Sleeping Angel

Abbie has been trying to give up her nap for a while now.  Most days she is not successful.  We struggle and struggle to get that nap in, sometimes it happens easily and some days not so much.  Today was one of those days that she just wasn't going to go to sleep.  Her cousins were here for the first time in a long time and she was much too interested in playing to sleeping.  Well here is how I found her when I turned around while making dinner.  She had sat up to the table hoping that dinner would be ready soon and all the playing caught up with her.

Disney On Ice

Thanks to this great website... SMMART IDEAS I won four FREE tickets to Disney on Ice.  I ended up buying one extra ticket so that we could all go.  We went last night and had a wonderful time.  It had Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, and Abbie's favorite Peter Pan (because she LOVES tinkerbell).    This is literally how my kids were through out the entire show.    No one said they were bored, or asked to leave at all.  They were glued to what was going on on the ice, for two hours.

We let the kids each pick out a souvenir... Lexie said that she really didn't want anything (which just shows that she is getting too big!) But we did get a WAY too expensive lemonade.

 Ashton picked out a light up spinny thing 

and Abbie picked out tinker bell wings. (imagine that) They were pretty cute and I am thinking that she will be tinker bell for Halloween next year if this love of hers continues.  

Here's a few action shots of the show.  They are little blurry it was the best I could get.

More Pictures

Got the kids all ready and went to take some more pictures of the kiddos yesterday.  My plan was to take them up the canyon by our house and hope that there was still enough good color left to get some really good pictures....  when we got to the mouth of the canyon it was closed.  Plan B drive around and look for a good place to take their pictures.  We ended up at Gardner Village and got GREAT pictures.  Lexie needed some that better matched the other kid's pictures. We just got back her school pictures and they were cute, for school pictures but they definitely weren't the greatest pictures ever.  And I wanted some of all three kids together to maybe do Christmas cards with.  Well here is what we got.  

Fun stuff

Photo Tinks by WiddlyTinks.com

Photo Tinks by WiddlyTinks.com

Picture a day...

I have decided to start a picture a day blog.  The link is over on the side of this blog.  Hopefully it will get me taking more pictures of every day life instead of only the big stuff.  Take a look, hope you like it.

FINALLY- GOOD PICTURES

It has taken me 6 MONTHS to find the time to take Abbie's two-year-old pictures.  I have been busy but not that busy, I just haven't made the time to take them.  I have taken other peoples pictures just not my own kids. (Thats sad, really sad.) Well they turned out so cute, I'm so happy and it was really easy.  I also took some of Ashton and he is a little harder to get a good picture out of, he loves to pull this funny smile where he really isn't smiling just gritting his teeth.  His preschool pictures were terrible, and that is being kind.  He wasn't even looking into the camera on most of them.  Oh well these are super cute.  Now to get some of Lexie, she was as school while we were taking these but it couldn't be helped.....

Remember these??

Well they have grown into these HUGE things....

The plant took over my front flower garden but it made some of the biggest pumpkins ever. It was even kind enough to make three, one for each kid. Can't wait til its time to carve them.

Ashton in Ashton

Going to Yellowstone while we are visiting Jake in Idaho Falls has become one of our families favorite day trips.  Since it is only 2 hours to Yellowstone we get up early and drive to Yellowstone for the day and stay until it is too dark to see anything in the park and then head home.  One of the little towns we pass through on the way is Ashton, Idaho.  Ashton thinks that it is weird that a city (town) has the same name as him and doesn't think it is very funny when we start telling him that "he" is coming up in 20 miles or however far away it is.  Well this time we needed to make a pit stop there so we decided to find "his" sign and take his picture by it.   What a good sport.

What a girl needs

I have been potty training Abbie for a little while and she had been doing pretty well.  She was having WAY more dry days that accidents.  Things were going so well, then when she filled up her last "potty chart" (about the same time she had her bladder infection that definitely didn't help matters either) I didn't bother to make another one because I thought that she was doing so well that she didn't need it.  Well things have been going down hill from there.  I was getting very frustrated, well today I had the brilliant idea (duh!!) to make her another potty chart to see if that would help motivate her to use the potty.  What a HUGE change it has made.  Putting a sticker on a piece of paper holds some sort of magic I am sure!  I think the potty chart will be here till we are done with potty training for good!!

picking out the sticker... I went all out and got big smiley faces this time, she loves them.

all these stickers are from today!!!  No accidents here!!!

Planting a Tree

This spring our stake president asked each family in our stake to pick out and plant a fruit tree in our yards. He made an analogy to Captain Moroni's Title of Liberty.  "Instead of writing the words on a torn coat as Captain Moroni did, families are invited to select and plant a fruit tree.  As it grows, so should our commitment to God, family, covenants, and country. As we begin to see the blossoms and the fruit appear, so should our commitment begin to appear.  Then, as we enjoy the fruit and happiness that comes from it, so should we enjoy the blessings that come from our improved relationship with God and family, and the strengthening of our testimony through the covenants we make, as well as from our love and support of this great country."  Well we went looking for our tree this weekend and found what Ashton called the "perfect tree".  It is a fruit salad tree, it has 4 different fruits grafted into the same tree, apricot, plum, peach and nectarine.  I hope that it can grow and produce fruit for us soon.  We also got a peach tree. It was a family effort to plant our trees.   Here are a few pictures that we took:

Digging the hole, in Herriman this is like digging in cement.

Picking out the rocks,  there were LOTS there always are, its what grows in Herriman, rocks.

Measuring the hole.  

Filling in the hole with dirt.

Adding a little water.

The planted tree, this is the fruit salad tree.

Picking out more rocks, for tree #2

Abbie found some...

Adding some fertilizer.

The little peach tree.  It will be a while before this one produces any fruit.  Patience will be key.