Hello from Sunny Colorado!

Well - we made it - we are officially here in Colorado and in our house... not exactly settled, but here! We are still surrounded by boxes.... :) Dan and I's bedroom is still carpet-less (should be in by Tuesday... hopefully...) So we have been unable to un-pack our bedroom stuff and unable to pack the stuff that will go in the room that our bed is in for now.We took a trip to the zoo with Grandma and Grandpa Cox before we left - the kids had tons of fun feeding the birds, petting the animals and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa. We rode the Carousel - which the girls love - but Aaron did NOT! I ended up needing to stand with my arms around him until it stopped. Aaron loved petting the goats and anything else he could touch!
So Saturday morning the kids and I packed up into the van and took off for Colorado. The drive took a bit longer than anticipated - since I kept missing turn offs - for some reason - they aren't marked very well.... So after a long but mostly uneventful drive - we arrived safely and began our life as Coloradans (or whatever...)


One of our first things to do was get Eileen registered for school - since it had long since started here. So Wednesday, Eileen started her first day of school! Here she is all dolled up in her pink pants and pink backpack and purple (because i couldn't find pink) lunchbox. She has already made friends in school, but I think she is in a bit of a rowdy class which she doesn't like.
So our week has mostly been full of un-packing and trying to get settled in (as much as possible) my greatest accomplishment has been to make our kitchen functioning - enough that we got bread made this weekend.
We have also gotten to see a lot of Great Grandpa - he has been a bit help in entertaining the kids and letting me get stuff done - and we also went over to visit him yesterday and went swimming in his pool. The kids had a great time - but were shivering and freezing any time they got out of the pool!
We have loved the difference in the weather. Everyone here is complaining that it is too hot and miserable - our family thinks it's perfect... LOL - after coming from 104 degree weather and 80-90% humidity, this feels almost like fall weather!! LOL

We are having a bit of a hard time adjusting to the dryness - lots of little (and not so little) discomforts - we hope we adjust soon - Aaron and Evie are both a bit sick and Aaron is coughing a lot - we finally went out and got him a humidifier - but it only helps at night. We are having to make a conscious effort to drink more water and we are using lots of lotion and chapstick. :)

So that has been the last two weeks for us.

Our Texas ward turned out in force to help us off - we had tons of ladies to help pack and clean on Thursday and Friday and tons of men to help us load the truck on Friday night. Plus a bunch of my friends took me out to dinner Friday night. We are going to miss that ward - but we are looking forward to new friends to be made.

Until next week!

The Insanity

Our life has been thrown into absolute insanity. Dan was offered a job working for his cousin in Colorado. After much prayer and thought we have accepted the offer and will be trying to get ourselves moved in the next couple of weeks. Between the start of the school year and the need for Dan to be out there for meetings, we are going to try and bust our backsides and get all our stuff packed up and moved by a week from Friday. I'm not totally sure how (or even if) we will pull this off - but either way - the next two weeks will be total insanity!!!

On a different note - Eileen has lost another tooth and now has a sizeable gap in the front of her grin.

Today I went in to start packing up clothes I won't need between now and then (sweaters in 100 degree weather?? NO!) and in the process started sorting out some of those clothes that I have that I have resigned myself in to never being able to wear again.... Eileen saw the pile and asked if she could play dress up in them - i said she could and the kids spent the rest of the day dressing up and playing in mommy's old clothes. (and of course - posing for pictures) Aaron loved dressing up - but wouldn't hold still for pictures :

Welcome Home!!

First thing I hear from Eileen "Mommy - we're loaded up with SUGAR!!" LOL - my kids had a wonderful week getting spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa! When I got home and tried to hold Evie - she just gave me the "what do you want with me" look and went to Grandpa. LOL
Dan and I finished our last day in Vancouver with a 6 mile bike ride around the peninsula - the weather and scenery were just GORGEOUS!!! - I miss oceans and trees.... :) Our area has neither. The whole ride was like this - beautiful trees and rocks on one side and the ocean on the other. And then a movie - the flight home was uneventful (lol - which is a good thing!)
After coming home we enjoyed a nice day with Grandma and Grandpa Jones - the only downside was our AC breaking down in the middle of the hottest week of the summer... thankfully it was in the evening and once the sun went down it was tolerable (well for me... Dan's parents - not so much.) Today we went down and spent the afternoon at my parents house to escape the heat - fortunately for us after an night and morning of resting it was easily fixed....It's amazing how much kids can grow in a week - we come back and Evie is walking everywhere (never crawls any more) and Aaron decided to start potty training himself.... He still wears a diaper - we haven't really pushed the issue yet, but any time his sisters use the potty - he wants to also - and he pees and poops in it. He's got that all figured out - and he loves to wipe himself - but can't quite figure out how to wipe the poop - the only problem is that if anyone goes in to try and help them - he waves his hand at them and says "no no - way way!!" (away) and shoos us out. LOL! What a funny boy!
Some pictures of the kids :)

Evie in Eileen's fort in the living room. :) She thought it was fun to sneak in there and out the other side...

Our indoor picnic (since it was too hot to eat outside!)
Playing in the new little pool that Grandma and Grandpa Jones got them.

Oh Canada!

Well - here I am posting from beautiful Vancouver, Brittish Columbia! Dan and I have been here for 5 days now and we have been enjoying ourselves immensly! The scenery is gorgeous and while the work is tiring - the time together has been great. The kids are all having a marvelous time with Grandma and Grandpa Jones (LOL - I'm not sure they want mommy and daddy to come back!) Hopefully they are taking pictures that I can share with you later.. speaking of which maybe I should do that too...

Dan and I got to celebrate our 8th anniversary here yesterday (in the same city that we took our honeymoom) and we spend the afternoon walking around enjoying the scenery and then we enjoyed a nice dinner at a restraunt right on the harbor. After we walked all over the penninsula on our way to Theater Under the Stars. We saw Joseph and the Amazing Techni-color Dreamcoat. The show was great and we had a lot of fun - even running into two senior missionary couples who were at the show because the lead character is in one of the wards they serve in.

Heehee - ok hopefully I will be back later with pictures!

Peaches!!

This week has been just 'peachy' LOL - BAD joke!! On Thursday we all packed up and went up to a local peach farm and spent the morning picking and eating peaches. Aaron just kept picking up peaches and taking a few bites out of them - then putting them back in the bucket! Mommy and Daddy did most of the peach picking and the kids did most of the peach eating. Either way - we came home with a whole bunch of peaches!
We then spent most of Thursday canning peaches and making peach cobbler and then after letting the rest ripen - we canned more peaches on Saturday - we are now looking forward to fresh canned peaches this year!



My mom went in for knee replacement surgery this week and came home a few days ago. I am trying my best to keep their fridge stocked (lol - I know how my dad cooks!!) And will probably spend the next couple days down there to help her out while my dad is out of town. Hopefully by then she will be a bit more mobile and comfortable.

We also went over to have dinner with some friends tonight and had a great time! The kids had a blast playing and the grown-ups enjoyed talking. Food was great- company was even better :)

All-in-all a very busy week - and it's only getting busier!

My Little Girl is Growing Up!

Dan pulled Eileen's front tooth out with pliers today.... her idea.... He would have pulled both the bottom ones - but the other one was too slippery. :) So now my sweet little girl now has a gap on the bottom half of her mouth. When did she grow up so much??


Here's her tooth in a little box I made for her. She is eagerly waiting to see what the tooth fairy brings her now.

Movie time... i hope

Well - Evie officially gets the award for being the youngest walker in our family.... She wasn't even 10 months old yet when she started walking. She is now comfortable enough to walk all the way across the room. She still crawls alot since it's still faster for her, but the tables are slowly tipping. Proof?? You want proof?? Well here it is...


So aside from Evie practicing her walking we had a busy but uneventful week. We went out on the boat where Dan worked on his 180s - it's soo cute - after anyone went out wakeboarding (regardless of skill level) Aaron would tell them when they got back in what a great job they did. Such a sweetie.

Today Aaron looked at me in church and said 'watch this mommy, watch this' he then proceeded to puff out his cheeks and then wacked himself on his cheeks with his hands. Then said "see mommy!! see mommy!!" His simple sentences and sweet words are just the cutest thing and make even his huge terrible tantrums bearable!

Anna has been growing up so much - her speech is getting more understandable and next week we will be going to a meeting to see if she will be able to go to pre-school next year. We took her to get her pictures taken since she is now a big 4 year old. She thought it was the funniest thing in the world to move after the photographer posed her.... we had a hard time getting the good shots in between the shots of her jutting her chin out or making other funny faces... Silly girl!!!


Sometimes it's easy to forget that Eileen is only 5. She is such a mature, responsible sweet girl. She is my big helper and I'm already wondering what I'm going to do with her gone at Kindergarten all day... :( She is REALLY looking forward to Grandma and Grandpa Jones visiting and talks about it in every prayer she says. She has been watching the calendar and counting down the days until they get here.

Crayons

Eileen and Anna love to color and draw - the spend hours and use up piles of paper and boxes of crayons doing it. Eileen loves all the fun color names in her 74 crayon box so when she tells me about her drawings - she tells me what colors she used on them. Today she brought me a drawing with a bunny - and this conversation followed....

Eileen: That's cotton candy and or-child
Mommy: wait... what? You mean orchid?
Eileen: No Or-child (she runs to get the crayon) See Or-child
Mommy: no...see orchid- that kinda looks like or-child but it's pronounced orchid.
Anna: see this one mommy - what's this one called
Mommy: brown....
Anna: yeah - but what's the name of it? (holding it 2 inches from my face)
Mommy: brown....

Eileen also loves to practice her writing. She found a sticky pad and came in and asked me how to spell "you" - I told her - she left and i went back to whatever I was doing. She came back a few minutes later with these notes for Dan and I.

Credits: Summer's Eve by Nibbles Skribbles and Ruby Lane

Evie is walking all over. She can walk half way across a room now - by her self. She is soo cute and wobbly! I'm amazed - she was our latest crawler, but earliest walker. Oooo they are growing up too fast!!!

Boats and Birthdays

Haha - you may have noticed that I have finally changed by blog background... I'm not sure I'm crazy about it, but I didn't have to make it and it was free and I was too lazy to spend any more time on something this un-important! LOL I did however thing it needed a re-vamp after spending a year and a half with winter back grounds.... :)This week (as implied by the title of the post) was highlighted by a trip on the boat with Grandpa and Anna's birthday and all it's celebration. We enjoyed a beautiful morning on a quiet, empty lake. The grown-up's wakeboarded and the kids swam and played. Aaron discovered the joys of jumping off the back of the boat to daddy - however he was unable to convince his sisters of it being fun or even safe. So he happily monopolized his daddy's attention (and mommy and grandpa with cameras for as long as he could while they watched and thought about it. I'm not sure if it's the reckless little boy in him or the trusting little boy in him that allowed him to do this when his sisters would not - but it was still cute and fun to watch. :)




The end of this week was consumed with Anna's birthday and getting ready for it. On Saturday Eileen and Grandma and I went out to shop for Anna's birthday. Eileen had soo much fun choosing her gift for Anna - she picked out two books that she knew Anna would love and bought and paid for them with her own spending money. It is so sweet to watch her wanting to make her sister happy!
This evening, my parents came over along with some of Anna's friends and their parents for some hot dogs and hamburgers. They were eaten on some home-made buns from my amazing friend Lori - accompanied by some scrumptious corn bread mady by my amazing friend Natalie and followed by this absolutely FABULOUS cake made by my talented friend Megan! Anna just adored her princess castle cake and we all had a great time playing and chatting and celebrating a sweet little girl!

Heehee- the cake in all it's glory
and Anna waiting to be able to blow out the candles! (or maybe mostly waiting to eat the cake....)
My little girl has grown so much in the past year - it is so fun to watch her learn from her big sister and make her decisions on what she likes and dislikes and changing. She is so matter of fact in her 4 year old way! I can't wait to see what the next year has in store for us!

What we've been up to...

The last two weeks have kept us busy - Summer is officially in full swing here with temps already in the 100's. Dan has been out of school for 2 weeks now - but last week he coached the wrestling camp - so he wasn't home much more than usual. on Thursday of that week Evie and I packed up and headed out to San Diego area with my choir Evening Song. We stayed with a lovely family up in Fallbrook and enjoyed cooler weather and scenery that included lemon and orange trees just laden with fruit! Our concerts went well - Evie traveled amazingly well and all in all I enjoyed our little trip. Evie enjoyed having me all to her self and the others enjoyed Dan's full attention. Eileen told him that she likes Daddy better than Mommy because Daddy takes her more places (they had gone to the Library and the Zoo - for the record - that isn't more places or different places that we go anyway) :) Evie and I flew home to a joyous reunion with our amazing Daddy and Siblings. Then Thursday we all headed down to the lake for a morning on the boat with Grandpa. The kids loved playing in the water and watching daddy wakeboard - Eileen was practically jumping up and down with excitement and yelling things like "Oooh COOL" while she watched Dan!

For Father's Day - I tried to spoil the AMAZING father of my children just a bit by making him a special breakfast. He ate and promptly left for church meetings... :) Then my parents came up for dinner and we enjoyed an evening together. We also enjoyed getting talk to my Grandpa and Dan's dad on the phone for a bit. I am soo blessed to have such amazing examples of what a real man should be like - kind, loving, strong, playful, intelligent, and faithful. Love Ya Guys!

Nap Time

Anna and Aaron can NOT nap together - if I try to lay them down for naps in the same room - neither one will sleep. I can't put Aaron down to sleep in the baby's room any more since he can climb out of the crib and invariably gets into mischief once he is out. So Aaron goes to sleep in the kids room and Anna gets to 'stay up' As a result Anna is VERY cranky most of the time and eventually passes out in some random spot (like the couch, the chair, the floor, the time out spot...) around 4pm. She then sleeps until we are forced to wake her up for dinner. But really - she just looks sooo sweet lying there asleep - all curled up like that - she looks so innocent - at least until you try and wake her up - then you get the "GRUMPY FACE" So for now we suffer through it and hope that she will adjust.... Ooohh - and I was unable to get pics of Evelyn's teeth - she is a champion squirmer and pictures proved impossible - however we did notice earlier today that she is very close to popping another tooth through on the top.... no wonder she's been cranky!!! LOL - hopefully she'll feel better now! :P
I've also decided to start teaching Eileen to play the piano - my ears are starting to hurt from her usual pounding on the piano and I'm hoping that if I can teach her - then I will at least get to hear songs. :) So we went to a local music store and found some beginner primers and next week - I hope to start teaching her the basics. :)

TEETH - FINALLY!!

That's right - my little Evie finally got her first teeth - two of them at once!! LOL - when Dan gets home maybe I'll be able to get pictures :)

Good Times

We've kept ourselves busy this week - just busy enough to enjoy it - but not so busy that we stress out. We had some of Dan's friends from work over for dinner on Thursday and had a really nice time - good food and good company!
Earlier today we invited some friends from church over for the crock pot stew we had waiting for us when we got home - had a great time eating and chatting and letting the kids play together.

Evie's favorite pass-time is the jumper - she could spend hours in this thing - she's even managed to fall asleep in it.... She has figured out how to jump forward and in the process - swing herself back and forth as well as bouncing up and down. And she just jumps and laughs and makes funny faces at all of us.
She also learned pat-a-cake this week. She just figured out how to clap her hands together and loves to do it - and as soon as I start singing pat-a-cake - she drops what she's doing and starts clapping!
We made a trip to the library this week - which is always a big hit with the kids. The found princess books, barbie books, train book and hours of entertainment. Yesterday I found them like this - that's right this isn't posed - they all wanted to read on this chair - the girls didn't even glance at me when i got the camera out - Aaron just glared at me for interrupting him! At least Aaron is reading Thomas the Tank Engine instead of Barbie... :) He comes to me with these and the Dora books many times each day, it's so cute to see him getting into books.

Countdown!!

Countdown to what? SUMMER!!!! Yey- school has just 2 weeks left and we are all looking forward to seeing a bit more of our WONDERFUL husband/dad. Monday was kind of an insane day and we spent most of the week recovering from it. We did the grocery shopping, laundry, went to the zoo, went to a primary activity, family home evening, and somewhere in there we tried to get the kids naps.... :) Here are a couple pictures from the zoo. Dan's birthday was this week as he likes to tell me - he is now OLD!!! LOL - he had a school thing he had to go to that night - so we got a sitter and I went with him.... not very exciting, but I did make him a cake and my parents chipped in to get him a PS3.
I got to go to a women's conference on Saturday and LOVED it - it was so uplifting and it was the pick-me-up that I needed. Hopefully I will be a better wife and mother because of it - I'm trying anyway! :)

(Credits: "Desmond and Molly" by Amy Sumrall)

Adding Insult to injury...

This has been a week filled with minor injuries. The week started off with some beautiful weather!! It was sunny - not too hot and perfect for playing out side. We were all out back - me picking weeds and the kids running around playings - barefoot as usual. Unfortunately for Anna she discovered the first fire ant hill of the season - with her bare feet. I heard her crying and screaming and looked over to see her poor feet covered with ants. I grabbed her as quickly as I could and started swiping the ants off her. Shortly after - her feet began swelling around the stings and my poor little girl was limping around for the next two days on this swollen foot while doing her best not to itch it. She has a few stings on the other foot - but they were mostly concentrated on the one. Evelyn has gotten very mobile and wants to pull up on EVERYTHING now. She had stood up near the girls door frame and the girls accidentally shut the door on her fingers - not realizing they were in the frame. Her poor little fingers swelled up and she screamed inconsolably for a good 20 minutes - and would break out crying after that anytime she touched anything with that hand. My poor baby girl!!

LOL - ok I did take pictures this week - of more than just injured body parts - we didn't do anything too exciting, but we had fun being together and enjoying the weather (at least until it turned rainy on Friday) Eileen LOVES doing puzzles and the kids have all done a LOT of puzzles this week. Eileen wanted to show off this 100 piece butterfly puzzle that she did all by her self.
Sweet cranky Aaron right after getting woken up at the end of nap time so he could eat dinner. Aaron has finally figured out how to climb out of the crib (where we still put him for naps) but he still wants to nap in there - so he gets his blanket and a toy and throws them in - then climbs in himself! LOL - yep he puts himself down for naps! Anna is now feeling much better after her ant ordeal - but she has shown a MUCH greater reluctance to go anywhere near any bugs since then - she now gives VERY wide berth to any bugs she sees - especially ants.

Evie is on the move. She crawls everywhere and gets into everything. She loves her jumper and loves try and climb up things (including me) she is a sweet happy baby (unless her fingers are squashed....) She could happily play in this thing all day - especially when her sisters load her up with toys like this!!