We just finished dinner. I made cashew chicken but the kids don't really like it, so normally I just give them rice & chicken with Mark's mom's honey sauce.
I opened the jar that I keep in the refrigerator and gave it a smell and thought, "hmmm, smells a little different" but still poured it on their meals.

I asked Dylan a minute later, "how does the rice taste?".
He said, "good mom".

I then gave it a try and still felt it wasn't quite right and then had Mark taste and he said "yep, that isn't good".

As I'm clearing the kids bowls Dylan says, "Mom I really didn't think it tasted good when you asked but didn't want your feelings to be hurt that you didn't make a good meal".

Made my night. So sweet! :)

Christmas #4

Christmas evening was spent at Mark's parents house. Michelle came to town and the kids were very happy to see her!
Mark's mom gave Isabelle a blanket & pillow like the one that Cadence received last year but hers is purple. She had the year and from them embroidered in the back of the blanket. It will be another thing that will be put in the keepsake trunk (along with Cadence's :)). She was very happy to have her own blanket & pillow and kept hugging them!

Cadence received a very pretty dress up Rapunzel dress. Cadence was a little shy at first when she opened it...I think there were too many people watching. But as soon as we were done opening the gifts and everyone went in different areas of the house, she had it on and was dancing around. :)

Dylan was excited to have the wagon that Grandpa had told him about :)

And they had lots of fun in the paper/trash pile when we were done. It's still fun for them to play in paper!

We took this picture originally to show how tall Dylan is compared to Grandma but the girls wanted to get in. It turned out to be a really cute picture. :)

And this is the end of the 2 day Christmas marathon!

Such fun!

Christmas #3

It has been tradition for many many years that the Whittemore's come over on Christmas morning. Mark always makes us amazing breakfast burritos. Look at the size that Israel made!!

All the kids!

We gave Maggie a princess mirror and some craft supplies/table.

The kids had a lot of fun giving and receiving their gifts. Maggie was so sweet this year. She had earned some money at a recent yard sale and she decided to buy gifts for my kids with her own money. So precious!

The morning ended with us playing in the front yard. Boys playing basketball, girls taking turns on the swing and mom's relaxing. :)

I love our Christmas morning tradition and am so thankful for close friends!

Christmas #2

We had a great Christmas morning! The kids woke up and opened their stockings, watched a little tv and then we started opening gifts (as soon as daddy got up :)).
I actually gave Mark his gift the day before so we could all enjoy a bike ride together. I bought him a old bike with a tank and whitewall tires. It is really cool looking and best of all he really likes it (he's so hard to buy gifts for!). I also bought the rest of us bike gear. Cadence a ride along bike that attached to Mark's bike and myself a old (1950's) bike and a seat for Isabelle to ride with me.




We took a little video while we went out for a ride. :)
I love that we have bikes again!

Dylan made us a cookbook at school. He had wanted us to open it as soon as he came home from school but we told him we had to wait until Christmas for us to open. He was so anxious for us to open our gift, it was the first thing he wanted to do when we started opening. I thought it was really sweet that he was so excited to give it to us!


I had a ABC book made for Isabelle. It has pictures of her and our family throughout it. It will for sure be something that one day will be put away in her keepsake trunk.

In the very back of the tree I found some papers that were folded and were wrapped up. I knew right away it was something that Cadence had done (she always wraps stuff up in paper and gives gifts from her room to me). I asked her who it was for and she said that it was for me. When I opened I found this heart picture. I love it and thought it was so special that she wrapped something up and hid it under the tree! It is going in the scrapbook.

We gave Dylan a basketball hoop. He was very excited! He has played a lot and has been a great new source of entertainment for him.

Christmas #1

First stop for Christmas was on Christmas Eve, celebrating at my parents house. Every year the kids do a little play while my dad reads the Christmas story.

They were so cute. Isabelle was Joseph (on left sitting down), Janae was Mary, Dylan was a shepherd, Cadence & Jake were angels. :)

The kids took turns opening gifts and were able to see what everyone else got.

Dylan had really wanted a gumball machine, so he was happy he got one...and I'm writing this 5 days later and they are all gone! That is some serious gum chewing (although he has been very good about sharing with his sisters :)).

The kids did great and it was a lot more enjoyable now that the kids are getting older!

Handmade Gifts

I made a handmade gift for my friend and amazing neighbor for her birthday yesterday. :) I had her kids each draw a picture that I planned to transfer to make a throw pillow. But to be honest I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to get it to transfer...I bought some fabric you can print on but ended up not really liking the feel of it so didn't use it.

I finally decided that I would cut out the letters, trace and embroider it onto some fabric I found for her. Here is the sewing during the process. I ended up sewing buttons into the centers of each heart to give it some extra texture.


Then it was time to sew the pillow together.



I didn't really like the way the edging looked (too handmade :)), so I sewed a edge on very side and like the way it looked better. The above picture is one without the edge and the other with. Not a huge difference, but enough.




Here is the final project! They turned out super cute and was very easy to make.

Every year a group of us girls that were friends from church when we were in High School try to get together at Christmas time. Jenny (on left of picture) is the only one who lives out of town, so it is our excuse to all hang out! This year only 3 of us could make it but between the 3 of us we had 10 kids who had a great time playing together and decorating Christmas cookies! If the other 2 girls could have come we would have had 18 kids, crazy!

I love that when we get together, it is like no time has passed and we pick up where we left off from last time. It's so good to have long friendships!

Mommy, awesome

I was driving with just Isabelle in the car this last week. It had been rainy the day before so there were still a lot of clouds in the sky. It was quiet in the car and all of a sudden Isabelle says, "mommy sky awesome". It was so precious that she recognized the beauty. I wanted to capture the moment so took a quick picture while driving down the freeway. :)

And this one I took one day after picking up Dylan from school.

The sky was beautiful. This is on our street we live on.

Amazing Race Birthday Party

For my birthday Mark planned a surprise "Amazing Race" adventure with our friends Israel & Kati and Chad & KJ. It was so much fun...I haven't laughed that much in a very long time!

It started with us all meeting at Chad & KJ's house and some how Mark slipped out the door without any of us noticing. The next thing we know is Mark is calling Chad and telling us about the race and giving us instructions! The first clue was to find a pink box hidden in the front yard, we all took off running. We had to put a kids princess puzzle together and he had written on the back 4 riddles or questions we had to answer. Once we had the 4 answers we had to google it and tell Mark our answer. The boys team got done first...the answer was Fox and Hound.

So our adventure took us to our next clue which was a text message with a riddle/saying from a movie we had to figure out. It was to drink a White Russian and take a picture of before and after. We had caught up to the boys because the text from Mark didn't go through and they had no idea what they were suppose to be doing. Their loss but was good for us girls! :)

The next clue was to go to the 1st park that Dylan played at. It was by our first house in Arrowhead, next to the playground is a small pond. Mark had set up ropes from one side of the lake to the other. Our instructions were to blow up a air mattress with hand pump and someone had to ride on it while someone else pulled them across to the other side of the lake! I somehow convinced Kati to do it and KJ pulled. KJ pulled so fast, she was flying across the lake...so much so that water got on the mattress and Kati ended up very wet! There was so much laughter!

Then we had to go to Peter Piper Pizza and win enough tickets to buy the list of prizes Mark required. It was something like 310 tickets and we could only play 4 different games to win the tickets! I played skee ball and by the end I had a rhythm going and was pretty good at it. :) I knew I am getting old because my back was hurting from leaning over and playing!

The boys once again got done just before us. They had their prizes and then there were some small kids in front of us. I asked the kids if we could go in front of them and we would give them our leftover tickets. They were thrilled!

Next stop was the end of the race. The boys won.

We had dinner at Chevy's...complete with a birthday song. :)

It was such a great time! Mark is always so great with coming up with unique and special gifts and surprises! Thank you Mark for a amazing birthday experience.

Week of Christmas fun!

This last week has been filled with lots of fun Christmas festivities!

As a family we drove around and looked at lights and found this amazing house that had all kinds of displays and moving fun Christmas stuff...they even had this bubble blowing thing that blew out what looked like snow. The kids loved it!

We exchanged gifts with Thomas and Ella and went to their house to play for a little bit. They also decorated some sugar cookies! I love that we still have their friendship even though we moved out of our old neighborhood.

I didn't take any pictures but we also went to the Christmas play at First Assembly church. It was new this year and the kids are always captivated by all that is going on, especially the flying angels!

2nd annual tradition of Mark having his team from work over to our house for a lunch and gift exchange. Everyone ate outside on our picnic table and then headed in for the gift exchange.
There were a few gifts that kept being "stolen" and others that no one wanted anything to do with!

Dylan had a Christmas party at school. We were able to use the cafeteria and set up the projector for the kids to watch Christmas Paws. There were also some fun Christmas crafts they could do.
The last day of school before break was also pajama day, so the kids were nice and comfy for the movie watching. :)

This is the whole 1st grade class!

Is this really starting??

Today when I picked up Dylan from school he informed me that one of the girls in his class has a crush on him. I asked if he liked her and he said no. I then asked if she tried to kiss him when on recess. He responded with a high pitch no!

Is this really starting!?

Goodness...

4 year check up

Last week I had Cadence's 4 year old check up (a bit late because it took so long to get in :)). Doctor said she is looks great, she weighs 39 pounds (75%) and is 45 1/4" tall (97%). Yep, we have tall kids! :) She had to get 3 shots and was very nervous but didn't cry. She did great!

Isabelle also was along because she needed to get a few shots (I'm using Dr. Sears vaccine schedule for her). She also did great, no tears from her either!

Afterwards we went to Dairy Queen for a treat!

Baby News...

or at least the news that we will no longer be having any more babies coming from my body. On Friday I had surgery...no more babies from me. I've known that I was done as soon as I had Isabelle. Mark on the other hand did not feel the same as me, so we had made a compromise that we would wait until my 35th birthday (2 1/2 years) and if I still felt the same then we could do something permanent.

This is us at the hospital waiting to get admitted.

All went well. Honestly, I thought I would have a really quick recovery and up back to normal that night. Needless to say that wasn't the case, but I feel back to pretty much normal now (3 days later). It was my first surgery and I was groggy/tired for the weekend. The girls were very sweet with me and were my snuggle buddies.

I'm not saying we are done with having more children in our family...I'm saying I was done having them come from me. :)

Sweet Whispers

5:30am - Sounds of an elephant walking into the bathroom...aka, Dylan. He walks so hard!
I lay him back down and say he needs to sleep longer.

Walking out of Dylan's room I hear a little girl voice, "mooooommm". It's Cadence, she was woken by the stampede. :) I tell her to go back to sleep. She asks how long. I say 1 more hour (knowing it would be a miracle if that happened!)

I lay back in bed. It is quiet for a minute or two and then I hear whispers coming from the girls' room. Cadence keeps shushing Isabelle to talk quieter. I can tell that Isabelle has crawled into Cadence's bed and they are whispering to one another.

It was so fun to hear them together talking, thinking they were getting away with something. :)

I really hope as the girls get older they are great friends and have many more mornings like this!

Check Mate

Mark taught Dylan how to play chess this weekend and took this really great picture while they were playing!

He caught on quick and really enjoys it. :)

Looking like Christmas

We decorated our tree this weekend. I love the smell of the fresh tree! Dylan was really excited about decorating and did most of the work. Cadence did help a little and Isabelle really had no interest in it at all. :)

It looks beautiful, just need to get the gifts wrapped up now!

Here is how our house looks in the evening. :)

And my front door area, you can't really see in the picture but they are little wire reindeers on the bench.

We've been playing Christmas music and the girls love it, such a fun season!