Parties!

So I've got some catching up to do in the blog department. We've had two birthdays recently...Mikayla is now 3 and Victoria is 5! Mikayla had an Alice in Wonderland themed party...complete with Eat Me Cupcakes and Drink Me "teacups". We had a tea party with sandwiches, cookies, and hot apple cider and celebrated everyone's merry unbirthdays just the way they do it in Wonderland. Everyone was told to come dressed in their best Wonderland outfit. We had some really cute rabbits, alices, and mad hatters! We also had a pinata...which turns out is really hard to break nowadays. John had to end up doing it and it took him a while too. lol.

Then we celebrated Victoria's birthday with her very first sleepover! Three kids ended up spending the night and about three others just came to the party part. It was hard to get those kids to sleep but they eventually did...which was good because Victoria had a dance performance at the festival of trees the next night. We managed to fit them all on her queen size bed...good thing those girls are small. :) She had her jungle cake that she requested...i just colored the icing green and added plastic animals because i wasn't going to pay $20 for a pre-made cake. Though it was a hassle I'm glad she got to experience having a sleepover. I think she enjoyed herself. So the next night was her dance performance at the festival of trees. She had no idea what she was doing this year but her Uncle Tommy and my brother and his family were kind enough to come watch her perform. She's still enrolled in dance and enjoys it so we'll keep with it if she wants to.

Other recent events have involved my mother coming to visit for Thanksgiving. The kids enjoyed having her here and going shopping a lot. Even meeting Santa. It was nice to get some help around this huge house for a while. We also found the time to make a gingerbread house with the kids. It was a fun experience and I look forward to eating it...yumm! So there's a brief catch up. If i've forgotten something I'll be sure to post it later on.

Too Many Bubbles?

Every once and a while we let Victoria and Mikayla use our Jacuzzi for bath time. John put some bubble bath in and walked away. 5 minutes later we come back to an overloaded bubble room! It turns out John used nearly the whole bottle of bubble bath. Oh well. Might as well let the kids enjoy it. You may also know that Mikayla loves playing with water. She helps to water our lawn sometimes. :)

Some stuff we've been up to...

Victoria had her final dance performance for preschool in June. She did a Lion King dance and "the Harry" which is super cute! I tried to post a video but it didn't load. :( Instead here's a pic of her in her outfit.

So school is out for the summer! Which means more time with the kids...i mean more time cleaning up after the kids. :) Unfortunately, due to Victoria's December birthday she won't be able to start kindergarten this year, which means she has another year of preschool she has to do. Her teacher says she's going to be REALLY ready for kindergarten...which means she'll be ahead. Maybe she can test out of a grade or something? We'll see.

I've been taking the kids out every once in a while to Classic Fun Center where they can get some energy out. They mostly love jumping on the bounce castles, but they can also go to the Jungle or go to the waterpark. Hopefully they'll learn how to swim soon.

John has been busy still in his "west wing room." It is coming along nicely. Although it's also taking a lot of work. He just put new sub flooring in where the office will be.

Life as of late has been the same for me...the usual cooking, cleaning, feeding, boringness of motherhood. However, I do have some news...I'm pregnant again. Yay! I'm currently about 10 weeks along and yes I'm throwing up...yuck. The due date is Feb. 17. I was hoping for a "summer" baby so that we can have some summer toys here, but oh well. :) Anyway, enjoy the video.

Please Help

These children severely need your help. They are so impoverished and starved they can barely smile . They run around all day and hardly eat anything. Your small donation of just a dollar a day can save them. They probably still won't eat or dress correctly, but at least they can have a new toy which will entertain them for a small amount of time. Researchers have named this one "Mime Disease." Characterized by the sudden urge to act like a Mime it begins with the facial makeup and continues into adulthood. You can help slow this process with your donation.

Disney World!

A few weeks ago we were able to meet up with my side of the family in Florida and take our kids to Disney World. Of course it was loads of fun. Victoria and Mikayla both got to meet their favorite characters. Victoria's being Tinkerbell I was quite surprised they even had Tinkerbell around to meet because I don't recall her being their when I was growing up. So of course when we saw she would be around we jumped at the opportunity to meet her. Mikayla got to meet Buzz and Woody from Toy Story, which she loves. Her actual favorite is Dumbo, but we couldn't find him. I wonder why. Oh well, she went on the Dumbo ride. They also met Mickey and Minnie, Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, Winnie the Pooh, and Tigger. It was great for them to meet so many people that they watch all day. Gotta keep those princess dreams alive. It was blazing hot and the waits were forever long, but hopefully they took away some good memories from there.

The adults got to have some fun too...and by that I mean me at Harry Potter World. My parents watched our children so John, Marisa (my sister), and I could go. The coolest ride was at Hogwarts castle. It was like you were flying a broom! And I got some Slytherin stuff for me at the shops. Yay! Fun stuff. We ate at the three broomsticks for lunch and had butterbeer.We also met the Grinch, which John loves. So that was cool. This was at Universal Studios...not Harry Potter World. The last ride I went on was the Hulk one...because it made me feel sick afterward. Luckily, we were about done anyway.

Other days, we just hung out at the resort, which was quite nice. We got free mini golf and they had nice pools and a gym, which I only used once like the first day. Who works out on vacation? Not me apparently.

And that is basically it. It was really nice to see my family and get to spend time with them. Plus taking the kids to Disney World for the first time is great. Now they just need a "Twilight World" and I'm on the next plane back to Florida. :) Yes, I'm a nerd.

Tennis, Party, Tree Climbing, and Demo...not neccessarily in that order

Wow it's been a crazy month! Between attempting to get settled and everything else I feel like I've been running around...but not.... I think what happened first was my little brother coming to town so I'll start there.

BYU invited the UNCW Tennis team to come play against them at BYU and coincidentally my brother Michael is on the UNCW tennis team so I got to see him! I thought we would be spending a bit of time together, but that was not quite the case. Mostly it was me watching a lot of tennis...which is ok...better than watching golf, fishing, or any other slow sport. I tried to get a few awesome pictures of him playing since he plans of becoming pro...although it appears I didn't get one of us together. Oops. I mostly talked with my older brother and his family as we were watching him play.

Ok so then, or somewhere in the month of April...Victoria started climbing trees...with NO shoes! She is quite the climber, but I figured since she's up there I better get a few pics before I yell at her for climbing the tree (jk...i didn't yell at her...just told her to be careful).

I think pretty much a week or so after we moved in John started "demo-ing" the old rooms in the house that are to become our office and library. It has been a lot of work. Right now it's just three old bedrooms that now is one HUGE one and boards and dust and old nails. It's blocked off thankfully. But he's been working hard and it should look awesome when he's done (as most things that he works on do end up looking awesome). So here's the hole in our new house...and actually since taking this picture the hole has gotten larger...and the room messier. Save me!

So now the fun part, we had our first housewarming party this past Saturday. It was a great turn out and I believe most people had fun. :) We had a taco bar and drinks and then most of the time everyone chatted instead of playing rock band. There were probably 10 or more kids in the house...and then the adults. But since our house is so big I think I hardly noticed. It wasn't cramped at all. At one point a "ball war" broke out. Lots of plastic balls were being tossed from the third floor to the second floor. And it was mostly the adults playing because we are SO mature! I had a blast! And that's our most recent update...lots of stuff going on in our lives right now...mostly fun. Keep looking for more updates. :)

And we're home!

We recently moved to Sandy, UT to our "final" home. By that, we mean the home our kids will grow up in and perhaps even John and I will get old in. It's a beautiful 8,000 sq ft (approx) home at the end of a quiet lane. It's got a two-car garage so we no longer have to shovel snow off our vehicles before heading out in the morning (yay!). It also has 3 kitchens (1 of which we converted into a craft room so it could pass FHA), 3 laundry rooms, 10 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, and a very nice patio. It really is an incredible home that we had to jump through a few hoops to get to, but it's totally worth it. We are currently having trouble filling it since we're broke from the purchase. lol. It's alright though. We've got everything we need and more. Still getting adjusted to our new life, but things are ok.

I recently had a miscarriage...we were planning on a third child this year, but it's ok. There's always next year. Perhaps we aren't really ready like we thought. Besides, I have a huge place to clean now. I should get a good schedule going before I start throwing up. :) And I suppose Sheldon is like our third child. ha ha. Here's Sheldon...our tortoise. And Mikayla pointing to him...she likes him a lot. Below, is Lady GaGa's inspiration...Victoria. We hope things are going well for all of you guys.

Oh, is it February already?

As usual, it should come to no one as a surprise that I'm not keeping up with updates. So, here's some Christmas fun we had in California with John's parents...