Our Little Romantic

Abigail LOVES to dress up as many of you know/have learned. This morning, she came downstairs in her dress up clothes, mismatched shoes, and eventually donned her fairy wings. She can RUN in heels! She'll sit still for me to do her hair, over and over again. She enjoys reading the Disney Princess books (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White) and of course, watching the movies as well. She says, "I'unt Lella." for I want Cinderella. It was one of her first sentences! She's such a girly girl and I'm sure she'll grow up to be quite the romantic.
Today, she was reading a Little Einsteins book where they went to Paris. She saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower and said she wanted THAT. I told her she could go there someday. Then she listed off all our names saying she wanted us to come too. I think she got this Eiffel Tower kick from watching The Aristocats, which is set in Paris. She found another book with Eiffel Tower pictures in it and would just sit and stare at it. Ah, Paris....I can only hope to go...

Blue

Brayton's Great Grandma Gloria crocheted a beautiful baby blanket for him, which we just received in the mail this past weekend. It's officially an heirloom. She did an amazing job and he just loves to snuggle right into it. During a recent snuggle session, I looked down at his little toesies and saw this:

(Where is a decent digital SLR camera when I need one?! hint hint Jeremy)

Thank you Grandma Gloria for the perfectly made and wonderfully soft blanket! Brayton loves to feel it between his toes :)

Happy Birthday Bailey!

Bailey, we sure wish we could give you big 10 year old birthday hugs! Have a fun, fabulous, wonderful birthday!!! The girls sure miss you. Maddie can't wait to play with you again (she says, "I miss you and sometime I'll come back!"), Abbie would love to dress up with you and Brayton can't wait to meet you! :) We love you bunches and bunches!!! Happy Birthday sweetheart!


Christmas 2007

Anchorage Trip 2008

Free makeup

Who couldn't use a free makeup item? Click HERE on my friend's blog to find out if you qualify as a member of a class action lawsuit (she's got ALL the details)...then head out to get your freebie! I went this evening to West Ridge Mall and all I did was sign a log and I got to choose between a few different items. Enjoy :)

School has DEFINITELY started

I know FOR SURE that law school has started again when I had this conversation with Maddie last night:
"Mom, does daddy live with us?"
"Yes honey, he's just busy with school."
"Oh. I miss him."
"I do too."

I never thought I'd hear that question. Jeremy is busy with school, flying, Boy Scouts, and more school. He does find time to spend with the girls, but this was just one hectic day the girls didn't see much of him during their waking hours. He gets to spend the evening with them today though! I've got kickboxing....

Articles of Faith

When I was four years old, my mom taped me repeating all 13 Articles of Faith (A of F) from memory. We learned these throughout the year in Primary. I thought it would be a good idea to have Madeline do the same this year. We have the Children's Primary Songs (click on link and scroll down to "A of F" to find the song...or just enjoy listening to any song from the song book) on CD and each A of F is put to a tune. Maddie learns so well through song (she can spell her whole name, list off the days of the week, and is learning her phone number through the tune "Oh My Darlin"). My plan is that each month we'll work on a new A of F (and of course do two in one month so she'll know all 13 by the end of the year). Here's a video of the 1st Article of Faith, which states, "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." How have you helped your children memorize things? Songs are a great method for Madeline and I look forward to learning how Abbie and Brayton will learn...

FOUR

Miss Madeline turned 4 today! We are amazed at how quickly these past FOUR years have FLOWN by! Her favorite color is PINK, so we started the morning off with pink pancakes.

She's such a big helper in the kitchen - always wanting to cook (don't worry, she's not allowed to do anything that involves the stove), do the dishes and sweep. She started setting the table on her own too and does a beautiful job. She even helped make her birthday cake by pouring ingredients, cracking eggs (with no shells!) and mixed it up. It makes her so proud.

We headed to the Kansas History Museum with the play group after breakfast and she got to play dress up with her friends. She was a cowgirl today.

Then we picked Jeremy up for lunch and he took her to Red Robin for their daddy daughter time.

She's quite the corn dog sometimes! Jeremy asked the waiters to sing Happy Birthday to her and bring out a sundae. This video cracks us up because she's totally not her bubbly self here. When she watched it she said, "I was being a little shy." And that's COMPLETELY OK by us.




After dinner (I'm sure talking a lot about our meals today!) we had some cake. She specifically wanted a PINK mermaid cake. She's a girl who knows what she wants! I did my best - don't judge my cake decorating skills please. She loved it! I love that it's so easy to please her. She could be in a terrible mood, but give her something as simple as a balloon and she'll forget all her worries. She's got the best smile. She gets our jokes and can even remember them days from now to retell to us.


All we had for candles were "2" and "2"....so add them together and you get "4"
Again, she's so easy to please that it took just one simple gift. She doesn't want much, in fact, she just wanted to have her party with only her family. She is able to form her own opinions. She likes to make decisions, and tries really hard to always make good ones.
I love that she shares so well with Abigail. I hope these two will be best friends for forever. I also hope that Abbie will want to wear clothes.

This is a VERY special card. When I had a baby shower for Maddie (November 2004) each friend got a numbered card. That number corresponded with Madeline's age. Each person wrote her a message to be opened on that respective birthday. Yes, I've been toting these cards around and will continue to do so until she reaches 21.

Today she opened Grandma Barbara's card which said:
"I remember when your mommy was pregnant with you. We couldn't wait for you to get here and now you're 4 years old! Happy Birthday! ~Grandma O'Neil"
What a neat gift from 4 years ago.
Madeline is a gift to us and continues to bless our lives with joy. She's quite an amazing little girl.

Heading home from Houston

Sunday rolled around quite quickly. It was our final day in Texas...yes, we know, 30 hours of driving to and fro for just a few short days, but it was so worth the trip! Here are some scenes from our hotel room before check out.

Jeremy's enjoying Karate Kid on the 42" plasma screen TV. It was pretty cool.
The girls enjoyed playing in the closet. Abbie got her fingers shut in the door, but she's still happy!

Brayton loved having a big bed all to himself for this nap.

We had lunch with Grandma and Patricia before hitting the road. Here are some parting shots:
This is Madeline trying not to smile about having to eat beans and spaghetti. The ranch dressing helped a lot :)

I love this pose of grandma's...she's such a spunky lady!

Grandma said that Brayton's first words will be, "no more kisses!"

Jeremy and his Aunt Patricia - last time he saw her was about 30 years ago. We hope to visit again much sooner than that!
Abbie had to get situated before falling asleep.
We left around 4:30pm and the kids slept most of the way that evening and into the wee hours (6am) on Monday before we were home in our beds. Thank goodness for portable DVD players!
Here's a drive-by shot of the Dallas skyline.

We all had a wonderful trip getting to spend quality time with everyone - these will be memories to cherish!!! Thank you for all your love and warmth!

Galveston & Houston Day 2

On Saturday we woke up and headed to Galveston with the family to see the sea wall at the Gulf of Mexico.

Coming in to Galveston, you could still see the destruction from Hurricane Ike - there were boats on the side of the road and piles of shingles, siding, and other rubbish. The houses weren't leveled, but looked like they needed a lot of work. Sad.

We then parked along the sea wall and headed down to the beach. There was a small drop off because the sand was washed out to sea during the Hurricane. There were crews bringing in sand to reconstruct the beach. We did find LOTS of sea shells to take home.
Maddie loved the beach - can you tell?



Here's Jeremy bottling up sand for us. This is a good shot of the small cliff of sand we had to jump off of.
Stacia brought crackers for the seagulls. Madeline held one in her hand and a gull came down and nabbed it. I tried to do the same trick, but was freaked out by the birds. It was scary to see them hovering overhead with their hungry little beaks that looked like they were ready to peck me if I showed them a cracker, plus I didn't want a "mess" on my head or shoulders.

Madeline liked drawing in the sand (as well as picking it up and throwing it into the wind, which flew right into her eyes). Here's a drawing of an "H heart".
Abbie was sleeping in the car with Brayton while Aunt Patricia watched them while we were out on the beach. Abigail woke up when we came back, so Jeremy wanted to take her onto the beach for a moment. It was a quick one as she really didn't like the sand or wind.

I thought it was pretty neat that we've driven from Fairbanks, AK all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico...it only took 7 months to make that journey :)

We brushed the kids off and headed to The Johnson Space Center just outside Houston to take a tour and let the kids play with space stuff.
We hopped on a tram that took us around the NASA campus. It was HUGE! I don't recall the acreage, but there are 200 deer that live on the grounds.
Here we are with Aunt Patricia...Madeline sure loved the tram ride!

Our first stop was mission control. This is the ACTUAL room that they use when there are space flights. They launch in Florida and control the flight in Texas - why? President L.B. Johnson (the space center's namesake) wanted to build mission control in his home state...no other reason...
Here we are viewing an exact replica of the space shuttle and parts of the international space station. It's so detailed that NASA could use it as a working laboratory. It was really cool.

Next, we headed over to see Saturn V. It's taller than Lady Liberty! Here we all are by one of the engines. This photo doesn't do it justice - it was SO MASSIVE that I couldn't fit it all in one shot.

Jeremy by one end of the Saturn V.
And we made our way through the overpriced gift shop to look for astronaut food. We found a $500 replica...yes, REPLICA...of a moon rock.

We headed back to Patricia's house for dinner and then crashed at our hotel around midnight. It was a wonderful day!

Let's go to the beach

We've been saying that we wanted to go to the beach during Christmas break. We thought of heading to Florida, but I wasn't up for a minimum 19 hour drive with a nursing baby. So we just put off the idea until just this past weekend. Jeremy's grandma Gloria is staying with her daughter, Patricia in Houston...and Houston is close to Galveston, where there's a beach! We'd much rather visit family anyhow! So sort of last minutely, we packed up and headed to visit Jeremy's family in Texas. The drive was about 15 hours, which included 3 stops in random parking lots to feed Brayton, and one hour of driving aimlessly because we were lost and Jeremy would rather use "the force" to find our way to grandma's house than to stop and ask for directions. He got us there around noon on Friday.
Grandma Gloria and the kiddos.
L to R: Kaitlyn (Jeremy's 2nd cousin), Gordon (Stacia's husband), Stacia (Jeremy's cousin), Mason (2nd cousin), Abbie, Grandma Gloria, Dahlia with Brayton, Jeremy, Madeline. Aunt Patricia was taking the photo.
Jeremy and Aunt Patricia


After visiting for a while, we headed to our hotel for some dinner and rest. Oh yes, and swimming...in an OUTDOOR pool! Yes, the middle of January and we're out in a pool. The girls were squealing with delight the whole time.

2 month stats

Brayton is getting HUGE! He had his 2 month (already?!) well child exam and he's doing wonderfully. Here are his stats:
Weight: birth - 8.0 lbs ...... 2 months - 13.0 lbs
Length: birth - 21 in. ....... 2 months - 24.75 in.
He's in the 97th and 90th percentiles for the above measurements respectively.

After reviewing this data, we conclude that it's safe to assume that he is taking after daddy :)

Buddies

After we had Family Home Evening tonight, the girls went up to their room to play while I folded laundry. I found Jeremy and Brayton together on the floor enjoying a football game. He's so glad to have a buddy to watch the game with. I'm so glad he's got Brayton too. Sweet boys...

Brayton was completely comfy and quiet for a good 1 1/2 hours snuggled next to daddy.


And for anyone wondering how our laundry pile looks when folded, here it is. Dirty (now clean) clothes from Saturday afternoon through Monday morning. Too much if you ask me.