Nine months and Noisy!

Taylor is now 9 months old! I took these pictures of her today playing with her favorite toy, a giant stuffed bear. She has two teeth no although you can't really tell in these pictures of course.

Here are a couple recent videos of her. She's so entertaining and surprisingly noisy. This little girl is so much fun. (sorry the first one is so dark)

Things that make Taylor happy:

chewing on stuff

face plants into pillows other soft stuff

other people clapping

baby einstein

Brooklyn

waking up

playing with faces

peek-a-boo

cheerios

making loud noises

shopping with mommy

Butterfly fly away

First day of Kindergarten . . . it came way too fast. I put her on the bus this morning and as it drove away (faster than it should have) I was just about ready to fall apart. I didn't think I would be so emotional about it, but apparently I can't help it. I thought I was prepared for this. I was waiting for the day when I could do what ever I want in the morning, watch my shows, do my own projects without having to find a project for Brooklyn to do, not listening to her saying "I'm hungry" every 10 minutes. Now that's gone and I'm not sure what to do with myself. I remember my first day jitters, but this is multiplied by 10, mostly because I won't be there with her. I've had all this anticipation building, and now I just have to wait.

I know she'll be fine. She has a great teacher. Her teacher is the principal's sister for goodness sake. How could it get any better than that? Mrs. W is her teacher and Mrs. V is the classroom aide. Their classroom theme is all ocean life so there are fish name tags, fish hanging from the ceiling, and a fish bowl billboard. It looks like so much fun in her class.

Taylor even had fun during meet the teacher.

There were lots of chairs for her to crawl in and out of.

Well, on Monday (I don't know why I didn't wait until Tuesday) I thought we would do some fun things, but I have to say going to see Hannah Montana at the movies was the most fun. Now I can't get the song "Butterfly fly away" out of my head. It was stuck in my head when i went to bed last night and it was stuck there when I got up this morning. It has the best lyrics and probably is why I'm so emotional. Here they are for your poetic pleasure.

You tucked me in, turned out the light


Kept me safe and sound at night


Little girls depend on things like that


Brushed my teeth and combed my hair


Had to drive me everywhere


You were always there when I looked back



You had to do it all alone


Make a living, make a home


Must have been as hard as it could be



And when I couldn't sleep at night


Scared things wouldn't turn out right


You would hold my hand and sing to me



Caterpillar in the tree


How you wonder who you'll be

Can't go far but you can always dream



Wish you may and wish you might


Don't you worry, hold on tight


I promise you there will come a day


Butterfly fly away



Butterfly fly away, butterfly fly away


Flap your wings now you can't stay

Take those dreams and make them all come true



Butterfly fly away, butterfly fly away


We've been waiting for this day

All along and knowing just what to do


Butterfly, butterfly, butterfly, butterfly fly away



Butterfly fly away


Butterfly fly away

I'm learning to let go.

Celebrate!

Saturday was my birthday and at this age it almost feels like just another day. Well, Mike did a good job at making my day feel special! First, he let me sleep in a little and took care of the girls while making breakfast for me. We ate French toast and sausage together as a family. Mike is not much of a breakfast eater so this is kind of a big deal for me. For those of you who don't know, my husband is a great cook. I love eating his food.

After breakfast we got ready to go see "Up." I loved this movie! It's so fun and works well with both old and young. We saw it as a family, Taylor too! We've never braved the movies with an infant before so this was a first for us and she did great. We even got compliments from people sitting around us after the movie at how well she did.

Another surprise during to movie was Taylor's first tooth! She finally got one out on the bottom. She's still quite fussy so I'm sure others are soon to follow. It's hard to get a picture without a screaming fit so you probably won't see one.

After the movie we went to Joe's Fresh Farm Grill. Warning: The Fried Chicken Tender Basket might as well be the Four Fried Chicken Breasts Basket! They were huge. I only got through two and had to take the rest home. However, like many things on the menu, they were delicious. I don't do fried too often so this was a nice greasy treat. Higley and Ray if you're interested.

After lunch, we took the girls home and Mike gave me birthday money and sent me shopping BY MYSELF for 2 blissful hours. After visiting 5 different stores, I ended up with 2 shirts, 4 pairs of earrings and 4 necklaces. It's been a long time since I've gotten any stylish jewelry so I stocked up!

I got home and got all fancied up with my knew jewelry and we headed off to a surprise dinner. Mike wouldn't tell me where we were going so I tried to be calm and patient about it hoping it was something I would like and not something he's been dying to try. We took the girls to Ted and Stef's (cousins) in Scottsdale. The only clue I had was it was near their place and I had never been there before. We swapped cars with Ted and Stef (which they had just washed their beautiful black Tacoma and we had our dingy dirty Pacifica) and used GPS for the first time ever to get to our destination. Where did we end up?

THE MELTING POT!

This is a picture of one part of our four course meal! It started with a cheese fondue appetizer with breads, vegetables, and green apples. Then we had a salad. Then came the entree with 5 different kinds of meat (filet mignon, sirloin, pork, chicken, and shrimp) and more vegetables (as seen in picture). Then dessert! Pure milk chocolate fondue with rice krispie treats, pound cake, brownies, cheesecake, bananas, strawberries, graham cracker covered marshmallows and the favorite of the night . . . oreo dust covered marshmallows. We've already decided to figure out how to make the Oreo marshmallow. They were delectable! I was absolutely stuffed, but so happy and in love with my food. Thanks so much Ted and Stef for watching the girls. We really appreciated it and they had such a good time. Brooklyn is still talking about Lola!

I give all the credit of my beautiful birthday to my wonderful husband. He takes such good care of me and puts up with a lot. I am so incredibly blessed to have him in my life. We've been friends for 10 YEARS now! Best friends just shy of that, so it's very hard to imagine life without him. I'm so glad I married my high school sweetheart and that we have two beautiful girls to show for it. We have a blast and still laugh at each other almost everyday. We may have struggles just like any other couple goes through, but I will forever love him. After such a wonderful day I've got a tall order to fill for his birthday. Hopefully I don't mess it up!

Here's a list of some things we got on my birthday (or planned to get) for free or special priced:

Free popcorn at Harkins

$10 of your meal at Joe's Fresh Farm Grill

A dozen donuts at Krispy Kreme (missed this one)

special love and attention from those who love you :)

Love the Photoshop

Hey everyone, Mike here. For those who don't know I am in a degree program that is a mix of graphic arts, web design and printing. I get to learn cool stuff that I really enjoy. This wasn't a school project but I thought I would share it with you. I learned some really cool techniques from a tutorial and turned this photo......

Into this...

I didn't "draw" any of it. It's basically a compilation of 12 different pics or so. Just blended together so it looks relatively seamless.

Cool, huh? Well...at least I think so.

So big!

She's growing so fast. Here's another of her trying to talk!

Hello . . .

I have been seriously neglecting to post pictures of the kids and we've been doing so many fun things this summer. Here's an update and just a few of the favorites.

This was 4th of July morning (sad I know that I didn't get to it until now). I woke my mom up to go to a breakfast gathering/party that was in the field in front of her house that her ward was putting on (my home ward I grew up in). It was nice seeing my friends' parents there and catching up with them. Brooklyn's not in this picture because she was too busy playing kick ball water style with mini pools as bases. Good times!

After breakfast and partying, Mike and I took Brooklyn to Chuck-E-Cheese for lunch and played lots of games. We saved about 50 tokens from the last time we were there and got 10 more from a rewards chart she filled out on their website. We got a crazy amount of tickets. Like 170 or something like that. I've never been able to do it, but we did this time. With all those tickets we got, we still only walked out with an Airhead, a sticky hand toy, and a plastic lady bug. What a jip!

After CEC, we went to a friend's house to play in the water (again). They rented this cool bouncer thing except this one is like a giant blow up slip and slide and had a little pool at the end of it. (Sorry, no pics of it) However, I think Brooklyn got more enjoyment out of the trampoline. Thanks Aunt Rena for inviting us!

As for the rest of the summer, this is how Taylor has been spending it! We just cart her around where ever we go and she's just fine with it as long as she has her strap to suck on.

We also signed up the girls for swimming lessons (which ends on Friday). Brooklyn calls it Pool School and has a blast!

Mike came with us today and took these awesome pictures! He's so good at it!

Here's me and Taylor in the parent-infant class which consists of us and another mom and baby. Oh well, we all get to be in the pool at the same time together and it's only for a half hour. I know Taylor loves it, therefore, by default, mommy loves it to :)

Happy summer everyone!

Quote of the week . . .

FHE, what a wonderful night. Lately, we've been doing something a little new. I want to get Brooklyn interested in the scriptures, but reading them word for word to a 5 year old doesn't work very well. Luckily for Christmas, my grandparents got us the entire collected works on DVD. It's basically all the stories put to pictures and with and abridged narration. Well, we started this last week so this week I thought I would do a little sum-up from where we left off. So I asked questions like "Who translated the book of Mormon" and "Who was the first prophet in the Book of Mormon" then I asked her, "Who was Nephi?"

"Nephi is the greatest man in the whole world!" --Brooklyn (age 5)

By the way she said it, I'm not sure any other man is ever going to measure up. I love this age.

ok, ok . . .

After my flip out last week, I feel kind of obligated to post something about the Bachelorette yet again. I'm so happy for her now that the jerk is gone. I hope he gets back and his manager yells at him and says, "I told you the show would be good for you not to go act like a jerk!" and dump him on the spot. He seemed so drunk at his exit interview in the limo it was disgusting.

Adios Wes!

(I wish I was the one dunking him in this picture.)

Grrr . . .

Our computer crashed last week. I went without the internet for about 4 days. That's a really long time. The worst about it is that I had been working really hard and organizing and maintaining our budget records on excel and now . . . they are gone. I loved looking at all the files at the end of the year and knowing where all the money went. Now I'm back to the stunned and amazed shock at the end of the year. I'm not the one who does the taxes so why should it matter. I'll tell you why. It's that OCD in me that needs the satisfaction from working so hard and maintaining order. Now it's gone . . . and I feel cold. Okay, not really, but man! That was a lot of work. So now we have a bigger hard drive and I've reassembled the worksheet in excel to keep track of the finances among other things like download a day and a half of CDs from my collection onto iTunes. Word to the wise . . . back up your computer . . . everything.

I want to break something . . .

How could she! Wait, let's start positive . . . nope, I'm too mad. How could she keep Wes around? I think the only reason I will accept is that she didn't want to look like a jerk and just bump him off. How could you not trust Jake? He's just about as genuine as it gets. Wes needs to take his "career" somewhere else and stop using Jillian. I really hope this doesn't end lame.

Okay, I think I can handle the positive now. Ed's Back! How could that not be positive! I'm glad she kept him even though he is a little behind, he was already ahead to begin with. My vote, Ed, but honestly, I'll be happy for whomever she picks as long as it's not Wes.

I'm glad I got that off my chest. :)

Happy Birthday Brooklyn!

We all had so much fun on Brooklyn's b-day trip! I told Mike that we needed to say "Yes" to as many things as we could on our vacation with her. We wanted to make it so much fun and memorable and I really hope we achieved that and these memories will be with her forever.

We started out by leaving Monday for our hotel that was walking distance away from Disneyland. When we checked in we got dressed for Huntington Beach which was only a half hour away. It was kind of cold so we kept shirts/sweaters on.

However, Brooklyn fell in the water with her sweater on and got too cold. She mellowed out after a while and we built a sandcastle and played with bubbles before we left.

The next day was Brooklyn's birthday! We got up early to get into Disneyland as soon as we could. She got a pin at the ticket window that said "Happy Birthday" and they put her name on it so that any of the cast members we met would all say "Happy Birthday Brooklyn" and she would say "They know it's my birthday! They knew I was coming!"

She thought this was just for her.

Of course we met Tinker Bell. We got an autograph book for her so she could get all the characters' signatures.

She wanted to ride with Daddy for Autopia.

She got her face painted while Daddy waited in line for the Matterhorn and almost ended up going by himself on the ride.

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! Brooklyn can even spell his name!

Minnie was next door so we couldn't miss her.

Goofy lives across the street. He really was goofy. I haven't met the characters since I was a kid so this was an awesome experience for me too. To be honest I almost cried when I met Tinker Bell. I guess I got a little star struck. (I wonder what would happen if I met a famous actor/actress. I'd probably fall apart. How embarrassing)

I'm not aloud to do this ride. I'm glad they had fun doing it!

I love this picture!

Brooklyn got to be on Daddy's shoulders during the parade. After a few minutes she asked to go back to the rides. She didn't want to stay and watch them dance in the street. The new parade isn't that amazing.

Anytime we got close to getting on a ride, this is what Brooklyn would do. She doesn't like loud noises, but she likes going fast!

This is in line for our last ride at 11:30 at night. I can't believe she lasted this long! Our last ride was the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. She said she didn't like it, but I really think she didn't like having to wake up to go on a fast ride. So then we left in time for the park to close at midnight. Amazingly she walked all the way back to the hotel.

I think I can safely say that 5 years old is the perfect age to bring a child to Disneyland! She was able to do all the rides and WANTED to. She never backed out once. She did cry after Splash Mountain, but not because of being all wet or because of the big scary drop, but because the vultures laughed at her and were mean. It was cues like this through out the day that made us decide against trying the Haunted Mansion. I'm so proud of her and how brave she was. She didn't give us any problems and was so much fun to watch and discover what a wonderful place Disneyland is. We had so much fun and have lots more pictures. These are just the highlights of our day. I'm so glad we took Brooklyn. Now it's going to be hard for just Mike and I to go by ourselves with Brooklyn knowing just what were up to. It truly is the happiest place on earth!

Kristy

I ran into a good friend the other day who I haven't seen for a long time. She's so awesome! Everyone should know her! So let me introduce to you (if you don't know her already) Kristy! We've been buds for a long time. I want to say Jr. High is when we actually met. We just kept hanging out with the same group of friends all the way through college where we had even more of a blast! Here's some memories I'd like to share from the college years . . .

We loved to get people in the middle of our hugs. We'd call them Kristy(i) sandwiches (when actually the sandwich should be called after the person in the middle in which case this would be a Michael sandwich.)

Here we are again with said Michael at a Homecoming parade! The theme was "No Badgers" from whatever movie that was on so a bunch of us thought it would be funny to put duct tape on our bottoms and spell out EAC No Badgers. Why that was funny I don't really remember, but we had a blast (Everyone told me I had a nice "A":) So we ran around during the parade all together thinking we were hilarious. I guess that's what a small town like Thatcher will do to you and I don't regret it one bit!

Kristy and Evelyn stayed at my house after a college temple trip. I loved having sleep-overs at my house with my college friends. Thanks mom for putting up with us!

Okay, here's a true Kristy(i) sandwich thanks to Jake (left) and Zach (right). Aww, those were the days.

On another weird note having to do with the name Kristy . . .

I was driving home today when I heard this song say "Kristy are you doing okay?" So I looked at my display (it tells me the artist and song title) The above line is the title and it's sung by Offspring. Crazy! Here's the lyrics . . .

There’s a moment in time
And it’s stuck in my mind
Way back, when we were just kids

Cause your eyes told the tale
Of an act of betrayal
I knew that somebody did

Oh, waves of time
Seem to wash away
The scenes of our crimes
But for you this never ends

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Though the marks on your dress
Had been neatly repressed
I knew that something was wrong
And I should have spoke out
And I’m so sorry now
I didn’t know
Cause we were so young

Oh, clouds of time
Seem to rain on
Innocence left behind
And it never goes away

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Oh, clouds of time
Seem to rain on
Innocence left behind
And it never goes away (It never goes away)
It never goes away

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Ha! A song with my name in it! So what it's not spelled right. So now after all is said and done, I think I'll self proclaim this KRISTY(I) WEEK! I hope you all enjoy it :)

Help!

How do I add a picture to this oh so cute header I found? Anyone . . . anyone?

What 2 do . . .

Okay, so I've been kind of a slacker lately not posting real pics and letting you know what's going on.  So here's an update.

For the Mother's Day project in our Preschool we made these cute little flower pots with paper flowers and straws.  Brooklyn made on for her grandma and my example went to the other grandma.  It's just weird having your own kid make you a present.

For the second to the last Friday of the preschool, we went to the movies to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D!  We had so much fun!  Thanks Hunter's mom for coming with us.  It wouldn't have been the same without you.

For the last Friday, we went to the San Tan splash pad and had a water party.  Like the doofus I am, I forgot my camera.  But here's some pictures of Brooklyn playing there on another day.  Sometimes, we really need a break out of the house and I love having this splash pad near by.

Taylor likes it too. She's always happy outside.

Taylor's new adventure is eating rice cereal.  We just started this last week.  She's now 6 months old, but is really supposed to be 5 months next week.  Doctors have premies hold off starting cereal until they are gestationally old enough. 

I love her chubby cheeks! 

Oh, and that's right, I made her bib!  Cha-ching!

Next adventure, Disneyland for Brooklyn's 5th birthday!!!