4th of July

I love the Fourth of July.  It's a great holiday and a great thing we celebrate!

We didn't go to the hot air balloon festival this year--the timing just didn't work out right for us, but we'll have more chances in the future.  We love going to the parade though, especially because we have some pretty great ladies who sleep out on the parade route and reserve us a fantastic spot!

Photo bombed by Mike :/



After the parade we went home for naps, lunch and some resting.
That evening just as we were getting ready to head out the door to pick up dinner and head to the fireworks, Aurora was playing with our door and locked the deadbolt with the door open and then slammed it against the door jam.  I closed the door and got the lock back in the door, but it wouldn't go flush with the door so I locked it thinking when I unlocked it, the lock would go back into the door.  But...we ended up getting locked INSIDE our house!  I decided I'd rather get locked in than out, but I was still irritated because we were almost ready to leave for other fun festivities.  Darwin couldn't get the door unlocked either and ended up climbing down the outside of our building through our living room window (from the 2nd floor) thinking he might be able to unlock it from the outside with his key.  That didn't work, so he climbed back up the side of our building and back in through the window to try plan B.  He ended up having to take the entire dead bolt apart to get it unlocked just to get us out of the house.
Needless to say, we had to buy a new dead bolt for our front door the next day :)


Our Sweet Savannah in her cute, festive dress :)

Miss Aurora

Our family :)


Vannah kept trying to pull Rori's curls...stinker!

We entertained ourselves in various ways for a couple hours before the fireworks

Cutie!


Rori played on the bleachers for a while and ended up tumbling over one of the benches like a slinky :(  She got a nice bump on her head from that, but she was a good sport and felt much better after some snuggles and feel-better-kisses from Mom and Dad


Eating cotton candy and getting a little scared of the loud fireworks someone was lighting off near the field

Once it got dark enough, we whipped out the glow sticks Grandma and Grandpa gave us before they headed out of town on a Church History tour for a couple weeks.  The glow sticks were a big hit and really help with keeping track of the kidlets in the dark!



Happy Fourth!!

Our girls in June

This is my last post for June and then we're on to July! Yay!

I mentioned in a couple posts back that Darwin went to Scout camp for a whole week back in June.  It was a rough week for all of us.  We didn't have much contact with him because he was busy with the scouts, and camping in the mountains.  I had to work over time that week and ended up putting in 65 hours!  The girls got to hang out with really awesome people that week though, and THANK YOU again to our angel babysitters (you know who you are) who made it possible for me to get all the hours in that week that I did.  We were all SO ready to have Daddy home.
Aurora especially misses him when he's gone--this was the afternoon he came home. Priceless!

Our girl's sleep schedule gets thrown off a bit in the summer time.  Aurora has been taking naps in the early evening quite frequently and then has a hard time falling asleep when it's bed time.  One night she told us she was going to have a picnic with her toys in her bedroom, and we were fine with it as long as she stayed in her room.  After she had been quiet for a while, Dar went in to check on her and this is what he found--bike and puzzle and all! :)

I love when I look through the pictures on our camera and find that Rori has taken some selfies :)

Savannah turned 15 months in June!  I can't believe how fast time flies!

 Savannah's 15 month stats:

Weight: 26 pounds 7 ounces (96%)

Length: 33 inches (99%)

Head: 46.5 cm (72%)

At 15 months:

-Savannah's personality seems to blossom more and more every day!  

-She is such a funny little thing, and a huge tease!  She frequently takes Rori's clothes when she's trying to get dressed and will book it out of the room giggling, wanting Rori to chase her.

-She LOVES animals, and that is not an understatement.  She gets SO excited anytime she sees any kind of animal.

-She is becoming pretty independent and wants to do everything herself.

-She loves to do anything her big sister is doing.  They're becoming even better friends as they get older.

-She loves watching Baby Einsteins and gets excited as soon as she sees the caterpillar come on screen in the intro.

-She also loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and calls for Toodles when the rest of the gang does too.

-She's slowly starting to say more and more words.  A few of her new ones are: "echo", "ouch" and "Ye-haw!"

-She's signing more too: Thank you, Sorry, help, bath, cheese, bird, shoes (and I'm sure there are more words and signs I'm not thinking of right now).

-She's starting to sing along with songs in the car, and especially to the songs from Frozen, or when we're singing at church.

-We dropped her most special bunny in the parking lot on the way home one day a few weeks ago.  I wasn't sure where we lost it and found out later what happened to it.  I think I was more distraught than Savy was about it, but I ordered a new one and now she has H2 (Hopson II).  She could tell the difference and didn't want anything to do with the new Hopson at first, but she's slowly warming up to her.

-She stuck a pea in her nose at dinner a few nights ago (again while Daddy was out of town).  I planned to take her to the doctor the next day to have them get it out because I didn't feel like it was urgent--she was still doing okay and able to breathe fine, she just seemed a little uncomfortable.  Luckily she was able to get it out on her own in the middle of the night.

-She definitely still loves nap time and bed time, although she doesn't fall asleep on her own as well as she used to.

She's starting to love dressing up--she says "Ye-haw!" every time she wears this hat :)

She fell asleep on the floor one afternoon when she was being stubborn about taking a nap in her crib

She also LOVES books--we find books all over the house that she has pulled off the shelves and taken with her to look at throughout the day

With more books on another day--I'm so glad she lets me put her hair in cute little piggy tails now!

We love you, Miss Savannah-Wanna!  Happy 15 months!

Feeding the Ducks

For FHE one night in June we took the girls to a pond to feed some ducks.  We always get a kick out of the ducks from the very beginning because as soon as you park at this pond, the ducks are headed straight for your car because they know what they're about to get :)

As we pulled into the parking lot I saw this little family of ducks in one part of the pond away from most of the other ducks.  We decided to go feed them first--the babies were so cute!


My cute family

There always seems to be one pelican hanging out with the ducks and geese

I felt so bad for this poor duck--it was missing half of its bill!


Aurora is becoming a pro at feeding the ducks

Vannah was really getting into it too!

A mama Canadian goose with her teenagers :)

 So HAPPY!

We love FHE activities!
[And so do the ducks ;) ]

Father's Day 2014

So much has happened since Father's Day that I really don't remember much of what we did for Daddy (I had a really crazy week the week before--Daddy was at Scout Camp with the scouts and I worked 65 hours of over time that week!).  I think we let him sleep in a little bit and then we made him a yummy breakfast and gave him his gifts. We didn't get a picture of Daddy and the girls until after church, so this is as good as we could get...

I thought this one was cute too :)

Darwin, thank you for being the best husband and father we could ask for.  We're SO blessed to have you in our lives.  Thank you for loving me and the girls like you do.  We need you more than you know.  Love you, Bunches!! Happy Father's Day!

Art City Days 2014

We always love Art City Days and look forward to it every year.

We got up really early one morning to see the hot air balloons and we were a little disappointed that the balloons couldn't fly this year.  The wind gusts were too strong and made it too dangerous for the ballooners.  We still got to see a couple of them get filled up, and that was good enough for us this time.

Me and the girls and Uncle Jared

Aurora's face looked like this most of the time we were there.  Our once fearless child now gets pretty scared when she hears loud noises :(

Savannah is following in her sister's footsteps and doesn't like loud noises either :(

Our girls were finally happy when we were sitting a good distance from the noisy balloons, holding balloons of their own :)



She wanted to see the piggy balloon get blown up, but notice the plugged ears. Poor thing.


Later that same night we met up with some of our friends at the carnival.

Aurora was much more brave about riding the carnival rides this year, but still got a little scared

It REALLY helped that she had a friend to ride rides with this time.  They had so much fun together and Aurora got more and more brave with wanting to try new rides.


Savannah was excited to ride the merry-go-round with the gang

After trying out the small car ride, they decided they wanted to try the bigger one :)

For some reason I see visions of these two in their teenage years--look out, April! ;)

The last ride Rori and Orlando did was the caterpillar roller coaster.  Aurora was even putting her arms up and yelling "Woo-hoo!" on this one. I'm so proud of her for trying new things and enjoying it! :)

The next morning we got up and headed into town to watch the parade.  It was surprisingly chilly that morning!
Rori and her other BFF, Mr.P
And, evidence again that our girls don't like loud noises


Vannah needed a little help from Daddy

I had to work a lot during the month of June to help with a big project we needed to complete, but we got photo evidence that I took time off work to go with them to the parade :)

Darwin and Aurora met up with our Aussies to watch the fireworks that night, but didn't take any pictures.  Savannah and I stayed home so she could go to bed and I worked after she fell asleep until Daddy and Rori got home.

Yay! for Art City Days!