Mara's Birthday Celebration

Grandma Tolman was gone for Mara's birthday, so she came over about a week before and gave Mara her gifts. She got a way fun Princess book that came with a playmat and figures, and some new clothes.

The night before her birthday we gave her a new nightgown. It was one that I had bought at a craftshow and had forgotten about. I'm just glad that it fits her.

For breakfast she requested pancakes.

Then it was time to open gifts from us.

Xander picked out the Princess & The Frog Polly set for her. Which she loved!!

She also got a few new dresses, a tableware set of Princess & The Frog and a 'Snow White Baby'.

I even did a 'princess' hair style for her for church!

I forgot to get a picture of the kids before church when they wore their Easter clothes, so I made sure to get one before we left.

After church, Aunt Karri was here decorating Mara's cake and she had to give her 2 cents about it.

The finished product!

After a yummy dinner and playing outside with cousins it was time to open presents!

She was very spoiled and got a bunch of fun stuff.

This movie from JD & Chris (Barbie: The Princess & The Pauper)  made her scream so high that only dogs could hear!  We had rented it a few months ago and she love, love, loved it, so she was overly excited that we now own it!  She also got a Barbie: Mermaidia movie too :)

A new Beauty & the Beast playset from Mana!

My mom is working hard this year to make pillowcases for all the grandkids for their birthdays. It's been really fun for her to use the Cricut in a whole new way.  She uses my machine WAY more than I do!

New Barbie and Ken from Aunt Karri, along with a carrying case!  So cool!

Barbie clothes from Mana!

A Prince Eric doll from Grandma Joan!

And it's official: Mara has WAY TOO MANY BARBIES!!! 

Lisa (my sis in law) and I have been discussing the fact that our girls have way too many barbie dolls and 90% of them have come from Grandma Joan!  She just can't pass up a great deal and LOVES to give gifts to the grandkids, so mostly it's a new barbie for the girls.  It's getting really tiring having so many dolls lying around. Ultimately, I would love for Mara to have maybe 3-4 dolls and just keep the clothes from the others and only buy new clothes for them. We have both told Grandma 'no more barbies', but she's still trying to give them, so we'll see what happens in the future. But for now, Mara likes playing with them and I just need to figure out which ones are her favs and then get rid of the rest.

That night was a combined celebration of all the April birthdays in the family. Mara's bday is the 11th, my mom's is the 14th, and my niece Sawyer's is the 19th. We've been lucky to celebrate them all together, but might need to have them separate in the future, you know, girls and their jealousy.

This picture makes me laugh. We've got our 3 birthday girls and then Conli had to jump into the picture! She was so funny all night and had to be in the middle of everything, even though her birthday was barely a month ago!  We might just need to change her birthday from March to April so she can feel included in the festivities! But I love that it's Mana & her 3 girls :)

Happy Birthday Girls!!

4 Years Old!

Mara turned 4 yesterday and is so proud of it!!!

Here she is modeling a new dress she got from Grandma Tolman, and she had to put the bow from the top of the present on her dress too! 

It makes me think of Phoebe on Friends :)

A few things about Mara:

• 
  
  She is very loving and is always willing to give hugs and kisses (even to my belly!)
• She loves her big brother and always wants to do the things that he's doing, eventhough it drives Xander crazy because he says she's a 'copy cater'!
• She is always so excited when Daddy comes home and always gives him loves.
• She loves to play in the bathtub and pretend that she's a mermaid.
• She is always playing 'princess' with either her princess dolls or dress ups.
• She loves to dance and will do it ALL the time, even when we're in a hurry to get dressed or go somewhere.
• She is a poser, as you can tell from the picture.
• Her favorite TV shows are Olivia and Word World. She also loves Phineas & Ferb because Xander does.
• She loves ALL princess movies (especially Little Mermaid right now) and is starting to watch Barbie movies too, thanks to Uncle JD & Uncle Chris.
• Her favorite color is Pink.
• She loves to eat cheese sandwiches, pink milk, and fruit snacks.
• She's a really good eater and will (for the most part) eat whatever I make for dinner, even if it takes her all night, she'll still eat it, only because we make her :)
• She is very excited to be a big sister and talks about it all the time.
• She knows how to count past 10, but doesn't know her ABC's (I blame myself)
• She knows how to write her name with a little help.
• She still has some trouble with her colors. She mixes up Yellow & Blue. For a long time we thought that she might be color blind, but realized that she was just unsure about how to say Yellow. Now that she knows how to say "Lellow" she's getting much better.
• She says certain words wrong like forgot = gotfer, does = dews, she= her. I love it and am sad that she'll grow out of it.
• She loves having 'pretty hair' but usually cries when she gets wet from the waterbottle!
• She loves her bear and takes her everywhere we go. But bear stays in the car for the most part because of being lost at Target last year.
• She has a great imagination and can play by herself for hours.
• She loves to wear dresses and skirts, and will usually get mad at me if I pick out pants for her to wear, but she will wear leggings :)
• She loves to have 'play dates' but usually ends up bossing her friends around.
• She knows how to unbuckle her seat belt, but can't buckle it by herself yet :(
• She wears a size 11 shoe and is a 5-6 in the girls section for clothes.
• She's in the 90% for her height (41 3/4 inches) and 97% for her weight (48.8 lbs).
• She loves to collect stickers and draw pictures.
• She loves books and wants to be read to all the time.
• She likes to have her nails painted, but it doesn't stop her from biting them.
• She likes to sing, but gets embarassed when people pay attention to it.
• She is very polite and says 'please' and 'thankyou' all the time.

I love my little girl and am constantly surprised and amazed at the things that she does. Every time my children have birthday's I'm always floored at how fast they are growing up. It's just amazing how fast time flies by. It feels like yesterday that she was born and now she's 4.

Happy Birthday Mara!

I Love You!

New Family Picture

Mara has been drawing people for a few months now and has just recently started doing family pictures. She drew this one yesterday and showed it to me when she was done. As she was telling me who everyone was she gasped and said "Oh no! I gotfer the baby!", and then she added the baby to the picture. (Mara says 'gotfer' for 'forgot', and she also calls the baby by name, but I just don't want to post what her name is yet) 

I love that she is including her baby sister in the things she does, like the pictures that she draws and her prayers :)

I know she's going to be a awesome big sister :)

Dinner & Jazz

Monday was our 8 year wedding anniversary, but Pat had class and work, so he was gone all day. But we were able to celebrate on Tuesday night!  We went out to Texas Roadhouse and were able to get a table right when we walked in!!  (probably because I called ahead)  I love that place!

Then we headed up to Salt Lake to go to the Jazz game.  A co-worker of Pat's gave us their tickets for that night because they weren't able to go. So we had free tickets to THE BEST game of the year!  They played against the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that they have lost to all season!  It was a very intense game but after a high scoring game and overtime The Jazz were Victorious!!!!  It was awesome!  Let's just hope that they do well in the playoffs!

Here's a pic of a 3 point shot by Deron Williams!

(who had a career high of 42 points that night!)

The final score!

 I'm glad we were able to go out and celebrate and in such a great way!!!

Easter Festivities

For the first time in 4 years, I actually colored eggs with my kids.  The last time we did this was right before Mara was born!  I find that I'm a lazy mom and don't make a big deal out of holidays for my kids, so I decided to make a change and start being a fun mom instead of a lazy mom :)

My sister Karri came over to help us on Saturday.  The kids had alot of fun and didn't get too messy, thank heavens!

I didn't get a picture of the finished products, but we had fun anyway :)

Sunday morning the Easter Bunny came and hid the kids baskets. Xander found his with some fun figures from his favorite show Phineas and Ferb!!

Mara got a Colorwonder set of The Princess & The Frog, along with a new polly and jewelry.

We awoke to snow covered grass, which was really weird, but luckily it melted by the afternoon so my mom was able to do her annual Easter Egg Hunt for the kids.

Xander's basket doesn't hold much so we always have to get out a sack for the overflow!  The kids always have a great time finding their eggs (my mom labels them) and finding eggs for their cousins too.

My mom is really good about filling the eggs with change and the kids LOVE to get money, cause, really, who wouldn't ;)

She also made treasure boxes for all of them.

Xander decided that the best place to stash his candy was in the box!  Mom also got them all their own can of Pringles, which was a BIG hit!

After counting up their change, each of them walked away with over 13 dollars!!!!!  (Grandma Joan gave them each a $5, so that helped) They've already spent some of it, but will be saving the rest!

What a great day!

8 Is Great!

Happy 8th Anniversary!

I LOVE YOU!

Catching Up

I've been meaning to blog all week (I think I say that too much). But I've got a very quiet house with the kids asleep and hubby playing basketball, so I'm going to catch up a bit.

For starters, Xander had a little set-back with the HSP around the 21st of March (almost 2 weeks ago, see how far behind I am).  Poor boy got another head cold, just a cough and stuffy nose, and his legs went crazy again!!!  We noticed it on Saturday the 20th, kept him home from church on the 21st (because of the cough) and this is what he looked like on the 22nd.

I called the doctors office to see if this was normal.  It has only been 6 weeks since it all started, and he was looking 100% better.  But the cold just made it go crazy for a few days.  They said that it was normal for him to have a 're-lapse' (my words, not theirs) within 2-3 months if he gets a cold.  Luckily, he only had the spots for a few days and there wasn't much swelling with it this time.  So lets pray that he stays healthy for the next month or so until it's all gone.

Since Easter is on Conference Sunday this year, I had the kids wear their new Easter clothes (from my mom) on Sunday (the 28th).  We didn't have time before church to get a pic, so this is afterwards. We tried a few on the front porch but Xander was having a hard time looking at the camera because of the sunlight. So we went to the backyard to see if it was better (and it wasn't).  This is the only one we took back there and we told Xander to keep his eyes closed until my mom counted to 3, and this is what we got!!!

I guess it's better than nothing.

Lately Xander has been wanting to do chores for me like loading and unloading the dishwasher (which totally helps my back!) and taking out the garbage.  Our trash day is Tuesday, so Monday night we were talking about how we could all (me, Xan & Mara) take the garbage can to the street together.  So I gathered the last of the garbage around the house and told them to stay in the kitchen and wait for me. When I got back upstairs I couldn't see the kids anywhere, so I asked my mom if she knew where they were. She said she heard them talk about jackets and shoes and that was it. So I ran over to the kitchen window to see if I could spot them anywhere and this is what I found:

I guess I took too long getting the garbage and they decided to just take the can out by themselves.

Xander was so happy about helping out that he even brought it in from the street first thing on Tuesday morning (he put a jacket and shoes on while still wearing his pajamas)

Oh how I love my Xander!  He just surprises me all the time!

Bubble Time

My mom came home from the store on Saturday with a new bottle of bubbles, so of course, Mara pestered her for awhile until finally they went outside to blow bubbles.  I took more pics than this, but these are my favorite.  It just makes me wish I had a better camera and a smaller tummy so I could get those 'shots'.

American Heroes

Thursday night Xander participated in his first program while in Kindergarten.  His grade sang 'Yankee Doodle'. He knew all of the verses (I thought there was only 1, but there is at least 3-5!)  He did a great job and was so excited to be in the program.

He's on the top row, somewhat in the middle of the picture, with his head down.

There were so many people there so it was hard to get pictures. But I was able to video tape it, eventhough it probably didn't turn out that great. Oh well, it was fun to be there anyway :)

Random Thoughts

First I'm excited to report that Xander is doing SO much better!!  He's still taking meds everyday, but only once! He doesn't swell as often as he used to, and his spots are getting few and far between.

These are his legs last week: March 9th  (4 weeks after it all started)

These are his legs tonight: March 17 (5 weeks later)

I was starting a bath for him tonight and took one look at his legs and they just look so AMAZING!! There is only 3-4 new tiny spots and the rest of his legs have faded ones.

It makes me so happy and relieved that he's doing this well.  When it all started, it was such a frustration that there wasn't anything I could really do to make it go away. But we've just taken it day by day and look at where we are now :)

Mara decided that she wanted to have her hair like Giselle's (from Enchanted). Meaning: she wanted flowers in her hair.  So she ran to the bathroom and picked out some flowers and bows so I could put them in her hair.  She was so happy to be like Giselle :)

I feel so, I don't know what the word is, that I have neglected to get belly pictures during this pregnancy.  I was so good when I was pregnant with Mara (since I didn't do it at all with Xander's pregnancy) at having my picture taken on the days of my doctor appts so I could see how big I got, but I just keep forgetting to do it this time around.  So here we are, at 29 weeks, and this is only my 2nd pic I've had taken.  Granted, I look HUGE, but I don't feel huge, at least not yet.  I know I'll be getting alot bigger in the next few months as we near the end. 

I'm only just starting to really feel the aches and pains with pregnancy.  She is starting to really have awake times and sleeping times, which, for the most part, I hope change once she's born. But I do love being pregnant. It's just so amazing that ones body can change around to accomodate another little life.  I love being able to get to know my baby by the movements that she makes.  So far, she really likes to have her feet in my right rib and has just recently started having hiccupps. Also, she thinks that it's 'play time' when I'm ready to go to sleep and is always fighting with the matteress when I'm lying on my side.

But I'm so excited to have another child in our family. It's been so long so it seems like everything is all brand new. I just hope I haven't forgotten how to take care of a newborn :)