Fun Weekend

We had a fun weekend! Friday we watched Becoming Jane, and I loved it of course! Anything Jane Austen is going to be high on my list! Saturday night we went to this awesome show at Truman State University. It was the Peking Chinese Acrobats, and they were literally incredible! The way they could contort their bodies was shocking! They also had amazing strength and balance. They were so entertaining, and I've never seen anything like it! THANK YOU Saysh for watching our kids on such short notice! You're the best! It was so fun to get out to a cultural event. We haven't done that in forever!

Maddie

I wanted to do a post about each of my girls. Mostly everyone knows them as "the twins" and since they are little still, people don't get to see their different personalities.

Our Maddie is a sweetheart! She has a very loving personality. She loves me to hold her and hug her, and she gives me lots of kisses. She LOVES her sister and the first thing she says when she wakes up from naps is "BeWa?" When I tell her Bella is still sleeping she gets this look on her face.

A classic Maddie look that we love! She has figured out how to move her eyebrows! She is great at sharing and everytime she shares with someone she says "Tank Yu" to herself and does the thank you sign. (We are trying to help Bella share in return! She's getting better at it. :) )

She is so smart and loves to look at books. She loves to find matches of everything like two butterflies etc. She is really fast at it too. She loves to sing and she knows lots of songs, and their actions. She has a big vocabulary and speaks really well.

She also loves to wrap up her babies, stuffed animals, and even her pacifiers in blankets and put them to sleep. She LOVES to wear SKIRTS and wants to wear one everyday. She's not quite so into shoes as Bella, but she'll follow Bella's lead and wear different shoes around the house. It usually only lasts a few minutes though. She's a barefoot girl like her mom.

She loves making things out of playdoh and she comes up with new games all the time. She colors for a few minutes or does stickers for a bit, but moves on to other things much quicker than Bella. She is a little collector and carries things around all day. She also entertains herself well.

She is also a little more cautious about things. She is still a climber and has an energetic adventurous spirit, but she has to be really certain about things before she tries them. Her favorite foods are Cheese anything, strawberries and especially watermelon. She loves M&M's but she doesn't eat many treats. She doesn't have the sweet tooth like Bella does! (Bella will try anything new, and loves treats, but Maddie sticks to her regular things.) Maddie loves to be tickled and to tickle Dad. She LOVES her Dad! (Bella is still a bit of a Momma's girl.) She is a fast runner and loves to cruise around our house. She plays well with other kids and LOVES her friends.

We love having these two girls in our lives and watching their similarities and differences. We get excited about all the fun thing they have ahead.

BELLA

I want to do a post about my little Bella. (Don't worry Maddie, I love you equally as much! You'll get your very own post too.)

She is a doll! She has such a fun little personality. She is so creative. She loves to play with stickers and to color. She could sit for an hour and do them. She loves play doh too, so maybe she'll be our little artist.

She has an OBSESSION with SHOES. She always wants to wear my high heels and tries to walk around the house. Everytime we go anywhere she wants to wear her sparklies, but must wear one purple and one pink. I've given up trying to fight this because she feels VERY strongly about it! She'll throw a huge temper tantrum if I suggest two pinks. She also loves to wear dresses and look "Pretty." She points to everything in our house and in every book that is PINK, and must have a pink pacifier at night. She is going to be a little Diva!

She is adventurous and loves to climb on everything and go up and down the steps by herself (walking- not crawling anymore. She's a "BIG GIRL!") She loves to swim too! She loves to play with her babies and take them on rides in her stroller, wear them in her little backpack, and wrap them up and put them to sleep. She is so smart, and is talking more and more all the time! We love our little Bella and think she is so fun!

Valentine's

We had a great Valentine's Week. It is always one of my favorite holidays, because my husband does such a great job of making the day special and romantic! This year was no exception. Unfortunately we've all been sick this last week. We've taken our turn with stomach struggles, so we had another round of throwing up kids. I'm done with that! I can't wait for spring! People always say once your kids go to nursery they are sick every other week, and thus far, we have followed that pattern! Anyway, we still wanted to celebrate, even though we didn't feel that great. We didn't have a babysitter (since there are about 2 babysitters in our town :) ) so we started the night with a family valentine celebration! The girls and I were banned from the house for an hour and when we came home, this is what we found!

Scott is the cutest! He had a dinner all set up complete with a yummy appetizer, salmon, and dessert for us and french fries and Mac and Cheese for the girls! What more could we want? He gave me five red roses for our five Valentine's together and he gave the girls each a pink rose. They LOVED their flower! Especially because it was PINK. They have an obsession with pink. We did some other fun little activities and Scott even got me the full Anne of Green Gables DVD Series, which I've been wanting for years. Yes its true. I'm an Anne lover. I grew up with Anne, and could probably recite every line in all 3 movies, but still I love them! He got his Princesses some gear, which they loved to wear around. They always want to look pretty. After the girls went to bed we watched No Reservations, which I liked (although I cried my eyes out half the movie.) Such a fun night, and such a sweet husband. He made it so great for all of us, and I love him so much!

LOVE!

Happy Valentine's Day to all our family and friends! We love you! Kisses from Missouri!

We love President Hinckley

This picture says it all. What an incredible man and Prophet. We will miss him. The things he accomplished are incredible. Can you imagine the thousands of people who are greeting him and thanking him on the other side because they received their temple ordinances because of President Hinckely? I feel like he was "my" prophet- the one I remember and knew the most. You've probably seen the President Hinckley scripture challenge floating around in your emails, but I decided to join. You are supposed to read the BOM in 97 days in his honor. It started yesterday, so it isn't too late to join in!

Winter Quarters

Over Martin Luther King day we decided to head to Omaha, Nebraska to see Winter Quarters. It was about a 4 hour drive from us and we thought that since we've seen all the church history stuff around here, and 4 hours isn't too far, we'd make the drive. We have loved being able to see all the church history in this part of the country. Anyway, we went to Nebraska with our friends the Wilkins and had a great time. We ate at Macaroni Grill which was such a treat! (Remember that we have one chain restaurant in our town, so we love when we get to our favorite restaurants!) The next day we were able to do a session at the Winter Quarters Temple. We traded off babysitting with our friends, so Scott and I were able to do a session together for the first time in a long time! It was so nice. The temple was beautiful. It had these pretty stained glass windows that depicted the pioneers and Brigham Young on their journey. They have a nice visitors center, and a big pioneer cemetery, which we didn't go in because it was buried in snow.

It is always amazing to me to think about the faith and courage of the pioneers. I don't know how they did it. I have truthfully never been so cold in my entire life! Honestly, the weather was freezing and the wind was horrible. I couldn't even imagine the pioneer moms trying to keep their babies happy and warm, when I couldn't even keep mine happy in a heated car. It gave us a whole new appreciation for the pioneers. Some of the saints stayed in winter quarters for two winters. I can't remember the exact numbers but there were around 600 pioneers buried in the cemetery and over 200 were kids under age 3.

We spent the rest of the day at the mall and enjoying some family time! Scott and I love to travel and have had some great experiences. It was fun to hang out with the Wilkins! Here are a few pictures.

Mom's Website

My cute sister Christine has been helping a group of women get a mom's website going. It is called the Power of Moms. I think it is great because it has inspiring and uplifting stories, goal, values etc. for moms. I have a little article about twins listed in the journal section. Check out the site www.powerofmoms.com

Oh What do you do in the Wintertime...

when it's too cold to go outside?

Here are our recent indoor activities to keep the girls occupied. I set up a pack and play with balls for a "ball pit". They loved it!





Isn't this giraffe tent awesome! It is hilarious how huge it is. It nearly reaches our ceiling! "Joe" as he has affectionately been named was a present from Aunt Lacey and Uncle Ashton for Christmas. Scott set it up on sunday and the girls love it. They always want to give him kisses and play inside. Of course "Big Bear" had to go in the tent as well. Unfortunately we don't have a big enough house to leave Joe up all the time, but it will be a fun thing to bring out this winter.


Maddie and Bella love to play! They already have good little imaginations I can tell because they'll sudenly start doing little activities that I wonder, where did that come from? They'll be 18 months on friday. I can't believe how the time is flying by. They are seriously such smart little girls. They still love to read lots of stories and they can tell you what sounds the A, B, C, and D make! They can count to three, and do all the time before they are about to jump off something (the bed, the couch, the stairs!) It about gives me a heart attack and I have to race over to make sure I'm there to catch. Maddie had a tumble down the stairs the other day because she has decided that she wants to be a big girl and go down forwards. She did a full on somersault, but luckily she caught herself and landed on her feet half way down the stairs. She also fell out the door and got a bloody nose the other day, so she takes the prize for the most injuries as of late. she is also really into giving kisses lately. It is sweet. She gives me about a hundred kisses a day! The girls have started to sing and it is darling. They also love to spin until they get really dizzy. Bella has gotten really opinionated lately! She has always been really observant of details. Now she always has too choose which car seat is hers and she will only sit in "Bella's highchair." If I have two of the same outfit to put on the girls, she has to pick which one she'll wear. The same goes for everything- which color spoon or bowl she gets, which sparkly shoes, etc. The other day Scott and I were sitting on the couch and the girls were playing. I didnt' realize they were listening but we said something about how we should read scriptures before Scott went back up to school. A few seconds later Maddie came up to us with her New Testmant board book that we read to them. It was so sweet and made us realize how much they know. We love our girls so much.

Sunday

Maddie

Bella


We have now switched to 9:00 church. Hooray! It is so much better for the girls because they are happy and then can still come home and get their nap. We have a huge milestone next week. The girls can officially go to NURSERY! We are so thrilled! They will be so much happier playing with the kids and toys because they definitely don't like to be quiet or confined in the other meetings. They can last fine through sacrament (with the help of lots of activities, books, toys, stickers etc.) but after that they are ready to play. They are both active little girls and I'm so glad. I hope that they will do well in nursery and are nice to the other kids and such. They are kind of clingy to me, so hopefully they'll make the transition. Thankfully Tobey is a nursery leader and she is like their second mom, so they love her and Addie too.
Scott and I can't wait to see what it is like to sit through all our meetings again. I teach relief society on the second sunday and he teaches deacons every other week so on those sundays we've been able to have a regular meeting, but since the girls have been born church has been a little different! :) We love them though, and are glad they are so full of energy and life!

Utah

I'm so mad at myself for not taking more pictures of our trip. We got to see all of my family and I didn't take pictures!! I don't know what I was thinking. Unfortunately the girls got the flu when we were there so we had over a week of throwing up/diarrhea/and sad clinging babies. We were sad that it happened on our vacation, but it is that time of year. We still had a great time with everyone- even though we got a lot of my family sick :( . We also didn't end up being able to see a lot of our friends this time, because I didn't want to spread the sickness and the girls were sleeping half the days! We wish we could have seen you!

Here are some of our trip highlights:
Going to the Nutcracker with my family - a tradition for years!
Breakfast with the Divas.
Going to Scott and my first movie in the theater since the girls were born! (I know that is pathetic) We saw National Treasure 2.
Enjoying Cafe Rio!
The Children's Discovery Museum at Gateway. (See the pictures below.)
Going to Oakley with my whole family!
Going to the Jazz game with Mike and Chantelle
Eating at the Cheesecake Factory
McKenzie and Chase's sealing by Grandpa Hammond
Learning how to make Sydney's yummy bread
Watching the girls play with their cousins.
and just spending quality time with our families

Christmas in St. George

Opening presents on Christmas morning.


Scott's sisters and Mom

Maddie and Bella with Grandma and Grandpa at McKenzie's wedding.

We just got back from a wonderful holiday vacation in Utah. We loved spending time with family and friends, and as always, it went by way too fast! We spent Christmas in St. George and we definitely got spoiled!

A few more family pics...

Family Pictures

My good friend Tobey took our family pictures just before the holiday, and I've been meaning to post them. She is so talented! We love them!

The Girls

Maddie found a blue marker and wanted to try out a new shade of lipstick!

BEARS! Somehow we have taught our children to be obsessed with bears! They love them and always carry around at least one of their many bears. For their Christmas present this year we got them "Big Bear," who now takes up half the living room. The girls LOVE him and everytime they wake up they run to big bear and give him hugs and kisses. They read with big bear, they watch shows with big bear... he's essentially part of the family! Sometimes I even find Scott studying with Big Bear! Merry Christmas girls!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The kids at our Thanksgiving dinner- Bella, Maeva, Caitlin, Maddie, Abby, Sarah, Grant, and Liberty.

The boys watching football after a great feast!

We had so much good food that we were all stuffed and had plates and plates of leftovers. We have so much to be grateful for!

More November Pictures

The girls love to wear their fur coats with the hood around the house, just like the Alaskan Dolls from Grandma Sue and Grandpa.

The girls with Dad and Grandpa Randy in beautiful Nauvoo.

Looking good ladies!