Bubba and Nellie

Christmas 2011!

2011-12-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

This year we had a nice, relaxing Christmas which was absolutely wonderful. We didn't really have to go anywhere and Bubba had some time off so we just got to hang out, get some stuff done around the house and enjoy the holidays! We spent Christmas Eve with Grandpa and Grandma Boyce and then came home and the girls went to bed better than they ever have (I wish I could say Santa was coming every night...worked like a charm)! Santa was smart this year and didn't bring anything that required a lot of assembling, so we all had a relaxing night and got to bed early! Camden got up around 7 am on Christmas so I hung out with him, just waiting for everyone else to wake up...finally at 8 I decided to wake everyone up so that we would have time to open presents before church at 11. Everyone was happy with their presents and we had a great morning. We went to church at Papa and Gramie's ward and then came home for naps before going back to Papa and Gramie's for dinner.

Savannah really wanted glasses for Christmas...these ones are for "cosmetic" purposes only and she loves them!

Christmas Card 2011

2011-12-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

We got lazy and didn't actually mail out Christmas cards but I did make one anyways just so that I have a summary of the year!

This year has been yet another busy one for our family, but as the year comes to an end, we are very aware of and grateful for how much we have been blessed throughout the year.

The most noteworthy blessing of the year would have to be the birth of our little boy, Camden David, who arrived on May 24th. I was a little nervous about having a boy after so many girls, but I have fallen hard for this sweet little guy and he has been such a wonderful addition to our family. He is such a sweet, happy and easy baby which has been a huge blessing and he is so cute too! All of the girls have been sweet with him, but are starting to become even more interested in him now that he is getting more interactive! He just barely got his first two teeth, which was a huge surprise to me since he never displayed any of the normal signs of teething...yep, he is just that good of a baby! He is an expert at rolling over, he’s pretty good at sitting, he’s not even remotely interested in eating any type of baby food, he smiles and laughs all the time and he absolutely loves his feet as long as they are not covered! I am so glad we finally got this little boy in our home...we love him to pieces!

Madison is now 22 months old and is a handful, no, make that two handfuls...nope, that doesn’t quite cover it either. This little girl is full of personality which can be hilarious and endearing at some times and absolutely frustrating at others. Now that her vocabulary is really taking off, she is finally beginning to use words instead of just whining and tantrums and that is helping us all deal with each other a lot! She loves her binkies and carries them in a bag all day long. She has no fear of anything, not heights, not water, not animals, nothing. Madison has the most interesting facial expressions I have ever seen on a one year old and can scowl better than anyone I have ever met. The poor thing still doesn’t have much hair, but still has her adorable dimples! We are both extremely curious and extremely frightened to see how her personality continues to develop as she gets older...she definitely keeps us all on our toes!

Paris just turned 5 and is our little drama queen. She is so animated when she plays pretend and tells stories and is always full of comments that catch us off guard and make us laugh. She is extremely helpful, especially in the kitchen-she loves to cook and bake. Paris continues to amaze us with how smart she is-she can read anything and is doing extremely well in preschool again this year. Paris loves to play on the computer, sing, play pretend, read, play with friends, ride bikes/scooters and jump on the trampoline. She used to be nervous while swimming, but surprised us all this year by completely overcoming her fear of the water and doing fabulous in swimming lessons!

Savannah is now 6 and started first grade this fall. We started her in a French immersion program at a different school this year and it has been an amazing experience so far. She loves her teachers, her new friends and she LOVES learning French! She tells us that she likes French better than English and that she wants to move to France (Bubba is thrilled)! Her French teacher just told us that Savannah always raises her hand and that she feels bad because she can’t call on her every time. I couldn’t believe it-this is the same little girl that barely said a word in kindergarten and now she is participating all the time...in a whole different language! Savannah is in the top of her class in reading and math as well and just recently was chosen to be Student of the Month in her class-we are so proud of her! Savannah is like another mother to Madison and absolutely loves taking care of her so we (I) really miss her while she is at school! Savannah is such a good little girl and is always so sensitive to the needs of others and is a wonderful helper to everyone! She finally lost her first two teeth this fall, and also got staples in the back of her head this year!

I continue to stay at home and try to keep the chaos at least slightly under control! Having 4 kids within 6 years has been a little crazy and I definitely feel myself being ‘stretched’ constantly...I have never been more challenged or tired in my life, but I am so grateful that I get to be at home with my kids, and am so grateful for the blessing that each of them is in my life. I am learning so much from them and although some days I feel like running away and/or pulling my hair out, life is good and my kids are awesome! I trained for a half marathon, but never actually ran it since my knee started acting up and I couldn’t figure out how to leave my baby for that many hours since he refuses to take a bottle, but am planning on running one this summer and am excited for that.

Bubba continues to work for Platinum Protection and is now over the entire installation department at work. He is very busy and works super hard, but loves his job for the most part and we are both so grateful that he has such a wonderful job and that he gets to work with great people and such an awesome company. He traveled quite a bit this last summer and is already starting to book quite a few trips for this next year.

We are grateful for each one of our family members and friends and hope that each of you has a wonderful holiday season!

The cutest boy in the world...

2011-12-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

I know I always go on and on about how cute and sweet this little boy of mine is, but I really do believe he is pretty much the cutest boy in the world....and here is some proof in the form of a lot of pictures!

Camden - 6 months old!

2011-11-28T15:42:00.001-08:00

Just took my little boy in for his 6 month checkup...he is growing up way too fast! He can sit up pretty well but isn't quite ready to be left on his own as he still tends to lean over and land on his face quite a bit! He rolls quite a bit...his very latest trick is to roll over several times from the middle of the floor until he is under the Christmas tree and then he tries grabbing ornaments off of it! He still will have nothing to do with any kind of bottle or baby food so hopefully he will become more interested in food over the next few months! He weighed in at 18.7 pounds so he is down to the 65%ile for weight which is skinny for my kids at that age :) and he measured in at 26.5 inches which puts him in the 50%ile for height...no surprises there! Camden still loves his feet and grabs them constantly, and if he happens to have socks or shoes on, those must come off immediately which is making winter challenging...he is just going to have to live in his footed pajamas so that his feet don't freeze! All of his sisters love him and are mostly really sweet with him (aside from a few not-so-sweet moments from Madison each day)...he is going to be spoiled rotten by all of us. He is starting to give some very open-mouthed kisses which I love and is still just the sweetest little boy ever. He has had some challenges with sleeping lately but I think we're finally getting him back on track and most nights he goes 8-9 hours, wakes up once and then sleeps another 2-3 hours so not too bad. He is very close to consistently being able to get his own binky in all by himself which is personally one of my favorite milestones, especially in the middle of the night! I think he would be on a fabulous nap schedule if it weren't for the fact that I'm always waking him up and trying to work his naps around everyone else's schedules. I guess that's what you get for being the 4th kid! We love Camden to pieces!

Paris is 5 on 11/11/11

2011-11-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

What a cool date for a birthday! I can't believe this little girl is 5 years old already. Paris has so much personality and makes life very interesting for all of us. Some moments she is the sweetest, most helpful little girl ever and other moments she is very stubborn and intensely emotional/hot-tempered but it definitely keeps us on our toes. Paris still loves princesses and fairies and everything girly, but I think her favorite thing to do these days is read. She has been reading for over a year now, but I am amazed at how well she can read at such a young age. Every time I go into her room to make her bed, I find a stack of books that she snuck in there the night before to read before going to sleep. She finds flashlights and sneaks them under the covers....I'm sure I should be more strict about making her go to sleep, but can't really find the motivation since I read for hours every night before going to sleep when I was young too! Paris loves to play on the computer, ride her bike and scooter, and play with friends. We had a birthday party this year at our house with a few of her friends...she wanted a My Little Pony party but since she invited a few boys, we tried to keep it from being too girly. We had pony races, played Horse, Horse, Pony, Hot Potato (with a stuffed pony), went on a scavenger hunt for a pony, and played Pin the Cutie Mark on the Pony too. Paris had her 5 year checkup and weighed in at 37 pounds (25%ile) and is 40.5 inches tall (14%ile). Poor thing is pretty short, but it amazes me that my little petite girl is the same child that was in the 98%ile for weight the first couple years of her life!

Halloween Fun!

2011-11-01T05:42:00.000-07:00

We had lots of fun in October, getting ready for Halloween and enjoying the beautiful fall weather! We went to a small pumpkin patch nearby to pick out pumpkins and the kids had a blast playing in the dried corn...well, until Savannah started freaking out because she had a bunch of corn kernels in her pants that were not feeling very good!

This year, Paris wanted to be Silvermist (one of Tinkerbell's fairy friends), Savannah wanted to be Smurfette, and then we decided Madison should be Winnie the Pooh since she loves Pooh, and then we figured Camden would be a cute honey pot. I think they all turned out to be pretty cute and they all stayed warm while trick-or-treating too!

Saint George

2011-10-28T05:42:00.000-07:00

The month of October has been a busy one for us, starting with a quick weekend trip to St. George. A few months ago, Bubba got new tires on his car and the tire store gave us a voucher we could use for a couple of free nights in a hotel and one of the places we could stay was St. George. We had talked about going there this year anyways so that we could take the girls to see The Little Mermaid at the Tuacahn Amphitheater down there. Right before driving down there, we started getting snow at home so we were really glad to get warmer weather for a couple of days! Although interesting to have all 6 of us in a hotel room for the first time, we actually all slept pretty well and survived! We were driving around to find a park to play at while we were there and they happened to be having a small carnival/fair at the park that we found. They only had a few rides, but they were free and since it was Friday and most kids were in school, there was hardly anyone there so the kids had a blast there. That night, Bubba was nice enough to stay at the hotel with Madison and Camden, and I got to take Paris and Savannah to see the show. It got a little chilly, but the play was absolutely amazing and all 3 of us had a wonderful time. One of the hardest things for me about having two babies in the last couple of years has been the lack of opportunities to just spend time with my older kids without the distraction of the little ones, and when you have a nursing baby you can't leave very long it is hard to do fun stuff with the older kids. The girls are just at such a fun age right now and I hope we get more chances to have fun dates together - it was a blast! Unfortunately, we have been horrible at taking pictures lately but I do have a couple off of my phone from our trip!

Camden 5 months

2011-10-24T05:43:00.000-07:00

This little boy continues to be the sweetest thing ever and we just love him so much. At 5 months old, he is rolling over front to back and back to front. We have experimented a little bit with baby food/cereal and so far he isn't a big fan but is starting to act a little more interested and he refuses to have anything to do with a bottle. He still has the cutest dimples, he smiles at anyone and everyone who talks to him and is just a mellow little guy most of the time. His favorite thing continues to be his feet...he ALWAYS is holding on to them and has now started putting them in his mouth as well. His eyes are kind of a dark grey color so I'm still not sure what color they will end up. We love our little boy!

4 months old!

2011-09-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

I know I say this every time, but I can't believe this little guy is already 4 months old! Camden is the sweetest baby ever and I am absolutely in love with my little boy! He is so smiley and happy and mellow-pretty much the perfect baby and we just love having him in our home. I just took him to his check-up and he weighed in at 17.1 pounds, 24.75 inches. He is definitely not starving and kind of looks like a little ball these days :).

We have started putting him in the Jumperoo and he loves that, he loves his Bumbo seat and is starting to enjoy tummy time a little more, although he really doesn't get much floor time at all because I am too afraid to leave him on the floor with Madison around! He still sleeps pretty good and only gets up once a night to eat so no complaints there, and he is a pretty good napper also. He is the first of my kids that is happy even when his naps get skipped or shortened, which is good since we have to work around all of the other kids' schedules these days. He loves to "talk" too and sometimes gets so vocal that it sounds like he is yelling for several minutes straight...pretty darn cute. His favorite thing these days is his foot...he always grabs his foot and hangs on tight! He is also trying pretty hard to be a thumb sucker these days, which I think is pretty cute but am still trying to discourage the habit by replacing his thumb with a binky whenever I catch him at it!

Camden's Blessing

2011-09-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

We waited until Camden was just over 3 months old to do his blessing, so that his Uncle David would be home from his mission and able to attend! It was a wonderful day to have so many family members and friends there to support us and our new little boy. I will say that it was a lot harder to find a cute blessing outfit for a boy than for a girl and Bubba and I both thought that most of the options were ridiculous! Even the one that I ordered came with a silly hat...there was no way we were going to allow him to wear it, but I did try to get a couple pics with it just for giggles...why do they even make those hats anyways?!!! We didn't even get a full family shot that day, but did manage to get a picture of the girls since they looked cute that day too. It's impossible enough to keep track of all 4 kids, nevertheless take pictures of all of them!

Not sure what that spot is on my face...

Beginning of another school year

2011-09-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I have a first grader! This year is a big one for Savannah since we enrolled her in a French immersion program at an elementary school in Provo. I have been incredibly nervous for this because I thought she would not be very happy about the drive and that she would be stressed about having a teacher speak only French for several hours every day but so far she loves it. Her English teacher is Ms. Garner and her French teacher in Madame Villareale. I really hope that she continues to enjoy the year and that we all survive the long drive!

Paris has started another year of preschool with Miss Amy and is loving it again. I think she is ready for kindergarten, but since she doesn't turn 5 until November, she gets to enjoy another year of preschool before school next year. I think she will have a hard time with Savannah being gone all day long but she does a great job of entertaining herself and has started playing more with Madison while Savannah is at school, which has been so nice.

Staples

2011-08-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Savannah was playing with some friends and got knocked into the door frame (we're not exactly sure what happened since every version we have heard has been different) but she ended up with a large wound on the back of her head. Bubba took her to the doctor who decided she needed staples to fix it...Bubba had to hold her down pretty good for the numbing shots but she was very brave for the actual staples and hasn't complained about it since. She's actually pretty proud of it now. The hardest part was trying to wash the blood out of her hair without getting the wound wet. Her hair might look a little scraggly for the next few days since it's hard to wash or comb without causing a lot of pain. In a week, we get to go get them removed-apparently that's a painless process so we'll see how it goes!

Blackberries!

2011-08-29T13:52:00.001-07:00

Last week for FHE we went with Papa and Gramie to pick blackberries at a patch not far from our house. The girls thought it was super fun and as you can tell from the pics below, Madison especially had a fabulous time! Now we have lots of blackberries in our freezer for smoothie making...yum!

Our cute little boy!

2011-08-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

I can't believe our sweet little boy will be 3 months old in just a few days...this summer has just flown by and although it has been a little hectic, Camden has been such a sweet baby and has fit right into our family so well. He is still a great sleeper and he is a fabulous smiler...I think he smiles more easily than any of my other babies and we have even heard a few little laughs already which is so cute! I feel bad that we haven't taken more pictures of him, but I just don't feel like I ever have enough hands or time for the camera! We have taken a few pictures though, and here are some of my favorites!

A Few Things I Want to Remember...

2011-08-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have always had the intentions of writing down things that my kids say or do that are especially interesting or humorous, yet I don't have a good place to do it and by the time I remember to write them down, I've already forgotten them! Hopefully I will start blogging more of these since it already makes me sad that I have forgotten so many, but here are a few recent moments that I don't want to forget!

A few weeks before Camden was born, we were talking about what we should name him. I asked Savannah what she thought and she replied, "Well, I think we should wait until he comes out so we can see if he is a white baby or a brown baby, so that if he is a brown baby, we can name him a brown baby's name." I think it took me a minute to reply, but finally I asked, "...and what is a brown baby's name?" She replied, "Benjamin." So apparently she thought that it is just a 50/50 chance as to whether or not you have a white or a black baby, and the only black person she knows is a little boy that was in her kindergarten class named Benjamin. So funny how their little minds work!

Before Camden was born, we got the girls bunk beds for their new room and for the first few weeks it worked out well because Savannah wanted to sleep on the top and Paris didn't. Then they both decided that they both like the bottom bunk better and so I was letting them take turns every other night to make it fair. So it was Paris' turn one night to sleep on the top and of course she was arguing with me about how she didn't want to sleep on the top and I just told her to go to bed, end of discussion. A minute later she starts yelling for me at the top of her lungs so I went running in their room and she points at the warning label on the top bunk and says, "Mommy, look. I can't sleep on the top bunk because the sign says that children under 6 should not be allowed to sleep on the top bunk. And I'm only 4 and 4 is less than 6." This was probably one of the first times that Paris has actually made a valid point during an argument, and I didn't really know what to say because I didn't want to tell her that you don't have to follow instructions, so I just told her that some kids aren't very smart, but since she was smart enough to read the sign, she was old enough to sleep on the top! She then said, "But, Mommy, it says WARNING!" I was laughing at that point and told her that she would be fine and she still had to sleep there but it was still pretty funny. So to the people who write warning labels and think no one reads them, they are wrong!

A couple of weeks ago, we were out as a family somewhere and Bubba was taking Paris to find a bathroom. She had been having a really hard time listening that day and so while they were walking, Bubba said, "Paris, I really wish you would listen better." She didn't even hesitate and very conversationally replied, "Well I wish you would be a little bit nicer to me." I think we're in for it with this one!

All 4 kids at 2 months

2011-07-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

Camden-2 Months Old!

2011-07-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how fast the last two months have gone-it has all been a little chaotic, but we have adjusted pretty well and love this sweet little boy so much! I just took Camden in for his 2 month checkup and he now weighs 13.9 pounds (86%ile) and is 23 inches (50%ile). So basically, he is following the same trend his sisters did....short and chunky! In the last few weeks, he has started smiling a lot and he even kinda laughs a little bit when he gets really happy which is pretty cute. He continues to be a great sleeper...I have never had to get up with him more than once at night and it has been wonderful! Right now he sleeps from about 9:30 until about 5, eats and goes back to sleep until about 8. No complaints here! Here are some pics from the last month or so...he is such a little cutie!

Savannah turns 6!

2011-06-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

I can't believe this little girl is already 6 years old! Savannah is such a sweet little girl and we are so lucky that she is just so good. She is pretty much never disobedient and is extremely honest all of the time which is amazing for a child her age! She is such a great helper to me and will help with anything that I ask her to do, but she is particularly amazing with Madison these days. Madison really wants to cling to me all the time, but especially now with a new baby, I just can't hold her all day. Next to Mommy, Savannah is Madison's favorite and so she is more than happy to play with Savannah and I am just so glad that the timing of all of this worked out so that Savannah isn't in school right now...I don't think we're going to let her go back in the fall because I don't know how Madison and I will survive! Savannah is still pretty quiet but is not nearly as shy as she used to be. She is extremely observant and just quietly watches everything and picks up on and then remembers every single detail about everyone and everything that is going on. Her favorite thing to do is draw and she is also starting to write some stories to go with her illustrations which is so fun for us to see. I am still amazed by how good her drawings are...I really do think she has a natural talent in this area which is amazing, given my inability to draw anything! She loves to ride her bike and scooter, jump on the trampoline, play with friends and read books. This year was Savannah's "off" year for having a party but we went to Seven Peaks instead and had a good time even though it was extremely crowded and a little difficult with a newborn! Happy Birthday Savannah!

Dance Recital

2011-06-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

The girls have really enjoyed their dance class this year and just had their big end-of-the-year recital a couple of weeks ago. I was a little nervous that they would get shy or be hesitant to perform on a bigger stage in front of so many people, but they never even protested it at all! I was so proud of how brave they both were and they both seemed to have a lot of fun performing too! I was surprised to see that Savannah was a little less inhibited on stage, since in real life, Paris is much more dramatic, but they both did a fabulous job and they looked adorable!

Camden David Tracy

2011-06-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

Our little boy is finally here! He was due to come on June 2, but I was really hoping that he would come a bit earlier than that because the girls were early and I was really feeling done with being pregnant! Bubba had to travel from about mid-April until mid-May and then planned to stay in town until the baby arrived, so as soon as he was done traveling, I started climbing up and down stairs, jumping on the trampoline, etc. in order to get things moving! At my doctor's appt. on the 23rd, I was already dilated to almost a 4 and the dr. told me that if I started having any contractions and came to the hospital, they wouldn't send me home so I did a bunch of stairs that night but nothing really happened. The next morning, I woke up and after I'd been up for a while, I realized that I was having contractions about every 3-4 minutes. I had been having a ton though for the last couple of months, so I didn't think too much about it, especially since they didn't hurt but by about 10 am, I realized that they were getting a little more intense and were staying regular no matter what I was doing. We called my mom and she arrived and we went to the hospital around 11. I didn't want to get checked in quite yet so we walked around outside for a while and then finally got checked in around noon. My contractions stayed regular and were about every 2 minutes but still not hurting too bad. During the whole pregnancy, I kind of thought about skipping the epidural, but wasn't 100% decided either way. Since the contractions weren't too bad and I was dilating fairly quickly, I figured I would go for it. I was curious as to what it was like and since we are pretty sure this is our last baby, I figured it was my final chance to experience natural childbirth. My nurse had 5 children naturally and I was really lucky to have her...she was great! Around 4, the contractions started getting pretty painful, but I still felt pretty good about the whole thing and I was already dilated to a 7-8 at that point. Bubba did a great job helping me breathe through the contractions and it honestly was not as bad as I thought it would be at that point. The most annoying part of the whole thing was that my hands/feet/legs/arms were all mostly numb for the last couple of hours before the baby was born....the nurse said it had something to with how I was breathing and I even tried breathing into a bag, but it didn't help at all and it was so annoying! My dr. came in at 5:10 and broke my water and then the contractions were right on top of each other and super painful! About 5 minutes later I felt like I needed to push and sure enough, it was time. At that point, I think I panicked a little bit and I honestly don't really remember much about the next few minutes except that I was screaming and trying to push (and Bubba says I almost bit his hand off) and it was the strangest feeling but luckily I only had to push a few times and Camden arrived at 5:25! The cord was wrapped around his neck but he was fine and they let me hold him right away. I'm not sure that I would do the whole natural birth thing again if I had the chance, but I'm glad I did it and got to have that experience this time around.

Camden David Tracy weighed in at 8 pounds exactly and was 20 inches long at birth....my heaviest baby! His poor face was super bruised and the last of the bruises finally went away a few days ago, so all of the pictures we have of him are pretty bad...the poor baby looks like he was hit in the face with a bat! When the pediatrician saw the bruising they told me that he was more likely to have problems with jaundice because of the bruises, and sure enough, his levels were too high at his 3-day check-up. They gave us the lights to set up at home, which he hated and when we had him tested the next day, his levels had still gone up too high (21) so they told me to go straight to the hospital and set him up with the lights there. We checked in at about 2:00 on Sunday and by the next morning at 10 am, his levels were down to 13 so they let us go home. We continued to get his levels checked for several days after that since they went back up for a few days before finally going back down...the poor baby had to get poked every day for about 2 weeks straight! He is fine now though and the bruising is gone, except for the hemorrhages in his eyes, and the dr. said those may take a few more weeks to disappear. At his 2 week check-up he weighed in at 8 lbs, 2 oz. so he is slightly above his birth weight and doing great!

Camden sleeps great at night...I haven't been up more than once at night with him since we brought him home! He usually does a 5-6 hour stretch and then goes back down for a few more hours after I feed him. He nurses great and is mostly content when he is awake...and so far, he is awake a lot more than my girls were at this age. In the morning, he will stay awake for a couple of hours before taking a nap....none of the girls could stay awake that long until they were several months old...at least!

Having 4 kids is definitely a little bit crazy! Luckily Bubba has been around quite a bit to help...I don't think it would be so bad if Madison didn't want so much attention, but I think she is finally realizing the baby is here to stay and has realized I can't hold her all the time...the last few days have been much better. The other girls think Camden is pretty cute and are so busy playing with each other that they haven't seemed to really care too much...I'm sure that once he starts waking up and becoming more interactive they will be more involved!

Preschool Graduation

2011-05-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Paris just completed her first year of preschool this year and absolutely loved it. She loved Mrs. Amy and also enjoyed having some friends from our ward in her class too. Since she won't be five until November, she gets to do one more year and is so excited to be able to go back to Mrs. Amy's preschool next year too! Paris has amazed all of us this year with her reading...she reads chapter books these days with hardly any trouble and absolutely loves to read as much as she can! Paris mostly takes after Bubba, but I'm glad she seems to have inherited my love of reading-she is such a smart, sweet little girl and we are so proud of her! She was supposed to say a line as part of the graduation ceremony and was a little too nervous to actually do it in front of everyone....I'm guessing next year she won't be quite so shy! She didn't want to wear her hat either...the girl definitely knows what she wants/doesn't want to do!

Kindergarten Graduation

2011-05-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Savannah finished kindergarten this year and it has been such a great experience for her. She was doing pretty well reading before the school year started, but now she reads everything and her writing has improved so much...she loves to write notes and stories and her handwriting and spelling amaze me! She has made so many friends and although she is still pretty quiet and shy, she has come out of her shell so much and has gained a lot of courage which has been so fun to see. She loved her teacher Mrs. Davis and I'm glad she had such a great experience this year. Next year she will be switching schools since she has been accepted into a French immersion program in Provo. The drive will not be fun, but she is excited to learn French and we are so excited that our children will have this opportunity to become completely fluent in another language with minimal effort on their part. For now, we are just planning on enjoying the summer and sleeping in (Savannah is not a fan of being woken up, which I had to do almost every school day this year!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Having church at 9 am makes it a little difficult to take really good pictures of 3 little kids, so we didn't get any fabulous shots, but the girls looked adorable and we had a great Easter this year. Bubba has been out of town for the last 12 days and was able to be home just for Easter Sunday before having to leave again, so it made the day even better!

Cool Whip!

2011-04-08T14:13:00.001-07:00

I was trying to keep Madison busy for a few minutes the other day, so I gave her the lid to the Cool Whip container...it kept her occupied for quite a while and she was in heaven!

Good Memories!

2011-04-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have been reorganizing everything in our house lately since we are moving all the of the kids into different bedrooms and rearranging all of our stuff. I found a box of old pictures and came across this chalk drawing that Bubba and I had done when we went to Paris about 6 years ago. We were up at Montmarte where all of the artists are and this guy talked us into buying this...I think it was like $100 and I don't think it looks like us at all, but it's kind of neat to have an actual personalized piece of art from Paris. Bubba and I both laughed when we saw this because it is actually pretty awful...don't think we'll be hanging it in our living room anytime soon!

Happy Birthday Madison!

2011-02-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

I can't believe our baby is already 1! This has been the fastest year ever by far, but we are so glad to have this little girl in our home and can't remember what life was like without her! Madison is such a funny little personality...she is relatively easy-going and very tolerant of all of the torture her big sisters put her through, but is also very opinionated about what she likes and doesn't like. She is incredibly wiggly and does not like sitting still at all, but she loves to give snuggles and kisses which is so much fun for all of us.

A few things about Madison at age 1:

-she growls when you ask her what a bear says

-she loves to bonk heads...she does it pretty softly but only with people she loves so it's kind of like a hug!
-she has 7 teeth, 4 on the top, 3 on the bottom
-she has been taking a couple steps here and there for a while but just in the last week or two, she has really figured out the walking thing and is now walking more than crawling
-she is very picky about food but mostly likes toast, bananas, cheese, strawberries, green beans, olives, corn and a taste of anything sweet!
-she can wave hi and bye
-she says dada and mama and has started saying "doh" a lot but we haven't figured out what that means
-she loves looking at books and playing peek-a-boo
-she absolutely adores her big sisters and lights up when she sees them, especially when they get home from school
-she is a great sleeper most of the time....usually sleeps 12 hours at night and still takes 2 naps that are about 2-2.5 hours each!
-her official stats: 23.13 pounds, 29.5 inches

Madison has brought all of us so much joy this year and we love our little one-year old! We had a small party with family and Daddy made her a butterfly cake for her birthday. We gave her a cupcake and I think the whole thing was gone in less than a minute! That's our girl!

Christmas Sunday

2010-12-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

The girls were all sick the Sunday before Christmas so these pictures were actually taken the following Sunday, but close enough. It was pretty much impossible to get a decent picture with all of them, but I thought they were pretty cute anyways!

Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T18:00:00.000-08:00

This year we actually decided to do a quick vacation right before Christmas and we took the girls to Las Vegas for a few days. Unfortunately we forgot the camera, so we don't have any pictures, but we had a great time on our little family trip. The drive there was a little nerve-wracking...we had really bad snow for the first couple of hours and then lots of rain, so the drive took about 8 hours instead of 5, but we got there safely! We stayed at the MGM Grand hotel and the girls were very impressed with the Strip and all of the lights! We spent one morning at the Children's Museum in Vegas and had a great time there with all of the exhibits. Another highlight of the trip was the M&M store....the girls were thrilled to be able to get pink and purple M&Ms. Madison had a pretty bad cough/cold the whole time which was less fun for her, but she was still a trooper and we appreciated the excuse for lots of relaxing time in the hotel room so that she could take some decent naps! We got home on Christmas Eve, just in time to get ready for Christmas. I forgot to take an official shot of all 3 girls in their pajamas, but Christmas morning was still a success! The girls didn't have any "big" wishes this year, just lots of little presents, but they were thrilled with all of the princess, fairy and Strawberry Shortcake stuff that they got! I was very spoiled with a new pregnancy pillow, new coat, gift certificates for house cleaning and lots of books that I wanted. Daddy had Christmas come early this year when he got new scuba gear and a new gun, but he also was surprised with a new Blu-Ray player on Christmas morning....we all lucked out this year!

10 months old!

2010-12-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

I've gotten behind on Madison's monthly updates, but she is now 10 months old and as cute as ever! At her 9 month appointment she weighed in at 21 pounds, 5 ounces and was 26.5 inches tall. She is still crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything and will walk as long as she is behind her push toys or holding on to someone, but has not yet started walking independently. She now has 7 teeth (4 on top, 3 on bottom) and has pretty much decided she does not like baby food anymore or anything that she can not pick up and feed to herself. Her diet these days consists mostly of crackers, cereal, bananas, green beans (her absolute favorite), cheese, blueberries, toast, strawberries and peas! She says 'ma-ma' and 'da-da' a lot, although not always at the appropriate times so I'm not sure she knows exactly what they mean but we can pretend! One of the cutest things she does is give kisses! Every morning I let her wake her daddy up....I put her on the bed and she crawls over to him and gives him a big slobbery kiss on his face! Any time someone is laying down, they are in for kisses and she also like to bonk foreheads with the people that she loves the most...pretty sweet! Madison is still not much of a laugher but still has a fabulous smile and she still has those adorable dimples too!

Dance Recital

2010-12-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

The girls had a dance recital with all of the songs they had been learning for Christmas and although I was nervous that at least one of them would not cooperate, both girls did an amazing job! They got to show us the different floor work that they practice and then they got to perform all of their dances, complete with a bunch of adorable costume changes! The whole thing was one of the cutest things I have ever seen and I was so proud of how well they did!

12 weeks

2010-11-18T19:13:00.001-08:00

Well, I am 12 weeks pregnant as of today and am very grateful that the morning sickness and tiredness and all that yucky stuff are almost completely behind me. It's been about 2 months now since I found out I was pregnant and I am still a little bit in shock and a little bit in denial for the most part, which I think is kind of good, because when I start to think about the reality of it all, I get kind of overwhelmed.

We had honestly almost officially decided that our family was complete with 3, when I found out that I was pregnant. I got pregnant at a time I never should have been able to and the whole thing has been crazy timing wise, so we figure it was definitely meant to happen this way, especially given my history of so many miscarriages. I have already had an ultrasound and just heard the heartbeat last week...so far everything is going perfectly. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how I am going to manage it! Having Savannah and Paris so close together (16 months apart) was difficult but now that they are older, I love having them so close in age. Madison and this baby will be barely 15 months apart and while I'm sure it is going to be absolutely nuts with all these little children, I'm sure that these two will love having such a close buddy as they grow older as well. I feel like the jump to 3 kids has not been too bad, mostly because there is more than 3 years between Paris and Madison. The older two are old enough to be helpful and independent while I need to be taking care of the baby and they love playing with her which has been so nice. But even loading all of them in the car and going anywhere and working around nap schedules and preschool and school schedules and everything else has been a little bit nuts, and I can't even imagine leaving my house with all 4! Especially these days with Madison all over the place and getting into everything....yep, that partial denial thing is a good thing!

Even though I am a little freaked out right now, I am grateful for the opportunity I have to have another baby and am grateful to have all the children I have...even though a lot of times it is hard and exhausting, I wouldn't trade it for anything! So now we are just anxiously waiting for January so we can find out if we are going to be an all girl family or if Bubba will finally get a buddy around here!

Paris is 4!

2010-11-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

I can't believe this little girl is 4 already! Paris continues to be quite the little personality! This year Paris started preschool which she absolutely loves, except for some reason she has decided that she doesn't like finger painting and refuses to get any paint on her hands. Quite the change from the little girl who loves making messes! Paris loves all things princess and Strawberry Shortcake and loves playing with Savannah...those two keep each other entertained constantly which is so nice for me! Paris is pretty shy when she first meets people but once she gets warmed up she loves to talk and is pretty dramatic in nearly all of her statements which is pretty entertaining for all of us. She loves dance class and she is always singing at home as long as she thinks no one is really listening! Paris is super smart and has continues to surprise us with how many words she can read...we've been working with Savannah on reading and I think Paris has just picked up a lot of it...she can read a ton and loves books which I love! She continues to be very stubborn and headstrong, but I'm sure that in the future that will serve her well...it just makes for good lessons in patience for her parents! We love this little girl so much and are so happy to have her in our family...Happy Birthday Par!

We had a family party the night before her birthday...it was my first ever experience with fondant and was kind of stressful, but I thought it turned out ok for my first try!

Birthday morning-opening presents!

She wanted to go swimming for her birthday so we went to the rec center in Lehi and had a great time, especially since Uncle Landon, Aunt Melissa, Austin and Cody got to come too!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

This year Savannah wanted to be Strawberry Shortcake again and Paris wanted to be her sidekick, Raspberry Torte. And then they wanted Madison to be a strawberry to complete the theme...I thought they were pretty cute! We were just going to spray their actual hair, but once I realized they would be wearing their costumes 5 different times this year, I decided to spray wigs so that we didn't have to keep washing out their hair since it's a pain! The wigs were a little crazy and Paris really wasn't a fan, but they were pretty cute little girls!

On Halloween, it looked pretty stormy so we decided to go to the mall to trick or treat in case the weather didn't cooperate for regular trick or treating. We got to the mall 30 minutes after the trick or treating started and every single store (except for like 3) were out of candy already. What a nightmare....a mall full of children and no candy! So we left with a couple of tiny little Tootsie Rolls and luckily the storm cleared up by the time we got home so we were able to get some real candy.

The day before Halloween, Savannah got to be in a little parade at her school and she was so cute!

Pumpkin Carving

2010-10-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last year, the girls wanted nothing to do with touching pumpkin guts and this year was no different so Daddy got to do all the work once again. And I am really upset with myself because we didn't even take a picture of the final result. Bubba did a great job though and the kids loved watching him carve their pumpkin...with all these girly girls, I'm guessing this might just become the tradition at our house!

Pumpkin Patch!

2010-10-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

Every year since we have lived here, we drive down to Santaquin in October and go to the Red Barn to go pick out our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch there. This year they had a fun little maze built for the kids and we had a great time going on the extremely slow tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch and then trying to carry all of our kids and pumpkins back with us! The Red Barn makes the best donuts in the world around Halloween, so of course we had to buy some of those too and I'm pretty sure that was the best part of the whole experience!

Our little ballerinas!

2010-10-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

In September, both girls started taking dance lessons and so far they have loved it! They are in the same class and I think that helped both of them be brave enough to give it a try and so far it has been wonderful. Their first performance is in a couple of weeks, so we'll see if they cooperate when it is time to perform in front of other people, but it has been fun to see them practicing all their moves together at home! In these shots, Paris was being slightly more cooperative....surprise, surprise!

First Day of Kindergarten!

2010-09-27T05:38:00.000-07:00

I'm so behind on blogging, but will try to catch up this week. Savannah started kindergarten last month! I kept thinking she would be hesitant to start school, since she is so quiet and shy, but she has been nothing but excited about it. A week before school started, I took her in for her kindergarten assessment and she flew through it...I was so proud of her for answering the questions! I knew she knew all of the stuff, but wasn't sure she would actually talk once we got there...but she did a fabulous job! Her teacher was very surprised at how much she knew...Savannah read her a book, wrote her letters, and even got the subtraction problems right...which the teacher said had never happened before!

On the day school started, Savannah insisted she wanted to ride the bus so we walked her down to the bus stop and she didn't even hesitate to get on...I admit that I was nervous about how she would get to her classroom once she got to the school so I followed the bus and made sure she went with all the kindergartners to class...she handled it all like a pro. She doesn't tell me too many details about what she does at school, but says she likes it, and so far recess is her favorite part!

In the last couple of months, Savannah's reading has just taken off...it all finally clicked and now she reads everything! At night, I usually find her reading in bed with a flashlight, long after I thought she was already asleep. She reads to Madison and Paris too, which is so nice for all of us! I'm just surprised at how fast it all clicked...and I'm super impressed with how well she reads. A lot of times kids read really slow at the beginning, stopping at every single word to think about it, but she just flies through, hardly hesitating unless it's a word she doesn't know. Since reading is my favorite thing to do, I am so happy that she seems to have inherited/developed that same trait!

7 months old!

2010-09-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

Madison is now 7 months old and is getting so big! She is no longer content sitting and has been trying to crawl for a couple of weeks now...she usually gets up on her hands and knees and ends up pushing herself backwards instead of forwards, but in the last couple of days has started to figure out how to go in the right direction. I think she'll figure out how to actually crawl in the next couple of weeks but she manages to roll and scoot and moves all over the place already! She loves solids now and really loves Puffs and Cheerios...the first few times she had a really hard time picking them up and actually getting them into her mouth, but now she is a pro. Last week, she got her first two teeth-they came in about a day apart. She still doesn't laugh much at all, but always has a big smile for anyone she knows, and sometimes for people she doesn't! Still not much hair, but I think it's finally starting to actually grow!

Not happy about the fact that she scooted backwards and got stuck under Savannah's bed!

6 Months Old!

2010-08-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

The day we flew home, Madison hit the 6 month mark! Its crazy to me how fast the time is going! We had her check-up a couple days after we got home and she weighed in at 19 pounds, 3 ounces (95%ile) and is about 24.5 inches tall (50%ile). That's my girl! She is sitting up all by herself these days with only the occasional tipping over and that's what she wants to do all day long! No more laying down to play and she would rather be sitting than be held a lot of the time too. She is waking up a couple of times a night now, so now that we're home and getting adjusted, its time to start doing some sleep training because I know she can sleep longer than this! Her bottom two teeth are just about to poke through...any day now they should appear! We have started some solid foods...it took her a while to be interested in them, but in the last few days she has really started to eat well and seems to finally enjoy the food!

We're Home!

2010-08-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that another month has already flown by...and this month has been crazy! We spent a lot of it getting packed up and ready to leave VA. Savannah flew home with Kassie on the 14th, and then I flew home with Paris and Madison on the 21st. Paris had a little (ok, not so little) meltdown going through security because she didn't want to take off her shoes or walk through the scanner. It was not fun holding a baby, trying to fold up a stroller, get my own shoes off, force hers off, and drag all of us through security with her screaming her head off, but once that was over with, both girls were wonderful on the flights. Madison slept almost the entire time up in the air and Paris just played games on my iPod! Walking into my house was the most wonderful thing...I forgot how much I love my house! The girls are loving having a yard and more space to play and have been so happy to be home. And I am loving the climate...it is so much cooler and actually refreshing to be outside!
Bubba won't be back for a few more days since he has to close up the office and then drive all the way home, so we are just counting down until he gets here and we can get back to normal!

Fun in VA Beach!

2010-08-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have been horrible about taking pictures this summer, but luckily my sister has taken a few so I have some record of our summer out here in VA. Only one week left and we'll be home which I am SO excited about, but we really did have some fun times out here too!

These pictures are actually from the very beginning of the summer when we took a Sunday drive to see the beach. All winter we told the girls we were moving to VA Beach and when we got to our new apartment, the first thing they asked was where the sand was. So we had to prove to them that we actually were close to the beach! At that point in the summer it wasn't very warm and the water definitely wasn't warm, but the kids had fun in the sand!

At the end of June, my parents came out to visit and we were able to go back to the beach (unfortunately Bubba was super busy that week and wasn't able to go). This time it was soooo hot outside and the water was awesome...perfect beach weather! The girls were a little nervous about the ocean and the waves, but had fun playing in the sand. Paris eventually got brave enough to sit in the waves and she loved it....I think we emptied buckets of sand out of the bottom of her swimsuit a dozen times!

Just this last week we took the kids to the VA Beach Aquarium. This one little girl just kept coming up to Savannah and hugging her...it was pretty cute! Savannah isn't a huge fan of strangers or people getting in her bubble, but I think she thought this little girl was pretty cute too!

Lately my girls make the cheesiest faces for pictures...we need to work on that before we get family pics taken this fall! BTW, this was in front of some type of crocodile.

In front of the shark tank.

Big huge lobster! Once again, the faces are awesome....:)

After the aquarium, we were able to go on a Dolphin Cruise...I'll admit, I wasn't really expecting to see very many dolphins, especially since the boat was not cruising very far from the shore at all, but it was amazing. We saw dozens and dozens of dolphins and they were pretty close to our boat! The girls loved it so much and kept telling me how that was their favorite thing that we've done all summer...it was well worth it, even though Madison was not a fan of the boat and was screaming for the last 20 minutes of the trip!

We're excited to come home and get back into a routine, but VA Beach has been a fun place to live and overall it really was a good summer!

5 months old!

2010-07-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

Madison is 5 months old, and just as cute and chunky as ever! She has rolled over a few times now, but doesn't seem to care too much about it. We've started rice cereal and she's not a huge fan, but is getting pretty good at actually eating some of it, instead of spitting it all out. After going 2 months straight without a single night of waking up between 9 and 6, she began waking up 1-2 times a night the day she hit 4 months. She is still a great sleeper and I shouldn't complain about her getting up once in the night since she sleeps from about 8 until 7, but it was hard to go back to being up at 3 am after being so spoiled for a couple of months! She sits up pretty good...not good enough to be left alone in the middle of the floor yet, but she can stay up for quite a while most of the time. She loves chewing on her fingers! She has discovered her feet recently and loves to play with them. She absolutely loves her big sisters and I love that they entertain her so well-its such a big help! In the last few weeks, Madison has become quite the chatterbox! I remember the other girls making noises, but never this much...she will "talk" for 10 minutes straight and she has the funniest facial expressions while she is doing it! (Bubba took a video of it on his phone, so when he is around I'll have to try to get it on this computer). I am so in love with this sweet baby and am sad she is growing up so fast!

I think the other 2 girls had dimples for the first few weeks of their lives, but they quickly disappeared. Madison is now 5 months old and still has the cutest dimples ever - I'm trying not to get too attached in case they disappear, but I'm hoping she gets to keep them!

Big Girl!

2010-07-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

All 3 of our girls have different personalities, and Paris happens to be the firecracker of the bunch! And that's putting it mildly! She is the sweetest little thing, very dramatic, very funny, and very stubborn. When Savannah was potty trained about a year and a half ago, she did it within a matter of days and it was so easy-she just decided one day to do it and that was it. I thought Paris would be even easier to potty train since she now had the example of her big sister to follow. I kept bringing it up with her and she flat out refused to have anything to do with panties or toilets...no way. I didn't want to push it because I figured she would do it when she was ready, but then her 3rd birthday came and went and I knew she was capable of it. I still put it off though because Madison was born and then we moved to VA, but as soon as we got settled here, I decided that we had to do this no matter what.

The first month was awful...I didn't want to push too hard, but she just wouldn't even try and every time she had to put panties on, we had a huge meltdown. Then I would finally get her to try to sit on the toilet and she'd sit there for a while with no results and then two minutes later she would have an accident. I was ready to run away but I stuck with it and took away the diapers and pull-ups (except for when we left the house - I'm not that big of a glutton for punishment!) and stopped fighting with her otherwise, and somehow she has just figured it out over the last couple of months. She doesn't have any more accidents and does all of it all by herself...I'm still not sure how we got to that point, but now that the whole experience is over, her and I are both super proud of her and she is officially a big girl!

4th of July

2010-07-10T07:59:00.001-07:00

We were pretty lame this year and didn't really do anything for the 4th...it was Sunday and it just seemed like a lot of effort to keep the kids up so late and try to find somewhere around here to go see fireworks...so we just stayed home. However, I did have cute patriotic clothes for the kids to wear and tried to get some pics. Paris wouldn't even touch her red, white and blue shirt because "blue is a boy color and I don't like boy colors" so she is not in any of the pictures. It's really fun to find things for her to wear these days! Speaking of which, Savannah refuses to wear shorts this summer...she will wear jeans (it is over 100 degrees here almost every day) or skirts, but will not wear any of her cute shorts. AAAAAAHHHHH! Anyways, if these pictures don't make you feel patriotic, I don't know what will!

4 months old!

2010-06-30T11:11:00.001-07:00

Our baby girl is now 4 months old, and once again, the time is going way too fast! Madison had her 4 month check up yesterday and is now 24 inches long, and weighs 16 pounds, 4 ounces! Yep, she is short and chunky but couldn't be any cuter or healthier! She rolled over for the first time last week (tummy to back) which was exciting and we still have not gotten her to laugh. All of my girls have been kind of slow to laugh and never did very often as babies...and we have tried everything! She still smiles constantly though and is still such a wonderful baby.

Savannah is 5!

2010-06-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that Savannah is 5 today! It does not seem like it has been that long, although at the same time, I really can't remember what it was like not having her in our home! I guess 5 just seems like a big step since it means that she will be starting kindergarten in a few months, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that. Savannah has always been such a sweet little girl and as she gets older, her thoughtfulness just increases. Kassie took her on a date for her birthday and they went for ice cream and then Kassie was going to take her to the mall and Savannah told her that she thought Paris would want to go to the mall too and so they came home and picked her up. I think Savannah and Paris are both going to have a hard time being separated when Savannah starts school...they truly are best buddies and do everything together!

Here are some things about Savannah at age 5:

1. She loves to color and draw...we have hundreds of pages of artwork and all of it is really good!
2. Her current favorite princesses are Ariel and Sleeping Beauty.
3. Her favorite color is pink.
4. Her favorite food is macaroni and cheese.
5. She loves to ride her bike.
6. She plays with her Polly Pocket princesses for hours every day.
7. She LOVES Madison and talks to her constantly when she is awake!
8. She is learning how to read and can read lots of books these days!
9. Savannah is excited about starting kindergarten in the fall.
10. She loves to swim!
11. She likes to watch Strawberry Shortcake and princess movies.
12. She is so good at sounding out words and writing them...we love seeing all of her lists and letters that she writes all by herself! And we can usually read them without any help...yep, she's pretty smart!

13. She is 41 inches tall and weighs 39 pounds.

For her birthday she got a new dollhouse and has already spent hours playing with it. We figured that with 3 little girls, it was a good investment. We tried to go swimming, but only had about 10 minutes to swim before the thunder and lightning started so we went home and had macaroni and cheese (at Savannah's request)! We love Savannah so much and are so glad to have her in our family.

Happy Father's Day!

2010-06-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let Bubba know that he is the most wonderful dad ever to our 3 little princesses...we are all so lucky to have him in our family and all 4 of his girls absolutely adore him!

Summer in VA!

2010-06-17T11:05:00.001-07:00

I can't believe we have already been here for 2 months and we only have 2 more to go before we get to come home! Time is flying by and although we haven't done anything terribly exciting, we've been staying busy and having fun out here on the east coast. It has been hot the whole time we have been here and now it's almost unbearably hot...most days it is in the upper 90's and we have been at 100% humidity for a while - ouch! We have a pool at our apartment complex, but it really isn't made for a mom with 3 small children who can't really swim on their own, so we joined the YMCA for the summer and have been using the pool there since there is a kiddie pool and a very shallow end in the big pool. The kids love the pool and I'm glad since there is pretty much nothing else to do outside without melting! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from the pool because I don't have enough hands or room in the bag for our camera!

Savannah and Paris continue to be best friends and I am so grateful that they play together so well...they keep each other very entertained even though we weren't able to bring many toys with us for the summer. They have wonderful imaginations and are always pretending something...lately they have been acting out "The Little Mermaid" several times a day...they know all the parts amazingly well for not really having watched the movie very many times. Above all, these girls love to color! I can't tell you how many sheets of paper we have gone through, but they never get tired of coloring.

This is a small sample of the coloring they have done...they color these Strawberry Shortcake characters and then Savannah cuts them out to make 'dolls' to play with. We probably have more than a hundred...easily.

The ward here has been amazing and super friendly so we have been able to meet lots of new friends and we have have been able to have lots of play dates at parks and houses that have lots of fun toys...we will really miss this ward when we move back to UT.

Madison continues to grow and get even cuter and smilier every day. We put her in the Jumperoo yesterday for the first time...she's still a little too short to actually be able to jump, but she loved it!

Wonders never cease...

2010-06-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

So I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful. Those of you in summer sales programs know that having a birthday during the summer is hard because you just don't really have time to celebrate it very well...every year in the past I've been lucky to even see Bubba on my birthday because he's had to work. This year, Bubba made a huge effort to not have to work much on my birthday and he made me breakfast, watched the kids so I could go shopping with Kassie, and then Kassie babysat so that Bubba and I could go to dinner and a movie. This might sound very normal to many of you, but this NEVER happens during the summer for us so it was an absolutely wonderful birthday for me! Every other day this summer Bubba has been working/gone/on the phone from about 9 or 10 am until way past midnight....six days a week! Anyways, it was a miracle that he was able to take so much time out to make my birthday special and I really appreciate it - thanks babe!

For my birthday present Bubba got me an iPod touch and a new pair of Nikes that sync up with it so I can keep track of my running...yep, you heard that right...I have been running. Those of you who know me, know how I've kind of been a running hater forever. I love working out but have always stuck to an elliptical or spin classes and always have thought that I can't run and that I hate it. After I had Madison, I decided I wanted to actually give running a fair shot and I started up about 6 or 7 weeks ago. I'm not fast and I don't know that I'll ever like it enough to run a marathon or anything super far, but I have really been enjoying my early morning jogs and my goal is to do a 10K on Labor Day this year. This morning I went almost 3.5 miles without stopping and I felt pretty good...probably could have gone farther but don't want to overdo it or kill myself! I think the farthest I'd ever run before all of this was a mile back in elementary school...so yes, this is pretty much a miracle!

3 Months Old!

2010-05-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how fast the last 3 months have gone...wow! Madison is such an angel and here are some of her accomplishments as of right now:

-has slept through the night (at least 8-9 hours) for the last 3-4 weeks consistently!

-takes 3 or 4 good naps during the day (can't stay awake for much more than an hour at a time!)

-I can lay her down wide awake for naps and she puts herself to sleep with no crying at all...it's an absolute miracle!

-can hold her head up when laying on her tummy

-smiles at everyone who smiles at her

-gets a little upset if left in a room by herself, but as long as she can see someone she knows, she is very content

-starting to drool like crazy

-loves her binky

-loves bathtime

-loves to be outside

-hardly ever cries...maybe a couple minutes a day and that is if she can't get a burp out or she is super tired

-according to being on the scale with me, I think she weighs just over 14 pounds right now!

Madison has been such a wonderful addition to our family and the transition to three kids has been so much easier than I anticipated. I'm not sure if it is because she is such a good baby, or because there is a 3 1/2 year gap between her and Paris, or if it is because I am a little more relaxed/less stressed about everything in general, but I'm grateful! It's sad to see her grow up so fast, but it's so fun to see her learn and grow as well. Savannah and Paris continue to pray daily that Madison will grow up fast so they can play with her more!

Holding Hands

2010-05-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

Since Madison was born, Savannah has been somewhat obsessed with having Madison hold her finger. Some day she will realize that it is a reflex that all babies have when you stick a finger in their palm, but for now, she truly believes that Madison just loves to squeeze her finger. And from the way that Madison responds to Savannah with such big smiles all the time, I think I'm also convinced that their hand holding is more than just a reflex as well! Any time Madison is awake (which is still not super often!), Savannah runs right to her and grabs her hand....even in the car, I will look behind me and Savannah is holding her hand from her carseat....it is so sweet, and although I don't think Madison will tolerate it forever, I do hope that all these girls continue to be best friends and have a wonderful relationship as sisters.

Smiles!

2010-05-05T10:30:00.001-07:00

Madison has been smiling for a while now, but I haven't gotten any smiles on camera yet until this morning.....she saves her best smiles for Savannah and Daddy! We just love this little girl so much...she is the sweetest baby ever and is soooooo good!

Sisters

2010-04-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

All 3 of my girls at 2 months old....

2 Months Old!

2010-04-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that Madison is already 2 months old! We had her check up yesterday and everything checked out normally...she's as healthy as can be! She now weighs 12 pounds, 12 ounces and is 21.5 inches long. Basically that means she is chunky and short...no surprises there! She is such a wonderful baby and we love having her in our home. I haven't been very good at taking pictures of her or the other girls lately...this one of the three of them is pretty funny. My girls love to dress up in their swimsuits and lay out this big blue blanket on the floor and pretend they are swimming...that is why they are wearing swimsuits in the photo. I am so blessed to have 3 beautiful little girls!

Madison's Blessing and a very long drive....

2010-04-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we had Madison's blessing which was a little crazy since after we scheduled it, we found out that we had to leave the very next morning to drive out to VA for the summer! The blessing went very well and we really appreciate all the friends and family that came to support us...I think we had about 50 people there and it was wonderful to be able to see everyone before we had to leave for the summer! Madison continues to be such a fabulous baby....the last few nights she has slept 8+ hours at night without waking and she still takes really long naps during the day too...when she is awake she is generally content just to sit and watch all the craziness around her! In the last couple of weeks she has really started to smile a lot which is so fun and the other girls love to try to get her to smile. And, just like her big sisters, Madison is filling out pretty nicely these days...no surprise there! I'm curious to see what her weight is at her 2 month check up next week...I don't think she is quite as big as Paris was at that age, but she's pretty chunky!

Our drive to VA was very, very long....but I suppose it could have been much worse. We had to make the drive in 3 days, but we did end up all going in one car which was so wonderful. If Bubba and I had been in 2 different cars, I'm sure I would have had the kids most of the way and it would have been very difficult to be driving and entertaining 2 kids while reinserting a binky a thousand times for the baby! Savannah and Paris did really well and hardly complained at all about being stuck in the car for so long, but they also hardly slept at all which wasn't a huge surprise since my kids have never been great car sleepers. However, after spending 3 days in the car for about 17-18 hours a day and getting only about 6-7 hours of sleep in a hotel each night, I think they only slept for about 2 hours total while driving! Madison, on the other hand, slept amazingly well during the whole drive, and even more amazingly, she still slept great at night once we got to the hotels, even though she had slept all day too! On day #2, everything was going fine until after dinner when Paris told us her tummy hurt. We ended up having to stop 12 times within about 2 hours while the poor thing had a horrible bout (rather 12 bouts) of diarrhea. That was really not fun and did not help our progress on the road....but it finally ended and the next day she was just fine. I guess we had to have something exciting happen....oh, the joys! Anyways, we arrived safely in VA Beach and our apartment is really nice...there are lots of fun parks, pools, stores, etc. that are all really close to where we live so we are excited to explore while we are here this summer!

It's all gone...

2010-04-07T13:53:00.001-07:00

The other day as I was trying to comb through all the tangles in Paris' hair, I told her that I thought short hair might be fun and asked her if she wanted to get her hair cut. She emphatically told me no several times, but Savannah told me she wanted her hair short. This shocked me because she has always wanted her hair to be long and always gets so many compliments on her beautiful long hair. I kept asking her and thinking she would change her mind, but she didn't so I made an appointment at the salon for the next day. I thought that as soon as we got there she would change her mind, since she is not a big fan of strange places and had never been to a salon before, but she walked right in and sat in the chair. She said she wanted it at her chin and the lady started cutting. I just kept waiting for the meltdown where she would decide she had changed her mind but it never came....she sat so still and when we left she had a huge smile on her face and she loves her new hair. I was sad to see it all go, but the new haircut is so cute on her and it is soooo much easier to comb through and deal with....now I just need to keep trying to convince Paris that she wants short hair too!

False doctrine?

2010-03-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was putting the girls to bed and was frustrated because it was taking them a very long time to go to sleep (thanks to Daylight Savings) and I told them it was their last chance to go to sleep before I took their dolls away. Paris then piped up with "We need to make the right choice or Joseph Smith will send a big fish to eat us up." That took me a little off guard, but I told her that wasn't quite true and she insisted that "if you make wrong choices, Joseph Smith sends the big fish to eat you up." I asked her why she thought that and she said that's what she learned in Primary today! I'm guessing I just have a 3 year old that wasn't paying very close attention in class!

More cute pics of my angel!

2010-03-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Madison is almost 2 weeks old now, and is still so good...she's only cried a few times and it never lasts more than a few seconds...we're still keeping our fingers crossed that this behavior lasts for the next 18 years! :) Anyways, here are just a bunch of random pics of this sweet baby of ours...

My little artists!

2010-03-05T13:01:00.001-08:00

Savannah has always been artistic...even when she was as young as 18 months old, she would sit and color for long periods of time and has been drawing very good pictures from the time she was 2. Lately her pictures have become very detailed and very recognizable and she is very proud of them so she has been taking pictures of her drawings. She has become very interested in our camera and loves to take pictures (we're going to have to get her a more kid-friendly camera to play with so she doesn't have to use ours!)...I'm actually impressed at how good she is with centering the pictures and it's pretty funny to see some of the pictures that show up on our camera! So here are some photos from Savannah...some of her own drawings and the others were just random objects that she wanted to take pictures of!

Paris has never been quite as artistic, but she is definitely creative and imaginative and not afraid of messes! The other day, this is how I found her after the girls had been coloring...she decided to use herself instead of her paper as her canvas! She explained that she just pretended it was makeup! Oh, and those markers hanging from her hair were her curlers....yep, that's my Paris!

Introducing....

2010-02-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

Madison Celeste Tracy! She wasn't due until March 12, but decided to come 3 weeks early and was born on Feb. 21st instead!

On Saturday, the 2oth I started having a bunch of contractions in the afternoon but didn't think too much of that since I've been having lots of them for weeks now. Bubba and I actually had a date planned that night, and by the time my parents came over to watch the kids, I was having contractions every 4-5 minutes, but kept thinking they would go away and they weren't really that painful at that point. We went up to Orem for dinner, and during dinner the contractions were getting more painful and were every 3 minutes like clockwork so I started getting a little concerned. We had tickets to go up to a play in Salt Lake, but I really didn't feel like we should drive even further away from the hospital (in Payson), since my last 2 labors only lasted about 4 hours from start to finish. So we decided to head to the hospital (I didn't want to wait for the contractions to get worse since I found out that I was GBS positive this time around and they wanted me to try to be on antibiotics for at least 4 hours). I walked up to the nurse and told her that I thought I might be in labor and I'm sure she thought I was crazy since I wasn't really in much pain or anything but they put me in a room and hooked me up to all the monitors and checked me. I was only dilated to about a 3 at that point but was having a contraction every 2 minutes so they decided to keep me there so they could get the antibiotics started. This was at about 8:00 pm. The contractions started getting much more painful a couple of hours later but I was only dilated to a 4 at that point so I got my epidural at about 10 and then my dr. broke my water shortly after that. I thought things would move more quickly at that point, but I continued to only dilate about a centimeter an hour until just after 4 am when they told me I was ready. I can't believe things moved so slow this time! The dr. came in at about 4:15 and they got everything ready and then I pushed through a few contractions and the baby was born at 4:31 a.m. She gave a little cry but then was so quiet I was starting to wonder if she was ok, but it turns out that so far, she just is really quiet!

Madison Celeste weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was 19.5 inches long...good thing she didn't wait 3 more weeks or she would have been quite large! So far, she is such a wonderful baby and we love having her in our home. She hardly ever cries and she sleeps so good right now which has been wonderful. Last night she went to bed at about 10, woke up at 1 to eat, went right back to sleep and then I woke up at 6 am in a panic because she was not awake yet so I woke her up to feed her again! Who knows how long she would have slept? I feel like I'm constantly waking her up to eat because she just really loves to sleep right now! However, when she does eat, she nurses like a champ and so far has been my best nurser too. I know she's only 5 days old and a lot could change, but up until this point, she has been the perfect baby and she is just so sweet. Even when she is awake, she just lays there contentedly and looks around which is unbelievable to me because the other 2 had to be bouncing or moving or being walked around to be happy when they were awake! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't just a fluke! I feel great and am so happy that I got to skip the last few weeks of being pregnant! So far, the girls love her and haven't seemed to be too phased by her appearance. They come look at her for a few minutes and then continue on with playing like normal, although they keep telling me that they want her to grow up so she can play with them too.

And we'll be off....

2010-02-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

This summer, Bubba is going to be managing in one of Platinum's summer offices and we just found out recently that we will be going to Virginia Beach for the summer...sounds rough, doesn't it? :) I'm actually really looking forward to it, except for the fact that it is about 36 hours away and I will be driving there with 3 kids, one of which will be a 6 week old baby! But Virginia Beach is one place we haven't been yet and it sounds like there is a lot of fun stuff to do there...we're all excited to be able to spend lots of days at the beach!

Pregnancy Update

2010-02-17T10:34:00.000-08:00

So I just realized the other day that I haven't taken any pictures of me during this pregnancy and I'm almost done! So here is a picture of me at just over 36 weeks along...hopefully we won't have too much longer! Looking at this picture, I don't think I look nearly as large as I feel...I feel like a whale and have definitely gotten more uncomfortable over the last couple of weeks. I don't remember feeling so slow and unable to move the last two times I did this, but maybe we forget these things for a reason!

Up until about 5 weeks ago, the baby had been head down at every appointment and then at about 32 weeks, she was head up and stayed that way for several weeks which was making me nervous, but I did a lot of tricks that I found online (including hanging upside down off the couch, putting frozen veggies on her head, and having the girls shine a flashlight on the bottom of my tummy which they thought was hilarious), and at my appointment last week she had flipped and we are hoping she stays in the correct position! And at my last appointment (about a week ago), I was already dilated to a 2, so that means all these contractions I've been having are maybe doing something at least!

The girls are getting very anxious for their baby sister to arrive and I think they are starting to believe it will never happen since we've been talking about it for so long. A few weeks ago, we put them in the same room, which I was a little nervous about since they are such great sleepers and I didn't want that to change, but they have done great! It takes them a little longer to get to sleep at night, but so far they have still been sleeping all night and waking up at their normal wonderful time of about 8:30!

Blog Resolution!

2010-01-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

Just recently I have come across some blogs for people that I know who have been very diligent about keeping up with their blogs and it made me realize that I really want to be more consistent with this blog. I would love to have enough posts to make a blog book for every year so that we have a personal history/record/journal for our family so I'm going to try to post more regularly this year. Of course with having a baby soon and moving for the summer, it might not work out so great all of the time, but overall I'm hoping to do better! Hopefully by publishing this post, I will have more accountability and feel more pressure to follow through with this resolution of mine!

December Summary!

2010-01-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

This December was a very busy one but we had a wonderful Christmas season and it was so fun because the girls were so excited about everything. They loved the decorations, lights, parties, snow and everything else and we had a wonderful time!

I got the girls cute red sweaters and black skirts to wear to church and Savannah was not happy at all about it. She insisted that she didn't like black and I told her that I let her pick what she wears every other day and that she needed to wear her Christmas outfit for a few hours this one time...so as you can tell from the pictures she was not thrilled, but she did end up cooperating and I think the girls looked pretty cute. I don't match the girls very often anymore (mostly because Savannah is very picky about what she wears and Paris is actually starting to get that way too), but I think it's fun to have matching dresses and am already getting excited to be able to match all 3 girls!

We had several snowstorms throughout the month and the girls absolutely loved playing out in the snow. They went to go "help" Daddy shovel one day and he ended up making them a little sledding hill in our front yard that they loved. I tell them all the time what lucky girls they are to have such a wonderful Daddy-I think he continues to have more and more fun with them as they get older, and I think both of them are pretty big fans of his too!

Christmas morning seemed to be a big success...the girls loved their new bikes from Santa and Bubba loved getting Beatles Rockband. He has wanted to get Rockband forever but I just don't like the songs/singers/vibe of that game and didn't want the kids around it, but I figured the Beatles version was a little more family friendly and Bubba has always been a huge fan of the Beatles too! The kids love playing drums and guitar with Daddy...maybe they will actually get some of his musical talent since they won't be getting any from me!

The girls were so sad when Christmas was over, and did not want me to put away the tree and all the other decorations. In fact, we still have the Christmas music CD in the car and the girls love it so much that I haven't had the heart to take it away so we have still been listening to Christmas music-both girls know all the words and verses to all 20 songs on the CD! I need to replace it soon though, or I think Daddy is going to go crazy!

December 28 marked our 7th wedding anniversary...it's hard to believe that it's already been 7 years but when I think back on everything that we've accomplished and done since we've been married, it seems like much longer than that! I couldn't ask for a better husband and can honestly say that we are happier than ever and I am so grateful for everything that Bubba does for me and our family. He works so hard for our family (in fact, he actually had to work in Dallas the entire week so he missed our anniversary and New Years) and is such a wonderful father to our girls. Can't wait to see what the next seven years brings us!

2009 was a great one for our family...here is our Christmas card for the year (once again I sent them out late and might not have gotten one to everyone so enjoy)!

Paris' 3rd Birthday!

2009-12-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

Paris' birthday happened to be the day after we got home from Australia so we didn't do a big party this year, but ended up having grandparents come over for cake/ice cream and then we took the girls to see Disney Princesses on Ice a couple of days later and they both loved it! I can't believe my baby is 3!

Paris at 3...hmmm, what do I say about this little girl of ours? She has always been so full of energy and personality and has quite a few intense moments, but most of the time she is very sweet, funny and entertaining! She is a very smart little girl and can write almost all of her letters, she loves to read books, sing songs, and use her imagination. She is constantly pretending to be different people/animals, and her and Savannah make up little games and pretend play scenarios all day long. She absolutely loves to ride her bike and her scooter and goes a little too fast on both! I need to start being better about keeping track of writing down some of the things that she says because she always comes up with the funniest ideas! Several weeks ago we finally got rid of the last binky and it didn't seem to phase her at all even though she was pretty attached to them at night! She is excited to have a new baby sister and talks about it all the time. Savannah is her best friend and they just love each other so much which makes me so happy. We love our little Paris so much and are so happy to have her in our family.

Australia

2009-12-15T18:06:00.000-08:00

This year Bubba's company decided to take the Regional Tech Managers on their own little trip and so we decided to go to Australia! We left on November 1st and came back on the 10th and had a fabulous time! Of course it was hard to leave the kids but they had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa and Gramie and Papa, and it was really nice to have a break, especially since that will probably be harder to come by when #3 comes along!

The flight was not very fun, but actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and we both got quite a bit more sleep than we anticipated. We stayed at a great place right outside of Cairns-it was right on the beach so we had an awesome view from our window and got to hear the waves every night while we were sleeping! We went on a gondola ride over the rainforests, went to an Aborigine cultural center, did lots of shopping, got to see a bunch of animals in an animal habitat and drove all over seeing different things in Australia. There were bats EVERYWHERE which was kinda gross and creepy but interesting since I don't think I've ever actually seen a bat before!

Before we left Bubba got scuba certified so that he could dive at the Great Barrier Reef while he was there. I'm not sure if I would have gotten certified or not if I wasn't pregnant, but since I am, I didn't have to decide! The day we spent out on the reef was definitely one of the highlights, although the boat ride out there was pretty awful and was making most of us pretty sick. I did get to snorkel while I was there and it was pretty amazing to see everything that we did under the water. Just a few minutes before I was getting out of the water for the day, I happened to look over and see a huge sea turtle just a few feet away and was able to swim right next to it for a few minutes which was awesome! Bubba had a blast diving and can't wait to scuba dive again!

Overall, it was a great trip and I'm really glad that I can now say I've been to Australia. Thank you Platinum! I'll just post a bunch of pics in no particular order since putting them in order is such a pain!

Halloween

2009-12-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

Halloween was a lot of fun this year-it seems to get more and more fun every year as the kids get older and get more excited about holidays! This year was actually the first year that we carved a pumpkin with the kids (I will admit it's completely my fault because I don't really like to do it and until this year I justified not doing it because I figured the kids were too little to know any different)! The girls were excited until Bubba opened up that pumpkin and the girls were absolutely disgusted with what was inside and wanted nothing to do with it so Daddy got to do all the work while all of his princesses just watched! The girls did love seeing the end result though, especially once we got the candle inside of it and put the lit product on the porch so I guess it was worth it..maybe next year they will actually help!

The kids were so excited about trick or treating and had an absolute blast that night. Savannah insisted on being Strawberry Shortcake and Paris wanted to be Dora so that's what they dressed up as and they were both so cute! We had a great Halloween with lots of candy, and nearly 2 months later we still have candy in our Halloween buckets (they only get a piece a day and a lot of days we forget about it)!

We are so proud!

2009-10-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today was the Primary program in our ward and since Savannah is a Sunbeam this year, it was the first time that she was able to participate. The Primary had their first rehearsal two weeks ago and she was fine with it, but last week she came with me to my classes because she didn't want anything to do with saying her part or singing the songs during their rehearsal. Given the fact that the one time she was asked to say a scripture in Sharing Time, she threw herself on the floor crying when it was time for her to speak, I just kinda planned on the fact that she probably would not actually participate in the program today. Every time the Primary has sung in Sacrament meeting this year, she has refused to go up with all the other kids. However, when it was time for all the kids to go up, she went right up there without any hesitation! I couldn't believe it, but figured she would probably not actually say her part....and again we were so surprised! She went right up to the microphone and said her part perfectly ("Heavenly Father loves me and has a plan for me"). Bubba and I were shocked, but we were so proud of her (yes, BOTH of us got a little misty eyed after she said her part). Savannah is such a sweet little girl but has become a little more unpredictable these days...sometimes she is so shy and not quite so cooperative and other times she is fearless and not fazed by anything! I just wish I had a better idea of which situations would trigger which reaction so I could prepare myself a little better!

Another princess?

2009-10-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

So we had the big ultrasound a couple of weeks back and most of you have already heard our big news...I was waiting to post on here until I could scan the ultrasound pics in, but I'll go back and add those later. Anyways, we found out that we are having.........another GIRL! We are super excited, although the first thing that Bubba said when he found out was, "Another princess?!!!!" However, we love the two princesses that we already have and are thrilled to be having another one, even if it does mean even more pink and more drama in the house! I just barely hit 20 weeks so we have less than halfway to go until March 12 but that still seems like a very long time away. I feel great these days and in the last couple of weeks have been feeling the baby move all day (and most of the night too!) which is my favorite part of this whole pregnancy thing. Now all we need to do is come up with a name....we have absolutely no ideas so any suggestions (that you aren't set on using for yourselves) are appreciated!

Catch-up time!

2009-10-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

So this is going to be one long post that covers everything we've been up to for the last couple of months!

At the end of August, we had a Mauler Family reunion here in Payson for a couple days and had a great time with everyone...we even attempted some family pictures while the whole clan was here. It was windy and freezing at the time and my kids were not feeling good, but we got a couple decent shots!

At the beginning of September, Savannah started preschool for the first time. I was a little nervous because she is very shy and somewhat resistant to change, and she didn't know the teacher or any of the kids in her class, but she never even looked back when I dropped her off and she has loved it! She loves her teacher, Mrs. Amy, and she can't wait to go every time which makes me so happy. Paris has been a little less excited about and wishes she could go too, but it has been really fun for me to have a little bit of one-on-one time with her and I think she looks forward to that as well.

On September 16, my brother David left on his mission-he was called to the Copenhagen, Denmark mission and is now in the MTC. My girls got to be around him this summer and Savannah particularly was very attached so we all miss him but he is being a great example to all of us and the kids are excited to be able to mail him letters and pictures. If you want updates on his mission, you can check out eldermauler.blogspot.com.

We've been loving fall so far-we've driven up the canyon several times and it is just beautiful. Yesterday we went to the local pumpkin patch and got to go on a tractor ride to a field where picked out some pumpkins and I took a bunch of pictures of the kids since I have been really bad about taking pictures lately.

Here we go again....

2009-08-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Yep, it looks like baby #3 will finally be joining us in March! I have already had several doctor's appointments and so far everything is going perfectly...we had an ultrasound a few weeks ago and just heard the heartbeat yesterday so we are definitely feeling relieved that things are going so well this time around. I'll be 11 weeks along tomorrow and my official due date is March 12! I have felt just about as sick as I did with both girls and so if things go according to history, I should only have a few more weeks of nausea before I start feeling better which sounds good to me because it is really not fun being sick all day and night and trying to keep up with two kids (who don't take naps!) at the same time!

Savannah's 4th Birthday!

2009-06-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am cheating by changing the date on this post to reflect Savannah's actual birthday even though I am actually posting this nearly 2 months after the fact!

Savannah is now 4 and I can't believe how fast the last four years have flown by! Savannah has always been so mellow and well behaved (nearly all the time) and we have loved having her in our home and family. I love seeing her personality develop and she is becoming such a thoughtful and sweet little girl. She has always been fairly shy and quiet and is very content to be alone and to observe everything going on around her. There have been many times when I will stand outside of her door at night after she has gone to bed just to listen to all of the stories and songs that she comes up with when she thinks she is all by herself! Savannah loves to read stories and is starting to read actual words on her own which is exciting. One of her favorite things to do these days is to color-actually she has always loved to color and draw, but recently her coloring has become quite impressive-she is meticulous about staying in the lines and coloring every little detail. She still loves everything princess, although I think she is a little less obsessed than she was several months ago-at least now she is not wearing princess attire 24/7! Actually, she has this one denim skirt that she wants to wear every single day and is very upset on the days that I have to wash it because she does not want to wear anything else-I've tried to help her pick out some other skirts from the store that she likes but she doesn't want to wear anything except for this one specific skirt so I guess we'll have to keep trying to find something else she wants to wear. Savannah is a wonderful older sister to Paris and is usually very nice and accomodating to her slightly rambunctious, loud little sister! And yes, she has the most beautiful hair ever! Too bad she is going through a phase where she won't let me do anything with it-she just wants me to brush it and she wants to wear it "long" with nothing in it....aaaaahhhhh!

Savannah will be starting preschool this year-I can't believe she only has one year left before kindergarten! It makes me sad to think of her going off to school-I can't believe what a big girl she is now! We love Savannah so much!

Florida Trip!

2009-06-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is very overdue, but hopefully I will get caught up soon! At the end of May, Bubba had to go to Florida to visit offices in Tampa and Orlando and since we had some frequent flyer miles that were about to expire, we decided to go with him for the week and spend a couple of extra days there for a mini-vacation! We got tickets for Sea World and Disney World and the girls were so excited for our trip.

The entire 7 days we were there, it was pouring rain for all but a few hours....not exactly what we had in mind, but we still had a good time for the most part although it will probably be many years before we are brave enough for Disney World again! The day we went to Sea World, the weather was actually pretty nice and it wasn't very crowded so that worked out well and the kids loved the dolphin and whale shows. I had never been there before and thought it was a great place for the kids-they had some little rides there too that didn't have lines so we went on some of them multiple times in a row without even having to get off!

A couple days later we decided to try Disney since the Weather Channel was predicting a slim chance of rain compared with the other days so we set out that morning and we were about 5 minutes away when Savannah started throwing up all over! She is now 4 years old and this was the first time in her entire life she has ever thrown up-we couldn't believe it but luckily we had a change of clothes in the car so we cleaned her up and she seemed to be fine so we kept going. We got on the bus to the monorail, got on the monorail and we were about 1 minute away from the park when it started to rain. We headed into the park and it started to lighten up a little so we got in line for the first ride we saw...The Teacups! Not the smartest choice for a kid who just threw up but she really wanted to ride on them so we got in the 30 minute line and rode the teacups. Then it started pouring rain, so we rain to the Small World ride since it was indoors. We didn't have to wait too long for that and the kids loved the ride, but when it was over it was still dumping rain outside so we decided to eat lunch and spent about 30 minutes walking around in a restaurant waiting for a table to open up since everyone was trying to get out of the rain. Then, we finally found some ponchos to purchase (prior to this, we were the only ones there without ponchos and we were completely soaked), so we headed out again and waited in line for another ride....and of course now that we had the ponchos, it stopped raining. We waited for about 30 minutes and were in the next group to go on the ride when they shut it down because of lightning...nice! We were just leaving the ride when it started really dumping...like 10 times harder than any rain I've ever seen before so we ran into the nearest shop and waited for about 20 minutes to see if it would stop. When it was apparent that it wouldn't, we decided to go find the princesses, since that was the thing that Savannah had been most excited about. It wasn't very close to where we were but we finally got there and only had to wait about 30 minutes to see Aurora, Belle and Cinderella. Savannah loved seeing them but of course was too shy to get in pictures with them by herself so we all got in the pictures, dripping wet with our ponchos...lovely! By this point, it was still raining and we were done so we left the park and went back to our nice dry hotel. Bubba and I keep joking that our kids probably will never want to go back there, seeing as how it was such a wonderful experience for them!

The rest of the week Bubba was working while the girls and I hung out in the hotel, hitting the swimming pool anytime there was a break in the rain (only happened twice), and drove around trying to find things to do. Too bad there really aren't very many indoor activities in Florida! We did go to the aquarium in Tampa which was pretty neat, but other than that we just hung out. The kids loved being in a hotel and actually slept well which was great. The flights weren't even too bad thanks to coloring books and a Dora DVD! Even though the trip wasn't quite what we had anticipated, we still had fun and it was nice to see Bubba a little more than we would have if we had stayed home.

SEA WORLD

While we were eating our ice cream, this squirrel came right up next to us to have a bite so we kept giving him pieces of our waffle cone...he was eating it right out of our hands. We had to put a stop to it when we saw Paris letting him eat off of her spoon...one that she stuck right back in her own mouth for the rest of the bite!

FLORIDA AQUARIUM IN TAMPA

DISNEY WORLD

Brian and Laura's Wedding

2009-06-04T14:20:00.001-07:00

Bubba's stepbrother Brian just got married a couple of weeks ago and we had a great time attending the reception and wedding ceremony. Brian and Laura got married in the Salt Lake temple and it was wonderful to be there for that...the girls also had lots of fun running around outside the temple and we got lots of pics of them that day too so enjoy!

I'm one of them now...

2009-05-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

I have always considered myself pretty good at finding good deals while shopping, but I would always get frustrated when I was behind someone in line that had dozens of coupons or was price matching every single item in their 3 carts worth of stuff...I always thought those coupon people were just kinda weird. I've "used" coupons before but didn't really think it was worth the extra time and effort to save a few cents here and there so I really never got into it until recently. Thanks to Utah Deal Diva and several other couponing blogs/websites, I have finally started to learn the tricks and have been saving a lot of money. I'm nowhere near as good at all of this as many others are but yesterday I went to Target and bought nearly $80 worth of stuff for only $26! I'm sure there are alot of people out there who could do even better but I was pretty proud of myself and am hoping to continue to save even more money in the future. Spending money on stuff you eat has always been kind of depressing-I would much rather have that money to spend on something more fun, so the more money I can save grocery shopping the better. So now I'm one of those weird coupon people....but I'm proud of it!

St. George!

2009-05-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

For Bubba's birthday a few weeks ago, I gave him tickets to Brian Regan and the show was this weekend down in St. George so we got to go down there for a quick trip! It was only for 2 days, but we had such a good time-especially since he had been out of town for almost 3 weeks prior to that for work! My parents watched our kids so it was just the 2 of us and it was so nice to have a little break-we got a couples massage, saw Brian Regan (for those of you who don't know who he is, he is a comedian who is hilarious and his jokes are all completely clean too which is rare these days), went bowling, watched a couple of movies, slept in, ate out, and enjoyed not having anything we had to do! Well, sort of...Bubba was on the phone for a lot of the time, especially during our drive there and back, but for the most part it was very relaxing and so fun just to be alone together! Bubba will be gone for a big chunk of the summer due to work, so any time I get to have him around is very much appreciated!

Happy Belated Easter!

2009-05-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

I know Easter was several weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to showing off the pics of my cute girls. On the Saturday before Easter we went to the big community egg hunt and it started raining just a few minutes before the actual hunt started and it was freezing, but luckily the girls got a few eggs and the whole thing was over within a few minutes! Later that day we had another hunt with some friends...also in the rain! We also hid a few eggs around our house Easter morning and then we had one final hunt at my parents' house later that afternoon-that is a lot of candy-luckily I was able to sneak most of it away and the kids don't even realize that all of their candy disappeared!
Sorry for all the pics, but there were quite a few to choose from and they are all so cute. Savannah really doesn't like getting her picture taken these days, and both girls were less than happy about getting photographed before church on Easter Sunday, but we got a few decent shots in!

Princess Party!

2009-05-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I took Savannah and her friend Ruby to a princess party up in Provo and she was in heaven! They got to attend a tea party where they learned all about manners, they made wands and hats, and got to get makeovers as well...Savannah is usually somewhat timid about stuff like this but she even talked to the girls who were volunteering there and she didn't seem nervous at all even when they put eyeshadow on her! It was really cute to see so many little girls all dressed up and Savannah keeps asking me when we can go to another princess party!

Bubba is 30!

2009-04-16T06:14:00.001-07:00

Today is Bubba's 30th birthday...I just can't believe it! 30 used to sound so old to me...and now it's already here...for him anyways! He started off the morning with a raspberry croissant that I picked up yesterday from his favorite French bakery and then he had to go on a treasure hunt around the house to find his present. The last clue led him to my parent's house where he found the set of golf clubs that he has been wanting for a long time so he was very happy with that. I also surprised him with the news of a quick trip to St. George that we will be taking in a couple of weeks to go see Brian Regan, get massages and relax for 2 days in the midst of the crazy summer that is starting! Those of you who know Bubba know that he loves presents, but he hates to wait for them and so every other birthday and Christmas he has had since we've been together he has known well in advance what he is getting. This year he had no idea-I finally surprised him! Tonight we will be going out to dinner with Bubba's family to celebrate some more!

Hope you have a great birthday babe and a great year as well. We love you!

And here are some cute pics that I dug up for your enjoyment!

Lots of pics....

2009-04-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Every year we put all of Bubba's reimbursable expenses for work on a Costco credit card and then we end up getting a gift card to Costco every February. This year we decided to use part of it to buy a nice camera and ended up getting a DSLR (Canon Rebel). We (mostly Bubba) have been having lots of fun testing it out on the kids and as a result we have thousands of pictures from the last month even though we really haven't been doing anything too exciting! I just picked out a few to torture you with...I literally had hundreds to choose from! I am loving the fact that the camera has virtually no delay so I actually get the picture I was intending on taking! With our other camera, the kids would move before the picture would actually take and so we never could quite capture the actual moment we were trying to capture!

These first two pics of are of my cute nephew Austin...my brother Landon and his wife Melissa came up from Arizona to Utah as a surprise to all of us on their Spring Break and we had so much fun with them!

A couple of weeks ago we went to Zions National Park and had a great time thanks to Platinum! We stayed in a super nice cabin and got to do lots of fun stuff...it was so nice to get away and have a little break for a few days...we just forgot the camera and didn't take any pictures!

On a less exciting note, the last few months have been a little bit rough. I found out I was pregnant at the beginning of January and thought everything was going well as I was super tired, nauseous, etc. However, at my first doctor's appointment at almost 9 weeks I found out through an ultrasound that I would be having a miscarriage. I decided to just wait it out and let it happen naturally, assuming it wouldn't take too long, and it ended up taking a very long time and I finally just miscarried this last weekend (at 16 weeks). I'm doing fine now and am relieved that it is finally over, but obviously a little concerned since this is the 4th miscarriage that I have experienced. As hard as this has been, I am grateful for the perspective I have gained-I am so grateful for my two little girls and know that everything does work out somehow-just not necessarily when and how we may have planned!

Bubba is getting busier and busier at work as the summer approaches-we're just hoping that he is around a little more than last summer! He really does enjoy his job though and we are grateful that he has such a good job with such a great company-even if it means he is super busy most of the time!

Cute video!

2009-03-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

I know I'm behind again and I'll try to update soon, but I just took this little movie this morning and thought it was pretty cute....my girls love to sing the "Sleeping Beauty" song and we hear it dozens of times a day in our house!

Long Overdue.....

2009-03-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything....and I haven't taken many pictures recently either! We just haven't anything too exciting going on up until the last week or so. Last week we were able to make a quick trip to Colorado to stay with my brother, his wife and their 4 kids. We were only able to stay for a couple of days but the girls had fun with their cousins and got to play outside while we were there because the weather was beautiful!

While we were there, we also got to go see Celine Dion in concert! I remember her being one of my first favorite musical artists and I remember that the first two CDs that I ever bought were hers....I have always loved her music but have never actually seen her before so this was big treat and her concert was amazing! I don't think most artists sound quite as good live as they do recorded, but Celine was so incredible-I really think she is one of the most talented singers ever and Bubba and I both really enjoyed it!

Yesterday, Bubba and I both got new callings in our ward....we've been relaxing for the last couple of months since we got released from nursery and it looks like we'll be much busier from now on. Bubba is going to be the secretary in the Elders Quorum and I have been called as the 1st counselor in the Relief Society Presidency which is a little scary but will be good for me and is something I've never done so I'm sure I'll learn a lot!

The girls have been so fun lately-they play together so well and they have the cutest little conversations with us and with each other. I just love how their minds work. Yesterday I was talking to Savannah about things that she likes and she was listing off things that she liked. I said, "Well, you like Paris too." She replied, "No, I don't like Paris.....I LOVE her!" I thought that was pretty cute and also very true....she really does love Paris and Paris loves her too. If one of them wakes up earlier than the other, they go nuts trying to get me to let them wake up the other so that they can play. We asked Savannah the other day who she was going to marry when she grew up and she replied "Paris." We asked her how many kids she was going to have and she said..."Just one...Paris." So she doesn't quite understand these concepts yet, but she obviously loves her sister and that makes me so happy. It was a challenge having these two 16 months apart, but now that they are a little bit older, I am so happy that they came so close together because they are such good buddies and have so much fun together. A couple of weeks ago, Bubba was laying on the couch trying to sleep and the girls decided to fix his hair.....

Yesterday before church, we got a few pics of the girls hugging and kissing each other....something they came up with all on their own-it's one of their latest games!

Sledding with Papa!

2009-01-21T08:06:00.001-08:00

Last week we had one day that was slightly warmer than all the other days we've had so far this winter so I decided it would be fun to take the girls sledding and my dad (Papa) wanted to come too. We just went to this little hill that is near our neighborhood and we were the only ones there...it was perfect. I took Savannah down with me when we first got there and she didn't seem scared or anything, but that was her only time down the hill...she refused to go again and spent the rest of the time there eating snow and sledding down the hill on her stomach (without a sled!)...and she was perfectly happy! On the other hand, Paris could not get enough! Every time we went down the hill she would immediately say "Do it again!" She went down by herself a few times and was fine but she preferred to go with either me or Papa and so we got lots of sledding in too!

At one point, Paris just laid down with her face in the snow for about 3 minutes...I went to go check on her because she wasn't moving at all and she told me she was just sleeping...crazy kid!

My new look!

2009-01-13T19:02:00.001-08:00

After having my hair long for almost 2 years now, I decided it was time for a change and I got it all hacked off! So here's what I look like now....

Our little ballerina!

2009-01-13T18:45:00.000-08:00

Savannah absolutely loves to twirl and spends a huge amount of time each day twirling around the house, usually while singing. I decided that she was old enough to begin taking dance lessons so I signed her up and her first lesson was last week. She was so excited to wear her leotard and shoes, but I was a little concerned that she would be too shy to actually participate in the class. But she did awesome! She walked right into class and listened to the teacher and participated without any problems the whole entire time! I'm so excited to see how much she learns and hopefully her courage will last all the way through the big performance at the end of the season in May!

I love this video...she is trying so hard to do her plies and technically has it down, but we need to work on the gracefulness factor...it's still pretty dang cute though!

Discovery Museum

2009-01-13T18:22:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we took the kids up to the Discovery Museum in Salt Lake for the first time and they absolutely loved it! They had such a great time playing with all the exhibits and toys and after 2 hours we had to drag them out of there because they would have stayed much longer if we had the time.

Cute daddy walking with his cute girls!

Paris loved putting the balls in these vacuum powered tubes...every time you opened the little door the air would blow in her face and she loved it! She did this about 100 times in a row before we convinced her to move on to the next thing!

The girls loved playing in the water and as you can tell, Paris got soaked...no surprise there!

This is Daddy trying to dry Paris off under the hand dryer....nice try!

And this was the horse's mailbox...haha!

Christmas!

2009-01-08T07:11:00.001-08:00

This year we were able to have Christmas morning in our own home and it was so fun! We had dinner on Christmas Eve at my parents' house and then we came home to put the kids to bed and get everything ready for the morning. Our wonderful children slept in until almost 9 and they were so excited to go see what Santa had brought them! We started with stockings and both girls found Chapstick first....it took us forever to get that away from them so they could move on to something else....and that was pretty much the story of the morning. We had to keep taking breaks and then come back to opening presents because the kids would get stuck on one thing and have no interest in looking at anything else-it took several hours to finally get everything open and they really didn't have that many presents!

My mom made the girls these cute matching nightgowns for Christmas!

Christmas Preparations!

2009-01-08T06:39:00.001-08:00

We had a wonderful Christmas this year and we especially had fun getting everything ready! Holidays just get more and more fun as the kids get older...they were so excited about everything and we had lots of fun doing Christmas things throughout December. Here are some pics of decorating cookies and making a gingerbread house.

Yep, we had to take Paris' clothes off since she is the messiest little girl when it comes to any kind of food....and yes, she probably ate way more frosting than she put on the cookie, but she had a great time!

My neat, tidy, meticulous child that spent 30 minutes decorating one cookie without getting any frosting anywhere else!

Her finished masterpiece!

And here is the gingerbread house assembly and decorating process:

Savannah carefully decorating, Paris eating all of the candy...pretty typical!

Once again!

Ok, she did help some!

And here it is after all that work...isn't it beautiful?!!!

Paris' Owie!

2009-01-08T06:34:00.000-08:00

I am so behind on my blog, but I'm attempting to catch up! This happened about a month ago-Paris was running around and fell in our basement and hit her eye-it was bleeding everywhere and looked pretty nasty for a couple of days. When it happened, she cried for about 10 seconds and then was back to running around like a crazy child...that's Paris!

Happy Anniversary!

2008-12-28T11:02:00.000-08:00

So we've been married for 6 whole years now...wow! In some ways it seems like it hasn't been anywhere near that long and in some ways it seems like we've been together for much longer than that (and I mean that in a good way)! In the last 6 years we have moved about a dozen times (and in 6 different states), have purchased 2 homes, had two children, and between the two of us we have worked for six different companies during the time that we have been married. We have been on three cruises, a trip to Paris together, and many other smaller trips as well! It has been a busy 6 years but overall our adventures together have been wonderful and I feel like we have accomplished quite a bit together. I have learned so much about myself in the last 6 years and am grateful that Bubba is as patient as he is with me-he is a wonderful husband and father and is truly my best friend. He is so good for me and I love him so much...I'm looking forward to many new adventures and many more years together!

The Polar Express!

2008-12-16T06:41:00.001-08:00

Last night we took the kids on the Polar Express, a 90 minute train ride up in Heber where you get cookies, hot chocolate and a visit from Santa! It was our first time and while it was fun, I'm not sure that it will become an annual tradition-it'd probably be better if the train went faster than 10 mph (and no, that is not an exaggeration-it really does go 10 mph the whole time). Savannah was so excited to see Santa and has been talking about seeing Santa on the train for weeks now-of course as soon as he got close, she got really shy, but she didn't scream and she got really excited when he gave her a bell. Paris was also pretty shy with Santa, but just buried her face in Daddy's shoulder and peeked out every now and then. Considering that last year when we got close to Santa, both kids had screaming meltdowns, I think we're making progress!

The only picture we got of all 4 of us-not the greatest, but we're all there!

Bubba and Savannah being silly with fishy crackers

Savannah opening her mouth wide for a cracker....I told Bubba we needed a picture of it so we could pretend like she made this face when she Santa!

Mommy and Paris looking at Christmas lights out the window

Savannah seeing Santa (from a distance!)

Seeing Santa up close

Getting her bell from Santa

Paris hiding from Santa

Just a cute pic of Paris!

Platinum Cruise

2008-12-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been so lazy and behind with our blog lately but things have been crazy busy and I haven't had much time! The day after Thanksgiving Bubba and I left on an 8day Mexican cruise with the company he works for. We had a wonderful time even though it's always hard to leave the kids behind, especially for that long! They stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Boyce for the first few days and then spent the rest of the time with my parents-I felt bad because they got sick right before we left, but they all survived and the kids kept telling me about all the fun things they did with their grandparents. It is so nice to have so much family living so close to us!

Our cruise left out of San Diego, and we stopped in Acapulco, Zihautanejo/Ixtapa, and Manzanillo. We spent most of our time on land just hanging out on the beach and snorkeling which was so nice and relaxing. We did go jet skiing once and we also got to go see the famous cliff divers in Acapulco which was crazy-these guys climb up this huge cliff (over 100 feet) and then jump straight into the ocean below-it was nuts! And some of the guys that do it are really young-we asked one of them how old he was and he told us he was 14! We didn't take very many pictures (so if anyone has any of us, please email them!), but we had a great time and it was a very nice break for both of us! Thanks Platinum!

So this is not the greatest picture ever, but you can kind of see the divers getting ready to dive off the cliff. Those little house/statue thingies are of the Virgin Mary so that the divers can pray before they dive!

Me getting ready to watch the cliff divers

On the beach in Acapulco

Bubba in the hot tub (not sure what he's doing?)

The beautiful view from the balcony in our room (and Bubba with his Mexican tattoo!)