Our girls in November

These little girls we have certainly fill our lives with joy!

We sure love these little kidlets of ours!

Savannah
Savannah is starting to put multiple words together and I love to hear her talk!  A lot of what she says isn't very clear and has to be interpreted by me, but she's really close with some of them and it's nice that she's communicating so well with everyone!  Her words seem to be more clear every day though.  She surprises us with some of the new words she says on a daily basis. She's growing so fast and she has such a fun little personality.  She still loves to be a tease!  She has all of her teeth now except for her 2 year molars.  She currently loves Nemo and Frozen.  Her favorite show is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and she LOVES Mickey and Minnie right now.

Her favorite song is "I love to see the Temple."  She won't let me sing/hum any other song to her right now when I'm putting her down for nap time or bed time.  If I accidentally (or on purpose) switch the song she'll stop drinking her sippy or take her binky out and say "Memo" to let me know I need to keep singing "Temple".  I love that that's her favorite song!

Some of these pictures are kind of random, but I want to post them anyway :)

Happy girl!

And not-so-happy :)

Savy is learning how to take selfies just like Rori does

Savy's mullet hair is long enough that we can do braided piggy tails now!


Aurora
She's such a little sweetie.  She definitely has her moments, however.  Most of the time she's really great and helpful and it's nice that she's getting older and learning new things and likes to learn how to do new things on her own.  She really wants to learn how to tie her shoes.  We just want her to master potty training!  We'll move on to bigger and better things once that mountain has been conquered.

She got her hands on my eyebrow pencil one day and did her own makeup. I promise I don't do my makeup that way ;) I think she was trying to look more like Daddy than Mommy that day.

I pulled our her ballerina hand-me-downs from my cousin, Keira, and Rori LOVED it!  We really need to sign her up for a dance class!  Doesn't she make such a cute ballerina?

We tried a new hair style on Aurora too--I think it's my new favorite way to do her hair. It looks so cute on her!


I'm glad these two are such good friends and play so well together (most of the time).

I think it's been a while since I've posted some of Aurora's Rori-isms.  She really cracks us up sometimes!

October 15, 2014

Daddy was giving the girls a bath and Mommy was working on the computer.  From the other room, Mom heard Aurora say, “My butt is going to get big like yours, Daddy.” Haha!

October 23, 2014

We were eating dinner and Mom and Dad were chatting about something, not heated or anything…

Rori: “Guys! Stop fighting, okay?”

Mom: “We’re not fighting.  We’re just talking, sweetie. Apparently we don’t talk enough.

Rori: “I don’t like talk enoughs.”

October 27, 2014

We were just finishing up FHE.

Rori: “I have visiting teachers.  One’s name is Lucy and the other one’s name is Gru. And I have a friend named Macho.”

November 1, 2014

We were leaving cousin Alli’s baptism and following Grandpa and Grandma to Cracker Barrel for lunch. From the back seat we heard:

Rori: “Dad! We have to go home first!”

Dad: “Why do we have to go home?”

Rori: “So I can get my wallet.”

Dad: “What do you need your wallet for.”

Rori: “So I can buy the food!”

We thought it was very sweet that she was wanting to buy lunch for everyone :)

November 19, 2014:

Rori was going potty and I was sitting in the bathroom with her and we were just talking about something random. Aurora noticed the permanent retainer I have on the inside of my bottom teeth.

Rori: “Mom, you have a bracelet in your mouth.”
Mom: “I do?”

Rori: “Yeah. And Aeryka has bracelets in her mouth too.”

Mom: “I think you mean braces.”

Rori: “No, Mom.  They’re bracelets and necklaces.  I want bracelets in my mouth too.”

November 25, 2014

The girls were watching Polar Express and the Polar Express song came on.

Aurora exclaimed: “Oh, my heart!”

Mom: “Haha! What did you just say?”

Rori: “Mom, this song is in my heart!”

November 2014: For several months now Rori has been praying every night for a baby brother and “this many babies”—she unfolds her arms to put up all 10 fingers.  I told her she can have that many babies when she’s a mommy.

December 12, 2014

Rori: “Mom, Savannah is being a stinker. And a pill.  And a banana peel.”

November Happenings

Darwin and I have been really trying to make the effort to have some fun quality time with the girls on the weekends because we're working a lot and pretty busy during the week days. Not that we don't spend time with them during the week, but we make extra efforts to spend time together as a family on the weekends.  One of our favorite things to do as a family is a Friday night movie night.  I think we all look forward to Friday nights all week long!

We get lots of snuggle time in :)

Name that movie, anyone?
{Princess Diaries for anyone who can't guess those feet ;)}


Sunday, November 9, 2014
Aurora had her very first primary program at church!  Grandma and Grandpa came to watch and we were happy to have them there with us!  I was a little irritated with our primary president for a couple of reasons that I won't go into detail on.  Let's just say they had to do with crayons and peanuts.  Aurora did AWESOME though!  She was the very first one to say her line in the program and she nailed it!  She even whispered to the primary president, "I'm going to do it all by myself!" and then she said her line perfectly, "Before we came to Earth we lived with Heavenly Father."  I almost missed it because I didn't know she was going to be very first and I was on my way out the door with Savannah.  Luckily I heard her sweet little voice just before I left the chapel and turned around to see her say her line :)  Way to go, baby!
A friend from the ward sneaked a couple pictures of Rori during the program.
(Thanks, Vickey!)



Our sweet little Aurora got this giant chocolate bar from the primary presidency as a reward for having her line memorized.  She was one of only a few who had their line memorized.  Good job, Rori!

Savy was proud of her sister too :)



Sunday, November 23, 2014
We had a big family dinner with my mom's side last Sunday because my mom had some cousins in town from New York on their way to Idaho to spend Thanksgiving with their three sons.  I didn't even get any pictures of them, but it was great to see you, Tim and Gail!  I love that we live close to my mom's cousins and that our girls have cousins to play with on a regular basis.  They look up to their older cousins and always have a blast with them.  Just Dance on the Wii is always a hit with everyone!  Savannah was adorable to watch.  She just made up her own dance moves as she went along :)


Rori did awesome following along with the dancers on the screen!

Rori's focus face is great :)
(Just ignore the red eye :/ )

All the cousins crammed together

My cute parents :)

 And our cute family
(Again, ignore the red eye--we really should invest in photo shop some day)

More November to come later!

Halloween 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a couple days off of work so I thought I'd keep plugging away at the blog posts I haven't done yet.  Even with it being Thanksgiving, I thought I'd finish up with our Halloween :)

We dressed up as a family of pirates this year.  Several of our ward members told us at our ward party that we should have gotten a prize for best costumes (if they had given out prizes for that). Several people didn't recognize that Jack Sparrow was really Darwin at first.

Rori insisted on taking a picture of the two of us after we got a family picture taken.  She's a cutie!

On Halloween day we had lots of fun throughout the day.  After lunch we ate some yummy cake pops my friend April brought over for us.  The girls LOVE her cake pops and kept begging me to eat one :)

Savy's serious face cracks me up!

 After Daddy got home from work we ate a quick but yummy dinner and then headed out for some trick-or-treating at my cousins houses and a quick visit to my great aunt and uncle who live close by.  Then we met up with our Aussies! I hope it's okay that I stole a couple pictures from your blog, Trace!

It was so warm to start of with, but we had jackets with us because we knew it would get cold once the sun went down, and it did :)

Our cute little pirate girls being pulled in the wagon by their pirate daddy

It was a little windy so Rori had to hold onto her hat, until we finally just took it off :)

Beautiful Halloween sunset!

Guess who got to join us after flying in that afternoon from the East coast?!  Auntie Geo! Woo Hoo! Rori was thrilled that Aunt Georgiana got to come trick-or-treating with us!  She made Georgiana carry her almost the whole time. We all love when Aunt Georgiana is in town!

My cute pirates!

To top off the night, Grandma and Grandpa gave us these adorable owl cupcakes.
They were cute and delicious!

Happy Halloween!
Until next year...

Boo at the Zoo!

Darwin won entry for 2 adults to the Salt Lake Hogle Zoo at a conference he attended last winter.  It was only good for this year so we knew we'd be going at some point this year.  Our first attempt failed when our kids got sick over Memorial Day weekend when my cousins and their kids went.  We were pretty bummed we didn't get the chance to go with them.  Then we planned to go over fall break.  It still didn't happen because I was swamped with work stuff and Darwin had deadlines for an online course he was creating.  I really wanted to take the girls before the weather got bad, so our last shot was Halloween.  We ended up going the Saturday before Halloween and it worked out PERFECTLY!  We've never gone to the zoo around Halloween time, but it was a blast because not only did we get to see the awesome animals at the zoo, we got to wear costumes and go trick-or-treating too!  Well, at least the girls did ;)

I felt like we did pretty good getting out of the house by 9am to drive the hour-ish it takes to get to the zoo from our house.  When we got there my heart sank a little bit when I saw how far away people were parking because the zoo parking lot and the over-flow parking lots were both full!  Yikes!  I was beginning to think we should have picked another day for our zoo adventure.  It worked out fine though.  It was crowded, but it was really fun too.  We saw probably 50+ girls dressed like Elsa and about half that number of Anna's.  Those were definitely the most popular costumes.  I personally think our girls made the cutest little pirates ever!

Right when we got inside I noticed Savannah had lost one of her brand new boots!  Seriously?!  Luckily some nice person had turned it into the lost-and-found already.  Once everyone had two shoes on again we were good to go!

The giraffes were first up
(and last for us too!  Aurora liked them so much we had to see them again before we left)

We got in line for the choo-choo and didn't realize until we got to the train entrance (after standing in line for 20ish minutes) that you had to buy separate tickets to ride it.  So, the girls and I held our place in line while Dar line-jumped to go buy tickets.  Again, it all worked out :)  Unfortunately for Aurora, we ended up being in the very first train car right next to the "noise".  Don't worry.  She survived. ;) This was the only picture we got of the 4 of us while we were there, so it'll have to do.

We saw all kinds of animals that day.  It was pretty special.


If you know Savannah, you know she LOVES animals!  I think it's safe to say her very favorite that day were the elephants.  She kept making elephant trumpets over and over again with the biggest grin on her face.  She melts my heart a little bit sometimes :)



This is the oldest elephant in North America!  I love how majestic she looks--wrinkles and all ;)

Savy watching the elephants :)

A momma and baby elephant

Standing next to the not-so-real, but still very-cool-looking elephant

There were fun Halloween decorations all around the zoo.  This is the only one I got a picture of.

A white rhino


Pretty birds


They weren't animals, obviously, but the girls were pretty excited about the princesses they got to meet that day too!


We thought the gorilla looked kind of grumpy.
We were the only ones standing by the gorilla this time, but we came around by the gorillas a little bit later and there was a HUGE crowd so Rori and I went down again to see what was going on.  There was a man down there dressed in a very real looking gorilla costume causing quite a stir for the gorilla.  He was freaking out a bit and banging on the glass.  We only stood there for about a minute when a zoo employee came over and asked the man to take his mask off because of how the gorilla was responding.  Poor gorilla!



Seeing how we measure up!

The eagles have landed!

Savy was afraid of this otter statue.  Silly girl.  I guess she only liked the real animals!

Crawling through a log

It was surprisingly hot that day!  I was thinking it might be nice to go for a dip with the sea lions ;)

I love that they have observation windows so you can see the animals under the water too.  Awesome!

I think Savy ate half her Halloween candy before we left the zoo :)

They'd get super excited when the sea lions would swim by the window.  I'm not going to lie. It was pretty cool to see.

Daddy accidentally took some pictures while we were standing in line to buy souvenirs.  This one cracked me up a little bit :)

After buying the girls each their own sea lion, we sat down for a yummy lunch!  The garlic fries were delish!  It was way past nap time at this point and I had to get home to make my food assignments for our ward Halloween party that night so we didn't get to see the reptile house or anything.  We didn't get pictures of some of the other animals we saw: monkeys, lions, tigers, polar bear, brown bears, llamas, etc.  But we saw lots of really cool animals!

Before we left, Daddy gave the girls a science lesson :)


And we took one more look-see at the giraffes before we headed home.

It was such a fun day!  The weather was awesome and the animals were fun to see.  But, most of all it was just SUPER nice to take a break from our busy life to spend a fun day together as a family.  Those are some of the moments I live for!