Abigale the Jack-o-lantern

It's that time at our house where teeth are falling out all over the place.  It's also that time when I hear multiple times a week, "Mom-wiggle my tooth."  Yep-Abigale's losing teeth, many teeth.  Sometimes I wonder how she manages to eat.  Dad teased her that she looked just like a Jack-o-lantern.  She thought it was so funny, that is until she decided to be offended.  I told her she was the cutest Jack-o-lantern I had ever seen and that made her smile again.  Besides, how can you be sad about all the cool new ways you get to talk with missing teeth or all the cool tricks you can try like sticking a straw in the missing tooth hole, etc.  The possibilities are endless...  Love you toothless Annie.

Love This...

Adalynn is so cute hanging out like this on the couch.  She does this sometimes and it melts my heart.  There's something about relaxing with hands behind your head.  Love this.  Love you, cute girl!

Happy Birthday, Big Daddy

Alan turned 36 this month, 36.  We had a "surprise" BBQ for him with some of our friends and it was great!  Abigale's way of keeping a secret was "Dad, I hear we might be having some friends over, do you know who they might be?"  Thanks Abigale-that was really helping me surprise dad.  Preslie's way of keeping the secret was saying in front of Alan, "Mom, are the friends hiding in the backyard yet?" Another super awesome secret keeper in the family.  I think next time I'll keep the secret away from my special secret keepers as well.

Thanks for everyone that came to wish Alan a Happy Birthday, it mattered to him.  We love you, big daddy (as he likes to refer to himself.)

Family Night and Yoga

Alan and I wanted to encourage our children to be more active and not have the TV on quite so much.  Alan did a fantastic family night on the word of wisdom and the importance of excersising.  He made up some tracking forms for each person in the family and we color in a square everytime we do something active.  One squre equals one minute.  After 200 minutes of excersise you can earn the Bronze Award and get a certificate, 100 more for silver, and 100 more for gold.  Our girls are completely excited about it all.  Everyone has earned their bronze award and some of us have earned our silver as well.  I'm surprised how much this has mattered to our girls and to myself admittedly.  When you see a visual reminder it really does help you make more healthy choices.  Thanks for the effort Alan, it's really paid off.  The display of our awards can be admired in the living room for all to see.  Heck I have to work hard to keep up with our girls so I don't feel super embarrassed.

Abigale was working hard to earn her minutes and she got out our Power 90X exercise videos and decided to to Yoga.  It was so cute that she decided to do this all on her own.  She got out a towel (her yoga mat), a bottle of water, and even a towel for wiping off her super sweaty face like they say you need in the movie.  It was funny watching her as I was secretly snapping pics from the other room.  She did it for quite awhile and immediately went and colored in some squares.  It's funny that because you label a piece of paper an award all of the sudden it becomes very important.  Love you Yoga Star!

Blog Worthy Details

We've been super busy lately just keeping up with life.  We're happy though, super happy.  Since we are using this blog to journal for our family there were a few things I wanted to include that I keep forgetting to blog about.  First I mentioned we got a new car in January.  We love it-it's a Ford Excursion that we bought from Alan's uncle.  He gave us a super deal on it and although it is "Large and in Charge" we LOVE all the space we have in it.  There is oh so much more peace when driving around now that everyone has their own space and no one is touching.  It's fun to drive, I feel much safer in it because I'm tall enough to see over other people and their crazy driving.  I was a bit hesitant to buy it at first because it was so big but I'm glad everyday that we did.  It's been a huge blessing to our family.

Also-in November I started working for my dad's company of about 20 years, Northern Utah Electric.  I love working with and for my dad.  I've always looked up to my dad a great deal and admired the qualities he possesses as he runs his business and in his life in general.  He is a great man.  He treats his employees very well and in return they are great employees.  He does all commercial work, a lot of federal work also.  Because of his he hired me to do his weekly federal wage reports, his weekly payroll, and I've been working on a huge OSHA compliance program which we are getting ready to present to the employees in the near future.  It's been challenging but fun and is very part-time and flexible so it works great with our kids.  It's been a huge blessing to our family.

Also recently Alan and I both got new callings.  He is the first counselor in the Elder's Quorem Presidency and works with some great guys.  I like to tease him that he admitted that the president is his "BFF."  Do guys really say that sometimes, well mine does and he said it with pride gleaming in his eye.  It was so funny!  I now work in young women's as the beehive advisor and it's been a lot of fun working with the girls.  We have a stellar group of youth in our ward and it's a pleasure to be with them each week.

Last but certainly not least-We have great friends that we love spending time with.  We feel so blessed to know them all.  Our friends The Bailey's bless our lives immensly.  They are always looking to help us out with whatever project we are working on and always show support & concern for our family.  Our families have gotten to be very close friends over the last couple years and it's great because they have kids all of our kids ages, basically-so the kids all play really well together.  We often have game nights with them and every time all of the kids come too and enjoy a late night with their friends.  It works out great for everyone, adults and kids alike.  It gets a bit chaotic at times but it's great to be surrounded by people that share the same values as you, and the same values you are trying to instill in your own children.

I just felt that I wanted these things mentioned because they are things that are important to us, even though they may seem insignificant to others.  Thanks for letting me do my "mentioning."

This is the dollar...

When visiting grandma and grandpa, grandpa was giving coins out to all the kids and went to hand Adalynn a dime.  Alan said, "Dad she can't have that she will eat it."  Grandpa laughed and pulled out a dollar from his wallet.  I started laughing and said, "She'll probably eat that too."  He handed it to her much to the chagrin of Abigale who was holding her quarter.  I thought for sure it wouldn't even last the ride home but Adalynn was so proud of her dollar and admired it closely the whole way home telling us, "Grandpa, dollar", over and over again.  For days and days she carried this dollar around, pushed it in her stroller, talked to it, and basically treated it like it was part of the family.  It was so cute watching her and funny watching Abigale going nuts because she wanted that stinkin' dollar so bad.  Needless to say, it's tucked away safe and sound for a time when we need a decent distraction.  Thanks Grandpa!

Easter In a Nutshell

The Baskets-Alan and I always have fun getting ready for holidays together, that makes it more fun to me.

Finding the Eggs-The Easter bunny was pretty creative this year with some of the places and I'm pretty sure we may still find some eggs hidden in the future-Silly Bunny.

Our Beautiful Girls in their new Easter Dresses-we thought they all looked bea-u-tiful!  We are so glad our girls love each other so much, that is something I'll always treasure that girls from three different biological families are so close and act just like my sisters and I did.  It's a testimony to me always that The Lord knew they were meant to be sisters, what a blessing to our family.

Coloring the Easter Eggs

We went and colored eggs with most of my family.  We had a great time and Adalynn had fun too.  Although she kept trying to lick the eggs and use the spoon to eat the dye, it was funny.  Glad to see that daddy could really get into the egg dying as well.

Romping in the Snow in April?

This was Adalynn's first time in snow.  Isn't she super cute all bundled up?  The girls had so much fun playing in the snow together.  I loved watching them, that's something I love as a mom about more than anything.  I'm glad they love each other, they were definately meant to be sisters.

Spring Break

I decided to load up the girls and go visit my sister and see her new place for Spring Break. It was a pretty but long three hour drive. She and her husband live on a Ranch and our girls had a lot of fun down there with their cousins. I can never get enough of my sister so it was a great week.

We did a couple Easter crafts with the kids, enjoyed dine-in Pizza Hut (a family favorite from when we were little), fed the cows and horses, chatted, played and just enjoyed great company. The cows were having their babies so it was really fun to see and watch the baby cows. My girls LOVED feeding and petting the animals and would have stayed there doing that all day. I love my sister and was grateful we could spend some time together. It was a fun trip and it allowed Alan to work some long hours since he's been so busy at work. I missed him really bad though and was glad that he is who I always get to come home to.