Happy Birthday Maggie!

Maggie's birthday lasted 3 days this year! We had a birthday party on Thursday-- with 10 of the cutest girls EVER! We had so much fun and big THANK YOU to Micki, I couldn't have done it without you! And Arisa for taking Annie, which was a HUGE help!! On Friday we took treats to her class and I got to have lunch with her and her cute friends, and for the best treat ever, Grandma came and spent the night with them while John and I went up to SLC for our anniversary. Saturday brought more presents and cake and dinner at I-Hop. What more could a 7 year old girl ask for? We love her and she is so sweet. She has great friends and is so smart!!

December 2009

Here's what we've been up to in December:

Thanksgiving 2009

So, we are a little slow, so now we play catch up! We had Thanksgiving at my Mom & Dad's and it was wonderful! We started the day out with a Turkey Trot 5k. John, Johnny, & I ran with my Dad, Tyra, Scott & Jorine. It was a great way to start out the day. My mom cooked an amazing meal, Scott did the turkey, and both my Mom's parents and my Dad's mom were there. It was so fun to be with both sets of grandparents! The next day brought lots of 3:30 a.m. shopping, and we did awesome-- as we usually do. We love Black Friday shopping! It's one thing we look forward to Thanksgiving for! Josie was our amazing photographer this year. It is so great to be able to hand the camera to her and it's fun to see what she comes up with.

Johnny's Birthday 2009

I realized when I went to post pictures of Maggie's birthday, that I haven't yet done Johnny's. Can he really be nine years old? Maybe I'm just in denial. The other day he asked how old until he was an "adult". He's halfway there!! This year we had a little party for him, he invited some friends and they went bowling. They had a great time, he is blessed with so many good friends in our neighborhood and ward. One of the reasons we stayed in this neighborhood when we bought our house is because there are a multitude of boys his age that are so great, which is really hard to find. We love Johnny so much. For Christmas he asked Santa for a brother. Hard to tell him it's just NOT going to happen! If I'm only going to have one boy, I'm glad it's him-- he's the best older brother and biggest helper ever! Having a fourth baby is soooooooooooooooooooo much easier than a first, mostly because of him! Happy 9th birthday, buddy, we love you!!

Hottest Toy This Season

Something about the hunt makes it exciting for me. I've been looking for months, along with others I roped in with me. Today I scored (4) of these:

I already have a lot of the accessories I've just been holding onto. I finally made the decision to give up last week, but ... by a matter of luck, I'll be holding onto EVERYTHING. Or selling them on E-Bay to pay for Christmas this year!

A Christmas Carol

We saw Disney's Christmas Carol over the weekend.
I took my sister, Tyra, who is 11 and my kids.
We all left feeling scared.
Maggie covered her eyes for most of the movie, Josie held my hand.
I was warned, and wish I would've listened.
DON'T take little kids (even 11 year olds) to see this movie.
I feel bad I wasted $65.

So much to be grateful for ...

I love Thanksgiving. I love getting to stuff myself silly, and I love spending it with family. I didn't love it so much growing up, but now that we don't get to see our immediate families as often, it is great just to be together. It is a wonderful time to reflect on all our blessings, and we have many. This year we've had some big changes, and not a day goes by that my heart's not full of gratitude.
BUT ...
One thing I especially love about Thanksgiving, is the next day. We look forward to it for a long time, and this year is no exception! Happy Shopping!

Annie's Blessing

We blessed Annie a couple weeks ago. She was so beautiful, I wish I would've got more pictures. I've been so lame at taking pictures. Thankfully my Mom had her camera this weekend or we would've missed Halloween pictures too! I was so worried that Annie was going to scream her head off during her blessing, because it's just her style, but she was really sweet. I was so grateful! We had everyone over afterward, and I'm so grateful for a house that will fit everyone, we love it! We missed those that couldn't be here with us. Annie is very loved and it's always good to be able to have our families together. She is so sweet and we love her so much!

Halloween 2009

We had our annual "SOUP & SCOOP" at Grandpa & Grandma's before Halloween. It is always so fun and the kids look forward to it every year. This year we almost didn't make it because of Josie being sick and I wondered if I should take Annie or not. I'm glad that we went and we had a great time. It's always fun to get together and it's been fun to make traditions that we look forward to.
The kids all had Halloween parties at school and it was fun for Josie to have one this year. We also had a Halloween ward party that was a blast!
For Halloween we had my family here because we were blessing Annie the next day. The kids love having Tyra here and we had a great time on Halloween. They got loaded with candy, of course, and Josie ate all hers and don't tell Maggie, but her bucket is also empty-- courtesy of Josie. The girl loves candy (takes after her mom, it's all I've had for breakfast and lunch since Halloween!)! The weather was lovely and we were so glad!
Crazy that I didn't get any pictures of Josie! Oops!

Isn't she beautiful?

My good friend, Andrea, took these pictures last week. Annie was more cooperative than I thought she would be. They turned out so awesome and I am so grateful!

Artwork

Josie brought this picture home from school last week. Can you guess who it is? (it's not me!)



When I asked her who it was, she said, "It's Ariel, Mom! Here are her shells and her fin and she has red hair!"

Josie's Circus Day

Josie had a fun circus day at school to show us some of the things she's been working on. It ended with cotton candy-- it doesn't get better than that!

Wacky Day

Here is Josie for "WACKY DAY" at school. She was so excited! It's good to be wacky for one day ...

What We've Been Doing ...

Things are slowly, but surely, returning to normal. Annie was born on Sept. 17th. She really didn't want to come, I was dilated to a 4 and just kept going! I was so worried that once I went in to labor she would come really fast and told my Doctor that I was going to have to pack some snacks and pitch a tent in the hospital parking lot so that I didn't deliver at home or in the car! At my appointment he told me to come in that night while he was on call so that the baby would be born in the hospital. He broke my water at 1:15 a.m., I had my epidural by 1:30 a.m., and she was born at 2:58 a.m. So it's a good thing for a great doctor that didn't make me wait to go into labor myself! Everything went really well and we are really glad to have her here, but she has turned our lives upside down trying to show us who is boss ... and it isn't us! I was so spoiled by Josie that I didn't even consider what it would be like to have a baby that actually cried and didn't sleep all night!! We've definately struggled, but I think we're getting things figured out. I've had the nicest friends ever that have brought in dinners, taken the kids so I could rest, and have brought in yummy treats-- we've been very taken care of, and I am so grateful for that. It's hard to believe that it has been almost 5 weeks, she's growing like crazy. I've been terrible at taking pictures, but here are a few:

Annie Jeanne

Happy Birthday!
Annie Jeanne
September 17
6 lb. 4 oz.
17 in. long

Josie Starts Preschool!

My baby started preschool today! It was so weird to send her off to school and be all alone for a couple of hours. I know I only have a few weeks of being alone, but it was kind of sad to see her be so big. She's going to a great school and 6 out of the 10 kids in her class are in our neighborhood, so she was excited to go with all her friends. She loved posing for her pictures, if you can't tell!

Do you see what I see??

Look closely ...

That's right ... it's GRASS! We had it planted last Thursday, we've been taking extra good care of it, and today we saw some little blades poking up. We're so excited!
This is a block of cement we made with the kid's handprints when we had our cement poured. It turned out cute, I'm not sure what we're going to do with it, but for now it's cute.