Odds & Ends

I have a few pictures that I wanted to post, but they didn't go under any category, so I decided to post all of them anyway; so here goes:

Here is Sydney's poor eyes! She's been wearing glasses and patching for over 2 years now, but ever since Christmas, her right eye (the amblyopic one) has been wandering uncontrollably! As soon as she takes her glasses off, it veers toward her face! Her vision has improved a lot since patching, but she has hit a plateau, and has had no improvement over the last 8 months. Because of the plateau, the Dr. wants us to increase her patching time from 6 hours a day, to ALL DAY LONG, except for the last 2 hours of the night! Harsh huh!? We have been doing that though, although, I don't agree. Therefore, we are driving all the way to Seattle, to see one of the top doctors in the Country on Feb. 16th to get a second opinion. (We'll keep you posted) Hopefully she has different news for us!

Here they girls are in OUR bed! Every now and then, they will have trouble sleeping. (More so Sydney) and so occasionally I will let them sleep in my bed until we go to bed. I don't know what it is about "mommy and daddy's bed" but kids just ALWAYS seem to sleep better in them. My girls always conk right out when I let them. I thought it was pretty funny; hence the picture!

Here are Sydney's new glasses! The Dr. gave us a new prescription for Sydney at her last appointment, so she got to chose to glasses. She LOVES getting new glasses, and she just loved these. Although, I liked the black and blue ones better, and tried to persuade her, but she had her mind set on purple! She looks cute in anything though! :)

The girls are loving the extra space they have now. Here is a fort they made in their play room one day. It stayed up for almost 3 days!

Everyday, (well, almost everyday) I help Sydney work on her letters and numbers, to prep her for kindergarten in the fall. It has been a VERY long process, because she is so carefree and playful. However, she has come A LONG way! She can now write all upper and lower case letters and numbers, and she can recognize the letters by sight! We are now working on the sounds that each letter makes. She is doing really well though. Here is a sample of her work that she did today! Good job Sydney!

Well, this is a cook book that I got from my sister, Amy, a couple of Christmases ago, and I am JUST NOW getting around to using it. I organized it and put all my recipes in it finally. Can you tell I'm proud of it!?! :)

I even bought photo protectors, which work great for recipes as well, to protect and organize them.

There are some full-paged recipes as well, but they fit nicely too. I am way excited to start using my recipes now! Thanks Amy! ;)

So You Think You Can Dance

Every summer I look forward to the TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance". One dance I really liked was this one on You Tube My niece, Aly found the song and put it on her blog, and my sister, Tara reminded me that it was from this dance. So I stole it and put it on my playlist! If you aren't familiar with the show, it's a lot like "American Idol", but with dancing instead of singing. Watch the video though. It's pretty funny.

Livia's Telescope

Livia got a telescope for Christmas, but we've only been able to use it a few times, since we've only had a few clear nights! Here are a few pics of the moon though. We just pointed the camera in the actual eyepiece, but it still looks kind-of cool. We can see the craters on the moon even. We need to figure out how to view the planets better though.

Livia's Baptism

I can't believe my little baby is already old enough to get BAPTIZED! She is growing up to be such a smart, beautiful, talented, & responsible sweet girl! I am so proud of her. Last weekend she got baptized, so we had both her grandparents come and visit, along with 3 Aunts, and their families. It was a lot of fun! Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Doesn't she look so pretty! I LOVE her dress. It's the same dress that her older cousin wore 2 years ago. Plus her Aunt gave her the Baptism necklace from the Deseret Bookstore; so she looked very sweet and angelic! :)

Here is the happy family, pretending not to be freezing!! :) The kids hate it when I make them do that!

Here are the family members that came to the baptism.

Her other Aunt even got her 2 dozen white tulips! So Pretty! She LOVED THAT!

~ Everyone just before it started ~


Sydney greeted everyone and handed out the programs. She did a very good job! Her and her cousin Tamara, even sang a couple songs at the baptism. I didn't get to see them, but I was told they did VERY well!

Livia with her daddy, who got to baptized her! Mike did a really good job and I am sooo glad that my daughter was able to be baptized by her daddy!


Livia with her Nana & Papa

Livia with her Mammaw & Pappaw

Here are some pictures from the "After the Baptism Celebration" at our house. Doesn't Livia look so thrilled! I'd like to know what she was wishing for! ;)

She was definitely showered with TONS of gifts, cards, & flowers! She doesn't realize how lucky she is to be able to be surrounded by so many people who truly love her; including BOTH sets of grandparents and 4 Aunts and their families that she gets to see regularly. Very luck girl!

I couldn't resist! I HAD to put this one in. It totally looks like Mike and his Dad are have a smoke! HA HA!!!! His dad is actually the Bishop in his ward, but it was so cold outside it looked like they were smoking! ha ha!! :)

Catching Up!

Okay.... I know it's been a LONG time since I've posted! I promise I have a good excuse though! We moved, and then we all got sick right after the move, followed by pink eye, and between New Year's, unpacking, and Livia's birthday, it has been a chaotic madhouse it seems. But we all managed to survive! You'll have to scroll through all the posts to get the details. Here are just a few random pics that I liked:

Here is the girls with their snowman! They even sung the Frosty song to see if it would work on their snowman! ha ha! It rained that night though, so by morning the head and half the body was gone! ;)

This picture gives you an idea of how much snow we have had lately!

We have been having to do lots of shoveling now too. (Esp. Mike!) We had to go and buy our first snow shovel, now that the university won't shovel us out anymore! :)

Sydney made herself a snow chair and was just eating the snow with a big spoon and bowl! She always makes us laugh!

Here is our new front yard. It looked so snowy and pretty!

Livia's Birthday

Livia had her 8th birthday on Friday, and she talked me into having a sleepover party with 3 of her friends. Never will I do that AGAIN!!! She had a TON of fun though, but MAN! 4 little girls at the same time! That was insane! They finally went to sleep around midnight! And then they woke up around 6:30! Plus, all they ate was sugar, cake, and candy! I woke up Saturday morning, and they were all eating candy before breakfast! Crazy kids! Livia had a blast though, but she definitely had too much birthday. She took a nap when it was all over! I can't believe she's 8 already! She will be baptized this Saturday!

This is more accurate with how she was really acting all night with her friends! ;)

Here they are watching the new Tinkerbell movie!

Blowing out the candles!

We got her a Baptism book so she can start filling it out.

Here are the friends she invited.

New Year's

For New Year's, we stayed in Moscow, since we were literally, living out of boxes and bags at the time! My sister, Tara and her daughter came over and we played games and ate way too much food! It was pretty fun though.

We couldn't find our real noisemakers, so the girls used pots and pans and spoons; which worked very well!

Here they are "cheersing" (Is that a word!?) :)

Awwweeeeeee!

Tara and Mike playing battleship.

Girls rockin' it out on Guitar Hero! (We may have been living out of boxes still, but you can guarantee that Mike had all the electronics hooked up!)

Sydney and I made chocolate Chip Cookies! She is my kitchen helper. ALWAYS! She LOVES to cook!

Here we are all playing Littlest Pet Shop Monopoly.

Livia's favorite snack, by far, were the crackers and cheese!

Here are the girls, NOT jumping on the beds!

And here's the happy family! It was fun being able to just hang out and have fun together!

Here are a few resolutions that I made for myself this year:

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1. To get to church early enough for a soft bench! (Sorry Holli, I can't pick on you in the back anymore. You're going to have to move up too!)

2. To complete the Moscow's little triathlon this summer, with a decent time! :)

3. Lose 10 pounds, while I muscle-up a little bit.

4. To be a better visiting teacher. (Actually visit with my sisters more than once a quarter!)

5. Go to the Temple at least once a quarter. (4 times a year beats once or twice that I have been going!)

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Hopefully everyone has a happy new year and that it is way better than '08!

We've Moved!

We moved just a few days after Christmas, so our Christmas vacation was not like a vacation AT ALL!! Here are a few pics of us packing and unpacking!

Here's Mike setting things up in our new bedroom. It's nice having more room, but what I really love, is the closet! It's much bigger than our little apartment one! I love it!

Tara & Tamara helped out A LOT!!! I snuck a picture of one of their breaks they were taking!

This is us unpacking the kitchen! It looks more like a tornado was in my house!

Here is Mike taking a break on our garage.

The girls were on cloud 9 moving into a house! They were jumping off the walls! Here's Livia's breaking out in song!! :)

Here is the not so fun day of loading the u-haul. It was cold and very icy outside. We had to buy 3 bags of ice-melt to help make a path to the truck! We were blessed though. It was the nicest day that week.

Here's my sister, Tara, aka: "muscle-woman". She was a huge help! Thanks Tara.

And here is our new house! It is definitely nice having twice the space, with our own yard that we don't have to share with 20 other kids!

Here is our garage, AFTER we organized it! Total change huh?! It is totally nice having a garage in the winter! I am loving that!

Here's the girls' room. They love the extra space! There closest alone is practically as big as their old room was, so they love to go in there and play. They call it their dressing room. :)

Here is our living room. Mike's taking his usual Sunday nap in the picture.

And our kitchen. The best thing about our kitchen, is the dishwasher!!!! I haven't had a dishwasher in 6 years!!!! I LOVE IT!!! That will never get old!