Alex is one!

I can't believe today is Alex's 1st birthday! It seems like especially the past 5 or 6 months have gone really fast. That first little while when they're little babies is so hard and seems to take forever at times but then it starts really speeding up. He's so much fun now, though, and our family would be so different without him.

I just barely switched him last week from his rear-facing carseat to a big kid, forward facing seat and he was so cute how happy he was. He loves being able to look out the window and look over at his sisters and I think he feels so big and cool like them. Usually there are lots of times he screams when I try to put him in the car but now he almost always seems happy and even excited to go somewhere. He looks over at his sisters with big old smiles and kicks his legs excitedly. I think he's still relishing in the fact that he CAN kick his legs and move them freely while he's in the car! I'm actually surprised I held out so long with switching him over. With both the girls it seems like I couldn't handle seeing their scrunched up legs pushing against the backseat of the car at around 10 months--maybe he's shorter than they were. Or maybe I waited because I didn't want to give up being able to sit next to him in the backseat and nurse him while we were driving (I really try to cover up for the sake of passing motorists, I promise!). We just go on so many road trips and stuff and it makes it SO much easier to keep peace in the car when I'm right there to shut him up when I have to and not to stop for feedings all the time. Now we have a whole seat full of kids and I know it's not going to be much longer before we have to give in and trade our sedan for a minivan or something bigger. I'm not looking forward to that. I like how close the kids are in our Taurus plus I love our huge trunk...I'm going to miss that.

This is what my backseat is looking like these days:

Alex fell right to sleep in his new carseat on the first night!

Katie's 1st Haircut

Well, actually I should say haircuts, since there were two. The first was self-inflicted and the 2nd was my sad attempt to correct it the best I could. In hindsight I'm really wishing I would've dealt with the inconvenience of driving her to a professional hair stylist, but there's not much I can do about it now except hope it grows quickly. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw what she'd done to herself was Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber. What do you think?

This is what she did to herself:


And here is my attempt to fix it, along with a pic from Dumb and Dumber, just for a reference.








Every time Joe looks at her he just kind of puts his hand over his face and laughs and says she looks like she has a mullet. Poor girl. Grow hair, grow!

Draper Temple Open House

About a week ago our family was lucky enough to go to the open house of the new Draper Temple. What a beautiful temple! Savannah had been so excited for months that she'd actually be able to go inside the whole temple and see everything. I loved when we went in the celestial room because all 3 kids got quieter and more reverent and the girls looked so in awe as they looked around. It felt really great for me to be in there with my whole family. Savannah also really liked being in the sealing room and we looked in the mirrors together where you can see forever and she gave me a big hug and told me she loved me and it was just a sweet moment. Now we're really looking forward to going to the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple soon, too!

Alex's first steps!

Alex took what I'd call his official first steps about 2 weeks ago but he was still pretty unsteady and would always fall after just 1 or 2 steps. It's been one of his favorite things to do since then so he's getting a lot better at it. Look at this little video Savannah took of him tonight! It's so fun watching them get bigger! Most people think I'm crazy but I LOVE it when my kids start walking!

Future commercial star?

I took these little videos of Katie back in August and I thought they were SOOO funny! I've wanted to post them on here and I kept thinking it was probably really difficult so I never did it. I can't believe I never realized it's just as easy as inserting a photo! I'm horrible at this stuff sometimes. Anyway, at the time Savannah was going through a big Push Pop phase and of course Katie wants to be just like her big sister so she was copying Savannah and trying to convince me how much she likes push pops by telling me emphatically they're "DELICIOUS!" I think she's so funny. By the way, you'll notice she's also copying her big sister's bad habit of stripping down to her underwear as soon as we walk in the door and whenever we're inside the house.

Happy Halloween

What a fun Halloween! There really wasn't anything that extraordinary about it but I think what made it so much fun is that Joe had the whole day off to be home with us! I really think this might be the first time that's happened since we had kids! Very early in the year he started thinking about how he always has to work on holidays and fun days throughout the year so he sat down with the time off request book for his work and requested to be off for the 4th of July and Halloween, both of our birthdays and our anniversary, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and anything else he could think of when he wouldn't want to work. Actually, for Halloween he requested off not only today but tomorrow, too, so he can stay up late tonight without having to worry about getting up early to be at work at 6am on Saturday. Yipee!!!

We just hung out during the first part of the day and in the afternoon we took the kids to Carl's Jr to eat lunch and play on the playground. That's one of their favorite places to go but Joe and I don't especially love it so we went to Blimpie first and got sandwiches to go so it all worked out well. We met Aunt Savanah and Grandma Cindy at Valley Fair Mall for trick-or-treating with their cousins at 5 and that was awesome because they got a ton of candy in just under an hour! Then you can come home and it doesn't matter if you only go to 10 houses in your neighborhood because they've already got a bunch of candy. Actually, the weather was unusually warm this year so the kids spent quite a bit of time going around with Joe to a bunch of houses. We have so much candy! I stood outside in a t-shirt and bare feet (that's how warm it was!) passing out candy on the sidewalk to save the kids some time walking up to the door. It was like a California Halloween! I loved it!

Savannah decided months ago she wanted to be a cheerleader so I found her a costume on eBay back in August and tried my best to keep her from completely wearing it out before Halloween. If you don't know, Katie is constantly doing the best monster voice so I thought a monster costume would be perfect. She loved Monsters, Inc. so she got to be Sully and she was really excited about that. I also got hers almost 2 months ago so she's had fun wearing it from time to time and she would make me laugh because she'd find it and put it on herself, then come up to me with the hood on holding up claw hands and saying, in her best monster voice, "I'm a mean, scary monster". When I'd pretent to be scared she'd quickly pull off the hood and say with her cute smile, "me just Katie." This would then repeat over and over again for 5 or 10 minutes until I managed to distract her or get the costume off. Alex got to be the pumpkin, which became a tradition out of laziness when I didn't want to find a costume for Katie's 1st Halloween and decided to recycle Savannah's. At least a pumpkin is gender-neutral and I think it's a really cute pumpkin costume so I'm all about the recycling/tradition idea. Just for fun, I'll put a picture of all the kids wearing it. Savannah and Alex are 8 1/2 months in their pictures and Katie was 7 months when she wore it. Happy Halloween!

This is a fun picture of Alex and Katie laughing and playing at our ward Halloween Party.


This year I wasn't motivated enough to come up with costumes for Joe and myself so we're just boring old parents for Halloween.




Our Three Little Pumpkins

Good Morning!

Hello! It's very rare that I would ever be able to post something in the morning. For one, I usually sleep in later than this. But also, it's just kinda busy with getting breakfast, diapers changed, getting and everyone dressed, hair brushed, etc. This morning I woke up with Joe when he got up for work and usually as soon as I get out of bed, whether the kids hear me up or it's just some kind of ESP, they all wake up--no matter how early it is. So where are they and what are they doing right now you ask? Let me show you...



How precious is that! The girls have gotten really bad lately about coming and getting into bed with us in the middle of the night and usually they try to hog the bed but look how cute they are all three huddled together so close. I can't believe they're sleeping like that. While I was taking pictures Alex started to stir a little so look how cute this one is where he's stretching and kind of punching Katie in the face but she's doesn't seem to mind at all.
Luckily he just stretched a little but never opened his eyes or woke up. They're so precious when they're sleeping. What a great way to start the day!