Tuesday, December 30, 2008

It was a "Merry" Christmas!







We had a wonderful Christmas. We are thankful for friends, family, faith, and all of the things in life that we get to enjoy. We are very blessed.

Christmas outfits


An early Christmas present








A couple weeks ago I gave the kids an early Christmas present. A kitten! Her name is Sophie. Samantha tortured her for the first day and I thought I would have to give her away- Samantha, not the cat. :) But she has calmed down a little bit and believe it or not, the cat loves her. Ashley and Taylor were SO excited to get a cat and have been great with her.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Christmas Festivities

Every year we decorate Gingerbread Houses. This year I bought a kit and the house was already assembled-so GREAT!!! 

Ashley and Taylor were very intent on making their pattern for the roof
Not sure what was going on here!

As usual, there was lots of candy sneaking going on

Samantha decorated her own gingerbread snowman. She made sure to lick, or take a bite out of every piece of candy as she put it on. I think she was pretty proud of it.


Monday, December 1, 2008

My new tree and un-traditional decorations-UPDATED


My beautiful new angels- aren't they perfect!!!

And we moved the tree! :)


Its my favorite color, what can I say?
Yay! Only 23 more days!!!


Monday, November 17, 2008

I was tagged for this by my friend Tammy
So the rules are: Go In your Picture Folder, choose the 4th folder and 4th file, then share 4 things about the photo:



1. This is Ashley
2. Taken at the beach in San Diego
3. She was 5 years old
4. She's my beach babe.

I tag anyone who wants to play!

* I stand corrected. This was this past summer, and ashley was 6. Its all a little bit muddled to me.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Groovy

I love these pictures of Taylor being silly, with a HUGE smile on his face...






Yep we were dancing on a Sunday. :)

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Happy Birthday to Michael....



Here are 32 things about Michael that I love, although I could think of many more!


1. He's a surfer. ( A darn cute one)
2. He is an amazing father
3. He makes me laugh
4. He likes to tease, but knows better then to tease me too much
5. He works really hard
6. He likes to wear his socks outside
7. He is good at everything he tries
8. He's really good at barbecuing
9. He likes to listen to AM radio, yeah he's getting old! ;)
10. He's good at skateboarding
11. He doesn't care what people think
12. He likes to help others
13. He has muscles without even trying
14. He's smart
15. He takes me to New York
16. He's almost always happy
17. He is patient
18. He can do back flips
19. He puts up with my crazy moods
20. He does a really good imitation of the dancers on "So You Think You Can Dance"
21. He doesn't sit around all day and watch football- even though sometimes he would like to
22. He changes diapers like a champ
23. He likes to eat chocolate covered pretzels dipped in peanut butter
24. He lets me sleep in
25. He can dunk- I think he still can, although I haven't seen him do that in a little while. ;)
26. He likes to watch "The Office" with me
27. He likes rootbeer
28. He does crazy things like perm his hair and dye it very blonde
29. He's very practical
30. He's relaxed and easy going
31. He can talk like Donald Duck
32. He's an amazing husband

Hope you have a great day babe! I love you!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Look!

I did Sammie's hair! :)


Sun's Scrimmage game, A lost tooth, and a haircut...

Ashley lost her tooth last week- FINALLY. It was hanging on by a thread for weeks.

We took everyone to the Sun's scrimmage game at McKale Center on Friday. The kids LOVED it! Sammie danced and played the whole time. Ashley was just happy to have nachos and sprite(takes after her mother), and Taylor kept an eagle eye on the gorilla, ready to bolt if he came anywhere near. As we left, Samantha threw herself on the ground and said, " I wanna stay here!"

Yesterday, I took Ashley to get her hair cut. She loved getting it washed and styled. She thought she was pretty hot stuff.




Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Today is I miss NYC day...



sigh.

If you've been to NY, tell me your favorite thing about it. If you haven't been there, tell me when we're going. :)

I love the energy. I love the constant hum of activity. I love the diversity. I love the architecture. I love the black stuff that gets all over my face after a day of walking around the city. Ok, I don't really like that, but I'd take some black stuff from NYC on my face today.

Time keeps passing...

Taylor learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. He woke up one morning and told me he had a dream where he learned how to ride his bike. Michael took off his training wheels and they tried it once- Taylor was terrified and decided he didn't want to learn after all. A few days later he decided, once again, that he was ready. Now he wants to ride ALL THE TIME. No matter that it is 95 degrees out. He's not too good at steering. He's almost taken out me, Samantha, and Grandma's car. But he's getting better!


I blog in spurts...

Samantha's party was fun- she is the first of my kids to not freak out when everyone is singing happy birthday. She just sang along!


P.S. I promise I do Samantha's hair. Every morning she says, "Hair Pwetty?" And so we do her hair. It lasts 10 minutes. Sometimes even an hour.


I made cupcakes from scratch with a recipe from Magnolia Bakery in NYC. They are easy, but very time consuming.


I guess it was worth it though- Samantha enjoyed them. :)

Monday, September 29, 2008

Let's try this...

Here is a MEMORY GAME challenge for you. Saw this on my friend Ashley's blog and thought this was a fun idea. I'd love to hear the memories we have shared together! Heres what you do: 1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! 2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Happy Birthday Samantha!






Samantha Marie turns 2 years old today! We love her so much! She is a little troublemaker and she makes us LAUGH!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

More Pictures...

St. Patrick's Cathedral


Bethesda Fountain


Belvedere Castle

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

New York Part 3

Okay I think I am dragging this out too long now so I'm going to wrap it up! I don't have a ton of good pictures left either!

Saturday we went went to Harlem. My dad has a friend, Dennis, that lives there in a brownstone that he has been restoring, and he was going to let us see it! Unfortunately we didn't bring the camera. We have some video, but its not great video. His place was really cool, I wish I could remember all the facts about it. He lives on one floor, and rents out the other 3. He has done a great job with it. It was amazing to see the before photos and be able to see the finished product. Dennis has lived in New York about 20 years and he knew a lot about it. Especially about his neighborhood in Harlem. He took us on a great tour. Except it was SO humid! We ate Fried Chicken at a wonderful Southern restaurant called Spoon Bread (after walking about 100 miles, Dennis knows how to walk!) and finished up with the BEST peach cobbler I have ever had. After that, Michael and I separated from the group and went back to the hotel to cool off. We met up with the fam later to eat at B Bar and Grill- I highly recommend it. Form there we went to Dylan's candy bar- cause who doesn't like candy?! Then of course we went to Serendipity for Frozen hot chocolate and other desserts we did not need. But hey, we did walk A LOT. Our plan was to go to a club that night, my cousin Kelly very kindly gave us some good options. I'm not sure what happened-Oh yeah, it poured BUCKETS of rain from 4pm to 11pm thanks to the hurricanes. And me and Michael realized we are way too old and not hip enough to go to clubs. So we put ourselves to bed.

Sunday morning we woke up and got ready for church. We looked at the building locator online to figure out where the ward was meeting that was in the temple building. It told us where to go and what time it started-11am. We took the subway, barely making it on time, only to find out the building was closed for construction. We were so disappointed! At that point we wouldn't have been able to make it to any other meetings. At least we tried right? We went to lunch at the 5 Napkin Burger on restaurant row. It is very good, nice BIG juicy burgers. Except mine came out mooing and I kinda lost my appetite. We went to Rockefeller Center and St. Patricks Cathedral and then walked by all the fancy shops on 5th avenue. Then Michael and I, and Jeff and Natalie decided to go to Central Park and rent bikes. I got to see all of the things I've been wanting to- Bethesda fountain, Belvedere Castle, Sheeps Meadow. I highly recommend renting bikes to tour Central Park. We got to see everything without killing ourselves walking. It was a BEAUTIFUL Sunday and I think one of my favorite parts of the trip!

Michael and my brothers and Natalie left early Monday morning. I changed my flight so I could stay one more day with my parents! Michael took the camera home, so no more pics at this point!

Monday morning I got to go to the lower east side Tenement Museum. It was very cool. A lot of history there and I love to look at old buildings. We went over to Greenwich Village and of course, got some more cupcakes at Magnolia, and then ate lunch at Le Pain Quotidien. My parents needed to leave- they had tickets to the US Open, so I had the afternoon to myself. Which was great! I would hang out by myself in NYC any day! I went down to Bryant Park. It was Fashion week, so I stood by the tents people watching for over an hour. I was trying to catch a glimpse of someone famous, but no such luck. I went shopping around Times Square, ate some dinner in a little cafe, and then went to see "Chicago". Can't say it was my favorite Broadway show, but it was entertaining. I walked back to the hotel by myself at 10:30 pm, stopping on the way to get some soup. I was so glad I stayed another day- EXCEPT...

We had to wake up EARLY Tuesday morning to get to JFK. Our flight was at 8am. We got on the plane on time and got on the runway. And then we stopped. The captain came on the intercom and said that there was bad weather up ahead and that we were grounded until it came through. We sat for two hours on the plane before it even started raining. We sat for another two hours waiting for it to pass. We were finally getting close to leaving, we were 4th for takeoff, when 1 lady on our plane decided she wanted to get off. After 4 hours the airline cannot force you to stay on the plane. We had to turn around and let her off. People were NOT happy. I was starting to feel hysterical from being cooped up in a plane for 4 hours. We were given drinks and some nasty snacks. It took another 2 hours to refuel, re-stock the plane, and change crews. After 6 hours of sitting on the plane, we left on our 5 hour flight to Phoenix. We arrived in Phoenix, got some food, and drove to Tucson. I got home at 8pm, 11pm NY time, just in time to see the kids before they went to bed. The whole travel experience was AWFUL.

But I LOVED my trip to NYC. And I got some great news in my email inbox a few days later. Jet Blue gave me a voucher worth my round trip flight to NYC!!! Now I have to go back. How awesome is that?! Its time for that girl trip we've been talking about! You know who you are, lets get it planned! Whoever wants to come! :)

Closest subway station to our hotel


B Bar & Grill


Dylan's Candy Bar


Serendipity Frozen hot chocolate