Aurora's 4th Birthday!

Four years old! Seriously?!  Where does the time go?

I can't believe our little Aurora Nicole is growing up so fast!  She's a joy to be around and we love the charming girl she's growing up to be.  She certainly has her moments, don't get me wrong, but she's the light of our lives and keeps on amazing us with her spirit and her loving personality.

Aurora likes to go on "family dates" to eat dinner at a restaurant.  She doesn't care which one, she just likes "family dates". I love that she likes to be together as a family and that one of her favorite things is to go on dates with Mommy and Daddy. She's a cutie!

So, the night before her birthday we took her on a "family date".  We took her to the mall where they have these fun little animal things that you ride with only two rules--stay on the bottom floor and don't take them into any stores. She's been wanting to do it for a while and we thought this would be a great opportunity.  She loved it!  The 30 minute ride was a little long and both girls were ready to be done by our time was up, but they definitely enjoyed it!

Rori chose an elephant to ride on
(it drove fine but needed to be charged because it was definitely slower than Savannah's and my hippo)

Savy wanted to ride on a hippo

It was fun to race them all around the mall!  Once Aurora got the hang of it she got to drive one all by herself! :)

After our riding session we ate a yummy dinner at Wingers.  It was a fun family date, and perfect for our four year old's birthday!

Birthday morning, Aurora woke up to balloons all over her room, ribbons hung all over the house, and a pile of presents waiting for her from Mommy, Daddy, and Savannah.  We were aiming to have her open her presents that night when we had family and friends come celebrate with cake and ice cream, but she couldn't wait...go figure :)  We at least got her to help Daddy make her cake before she opened presents.




This one is a little fuzzy but I love her reaction.  She'd been asking for a cake like that for a while but she got a bonus pizza too! :)

Grandma and Grandpa had to leave out of town so they brought their gifts over the night before.  She got to open those in the morning too.

She got a food set for their new kitchen they got from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas

A new scooter--she was thrilled!

Playing with her new toys

Enjoying some iPod time after a bath and before getting ready for church. One of her favorite things to do :)

Daddy always gives the girls flowers on their birthday, and he gets flowers for me too :)  He's the best!!!

Our beautiful girl all ready for church.  Happy to be four!...

...but sad she's not five yet. Silly girl!

After church she helped Daddy decorate her cake and cupcakes and get ready for some company to come celebrate with us.  She was excited for people come be with her on her special day!  She wanted a princess cake this year.

And she got Hello Kitty cupcakes because she loves Hello Kitty so much too :)




After cake and ice cream she got to open some more gifts. Spoiled little thing! ;)

One of her favorites was a pillow-book from Uncle Ryan and Tammy

She got nail polish from her friend Alex and my friend's little girl, Charly, had fun painting Rori's nails with her new nail polish.

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us and for those of you who wanted to be there with us but couldn't make it.  Our little sweetheart had such a special day!

Aurora's 4 year stats:
Weight: 32 pounds 6 ounces (27%)
Length: 39.6 inches (46%)

At FOUR years:

-Aurora has quite the little personality on herself and she definitely keeps us on our toes.

-She's a smart little thing and surprises us with the things she remembers and comes up with sometimes.

-She can write her first and last name all by herself.
-She can also write words like Mommy and Daddy and can write about 3/4 of the letters in the alphabet and is learning to write many more things.
-She loves to draw pictures and is getting better and better at drawing people and things like flowers, hearts, the sun, etc.
-She can write all of the numbers 1-10
-She is always asking questions and loves learning new things
-She has a tender heart and can be quite emotional at times (I definitely thing it's a girl thing!)
-She REALLY wants a baby brother and prays for one almost every night.  She also prays for "this many babies" and will unfold her arms to hold up all ten fingers. I tell her she can have that many babies when she's a mommy :)
-She will randomly tell people we're having a baby brother, even though I'm not pregnant.  I keep telling her that I want one too and hopefully we'll get a baby brother someday.  She already calls him by the name we want to use if/when we get a baby boy.
-She's excited to start preschool in the fall and already says she has to do "homework" which usually consists of her drawing pictures and cutting them up.
-She loves primary and learning about Jesus.
-About a week before her fourth birthday she finally "got it" with potty training and has come leaps and bounds in just a short while--finally! :)
-She loves to tell stories and frequently tells us stories about her great-great-great grandfather and other "great" relatives.  It's pretty comical most of the time!
-She loves her baby sister and is always so proud of her.  She tells random strangers about all the new things her "baby" is learning.
-Whenever I ask what she wants for dinner she requests spaghetti and meatballs but usually doesn't eat the meatballs.
-Her favorite color is pink
-Her favorite movie is Big Hero 6
-Her favorite book is a book called "My Little Ducky"
-Her favorite song is "I love the mountains" but changed to the words I made up (I love Aurora, I love Nastassia Grace, I love Savannah, I love your Daddy too! I love to be with you when all the lights are low. Boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom!)
-Her favorite thing to do is doing chores, so she says. Haha!  Really it's to play with Savannah :)

Happy birthday, Aurora Nicole!

We love you!

Catching up - January Randomness

The girls were pretty sad when we said it was time to put all of our Christmas stuff away.  They were good sports though.
Rori kissing the Christmas tree box goodbye :)

They're becoming pro's at silly faces!


These two are such good friends! I love that they play so well together.  They crack me up a lot with the silly things they come up with; like trying to squeeze into the doll crib together.

They didn't quite fit.

I had a conference call for work one morning and had to lock myself in my bedroom so I could listen without interruption.  The girls helped themselves to making a mess while I was preoccupied.  This wouldn't be such a big deal to clean up if Darwin and I weren't so adamant about having our movies alphabetized.  The pile actually stayed there until Daddy got home and he's the one who cleaned it up.  What an awesome guy!  Good thing it was only a few of our movies!

They both love Daddy's electronics.  They usually need their own time with the iPad or iPod, but it's nice when they'll sit together and share :)

One of their favorite things for breakfast right now is Nutella on toast.  Savy asks for it almost every morning, but Aurora likes to switch it up sometimes.  They love the chocolaty mess it makes :)


Being silly

 
 



More to come later! :)

We're back in business!!

$800 later, we got our recovered data on St. Patrick's day!  Yay!

It was expensive, but totally worth it to get back all those precious memories!!

Since getting our data back, we've backed up our photos 4 times!

It's probably a little excessive, but we're being super cautious now.

I haven't been able to blog until now because the same day we got our data back I got a code from Shutterfly for a free photo book and only had a week to finish it.  So, with my work schedule and using every spare minute I could to work on Aurora's photo book, I'm now getting the chance to blog again! Woo! Hoo!!

Now on to getting caught up.  I back dated our last post for December, but all our other updates will follow this one, so don't miss our December Part 2 post!

P.S.  While working on the Shutterfly photo book I just made for Aurora, I found an online website that has FREE unlimited photo storage.  It's called This Life by Shutterfly. Yet another reason why I love Shutterfly!!

The unlimited photo storage is free, but if you want video storage you have to pay an annual fee.  Just FYI :)

Don't give up on me!

I feel I have to explain the reason for my lack of blogging over the last few months because I've had several people ask me recently why I haven't been blogging.  Thank you to those of you who still read our blog and haven't given up on me!

*Rewind to mid-January*

I had dedicated myself to getting up early (5am, or maybe 6ish) on Sunday mornings until I get caught up on my blogging and creating the Shutterfly books I want to make.  So, one Sunday late in January I woke up to blog more about our Christmas, and the external hard drive we keep all of our photos and videos on could not be found by our computer, although it was plugged in.  I gently woke Darwin up to see if he could help me with it, thinking I was missing something or that it was right in front of my face and I just couldn't see it.

But no, our computer really couldn't find it, and when we tried to open it up we got a pop-up error asking if we wanted to reformat the drive.  Not a good sign!  I was heartbroken and sick over thinking we've lost all of our photos and videos from our 9.5 years of marriage.  Ugh! It still makes me sick!

Due to our busy schedule we didn't take it up to the Geek Squad until probably two weeks later.  They tried recovering our info while we waited but nothing came up.  We gave them a deposit and they said they'd try to recover it using some other software they had on hand, but if they couldn't recover it they'd refer us somewhere else.  I was hoping beyond hope that they'd be able to recover it (because that would be AWESOME and the cheapest route for us) but unfortunately they couldn't recover it, so they gave us our deposit back and referred us elsewhere.

The next step was to take our hard drive to a company in Salt Lake and hope they could recover it.  With their business hours and Darwin's work schedule it was tough to get up there before they closed, but we finally did it about two weeks ago.  They ran a data test on it and determined they needed to send our hard drive to their main base in Denver, CO.

We've been receiving daily emails about how the progress is coming with the recovery of our data, and the updates are hopeful, but we're still not sure if they've been able to recover all of our precious photos and videos.  I'm really hoping to get some good news tomorrow!  We know it's going to be expensive but totally worth it to get back all those priceless photos and videos!

We've been praying on a daily basis, multiple times a day, that our data will be recovered.  We had backed up a lot of it, but it's been a while since we backed it up last and I think it's at least all of Savannah's lifetime that hasn't been backed up.

So, if you think of us in your evening prayers tonight, say a little prayer that our data will be recovered and hopefully I'll be back to blogging and online scrap-booking soon!

*A word to the wise*

If you haven't backed up all the info on your computer lately, don't wait!  Do it NOW!  And then as an extra precaution...back up your back-up!

December - Part 2

Christmas Eve

On top of making Christmas cookies, we usually go swimming as our main activity on Christmas Eve--it's a tradition we're carrying on from my family--but this year we switched things up a bit and went up to Temple Square to see the lights.  Aunt Georgiana (Darwin's sister) was in town for Christmas and we have never taken our kids up to see the lights.  I feel like a horrible Utah mom for that reason! Haha!  So, we jumped on the opportunity to go see the lights on Christmas Eve this year instead of swimming.

It was a beautiful evening! Check out that sunset!

 It was really warm for being December, and I was grateful.  The lights are beautiful with snow all around, but I was personally glad for a warmer winter evening.

Our kids were excited to be there.  They love temples and being at a temple with lots of Christmas lights we pretty thrilling to them :)

Savannah was having some issues with her hat :)  Cute girl!

Our family!

Aurora loves doing silly pictures

Me and my handsome hubby!  Oh, how I love him!!

After walking around to see the lights with Darwin's family (yes, they were there too, we just didn't get any pictures of them for some reason), we rushed to Olive Garden for dinner before they closed for the night.  We ate a yummy dinner and enjoyed our time together before heading home to get ready for Santa to come.  The girls fell asleep in the car, and I felt bad that they didn't get to put out the milk and cookies for Santa, but we made sure Santa got all the cookies and milk he needed!

Aunt Georgiana slept over on Christmas Eve and Santa didn't even wake her up when he came, even though she was sleeping on the couch right next to the Christmas tree!  What a sneaky guy! ;)

Christmas Day

The girls actually slept in pretty late for being Christmas morning, but it's probably because we had a late night.

We woke up to fresh Christmas snow!  One of my favorite things about Christmas is waking up to a fresh, new, snowfall.  It's one of very few days we got snow this year so we were really blessed to have it!  When Aurora woke up and saw it, she came in to tell us, "Mom! Dad! It snowed!  Santa Claus IS coming to town!"

It was pretty adorable. :)

 

As soon as they got up they were checking out their stockings to see what Santa had filled them with.

Me and Aurora

Yep, now you've seen me without any make-up on ;)

The girls had a blast opening their presents.  Savannah wasn't super interested in the unwrapping part but it worked out well for Aurora because that was her favorite part so she got to help Savy open her presents :)

After a nice, relaxing morning and afternoon, Christmas evening we went to Grandpa and Grandma's house to open more presents and have a yummy Christmas dinner.

Our family on Christmas day

Another silly picture :)

Our cute girls watching a Christmas classic--White Christmas

Happy girls excited to open more presents!

Daddy being silly with some of the stocking stuffers the girls got (a tiara and a dinosaur mask)

Aunt Geo and Rori having a boxing match

Grandma and Grandpa gave the girls an awesome kitchen set

Aunt Georgiana and Aunt Andrea spoiled the girls too!

Setting up the kitchen

The next day, Daddy spent a couple hours setting up the new kitchen set for the girls (he said it took him two movies to do it--we watched The Music Man and The Lorax while he set it up)

 Rori takes over the camera every chance she gets. She took this picture of Daddy.

I think the girls think the kitchen set is more for playing in than playing with.  Whatever works! :)

I thought I got a picture of the finished product, but I guess I didn't.  Either way, it looks great and the girls love it!

Retirement Tribute

Darwin's mom retired at the end of the year.  While Georgiana was still in town, Dar and his siblings put together a little retirement tribute for their parents. It was fun to honor his parents and their many years of hard work!

Darwin reading his tribute

We all laughed and cried together

Georgiana had given everyone silly string in their stockings but was told it wasn't for spraying in the house.  But, after the retirement tribute, Grandpa surprised Geo by covering her with the silly string.  We realized after that why it really is an outside toy :)

Aurora wanted to feed the silly string "spaghetti" to Grandma :)

New Year's Eve

Our New Year's Eve was pretty low key.  We had planned to do some fun activities with the girls and let them stay up later than normal.  Bed time usually isn't until 8pm and we were going to let them stay up until 9:30-10:00ish, but Aurora fell asleep at 6:30pm!!

Daddy put "spicy drink" a.k.a. Sprite, in her sippy.  Savannah was pretty wired for a while after that.

We felt kind of bad carrying on without Aurora, but we had fun with Savannah until it was her bed time.

Daddy and Savy love dancing/spinning together

It was a wonderful Christmas and New Year holiday!  We loved having Daddy home with us for two whole weeks!  It was great to have Aunt Georgiana in town and great to spend so much time with family.

That wraps up 2014 in a nutshell.

Here's to another great year!