The Beginning of the Storm

A big storm started moving in tonight and when it started, the flakes were really big! I tried to get a picture of them falling but it is pretty hard to catch them on camera. Here's my best shot - this is the view from our back door.
Snow day tomorrow? Please?

Ouch!

Tonight, as the kids were getting ready for bed, Emma tripped (or something - no one really saw it) and hit her head on the gate at the top of the stairs. It instantly swelled in to a huge goose egg and she got a little cut. Poor girl. This picture was taken just before John cleaned it with rubbing alcohol - which, of course, made her cry again. It also made it bleed. We are noticing that she has a really high tolerance for pain!
Poor Ems!

Big Girl Emma

Pardon the lighting of this photo, it was taken in our closed (therefore, dark) garage - too cold to open the door before we are all safely in the van. :)
Because Riya got her new booster seat, Emma got upgraded to Riya's old seat. I took the pads off and tossed them in the washer so she could start with a "like new" car seat. Until now, she's been in the rear facing infant carrier - she loved facing forward!!  We were going to check out some more houses and on the way, she kept staring at John while he was driving. I realized that she's never seen that before and it was fascinating to her!
Look how happy she is - with those fingers in their usual position. Haha.

Big Girl Booster Seat!

Riya is just growing up in all sorts of ways! Today, we finally got her big girl booster seat in the mail - I had been putting off ordering one because I wanted to check reviews/avoid shipping charges. Plus, we have basically any store you can think of here in our town and why pay shipping when you can drive to buy it? After much begging from Riya (everytime we got in the van) I ordered this baby online and because John is a student, we got free 2 day shipping. Oh yeah! Riya was almost in tears on Friday because it didn't come until after we picked Jayden up from school and we had errands to do before that so she had to sit in her "baby" carseat. I'm pretty sure the fedex guy was watching us because as soon as I pulled in to the garage, he pulls in to the driveway and gives us this glorious box. :) She was SOOO excited!!
This prompted me to get very ambitious and clean out the entire car - vacuuming so thoroughly that EVERYTHING that was in the car came out. That was a lot of stuff!! Seats were folded every which way they could to allow the most precise cleaning job possible. :) As I was emptying the van, I was just putting things on the floor in the kitchen... shortly after I was finished, someone knocks on our door... who could it be?? My visiting teachers, of course! My house looks like a tornado threw up in it and I forgot they were coming. Lovely. They got to see my house in it's best form! I love those girls though - so, oh well!

Passie Fairy Visit

Last night, Riya's beloved "passie" went missing for the billionth time and we decided to see if the Passie Fairy might come visit her if she was willing to be a Big Girl and not sleep with it. We've been trying this for several months now but she always decides that she needs it. She is only allowed to have it at night, in her bed - and during nap time.
We were a little shocked when John said, "You don't need it, you are a big girl now" and she answered with, "I don't need it. I'm a big girl!"
She went to her bed and then started whimpering about needing it so I got out the Bye-Bye Pacifier book that she's read a million times and she didn't want me to read it but I did anyway. We told her about how the Passie Fairy might come and leave her something under her pillow if she can say goodbye to them for good. She giggled and agreed. She slept all night without it and woke up to find a dollar!! She decided to spend it on chocolate and so we did. :)
She then slept during nap time without it too!! Yea Riya!!!

PS - Seven years ago today, I was supposed to be due to have Jayden (I had a probable due date of January 18th but this day was my official due date)... did he come? Nope... stay tuned to see when he actually made his appearance. :)

Book of Mormon Stories

As previously mentioned, we were challenged to complete the Book of Mormon in 80 days. Tomorrow is the activity for the finale of that challenge. I made these little notebooks (with some assistance from John - thanks, babe!) and candy bars for the activity. John put on The Karate Kid (Jaden Smith version) and we taped/mod podged/folded away while watching the movie. I didn't watch much but it sounded like a cute movie! :)

Baby Bathtime

My girls love to take baths. Emma loves the idea of getting in the bath and then she loves playing/splashing but as soon as you ask if she wants to get out, or if she sees the towel, she is ready to get out! Then she likes to be wrapped up in her towel, snuggled up tight and held like a baby while we tell her over and over again that she's our baby. She just giggles and squirms! Then if we show her what she looks like in the mirror all wrapped up, she gets so excited. Riya does the same... she always says, "I want to be your baby" when it's time to get out. We love it, they love it. Bath nights are win-win nights for us all! :)

PS - Right after I took this picture, I put Emma's diaper on and went to look in the dryer for PJs for her. I was then notified that she had climbed back into the tub with Riya and was playing again. Lovely. When I went to see her, she was just sitting there playing gleefully. She looked at me like, "What, Mom?" 

After School Nap

In our house searching, occasionally I will find a house that I like but I'm not familiar with the neighborhood or I just want to see it in real life instead of just a picture. The best time for me to do this is after picking Jayden up from school. Today was one of these days. I guess the kids got bored on the drive. This is what I saw when I turned around after noticing the quiet backseat. :)

Not So Yum-mus

Today's dinner was disgusting. Yep. I admit it. Rarely is there a meal that I don't like and that induces a gagging reflex in John (completely serious - 3 times he gagged! haha). We think it was the texture combined with the taste that did it. If either had been better, it would have been more edible.
I love to eat healthy food. Most of the time, I love the taste of the more healthy options more than the unhealthy counterparts. Hummus is not something I have ever really liked. I've tried to love it but I just don't. I had to come to that conclusion tonight. This recipe was called Sunshine Hummus Pasta - from the Eating Clean magazines that I love to cook from. I thought I'd try it - it would probably be good right? Ugh. Gross.
Funny thing is, Riya scarfed it down. She really likes to eat healthy foods (when I can get her to put food in her mouth) and mostly loves them - like me. So it wasn't a huge surprise that she liked it except for the fact that John and I couldn't seem to stomach ours. Haha. The roles were reversed tonight, I suppose.
Gross.

Saturday Shopping

After trying to figure out which day will be my weekly grocery shopping day this semester, I've decided Saturday is probably going to be the easiest. This was my first attempt - and I thought it would be great to do it as a family, with hungry bellies. Not a good idea. I was such a grump by the end of the trip and the kids were completely restless. We split up boys against girls (except I designated John to take Emma - haha) with our lists to see who could be done first. I'm pretty sure it was a tie because we ended up together to get the last few things anyway.
When we all got in the house and unpacked the groceries, this is what the floor looked like in the kitchen. We came in from the garage which brings you in to the kitchen. Shoes are put away (except John's), bags are emptied and floor is in desperate need of mopping! Lovely huh?

Double Piggy Back

For Family Movie Night tonight, we watched Mac and Me. It was Jayden's pick and he saw the alien and decided that was the one he wanted. John loves 80s movies and I think they are humorously cheesy - the effects are awesome! :) Best part - the end where the aliens become citizens of the USA and then you see them driving in a car down the highway, fully clothed with Mac in a carseat. Really? Nice.
After the movie, the kids got their PJs on and both wanted daddy to carry them upstairs to their rooms (Emma was already asleep) so this was the result. Double piggy back ride!! I couldn't help but take a picture!

YWCA

Today we helped walk Jayden's class from the YWCA where they are going for gym until spring. I took the girls in the double jogging stoller and walked the few blocks in the snow. They loved it!
This picture was chosen for today because Emma was actually looking at the camera, smiling and not moving! That is a rare occasion so I had to document it! She and Riya walked the halls around the gym while we were waiting for them to be done. She decided to stop and smile for me during her fun! :)

Pixos, Pixos

I had a meeting tonight at church so I carpooled with Heidi while her family stayed at our house to party with my family while we were gone. Jayden and Dalton have so much fun together and they both love to make stuff. This is what they made this time - Dalton made the whale and Jayden made the helicopter (I didn't know when I took the picture that it was upside down - oops!). Very cute, boys!

Trip to the Dentist

On Sunday, I was eating a piece of dark chocolate and I noticed that there was something crunchy in it. Not like a peanut but like toffee. I thought - this was supposed to be plain chocolate! I told John about it and started to take whatever that crunchy piece was out of my mouth and before it was out, I noticed my very last molar on the right side of my mouth was really rough/sharp on my tongue. Uh oh! Part of  my tooth broke off! This is the tooth that I have had a cavity in but haven't wanted to go to the dentist because my last experience was traumatic and we don't have dental insurance. Bad idea. With Monday being a holiday, I needed to wait until today to go see a dentist. Luckily they were able to see me! I got a ginormous filling put in and it was relatively painless and thankfully didn't break the bank. Whew! Now I'm not so scared of the dentist - these guys were pretty awesome. Downside = I'm probably going to have to get a crown on that tooth in a few years. Oh well - that's life. :)
Immediately after I was finished getting it filled, I had a visiting teaching appointment to go to so I went with half of my mouth being numb. Pretty strange feeling to talk without being able to feel it!
I was very blessed to have this all be a pretty pain free experience - the cavity, the breaking, the numbing shots, the filling. All of it was very manageable  - the only part that hurt was the numbing shot!
Now to go in for a teeth cleaning...

Sledding

Today was Martin Luther King Jr day so both John and Jayden were out of school. We have been wanting to get together with some friends to go sledding for a little while so we figured today was perfect (the snow was threatening to melt so we wanted to do it before it was all gone!). We had so much fun! Definitely something we'll have to do again. Our little girls look like twins in this picture - and often times they look similar without the big pink coats. The boys had so much fun going up and down the hill (the little AND big boys - haha) that Jayden was drenched in sweat by the time we all got back in the van! Riya was a natural on her snow seat and Emma giggled away while she rode down with the adults!
Love, love, loved it! Let's do it again!

Finished!

Way back in October, our Relief Society presidency gave us the challenge to read the Book of Mormon in 80 days. Today was the last day and I finished it! I got a little behind during the holidays but made up for it in order to reach my goal. I love accomplishing my goals! Thanks for the challenge!!

All Dressed Up...

Today was a busy day but I managed to squeeze in some time to stitch together the dress that I cut out a few days ago. It's a convertable dress so it can be worn many different ways. Basically, it's a circle skirt with two really long straps and a waistband. You can twist, wrap and tie the straps any way that you want to in order to get the style you want. It can even be worn as a tunic style shirt! I have a few minor improvements to make to it but overall - it turned out super cute!
Today we also got to tour the house I posted about on Thursday and we liked it but not too sure if we are going to pursue it. We'll see. More to come... :)
(Coming soon - family pics! Finally got them taken today - Emma was not liking that idea and was letting it be known but hopefully they still turned out anyway!)

Craft Night = Fun Night!

Tonight was our monthly craft night with a group of my friends. This month we made cute little purses - look how cute mine turned out! I LOVE it! I'm really loving green and brown lately. Don't they look great together?
It was a lot of fun and I always look forward to my monthly girls' night. I always come back home feeling recharged and ready to be a great mom/wife/crafter again. :)

House Hunting

We have begun the process. This is one of the houses we are really looking at and today I drove out there to check it out - from the outside. I walked around the house, peeking in the windows, loving what I saw. Right now, there are 4 houses in the running but I think we might knock out two of them soon. More to come...

SNOW DAY!

After snowing all night long, today started out as a 2 hour delay for Jayden's school so John goes out to shovel the driveway so we can leave at 10am (and he can go back to bed). Well - 9am rolls around and we find out school has been cancelled for the day for Jayden - not John. Here is John, shoveling the drive for the second time so that he can get to class. Our driveway is forever long and it curves so it has even more to shovel - what you see shoveled here is only half of the driveway. He still had the other side to do. What a guy! :)
WE LOVE SNOW DAYS!! Jayden and Riya got to play all day together (with Emma tagging along, trying to keep up)!

Makeover Time!

Today, my friend Heidi and I got to spend a few (+) hours getting our hair done and posing for some pictures for our stylist's portfolio. I, of course, needed a picture of the day so we took a few on my camera. Just call us Ebony and Ivory. :)
Or Snape and Hermoine...
Haha.
It was a lot of fun. Heidi got new highlights and a cute cut and I got a lot darker of a color put in my hair and a trim. I don't think this picture really captures how cute my hair actually turned out (or at least in my opinion - haha) but it was the best shot of the two of us so - oh well!

Thanks to Genevee for the awesome hair, thanks to Heidi for the fun time and thanks to Melinda for letting Riya play. :)

Good day!

Oh - and Jayden got out of school 2 hours early because of lots of snow!!
(Told you it was a good day!)

Family Portrait

Wondering why you haven't received our yearly family portrait yet? Well - now you have. Enjoy.

Today, I was informed that this is our family according to Jayden and Riya.
My mom gave us a bunch of Little People toys from when I was a kid and my kids LOVE them. They play with them all the time!! Naturally, they had to assign them names and we each got a toy assigned to us.
Notice anything strange about this line up??
Who is that on the far left? Not Jayden. He's the second from the left. Here we go: (L to R) Emma (!), Jayden, Daddy, Mommy, Riya

Yes, Jayden thinks that boy with the baseball cap on looks more like Emma than the little girls that look similar to the one representing Riya.
Hmmm... what do you think?? :)

PS - We actually plan to send out our real yearly picture/newsletter by the end of the month.

Where's dinner??

We have been having major issues with Riya and eating lately. Some nights, she will not even touch her dinner and she will go to bed "hungry" because we won't offer her any other food until dinner has been eaten. She very rarely ever says she's hungry though. This has become such a source of frustration that I've thought about taking her to a doctor to get checked. I've heard the thing about "she won't starve - if she's hungry, she'll eat" but when she has gone an entire day eating only a few bites from her cereal in the morning, we start to doubt it. I was given some advice to have her cook with me and then she might be more excited to eat it. She LOVED helping me cook but still didn't touch it. UGH!
SO - tonight, we had thai lime chicken, broccoli  and fried rice. I was cautiously optimistic (and hate wasting food) so I gave her two pieces of broccoli (these were the whole pieces so they were pretty big), enough rice to fill that smallest part of the plate and some cut up chicken. I told the kids that they were giants and they had to eat the trees and sand (rice) all gone. Jayden decided the cut up chicken was going to be houses. Riya ate all of it - even giggling most of the time she ate!!
She was the first one done with her dinner! I had to take a picture for proof! YEA!! (Let's hope she keeps it up!!)

Tiaras, Tutus, Treats and Toys!

Today, Riya went to a Princess birthday party for a friend from church. She had so much fun! They each got a tutu to wear with a wand, decorate their own special tiaras (which was stolen from Riya by the wind when we stepped outside), make special princess snow globes, play with stamps and stickers, eat lots of yummy food - including a castle cake (!), and open a pinata with more treats!
It was such a fun time and Riya loved being a princess! Thanks guys!!

Family Movie Night

On Friday nights, we do family movie night. We spread out a blanket, eat dinner on the floor and watch a movie. Usually, we end up with popcorn on the floor at some point during the night. Tonight, we got to have some friends join us for family movie night! This is the kiddos enjoying the popcorn and all staring up at the TV - we watched Dragon Hunters on Netflix. Interesting movie... different but interesting.

When their parents came to get them we ended up staying up to play the Wii with them. Another late but great night with friends! Thanks for staying guys!

The Never Ending Pile

What do you get when your family of 5 doesn't get any laundry done for well over a week? This is what I spent a large part of my day doing today. Real stuff here. Not glamorous... at all. BUT we do have a lot of clean clothes now! This shot is from the top of the pile of clean clothes on top of our queen size bed. Most of the bed was covered and the pile was about 3 feet tall.
C'mon Sara - as Flylady says, "A load a day keeps the chaos away!"

Who wants to take a Risk?

On New Year's Eve, I finally learned (sort of) how to play Risk. This is one of John's favorite games to play but up until now, I'd never really had the chance (or extreme desire) to really learn how to play. I figured  now was a good time, even if it was 1:30am (or later - who can keep track??). I mostly grasped the concept and it was mostly fun but our game was ended after about three turns because of our friends' little girl getting sick. It was nearly 4am anyway so it was probably time to.... I don't know.... go to sleep?? :)
So, plans were made to get together today to start another game and hopefully finish. We arrived shortly after picking Jayden up from school and the game began. It was finished around 7pm with our friend, Heidi, winning! Which, of course, meant that I won by proxy... us girls have to stick together against those husbands who have that intense strategy. :)
It was a fun get together and the kids had fun as well!! Great night!

Girls' Room!

It is not decorated and it is not completely clean but this will have to suffice for my picture of the day. :) Because of my cleaning out the garage yesterday, we had a few things that were brought back in to the house to find new homes. In order to make them fit, we've had to rearrange a bit. The brown (unfinished/not painted because, as mentioned previously, it's too cold) dresser was in Jayden's room but it seemed like a better fit in the girls' room. The table and chairs on the far right have now been adopted as bedroom furniture instead of garage storage. This is what I spent a good chunk of the day doing. Cleaning, sorting and rearranging the girls' room! Now to decorate!!
(Yes, Emma sleeps in a pack n' play... all three kiddos have. I kind of prefer them to cribs. Maybe the next child will get a crib? Who knows.)

Clean out the garage day!

This is a miracle. Too bad I'm only doing one picture a day or else I'd show the before picture for a true understanding of what I mean.

A little back story: When we first moved here, we decided that, because we had a 2 car garage, we wanted to at least be able to park the van in there. We were successful until we found a great steal of a deal on a twin bed for Riya at a garage sale this summer. I wanted to paint it so we loaded it in the garage for the week (yeah- right!) until the following weekend when I'd slap on a few layers of paint and bring it inside. So, the poor van was kicked out of it's home for one week. One week turned into about 5 months. Yikes! Now that it is too cold to paint in the garage or outside, John and I finally moved the bed up to Riya's room with only one side of the headboard painted to clear out some space in the garage. Cue Christmas decoration unpacking. Garage turns into a disaster area. No room for van.

Today, I decided that enough was enough. I wanted order again. I worked most of the day on this crazy project and in the end, we got BOTH cars in!!! YEA!!!! Once we have a garage sale, we will have even more space...

Sunday, Sweet Sunday

Today was great - I almost always love Sundays! I love that I can renew my covenants, my mind and my body. Our ward meets at 9am so this picture is pretty typical of what our Sunday afternoons look like. Riya was wanting to snuggle with me but I was making rolls for dinner so she drifted off to sleep with Daddy... I walked in and saw this adorable-ness. Happy Sunday!

Happy New Year!!

After staying up ALL night long on New Year's Eve, we had a very lazy New Year's Day. I think this is a new tradition because it was so nice (in a very sleep deprived kind of way) to just sit around in our pajamas, take random naps and watch movies! We closed the day by sipping hot chocolate around the table while talking of our new theme for the year. Great quality family time today!! Happy New Year!!