she's three!

our little princess turned three last week... where has the time gone?

we celebrated with a princess tea party with her friends and let me just tell you...i may have had more fun than the little girls! there is definitely a BIG difference with girl and boy birthday parties! aren't those pink and purple chairs just adorable? i borrowed them from a friend and they just MADE the table!

the girls were so cute! i am sure we'll be having a few more "tea parties"...

just for fun!

oh, how our lives have been changed since the arrival of this sweet girl into our home! she is ALL girl, even with 3 brothers... she is the sweetest thing... i love her early morning cuddles and kisses, i love the way she loves to shop with me, i love the way she is always looking out for her brothers and saving her treats to share with them, i love the way she loves everything pink and purple and princess, i love the way she loves her daddy, i love her bright blue eyes and shiny blonde hair, i love the way she cares for her little dolls, i love how she twirls and dances around the house in her petti-skirt... and that she has been talking about starting "dance class" for months now...(guess i better get her signed up!), i love how she sings at the top of her voice, i love how she loves nursery class (and am hoping the transition to sunbeams will be a happy one!), i love how she mimicks me when i am cleaning, cooking, writing in my journal, etc..., i love her little voice and the cute things she says... i could go on and on, but really i just love that she is our little girl and she has brought us so much happiness and so many smiles the past three years... and as much as i hate how fast she is growing up, i look forward to all the years ahead with her sweetness...

happy 3rd birthday savanna!

our california boy

mr. e, ethanator, ethan-eater, ethan 'cookie'... however you put it, this kid is a riot!

he came into this world, march 13, 2004 in clovis, california....18 days earlier than expected. he loves that he and daddy were both born in CA and both have blue eyes!
he truly believes that he was born on the matterhorn... in his little mind, california is disneyland, so it must have been the matterhorn... he'll tell you all about it if you ask... and there's definitely no making him believe otherwise!


he is the best thing that happened to us while we attempted to put down roots in CA, only to move many times in his first year. it was a year of pure craziness, but our little "love" made it all better. back then he was always full of huge smiles,huge baby chub rolls, huge laughs...
still to this day he has a huge personality, huge facial expressions with his huge eyes, (he is still pretty huge too... just a big thick kid...i can barely lift him these days!), he has a huge imagination(making up funny and detailed stories all the time!), he says hilarious things, and is pretty determined to do whatever he decides... like when i am calling for him to "come here" his reply is "i'm ignoring you"... like trying to convince me to buy a paint roller so he can paint his room red (his favorite color) ... the other night he went and got in bed, so tired. well i went in his room to get him to come and brush his teeth and he told me "i'm too tired to move my fat little body!" i was laughing so hard! i didn't know, but apparently that is a line from a movie he had been watching earlier ... i often find things in my shopping cart as i am checking out that i definitely did not put there. he likes to do his own shopping when we are out. on one of our recent trips to walmart, he grabbed a bunch of silk flowers that he really wanted to give to his favorite girl, hallie. he also wanted to buy her some betty boop socks, i talked him into the flowers. he is just hilarious! he has a great memory, and a very inquisitive mind!
we just love this boy and are so glad he came to us 4 short years ago!


we celebrated his birthday with donuts for breakfast, a fun party with some friends during the day... so glad cousin macy was here too! we had pizza and then headed over to jumpin' jacks for some serious fun!

later that night we had another bash with the family... good times.


happy birthday ethan! you are the best!

Savanna Blythe Turns One!

well, our little savanna turned one back on December 11 and i have finally put together a little montage of her. oh how we love this little girl. she has brought so much joy and so many smiles into our family this past year. we all adore and love her so very much!
enjoy the little video if you have the patience...it is about 6 minutes long, but all you children of the 80's will appreciate the last song on it... that i am sure of!... i mean, really, who didn't love that movie?!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

35!!

happy 35th birthday clint! we celebrated tonight by taking the fam to macaroni grill. i think the laugh of the day was watching the kids try calamari! actually, barrett and cameron liked it, but ethan...well just take a look at that face! our kids really aren't picky eaters....never have been. we ate a lot of course, and cameron made sure they knew it was clint's birthday, so out came the free cake.
to quote barrett: "even if you're full, it's still so good!". it was a fun night.

we are one lucky and blessed family to have clint! he really is one wonderful daddy and husband.

p.s. are we really in our 30's??? when i think of someone in their 30's, i still think of tom & ruth, the neighbors i grew up next to and babysat for all the time. they were a darling little family. it just doesn't seem possible that we are now that age...except clint and tom have the same hair color!! haha!

October 2007

Here are the highlights of the past month... all the many things that have been going on and are to blame for my major blogging break.....no, i haven't been reading the twilight series...they are still sitting on my shelf unopened...i still don't have the courage to let my life come to a screeching halt just yet...

Halloween
the boys got to dress up for school and they had a fun parade we got to go watch. ethan (peter pan..with a dagger that daddy made that morning) loved watching the parade and cameron loved showing savanna (tinkerbell) off to all his friends. we went to help in cameron's class and then spent the night trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and grandma's.





clint and I went to a super fun party with some friends the weekend before halloween... it was a load of fun and laughs! oh and thanks for the pics, sandee!


Sick Kids
the kids all had a tough battle with some icky virus and savvy had 2 ear infections this month. one week cameron missed 3 days of school and really wasn't feeling too well. but, cameron being the nurturer that he is, went out of his way to take care of me. i went to pick up barrett from school and came home to this on my bed. cameron met me at the door and told me that he thought ethan fell asleep on my bed and i needed to go check on him, but really he had made me lunch, "because I haven't seen you eat lunch yet today, mom". cameron really is a sensitive and thoughtful little man.



Teething and Playing

check out those babies comin' in! we also can't play hard enough with this little doll. she loves to play peek-a-boo, so big, pat-a-cake, so much..etc. she also gives the yummiest hugs and kisses. she is still army crawling all over the place and once in a while she'll crawl on all fours. she also just started pulling herself up to standing...yikes! get ready for some bumps and bruises...

Barrett turned NINE!!


holy cow, we have a nine-year old...and what a handsome one! i cannot believe nine years ago we had our first child! it feels like only yesterday, yet i do feel a lot older now than i did then! as new parents, i think we have so much to learn and the first child is our guinea pig. barrett wasn't an easy infant and definitely forced us to learn many things from the very beginning. i am grateful for that, he really helped us adjust quickly to all that being a parent entails...and we are still learning lots with him. barrett is a great student and is loving third grade. barrett is an energetic and inquisitive boy. he loves learning about everything! he absolutely loves reading right now and speeds through a book about every day. barrett is growing like a weed...most people cannot believe he is only 9! he is going to be taller than me any day. he is a great big brother and really tries to do what is right. barrett had a great birthday. he is really enjoying his new mountain bike, since his last one he got when he turned 5! he had a fun, spooky halloween party with a bunch of friends.
we sure love you barrett...thanks for keeping us laughing and learning!


Fall Days and Friends
i love fall. i love the colors, smells, weather, food... it is quite possibly my favorite season. this fall has been especially long and beautiful....we have tried to enjoy these beautiful days by getting outside...but alas, as it is starting to really turn colder, i am wishing we would have spent more time outdoors this past month.




A weekend in one of our favorite places....Cache Valley
seriously, in my book, there are few places as beautiful as cache valley, especially in the fall. we went up to see old friends and visit grandpa and grandma barrett and i think we hit the timing just right for those fall leaves. it was beautiful! we had a nice time and hauled off a bunch of stuff for the grandparents... we love and miss that place.




A Week of Fun in Sunny California

we had a blast in the OC. we spent many fun filled relaxing days at Disney and a day at the beach. It was a lot of fun to be there with many of my siblings and parents. We really just love this place. our little ethan had a blast and went on every ride he was tall enough for without hesitation...splash mountain was his favorite, but he also loved tower of terror, space mountain, big thunder railroad, star tours, the matterhorn...the list goes on and on! check out ethan's "thumbs up" in the tower of terror picture...it was hilarious! i love watching the kids enjoy disney the first time they are old enough to really enjoy it. we all had a great time and lots of fun! here are some slide shows of our fun week and a cool video of barrett and cameron who were chosen to train as jedi's and got to fight darth vader and darth mal at the same time! they had a blast!