New year new fun

Our stake had a Women's conference yesterday. One of the seminars was on blogging. The woman giving the seminar told of how she loved to write, and blogging became a source of therapy for her when she had her 1 yr old daughter die. It started out as a place to write down how she was truly feeling, and she just had her family and close friends reading it. Then it networked into over 100,000 people reading her blog. She has been able to reach out to people who have had similar experiences. She has been able to bear her testimony, and reach people all over with her blog. I have been taking a family history class during Sunday school. I feel like I need to do better with my own personal history. I always thought I could blog to do it as a fun way to preserve mine and my families history. Now I just need to do it. So I am going to do better. I have been blaming it on my camera the last few weeks because I was having problems transferring my pictures from my camera to my computer. Pictures or no pictures I am going to do this.

I did just figure out a different way to get my pictures. Yea!!!
We had a great Christmas holiday. Mark's parents were able to fly in to be with us. I think Sarah and Annadele were very happy with what they got for Christmas. Alex could care less for the most part, but of course Alex and Annadele loved each others gifts.
We had a great New Years Eve. We had some Kobe short ribs, wantons, s'mores, a veggie tray, chips and dips, and shrimp. The best part was all of the good company. I am sorry to say that I crashed about 10:30. We had stayed up late 2 or 3 nights in a row. My body just couldn't do it any more, plus we had 9AM church the next day. Mark had even tried to play match maker for Melodee and invited his friend Jeff. Jeff is a great guy, but not a match for Melodee. Thank heaven for Mike and Amy for trying to welcome him and talking to him. Mark was on a no magic allowed night, but Jeff looked so bored and wishing he was some where else that I told Mark he should start up a game. Mark said they all had a good time. I think for me it was best I went to bed. It was great to have so many people around to bring what I hope will be a great new year.


One more thing I need to mention berfore I go to bed. Annadele went pee in the potty chair for the first time on Thursday. She has been sitting on it for a while, but has never done anything until now. She has been saying her diapers are bothering her, and I told her maybe we need to switch her to panties. It happened for all of a couple of hours because then she had an accident, and then we had to go out. But I hope to try again this week. Crossing my fingers.

Dress up fun

One afternoon Annadele wanted to play tea party, and so Sarah thought we should dress up for it. We ended up not playing tea party, but having a fashion show with the misc. stuff in the dress up box. Although for Annadele, this is her purple princess butterfly outfit that she has to wear everyday.
A friend of mine recommended that we check out Fancy Nancy from the library. She said because my girls always look so nice and fancy she thought they would enjoy it. Oh how Annadele is my Nancy. She is only two and 1/2, but we had to do beauty parlor today, and I got to trim and paint her hand and toe nails. I couldn't stop at just her toes, but her hands had to be painted also.

Alex's 1st birthday

Alexandra had her 1st birthday. I can't believe it has already been a year since she was born. Mark really wanted to have a birthday party for her even though we had celebrated it in Utah. He had a work event going on the weekend of her birthday, but we decided we would celebrate it in October. But on her birthday we were invited to another little girls birthday. A co-worker of mine had her little girl Azalea on Sept 23rd and I had Alexandra on Sept 24th. They are one day apart. She invited us to Azalea's birthday party. It was really nice. Thanks to her parents they had it at the M Resort at the studio B buffet. It was really good. Crab legs, shrimp, lots of variety. Rated one of the best buffets in vegas, I found out later. It was fun to see Alex and Z interact with each other. One of their friends even had a daughter Annadele's age. Except for it being nap time, the girls and I had a good time. Mark was even able to make it for the last 20 min., and glad he did.





So last week we gave Alexandra her party on October 8th. It was so funny because if you asked Annadele who the party was for, it was for her. She was very excited. I got the house cleaned up, and I tried to reuse some balloons we had but the place I went doesn't sell the helium separate I would have to rebuy my balloons or buy new ones. I opted for no balloons. It is only her first birthday. She isn't going to rememeber. It was funny because Adele was worried we weren't going to have enough food. I was worried we would have too much. Plus there was no room in the fridge for left overs. She was trying to talk Mark into going and ordering more food an hour before the party. I had already talked him out of only making one pan of ziti instead of two. In the end, I was right. We had plenty of food. The hit was the egg rolls Tony was frying as people were arriving. I think every one had a good time. And people actually showed up. Although I did call everyone we had invited Thursday to find out if they were coming or not, so I knew how much food to prepare for. Annadele still thinks the presents are hers, but I guess that will come with time.

Play time and visits

I totally missed posting in July. I kick my self because I didn't even take any pictures of the 4th of July. It was Alexandra's first, and I missed it. We went to one of my old co-workers Angelica Hopgood's house. She has a daughter born the day before Alex's (even though she wasn't due til 2 wks after me). We just hung out and talked and ate food. It was low key. We were just glad to be invited. On the way home, we found the perfect place to watch the fireworks. It is really close to our home, and every where we looked we could see fireworks. The best part about it was no traffic. I think we plan to make it a traditional place to go.

My girls have been having a great time playing with each other. They built this tower of blocks one morning. I thought it was great team work, and pretty creative.

For Big Mommy's (Adele) birthday we went to eat at her favorite place when she comes to Vegas, In-N-Out. She wasn't there in person, but she was thought of and loved from afar.



I just love to see my two little ones play and make each other laugh. Plus they are so great when they are clean.





Adele has given Sarah a couple of the American Girl dolls, and gave the baby to Annadele. She had sent the matching pj's awhile ago, but they were too big for her. Now they fit, and I had to get a pic of Mommy and baby. It was freaky how much the baby doll looked like Alex when she was 4 or 5 months old.


One thing I have been doing with my girls is taking them to the library for story time. They had a special performance with Jim Gill that I took them too. We all had such a good time. I even had to buy one of his cd's, and a book. I told Sarah I would buy both, but the book she would have to wait to open at Christmas time.



We had the Sorenson's stay with us on their way to Cailfornia, and then again on their way back. Mark went all out for breakfast. He had Emiko help him make cat head biscuits and gravy. It was yummy! They did a great job. : )









On their way home, they stayed again. I took them to M&M world. We saw the 4 floors of the store, watched the little movie they had, and then it was time to go home. I would have liked to show them a few more places, but everyone was tired and worn out. Three days of Disney Land and they had had enough. That just means they have to come back to visit again. Mark made a delicious dinner of prime rib, mashed potatoes, veggies, rolls. Sarah and I had made cookies the night before. I don't think any one went hungry that night. Kimi and I stayed up way to late that night chatting, but it was so fun to have girl time. It took me a couple of days to recoup, but can't wait for another good time at our reunion.

Sarah had a birthday shout Hooray!!

We celebrated Sarah's 9th birthday last week. It was a busy day, but I think she had a great day. She was going to have her party at a bouncy house and then decided to make it a swim party. The girls met at Jen's house. Mark, his niece Rachel, and his mom all went swimming. I decided to stay home with the girls so they could get a nap in, and then pick up the pizza later. (Little girls with out naps makes for a very long day.) The girls came back to Jen's house to play games, eat pizza, and have donuts. Sarah's sisters love her so much they just wanted to be in the middle of it all. Sarah isn't a big fan of cake so she decided she would rather have donuts instead. Her mom and her saw this idea on a show. Krispy kream donuts didn't have the strength to hold and kind of got smooshed together. But they still tasted good.


Later that night, we ate at the food court of the Santa Fe, and then went bowling. Rachel is on a bowling league back in New York, so she kicked our butts. But we all had a good time. We ended the day going to Cold Stone for ice cream. We dropped Sarah off at her mom's. And a few hours latter, Mark dropped off his parents, and niece at the airport. It was a busy day, but a good one.

Alexandra turned 9 months on Friday. She is growing and developing too fast for her mama's sake. She is crawling all around and standing up. Not really cruising yet, but I am sure that will come. She has 7 teeth and 2 more coming in. She just started saying mama. I love it. Now I am trying to get her to say dada.
Alex and Annadele are great daughters. I love to see them interact with each other, and make each other laugh. Annadele has eczema all over her body. She loves to be in the water, but I think I need to limit how much she is in the pool. We bought a kiddy pool to put in our back yard. She would want to go outside and help water the plants, and then start undressing her self right outside so she could go in the pool. We emptied out the pool so she can't go in to try to help her skin. The sad part is that we just got a membership to the YMCA across the street which has a great pool. We went for the first time on Friday, but I don't think I can go back for a few days until her skin is looking better. The poor girl has scratch mark all over her body. I have a cream the doctor gave me, but it seems to work for a little while and then it comes back. I bought her a good lotion, and I am trying to moisturize her twice a day. I hope it helps.

Just got great news from Mark. He passed his series 65 test. I am not sure what this allows him to do (something with investing), but I know he is the first person in his office to complete it and pass. Everyone else has failed thus far. Go Mark!!!