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!

My sweet little boy

A few of you might know that I'm completely addicted to digital scrapbooking. Actually, it's pretty pathetic because I'm more addicted to surfing dozens of different websites looking for and downloading all the free supplies than I am actually scrapbooking anything. Now I'm filling up my hard drive with a whole bunch of super cute kits and things but no actual scrapbook pages! The good thing is every once in a while as I'm visiting sites I'll see a really cute kit that they're giving away as a posting bonus if you participate in a challenge, which always involves actually making something. That may be the only times I've ever made pages up to this point with the exception of the kids' photo books I've made for them. The latest one was a template challenge which was fun because I've downloaded dozens of templates but I'd never actually used one, so today I did it and it was so much fun! I'll definitely be using more of them. I made a page with some pictures I took of Alex yesterday. I love dressing him in something cute and doing a little photo shoot. He's so smiley and fun to take pictures of! I just thought I'd show off my cute little page. P.S. This is one time it's definitely worth clicking on the picture to view it at full size. You can't see his little dimples unless it's bigger!

Lagoon Continued...

First of all, I just wanted to write today because it's 8-8-08 and it's such a fun date! The Olympics starts today in Bejing so that's exciting, and I also remembered one more thing about Lagoon that I completely forgot to mention. We spent a few hours there in the afternoon while it was hot before dinner and I was really excited because it was my first time trying out my new waterproof camera! I got it as an anniversary gift from Joe (actually, though, I just wanted to buy one really bad so when our anniversary was coming up I asked him if I could buy it as an anniversary present and he said yes, so I'm the one who researched everything and made the actual purchase). Hey, any excuse that works is fine with me. =) It's so nice having a camera you can take near water or sand and not worry about dropping it and ruining it. The pictures aren't as good as normal camera, but they're good enough for me. It definitely does better in outdoor sunlight than indoors with the flash. Here are a few pics with it:





I kept trying to get Savannah to go under the water so I could take a picture of her, but the water was really cold and she wouldn't stay under long enough. The best I got was her body.


Here's one I got of Joe, though!


Lots of fun. I'm excited to use it more when we go to Las Vegas next month.

Lagoon

Gosh, I guess it's been a busy summer because I'm totally slacking on my blog! So much has gone on and I'm sure I have lots of fun pictures and stories to share but for right now it's too overwhelming to try to remember so I'll start with the present. Yesterday we went to Lagoon because Ryan got us a bunch of discount tickets through his work at Larry H Miller. I was excited about going now that Savannah was another year older and at least a few inches taller. She was even tall enough to ride on "The Bat" this year so we went together and it was the first time for both of us, which was fun. It was cool going on more of an adult ride with my little girl. Kind of weird, but fun. I was really excited because this was the first time in while that I haven't been pregnant at an amusement park so I could actually ride the fun rides! I missed last year at Lagoon, plus Knott's Berry Farm in August of last year and it seems like one other one while I was pregnant with Alex so it seemed like forever for me since I'd been on a fun ride. The kids had a lot of fun going on all the little kiddie rides and I was surprised how fun it was for me to just walk around with them and watch them go on their rides. I guess because they get so excited and are having so much fun that even though I'm not really doing anything I can experience it through them and I just love it. I tried spending more time enjoying watching the kids rather than worrying about pictures all day like I usually do, so most of the shots were taken on their first ride, the OdySea, which is like a big octopus that shoots water. Here are some cute pictures of the kids.

Savannah and Kammi

Dylan and Dax

Katie and Joe

Savannah and Katie in line for a ride.

Although I loved walking around with the kids, I was incredibly grateful when Ryan, Dad, and Cindy volunteered to watch our kids for a few hours after dinner while the rest of us adults went on big rides! Ryan took his three kids plus Savannah on some kid rides while Dad and Cindy stayed back on the grass where we were "camped" with Katie, Alex, Bailey (Chris and Jenny's daughter-16 months), and Brooklyn (Tracy's daughter-19 months). That's 4 pretty little kids to for just two people to watch. They're amazing. When we got back Alex and my dad were asleep on the blankets. How cute is that?

We adults were only able to go on 2 rides since the lines were so long but it was SO much fun. We went on Wicked first and it was probably the best ride I've ever been on. I loved it! I couldn't believe how scary it was but it was really awesome. We also went on Spider after that and it was a lot of fun, too. Most of the time was spent waiting in lines but we had a lot of fun just talking. It was Joe & me, Matthew & Amanda, Chris & Jenny, Savanah (alone because Ryan was with the kids), and Tracy (her husband Nick is working out of town). We had a great time together. Matthew took a picture of us all so I'll have to get it from him and post it here soon. *Update* Here it is finally!

We stayed until closing as usual (only 10pm since it was a weekday). We always seem to be in the last group that they're kicking out the doors. I think it's become our tradition that we always end the night getting in as many Tidal Wave rides as we can squeeze in since that seems to be the last ride to close and that usually ends up being our final meeting place at the end of the night. Of course the kids were asleep before we even got out of the parking lot so you know it was a good day. We had a ton of fun. Thanks for inviting us, Ryan!