Finally, Pictures

The kids and i have loved this nice weather we've been having, it means we get to play outside after school. It also means I don't have to keep such a close eye on Piper because she can go potty wherever she wants, but I do have to make sure she doesn't squeeze through the gaps in our fences. The kids were playing so nicely today that we spent most of the time between work and dinner outside and I got some cute pictures.

She's happy to come outside because she'd been sitting in a time-out after peeing her panties, that's the third time in 2 days, frustrating.

She loves to dig in this hole, she's using a tent stake.
Scroll quickly through the next 3.


She loves this doggy.
Talk about a cutey pants. I love this picture soooo much.

Not Much

I don't really have anything interesting to post about lately, hence the lack of blogging. We have just been working really hard on getting this little doggy potty trained and it isn't easy. She is now confined to the kitchen when she's out of her kennel because she's pottied on the floor a few times and we do not want our house smelling like puppy pee. So until she is good about going outside every time she's not allowed on carpet. We have gates going across the entries to our hallway and living room, which keep Piper out, but also the kiddos which means we have to spend lots of time lifting them from one area of the house to the other, kind of a pain, but hopefully this wont last too long. Also, now we have to take the gates down when Piper is in her kennel at night or when we're gone during the day because apparently our cat isn't able to jump over them, so I got to clean cat poop off the kitchen floor this morning, and clean cat pee from the puppy bed, because max couldn't get to his litter box. He can jump up onto the counters, but not over the baby gate, I don't get it.
Other than that we aren't doing too much besides work, for Dave and me, and school, for the kiddos. Although Dave did put up Halloween decorations on Saturday so that's something fun to look forward to. Now I just have to come up with some cute costume ideas for the kids. Let me know if you have any ideas for coordinating costumes for the kids and Piper.

Reece First Pic With Piper

Reece hasn't been too thrilled with Piper so far. She's a little bit feisty for his liking. He doesn't like when she licks his face or tries to jump up on him, so he mostly cries when she comes near him. Last night I had Piper sleeping on my lap so I asked Reece if he wanted to hold her. I sat him next to me on the couch and transferred Piper to his lap, he loved it. All he wanted to do was pet her. I had to take some pictures because I didn't have any of the 2 of them together yet, and they turned out really cute. Of course, Sierra came in a few minutes later and stole Piper away, but I thought it was really cute how upset Reece got when she did it so i took a picture of that too.

So Sweet.

Adorable.
Mischievous.
Temper Tantrum.
Sierra was pointing out her nipples in this picture. I didn't realize I'd taken a picture of her doing it until I was looking back through them.

Spongebob

Nothing big has been going on around here lately so I haven't had much to post about, unless you want to hear about our attempts to potty train our puppy. She did really well on her first day, but has been having more accidents lately, it's probably because we've been more relaxed about watching her, but it's still really frustrating. We still love her though and I'm going to try to stay on top of things so we can get this done right from the beginning. We went to my nephew, Tanner's, birthday party on Sunday and had a great time. They always have a great party and the kids always love it. This year the theme was spongebob and it was a big hit with the kids. Sierra's favorite part was the life size spongebob, she's usually scared of thing like this, ie Chuck E Cheese, but she actually loved it this time, I think because it was a familiar character. She held his hand and even hugged him. Reece, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed by him. You couldn't have pried him off my legs.

Saying Cheese for her pic with Spongebob.
A big hug.
Trying to convince brother to go see Spongebob.

Piper Update

Well I'm up bright and early with my new baby. She had a great night. I've never had a puppy before that was my all mine so this is all new to me. She slept in her kennel all night, though she did whine a few times and is up now just a little after 6. She was so excited to get out of her kennel this morning, she practically licked my face off, now she's licking my feet. She didn't even potty all night long, we put paper in her kennel so she could go if she needed too, but she waited until I let her out this morning. I was going to take her outside to go, but I didn't and she just went on the news paper, but I think from now on I'll try to take her outside as much as possible. She loves to terrorize Max, she'll chase him around and max will bat at her and run away, it's really cute. I hope Max doesn't hate her though. Another cute thing she does while she's eating, her back legs lift off the ground sometimes when she eats, I think it might be because her bowl is pretty deep, but it's so cute to see her on just her front legs.

Sierra loves her. Isn't this pic adorable.

I was holding her while she slept so Sierra wanted a turn.

So Sweet!

Introducing: Piper

We have a new addition to the family. We went an picked her up today, and so far she is a sweetie. She loves to play with the kids, especially Sierra's hair. It'll be a change for us, but hopefully a good one. Sierra hasn't left her alone since we got home and we all love her already. She's even done OK with Max. Isn't she adorable.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUBBY BOY

I can't believe my baby is 2. Reece's birthday was yesterday, so I'm a day late posting, but I was stressed beyond belief trying to do the birthday party. Now that the party is over I can relax and post about it. We did a Star Wars themed party, Reece isn't really into anything in particular yet, so we just did something Dave likes. I wanted to go all out because Reece didn't get a first birthday, we just did cake as a family, and I feel a little guilty about that.So we invited our families and some friends and had a great time. We made a pinata to look like a Death Star, it wasn't too strong which was nice, each of the little kids got swing at it a few times and than all of the big kids each got one good whack at it before it broke. We did Pin the Lightsaber on the Jedi, which was pretty fun too, and a cute idea, thanks Dave. Of course we had a bunch of snack and lots of presents and cake and ice cream too. Reece loved his cake, he kept putting his finger in the frosting and licking it while we were singing happy birthday to him, it was pretty cute. All in all it was a lot of fun, but I cant deny that I'm glad to have it over with.

Yoda using his powers, of course he only wore this for maybe 5 minutes.

Pining on his lightsaber, it's actually falling in this picture.
Sissy liked the spinning.
Yummy.
if you ask Bubba how old he is this is what he does, and he'll say "I'm 2".

Sierra actually put a dent in the pinata when she hit it.

I couldn't pull myself out of bed this morning so I decided, to myself that we were just going to skip church, but when I got up and came out of my room Sierra was in the hallway all dressed for church. She'd done it all by herself (I had set the clothes out last night to make my morning easier). So I looked at her example and got Reece and myself ready and we made it to church right on time. I love how my kids, even though they are so little,can set an example for me. Sierra even grabbed Dave's scriptures last night and started "reading" them in our bed.

Lunch time after church today, Sissy always tries not to smile when I want to take her picture.

I always get one.

And of course a cute little bubby boy.

Cleaning Day

Today is my big cleaning day to get ready for Reece's birthday party this week. I can't believe he's almost 2 (but that's another post). We are just having a get together here with friends and family, snacks and games, and of course cake and presents. I have to scour the house so I wont have to do it during the week while I'm trying to work. Luckily, Dave took Reece's birthday off from work and I didn't so I'll be at work while he decorates and does the cleaning before everyone shows up. That'll be a nice change from usual.
My jobs for today:
1. Sweep and Mop the kitchen
2. Deep clean the bathrooms ( Dave did a half A job of this last week).
3. Vacuum all rooms.
4. Wash all of the laundry(last weekend I did all of the laundry, which is my normal routine on Saturday, but I forgot about the last load of laundry that was in the washer. I didn't remember about it for a few day so, of course, at that point it smelled all mildewy and i had to wash it again. But even after rewashing it and drying it everything smells too bad to wear so I just had to throw it back in the wash again. Maybe third times the charm.
5. Organize as much of the garage as I can stand. The garage is cluttered with boxes of random stuff, so I need to go through and reorganize and label stuff. Not a priority, but definitely something that driving me crazy.

Wish me luck on this, it's never easy to get stuff done with 2 little ones to entertain. Sometimes I feel like I need to get a babysitter just so I can clean the house. I hate to make them entertain themselves all day long so I try to still play with them and let them do fun things while I'm trying to clean, but I don't want them making more messes for me to clean up, since they almost never clean up after themselves.

Completely off topic, Reece slept in until 9:30 this morning. That is so crazy. He usually wakes up around 7:30ish, but that's with Sierra bothering him and being noisy. She played really quietly this morning in the play room.

Do I have to Title Everything?

I've been finding it really hard to find time to post lately. It seems like if I want to be on the computer than the kids need something immediately after I sit down. So if I want to blog I have to listen to them scream for me every 2 minutes, if I get up in the middle of writing something I lose my train of thought and it takes me longer to finish. I would try to wait to get on the computer until the kids are in bed, but Dave usually plays video games in the evenings after dinner and we don't have a hub for our modem so only one of us can be online at a time. I'm trying something new today which may solve this problem, for a while. I can let the kids play outside in the backyard while I'm on the computer and I can see them perfectly. They mostly play out on the cement slab just outside the glass slider so it's not even like their in a different room from me. It seems like this will work really well for as long as the weather is nice enough for them to play outside. And it might give me a chance to blog a little more regularly, if I can come up with anything to say.
Here's some pics of the kids at school this morning.

His face looks hilarious in this photo.

What Were You Doing?

I remember exactly what I was doing 7 years ago today. I was in my 2nd semester at BYU-Idaho and I was getting ready for classes. One of my roommates had the TV on and I could hear it so I went out to the living room. I couldn't believe what I was watching, I actually thought it wasn't real. After a minute I realized that I was watching the news, not a TV show. I don't think it really hit me how big this was. I felt like I was in a bubble because what happened had taken place so far away and didn't affect me personally, loss wise. Even now I can't imagine how it feels to be one of those people who lost loved ones in the attacks, but I have so much respect for people who serve our country and sacrifice for my freedom.

Interstate Fair 2008

This post has a crazy amount of pictures, but there were just sooooo many it was hard to narrow them down. I think I took over a hundred pictures while we were at the fair, but it was so much fun. The first thing we did was see the llamas and let Sierra go for a ride. She loved it and she even got to feed a llama too.

Sierra was too small for almost every ride, she wasn't even big enough to go on the big slide, but she did go on the teacup ride. She was so funny, lounging back and letting the little boy she rode with do all of the work.
She looks like she's having a blast in this one.
We got cotton candy to take home and Sierra got to hold it. By the time we got home it was all deflated because she'd been squishing it and twirling it around. She was worn out by the time we left.
We put the kids together in the single stroller because it has a better basket than my double stroller, it worked out really well and Sierra was being so sweet and rubbing Reece's head.

We took pictures in the Tee pee display they had set up, so here's a rare shot of mommy, the kids looked so cute I had to post it.
And one with daddy too.
The kids had a blast looking at the animals. The only problem we had was in the cow barn, one of the cows was mooing like crazy and Sierra freaked out. She didn't want to look at any of the cows after that.
Bubba passed out in the car, I tried to keep him up so he'd go down for his nap when we got home, but he was exhausted. He stayed asleep when I moved him to his bed anyway.
They had a little kangaroo, it was so cute.
This goat was being really aggressive with the other goats, it was head butting them, but I think it's really cute. I love it's coloring.
I think pigs are so adorable.
I loved the coloring on this bull and the ring in his nose.
Reece pointed at this bunny and said Moooo so I had to take a picture of it, it was so sweet.
The ugliest turkey I've ever seen.

We sat and watched the lumberjack show which was really fun. The kids weren't very interested, but Dave and I were. It was really entertaining and the guy with the beard reminded us of David's grandpa. We wanted to get a picture with him and the kids at the end, but he was talking to some people for a really long time and we didn't want to interrupt.
I love the rainbow suspenders.

Wow, did you actually read all of that. I think that's a record for my longest post, and the most pictures in one post too. All in all we had a good time at the fair, but I think we'll wait a few years before we go back. Reece got pretty tired of staying in the stroller and the kids wont be big enough for most of the rides for a while still. We did have some great ice cream though, mmmmmm bubble gum.