First Day of School Again

Today was Annika's first day of preschool and boy was she excited. She has been going with me to drop-off and pick-up MacKayla for the last two years and she was ready for it to be her turn. Her teacher, Mrs. Jenny, was an aide for the last half of last year so we were able to get to know her a little bit before Annika started and that was neat. She really enjoyed her first day and can't wait to go again.
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On Tuesday MacKayla was able to ride the bus to school for the first time and she thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. She let me take her to the bus stop on Tuesday but by Wednesday she was too grown up to allow me to come as well. I am still "allowed" to meet her at the bus at the end of the day.





We are getting ready for the coolest party ever at our house next weekend. If you haven't heard of it you have to check out www.houseparty.com. They are a company that sets you up with companies and allows you to try out new products first. We were selected to host the Fisher-Price party and we were sent four of their newest toys to play with and to have our friends come and play with. The toys are ours to keep and we get a small toy to give to our friends, it doesn't get much better than that...oh yeah, there will be food as well! Here are a few pictures of the girls playing with the new toys, and jsut because they are for the 6-36 month crowd, that doesn't stop my almost four year old and five year old from having a blast.

Time vs. Sale

At what point does the time spent become more important than the amount saved at a sale? Old Navy had their denim sale today and had adult jeans for $12, well as luck would have it, I really needed new jeans. So I thought if I got there early it might be a little crowded, but at least I could get what I needed. Well I found the jeans that I wanted and then waited in line for 1 1/2 hours to buy them! The lines stretched from the registers at the front on the store to the very back and even snaked around the back a bit. It was CRAZY. I also had some very interesting people around me, at least they helped to pass the time though. Oh well at least I now have some great new jeans...

First Day of School

So today was MacKayla's big day! Today was her first day of kindergarten. I can't believe that I have a kid in school already, I can remember being in kindergarten, oy! She had a wonderful day at school and she really likes her teacher. She is also lucky that she has her two best friends from church and dance in her class, so it was even more fun to go. Here are her photos of her first day.

Showing off her backpack

Posing

At the playground at school

With one of her best friends, of course I made them look into the sun, but they are cute still

In class with her friends.

It was easy to tell who were the first kids to go to school in their family, moms had cameras trained on them, lol.

So I try to have equal pictures of the girls to show off, but I have one wonderful child that is not very photogenic. For every ten photos of her, one will be good. Well about a week ago Annika was eating cherries and had wiped the juice all over her face. It reminded us of the Joker in the new Batman movie so we had her take a "mean face" photo. My cropping of the jokers catchphrase is not the best, but you get the idea.


A good photo of my girl

Daddy and his girls playing together


Bella is a funny little girl sometimes. The smiles that she can give make me think "here comes trouble" and this is one of those looks.

I also love the goofy whole face grin. We weren't able to capture it, but her new favorite face to make is a big closed mouth grin with her eyes all squinty.

And just like any smart woman she melts and loves it when daddy gives her a back scratch and massage...ah a girl after my own heart.


Along with getting ready for school this week, we have been battling illness. Annika developed a fever and complained of an earache on Saturday, by Sunday we took her into the doctor to make sure it wasn't an ear infection. Well her ears were beautiful, but her throat was bright red, a strep test was done and came out negative, so we told to give her Tylenol and let it be. Well by Monday morning she was fine and her fever was gone. Tuesday came and MacKayla and Arabella started to get sick with the same thing. What fun for us. MacKayla took it okay except when her fever would spike and then she would fall apart emotionally. Arabella was fine the first day, but yesterday was horrible. From 10 yesterday morning until 5 this morning she refused to eat, sleep or be put down. I think she cried more yesterday then she has in her life combined, it made for a wonderful day. To top it off I got sick with it yesterday too, and man this is a horrible illness. I feel bad for telling Annika that it wasn't that bad. Hopefully we will all kick this completely, but of course James hasn't gotten it yet, so we'll see how the weekend goes........

Tagged

4 Jobs I have had:
1. Mom - 5 1/2 years
2. BYU Morris Center Supervisor - 2 years
3. BYU Heritage Halls Security - One summer
4. Math aide in high school - 2 years

4 Movies I have watched more than once:
1. Harry Potter - most of them
2. Top Gun
3. Dirty Dancing
4. Disney movies...I can't narrow it down I watch them all the time with the bugs

4 Places I have lived:
1. We'll go back in time - Idaho Falls, ID
2. Provo, UT
3. Newport News, VA - only one summer
4. San Diego, CA - and several other counties there

4 TV shows I watch:
1. Eureka
2. ER
3. Gilmore Girls
4. The Waltons

4 Places I have been:
1. Seattle, WA
2. Washington D.C.
3. Valley Forge, PA
4. Corpus Christi, TX

4 of my favorite foods:
1. Chocolate
2. Cheesecake
3. Crab legs
4. Ice cream

4 Places I would like to visit:
1. Hawaii
2. Europe
3. Egypt
4. Southern Mexico

4 Things I am looking forward to in the coming year:
1. Having both girls in school for a few hours a week
2. Christmas
3. Vacation to Aspen Grove next summer
4. Spending time with my family

4 Friends I am tagging:
1. I hate choosing who to make do these, so if you are interested in doing it, I would love to see your responses
2.
3.
4.

1. How long have you been married? 7 years in December
2. How old is your spouse? 29
3. Who eats more? We both do, we love food
4. Who said I love you first? I think James signed an email with love first, but I don't remember the first time either of us said it out loud
5. Who is taller? James
6. Who sings better? James does, but he does not like people to know that he signs well
7. Who is smarter? We each have our specialties
8. Who controls the TV remote? It depends, we really don't watch much TV, but when we do we take turns controlling it, basically depending on who cares more about what is on
9. Whose temper is worse? Depends on the situation, but for the most part we are both really mellow people
10. Who does the laundry? I do
11. Who does the dishes? I do it most of the time, but when I get over burdened James will step up for me
12. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? When looking at it, James.
13. Who cooks dinner? I cook most of it, but James is learning how to make some wonderful food as well
14. Who is more stubborn? Like I said before we are both pretty easy going
15. Who is the first to admit they are wrong? We don't fight really
16. Whose parents do you see the most? We see James' for two weeks a year or so, and mine every few years
17. Who has more friends? I do, James is a guy and an engineer...enough said
18. Who has more siblings? James as he has one sister and I am on only child
19. Who wears the pants in the family? I have a more dominant personality, so I typically make most of the decisions, James just goes along with it

Six months

Can you believe it...Arabella is already six and a half months old. I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. She is such a good little girl. Happy, eats well, sleeps great, and is so loving, what a great baby. She had her six month check-up yesterday and she is 25.5 in long, and 15lbs 2oz. Although I would guess that in a couple of days she will have grown a lot more. Sunday night she went to bed at 6:30 pm, got up at 6:30 am to eat, went back to bed and slept until 11:30. Today it's now 10:15 and she is still asleep.

So here is the latest collection of cute photos.

What cute sisters

The girls love playing with their daddy, especially riding him like a pony.


Every week during the summer we like to go to the Zoo with our friends so here are some fun photos with our friends and us.



Arabella is almost able to sit up on her own now. She has great trunk strength, she just needs to work on her balance, but here are some of her accomplishments.


And here we have Arabella's six month photos.



And another photo to add to the collection of Arabella and her legs getting out. As I have mentioned before she has her own ways of doing things, in the photo you can see her two binkies, now she has never used them as pacifiers, instead they are chew toys, but she likes to have one in her mouth to chew on and another in her hand to play with. She also has her ring toy wrapped around her arm. Lastly she has to have her blanky to sleep with, she wraps it around her arm and rubs her face with it as she goes to sleep. So all in all she is a funny kid when it comes to sleeping.

The Daddy Rocket

Arabella has loved being in her jumper since she was two months old, well the result is that she loves to jump all of the time. Whenever we hold her she tries to jump, so daddy played a little game with her and she had a blast. Here is the video of the daddy rocket.

Best Quote

So James is going though the house finding all of the hobo spiders that have decided to take up residence here. The kids think that he is so cool as he is able to catch them and kill them. Annika was so proud of her dad and gave the best quote ever..."Dad you have the Holy Ghost so you can kill bugs and baptize kids."

Life

I tend to only update the blog when I have good photos of the girls to share, but I thought I would do a simple update on our lives for this one.

Not much is going on...the end.

Okay, I am sure that something is, but life has been really boring lately. I love summer, but I am ready for school to start if only to add some schedule to what we do. I find that too often in the summer if I have nothing to do, I will do nothing.

The girls have also been driving me nuts lately, they have a great love/hate relationship. They cannot stand to be apart, but when they are together all they can do is fight, I might as well set up a boxing ring and let them go at it. Oy vey!

Anyways, for something good...Arabella is six months old as of last week and is as cute as ever. She is starting to be able to sit up, with a little bit of help she can sit for a while. She still loves to eat and gets very mad when you do not get the food in there fast enough, silly kid.

James and I started a new calling this past Sunday. We are the Sunday School teachers for the 15-18 year olds. They are a great group of youth, and I think this will be a fun calling. We were thinking back to the Sunday School teachers that we had and we remember not so much the lessons, but the people, you couldn't beat having Cassie and Stan. When we were asked to accept the calling we were warned that this is an important age that they are at and that we need to be examples and help them stay on the right track...talk about intimidating. It will be fun...right.

I think that is the extent of my ramblings for tonight...it is kinda cathartic to just write, I might have to do this again.

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