Bree!!!

Monday morning at 8:22 am, Bree came to be a part of our family. She was 9 lbs 3 oz and 21 1/2" long. Mommy and Bree are both home now, enjoying being done with the pregnancy. More pictures will likely come soon.

E.R.

So, here is how we ended our Thanksgiving vacation . . .

I put Gracie down for a nap on our next to last day in Idaho and left her upstairs alone. About 30 min. later, Justin got back from his daily adventure and I asked him to go upstairs and check on Gracie since I wasn't finished cleaning up and hadn't gotten to her yet. A few minutes later, he calls my cell phone and says I need to come up right away. I ran up and found Justin cleaning up the floor which was covered wish Rylee's spray de-tangler. At first, I was like, "why am I here?", but then Justin handed me an empty bottle of claritin and showed me the two left he found on the floor. I grabbed the bottle and rushed to find my mother-in-law who it belonged to in order to find out how many were in there. She said somewhere around 10, no more than 20 maybe, but wasn't completely sure. I called poison control and they sent us to the E.R. We spent six hours there so they could observe her. They did have to give her an i.v. in case anything happened, but overall, she was fine. Seven hours after the incident, we took her home and went to bed. She woke up shortly after we were all asleep screaming because of stomach pain. We figured it was gas, but after the third time of her waking and screaming, we decided to take her back. Turns out we were right, and that it was probably a side effect of the charcoal she had to drink to absorb the pills she swallowed. So, after another 2 1/2 hrs. at the hospital, we went back to Justin's uncle's house, slept for a few hours, got up, packed, and came home. Everything ended up fine and she's back to her normal, crazy self again!

(Forgot the video for previous post)

Here is Justin and a few of the cousins attempting the eating portion of our Thanksgiving "Fear Factor."

Thanksgiving in Idaho

We had so much for Thanksgiving this year. We packed up the kids and my giant belly and drove up to Idaho for the Holiday. We did so many fun things! First, there was the constant supply of snow for the kids to play in.

And of course, there was fantastic food, but I had lost my camera that day so there's no pics, but luckily I found it in time to get some pics and video of the cousins "Fear Factor." There were a few categories that I missed cause of the whole lost camera thing, but I got the most fun ones!

First, they spun around 30 seconds and had to stand on one foot for a minute. Then they had to hold their legs up as if they were peeing like a dog. Followed by the eating challenge. There were five items that they got 10 pts each and an extra 25 if they ate them all: jalepeno peppers, pickled pigs feet, sardines, 2 TB. lard, and one raw egg. I'm proud to say, my husband finished them all off! You can watch the funny video below.

Gracie is Two!!!

Gracie turned two last sunday! We had a little family party for her and she had so much fun playing with balloons, blowing out candles, eating cake, and opening presents! She got some cute little outfits, some adorable fashion boots, some dress-up dresses, and a rocking horse that moves and makes sounds. In the video below, you can kinda hear her yell "he-ha!" when she begins to open her last present (that's what she calls the horse).

Gracie has grown up so much in just the last few months! Her little personalitly has exploded and she's become such an entertaining part of each day. She does the most random things to entertain herself and it just kills me! She is very dramatic ( a lot like her sister) and likes to dance and play dead a lot. Her favorite game is to play "dance party" where we put on music and dress ups and dance around the living room. She still doesn't talk a whole lot but is finally learning more words and becoming easier to understand. We all love her and enjoy watching her. Who needs t.v. when Gracie's around!

This first pic was suppose to be a family pic, but my mother-in-law was trying so hard to get Gracie to look and smile that she cut off heads a lot. This was the best of them!

For my mom

These are some videos of Gracie opening the presents that my mom mailed to her yesterday. It's difficult to keep clothes on her anymore so that's why she's naked. She was so excited to open presents that I don't think she really cared what was in them! But she loved everything!

Halloween 09

I love Halloween and I'm just a little bit sad that it's already over. (Emphasis on the "just a little bit." Walking all over the place all day can wear a pregnant lady out!) So here are some pics of our Halloween festivities!

First, we made cookies!

Then, we carved pumpkins.

You can see that Gracie was more interested in coloring on herself than decorating the pumpkins!

The finished product. Rylee drew a bat and a ghost on the smaller one that she wanted me to cut out. You can see the bat in the picture and a little bit of the ghost on the far right of the small pumpkin.

Then, it was time to play dress up and off to trick-or-treating. We first went to downtown Chico, then to the church trunk-or-treat, then off to a Halloween Party at a friends house to finish the night. I decided to not go with themes this year and the kids picked out their own costumes (although, I did help Gracie with hers.)

I tried to get Gracie to wear the hat, but she just kept being funny with it and covering her face, and then wouldn't wear it at all! So, we decided to stick with the pony and a pretty. But we love the cape!

We had tons of fun and accumulated a whole lot of candy, including chocolates! Woo-hoo!

A Giveaway

Okay, I don't usually post about these kind of things. But since the giveaway is from my good friend Becki, and I really, really, really want to win, I figured I'd do it this time! Anyway, Becki is super creative and talented. I've purchased many an item from her Whippycake store. If you want to learn more about it, you can click on the pink Whippycake button to the right. She has super cute things for mom and baby. You can read about her latest give-away there too!

Pumpkin Patch

One thing I miss about living in Mesa was the fun pumpkin patch we went to every year for Halloween. But Gridley did not disappoint! We found one that had the cutest little train, some bounce houses/slides, petting zoo where the kids got to pick up fallen apples and feed to the animals, a little playground, and a picnic area for lunch. The kids had just as much fun as they always do and I was very impressed with it! Plus, all the money we spent goes to a foundation for sick children and their families. I love knowing that some of my money will go to help someone else, it's a win-win! We got a few cute pics, but I didn't think to take a pic of the entire train, just the caboose that the kids were in. But it was pretty neat!

New Photos

I finally got around to finishing the photo shoot for Rylee and took Gracie out last night to get hers done. I love living on a farm because there are so many fun places and old junk to use for photos! Rylee was quite creative with hers. She wanted to be sure to have some silly ones, you'll know her creations when you see them. I was pretty impressed with her ability to look around her and see what she wanted to use for her shoot! That's the creative genes in her (inherited probably by her aunt Taryn, not so much myself). You can view photos HERE

One of My FAVORITE Things

Rylee has 3 or 4 books that she is assigned to read everyday for homework, taking up at least 20 minutes. She loves to read to her siblings and they love to listen. Gracie will usually sit the entire time, but seeing the camera was too much to resist and she had to do something to impress (usually copying one or both siblings). But you get the idea! Rylee is a really good reader and we are so proud of how much and how fast she is learning at school. Her teacher tells me how much her previous school prepared her for reading and writing and is impressed with her handwriting and creative talents (although she has had to have her crayons taken away because her creativeness was distracting her from her school work). So now we try to make more of an effort to enrich her creative abilities a little more at home. I noticed today that as she was doing her math homework she was singing a song. I thought for sure she couldn't possibly be getting her additions right when she's singing a song about the names of the months. But after checking both sheets, she got every one correct! I guess she's more of a multi-taker than I thought! Keep it up, Rylee!

Our first October Craft

What do you get when you take $3 to the dollar store, purchase a pack of foam stickers and two plastic bowls?

New Halloween popcorn/chips/candy bowls!!!

Dress up and a Dance Party

When Justin was a kid, his mom had a dance studio in thier house and I often hear about thier memories of the kids spending hours in there during the day playing dress up, coming up with skits, dancing, skating, whatever. It was those memories that created the few pics I've seen of my husband in a tu-tu!

So, since today seems to be pretty low key with most everyone working at the ranch during the season, we pulled all the dress up clothes into the big front room, found some fun music, and had a dress up-dance party! Cole wasn't interested in getting his picture taken or being in the video so it mostly the girls who participated.

Shrine Circus

My mother-in-law and I decided last minute to take the kids to the Shrine Circus this last thursday. It was pretty fun and entertaining, although warm outside. We, of course, got to have cotton candy and snow cones and Grandma treated the kids to a pony ride. Gracie couldn't stop smiling at what she calls the "he-ha's"!!! It was so fun to watch their little faces. I think they had a little too much fun with the cotton candy.

Beware. . .

. . . the following posts are completely out of order, but I was in a hurry to get this done.

My favorite boy

Cole and I recently did a little photo shoot around the farm. He had some good ideas of his own that we were able to incorporate! You can see the rest HERE. I tried to get Cole into head start this year but we were too late so we're stuck on a waiting list. In the meantime we are working on his letters, numbers, shapes, colors, etc. at home and going to start martial arts next week! He's excited to take what he calls "ninja-turtle" lessons. I think he'll really enjoy it and it will give him an opportunity to make some little friends his age.

Rylee's 1st day of School

Rylee started the first grade a few weeks ago. I can't believe how big she is (I know, all mom's say that). But she looks so grown up. She loves her teacher and so far she tells me that she has made six new friends (I guess she's keeping count). She loves being able to have lunch at school and sit with her friends and all the extra recesses she gets since she's there for so long now. She has also started dance as well. She is taking jazz, ballet, and tap (thanks to a grandma who owns the dance studio in town). So far she loves it all and is excited to have her grandma as one of her teachers. Recital will certainly be busy for her this year with three performances!

Fun in Montana

While we were visiting my parents in Montana, my dad gave the kids a tour of his work lab and they loved it. My dad's a dental technician and they thought all the teeth were so cool. My dad and one of his employees helped the kids make in-prints of their hands in some of the modeling clay along with the fun eye-glasses and rubber-glove balloons. They even got some teeth souvenirs that you can see Cole sporting below.

We also visited my Aunt Shannon who gave me a few zucchinis to take home. One of them didn't make it when I let Gracie hold it in the car. This is what was left of it.

Cody and Kate got married

Just a few weeks before my brother got married, Justin's brother got married! Our lives have been full and busy this summer! It's been fun getting to know our new sister-in-law and we welcome her to the family.

My brother got married!

My little brother, Adam, got married to Kaycee a few weeks ago and so me and the kids packed up and drove up to Montana. My mom flew down to drive with us and I am so grateful for her help. Rylee got to be the flower girl and Cole was the ring bearer. They were so cute all dressed up, but of course, couldn't have been more bored with the ceremony. So because of their good behavior, we went for ice-cream in-between the wedding and the reception. At the reception they had a good time eating all the yummy food and dancing. And since the DJ was taking requests, Rylee requested the chicken dance. Even Gracie got into that one!

HOLY COW!!!

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I've blogged. Seriously! I've never gone this long between posts before! I have so much to share with all of you but so little time to do so. I'm going to dedicate 1 whole hour later this week (hopefully tomorrow) to catching up on my latest and greatest news. But I have been keeping up on all of your blogs, even if I haven't left comments. Love to hear how all my family and Arizona friends are doing. Until tomorrow! ??

Don't worry, we're still here

I don't have any pictures to post just yet, but we did make it to California and are slowly getting our lives back in order. I love the weather and being on a farm. The kids are loving being able to spend so much time out doors and all their fun new chores, such as, gardening, picking vegetables from the garden, feeding the chickens, riding the golfcart to go find blackberry pushes for a special treat, and all the other fun things that come along with being on a farm like riding on tractors playing in dirt all day long!

There will be pictures soon, as soon as I can find my camera hookups. Till then!

Some last minute fun!

My parents were here visiting this last weekend and we had so much fun! We went swimming, shopping, eating, game playing, show watching, rough housing, and overall had a great time. My parents even took all three of our kids to a movie so Justin and I could have some much needed alone time. It was great. We finally got to go check out Dave and Busters for a bit and had a good time. Here are a few of the pics that I took. Most of the pictures are on my mom's camera so I'll have to wait for those ones.