Family Visiting!

Part of Daniel's family came to visit us at the end of September. We had a great time with them and were bummed to see them go. It always seems to feel like there is never enough time. But the time they were here was fun! However, I did a horrible job of taking pictures! I'm pretty irritated at myself that I didn't do a better, especially when I think about getting pictures of the little boys together! Oh well, not much I can do now. One of our outings that I did manage to get pictures of was a scenic chair lift up to Snowbowl. It was quite the view. It was a little early for the fall colors, but still pretty amazing when you can see the Grand Canyon from there!

Rayna captured in a tender moment with Grandpa! She pooped out once we reached the top!

Jude wasn't much for the sights either, his mama's arms were much to comfortable.

We miss you!

4th of July

Since we have had so many forest fires lately, there was no fireworks in Flagstaff. So, we headed down to the Phoenix heat and celebrated our Independence Day there with family and friends. I honestly did not do a good job taking pictures, but we did have a lot of fun. My sister BBQ'd, the kids played on the slip-n-slide, we had a game of water balloon volleyball, and then headed out for fireworks. The next day was a water filled day as well. We watched my newphews' diving practice (they can do some pretty amazing things) and then went to my brothers' to go swimming. It was definitely a time full of fun in the sun! So, here are the few pictures I took!

Mother's Day!

Okay, so I'm a slacker! I can't say I've had much motivation to stay up late lately to blog, but I have no excuse the girls are out of town at Grandma and Grandpa's house right now. So, here is my attempt to fill you in again, on the last month! Below are some pictures of my Mother's Day. We went on a little family hike, which turned out okay. We had one really enthusiastic hiker and one who was not quite so interested. I'll let you see if you can guess who was who from the pictures.

Easter 2010!

For Easter this year we went to my parent's house in Prescott Valley and met up with both my sister's and brother's families. The kids had a blast playing together. The girls were more excited about seeing their cousins than Easter itself!

Dying eggs is always so much fun!

I think we had an abundance!

First Easter basket!

I really do still love this man. He is amazing. The two of us just often get put on the back burner with the chaos of everyday life.

And they're off to find the eggs!

I'm Back!

I know I've been a little absent lately, but I'm back to try to catch up. My heart has desired to blog, but lately my laziness has won. Normally, Wednesdays are my one free night of the week and "The Biggest Loser" has been calling my name. I'm an addict, what can I say? So, it may take me a little bit to catch up, but bare with me.

For Spring Break we went on a trip to San Diego. We went to Sea World with the kids for the first time and they had a blast. They were very enthralled with Shamu. After we came home we rented Free Willy and the girls felt very connected to it.

Tobyn and Daddy at Sea World

I was unsuccessful our whole trip at getting a good picture of the girls. Rayna, really is my obstacle. She won't look at the camera! Uggh! I got lucky here on this shot, but Taylin just happens to not be cooperating! Oh, well. It's a beautiful back drop.

All three kids loved the beach. They could have stayed there for days! Sand, seashells, rocks, waves, who needs more?

Tobyn had a blast, but boy was he fun to clean up!

Our attempt at a family picture. Better luck next time!

This was on the harbor behind our hotel. We got lucky and scored a great hotel on the board walk right next to Seaport Village.

Sometimes they really can be cute.

Family Picnic

Tonight we had a family night and had a picnic dinner in the living room while we watched a movie. The girls think it is so fun! The first time we did this was actually by accident. We had been planning to take the girls to Movie's on the Square and have a picnic dinner with them there and one of them became sick. So, we decided not to go. (For those of you who don't know what "Movies on the Square" is, in downtown Flagstaff they stick up a movie screen and people come with their blankets and chairs and food and watch the movie.) The girls of course were devastated. In efforts to boost their spirits I came up with this idea. Although, the first time I had already packed our dinner in the cooler, so now, Taylin thinks I need to pack everything in the cooler instead of just bring it into the living room! Tonight we watched, "Penguin and the Pebble." Even Tobyn enjoyed himself. He used the time exercising and getting a little bit closer to crawling. He does the army crawl and throws a foot in there sometimes, but tonight he started getting up on all fours for a short period of time. He probably is still a week or so away from a full crawl!

The Sun Is Shinning!

After being stuck indoors for the last week while 3 storms came into Flagstaff and left 5 feet of snow, we took advantage of the beautiful Sun and spent the afternoon outside today! We took the kids sledding, and I can safely say we all had a great time!

The girls climbing one of the many snow piles that have been made by all the plows!

Tobyn's ready to go!

Just me and my Dad!

Poor Rayna! She had it rough! Between her gloves falling off and her hat falling off she could have called it quits, but she is a trooper! She loved the sledding enough to keep going. She actually spent the most time being a human sled (I wish I had a picture of that)!

Taylin hasn't always liked our sledding outings in the past, but she was truly awakened to the thrill that sledding can be! She was our one who was not ready to go and not ready for the fun to end!

Tobyn even enjoyed his time in the snow.

And yes, I had fun too!

Although, my tailbone still hurts from this one!

Thanksgiving and Beyond

For Thanksgiving we went down to my parents house in Prescott Valley. My sister and her family joined us there. The kids had a great time playing together and we had a lot of good food!

Out of the three pictures I took of the three of them, of course the best one is the blurry one!

Here's Daniel and Kyler playing a tossing game (I don't remember what it's called!)

The biggest cousin holding the littlest!

On Friday, we took the kids to a big gingerbread house display and normally they have gingerbread cookies there that the kids get to decorate, but we went on the wrong day. My kids were a little upset, so we made and decorated them at home, compliments of Dad making the frosting and Aunt Jena making the cookies!

My sweet munchkin!

Hideouts are always so much better at Grandma's house!

My sister let the girls paint her toes with nail polish that she gave them. It looks like she is having second thoughts!

On Saturday, we went over to the White Mountains to cut down our Christmas trees. This is the first year we have down this as a family. We got there a little late and didn't have as much time as we would have like to hunt for the perfect tree, but it was still fun. Daniel definitely felt like the Griswold family from Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation. Here is Brett and Kyler cutting down there tree and trimming it up.

Here is Daniel cutting down our monster of a tree! It was so big it was hanging out of the truck on the way home!

Here's Kaylee trying to entertain the girls and keep them warm.

Here's me trying to keep Tobyn warm. It snowed on our way home.

Here's our tree decorated! It barely fit through the door, we had to shove it and trim it up quite a bit! We have 10ft ceilings! As we were decorating it Daniel got the girls believing that we brought a squirrel home with us and it's living in the tree! (Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation is Daniel's favorite movie, can you tell?)

This is just a proud mommy moment of Rayna writing her name! Yeah Rayna!

The Last Few Weeks

It's inevitable, I always seem to fall behind in blogging! So, here is a recap of the last few weeks!

This is Montezuma's Castle. We went on a little field trip with just the girls and Hannah Finney. We had a great time and the girls were so interested and eager to learn! Their only issues were that they wanted to go inside. Which I can't blame them, I wanted to go inside, too!

Climbing trees is always a fun part of field trips!

Rayna and Daddy carving the pumpkin! Taylin was not interested in helping. The gooey part was not for her, but Rayna was all in!

For Halloween we went to a Harvest Party and the kids had a blast! They look forward to it every year! Here's Tobyn as a giraffe. I thought about putting a black nose on him, but then I decided that it would just end up all over me! So, I didn't.

For the girls, I came up with some homemade outfits in order to save some money. They weren't store bought, but they were just as excited about them. I thought they actually turned out okay for just using things around the house. Taylin was a bride. This dress was a flower girl dress for my niece when she was ten. So, it was way long, but it looked okay to just hem it!

Rayna was a purple butterfly! She was actually really fun to help dress up! She let me do her hair how I wanted, so I had some fun with it! (I did actually buy her wings)

Fun, snuggling in the morning!

"My sissy is so funny!"

This was our field trip to the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Phoenix. They have a good dinosaur exhibit, which is what we were studying this past week. The kids had fun getting to really see all the cool dinosaur bones.

Can you imagine this monster swallowing you?

The famous T-Rex!

They also got to pan for gold at the Museum! That was way fun and they even got to keep the gold they found!

While we were in Phoenix, we stayed overnight at my brother's house and went to my nephew's T-ball game and his birthday party. The girls had a blast playing with their cousins. This is Rayna and Jennica at Henry's party! (Jennica was dressed up as Hannah Montana to go to another Hannah Montana party)

Henry's 4 years old!