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. :)