Why I Love My Girls

So the other day this note was on my sink. It has been a little crazy for me around here since Jason got hurt. It has been fine and I am totally happy...I have just been very busy taking care of dogs, house, laundry, kids and all the things he usually does and I am usually a few steps behind regardless of how long of a day I have had. This note came on a particularly busy day. Taylor has this sense of when to shine through and when someone needs a little extra love. I definitely feel no lack of love at my house. My hubby and my girls show me so much love every day. I feel very needed and special to all of them. Tonight the girls and I all cooked muffins and dinner together in the kitchen. Everyone was doing their own jobs for the dinner and there was music in the background and everyone was just happy to be helping. I know that I am so cheesy, but it was one of those warm and fuzzy moments for me...where I just feel like the luckiest person in the world. Today is a great day!

Hooray for Tay Tay!

Taylor took 2nd place in her school spelling bee today! She's only in 4th grade! We are so proud of her! We would've been proud of her regardless, but 2nd place is definitely the icing on the cake! She won her class spelling bee and got to advance to the school spelling bee for the second year in a row! This little girl works so hard! She didn't get her study words until Monday night. We went over them in every spare second we had all week. She was so confident at the microphone and just did her thing! I love it! I was soooo nervous for her...I thought my heart would jump out of my chest. Every time she spelled a word, I had to look down. Jason said he did the same thing too! We didn't want to mess her up in any way. After it was over, Jason and I walked her back to the stairs, just below her classroom. We watched as she opened the door to her classroom and we heard her whole class start cheering and clapping for her really loud. Me, being the mom that I am, totally started crying because of that. I was overcome with joy for her and the love that was shown to her after. I guess that is just part of being a mom. We love you Taylor...always...no matter what!

Bye Bye Hair

He is such a goof!!! He makes me laugh!! After a bad haircut and a bad dye job, the head in now shaved...with shaving cream, a razor and all!

I really like his head shaved. I think he looks great and so mature with it like that. The girls think I'm weird, but whatever. I think he is already going to grow it back though because he says that he is too cold. Glad we live in Arizona, or he would really be too cold!

My Little Lovey Dove

Here are just a couple of cute pictures of Kamryn lately! I love this little love bug! She is pure joy!

This day I was eating a carrot and she kept looking at it and she was kind of mad, so I gave it to her. She doesn't have teeth yet, so I figured it was fine. She absolutely loved it. She wouldn't let it go. Even when she fell asleep in the car. So adorable!

We went to Costco together on this day and I just thought she looked cute, so I snapped a little picture!

This is today. She was so smiley today and she is saying Mama now! Finally! It melts me! Can you tell that I love this girl?~

Halloween 2010

This Halloween was pretty mellow. Taylor had a Halloween party at her friend's house during the day on Saturday and then we had a Trunk or Treat at our church on Saturday night. That was a lot of fun. They had food, a DJ and a ton of people showed up. Kamryn was a duck, Morgan was a queen, Rylee was a witch, Taylor was a vampire, I was the vampire's mommy, and Jason was a gimp! :) Ha ha! This post is mostly just pictures.

This is Taylor right before her party. She was the prettiest vampire I have ever seen. Yes, those are black streaks in her hair and yes, they did wash out the first time! Phew!!

How can someone with a green face still be so cute! I'm going to have her audition for "Wicked"!

I guess the face painting caught on! Tay wanted a white face and red eyes for the trunk or treat.

Sad Queen

Happy Queen!

Queen with candy!

Queen after too much candy! :)

Our little duckie on her first Halloween! Awww!

She loves her Daddy!

I look freaky, but I love this picture because she got so tired and feel asleep like this! So adorable! I love snuggling this cute baby!

...and that's how it ended...all partied out

Poor Poor Jason!!

About a week and a half ago Jason hurt his knee. He was playing basketball and was running to catch a pass and he dislocated his knee cap, tore off a bunch of cartilage, tore his meniscus and tore some tendons and ligaments that will have to be rebuilt. We meet with the surgeon on Monday. Going to be a long haul, but he is doing great attitudewise. We got him a wheelchair for around the house so that he can move around easy and carry things on his lap. It has been great because now he can be a part of everything we are doing! He even took all the girls and the dogs on a little walk down the street the other day. Next step?! Wheelchair olympics. Oh ya!!

Jaygyver

Yes...I am married to Macgyver, oh I mean Jaygyver. Yes...these are pants hanging from our ceiling fan on the patio. Yes...he did plant grass seed that was getting eaten by birds. Yes...the birds are gone and grass is growing because of the flying pants. Go figure!

Yes...we are crazy! Ha!

So my husband's latest crazy idea...a leopard gecko tank! Long story short, we didn't go anywhere out of town for fall break, so Jason wanted to do a fun project with the girls. Thanks to You Tube, we learned how to make fake rocks out of styrofoam and the kids had so much fun painting it and putting it all together with him. For me, I am great with it because of the memories it made and is making, it doesn't stink and it actually looks really cool.

It is definitely something that is desissyfying (I made that word up I think) the girls, which I love!! Plus, a guy gave us a free adult gecko and that was quite the deal! :) We got a small female (we think anyway) too that is more colorful, but we haven't held her much yet.

I love this picture...it shows exactly why I am ok with adding more craziness to our home! What a great daddy!

Is that a smoochable face or what! :) Ok, probably not!

This is kind of a creepy picture. I think his head kind of looks like a rattle snake head. I like the belly shot though!

These are super low maintenance reptiles. They don't need much besides crickets, water and an occasional worm or something gross like that. :) On one of our nightly walks, we noticed tons of crickets! Why buy them from the pet store, when we can hunt them ourselves?! Bentley, our girl dog even caught her first one! It was so funny to see her getting into it and joining the hunt. We would follow her and she would lead us to where the crickets jumped to. Rylee caught her first cricket and Morgan, who normally cries every time she even looks at a cricket, held the container that we kept them in. She didn't even freak out that much! So, we have had an absolute blast catching crickets this week and feeding them to the geckos. Fun, fun memories!

Fall Break

We just finished fall break and the girls are back to school this week. I didn't take any pictures, but we had such a blast all week long! It felt like last summer when we were in Texas and just looked for the fun, simple things to do every day. It helped that my friend Melissa moved here from Utah! I am on cloud nine about it! She has such nice, sweet, well mannered kids. Our kids get along so well! The girls swam at their pool with them and played at their house. We all went to this fun park and then her kids came and played at my house. We also went to the dollar movies and saw Ramona and Beezus. Such a cute show! I am so happy that she lives close!!! She is so fun to be with! The girls and I also went swimming at another fun pool and they had play dates with some other friends and sleepovers with their cousins as well. They also did that fun project with their daddy! Luckily, we took Saturday and Sunday to recover before they had to go back to school. They slept A LOT! :) That's the sign of a great week!

Our Puppies

I don't think I ever posted about our second puppy. We now have two boxers, a boy and a girl. They wear each other out and play king of the castle in the backyard on the little slide we have back there. The boy loves to get up on the trampoline, but that is a big no no! I think he really feels like the king when he's on it! They are fun!! The training is going well and we absolutely love them!! I thought it would be too crazy to have two...but it has a lot of bonuses! They are learning the down and stay command really well. They are doing great on their walks and LOVE to go to the dog park. It is fun because it gets us out on a lot of family walks together and the girls love the dog park as well. There is a great playground there and they love to run around with all the dogs. What can I say...we just love our little doggies!

Snuggle time!

Taking care of his girlfriend! Love this with his paw around her! Awww!

Puddle Jumping!!!

We had a huge rainstorm a few weeks ago. We had to go to the Scout Store in the middle of it. I LOVE a great rainstorm! It was so fun to be out in it! When we got to the store, the road in the parking lot was FILLED with water all the way up to the curb in spots, so I let the girls jump their hearts out! Taylor wasn't really interested in getting that wet, and Rylee was kind of into it...but my little Morgie LOVES to be wet and jumped and jumped and jumped! What's a great puddle if you can't take advantage once in a while right?! (The pics didn't do it justice at all, but hey, we remember how great it was! Ha!)

Go Diamondbacks!!!

This week we went to a Diamondbacks game courtesy of one of the companies that Jason works for!! It was such a BLAST!!! The company bought a bunch of table seats in this "all you can eat" section. Needless to say, the girls were in heaven. All the things I usually say no to or monitor pretty carefully were a go! And...as much as they wanted. We were all in party mode...on a school night! Oh ya! Happy to report there were no major tummy aches after!

The view from our seats was incredible!! We were kinda far from the players, but the whole night and atmosphere was amazing! I have never been to a major league baseball game, so to me, everything was on a giant scale!

I had to keep telling the girls that we were batting and to cheer. That lasted about 2 seconds and they were onto the next thing. Thus it is in the land of a baseball game! I still LOVE going...and the Diamondbacks won!! Go my favorite sports team go!!! (ha ha)

Daddy and daughter enjoying the feast of baseball junk...oh...I mean food! :)
So fun!

There was this nice lady that painted the girls faces for free. Talk about the icing on the cake of a perfect night! She knew the company was having a face painting competition. Tay stayed in the spirit with a Diamondback.

Here's a little kitty cat. Can't you tell?! Ha ha! Yes, she is in character!

Here is my little puppy. Kind of looks like a werewolf, but she won the competition and got the cutest Diamondbacks baseball hat, so it's cool. She said, "Mom, I just wanted a cute puppy dog face. I didn't want a bunch of fur." It was so funny! She loved it though and got a lot of comments all night trying to figure out what she was. She can look cute as anything!

So overall it was a great night! Can you tell? I think I just loved getting out and doing something fun! It was fun to see the girls' eyes light up when the saw the baseball field. I just love stuff like this and I am so glad that we had this opportunity! Oh, and I'm glad that we won an Outback gift card in the raffle! Hee, hee! I am feeling a little spoiled and I love it! :)