First Day of School

Here is Whitney on her first day of schoool-you can tell she looks real excited-she really was. She begged to ride the bus to school and luckily there is girl in our ward that catches the bus with her-they are even in the same class. Her favorite color is blue and she insists on wearing that color as often as possible-Joe actually tries to get her to like pink-it's funny. It takes us about five-seven minutes to walk to the bus stop.

Amber has cries half the time when whitney leaves for school because she misses big sister-other times she leads whitney to the bus and waves so anxiously i wonder at all that she cried in the first place. It's been a whole week now since school started and whitney loves her teacher and has gotten used to how things are. The second day she came home with a stamp on her hand that said "i need to bring lunch money tomorrow" She had gone to breakfast-we had a discussion about not needing to eat two breakfasts-but if she was feeling like she really had to eat it was okay. She said her friend ruined her day because they were late to class because of it. Funny.

Birthday and Bathtime

Here are the girls in the bathtub back at our house-i say "our" because it hasn't sold yet-Aren't they just adorable in all the suds. Whitney likes to take showers now so I had to capture one of the last times she will be playing bath time with her sister. Amber finally turned three and she finally went potty on the potty chair for the first time this week. I am going to take her shopping to get her big girl panties this week and hopefully by the end of the month-no more diapers.

Tag your'e it

The fun middle-name game!
1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts.
4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
Here goes:
This is the only time that i wish i had ashley's middle name.

D-Dance is my passion after my family and church.-easy one
A-my first name is spelled with an A-even though I am not a boy. got teased about that one the first day of Kindergarten.
N-Nightowl-I hate mornings and i don't think that will change anytime soon.
E-I love to EAT-no secret there-i think my whole family,even extended is the same. My family loves to eat.
T-Teamwork- I like the connection when you move together in unity towards a goal. I think with any new team-it's rocky at first but when you are finally insync, its awesome. My marriage is still rocky at times but we have our good moments too.
T-Terrible twos have now passed and I am wondering if Terrible Three's is another phase i was unaware of until recently......
E-Empty my house is almost empty-it needs occupants to refill it..

Okay so now i know you will be dissapointed-but i only know three other people who have blog-and two of them have a name that cooincides with a letter in my middle name-the same letter-so i guess the only person i can tag is arica since ashley has already done the tag thing. So arica you are tagged.

Moving

Okay so Joe was offered a great job out of state and we are excited to make the move and be there as soon as we can. We will be in an apartment until our house sells so we will have to downsize our living for a while-not as many toys to pick up is okay by me. This week we are finishing packing up all of our stuff and saying goodbye to friends. Whitney will start school next week-first day of school is the day after we move so things will get really crazy. I have to make sure to keep out her back pack with all the things i will need to register her with. Hopefully she gets am school-the school does full day but only for those who need it (It's more geared to catch up kids that are behind). Hopefully everything will run as smoothly as it possible can given the situation. Crossing fingers.

Garden Harvesting

I am so happy. The last few days I have been able to pick some tomatoes out of our garden. They took forever to ripen and my mouth has been watering all summer waiting for them to turn red. I also picked some corn today for dinner. We kind of went crazy with our garden this year and planted a good variety of things: Carrots, Cucumbers, Radishes(I hate radishes-but joe wanted to try them), Onions, Corn, Bell Peppers, Zucchini, Tomatoes, Cantaloupe and Watermelon and Strawberries. Everything has grown well, except the carrots are a bit small and ofcourse the strawberries won't produce until next year. Its been really nice not to have to buy much from the produce isle. (just salad and apples/bananas) Joe wants to grow twice as much next year. We always try something new each time and learn what not to do the next go around. Maybe our next house will have a few fruit trees and spot already reserved for a garden. I would love to have peaches or apricots. Wishful thinking but can you blame me-we are forever a greenthumb family now.

The OH NO!! episodes with children

So after reading about some mischievous doings by other children, I thought I would make a post of the worst messes my children have made thus far-and which child was responsible.

1. One bottle of Hershey syrup spilled on carpet in apartment: it all came out-i was about 7 months pregnant with amber and scrubbed for at least one hour-then steam cleaned it the next day. I was determined to get our deposit back. -Whitney

2. One half gallon of paint-spilled on carpet in front room-child with it from the elbows down, after stripping child of clothes and hurriedly putting them in washer i grabbed our steam cleaner and started suctioning like mad-when i thought i had cleaned it all up, realized that child had decided to make the wall, fireplace and wooden built in hutch her creative canvases-with a final wipe off on the handrest of the couch. Needless to say not all of that came out-with exception of the tiled fireplace and wooden hutch-worked on that one first.---Amber

3. 3/4 bottle of baby oil gel in toddler's hair-washed her hair three times with baby shampoo, then with my shampoo. Then with dish detergent-that seemed to get the most oil out. She smelled like lemon scented joy for the next week. -Whitney

4. 90% of maple syrup bottle poured-not spilled-on carpet. Steam cleaned it three times..still sticky..used laundry detergent mixed with water...still sticky...Finally took someone's advice and boiled water as hot as i could and poured it over then toweled it up as good as possible. When it dries, i will let you know if it is still sticky.-Amber

5. Markers from eyesight level down-scribbled all over the walls-on some of the carpet-and all over two half-dressed children. Can't count how many towels went through that night or how loud the girls screamed as dad hosed them down in the shower. Didn't know whether to laugh or scream as I entered to find that mess. (Photo above tells some of the story) Amber seemed to have given whitney the 80's hologram makeup look to her eyes-in purple and blue and I think their bottoms were covered with all of the ink from the two brown markers-Joe couldn't stop laughing about that part. -Whitney and Amber

Hope this was enjoyable to read and that it makes you feel that you aren't the only parent who on occasion wonders if there will ever be a time when "too quiet" doesn't mean you are going to find a crazy surprise when seeking out children.

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

Yes-we are having daughter #3. Joe was really hoping for a boy but he loves his girls and will fall in love with this one when she comes. I am excited because we are already prepared for a girl. We also put our house up for sale today-we will most likely be relocating for work..not sure to where-but we will keep everyone updated.

Family Time

Thanks to Joe's sister for taking this picture of our family. It is like the only one we have of us. This is when we went camping for Joe's family reunion in June. We stayed in Teepees and the kids had so much fun swimming at the hot springs and playing with their cousins. Ofcourse we all came home with a good sun tan (or burn).

Whitney's Party

We had Celebrated Whitney's fifth birthday with a Neverland Birthday Party. As she loves Tinkerbell she dressed up as the pixie herself and invited her friends to dress up as their favorite characters: We had a mermaid, some pirates, Wendy herself and a few lost boys including Peter Pan. We started off by greeting all of the kids at the indian camp and passing out headdressses. Then we played pin the star on the wand at Pixie Hollow. Here is a picture of the kids playing cannonball blast at Skull rock..they had to pop the balloons to find pieces to a treasure map..after putting it together they found the treasure chest buried at Mermaid Lagoon behind the waterfall (our bathroom decorated w/fish and shells-we hid the chest in the bathtub behind the shower curtain). Then we divided up the loot (gift bags filled with $store coins/jewelry and pirate booty) and had cake and presents.

Getting better

Well as most of you know we are expecting our third finally and everything looks good and feels that way too since i have been sick for the last month. I am finally feeling to where i can eat some things so i am grateful for that. Our dance concert went well enough..we had a few mishaps (wardrobe malfunction in one dress-girl back exposed-it could have been worse). I have started a new dance team of my own..sort of. I am working with the owners of a studio. We had try-outs last week and we didn't get enough guys try-out so i am going to try to do some recruiting this next week. Our first practice is this weekend-a get to know you short practice. Still it will be nice to get started..we plan on being in the summer parades this year..so we have a lot of work to do before next month. Also Whitney turns five next month and is so excited about her birthday. I told her she could get her ears pierced-don't know what daddy thinks about that one yet. Girls must be girls. I will let you know how everything works out. Right now i am busy trying to plan a neighborhood block party/bbq for next weekend. Yikes.

Chalk and Dirt..all you need for a good time!!!

So this last week has been really nice so the girls were able to go out and play. Here is what they did. Yes..we took baths almost everynight that week. I still don't know if amber had tried to eat the dirt or if that was from the dirt fight they had. I just couldn't resist the photo op of getting that messy face. And I still haven't gotten all of the chalk out of whitneys' capris..the bum looks like a rainbow of colors. Oh well..thats life as a mother of two very creative and sometimes very naughty children.

Ballroom Competition

My team did very well at our ballroom competition. My routines that were brought up beat out the other college's ballroom team of the same level.(They are doing the Jive (black)- and rumba(teal)in the pictures) I was very proud of our team. I competed in Paso Doble.(red) We took second place-so that was exciting. I also had to fill in a spot in our standard routine.(blue/white) A special thanks goes out to my mom for sacrificing her time for me that weekend and helping out/taking care of my family-love you mom!! And thanks arica for the stunning costume choice!