Family photos

Home can be a heaven on earth....

About a month ago, we had family pictures taken with the Spencer side of the family.  Saturday we were able to get the CD of the pictures.  I was so excited about how they turned out, they were taken in a field up by Highway 89 and it was the perfect day for pictures.  As painful as it may be to try and keep kids clean and presentable before pictures, it was all worth it.   I am so blessed to have such a sweet family.  I look around and see people who are less fortunate than us and thank Heavenly Father for all that we have.

I loved these pictures of the kids.  Completely kandid.  We are so blessed.

The Kangaroo Zoo

For Audrey's birthday I took the day off work and we went to the Kangaroo Zoo as a family.  It was so fun and the best part was we had some cousins, Grandma Spencer, and aunt Tami join us.  Steve's sister, Tami, and her family are in the process of moving from Hawaii to Texas.  During the transition period she and her two sweet kids, Kalia and Grady, are staying here in Utah until their belongings are shipped over from Hawaii.  So Audrey was way excited that they were able to be a part of her birthday.

I had never been to the Kangaroo Zoo, but we decided to give it a try for Audrey's birthday activity and it turned out great.  It is a place in North Salt Lake where the kids can just play on bouncers and the inflatable toys, and they also have galactic miniature golf.  It was a huge hit.

Audrey, Isaac, Kalia, Kylie and Allie.

The three musketeers.

Isaac doesn't look very surprised to be eaten by a hippo, lol.

Say cheese... I love this picture.

The kids thought it was great to pull the teeth down and pretend to be eaten by the shark. 

Steve's sister was nice enough to take this photo of us. 

We don't have many pictures together, thanks Tami!!

Happy Birthday Audrey!!! 

Just kickin' back. 

Whoever thought this up was genius, inflatable T-ball. 

Audrey said this was a "nice crab."

What a cute boy!!!

Happy birthday baby girl!!

I know I am a couple days late on posting, but better late than never, right.  On Monday, our beautiful baby girl turned 4 years old.  Happy birthday Audrey, we love you so much!

Sunday we celebrated with the family at the house, Audrey chose a Barbie and the three musketeers cake.  She was so excited.

This was Audrey waiting to dive into her cake, every time I told her not to touch it, she would get so upset.  You can see from the picture above, there was already one finger had touched the cake.  I love this picture, it tells a story all on its own.....

 Steve and I decided it was time for Audrey to graduate the toddler bed and move into something bigger.  So we went to RC Willey (of course) and bought her a full size bed.  We used the headboard and footboard from the crib the kids had when they were younger and gave her a cute new bed for her birthday.
Below are are couple pics of the new bed.

The kids thought it would be fun to go to "sleep" in the new bed.  They are silly kids. 

This is a better picture of the bed, however Audrey's eyes are half closed. 

Isaac enjoying Audrey's new bed. 

I had such a hard time finding the bedding for Audrey, but after endless searching I found this bedding at JC Penney.  I did have to order it online, and I was a little skeptical, but everything turned out fantastic.

How time flies....

So it is official, today is mine & Steve's 8 year anniversary!!! It is crazy to think that 8 years ago today, our cute little family began. I want Steve to know how much I love him. He is absolutely amazing and he never fails to tell me how much he loves me. Chances are he will never read this posting because he has so many other things going on in life. However, I still want to express my love and gratitude for him. He is absolutely amazing and he is perfect for me. Thanks babe, for being mine. :)

I am also extremely blessed to have two of the sweetest, most wonderful children in the world. Valentines Day was fun this year because the kids had so much fun getting Valentines and giving them to both Steve and I. In turn it was fun for Steve and I to give the kids a little Valentines gift. Saturday night Steve took me out for a Valentines dinner. We agreed not to get each other gifts, because our Anniversary is close to Valentines and we are going on a little getaway to St. George this coming weekend. Anyway, before we went to dinner we first went and saw our sweet little nephew, Ammon. He is such a beautiful baby and boy is he a fighter. He finally came home last week after over 9 weeks at Primary Childrens. He has been there since he was born, he was born with a heart disease, HLHS, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. It was absolutely amazing to be able to hold such a sweet little spirit. I hope he knows how much he is loved. After that we went to get the kids Valentines things which was fun. We tried to take the focus off candy alone and got them a couple other things. Then we went to dinner at Corbin's. Steve had made reservations, but did not tell me where we were going. I love surprises, it was so much fun.

Anyway, here are some pics from Valentines morning. The kids absolutely loved it!

We got each of the kids a little Valentines puppy. Isaac is pretty funny, he hasn't let his leave his sight since he got it.

Isaac posing for the camera, he loves his picture taken.

Audrey with her little puppy and Cinderella polly (she blends into her pajamas).

The kids wanted a pic of them with the flowers that daddy gave me.

The beautiful and thoughtful flowers that Steve gave to me.  I told him he was a stinker because he wasn't suppose to get me anything. But he said that the lofthouse cookies the kids gave him meant just as much to him as flowers meant to me.  

Poor Audrey....

For those of you who haven't heard already, Audrey has developed another allergy. I have determined that her skin must be as delicate as her tender little heart. Last Saturday I spent the day at home preparing for our wards Great to be eight program and taking care of some of the things on my "to do" list. One of those to do items was laundry, which is a never ending process. I had just bought a new bottle of laundry detergent the day before because I knew I was low on detergent and wouldn't have enough to do all the laundry. Anyway, I bought the same brand I have always bought, but this had Downy fabric softener in the detergent as well. Apparently Audrey is allergic. Saturday night we put her in a clean pair of pajamas which had been washed with the detergent and she woke up Sunday morning looking like a leopard. She had hives all over. They were all the way up and down her arms, legs, stomachm back, everywhere!!! Since I knew she was allergic to mosquitoes, at first I thought maybe it was an insect bite and she was allergic to whatever it was had bitten her. So we gave her benadryl and the hives went away completely within about an hour. But there was no bite visible. Then later she broke out again when we put pajamas on her again, this time almost instantly. (The dress she had worn to church was not washed in the new detergent.)

Wednesday night we were having dinner and Audrey said "Mommy, I'm itchy." So I looked and sure enough, more hives. So I gave her the benadryl and about 30 seconds later she said "Mommy, they are still there." It was pretty cute. I can see how benadryl can work wonders, but let's face it, it is not magic.

Now that we know she has this allergy, I have bought a baby detergent for delicate skin to wash her clothes in. The hives are not near as bad, but she still continues to get them. The nurse at the pediatricians office said that even after switching detergents the hives could continue for 4-6 weeks. This morning when she woke up again, she had hives on her face, legs, and arms. Poor thing.... hopefully these hives don't stay for the full 4-6 weeks.

Better late than never.....

Hello everyone, yes it has been over 2 months since my last posting. Sorry about that. Things just haven't seemed to slow down at all. But, things have gotten better, so I guess that is all that counts. For those of you who don't already know, Steve is working back at RC Willey. The work load at Redman was little to nothing, which as you can imagine his paychecks would match that. So after a while of looking, he came across an ad that RC Willey was hiring. He called down and spoke to management and a few days later he was re-hired. So he has been working there for a couple weeks now. It also happens to be the end of the term for Steve, so he has had loads of homework and finals to do. I am so grateful to have such a great husband who gives 100% effort to make life better for our family. He is absolutely wonderful and I don't know what I would do without him.

Isaac is doing awesome in kindergarten, in fact now that Isaac is learning how to read, he tries to read everything. Yesterday Steve and the kids came and picked me up to go out to lunch together. We went to Taco Time and as I was looking over the menu, the kids meals seemed a little pricey to me. So I asked Isaac "What do you want?" He said "I want a kids meal with a hard taco." Due to the fact that a kids meal was nearly $5.00 I said "Honey, I don't know if they have kids meals," thinking I could just play it off. Then Isaac said "Yes they do mom, see up there under the purple sign it says Kids Meals." Well, I was stuck and therefore we got the kids meal. Anyway, he is doing really well and is always anxious what the next school day will bring. Whether it is computer day, library day, P.E. or his favorite is free friday when they get to pick what centers they get to do.

Audrey is looking up to her big brother and is ready for pre-school. I haven't signed her up yet, but I probably ought to get cracking on that, I know they fill up quickly. At night she likes to "read" stories to me and she always asks when she can get a backpack like Isaac and go to school like Isaac. She is growing up so quickly, they both are. I can't believe that my baby girl will be 4 years old in just a couple of months. Where has the time gone?

I am still working full time, it is a huge challenge and makes things crazy for our little family, but it has to be done. I just have to keep reminding myself that it is a blessing that I am able to help provide for my family, because we certainly would be in a different place if I weren't working. The hardest part is when Audrey cries in the morning when she doesn't want me to leave and the days when Isaac asks if I would please take him to school. I am sure that if I were not a working mom, I would probably take those things for granted. But those are the things that I treasure. I am very grateful for my wonderful sister in law, Suzi, and my mother in law, Kaye that are so wonderful to help take care of my kids while I am working. I don't know what I would do without such a wonderful family!

I will try and post some new pics soon, we did get family pictures taken back in November, but I wasn't super happy with them. All in all, we are doing pretty well, and I want to say thank you to all those who have helped make things a little easier for us.

Growing up way too fast!!

So it is official, my little munchkins are not so little anymore. Yesterday when Steve and the kids got home Isaac told Steve that he had a loose tooth. Steve figured it was probably just starting to wiggle a little. Much to his surprise (and mine) he wiggled Isaac's tooth and it was just hanging by a thread. As silly as it sounds when Steve called to tell me that Isaac's tooth was about ready to come out, I said "don't pull it yet." Steve wondered why and I told him, "I don't want to miss his first tooth falling out." Crazy as it sounds, for some reason that seemed like a huge mile-marker. If he is losing his baby teeth, that means he really is growing up.

He was pretty excited to lose his first tooth. After this happened last night, Steve had young men and I had a church meeting to go to, so Steve came home to take the kids with him to rake leaves for a service project. After they were finished, they were rewarded with ice cream cones and the bishop gave Isaac his first dollar for his tooth falling out. Isaac absolutely adores Bishop Downs and he was very proud of his dollar.

Later, before bed, Isaac was sure to put his tooth in a small Ziploc bag and place it under his pillow in hopes of the tooth fairy coming. When he woke up this morning, he found under his pillow a new Spiderman toothbrush, with matching Spidermatch mouthwash (it turns your mouth blue to make sure he brushes well), and of course a dollar. He was so excited. He came in and after he showed me what the tooth fairy had brought him, he said "Mom, the real trick is how the tooth fairy put it under my pillow." I told him "The tooth fairy must have a magic wand." He agreed, then said "I think she came and saw that my room was Spiderman and that I like Spiderman, so that is why she gave me a Spiderman toothbrush." I couldn't help but smile. I realized that these are the great joys of being a parent, being able to see that spark in your childs eyes and all the joy and excitement they find.

I think Audrey was not so sure about Isaac's tooth falling out, but being the cute little princess she is, when I took a picture of Isaac with his tooth gone, she wanted a picture too. So here are a couple pictures from last night. FYI...Isaac's eyes are a bit watery because he has had a cold.