PJ's Bday

Thought I would continue my streak by posting a few pictures from Piper's recent birthday.

 

Costumes

Halloween was a couple weeks ago, but I will give myself some slack since I have not posted in a year.  We had Blueberry Muffin, Miss Strawberry Shortcake, and a rather vicious pirate.  They were all dressed up for the Texas weather. 

Happy New Year!

                                                                 

                                              

I have to apologize because we didn't get Christmas cards out this year. Christmas cards are one of my favorite things about the holidays. I have mine hung up all over my house so I can remember how lucky I am to have so many wonderful friends in my life. I will try to be better next year. Here is what my card probably would of said if I sent it.

We love Florida!!! We love the sunshine and the beautiful weather. I guess living in buffalo for four years really helps you appreciate warmth. Everyday we thank Heavenly Father for letting us live here. We spend most of our time outdoors. We love the beach and all the parks. We also have really enjoyed being in the air force. We have met so many wonderful people. The military seems to understand not to take friendships for granted. You never know when someone is going to leave and so you just cherish the time you have.

Here is a run down of how everyone is doing. Rylee is in kindergarten. She is doing so well. She loves to read and will read any book she can get her hands on. She wants to be a cooker, teacher, or makeup girl when she grows up. She is still sweet as can be. She loves her friends. She worries about everyone and is always willing to help. She is loving Florida but still wishes she could live in Utah next to her grandmas.

Piper is hilarious. Her goal in life is to always have fun. If something is not fun then she wants nothing to do with it. She told my friend that she wants to be a monster when she grows up. She wants to marry her dad when she is five. She insists to anyone that asks that she attends school every day (she doesn't).  She came out of her room one day with nine pairs of underwear on. She feels no guilt about anything. She just enjoys every moment she has.
                                             
Sawyer is thirteen months old and is very active. He explores every inch of the house. He empties ever drawer and box that he can get his hands on. He is either the easiest baby ever or the hardest. He loves to laugh. His favorite past time is splashing in the toilet or pulling the toaster around the house.

Scott is enjoying the Air Force. He is learning a ton and is grateful he gets to work with so many specialists. He is the finance clerk at church. He is a wonderful dad and spends most of his spare time making the kids laugh.

I am doing great. I have wonderful friends who I spend as much time as I can with. I love being a mom more than I ever have. I love to cook and am constantly trying to perfect my recipes. I wish we could live in Florida forever but we will be moving again in August. I forgotten how much I love being near the beach. I am a beach girl through and through. We love you and miss you all. We hope that 2012 is the best year for you yet!

Beach Pictures

Thought it would be good to share some pictures of where we live now.  We went to the beach on Okaloosa Island a few weeks ago and watched the sunset.  We are having fun.

Our Beautiful Children

Our friend took our family pictures and I love how they turned out. She used an old bike.

Picture of our Family

My family got all dressed up for a photo shoot and then my friend/photographer went into labor. She tried to tell me early enough so we wouldn't get all ready but I of course did not look at my phone. Since we were all dressed up we thought we would get another friend to take a couple shots for us. Here is the latest picture of all of us.

Snowing and Staying Inside

 It has been a normal winter here in Buffalo; cold and snowy.  That means we have spent a lot of time inside.  You get used to it over time but the kids become a little tired of it.  A tropical island sounds nice about now.

Some of Sawyer's great facial expressions.  

Going to a Game

First off, Happy New Year.  It is strange to be in 2011 because I am part of the "Class of 2011" and you just figure going into it that 2011 will never actually show up.  We are excited to move on to other things.  For those that don't know, we will move to Eglin AFB in Florida in the summer for a year.

I totally lucked out this year.  The BYU basketball team scheduled a game in Buffalo.  I spend way too much time following BYU sports and this was just too good to be true.  We live about 10 minutes from the arena.  Heather decided to stay home with Piper and Sawyer so I took Rylee to the game.  She is not a sports fanatic by any means but I thought we would try.  The game was awesome.  BYU managed to win the game against a tough UB team and there were lots of Cougar fans there.  My problem was that Rylee put her coat and scarf on sometime in the first half and told me that she was ready to go home.  She is funny.  We stayed for the entire game, but she did not understand why the game was so long.  I think I have my work cut out for me.

Tangled

We saw Tangled yesterday as a family.  We took all three kids.  It was quite daring I know.  Rylee and Piper have been so anxious to see it.  It was a fun movie and we all had a good time.  Sawyer did not make too much noise.  Piper sat on my lap for the first hour, then got bored.  Rylee loved it.  She sat in her chair laughing at certain points where I think she was the only one in the fairly full theater doing such a thing.  The only problem was the ending.  She was crushed by how the movie ended.  I don't want to give anything away if you have not seen it, but I might try to request an alternate ending so I don't have to answer more questions when the movie comes out on DVD.

A Buffalo Christmas

I want to preface this with a few questions from Rylee for Santa. Let me know if you know any of the answers to these. She was not quite daring enough to ask Santa at the mall.

How do reindeer fly?

Does Santa have parents?

Does Santa take his coat off and wear a t-shirt when he is in Florida?

To prepare for Christmas, we held our annual Christmas tree cookie making event.  It involves stacking cookies with frosting and then adding a red hot on top.  The girls had a fun time putting the cookies together.  They did not exactly pass the hygiene test, so do not be offended that we did not share them with anyone.  Piper did a good job until she realized she had a bunch of cookies in front of her.

 We had a fun Christmas together.  We had some friends come over for dinner on Christmas Eve.  Heather did a fabulous job on everything.  The kids acted out the nativity story from the Bible.  It was probably the most chaotic reenactment I have ever seen, but it was fun.

What a good star!

Rylee as Mary

A wise man with a couple of other guests modeling the new line of strollers

Christmas morning with children is special.  They are so genuine with their emotions and excitement that you cannot avoid smiling.  We are blessed to have such great family and friends.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Cape Cod

We made a trip to Cape Cod last summer around the beginning of July.  We did not have much experience there so we planned to take a tour of the cape during our week there.  We stayed in Mashpee and made trips to Sandwich, Dennisport, Hyannis, Chatham, Falmouth, Woods Hole, and Provincetown (and I am sure I missed some).  While the cape itself is not huge, doing the entire place in a week is tough with one child who naps and the other one who only wants to spend time at the hotel swimming pool.  I will try to touch on some of the highlights of the trip.

We both fell in love with Chatham.  We spent some time walking down the main street looking at shops. We were blown away by the simple and beautiful architecture of the area.  I wanted to take pictures of the area, but the streets are small and I feel awkward going around with a camera.  We managed to get a picture of one of the houses.

We also visited the Chatham Fish Pier in the afternoon.  We managed to watch a scallop boat come in with their catch.  I prefer experiencing an area much more by doing stuff like that than the other tourist attractions.  The girls had a fun time watching the birds and seals that were following the boats. 

At the fish pier

 

We also went to several different beaches.  The first one by Sandwich was rocky and the water was freezing.  We should have thought something was up when there was only one other person on the beach.  Rylee lost her pink boogie board there in a matter of seconds.  She put it down in the water and wind/current just took it out to sea.  I tried to go after it but I was not prepared for a full out ocean swim in those conditions.  So we resorted to other beaches on the south side that were much more pleasant and fun for the girls (with sand).

Playing in the sand near Hyannis

Another day trip involved quite a drive up to Provincetown.  We debated for a while on whether it was worth it to spend the extra time to go up there.  We apparently just missed the huge Portuguese Festival there, but the place was still full of tourists.  The city had a large marina with lots of tour boats, many for whale watching.  We walked up and down Commercial Street and saw some interesting things.  We bought overpriced and supposedly homemade ice cream on the way.  The girls were exhausted by the end of the trip.  I am pretty sure that is evident by their expressions in the photo.

We also stopped at a really neat place on the way up to Provincetown called the Salt Pond Visitor Center in the Cape Cod National Seashore.  We were able to go on a walk along a salt marsh with a large pond.  It was a great learning facility and I am glad we stopped there.  

We most of all enjoyed spending time with each other.  I might try to post more later about the good ice cream places we went to and the amazing clam chowder, but I have to update about other things first.

 

Just hanging out before bedtime

Newborn Pics

We had some newborn pictures taken by our friend about a month ago. She did a great job and we thought we would post a few of the pictures. Sawyer is doing well and getting excited for Christmas. We wish that we could be closer to family this year, but we are also having a lot of fun doing stuff on our own.

Year in Rewind

I am going to try and post things that we have done over the year. I figure that if I do a little each day I might be able to get some stuff done. The hard part about this though is that Sawyer is not on them. I could photoshop him in some of them, but I got some negative feedback on the last time I did that. These pictures are from Halloween. Rylee was a beautiful ballerina and Piper was a ladybug.