A Few of This Month's Highlights

Hanging out at our Brownsville Ward Valentine's Dance

Justin was dancing a lot! Miles LOVED dancing with him!

Making heart pizza's during Grandma & Grandpa's Valentine's lunch.


The kids had a blast decorating cupcakes!


Sweet Girls made sweet cupcakes


Justin turns 29!!


Poor little Miles... this is when we got home from the urgent care last night. Justin bought special Diego band-aids for Miles on our way home.


We got him to smile!


His stitches are so long because when Miles was wiggling so much, the doctor didn't feel comfortable cutting the strands too short for fear that he would cut Miles. He didn't want to make a difficult situation worse.

Accidents Happen

Tonight we were hanging out upstairs putting some laundry away and getting the kids ready for bed. The kids were being really goofy and running around. Miles was the wildest as always. The kids ran into Brooklyn and Riley's room and all of a sudden Justin and I hear a thump and immediately we hear Miles start screaming and crying. We went to see what happened as he was coming to our room. He had blood dripping from his chin onto his shirt and his mouth was bleeding a little. Miles is pretty accident prone because of how active he is, but it's usually a bump here and a scrape there. When Justin and I saw the blood we knew he needed stitches. We packed the kids up, got in the car and headed to the urgent care. We had to wait about 15 minutes before they called him back. By that time, he had stopped crying and was playing with stickers. Mark and Mary (Justin's parents) came and picked up the girls so Justin and I could both stay with Miles. The doctor came in quickly. He and a nurse held Miles down, with the help of Justin and myself. He tried to numb the whole chin area, but Miles was screaming and crying and moving like crazy. It should have taken maybe 20 seconds, but it took a couple minutes instead. Then the doctor started stitching Miles up. He kept screaming and crying and it took all the energy we had to hold him down (4 adults!) Finally it was getting too difficult for the doctor to try to stitch a moving target (the doctor was getting pretty frustrated) so we had to call in one more person to help hold him down. I think it was a traumatic experience for everyone involved. I was nearly in tears because Miles kept saying "Mommy, it hurts! I want mommy!" I think if I didn't have something to focus on... the job of holding him down, I would've fallen apart! Miles ended up with 6 stitches. He's a tough kid, though, and we're glad that that was the extent of his injuries! I don't think we'll ever really know how it happened, but we're glad our little man is a trooper and he's ok!

Neighborhood Park

We have a neighborhood playground down the street from our house that you can see from our house. We pass it everyday when we walk to and from the bus stop and the kids always want to stop. We haven't been playing there as much lately because of the colder weather and it's often raining. But this evening the kids really wanted to go for a little while before dinner. They had so much fun! They were running around like crazy and laughing and burning off tons of energy. It was fun. I guess we really need to take advantage of the dry days in the winter and be outside as much as we can. It makes the kids much happier!



Riley is quite the acrobat!

Miles is very relaxed :)
I think this picture looks so cool! Brooklyn likes to swing so high, it's hard to take a picture of her, but it does make for a very artistic photo.

The kids love going head first down the slide. They were cracking up!

Brooklyn's hair kept flying into here face, so I gave her my hair tie. Again, though, this girl is fast! She flew off the end of that slide!

It's hard to get all three kids looking at the camera with smiles and eyes open all at the same time. Here are our two attempts before Miles had had it with the camera.

Living in Luxury!

Recently, Justin and I went to the Aldrebrook Resort and Spa. It was so nice! It was very beautiful. We wanted to go hiking, but decided not to because of the rain. Maybe this summer we can go hiking up there without staying there (it's a little pricey!). We had dinner at the restaurant... Justin had king crab leg and lamb. I had a chicken fettuccine dish. It was pretty good, but honestly, I'm not a very fancy person, and it was hard for me to spend over $100 on that meal. I wish they had a Denny's across the street or something. :)
The highlight for me was swimming. The pool was huge and just warm enough. It was deep enough that we could dive in and there were only a couple other people there so it was almost like we had it all to ourselves. They had a huge hot tub too. Justin liked that better than the pool, but not me. Those things are nice for a while, but they're too hot, I think. So after we went in the hot tub for a bit, I went back in the pool. Not Justin, though. He likes the heat.
The view from our room was gorgeous. It looks over the Hood Canal. We were able to get a few pictures, but none of them does the view justice.
Justin really wanted to get a couples massage... it is a spa after all. We weren't planning on it, so we didn't make reservations for it ahead of time. They ended up being completely booked for all massages (and all rooms). I couldn't believe it. We went the last weekend in January, and they were totally booked! I can't imagine what it's like in the summer when there's so much more to do there.
Anyway, we had a great time. It was nice to spend some much needed quality time together and celebrate making it through 7 years of marriage! :) It's been a bumpy ride at times, but I've learned that it's those times that help us grow as individuals and as a couple. When we are pushed to the limit, we realize we're much more capable of things than we thought. I'm grateful to be making life's journey with Justin. He is a wonderful man!

This was our room. Justin is on the phone trying to schedule a massage. We had some A&W Root beer floats (pretty good), and some chocolate and vitamin water... quite the array of treats! :)
We're standing on the balcony outside our room... it was beautiful!
Justin loved posing for pictures!
We had to have at least one semi-clear picture of the two of us.
And here it is...
the beautiful view...
...of Hood Canal

Christmas... finally!

It has taken me til now to put the few pictures on here from Christmas, but we had a great Christmas! The kids loved being with family and getting presents of course. I was surprised by how excited Brooklyn got about giving presents this year too. She could not wait for us to open the presents that she picked out at Santa's Workshop at school. Miles went crazy for the candy, but we tried to tone it down a bit this year with that. He loved his cars too, and he got plenty of those. Riley and Brooklyn each got a Barbie and a Baby doll. My favorite gift that they got was a clip on light for their bed. They each have one, and now when we put them to bed they can stay in bed to read books and then they are really good about turning them off when they're ready to fall asleep. Now they don't ask to read in the hallway at bedtime. The whole Season was just a lot of fun. Thank you to everyone for all you give to us and for all you do for us. We are incredibly grateful for the friends and family that we have in our lives!

This is the Advent Calendar that took us over a year to make. We went through several revisions. Finally it turned out just how we wanted, and the girls loved hanging up an ornament each day. Riley was modeling it for me.

Miles opening his stocking.

Brooklyn and Riley with their stockings.

My 3 kiddos

7 YEARS!

In honor of our Wedding Anniversary this month (January 25th), I thought I should post a picture from our Big Day! I can't believe we've been married for 7 years! Time flies. We've had so many ups and downs, but I am so grateful for all of it because Justin and I are stronger people, and a stronger couple now because of all of it. Justin is such a wonderful, loving man who adores his children and does everything he can to make me happy. All he wants is for our family to be happy, and I would say he has succeeded! I'm excited for what the future has in store for us. Especially the near future... because at the end of the month, Justin and I are taking a trip to the Alderbrook Resort and Spa, thanks to Mark and Mary! It'll be fun to have a night away. We can't wait to go hiking and swimming and have a chance to SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT! No kids to wake us up! :) It'll just be fun to spend time with my best friend.

http://alderbrookresort.com/

Dating
Wedding Day

Butterflies

Brooklyn got a Butterfly Pavilion from a friend for her Birthday. We sent away for the caterpillars, and a few weeks later they arrived. The kids were so excited! The caterpillars we so tiny! We left them in the jars for about 2 weeks, until they each formed their chrysalis. It was crazy how big and fuzzy they became! Once they formed their chrysalis's, we moved them to the Pavilion. It took about a week, but last night and today, they've started to emerge! We have 8 butterflies out of 10 so far. I bet the other two will come out pretty soon. We're supposed to feed them sugar water with a little dropper for a couple days, and then we'll let them go. The kids LOVE them! I tried to take pictures, but it was pretty difficult to get really great ones. Here are the ones I managed to get, though.

Riley, Miles and Brooklyn with the Butterfly Pavilion
Brooklyn getting a closer look. The two hanging things toward the top right are the two that haven't emerged yet.

Gingerbread!

A friend of ours gave us a Gingerbread House Kit yesterday, and the kids have been so excited to make it. So, we decided to do it tonight for Family Home Evening. They had a blast putting all the candies on. Brooklyn got really excited about making patterns and just making it cute. Riley had fun putting the candies on too, but I had to tell her about ten times to not eat the icing. Every time I turned around she tried to sneak a spoonful. She thought she was pretty funny. Miles had a hard time getting the candies to stick, so he just decided to eat them instead. It was just really fun and it turned out cuter than I thought it would. My children are artists and designers in the making! :)