Together Again

We are settled in our new home and are loving it. We have a pretty good schedule down now and the girls are doing great. Dave is on a rotating shift so it seems he is always at work, but we try to spend as much time with him as we can.

I have never seen the girls so happy and willing to help. Kim loves to vacuum and askes if we can do it every day. She knows that we can't vacuum when Dave is sleeping so she askes the second he wakes up. Hadley on the other hand loves to sweep. Since she can do that whenever she likes she sweeps daily. The girls even love doing the dishes. I have to supervise a little but the girls do a great job helping out.

When I was still in California and the girls were in Washington. Auntie Heather was helping take care of them. She and Dave enrolled Hadley in a dance class. She is doing really well and has her first recitel in June. We are already getting ready for it. She loves her ballet class and is actually doing rather well. It took her a while to get used to it and start enjoying it. Now I can't get her out of her ballet shoes. If I would let her she would wear her tap shoes around the house as well but since Dave works the graveyard shift it is a little too loud.

Kim had a party at school that I went to they had a lot of fun trying to read their Valentine's cards.

I am happy to say I love being able to stay home with the girls. I have what I call "Proud Mommy Moments." It is when one of the girls does something remarkable. Kim is learning to read. We read the scriptures everynight and Kim reads her share of verses. She is getting much better and looks forward to it. Hadley loves to look at the pictures and askes me to tell her the stories about the picture. Then at night when Kim is already asleep Hadley tells her dolls the stories we have read about in the scriptures. I just get so much joy out of watching them learn and grow. I do miss the younger versions of them but this time is so much fun. It is hard to imagine it getting better.

White Christmas

We had such a great time together as a family that I have to blog more pictures. Santa came to Aunt Jenn's house and the girls are so excited to come and see what he brought. Even Anna wanted to see what Santa had brought the girls. We got to Jenn's after they had opened all of their presents. Since Mom was there they naturally got up really early. Mom normally gets up at 5 or so in the morning because she is so excited to see what Santa brought.

Hadley loves Cinderella and got a coloring book and crayons.
The girls got dolls from Grandpa Paul and Grandma Sandi. Santa brought them chests to put all of the dolls clothes in.
The girls love them.

Hadley got her doll out and immidetely changed her dolls clothes into every outfit that she got. Santa brought her 3 outfits and Nana made her 2 more including a adorable raincoat. Right after we opened presents we looked outside to find that it was snowing. It has been several years but this year we had a white (and green) Christmas. I don't see much snow in California so I can call the little flurry a white Christmas. :)The girls had so much fun playing in the snow.

Christmas in Washington

I know I haven't blogged in almost 2 months but there is a reason. My family has been apart and I am finding it difficult to take pictures without my girls around. We are moving AGAIN! Yes, again (with a big heavy sigh) This will be move 51 for me and 11 for Dave and I together. Dave and the girls are already in Vancouver and staying with Grammie (Thanks Grammie for taking care of my precious family.) Dave got a great job up there and Kim is already in school. We weren't sure if she was going to be allowed to go back to kindergarten because she didn't meet the deadline for her birthday for Washington but she did in California. They did let her start and between Grammie, Dave and Aunt Heather, Kim makes it to school every day. (Thank you again to Grammie and Auntie Heather for all of the help you have given to Dave and me.) We are renting a duplex as of Jan 15th. I have to finish up my job before I can move up. I will be moving up with our belongings that weekend. Dave and I get together as often as we can so I can see the girls but it has been pretty rough. When we finally are together again living under the same roof it will be 3 months of seperation. I am so grateful for eternal families. The knowledge that we will be together forever has made this seperation bareable. It is still difficult but we are pushing throw it. We were able to spend Christmas together which was a much needed time together.

I didn't have my camera for Christmas so I am copying pictures of my girls from Heather's blog page. Thanks Heather :) I am hoping to get more pictures from all the other family we were able to see so I will post them as soon as I get them. :)

We spent Christmas Eve with the Butlers and had a great time. Auntie Heather taught the girls Christmas songs and they sang them. Okay Kim and Norah sang Hadley was too shy to sing.

Grammie Cakes as Hadley calls Grammie read the Christmas story out of the Bible and everyone played a part. Dave was a sheep. (No picture of Dave, Sorry it really was a sight to see) Kim was the angel.
Hadley was Mary. I can remember doing the christmas story play when I was young and I was always Mary. I never had to speak just sit there. Hadley did it perfectly. Aunt Misty gave the all the kids Jammies. They had fun changing and waiting for Santa.

Inspiration from Yosemite

My sister-in-law Misty, takes the most beautiful pictures and so I decided to try my hand at it. These are just some of the pictures I took at Yosemite. Thank you Misty, I started to see life in a whole new world. I wanted to capture a piece of the beauty there and bring it home. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

8th Anniversary in Yosemite

Dave and I just celebrated our 8th Anniversary. I can't believe it has been 8 years already. It felt like only yesterday the girls were born and we got married. We have had a great 8 years. This year Dave surprised me by planning a special trip to Yosemite National Park. He went last year with his scout troop and couldn't wait to take the girls and I there. We left Saturday night right after I got home from work and then we drove to our hotel in Mariposa about 40 miles outside of Yosemite Valley. We got up and drove around the south and west end of Yosemite. We saw several animals. The girls had a great time looking out their window for different animals. We saw a 4 point buck (this one is for you Andy)About 10 deer...
2 Coyotes....
And Yes a BEAR! It was a very little cub but none the less a bear. Dave and I both wondered if this was a baby bear where is his mommy??? We didn't stick around to find out... We hike 2 granite hills. This one was so huge you can hardly see Dave and the girls. We walked pretty far up together and then I ran down the hill to get pictures so you could get an idea of how huge this rock really was. The rock was surprisingly really easy to walk up. We got to some pretty steep angles and still had a great footing. There is a little dot in the middle of the rock... That is my little family.
We let the girls run as far and as fast as they wanted to straight up the hill. They actually got pretty far but the got tired and sat down to wait for Dave and I. I am amazed how little oxygen there is at 8500 ft. It couldn't have been how out of shape I am... Okay maybe it could. The views were breathtaking.We then stopped for lunch at Silver Lake (at lease that is what I think it is called.) From a distance it was the most amazing blue I had ever seen. Dave said when he went last year the water was really cold about a foot below the surface. We also climbed this rock... The girls had so much fun climbing and playing on the granite. It was such a great view we took pictures from every angle. I think in all together we took over 180 pictures. So I had to be very selective on the pictures I post. :)

I have always wanted to see a redwood (or Sequoya) tree that is more than 20 feet in diameter. Well we did. This tree fell down several years ago and is on the very beginning of a trail. I couldn't wait to see what else there was to see. The picture of the biggest tree didn't turn out but this one tells a little of how big these trees get. Some of them are over 3500 years old. And I learned something really interesting... It takes a Sequoya 20 years to drop a pine cone. In this picture below the roots aren't even completely in the picture.

Primary Halloween Party

We just had our Halloween Party for Primary on Friday. The girls were so excited to go that they were ready an hour before we had to leave.

Kim wanted to be Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) this year. That is all she has talked about since we went to Disneyland in Septemer.

Hadley on the other hand couldn't decide. So we went through several different ideas on what she wanted to be and finally she decided on a ballerina. We had rented Angelina the Ballerina from the library and she started dancing around the house. We got her some dancing slippers and she even wears them to bed.
Kim also has a school parade at school on Halloween and a party that they are looking forward to. So stay tuned for those pictures. :)

Who does she look like?

Thanks to Jessica I found this great website. Plus I get prove that my kids actually look like me. I wonder if the meter was trying to tell me, "This kid doesn't look like either of you."



The first time I did this I used a different picture of Dave and Hadley came out 6% more like me. I like this picture better of Dave plus, she looks equally like Dave and I. :) If you would like to try it just click on one of our pictures.