playgroup valentine's party

We had a Valentine's party for playgroup. We made and decorated cookies and made valentine's. We had a great time, the kids really enjoyed it, we're even talking about doing one in March for St Patrick's day. I didn't get any great pictures, but here's a few of some of the kids decorating and eating their cookies. Oh, and if anyone needs a good sugar cookie recipe - this one is amazing. It has sour cream in it so the cookies are so soft - yum!!

names???

We don't have a name picked out yet, have a list of possibilities. but i'm open to suggestions. We think Ainsleigh is a very cool name, and therefore our next one deserves a cool name as well. Who knows, maybe one of you lucky readers can come up with one we just fall in love with. Have a great day!!

New house

The first weekend of February we bought a new house. We have been looking casually since December, seriously since the first of the year. We looked at quite a few houses, and found the one for us. We initially tried to stay in our ward boundaries, but that didn't work out, so we will be moving into the ward directly to the west of ours. We meet in the same ward and our playgroups meet together most of the time, so Ainsleigh and I are happy to not still have an easy connection to all of our friends in the Keizer ward - we have made some awesome friends there. And we'll still have our various parties together. Brody's sister Rachel and her family also just bought a house in Keizer - in the same ward!! They are in a different elementary school district, but it will be fun in the same ward, the kids will love seeing each other on a more regular basis. The house is new, we're buying it fromt the builders. We're excited about that. We like everything, the only thing we're planning to do is putting a closet organizer in the girls room, and maybe the understairs coat closet downstairs. So, here are some photos the builders took a little while ago to send to someone else. The refrigerator wasn't there yet, and there are only photos of the master bedroom, but we'll take more once we are moved in - empty rooms are kind of boring to look at anyways. It is a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath with lots of storage and an enormous master bedroom -so the office stuff will go in there. We are supposed to close somtime in March, latest rumor is the first week, but we'll see. We should be moving in very soon after closing. So right i'm busy trying to clean, clean out and start packing soon. My mom and stepdad, Ric, are coming this weekend so maybe they can help me get some things done. We are also doing the walk through and shopping for window coverings and some furniture. We saved up a little extra so we could get some new furniture for the new house as well - we're really excited.

living room from kitchen/dining area

kitchen & dining area - but there's a fridge now

linen closet in the laundry room - which is upstairs with all of the bedrooms!!

master bedroom

master closet

master bath - we LOVE this

driveway - at first I didn't like this, thinking I would've preferred more grass, but the more I think about it the more I like it - a place to ride bikes, play basketball and do all sorts of other things without having to be in the street. The house in in a cul de sac that will be fairly quiet, but is just off a busy for inside a neighborhood road where you wouldn't want kids playing.

backyard - yeah, enough space for a swingset!! And Ainsleigh's birthday is coming up - yippee!!

We're having a ....

January in a nutshell

January came and went really fast. We closed on the sale of our house in Florida on New Year's Eve (yeah!!), so a lot of time in January was spent looking at homes to buy here in Keizer. We came within hours of making an offer on one, but finally decided it was too expensive, made an offer on another but got outbid. Then things came around in February.

Play-doh has lately been one of Ainsleigh's favorite past times. She plays it nearly every day.

Ainsleigh loves the princess dresses she got for Christmas, and when baby Lillian came to visit us for a while one day Ainsleigh requested that she be dressed as a princess as well - they had fun, although i'm not sure Lillian was quite certain what to think of all the clothes.

Ainsleigh loves to have one of us with her when she watches shows, and daddy is still her favorite! I wish I could've gotten a good picture of both of them at the same time, but none the less - I still think these are adorable.

For our anniversary this year we went to Portland and watched the Jazz play the Blazers. We had a great time, and were very pleased with this picture, I think it's the best one of the two of us probably since our engagement pictures.

sledding fun in Utah

While we were in Utah there was so much snow we couldn't pass up the opportunity to play in it. Brody and his dad got the 4-wheeler going and nearly everyone got a ride. It was lots of fun. The kids had a blast, Uncle Regan did some crazy stuff, and they even decided they wanted to help Papa shovel his driveway. Ainsleigh loved all of it, but spent more time eating snow than anything else I think. I was amazed she didn't lower her body temperature or something she ate so much. This was on Saturday, the day before we left, and after this we had lunch, went to Kangaroo Zoo and off to the bowling alley - it was one long day. Ainsleigh didn't get a nap, so when she fell asleep at around 8 on the way home from bowling we just let her go and put her down for the night.

Christmas in Utah

Here's some of the pictures from Christmas in Utah with Brody's family. With all the grandkids together and playing together we had a lot of photo opportunities. Also, we did tons of fun things. Christmas, Chuck E Cheese's (chunky cheese's as Ains says), Kangaroo Zoo with all the jumping things & slides, and bowling. It was a crazy fun filled time. We also played in the snow, but I took so many pics of that I decided to do a seperate slideshow of them. Oh, and ignore the music, I couldn't easily figure out how to not have it and I didn't have time to really investigate.

a hair-erasing experience

The day before we flew to Utah for Christmas, very shortly before we were leaving to drive up to Portland to stay the night, I was upstairs and Ains was downstairs watching a movie. I checked on her, and she wasn't there - so I came down and looked for her. I opened her door - and there she stood scissors in hand. First I was mad, and yanked the scissors away. After putting them in non-reachable place I walked back to her room and screamed realizing just how much she had cut off. Then I srarted to cry over it - hair has always been a big deal to me, don't know why. She was already crying for numerous reasons - she couldn't get the door open (her knob sticks sometimes) so she had an accident since she couldn't get out to get to the bathroom, then I yelled, screamed and worst of all started crying. We called my mom so she could talk to her and I just cried the whole time. Yes, I had expected a self-barbering at some point- but I expected short bangs, a lopsided bob, not quite what we got...

the hair all over the floor

These pictures really don't quite show the damage well. The entire top of her head had hair 1-2 inches long, and the back right side had an area about the size of her palm that was seriously buzz cut short. I just kept trying to get her to wear a hat, which of course was very unsuccessful! We got it cut the next afternoon into a pixie, and cut again last week into a very short pixie. It looks cute now that we've gotten used to it, but the planis still to grow it back into a bob. If I don't put a bunch of product in it, it lays down so flat she could be mistaken for a really cute little boy. Also, the bed head is like 100 times worse and she hates for me to do anything with it. Plus, I miss pig tails. I'm hoping by this summer it will be long enough to be a layered bob at least - we'll see. I'm not looking forward to the growing out process, but I don't want bed head like this forever.

December snow storm

We got hit with a crazy storm in December. It hit on a Sunday and lasted almost 2 weeks. We hardly have more than 2 inches of snow on the ground in this area, and it maybe lasts 2 days - as you can see, it was a lot more this time. This was Monday, 8 days after it had started, and I think my car had only sat since Thursday or Friday! The first Monday the roads were like driving on an ice skating rink - like nothing i've ever experienced before. We left Tuesday the 23rd (day 10) and they got more for a few days while we were gone. Unfortunately for him, Joel came to visit in the middle of this and didn't really get to see anything as the entire area was completely crippled by the storm. Miraculously we made it out of the airport and by the time we were back the snow had nearly all melted. It was certainly a sight to see.

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween, after a slow morning we went to a playgroup party. Ainsleigh had a blast, but she wasn't very happy that we hadn't taken her costume with us when we got ready to do the group picture and she was the only one without it. After playgroup we came home for nap time, then we had to go to my work for something I needed to take care of. Once home from there (where she got candy and lots of attention so she was totally okay with it), we had a quick dinner and were off to trick or treat. We went out for around an hour, then she was ready to be home.... until Brock & Tate came by, then we went back out with them for at least another hour. It turned out good because as the kids were all getting worn out and we had been to just about every house in our neighborhood it started to rain. We were all so tired when we got back we left our porch light off, got ready and went to bed. Hopefully next year will be as much fun.

the playgroup gang: Isaac, Ains, Macy, Jacob, Maggie (beth for support), Brock, and Lillian

The little butterfly - once again in 3-4 layers of clothing for going out this year. I've managed to keep up the bug theme for 3 years, we'll see about next year, princess items are becoming very popular in this house.

the Pumpkin Patch

In October we went to a nearby pumpkin patch - there was lots to do, but we had a hard time getting Ainsleigh into many of the things, so it was kind of race through and get home. We had fun, she mostly enjoyed picking her and daddy's pumpkins out.

In a teepee in the maze

With daddy at the top of a hay bail mountain.

Sept trip to Utah

Ainsleigh in our hotel, day 2 Boise to Utah - very ready to get to Alpine and see everyone!

DIRRRTTTYYY GIRLZZZ!!!

Ains helping out in Papa Pack's berry patch - she mostly ran around after Coco, and one time they laid down under the berries so hidden and quiet we started yelling and yelling for her - finally she started giggling so we knew where she was, and where to look next time.

In September we went to Utah for about a week, mostly to learn how and do some food storage. We worked hard, had fun, and learned a lot. Because so much of our week was spent working we didn't take a lot of pictures. The day we got there we went to the farm to pick beans, Erin and Peyton came to visit for a while as we were getting ready to leave, and as you can see, they found a wonderful way to have fun. They thought it was just hilarious to throw the dirt up in the air and see where it went - we just kept laughing at them - especially they're little white eyes sticking out from such dirty faces.