Happy New Year

Can't believe 2007 is coming to an end!!!  Hope everyone has a Happy and safe New Year's Eve and a very blessed 2008!  Happy New Year and here's to many blogs in 2008!!

The Nutcracker

This weekend I took my oldest baby girl to see the ballet "The Nutcracker." It was so much fun seeing her sweet little face light up as she saw all of the ballerina's and she absolutely loved the music. I have had the tickets for about 6 weeks and we had talked about it a lot leading up to it. We talked about everything from how we were going to get to get dressed up to how we would have to whisper during the performance (which was a little hard to remember). We had a great time and maybe next year baby sister will be old enough.

After the ballet we went to get ice cream, which Sam was very excited about. She absolutely hates to have her hands dirty or sticky so with every bite she had to use a wet wipe to get the sticky off her hands. Justin and I started calling her Howard Hughes a few months ago when we saw this behavior. Do you know how hard it is for a 2 year old to eat ice cream without getting sticky hands? It was exhausting and hilarious to watch!! Hope everyone has a good Christmas Eve!

Baby Doll Dreams

Tonight was a special night for Samantha. Her Aunt Sandie brought over some Christmas presents for both the girls. She gave Samantha a cabbage patch doll and when Samantha got the present about half way open and saw what it was she put her little hands over her mouth and started saying "Oh my goodness" over and over again it was absolutely precious. She is finally old enough to have quite a reaction when she gets something she likes. It was so cute and let me just say Aunt Sandie she loves your gift and has gone to bed with her. I haven't even given her the books yet because she was so taken by the doll. I am so sorry that you didn't get to see her open it but hopefully these pictures capture the moment well for you. Come see us next week and we can have a tea party with the new doll whose name is Laci by the way!!! Cute Cute Cute..... We love you and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cards

It is 9 days and counting until Christmas and Justin and I decided that it was about time to send out Christmas cards..... All that counts is that people get them before Christmas right?? I couldn't get one of them both smiling in the same picture but they did a good job.... Here is a sneak peek of my little cuties Christmas cards!

Ice Storm

Ode to Electricity. How do I love thee let me count the ways.... I love love love electricity. We have had a bad ice storm here and we were without electricity for a day and were quite fortunate to get ours turned back on while many of our family and friends have not been so lucky. We feel quite blessed to be sitting in our warm house with our baby girls. All these pics are from either our house or houses in our neighborhood. There is going to have to be some serious tree cleanup once it all melts. While I am stating what I love let me just say that I love generators as well. If anyone wants any last minute Christmas ideas for us a big honking generator that will run everything in our house would be great! Hope everyone is staying warm!!!

Baby doll brush

It has been ages since I have had time to blog, but I thought I better take the time to get this funny story written down. The things that Samantha has to say to me are hysterical! Justin was out of town this week and as you know that can make for very long days. One of the evenings I was chatting on the phone and Sam comes up to me and says "Moma where is my baby doll's brush?" she wanted this tiny brush for one of her dolls that I keep put up because for one it is so small I am afraid that she will lose it, and secondly because I don't want Ally to choke on it. So since I am on the phone and it is so close to bedtime I tell her "I don't know where it is." I go back to my phone call and this answer simply was not good enough. She proceeded to ask me where it was 2 or 3 more times and each time I told her that I didn't know. She was getting louder every time she asked hello can't children see when you have a phone in your hand? Laf! After a few more times she tells me "Moma I think it is in the dishwasher" I start laughing and tell her that I don't think so and she tells me "Yes I think it is." After telling me this a few more times she gets distracted and finally goes off to do something else. We go to bed for the night and there is no more talk of the brush. When we wake up in the morning she is standing at the top of our stairs looking over the landing waiting on me and she sees the brush up on top of the bookshelf and she starts in "Oh Moma look there is the baby doll brush" and I say tell her "oh ok" like I didn't know where it was and she says "Moma we need to get it." I tell her well hold on a sec and that I need to run back in my bedroom to get something and she tells me loudly "Moma you are making me very upset about this baby doll brush." All I could do was crack up, she says such funny things everyday. She has turned into such a little girl over night and has really good conversations with us, it is just adorable. The conversations with her sister are a little less mature lately when she hears her cry she tells her "Ally get a grip." Laf!

Can you believe it??

What is happening to my baby? Alexandra is 7 months old and she is not only crawling but now she is pulling up!!! Can you believe this? She is so tiny, but she so desperately wants to play with her big sister. I caught a cute picture of her today pulling up and looking out the window....

Isn't she adorable!!!??? Could someone please tell her to stop growing so stinking fast?

Tales of Elmo and The Bunny

The girls had a great Halloween. They went and Trick or Treated at Daddy's office and then we went to the Trunk or Treat at our church. The girls had an absolute blast playing and watching the other kids. Samantha thought she was some kind of celebrity because all the adults and all the children every time they would see her would say "oh look there is Elmo" needless to say by the time she got home she thought she was something pretty special. Ally had an equally good time watching everything and really wanted to get involved in it all.

After our great Halloween though Sam woke up with a 102 temp and has been running between 102 and 104 degree temp since. She feels awful and has not had anything to eat to speak of since Halloween. I took her to the doctor yesterday and she has blisters in her mouth, they tested her for strep throat but it turns out it is just a virus and we have to let it run its coarse... Yuck.... On top of all that it is highly contagious and chances are before its all over it will make its rounds through my house. Ain't that Grand???!!!

Pumpkin Patch

We took the girls to the Pumpkin patch today and it was both of the girl's mission to never look at the camera, but we did manage to get a few good shots of them. Samantha had so much fun picking out a Pumpkin to bring home, and Alexandra just tries to eat anything that gets close to her mouth!! I also threw in a couple other random pics into the slide show that I thought were cute..... Hope everyone had a good weekend, we sure did!

"I'm too big"

We have a new saying around our house. For anything Samantha doesn't want to do she tells me "No Momma, I'm too big." The first time she said it I came in her room to ask her why she wasn't taking a nap and she tells me "I can't Momma, I'm too big." I literally fell over laughing and she began giggling as well because she was quite proud that she had made her Mommy laugh. And I laughed so much that I of course didn't make her take a nap because her wit had amused me. Well now she is saying it for everything. I will ask Sam "do you want breakfast, do you need to go potty, etc... and the response is the same "I'm too big." There also seems to be some confusion/trickery on her part if I try to tell her that she can't do something because she is too big(like sit in her doll stoller). She immediately starts telling me "oh no Momma I not too big, I Sam, I the big sister." Where does she come up with this stuff? She cracks us up.....

Also, Miss Alexandra is officially saying 2 words. She says "hi" and "Da Da." As much as I coached her to say Momma first she is laying the "Dada Dada" on pretty thick! Does he feed her, bathe her, change her??? Not near enough to deserve the first word! Am I jealous?? Maybe just a little... :)

Geeky??!!

Today while my mother-in-law was over visiting Samantha disappeared for a few minutes. When I went to find her I found her sitting at Justin's desk in our office just typing away on the keyboard I asked her "What are you doing?" and you know what she told me "I am checking my e-mail!" clear as day and very matter of factly as if of course I should have known that without asking!!! Anyone who knows us knows that we are a bit geeky at our house with enough computers for each of us to have 2, but jeez I think we may have corrupted our 2 year old or maybe she is just starting early to be the female version of Bill Gates!! Laf! Below is a pic of Miss Samantha checking that e-mail.

Austin Weekend

Our last unmarried college friend got hitched in Austin a week ago and all of us went down to their wedding. We had a good time celebrating with them. Justin and I left Samantha with my parents but took Alexandra with us. Alexandra had a lot of firsts this weekend, her first plane ride, her first rehersal dinner, her first wedding, and her first ride in a limo. It was a long weekend for her and she slept quite a bit the day after we got home. Here are some pictures of the fun event. Congrats to Brent and Lauren!!! Hurry up and make some babies you guys are the last ones for that too!! Love you all!

James, Kerri, and Anna (of course she will make
her official apperance in December!)


James, Lauren, Brent, Samer, and Justin!!
You boys sure look handsome!

Samer, Farah, Jana, and Ally after dinner.

Mommy, Daddy, and Alexandra dancing.

Kerri, Jana, Alexandra, and Farah getting in our
limo to take us to the wedding!


Farah and Alexandra

Samer and Alexandra

Jana, Justin, and Alexandra

The Ceremony

The happy couple!

Sick Girls

Two sick girs!!! Eeek! This is the first time since Alexandra was born since they both have been sick at the same time and it has been quite busy around here. Samantha got sick first and now Miss Ally has it. They both have a runny nose and cough and overall just don't feel well. I got up this morning and took them both in to the doctor and she said they have a virus that is going around and gave them a cough medicine. I told Sam this morning that her and Ally were going to the doctor and she told me "No baby sister goes to the doctor, I go to the big doctor." Her doctor is a little short and looks young, so if anyone knows any "big" doctors please let Samantha know. I will post more when I have something more to write than I wiped noses all day!!!

Late Labor Day Post

We went camping/4 wheeler riding over Labor Day weekend with a bunch of my family. We had a ball with everyone, and the girls proved to be great riders. There were 7 4 wheelers with 14 of us in total. A couple days before we left we went on a search mission to find Samantha a helmet since we knew we would be doing a bunch of riding, but her head is just so tiny we couldn't find one. So we ended up getting her a bicycle helmet and my mom got her some goggles. She is so adorable wearing them and since our return home has requested to wear her helmet around the house some. I get a few raised eyebrows when I open the door at home to people wondering why my daughter is wearing a helmet, but whatever... Anyhow I wore Ally in one of those Baby Bjorns and she spent quite a bit of time sleeping. Samantha has always been one of those kids who NEVER and I mean never passes out, but a couple of times that we stopped for a break while riding she was asleep, so let's just say 4 wheeling really takes it out of them. Funny story the second day we went riding we left about 10:00 a.m. to ride thinking we would be gone 4 or 5 hours like the day before, we brought lunch drinks and a few snacks. We stopped at lunch time at this great rock wall and had lunch after we finished my Daddy decided that we should not go back the way we came but go out a different way and he said it would wrap back around to our camp. Well guess what we got lost. I in no way mean a little lost, I mean big time lost. We spent the rest of the day basically driving in circles at the top of this mountain. Long story short we rode the 4 wheelers 70 miles that day and had to get someone to show us how to get back to our camp. We rolled back into camp around 9:30 p.m. pretty tired, and a bit hungry, but overall we had a really good time being lost, and we are all ready to do it again especially Samantha. Anyone else game?

Halloween Already???

Today I took the girls to Babies R Us to pick up a few things and I thought that I would just browse through the halloween costumes, well Samantha saw Elmo and it was over I knew I had to get it for her. Well she wanted to put it on when we got home and we have to basically make her take it off in order to cool herself off. She loves it. Justin thinks it will be worn out by Halloween! Laf! He also reasoned with her by telling her that she was too young to cook her brain by wearing around this incredibly warm costume in August.... It was crazy talk, but she actually let him take it off her after that. She has gone to bed now, and I am pretty sure I am going to have to hide Elmo until the weather gets cooler!!! I am sure you will be seeing another pick with Elmo in a couple of months.

Random pics

Here is a pic of Miss Ally being her cool self in her sister's sunglasses.

We went and visited Kelly and Jason in Kansas a couple of weeks ago and here is a pic of Ally getting a kiss from cute little Sydney. (Ally kept one eye open to keep her eye on her :) ) We had a good time getting to see them.

10 year anniversary

Well folks my hubbie and I were officially married for 10 years yesterday. That is a decade people, remember in elementary school when you thought a decade was a long time. Well let me tell you that this decade passed by very very quickly. We are planning on going away on a vacation to celebrate once I am done nursing the baby, so probably not until early next year. I thought that was going to be our present to each other but he surprised me by flying back in town (he had to be gone for work) and take me out to a wonderfully romantic dinner and if that weren't enough he gave me a gorgeous anniversary band. I couldn't believe it, was so very sweet! On top of all of that the baby actually behaved quite well for her grandparents while we were gone, so it looks like her medicine is working quite well for her.

Well I should probably do a separate blog for this but what the heck. As I have mentioned before we are stiiiiiillllll potty training our oldest. We have really good days and not so good days. Well 2 days ago I had our insurance agent over and was signing some paperwork when my sweet girl strolls into the kitchen to inform me "Moma I need to use the potty" well I am thinking this is not the best timing but am proud of her that she is actually telling me. So I take her in and put her on the potty and tell her that I will be right back and I go back and continue signing the paperwork. In no time she is yelling for me telling me that she is finished, I tell her to sit a bit longer and I will be right back. I wait a few minutes and then head in there and she tells me "moma I popped in the potty" I am thinking well that is great and I look and she hasn't gone, but I mysteriously still smell poop... Hmmm don't know why...... Well I get her and put her pull up back on and start washing her hands and I look down at the floor in front of the potty and lo and behold there is a big turd!! I can do nothing at this point but laugh and clean it up! Luckily we have an insurance agent that was born with a sense of humor, but I was still embarrassed none the less. Oh the joys of parenting. At least this time she was in the bathroom right??!!

My sweet girl....

I have a sweet picture like this of my Samantha that I had taken when she was a month old, I tried to have the same thing done for Alexandra. To make a long story short after 1 month of waiting the lady that took them said her memory card was corrupt and ended up having no pictures of my baby girl. So I ordered a backdrop stand and went out and got a backdrop and took pictures myself. I just wanted to document for the record that this happened so that Alexandra won't complain when she is grown that we didn't try to get her black and white pictures like her sister. :) Anyway, isn't she beautiful???!!! Soon to come I will take Samantha's 2 year pictures!

My Baby is 2!!!

Oh how the time flies,Samantha turned 2 this weekend. We had a pool party for her with all of her little friends and we had a blast. She is such a fun little lady! She has had so much fun playing with all of her new toys. Thanks to everyone who came we had a great time celebrating her birthday with you!

New pics

I haven't posted in a while because we have been so busy this summer, but here are some cute new pics of the girls!

Here is sweet little Ally playing in her baby Einstein. She loves it!

We spent a weekend celebrating the 4th with my parents and here is Sam riding bareback in the creek!

How time flies......

Can you believe it my baby girls are 22 months and 3 months. I went to the mall on Saturday to have Alexandra's 3 month pictures made and I had them take a couple with the two of them together. I just had to post a couple of the pictures up on my blog because of course being their Mommy I think they are just about the cutest things ever! I can't believe Alexandra is already 3 months old oh how the time flies.

P.S. In the previous post you will remember that I said that Samantha has been saying "Moma that sucks" when she means Moma that's stuck.... well it happened I was standing in Babies R' Us in the diaper isle and Sam got her shoe stuck in the cart well you guessed it she yells out "Moma that sucks" and this lady turns around and looks at me in shock and I had to explain to her that she meant that her shoe was stuck and she just looked at me and half nodded her head and acted like she didn't really believe me.... Let the embarrassing moments begin!!! :)

Say What?

Well we have been on vacation the past week and Samantha got to play with some of my older cousins. As the week wore on little things would happen for example, Samantha would be trying to pull her wagon and it would get stuck and she would loudly tell me "Moma that Sucks" the first time we heard it Justin and I looked at eachother with horror and tried to figure out where she had picked up this awful phrase. We ignored her but the phrase kept coming up she would get a shoe stuck under the chair or couldn't get her blocks apart and again would loudly yell "Moma that Sucks". I decided I couldn't ignore it anymore and I started telling her Samantha we don't say that and she just looked at me confused and went on about her business. Well we have finally figured out that she is saying That's Stuck and are quite pleased that neither us nor her older cousins taught her to say something like this..... But if you hear a cute little blond girl in Target yelling Moma that SUCKS try not to judge her parents she just may mean that something is stuck!!! :) Laf!

Three Ring Circus

Well Justin left this morning on a trip for work and I have tons of stuff to get done because we are about to go on vacation. This morning I got the girls fed and headed to the grocery store. They were both good until I got to the checkout line. Ally starts crying because she is getting hungry and Samantha is desperately trying to get the package open that contains a foam ball that I told her she could have for being so good in the store. I am in the self checkout with a cart full of groceries thinking that I can check myself out faster than a person who does this 8 hours a day. Should I say Duh! Anyway while I am ringing groceries as fast as I can I hear Samantha scream "YEA, I did it." Well I look over and she has the ball out of the package and I think well ok that's no big deal at least she is happy. Next, she starts yelling "Moma ball". I turn around and think oh she has dropped it so I hand the ball back to her, and again start messing with the groceries only to hear "Moma go get it" I turn around and this time the ball is about 15ft away and she is grinning ear to ear. This child actually thinks we are playing ball in the store while she is strapped to a grocery cart. Hello that is called Moma fetch the ball! This time I go get the ball and don't give it back to her. I quickly finish checking out and we head home. I bring in the groceries and put away any that need to go in the refrigerator and then I give Sam a drink and a snack and get myself ready to start nursing Ally. Well this situation almost always means that Samantha is going to tell me that she needs to go potty. So of course she tells me she needs to go poop in the potty. Well I take her in there and one handed get her on the potty because there is no way Ally is going to stop eating because she is starving so you get the picture. Well Samantha can not go potty if you are in the bathroom with her so I leave. Of course this trip ends with her not going.... I sit down again and start feeding the baby and Daddy calls to check on his girls. I am telling him how our day is going and Samantha comes and tells me again that she needs to poop on the potty so yet again we head into the bathroom and I leave her in there to continue my conversation with Daddy. She comes running back in the living room and I ask her what she is doing and she says "I got down" and I am thinking well great I better go get the pull-up and put it back on when she looks at me with this look of shock and says "uh oh Moma" and I am thinking no please don't let this be the "uh oh" I think it is. Well she starts running back toward the bathroom and you guessed it she is pooping the whole way. Did you know that you could poop while running? Well neither did I and let's just say I wish I didn't know! Well that is just the first half of the day, let's just hope that the second half of the day isn't blog worthy!! Have a good one!

Bye Bye Gymnastics

Yesterday was Samantha's last Gymnastics class and her Daddy came to video and take pictures. She had an absolute ball showing off for him. She has had the best time going. We will enroll her again in the fall but until then we will be playing at the pool... :) The pictures above are of her showing off one of her flips and the other is her getting a ribbon for completing the semester.

On another note I took Ally to the doctor today to see why she is such a fussy little girl at night and it turns out that she has acid reflux. Anyway, the doctor gave her some meds and I can already see an improvement tonight. Yippee!

Happy Memorial Day

We fired up the hasty bake and had friends over for a good old fashioned cookout with the exception of a few minutes of rain it was a great day. Not sure if all of our friends would agree since our oldest forced everyone to either play ball, swing, or push her around in her car the entire day!! :) She even woke up this morning asking if Michael wanted to come see her big girl room. I told her I didn't think he could take off work for that! Laf! Needless to say it was a fun day for Sam!

Early Morning Singing

All anyone wants when they go to bed on Friday night is to get to sleep in a little on Saturday morning. As I am sure you know with young kids this hardly ever happens and today was no exception. When I hear one of the kids start to move around all I can think of is please just let me sleep a few more minutes. Well this morning Samantha was the first one to begin stirring around in her bed. Each morning she usually starts the day by getting a book and getting back in her bed and reading it before she is ready to leave her room.... but on some mornings we get a special treat and get to hear her singing. This mornings choice went something like this:

Tinkle Tinkle ittle staaaar how I wunder what you arrrre
Up ubove du world so high yike a diamond in the skkkkky
Tinkle Tinkle ittle staaaar

Needless to say this wakes the entire house and I must say it makes Justin and I look at eachother and crack up and we can't wait to go and get her out of bed so we can start the day and see what she will do next. Who needs coffee when they can wake up to this kind of singing??? Oh ya I do!!

Hot Tubbing

Here is a pic of the Family... Not real proud of my body in a swimsuit but it is what it is, don't judge me I just had a baby!! :)

To blog or not to blog

I have always thought it was silly to have a blog, well let me rephrase I always thought it was silly for me to have a blog but have absolutely loved reading my girlfriends blogs. Anyway I decided to create one to keep some kind of record to remember all of the funny moments that happen when you are raising 2 baby girls under the age of 2. Our girls are currently 21 months and 2 months and are absolutely the joys of our life. Hope you enjoy reading this blog dedicated to document life with Sam and Ally.