My Birthday

I had my 29th birthday last Saturday,

We were able to go here

Had a very yummy frozen strawberry lemonade that was HUGE!

And we were able be in the company of these people

Thanks for a great night you guys!!!  Too bad we were missing a few members of the family (you know who you are, we love you!)

On Sunday we had a little celebration with my family and my sister gave me a very fun present:

And this is how it turns out:

It does what it says it does!! 

Now I just want to try it with something besides brownies and see how that goes.

I also was able to spend some money from family and got a new addition to my Precious Moments collection.

Along with this:

And I got a new bathrobe too!!!  It's so soft and nice :)

Pat finally got the rest of his presents from his birthday too:

February is such a busy month for us. I'm just glad that I don't have a child's birthday to worry about for another 2 months.

New Skirt

Here's my cute little neighbor modeling her new skirt!  I love the way it turned out.  The day after we took these pictures her mom gave birth to her little sister. 

So I'll have to get pictures of them together in their skirts when the baby gets a little 'bigger'.  (she was 10 lbs 6 oz)

My Princess

In the past week I've taken some way cute pictures of Mara. 

She is such a princess and I love her to pieces!

Gotta love the Fun-Dip!!!

Mana made Valentines cookies and we got to frost them!

Mara let me curl her hair for church

(even though she screamed through most if it).

It turned out way cute and for the most part lasted until church was over!

She loves to play dress ups most days, but whenever she watches Snow White she has to dress up just like her and act out scenes from the movie (this is the only movie she does it with).

Here's Snow White asleep, waiting for her prince.

Mara, my little princess, I Love You!

Randomness

We've been really busy this past week, but don't have many pictures. To start us out, here's a Mara hairstyle.

And another:

I'm trying to do some fun things with her hair that show off the length too. So we'll see how many different things I can do.

Last Friday, the 5th, was Pat's 29th Birthday!!!  This is pretty much the only picture I have of him from that day.

We celebrated a bit at Morri & Liza's house and had cake with them and Lana & her family.  Then we dropped the kids off at Roger & Tammy's, went to eat at Yamato's, then saw the movie 'The Book of Eli'.  It was a great birthday for him :)

I was able to finish another sewing project!! 

My friend Stacy, who happens to be my neighbor and VT partner too, is having her 5th baby real soon.  So I was able to make her a nursing cover & diaper clutch for the new baby!  I had decided to change the straps a bit and ended up with some extra fabric.  She is having a girl and has a 2 year old daughter too, so of course, I decided to make some matching skirts with the extras :)  I did have to buy a little bit more fabric to get the job done, but now I don't have any leftovers!!  I even did a new design for the skirts and they turned out WAY CUTE!!!!   I just can't believe how small the baby one is!  But now I know how much fabric I need when I make skirts for my own baby girl!

Her daughter LOVED the skirt and I'm hoping to get a picture of her in it soon.

On another note we've had some medical issues with Xander this week, but that'll be another post all together.

The Rest of January

I don't know why I've been such a bad blogger this past month. I have by no means been 'too busy', I'm just down-right lazy!  Here are a few highlights of the past few weeks:

On Saturday the 23rd, I wasn't feeling the best, so we decided to have a pajama day, since dad was at work for the evening.  The kids pulled out the toy dishes, the kids table and decided to play 'Resturant'! Here's what I wrote about it in my journal:

I love my kids! They have decided to block off the living room and open their own resturant! They have the table from the toy room and all the play dishes out to make food. Xander told me that it costs a penny to enter the resturant and when I'm done I get my penny back (but it has to be a real penny). Also we all have to share a pancake, and it's only for Xander, Turtwig, Mara, Bear, & me! And it's Bear's birthday and she's turning 5 and they are making a cake for her! I just love how excited Mara gets when she tells stories!

Menu: pizza, grapes, cake, pancakes, vegetables.

I just wish that I could video tape all that's happening (i know that i can, but the kids don't act like themselves when it's on)

They have the table all set up with chairs and plates and all for the 3 of us, and then Bear & Turtwig are on the couch with their stuff :)

I just love the imagination on my kids!

I have been playing around more with Mara's hair. The fact that I'm taking pictures of each style is adding up! I can't decide if I should just post the pics on my craft blog, always post them here, or start a seperate hair blog!  Because one can never have TOO many blogs, right???    So here are the latest dos:

* I'm always looking for something new to keep the hair out of her face.

I FINALLY made skirts for my nieces Bryton & Aubrey that live in Boise.  I bought the fabric after Thanksgiving with their mom, Amber and it's just been sitting in the bag for a month, but I finally got it out and went to work.  Yes, I did a little bit each day, so something that would normally take me a day to make took me a week (remember, I made 2). But they turned out WAY CUTE!!!  Mara was sad that one of them wasn't for her, but I told her that I will make some new ones this year that will match with baby sister, so that made her happy.

*Don't mind the shirt Mara's wearing, she was still in jammies when I realized that I needed to put them in the box to send, asap.  Amber took pictures of the girls in the skirts, so I'll post it as soon as I get it!

Here's a cute picture I have to throw in.  Whenever family comes over the girls HAVE TO play dress ups!  These are 2 of the favorite dresses that Aunt Karri has found at Target. I wish I had a dress like these to play around in!

And the last of the pictures of January.  Mara wanted to play Sleeping Queens with Karri & Mana (I wasn't invited to play).  I don't know who won, but they were sure cute!

Now that January is over and February has started, the days seem to be brighter.  It's finally nice enough to run errands without a coat, but I still don't want to spend time outside.  And I have 4 months left until the baby comes!  So far this pregnancy is going really fast, I can't believe that I'm already 23 weeks.  The kids love touching my belly in hopes to feel the baby move, but she's still too small for that to happen.  The other day they decided to start giving her hugs and kisses!!  I'm just glad that they are old enough to know better than to lift up my shirt to do it :)   We've decided on a first name, but the middle is still iffy, which is weird for me since it didn't take long for us to decide Xander's name, and we had Mara's picked out way before I was even pregnant with her.  But this time it's taking me a little longer to make the decision, I just don't want to get it wrong.  I'm not really keeping the name secret, I just don't want to post it yet. I have too many friends having babies and I don't want anyone to steal it ;)

Hopefully I can post at least once a week and get back to my regular blogging habits. Thank goodness January is OVER!!!!!!!!!!

January So Far

With the event of the ultrasound for January, I've negleted to post pictures of everyday occurances. So here's a post to catch up for the past 3 weeks.

On the 5th I was able to get together with some of my best friends (Stefanie, Courtney, & Erin) and have a girls lunch!!  It seems like we only do this when there's an event, and this event was that Courtney was in town!!  She was only here for a couple of days and I'm happy that we were able to steal her away for a few hours :)  We wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse, so we met there, only to find out that they aren't open for lunch on weekdays!!  HOW RUDE!!! So we went to The Olive Garden, which was way yummy!  I CRAVE their salad and wish I could eat it everyday!!

After lunch, Stef came to my house and cut my hair.  I realized that the last time I got it cut was last July right before our trip to Cali, so I was LONG overdue for a new do!!

I went from THIS:

To THIS:

I'm totally LOVING having my hair short again!!  When it was long I would only straighten it once a month, if that.  So now that it's short again I'm more willing to have it straight everyday.

THANKS STEF!!!!!!

On Saturday the 9th, we had tickets to The Mad World of Magic at Mountain View.  Pat got the tickets for free and we thought that the kids would like it.  The guy was OLD and the set was soo 70's, but the tricks were pretty good.  It started at 5:30 and we had to meet Pat there so we didn't get any dinner before it started, so we left at intermission, and got some dinner at Taco Bell :)

With the new year Xander is in a new class in Primary.  After church on the 3rd, he decided that he wanted to start reading his Book Of Mormon all by himself. He only reads a few verses at a time, but he's doing it almost daily and really enjoys it.  He gets so excited when he gets to turn the page!  Some times he reads silently, but when he reads aloud I'm able to help him with the words.  I don't know if he's really following the story that's being told, but at least he's reading it!!

This was taken on the 10th:

And whenever he gets out his scriptures, Mara has to have hers too :)

Later that day we were able to go to hear Pat's Aunt & Uncle report on their mission, so I tried another hair style on Mara.  After searcing a few blogs for one that looked cute and easy, I decided to just go at it and see what I came up with.  So this is 100% me :)

On the 16th, Mara had gone in the toy room to play and had closed the door (I prefer to have doors open). So after a bit I called for her to see what was going on and this is how she looked!

I don't know why she likes to be half naked, but I don't care so much. If she's happy, I'm happy :)

My sister donated these size 9 pink shoes to the dress up box! 

I love when little feet wear big shoes.

I decided the other night to try another new thing with Mara's hair.  So before she went to bed I braided the whole thing.

And this is how it looked when I took it out the next day.  It gave her alot of body to her hair, but it made it really hard to brush out the day after.

Yesterday Mara found a stash of Play-Dough and decided to pretend that she was cooking.  She loves to play a cooking game on her Leapster, so of course, she had to cut up everything for real.

I thought about saving the play-dough but she had squished it all together so I just threw it away.  I'm not really a fan of play-dough so this was probably the first and last time she played with it at home.

Well, that's the end of my catching up. Thanks for reading :)

Surprised!!!!!!!

That's exactly what I was yesterday.  I had a certain gender in mind and thought that I was 100% right for a very long time and learned that I was completely WRONG!!!!  It's been almost a full day and I think it will take me awhile longer to really believe the Ultrasound.

This is of it's face.

Did you see it??????

That's right!  We're having a GIRL!!!!!

I'm just completely floored, but excited.  She really is a very huge blessing because I don't have to buy ANY clothes for her (Mara's bday is in April, and she is due in June).  Hopefully there's enough of a span between the girls that Mara won't feel threatened when she's old enough to want to play with Mara's princess toys!

So there you have it!  Now it's just really deciding on a name. We have one in mind, but I'm not sure if it's right.

Any suggestions????

What Do You Think??

Boy or Girl??

We are having our Ultrasound next week and I'm interested to know what gender you think the baby is!!!  There's a poll in my sidebar where you can cast your vote and you can comment too!

My Crowning Glory

I have 2 friends in my ward that always do the cutest hair styles on their girls. I usually just stare at the girls and think "I won't ever be able to do that".  But I've made a goal to try new and fun things with Mara's hair (just for church, since we now go at 1:00).

This is a style that I copied from Andrea, but I did braids where she usually does twists.  I'm just happy with how it turned out :)

I just wish I could have taken a better picture, oh well.