Getting started on October, finally!

So, we're mid-way through November and I'm finally getting started on my October posts.  I'm going to just blitz through them...ready? :)

General Conference Weekend

October 4-5

I love, LoVe, LOVE Conference Weekend when we get to stay home together as a family to listen to our Prophet, Apostles, and other church leaders speak to us.  It's such a re-energizing experience every 6 months and I always look forward to it.  It's definitely a different kind of adventure trying to "listen" to Conference with little kids, but so worth it!  Our girls really did great!

I've been working for months on trying to get some file folder games put together for our girls.  I started cutting them out back in June on our long car ride down to St. George.  I had printed a ton of them and didn't get them all cut out on that trip, so any time after that when we'd be in the car for an hour or more, we'd bring the file folder games with us to cut them out.  Darwin ended up getting the rest of them cut out for me.  We spent Conference weekend listening to Conference and cutting, coloring and gluing, file folder games.  We're still not done because we still need to laminate them and then get them all cut out again.  It's a LOT of work, but I'll be glad when we finally get the time to get them completed :)

My loves.

Rori insisted I take a picture of her pencils :)


Jaker's
October 6
There's a super fun (not to mention FREE) pumpkin patch that shows up around Halloween.  The kids (and maybe adults, too) love it!  We went a couple of times this year.  The first time we met our neighbors there, and then our Aussie's met up with us too.

One big hit is always the corn pit.  I'm honestly not a huge fan, partly because the corn is pokey when you're not wearing shoes (and when you are wearing shoes you end up with a shoe full of dried corn)!  The kids love it though.


 Savy's friend, Mia, just chillin' in the corn :)

Our beautiful Savannah-Wannah


Cutie-pa-tootie Aurora!

Rori and Orlando on top of the hay pyramid

They were up pretty high and Rori was a little scared to come down on her own so I had to go help her down--meanwhile, Savannah booked it straight for some horses on the other end of the field--it's hard when there's just one of us and two kids to keep track of! Haha!

Their "cheese" faces crack me up sometimes.

Savannah's favorite part (by far!) was the petting zoo. This girl LOVES animals and can't help but get overly excited when she's around them.  It's pretty darn cute, I must say.  Too bad her Momma isn't willing to get her a pet just yet.

Sisters and BFFs!

Tracee cracked up because trying to get this picture made us think if the Brady Bunch.

Pumpkins make a perfect backdrop!

We were sad Daddy missed being with us on this trip, but he got to come with us another time...

Carpet Cleaning, Jaker's and our Pumpkin Patch
October 11
We've been wanting to get our carpet cleaned for a while and I finally found a good deal on Amazon so we went for it!  It was a much better experience with much better results than our last shot at cleaning our carpets.  Darwin thanked me a couple times for making it happen :)  The girls, of course, loved taking our house apart to get ready for the clean carpets.

We brought Aurora's mattress into the living room after they woke up that morning so they had something to snuggle on for their early morning TV watching :)

Savy thought it was pretty crazy to see her crib propped up sideways on our bed

Luckily the weather was pretty awesome for most of October and it happened to be a beautiful day the day we got our carpets cleaned, so we took Daddy to Jakers with us this time while we waited for the carpet to dry.


 
You can only tell a kid not to throw the corn so many times before you finally give in and realize you need to just let your kid be a kid sometimes [totally talking about myself here ;)]


 Especially when Daddy's in on it too!  What can I say?  He's just a really big kid and I love him for it!

Beautiful Savannah!

 Daddy buried Aurora in the corn--this is the only shot I got before she sat up and uncovered herself.

Drip, drip, drop!  Little corn kernel showers!

We missed out on the tube slides the first time we went, but the kids loved them this time!



 Once again, Savannah LOVED the animals!

Darwin was really cautious about letting Savannah pet the miniature donkeys because they were feisty little things!


Fun VW Bug all decked out for Halloween :)

And a creepy skeleton driving an old pickup truck

It was a must to visit the petting zoo again.  I love that I caught this shot of Darwin kissing Savannah's head.  Our girls are both so kissable!



I love Savannah's curly piggy-tails!

They're just like her big sister's curly piggy-tails!
Rori put corn in her shirt to feed the animals like she saw some bigger girls do :)

Cuddly little piggies

On a mega-slow super fun hayride around the pumpkin patch!  The kid driving the tractor was probably 10 years old.  It's probably a good thing he was driving it so slowly! :)

After a fun morning at Jaker's we had a yummy lunch together at Subway and then headed to our very own pumpkin patch to pick the pumpkins Aurora helped Daddy plant way back in May.
I love that I captured this shot of one of Daddy's beezee's on a pumpkin flower--two of our favorite things together: beezee's and pumpkins :)

I love the change of the seasons!

No words needed, but I couldn't resist posting this picture. Haha!

Savy was getting pretty tired at this point--it was WAY past nap time! She was a trooper though!

This picture kind of cracks me up more than it should.  Don't ask me why.

Rori was tired and wanting snuggles too.

Rori and Grandpa showing their "pumpkins".  "Silly, Grandpa!" as Rori would say.

Savy and her pumpkin

More to come on October later!

I {heart} bedtime.

One of my favorite times of day is bedtime.

I love that we gather together as a family to read scriptures and a fun story (or 2, or sometimes 3) together while the girls have one last drink of milk before bed.

I love that our girls frequently get silly and giggle together a lot at bedtime.

I love (most of the time) that they like to run around the house wanting us to chase them to get their jammies on.

I love that Rori's usually pretty good about letting us help her brush all the "sugar bugs" off her teeth and that Savy begs to brush her "teese" too (Savy doesn't let us help her though).

I love that our girls like for me (or Daddy) to sing to them and that they let me do "hair snaps" in their hair as they fall asleep.

I love that they love for me to rock them in our cozy rocking chair while I sing them to sleep.

I love the calmness and quiet in the house after the girls finally fall asleep.

And at all times of the day, I love that I get to be their mom!

09.22.14 - 18 months!

Savannah turned 18 months old on September 22nd!  Holy cow!  Time flies!  I honestly LOVE this age!  She's got an incredibly fun, mischievous, personality and she's so much fun to be around.

 Savannah's 18 month stats:
Weight: 28 pounds 13 ounces (97%)
Length: 33 inches (83 %)
Head: 48 cm (89%)

At 18 months:

-Savannah LOVES bath time!  She asks to have a "bap" on a daily basis.  I'm glad she likes to be clean (and/or play in the bubbly water)!

-She suddenly started talking a LOT more! She is saying new words almost every day--I love it!

-She is becoming extremely independent.  She loves to walk up the stairs to our condo all by herself and she's pretty insistent that she buckles herself into her car seat all by herself now too.

-She loves her big sister and the two of them play really well together (most of the time).

-Savannah LOVES animals! I'm sure I've said that before, but it's still very true :)

-She can say lots of animal sounds now and signs the name of a few too.

-She sits really well for me to fix her hair.  She has a pretty good mullet going on right now, so it's perfect for cute little piggy tails!

-She has the cutest little giggle and still does her awesome vibrato laugh too.

-She is definitely a tease and loves to tease Aurora by taking her things and running down the hallway hoping Aurora will chase her.
-She makes really good crusty faces when she's grumpy.  They honestly make me smile :)

-She goes to nursery now and LOVES it! (More to come on nursery.)

-She still loves to snuggle her bunny Hopson (or "Bop" as Savy calls her), her blankey and Mom or Dad when it's time to go to sleep.

-She loves books and stories.  She always climbs down from my lap at nap time to get a "boop" for me to read before she'll go to sleep.

-She definitely likes our daily routine and is happiest when we stick with it.

-She's a good eater and a good sleeper.  Thank goodness!

-She loves to play and run around outside.
-She loves to play with our Living Scripture DVDs, and wrestle in our freshly washed laundry.

-She wants to do everything her big sister does--the good and the bad!

-She loves to be tickled.

-Her personality is blossoming more and more and she's such a joy to be around!

I love her beautiful smile!

Look how serious she is! :)



Silly girl :)

So proud of herself for sitting on the potty like Aurora

Sweet little thing

She LOVES to play with our Living Scripture DVDs--it cracked me up that she was pushing some of them in the baby stroller :)

Wearing Daddy's slippers


Darwin calls her our little possum because whenever she falls down she just lays on the ground for a minute. Haha.

This little one likes her nap time and occasionally falls asleep when I'm in the shower if I'm late getting ready for the day. Poor thing.

Super Savy pushing a book around in the stroller

Happy 18 months, Savannah!  We love you, princess!

Family Portrait

I have definitely fallen behind in my blogging again, but I'm determined to slowly get caught up!  I know it's November, but I have to wrap up September before moving on to October, so bear with me :)

September 18th is always a tender day for me.  It's the day we were due to give birth to our 2nd daughter, Nastassia.  She was due September 18, 2012.  We were devastated when we found out at 13 weeks gestation that the tiny life growing inside of me had severe deformities and it was very unlikely the baby would make it through the pregnancy.  At almost 17 weeks along, our tiny child no longer had a heartbeat.  We were heartbroken, but we were so grateful for the time we had to try to prepare ourselves for this possible outcome--I really don't think there's a way to ever prepare yourself for something like that.

As hard as it was to lose our tiny baby girl, it was such a peaceful experience to be in the delivery room together that night.  I can honestly say I've never felt closer to Heaven than I did in the hospital on the night of April 6, and the morning of April 7, 2012.  We held our tiny and lifeless Nastassia Grace for the first and the last time on this earth on April 7, 2012.

Although she's not here with us physically, Nastassia is still very much a part of our family.  We talk about her frequently with Aurora and Savannah.  I love that Aurora likes to talk about her with us. Savannah doesn't understand enough yet, nor does she have the words to communicate with us about her, although she does like to look at Stassia's picture in our living room.

My heart was deeply touched when Aurora drew a beautiful picture of our family just a couple of days before September 18th.  Nastassia had been on my mind a lot but I really hadn't talked to Aurora about it.  I love that Nastassia is on Aurora's mind too, even when I don't know it :)

Aurora's description of the picture she drew:
"My brother (Jesus) is the green one. Daddy is the black. Mom, you're the purple. Nastassia is between you guys, and me and Vannah are here at the bottom."

My tender heart was touched.  Thank you, sweet Aurora, for making my heart smile by remembering your sister who is waiting to greet us in Heaven someday :)

We love you, Nastassia!  You're in our hearts now and always!