Thankful

This week my kids get to stay home with me because school is out for the week. I spent today with my kids and we had quite a few friends come over to kick off our no-school week. Tonight one of my daughters friends (who has never been to our house before) approached me to let me know that my son was trying to play with the girls and could I please have him leave the room?
I explained to her that in our house we are ALL friends and that included Gloria's brother and sisters.
Tonight when I was putting the kids to bed, I told Gloria what a great job she did today of playing fairly and being to kind to everyone. I then told her that the only improvement I could think of was for her to explain to her friends that she plays with her brother at our house because he is her best friend- that I shouldn't have to tell her friends. She then told me "Mom, I did tell her that I wanted to play with Grayson and that he is my best friend. But she went and told you anyway. I told her not to make him leave."- Grayson jumped in the conversation to agree with Gloria that she had stood up for him. I am so thankful for my kids and how loving they are to each other. I hope they will always be best friends.

My Baby is 1.

Livvy had a birthday last week. She is now 1 year old. She is such a fun baby to have around. She is still pretty little, just a petite little thing. She has these itty bitty feet, she just started wearing a size 2... but she still can wear some of her 1's. She is the first of my children to be below the %100 mark for height and weight.She is in the %20. It is fun. People always comment about this little tiny person running around!
Olivia loves showers and tubs. If anyone in the house takes a shower, Olivia will find them and join them... fully dressed or not, it doesn't matter to her as long as she is getting wet.
She is so happy. She loves to play with anyone who will play with her. Whenever we go out she loves to smile and wave at everyone we see. Everyone is drawn to her sweet smile and playful personality. She is a people person. She giggles constantly.
She has goosebumps on her head at all times. She is moving so fast all the time and running around that she is constantly bumping into things. She always has at least 2 goose eggs on her head. Usually more.
She loves to sing. She sings and sings and sings and sings. She has a song that was written for her called "Olivia". If she ever cries, we just start singing the song and she will quit crying and start singing, she can't help herself.
The girl can BOOOOOOGIE! We love to start playing music while she is walking because she will stop in her tracks and just start bopping along to the beet. She really knows how to shake her booty. It is so funny.
She loves to eat. LOVES to eat. She adjusted to regular milk just fine. She loves to eat whatever food we are eating.
I love you, little Livvy. You are such a joy and a sunshine in our lives. Happy First Birthday!

oldies but goodies

Gloria had a performance in her school talent show last June and Gray had a preschool graduation. Gloria and Cami also had dance performances. Unfortunately, right after these events occurred, I donated my camera to my hubbies dental practice and bought a new one for myself (that is not the unfortunate part)... the unfortunate part is that I left my card in his camera andI just got it back THIS WEEK, so here is a peek at what happened last June.

Gloria and her friends wanted to sing for their school talent show. So, we picked out the song sang by Megara in "Hercules" and got the karaoke music ordered and started the hard work on memorizing and harmonizing... they then auditioned for the show... they made it. They then decided that they wanted to choreograph the show, so we let them. It was a lot of work, but alot of fun and a huge accomplishment for 4 first grade girls. I was one proud mama.
Grayson did fantastic at his graduation from preschool. I didn't think that I would get so emotional, but I really did. I was so proud of him. He really matured this past year and was awarded the top of his class award. After the graduation they performed musical numbers that they had been practicing for the past 3 months. The boy can dance!!
Gloria and Cami also had dance performances in June (it was a busy month). Cami was so cute and all smiles. I was worried when she saw the audience that she would freak... but she didn't. She really did a great job. Gloria loves to dance. She has great rythm. She did a great job. I am so proud of all my kids. I love them so much!!

Soccer mom

Gray and Gloria are both doing soccer this year. They are great players. Gray really excels as a forward. He is very involved in the games and he fights for the ball. He is consistently a high scorer in his games (I am not going to mention that to get him so involved in the games we started out with a little bribery, $2 per goal scored... we will know better for next year, maybe $0.25 per goal... soccer has gotten really expensive this season. We only started the $2 incentive to make the game a little more entertaining for us as parents to watch and boy is it ever entertaining!) and we love watching him fight for the ball and take control of it. He loves the game. We love to watch him because he is so intense, but he has so much fun at the same time.
Gloria is a wonderful defender. She loves the position of defender, which may be why she is so good at it. She is so excited to guard the goalie and she is very aggressive whenever a ball approaches her. She is so happy and smiley and she loves the game. I was asked to coach her team this year and I have really loved doing it. It has been a great bonding activity for us. She gets so excited to tell her daddy and brother that she and mommy have a game today, or that she and mommy are on the same team. She tells all her friends that her mom is her coach. We are the "Pink Panthers". When I was asked to be her coach, I knew that there was only one pink team for the under 8 all girls teams... so I showed up early to the coaches meeting and spent a lot of time going through all of the uniforms to find the pink ones. I was so excited to find them before anyone else. The girls were all so excited when I told them that were going to get to be the pink team!! It was well worth the effort. I have loved being her coach this year and hope to be her coach again next year.

Beauty Is....

Grayson came home from school excited to enter an enrichment contest. The Theme is "Beauty Is...". I asked him what area he wanted to focus on, drawing, song writing (he is actually very good at writing songs, so I really encouraged this area) poetry or photography. He chose photography. So, I gave him my camera and let him start shooting.... he took these pictures by himself. He actually took quite a few shots (30ish?) he took shots from faraway and close up.. these are my favorite.

More Tarantula's

Here are some pictures from the Tarantula Festival this year. It's amazing how time can change our perspective on these furry arachnids.

Friendly Devil

This year Gloria wanted a "Devil" costume for Halloween. We found one at Rite Aid that she liked, so we brought it home. The night before Halloween, we were trying on our costumes and Gloria suddenly made a pouty face... she said, "Mom, I need to go to bed late tonight so that I will be grumpy tomorrow"... I was a little confused and asked her what she was talking about. She pointed out that the package that her costume came in said "FriendlyDevil" and she did not want to be friendly, she wanted to be scary!! I told her she could make grumpy faces if she wanted too tomorrow, but under no circumstances was she going to stay up late so she could be a "Scary-grumpy Devil"!

There's a world where I can go

Back to my house pictures...

I like my room. But.
But- I need to get pictures hung.
But- I need to recover my chairs.
But- I need a trunk or bench to go on the back wall (not pictured) .

I like a lot about my room. As you will notice, I am not a fanatic about making it perfect. I just like a nice warm and comfy feeling. I also like the brightness. I like my bathroom but I really look forward to ripping it apart and redoing it in a few years. I love my closet. It is The size of my kid's rooms in our old house. I love it's location. I love the doors leading to our backyard pool and hot tub. I love the fireplace. My room is not perfect, but things take time. We will get there. Any suggestions?

The Eensey Weensey Spider

For some reason these past few weeks I have been super... well, Maternal. Can I be any more maternal than I already am? You be the judge.
3 days ago I went out to the pool to give it a sweep and noticed 2 nice sized, super hairy tarantulas floating in my pool. My first thought was "Poor things" and I ran to get a net to pull them out. They were both still alive and moving. So I put them in the garden area and sat a while with them... When one of them started walking towards the pool again, I moved him again, further away from the pool. All the while worrying and fretting over their welfare. I felt so bad for them. Really. Weird? Not as weird as this. 2 days ago we had a tarantula appear on our front steps. He looked hurt. I tapped him to see if he was alive. He was. He immediately stood up on his giant legs and walked for a while before he sat back down. I figured he was probably just resting. For the next 2 days (up until today) he stayed in the general area. I was really starting to get concerned for the poor thing. I decided this afternoon that if the spider was still there this evening we would bring it inside and let the kids have it for a pet..... yikes! Is this me talking? I mean, a SPIDER!! And not just any spider, a HUGE spider. Thankfully when we got home the spider had crawled up the water spout (or one of the kitties got it), but it was no longer there... I hope it's okay.
See what I mean? Weird!!

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween. It is absolutely my FAVORITE holiday- I know a lot of it has to do with the candy, but the costumes add so much fun to the night... this year Travis and the girls and I did a 50's theme for our ward trunk-or-treat. I love coordinating our costumes. This year, on the night before Halloween we went out and had a little fun with some friends. We went to a Halloween party where the kids played games and won a lot of good loot. Then we went bowling. Livvy was our good luck charm. We all took turns holding her during our turns (which she LOVED) and it seemed that our scores were a lot better while she was in our arms. Afterwards we went to a Japanese restaurant and let the kids watch the chef toss our food around and light it on fire... do some fancy work with eggs and rice- the kids loved it. Most of our kids enjoy sushi. We finished off the night with a camp out. It was a great night, with no spookiness involved, but plenty of candy and fun- now that is what I consider a great Halloween.