain from my piggy ways. If you like sausage and chicken stock, you'll love this!

Recipe:

-1 pound ground sausage (if you like spicy foods, get the spicy sausage. If not, just get the plain. Either way is delicious!)
-1 envelope of Lipton Chicken noodle soup (comes in a box usually with two envelopes, but you only need one envelope)
-3/4 cup of rice

Cook the sausage in a skillet until it's cooked all the way through. Meanwhile, follow the recipe on the box to make Lipton chicken noodle soup in a different pot (I think it's just 3 cups of water added to the envelope and then boil it for 5 minutes). Then put the cooked sausage, chicken noodle soup, and rice all together in an 8X8 casserole pan. Cover it with foil and cook at 350 for 30 minutes. After it's cooked, stir the casserole and let it sit for about 5 minutes. So delicious and so easy!!!

(P.S. Please excuse the blurry pics. I'm using a new camera, of which I will post about later).

Goals-#2, #3, and #4

2010-09-13T23:04:00.003-06:00

Ok, so I mentioned in my previous post that I wanted to have goals for myself, to make my life less chaotic and to make myself a better mother.

Yesterday we went to regional conference (it's a church thing, for anyone who may not know). I was wrestling with my kids the whole time and didn't get much out of it because I wasn't really able to listen. However, I did get one thing out of it. Sister Julie Beck, the General Relief Society President spoke. She said that we are doing better than we think we are, but we can do better. One thing she mentioned was that a lot of young mothers these days are on the computer way too much. Because of this, they end up neglecting their children. One reason I didn't want to get a facebook account was because I didn't want to ever do that to my children. I am one to tell you that once you sign into facebook, sometimes you don't sign off for an hour or so later (although I'm pretty sure I've never done this while my kids were around-it's not possible to be on the internet that long with three little rugrats). Despite the fact that I didn't want to get a facebook account, I caved and got one anyway. The first year I had it, I didn't get on it that much. The past few months, though, I've gotten on it more and more. Just the past few weeks I've found myself on it 2,3,4....times a day. It's very addicting. Just like anything else that's addicting, this is not a good thing. To me, it's fine to surf the internet for a little bit if your kids are gone or asleep, but it's when you start neglecting them to "add a comment" or to read someone's status update that it becomes bad. I was on facebook the other day and Hannah was begging me to play with her, and I kept telling her in just a minute. I was really busy, apparently, reading updates and looking at pictures of people I haven't seen in years. Poor Hannah. I've snapped out of that little funk, though, after I heard that talk from Sister Beck. My next goal (besides making myself physically satisfied) is to stop getting on facebook/surfing the net while my kids are awake. I will still check my email every once in awhile during the day and anything else that I need to check, but I won't surf the internet. I did good today. Didn't look at facebook once while my kids were awake. I did look at it once while my kids were asleep, though. I feel that it is so important to take care of my little ones, and websites like facebook, myspace, and even blogger can be a distraction. This time in their lives is crucial to their futures.

Goal #3- I like making dinner, but I hate thinking of what we're going to eat for dinner every night. Sometimes 4 or 5 o'clock rolls around and I have no idea what we're going to eat for dinner......"I guess it's going to be a pancake night." To make myself a little more organized, I started a calendar with everything that we are going to eat for dinner that week. Then I go food shopping and buy all of the ingredients that I'll need for the week. So far, it's turned out nicely. Dinner feels much less chaotic, thank you very much.

Goal #4- I'm still coming up with a hobby to do for myself. I really don't have time during the day. By the time the girls are in bed, it's time for P90X, cleaning, and a little relaxation. Someday I'll find something for me...hopefully someday soon.

2010-09-12T20:47:00.004-06:00

And so the countdown begins to Disneyland! Thirty-nine more days!! I think I'm a little more excited than Hannah is!!

Commentless

2010-09-12T20:25:00.003-06:00

So here's the deal. I'm going to continue writing, but I'm going to take off the comments. Thank you to everyone who has ever left a comment on this blog. They really have meant a lot to me. However, sometimes I feel like my motivation to blog depends on how many comments I get. Silly, I know, but it's the truth. The fact that I haven't been getting tons of comments lately plus the fact that my life is extremely chaotic makes me want to just get rid of the blog. However, I want to keep this blog for me, and I know there are people who want to see what we're up to as well. So, we're going to try it like this for awhile and hopefully I will just blog whenever I have an extra minute. I'd love for you to continue reading if you want. And if you ever want to write me a comment or a note, just email me. I'd love to hear from you.

maralar@hotmail.com

Hopefully I'll blog more from here on out!!

2010-09-08T09:22:00.002-06:00

If you want to make a comment on the last post, you are more than welcome to. I just changed it so you can comment now.

Chaos

2010-09-05T15:32:00.012-06:00

This video is what Scott and I get to deal with every night at dinner. It's adorable but incredibly loud.

My life is such chaos right now. Ever since the girls have been able to move, I feel like I'm being pulled in a million different directions. I'm running right to get Bailey from eating the crumbs off the kitchen floor. I'm running left to get Brynn to stop pulling Hannah's hair. Then I'm running again to stop Bailey and Brynn from pulling on the computer power cords, the dvd players (of which they've already broken one by pulling really hard on dvd slot), turning off and on the tv over and over again, all while Hannah is crying because she can't watch her favorite cartoons. I swear that child gets beaten up by her little sisters. She is constantly getting pinched or her hair pulled out in clumps (actually we all are).
(This is how the girls have to watch TV these days. Otherwise they turn it off or end up breaking a dvd player.)

Bailey has sort of become the "bully" of the girls. Not because she means to, but because she's bigger and stronger than Brynn. Brynn teases Bailey by holding out a toy or food for her to grab, but then she pulls it back just as Bailey is about to grab it. Bailey usually ends up getting it, though, which then makes Brynn angry. Because Bailey can pull herself up and can move more fluently, she ends up stepping on Brynn or sitting on her. Brynn's only defense is to bite. She's bitten Bailey's bare buns before, and yesterday she bit Bailey really hard on the arm in the bathtub. Poor thing. I felt so bad for her. I was expecting fighting between the girls, but not this early!

Brynn still scoots everywhere she goes. Sometimes I feel really bad for her because even though she's quick at it, she's not as quick as Bailey or Hannah. I'll leave the room for a few minutes. Hannah will follow and then Bailey will follow her. Poor Brynn is usually crying because she's left alone. By the time she scoots herself to me, I'm usually leaving the room again. Here's a cute little video, though. She came out of Hannah's room the other day, scooting along with these behind her. It reminded me of someone who comes out the bathroom with toilet paper stuck in their shoe.

It's not just the girls that cause chaos, though. My house is chaotic as well. I look around and think, "I can never get this ruddy thing clean!" Food and toys are everywhere! There are crumbs all over the floor and splatters of food on the kitchen wall........milk spills and sticky spots that I have no clue where they came from. GROSS!! I just can't stay on top of it. I've had to put a gate up in our kitchen entry way because the girls will go in the kitchen and eat the food off the floor before I get the chance to sweep it up.

And then I look at myself in the mirror and think, "Wow. I look like I live a chaotic life." Not feeling cute much these days. I don't take care of myself the way I would like to. As I've mentioned before, I usually have my hair pulled up in a ponytail (mostly because I don't like it to get pulled out by my girls) and I often don't bother to put on makeup. Since I quit the gym in May, I've gained a couple of pounds too. It doesn't surprise me. I ate like an absolute pig this summer. I guess my metabolism has slowed down with age.

It's not just the way I look, though. It's also the fact that I feel like my identity these days is just that I'm a mother. There's nothing else that identifies me. There's nothing wrong with being a mother (in fact, I love it). I do my best to be the best mother I can be. However, I don't really have any talents or hobbies that I'm interested in right now. I really feel that this is something that I need in order to be a better mother. I need to find something that I enjoy doing. I think sometimes stay at home mothers put so much of their time and energy into doing their best at taking care of their wee ones, that they forget to take care of themselves. Who in the heck am I right now? What do I like to do? I don't even know. My current "likes" are changing poo diapers and chasing after my kids all day.

So, here's what I want to do. I need to make goals for myself. The first goal I've got going on is to get myself back where I want to be physically. I started P90X, thanks to a friend who let us borrow it. I've started eating healthy again too (P.S. Why does healthy food have to taste so nasty? Why can't vegetables taste like chocolate?). There's just something about working out and eating healthy that already makes me feel more confident.

The second thing I need to do is find a hobby. I tried teaching myself the piano a couple of years ago, but since we've moved it's been in storage. One of my favorite hobbies is dancing, but I'm not sure where I can take a dance class at or if I could find time to do it. Hmmm.....what to do. I'll find something.

I just want to end with this reiteration. I think it's so important to take care of yourself as a mother. We need time to ourselves too. I hope this doesn't sound selfish, because if it ever came down to it, I'd do anything for my little stinkers. But I do think that in order for me to be the best mother that I can be, I need to remember who I am as a person. And I need to make my life a little less chaotic. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to do that.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of my delightfully delicious monsters. Oh how I love them. I could just squeeze them and kiss them all day long.

Although you can't see it, Bailey is putting a bow in Brynn's hair. So cute!

The Birthday Party

2010-08-11T21:09:00.005-06:00

Happy first birthday to my beauties!

These smiles just crack me up. Both of them are so fake.

Hannah and her friend Montana had a lot of fun swimming together. They instantly became great friends.

My friend Stacy and her hubby Marc

Some more people at the birthday party above.

The birthday cakes.

The cupcakes for everyone else.

The girls loved their birthday cakes. They dove into them and ate almost the whole things.

They got so messy that we had to strip them down to their birthday suits and give them a bath in the baby pool.

The girls loved all of their presents. Thank you to everyone who came. The girls wont remember it, but Scott and I sure will!

2010-08-08T22:03:00.003-06:00

UUUUGGGGHHHH.....

It is taking every fiber of my being to write this blog. I am so not in a blogging mood lately. I keep thinking, "Oh, I'll blog about that later," and then later comes and I just don't want to do it. I think I've burnt myself out with 4 years of nonstop blogging. And I feel like I'm writing the same things over and over again....mostly about my girls. I wish I had something inspiring or witty to write about, but I don't. Even if I did, my brain is too tired to think. By the time my girls are in bed at night, I just want to flop myself on the couch like a dead fish.

So, let's think....

What's new in my life?

Well, we went to California for a week and a half, which was lots of fun. It's getting late now, but I will post pictures of that soon. I've had a few people ask me to post pictures of the girls' birthday party, so I will do that too.

So yeah, my girls turned 1, Scott turned 29, and Brynn learned how to scoot on her buns everywhere she goes. I'm almost positive she's going to skip the whole crawling thing, though I think it's going to be a long time before she's walking. Hannah took a gymnastics class with me in the month of July, which was so much fun. She's actually really good at the bars. I'm pretty sure I'll be signing her up for a class again in the fall.

Alright....I'm tired. That's my little update for now. I will post pictures some time this week. I promise!

P.S. Do you ever just sit there and laugh at something that you thought was funny earlier in the day? Sometimes when I'm alone I think of something funny and can't stop laughing. Just now I tried to go to bed, but couldn't stop laughing (and was shaking the entire bed) at something that happened earlier today, which is why I am out here writing this. This probably only happens to me because I'm a weirdo and because when I'm really tired I can't stop laughing at silly things. Want to hear what I was laughing at? It's probably not funny to anyone else but me.

Tonight we went over to my sister's for dinner and my mom was there (because she was in town for my cousin's wedding). We are sitting at the table and my brother-in-law says something like, "Sometimes when I'm at work, I wish I could just get sick so I could take a few days off." Then I said, "Well maybe you should start licking the banisters." And my husband chimes in, "Or the keyboards," and my mom chimes in, "or the bathroom door handle." Then he says, "I don't want to get worms, just sick." Then I said, "Well maybe the next time you see someone sneezing, you should just run up to them and open your mouth." Ohhhh, I can't stop laughing at this conversation. Most people cringe and turn away when someone is sneezing near them, but to picture my brother-in-law running toward someone sneezing and then opening his mouth to inhale their disgusting mucus is hilarious to me.

Good night.

The Girls

2010-07-12T19:32:00.004-06:00

Ah...these girls are just so scrumptious! Things just get better and better with them as the days go on. They are going to be a year old in about two weeks. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by. When I was pregnant with them, I remember many people who had twins tell me how much they loved having twins. They often told me that they wished they could have a second set of twins. After I had my girls, I thought, 'Why in the world would anyone ever want to have a second set of twins? This is hard!' I'm beginning to see why those people told me they wanted a second set of twins (although I'm pretty sure I won't be wishing for a second set). There is something special about having twins. Well, there's something special about having a baby period, but having two of them at the same time is a different kind of special. Watching them laugh together and learn new things together is an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. Dressing them alike and sitting them side by side in the Costco cart is one of my favorite things to do. We always get people stopping us to talk about my girls. The funny thing about them, though, is that they are so different from each other.

Bailey is a little more reserved. She's definitely a momma's girl. She usually just stares at strangers without cracking a smile. At home, however, she laughs and smiles a lot. She has the most adorable little grin. She loves food and this past week, she finally started crawling! She's been getting up on her hands and knees for months now, but she never actually moved forward. I'm proud of her, even if it did take awhile.

Brynn, however, is not crawling yet. I was worried at first that there was something wrong with her. With all of the things going on these days, like Autism and other abnormalities, I started to convince myself that she wasn't normal. She's not even interested in crawling right now. She can move around the room if she wants to, but she doesn't get up on her knees yet. Even the doctor said that if she wasn't crawling by 12 months, they might have to run some tests on her. I don't think they'll have to, though. She's definitely normal mentally. She's said quite a few words in her baby language, like "mama" "dada" "ba ba" "eyes" "uh oh" "book" "light" "hi." She also tries her best to do hand movements to songs like "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Popcorn Popping." She waves and points to things and claps her hands. From what I've read online, babies with Autism usually focus their attention on one item at a time and they don't really interact much with other people. Brynn interacts a lot with other people. In fact, she's usually really good with strangers and smiles a ton at them. She's actually a really funny little baby. I realize that things like Autism aren't usually diagnosed until a child is around 3 years old, but I'm pretty sure Brynn does not have that. I have no idea why she isn't crawling yet, but I'm trying not to worry about it. I'll let her take her time, if that's what she needs. She may just go straight to walking, and that's okay. I guess I've realized as a parent that there's always something to worry about. You just love your kids so much and you want them to have a happy and normal life.

Learning to Read

2010-07-09T19:30:00.003-06:00

Whoops, didn't write yesterday. Mom, I'm pretty sure you're the only one checking my blog these days anyway, so this is for you! I've been really lucky with Hannah because she's always been really eager to learn. I haven't had to push her much yet. Even with potty training, she practically taught herself. And she didn't use pull ups ever at night either. I don't expect to get this lucky with Bailey and Brynn, but I certainly hope I do. I hope this trait continues with Hannah throughout her life, though. Right now, she's been really eager to learn how to read/sound out words. She often asks me how to spell something or she'll try to sound out things by herself. I'm teaching her three letter words right now. Anything more than that might just have to wait. I didn't realize how complicating teaching a child how to read could be. There are so many rules to the English language that I never even thought about before this process. But again, Hannah is trying her best to learn. At this rate, she could be reading like a pro before kindergarten (though I realize it's not a race). Pretty sure I didn't learn how to read until I was like 6 or 7, but I guess things have changed a bit since then. Here's a video of her reading a word.

The Fourth (And Third And Fifth)

2010-07-07T22:26:00.009-06:00

Our little fam, dressed up for Independence Day.

My pictures are completely out of order, but I'm too impatient to change it. Our computer is going extremely slow right now because we are downloading something. It took me about 5 minutes just to type this (about to pull out my hair). Ok, whew, just switched computers, so this one's a bit faster. Still not changing the order of my pictures, though. So, let's start with what we did last. On the afternoon of the 5th, we (my step-mom, step-sister, my sisters, and I) threw a surprise 60th birthday party for my dad. We had a wonderful lunch and played a few fun games.

Here are my cute nephews. I can't believe how old they're getting. They're going to be teenagers in just a few short years.

We played water softball where the bases were little pools of water. Hannah loved batting and getting wet on the bases.

The girls wanted to put on a show for us (for the 3rd or 4th time- still cute, though). My two older nieces made up a song and a dance and taught some of it to the younger kids. The song was stuck in my head the entire weekend ("We're gonna fall down, and hit the ground, if you do not come tonight... " repeated over and over).

Hannah and her cousins above

And the birthday boy blowing out his candles!

Earlier that morning we went to the Freedom Festival parade. The girls were so good during the parade. Poor things were exhausted. I don't think any of us got much sleep the night before. Above are Hailey and Bailey.

Hannah took the above picture of me and her friend Jill.

Here are most of the people that we reserved a place for.

Hannah Banana

Brynn and Scott's cousin Andrew above

On the 4th of July evening, Scott and Hannah set up a tent and slept on Scott's cousin's lawn to reserve a good spot for the parade. Hannah was so excited. The above picture is a bit deceiving. I actually stayed inside with Bailey and Brynn while Scott, Hannah, and Scott's cousins slept in the tent. Hannah didn't get to sleep until midnight and Scott said he got about 2-3 hours of sleep that night. A lot of people camp out to reserve a spot for the parade, and they are not quiet. Some of them stay up all night and do fireworks. You know your daughter is tired the next day when she is asking you if she can take a nap.

Scott and Hannah above

Earlier that night Hannah got to do a couple of sparklers with our neighbors.

On Saturday night, the 3rd, Scott and I got to go the Stadium of Fire (an Independence Day show here in Provo at the BYU stadium). My fabulous sister, Hollie, watched our kids for us so we could have a date together. It was a wonderful show, but I didn't get any pictures. Carrie Underwood was the special guest. She has an amazing voice in person! They also had an amazing fire works show. Well worth the money! So that's our weekend in a nutshell.

A Blog A Day

2010-07-06T19:45:00.003-06:00

I'm baaack!! It's actually been quite nice taking a break from blogging. Want to see what I was busy doing at night in the month of June? Making these hats...

Not doll hats....hats for adults. It was kind of a service project. This doll hat was the first one I made. The yarn that I had for the adults turned out a bit cuter than this, but I forgot to take pictures of them. I'm going to make some of these for the girls and me for winter! We're going to be the cheesy family with matching hats.

Anywho, I'm done with that project for now, so for the next few days I'll be posting a blog a day. Stay tuned!

2010-05-31T21:07:00.006-06:00

Scott's mom and step dad came into town this weekend. It was a short visit but much needed. We've missed family so much lately. They asked me to take some pictures of them with the girls, and I wanted to post a few of my favorite. Can I just say that my mother-in-law is beautiful? Because she is.

I love the above one of Bailey. She looks like such a big girl.

Also, I'm going to take a short break from blogging. I figured I'd let those of you know who check this often, so you won't have to check it for awhile. I'm going to be busy in the month of June, but I plan to blog again in July. For my last post (for awhile), I wanted to write about the things that make me happy. I feel like I've been a little negative about my kids on my blog, and I apologize if it's felt that way to you as well. It does feel good to write it down, but if I'm having a frustrating day, I probably shouldn't blog about it. It makes me look like I'm unhappy with my girls. There are just so many things that make being a mother so worth it, and here are a few pictures and videos to prove it.

In the above picture, Hannah is sleeping in her bed in our bedroom so Grandma and Grandpa could have her bedroom. I came in to see that her scriptures were opened to the picture of Jesus (as you can see on the table in the background behind the water bottle). She later told me that the picture of Jesus helps her to not have bad dreams. Then tonight the power went out. She was trying to go to bed but was worried because she usually sleeps with her lamp on. Scott told her to say a prayer that the lights would go back on so she could sleep. She said one, and five minutes later the lights came back on. She started crying, so happy that Heavenly Father had helped her. I felt an overwhelming love for her and for Heavenly Father at that moment.

Next, there's the precious moment of her reading to her sisters. These girls LOVE this book, and Hannah loves to read it to them.

And then there's the precious moment of Hannah putting toys all over Bailey, until she can barely see anything. Bailey didn't mind, and it made me laugh. Definitely picture worthy.

And then there's this precious moment that happens every time we put the girls in the same bed.

Brynn doesn't take a binky, but she always steals Bailey's, and it always seems to make me laugh!

And finally, there's this little adorableness. I love my kids so much!

Update on the Girls

2010-05-23T18:50:00.007-06:00

Thank you for your comments on our pictures, even if you left them on facebook. You guys are all a little too kind!

Here's a little update on all of the girls:

Hannah Banana-

Oh....this child. Where to start? One minute she's an angel and the next minute I could swear the devil enters into her body. Okay, not really, but she's your typical three year old. Very emotional. Like I said, one minute she's being obedient, polite, and an excellent helper. The next minute she's throwing a tantrum over something incredibly ridiculous, like the dress she has to wear to church or the color of her dinner plate. I can't wait for this tantrum stage to end. It's weird because she often seems so mature for a three year old...she's usually really great about sharing her food and toys with her sisters. In fact, she loves taking care of her sisters. She loves being a mommy to anyone who will listen, like the neighbor boys when they are doing something that she thinks is wrong.

She also loves feeling like a big girl and watching a movie with Scott and me. Every once in awhile we'll have movie night with her, and she loves to push the couches together and snuggle with us while eating popcorn. The only hard part is finding a movie that all three of us want to watch.

Recently she's acquired a new friend that she's named Sally. This friend doesn't actually exist, but she comes with us almost everywhere. Tonight Hannah was screaming in her room. When we went in there to see what was wrong, she said that Sally was spanking her. Then we realized that she wasn't really crying, only pretending. It was actually quite funny.

Finally, Hannah is quite the little boy catcher. I didn't think that I'd have to be dealing with this until she was quite a bit older, but I was wrong. I've had at least 4 people tell me that she's had boys fighting over her in Primary (Sunday School for children) and boys putting their arms around her. I realize that it's innocent right now and that they are just friends, but I can't help but worry about her future. I can remember pretty clearly what boys were like growing up and some of them were the devil. A few weeks ago we went to the park and there was a 6 year old telling Hannah to chase him. Then he told her she couldn't go down the slide unless he kissed her. I wanted to punch him in the teeth!! He was a cute little Casanova, but I'm not ready for this kind of stuff yet!! She's still a baby for heaven's sake!! I don't want to deal with boys. She also has a friend that recently moved into our apartments named Ammon, who asked her to be his best friend. He already seems to absolutely adore her. They are really cute together, but still, he's a boy, and boys are the devil until she's 21.

Brynn-

This child is the craziest child I've ever known. From her crazy hair to her crazy personality, she just makes me laugh. She's always making funny faces, blowing air out of her nose, and laughing at the silliest things. She also moves her head back and forth like she's saying yes or no a lot and seems to love dancing to music! Here she is dancing to one of her favorite songs.

Bailey-

This child has decided recently that she's going to stop breastfeeding. I apologize if this is a yucky subject to anyone, so don't read on if it is. I breastfed Hannah until she was 13 months old, so I was hoping to breastfeed these girls until they were almost a year, but Bailey is saying, "No way, Mom." She bites me every time I try to breastfeed her. It's become a little game to her. She bites, I tell her "No!", and then she smiles or laughs. Not funny, but you can't help but laugh at her. At least I made it to almost 10 months with her, and I'm still able to pump her one full bottle a day, so she is still getting some breast milk. I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to giving my baby breast milk. I know it's silly, but I've been told several times by doctors and nurses that "Breast is Best!", so I'm doing my best to give them the best. Unfortunately it doesn't always work out how you want it to, so I'll deal with it. At least Brynn still breastfeeds without trying to rip off a part of my body with her teeth.

There's a lot more going on with my girls, but we'll save that for another post. I did also want to mention that my sister, Kerrie, had her baby today! Mia May, 7lbs 4 oz! I can't wait to meet her!!

Pictures are In!

2010-05-21T13:29:00.010-06:00

I wish I could post them all, but that would take me forever (especially since I can only upload two at a time because they are such big files). Here are some of my favorites, though!

Preview

2010-05-16T16:35:00.003-06:00

Here's a preview of what's to come! I'm so excited! We took pictures yesterday with my awesome cousin, Angela, and I can't wait to see the rest. I have a feeling that there are none of Bailey smiling, though. Poor thing was not feeling good yesterday. I'm a mean mom and made her go take pictures while she had a fever. She's doing much better today, though. I'm not sure when the rest will come, but here's a link to my cousin's blog if you want to check it out!

2010-05-14T22:02:00.002-06:00

Alright....I'll keep the blog for awhile longer. I told myself that if I got at least 40 people that I would continue. I wasn't actually expecting to get that much, but I'm actually glad. Thanks for voting. I'll update again soon.

Do Me a Favor, Would ya?

2010-05-07T22:56:00.002-06:00

As I stated in my last post, I'm thinking of quitting this whole blogging thing. We started it 4 years ago when I was pregnant with Hannah because, living so far away from our family, we wanted to be able to post pictures of our children for their grandparents, aunts, and uncles to see. I know that my writings aren't inspirational or awesomely worded, but that's never really been the point of my blog.

Last year I posted a survey at the side of our blog and was surprised to find that 41 people voted on it. I had no idea that that many people were checking my blog. It seems like 90% of the people on my blog list aren't updating their blogs anymore, so I'm sure that there aren't that many people checking my blog anymore. If that's the case, I am going to quit and take these writings to a personal journal. I will be happy to email my family and close friends pictures and updates of the girls if they still want them, but I don't know that I want to post all of these things on the internet for any stranger to see if not many people are even checking this. Does that make any sense? I realize that I could just go private, but it's too much work, and I'm lazy.

So, what I'm asking you to do for me is this: if you check my blog, even just every once in awhile, vote on my side bar. This way it will be anonymous, and that will determine whether or not I continue this blog. If there are only 5 or 10 people checking it, then I will just email you all pictures of my family.....and it will give you all an excuse to CALL me MORE!!!! ;) If there are more than that, then I may continue to keep up the blog because then I'll know that I'm not just doing this for me and my mom, but for you guys too. Thanks a bunch!

2010-05-04T13:33:00.003-06:00

I meant to write this a long time ago, but forgot. For anyone who comes to our site using scottandmaran.com, that will no longer be working tomorrow. We had to pay for that, and we've decided that we aren't going to do it anymore. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be keeping up this blog anyway. Part of me just wants to write these things in my own personal journal and stop blogging, but we'll see. So anyway, make sure you come to our site using scottandmaran.blogspot.com.

Also, my hubby and I celebrated our 6th year anniversary last week! I can't believe how fast time has gone by.

Want to hear how our lovely night was celebrated?? It was crazy! I really wanted to go to the Melting Pot since we've never been, but we decided that we wouldn't have enough time to go there and eat because it's far away, and we've been told that it takes a long time to cook your own food and whatnot. So, we decided to go to a fun little restaurant called The Mayan (complete with cliff divers, but I'm not sure how good the food is) and then to a movie afterward. It's about a half hour away from us and we didn't leave until about 6:15. When we got on the freeway there was a ton of traffic due to an accident. Stop and go, stop and go. I was getting really hungry and when I'm hungry, I'm grumpy. So about a half hour into driving we decided to turn around. We were going to go eat at Carrabba's, but when we got there they told us it was going to be an hour and a half wait. No way. So then we went to PF Changs. Hour and forty five minute wait. What is going on here? Then we went to California Pizza Kitchen....forty minute wait, which was better. At this point I was so hungry that I was tempted to go to Taco Bell. But, we decided to try out Spaghetti Factory, which was only a 15 minute wait. Thanks heavens! While we were at Spaghetti Factory the waitress told us the reason things were so busy around there was because UVU was having their graduation that day and everyone was taking their kids out to dinner. Whoops! Guess we should have checked into that. We finished dinner at about 8:20 and wanted to make an 8:15 movie there, but it was sold out when we got there. Boo. So, then we went to another theater, hoping to find something that was going to start soon since we told our babysitters that we'd be home around 11. There was nothing there either. Finally around 8:45, we decided we'd check one more theater and if that didn't work, we'd just go home. At this point we were laughing about how the night was going and we didn't even care what movie we could see, as long as it was something! To our luck, though, there was a 9:25 showing of Date Night, which would get us home right past 11. It was a hilarious movie, in my opinion. The night turned out really good, despite the fact that we were having horrible luck with all of our plans. Next year, we'll back up plan a little better. I must say, though, that with how many places we drove to that night, I'm glad I got to spend it with my hubby. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. It looks like we definitely need to go on more dates alone together!

I see the light....

2010-04-28T21:11:00.006-06:00

at the end of the tunnel. This post is going to be a bit different from my other posts, but I feel that I need to write it. Some of it is a bit personal....maybe shouldn't be posted for everyone to see, but I don't care. I see the light at the end of the tunnel because my husband is 15 credits away from graduating. It seems like a miracle with all of the things that we've gone through, and I feel so grateful to my Father in Heaven for providing this miracle for us. There have been so many times in our almost 6 years of marriage (on Friday!!!) that I have had to sit back and say, "How in the world are we going to do this?" The only possible conclusion that I can come up with is that the Lord has helped us through it all. I don't think this would be possible without Him. Here are a few examples:

When Scott and I were first married, he had a lot of debt from starting an online business. I remember thinking when we were engaged, 'How are we ever going to pay this off?' It stressed me out a lot. Both of us worked full time after we were married and I went to school full time as well. I felt worn out a lot, but I passed all of my classes. Two years later......SURPRISE......I got pregnant with Hannah. We were excited, but I also had the same thoughts. 'How am I going to finish school, pay off our debt, and be a mother (and I desperately wanted to be a stay at home mother). I quit work right before Hannah was born. It scared me to do so, but I knew that that was what I wanted most. After she came into the world, I was able to finish school a year later with ease and then a little after that, we paid off ALL of our debt. I felt so blessed and knew that it was almost impossible for us to get through these things, but we did it. So finally, I was done with school and Scott finally got into BYU, so now it was his turn to focus on school. Then we felt it was time to have another baby and......SURPRISE.....it's twins. Oh my gosh! 'How are we going to take care of twins, especially while my husband is still in school?' Things just seemed to work out for us, and I feel like it was almost better having my husband in school because he was able to be home with me more than he would with an 8am-5pm job. I was worried about our living arrangements too, but we found a 3 bedroom apartment that fit our price range and moved into it 3 days before Bailey and Brynn came into the world. The girls have been in this world 9 months today, and things have worked out nicely. We've been able to take care of them and give them a good home, despite the fact that there are days I want to pull out all my hair and feel like I'm going insane. We were blessed with these three beautiful children and I feel so lucky to have them in my life. I also feel so lucky to have my husband. He worked so hard this semester, staying up all hours of the night to do well and even got himself really sick with stress during finals because he wanted to do well. I am so happy that he is a semester and a half away from finally graduating. We've both been going to college off and on for almost 9 years now, and we've lived here for 6 of those years. I'm more than ready to move on with my life to bigger and better things (and I know Scott is ready too)! Like I said, though, all of this would not have been possible without our Father in Heaven constantly answering our prayers. Now...onto finding a good job and a great place to live!!!

P.S. In honor of the girls' nine month birthday, here are a couple of pictures.

Bailey's hair after a nap....

Brynn's hair after a nap....

Also, Brynn is finally sitting up! It makes things a lot easier. I don't think either one will be crawling for awhile, though. I'm going to have to develop a third eye in the back of my head when that happens, so I'm okay with it for now. Bailey also got her first two teeth this week. They're already growing up faster than I'd like them to.

Spring Pictures, Part II

2010-04-18T23:21:00.005-06:00

I took some pictures of the girls today in their Easter dresses. It's hard enough getting a good picture of one baby. Getting a good picture of two babies is like pulling teeth! Thank heavens I'm not a professional photographer. I don't know how they do it. This little girl was making these little scowls for most of my pictures...

And she was putting everything in her mouth that she could get her hands on. She's always been a good eater.

And because this little girl still refuses to sit up, I couldn't really get any good shots of her without Scott holding her.

If they weren't so cute, I'd spank them too. Just kidding.

Easter

2010-04-12T21:05:00.006-06:00

Alright, this is a little late, but here are a few pictures of our Easter festivities. First we had an Easter preschool at my house. I've gotten together with 6 other ladies and their kids to do preschool every Thursdays. I've only had to do it twice at my house and both times it's been pretty fun. This past time we had bunny masks and played "Bunny Bunny Rabbit" (Duck Duck Goose, but they had to hop like bunnies instead of run).

Scott thinks the mask is kind of freaky looking. After looking at this picture, I think I agree. I may have nightmares tonight.

We also had them make stained glass eggs (out of tissue paper and clear eggs).

The one on the right was the model egg. The one of the left was Hannah's egg.

We also had an Easter egg hunt. Each child had their own color of eggs, so they all got 3.

The Saturday before Easter, we colored some eggs with friends...

and then we headed over to my sister's house for an Easter egg hunt.

Bailey and me with the video camera below....

and sweet little Brynn.

Hannah picking up her eggs.

I didn't get any pictures on Easter day, but we did spend the night at my sister's house and had some yummy goodies and a yummy dinner to go along with it.

I tried to take pictures of Hannah in her Easter dress yesterday, but it just wasn't happening. She was being a humongous stink! This child has been challenging my patience lately. Quick, I better say two things nice about her before I say something bad......She's a wonderful big sister and absolutely LOVES her little sisters and she's really funny. Whew, okay. I've just had SO much trouble with her being obedient lately and I feel like I've tried EVERYTHING. I guess sometimes I forget that she's only 3.

These are the only two semi good ones I got.

And then she ran away from me for like a block. And she got a spank. I promised I wouldn't ever spank my children before I had them, but I've broken that promise. Boo.

Yup definitely a stinker, but an adorable one.

I didn't attempt to get the girls in their dresses after my little fiasco with Hannah, but here's a picture of them in some dresses that my mom made. Adorable!! Maybe next week I'll take some of them in their Easter dresses.

Happy 8 Months!

2010-03-29T14:49:00.004-06:00

Holy Cow!! Has it already been 8 months?? It's true what I've been told; the first year with twins is like a whirlwind. Sometimes I feel like I don't even have a minute to sit back and think (except for right now...the girls are asleep and Hannah is at a friend's house). It's really hard for me to even remember what it was like that first month with the girls. It feels like a long time ago, but not that long ago. Wow, I'm confusing even myself here. You know what I'm excited for??? To stop breastfeeding in 4 months. I love it, but it's a little more challenging with two and both girls like to bite HARD (P.S. Brynn's first tooth poked through today!!!). I'm excited for them to be eating real food and drinking out of a sippy cup because feeding them honestly takes up a lot of time. The good thing is, they've both started eating finger foods. They haven't mastered picking up smaller pieces with their fingers just yet, but they're getting it. One of the problems is that Brynn is still not sitting up. In fact, she refuses. I try to get her to sit and she arches her back. At this rate, she won't be sitting until she's a year old!! Oh well. If there's one thing I've learned as being a parent, it's that each of my children are different. Brynn's been stubborn since the day she was born. Adorable, but stubborn. Another example: Every time she gets sick I have to retrain her to sleep through the night. She's gotten sick every month since November, so there's been a lot of crying going on. Poor thing. I feel sorry for her, but she's got to stop waking up in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I just love my girls. Some days are so hard with them and I'm so tired and so grumpy and I feel like the world's worst mother because I lose my patience with the drop of a hat. They make me happy, though. I love the adorable little things that they do, too, like when Brynn scrunches her face and blows really hard through her nose or when Bailey laughs when I tickle her neck. I love Brynn's little raspy voice and the way she likes to talk to herself, and I love the way Bailey learned how to play Peek-a-Boo recently (she puts something over her face, lowers it really quick and then laughs after I say, "Boo").

Well, they are both screaming now and in need of my attention, but I just wanted to take a minute and reflect on the past 8 months. I wouldn't change it for anything.

2010-03-17T19:01:00.003-06:00

H-A-P-P-Y S-T. P-A-T-R-I-C-K-S D-A-Y T-O Y-O-U!

I love St. Patricks Day, even if it means I have to wear the one ugly green shirt that I have. The reason I love it.....THE FOOD....and I suppose it's also a way to celebrate my Irish background!! I do love corned beef, though! It's SO SO SO delicious! I could bathe myself in corned beef. Just kidding. That's actually really disgusting. But anyway, here's what we had for dinner tonight:

Corned beef, cabbage, carrots, green mashed potatoes, yummy salad, and rolls with green butter. We also had green Tampico but it was WAY too sugary. I couldn't even drink a cup of it.

Too bad my table cloth doesn't fit our table.

For dessert, I let Hannah choose these cookies from the grocery store. They're cute, but thank goodness Scott and I will be enjoying some mint chocolate chip ice cream later on tonight. As you can tell from Hannah's face, they're hard as rocks.

And here are some pictures we took yesterday. We had a picnic in front of the temple because it was a BEAUTIFUL day!! Spring time really just makes me happy.

So Stinkin' Cute...

2010-03-03T18:01:00.001-07:00

I Don't Know What to Title This

2010-03-01T10:12:00.004-07:00

I need to get those pictures of me off the top of my blog, so here's another post. Thank you to those of you who commented on my last post. It feels really good to hear nice things when you've worked so hard, so you all made my week! Now to the cuter part of my family.....the girls!! Here are a few pictures.

I tried SO hard to get Brynn to smile in the above picture. Jumped around, yelled, laughed hysterically at her, sung, tickled her, and I got nothing. There's something about a camera in their faces that intrigues them......maybe it's the gargantuan lens and extremely bright flash.

It was pure luck that I got the above one of Bailey.

As you've probably seen at the top of my blog, I dressed my girls up in the same shirt and took pictures of them. I liked this one of Hannah, except for the fact that her fly is unbuttoned. I got these shirts for $2.50 at Children's Place. You can't beat that!

And finally, Happy Valentine's Day to me!!

Wanna know a secret??

My previous wedding ring was real gold, but had a fake diamond on it. I told Scott that that was what I wanted before we got engaged. I personally find it silly to go into major debt to get a huge diamond ring, so we didn't. Six years later and a nice tax return, I finally got my diamonds. My previous ring was a solitaire, but I decided I wanted something different this time. It's not your typical wedding ring, but I love it. It's very sparkly! Who knows, maybe in ten more years I'll get a new one. Who says you have to wear the same ring your whole life? Not I.

Before and After

2010-02-06T21:05:00.003-07:00

I had a big debate in my head whether or not I would post this, but I'm going to. I don't particularly enjoy posting pictures of myself on my blog. As you can see, 90% of our pictures are of the girls, but I suppose this post will be about me. Back in October, some of you may remember a post that I wrote where I was frustrated with my weight. It had only been 2 months after the girls were born, but I was sick of wearing my maternity clothes. So I did something about it. I joined the gym, which is something I've never done before, and I started to eat completely healthy/ lower calorie items. I told myself that I would work out until I reached my pre-pregnancy weight, which I did this week. I'm darn proud of myself because I've never done anything like this before (except for once in college I tried to lose weight and somehow ended up gaining weight). I was really motivated, which I haven't been much of as far as working out goes.

So, here's me a few weeks before the girls were due. I gained 53 pounds. Yikes. I was huge and people were constantly staring at me. I knew it was ridiculous that I was embarrassed because I was having twins, but people looked at me as if I was some sort of a freak everywhere I went. I even had people ask me if I was having twins and people tell me that I was big. Duh. You don't need to tell me, peeps. I'm not blind.

So then I had my beautiful babies and lost around 30 pounds within the first 6 weeks. This is what I looked like in October. It was frustrating because I just wanted to look like my old self again. Around October 22nd, I started eating healthy and going to the gym 3 times a week. I started off losing weight rather quickly. I lost 15 lbs by December. Unfortunately in December I ate like a little pig, though, and ended up gaining 3 of it back. Seriously, Christmas week my diet consisted of chocolate and anything with globs of fat on it. It was very enjoyable.
So the month of January I told myself that I would go to the gym 4 nights a weeks to get off those last few pounds. I've lost around 7 pounds since Christmas, and I'm back to my normal weight. In total since October, I've lost around 19 pounds.

To be honest, I'd still love to lose 10 more pounds. I didn't particularly love my pre-pregnancy weight, but I am satisfied for now. If only I could get rid of that spare tire of deflated skin around my belly, I'd be a bit happier. Anyway, I will finish out the month at the gym and then I am taking a two month break. I am physically and mentally exhausted and I have to use all of my strength to get myself to go to the gym every night. I desperately need a break, and my apartment could use a good scrubbing too. And I'm sick of turkey.

2010-01-31T21:42:00.005-07:00

Update: Just took these three pictures today (Monday). I wanted to get a good one of them smiling but they just weren't feeling it.

I told a couple of grandparents that I would try to blog today. I know that they miss their grandbabies, so this is for you. I've been really busy this month, trying to go to the gym 4 nights a week and then I got sick this past week and haven't had much time to blog. I wanted to take some good 6 month pictures of the girls, but I haven't been able to yet so hopefully I'll get to this week. Anyway, here's a quick update and a few pictures.

The girls turned 6 months last week. I can't believe how fast time has flown by. Here are a few things that the girls have learned/done this month:

Bailey: 14 lbs 5 oz 25.25 inches
-Finally decided to take a binky.....hip hip hooray
- sleeps anywhere from 10-13 hours straight at night
- sits up while slouched over
- is extremely ticklish
- spits and makes funny noises with her mouth

Brynn: 14 lbs 2 oz 25.5 inches
- shakes her head like she's saying no
- was sleeping 10-12 hours but got sick and is currently waking up a couple of times a night.
- also extremely ticklish
- still HATES being on her tummy and is very picky about her food

Hannah has been doing so well lately too. Some days she has trouble being disobedient and I lose my patience with her quickly, but for the most part, she has been SUCH an awesome little girl. Right after the babies were born, she had a very hard time being obedient and wasn't sleeping well. She'd get out of her bed several times after we'd try to put her to bed and wake up at 6am, which wasn't typical for her. She rarely does these things anymore and she is such a good big sister. She often offers to help anyway she can and has even gotten good at helping clean up (well, a lot of the time). The other day I walked in her room, which was completely filled with Barbie parts. A little while later I went back in and she had put away all of her Barbies and their little accessories back in the right bins. Needless to say, I was extremely happy because getting her to clean up after herself has been a constant battle between her and me.

Man, I love my kids.

Christmas Festivities

2010-01-07T19:37:00.006-07:00

First off, I just wanted to let you all know that I am changing my comments so now I have to review them before they are published. I'm not liking these spam comments that I've been getting, so that's why I'm doing it. Scott wants me to go private, but I really don't want to do that. If I keep getting spam, though, I might have to.

So anyway, this post is going to have a plethora of videos and some pictures of our Christmas festivities. Scott and I both agree that this was the best Christmas we've ever had together (except maybe the one where he proposed to me) because Hannah is now old enough to understand what's going on. Here she is below with the gingerbread house we made together. She has such a sweet tooth, though. I think for every candy she put on the gingerbread house, one was put in her mouth as well.

We went to California for Christmas this year. I was really worried that Brynn and Bailey were going to be screaming the whole 12 hours of the drive, but they were angels. I heard about 10 minutes of crying there and back out of them. It was a Christmas miracle. Below is Hannah with the cookies she left out for Santa on Christmas Eve at Grandma Julia's house. She got those twin babies from my dad for Christmas.

Here are a few videos of Christmas day. I just love how excited Brynn is when she opens her gift from Santa (actually I don't think her expression changes at all the entire video).

On Christmas afternoon we went to my mom's house to open presents with her. Hannah got this pretty, sparkly dress.

Here is Hannah with her cousins in their new PJs and blankets, which my mom made.

Here's a video of Hannah and her cousin, Si Si, singing, which I thought was really cute.

We also got to meet up with Scott's dad while we were in California and were able to go to Old Sacramento. I hadn't been there for years and years, so it was a lot of fun. Kind of a bummer that we didn't have a stroller for the girls, though. We had some delicious Round Table pizza for lunch. I miss that pizza. Little Sleez just ain't cuttin' it here in Utah.

Here's a picture of Bailey holding her bottle, which she just recently learned how to do. Her cheeks and nose are REALLY red in this picture. I guess she was hot.

And I had to take a picture of Brynn too. She still had her lovely locks in this picture below. I cut her hair when we got home because her mohawk was getting out of control. I'm kind of sad that I cut it, though. Her comb-over was her trademark, and now her hair is short. She looks really different to me. Still adorable, but different.

Finally, here's a video of the girls eating some sweet potatoes for the first time. On a side note...I'm really confused. During Thanksgiving, I made a sweet potato casserole. I always thought sweet potatoes were orange, but when I started making my casserole, I learned that they are actually white. I was confused, so I googled sweet potatoes and learned that people often confuse them with yams, which are orange. Okay, so sweet potatoes are white and yams are orange. Then I get this jar of baby food entitled, "Sweet Potatoes." Look at the color.

I'm confused again.

Oh, and here are our Christmas pictures if you didn't get to see them.

The Bird

2009-12-15T14:42:00.004-07:00

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

2009-12-09T21:50:00.007-07:00

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!!

2009-12-02T19:34:00.010-07:00

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

2009-11-30T19:21:00.006-07:00

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.

2009-11-15T21:37:00.004-07:00

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

2009-11-11T21:02:00.003-07:00

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,

2009-11-01T20:26:00.004-07:00

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.