R and R Graham Family

Six Months in the Life of The Grahams, Via Instagram Photos =)

2012-01-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

So many adventures, So many photos, so much happens in just six little months.

This always changing, always growing, always crazy life of ours...

Here is just a glimpse:

Oh these girls... Sweet Sweet Girls. 5th Grade Ain't No Joke. Lots of work, projects, friends. They're both so crafty, super into duck tape, origami, drawing. They're really getting into starting a little dog walking & babysitting business. So Awesome. They are both really involved in looking out for their little brothers, reading to them, playing with them etc. Love These Girls.

So in love with this boy. Arri is all about being a boy, trying new things, learning, growing, exploring. He loves stuffed animals, art, legos, dancing, playing make believe, play fighting, bike rides, and adventures great and small.

Oh yeah, he also loves sweetie treaties of alll kinds.

Harper is super into reading novels these days, this is her proudly wearing her Katniss, (from the Hunger Games) T-Shirt. I have the same one. hee hee. What a Pretty Girl.

For Harper's 10th birthday Robert and I took her to Six Flags. Just the 3 of us went. We went on TONS of Roller Coasters. And OH MY GOSH! I've never felt older! Seriously, we had a blast but I totally walked out of there feeling like I got my butt kicked.

Tattoos, Robert & I both got new ones. :)

Several Smoothies Happened. :)

Lots of super fun super lovely visits with My Mom. She and Arri talk for hours planning her upcoming visits. They plan picnics, outings, movie nights, and all sorts of fun things. So cute. Then she comes and we do all of them! This picture was taken at our trip to "Grandpa's Barn" The fun pumpkin patch in Davis where they have TONS of adorable little baby animals to hold and snuggle. Yay!

Love These Guys.

Lots and Lots and LOTS of Bike Rides.

Harper and I went to the Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 Midnight Showing. So much fun! Serious Girl Bonding. Loved it! Looking forward to Hunger Games in March!

Lots and Lots and LOTS of Soccer Too!

Elias my little Cool Dude at the Skate Park by our house.

One of My Two Sweet Little Girl Scouts.

Elias has become SUCH a little bug enthusiast. He collects bugs whenever he can. He has an ant farm. He loves his butterfly net. He loves all things creepy crawly.

My little Dude.

Annie got glasses. I knew she had been needing to go to the eye doctor, but when we finally got her in there he said it was a pretty intense prescription and that she was supposed to wear them all day and night. Yikes. So she has. Day and night. Good thing she looks so dang cute in them. :)

Arri and Anna (the little girl I watch) have just become the very best of friends. They play all sorts of games just non-stop all day. Like old school playing outside using their brilliant little imaginations from sun up till sun down! I LOVE IT! I love listening to their little conversations. They are such amazing little dreamers, and I love that they always make an effort to include Ezra too. Great Kids. We've watched Anna since she was 1! Crazy.

This is pretty much a daily occurrence.

Girls just got home from a week away at Girl Scout Camp! Fun Fun!

My Little Night Owl. (yeah this is at 11am, he sleeps in till noon daily.)

Daily Fro-Yo in the Summertime.

Mr. Enthusiasm on the Carousel at Six Flags. :)

I'm such a sucker for these and I always make the kids (and Robert) stick their faces in them. Haha! (Christmas Eve at Holiday in the Park).

Little Ezra polishing off Santa's Milk & Cookies. Hahaha!

Hit me up for the chocolate chip molasses cookie recipe.

Changed my life! And my pants size. Hahaha!

Halloween.

2012-01-25T04:43:00.001-08:00

HALLOWEEN WAS AWESOME!!!

Our Familie's FAVORITE Holiday!

This year we had:

A Zombie.

Cruella DeVille

A Wolf Boy.

Spaghetti & Meatballs (Robert Loves Me.)

A Garden Gnome (or as Grandma G. Suggested, "Sleepy" from the 7 Dwarves. :)

Of Course Followed By the Kids REAL Favorite Holiday...

CANDY DAY!!!!

...Six Months Later

2012-01-25T04:13:00.001-08:00

There's no time like the present right. So 4:14 am is a perfectly reasonable time to start the first blog post after six months. :) My schedule has gotten so so very turned around. Just from staying up so late during the holiday months editing family photos. November and December sorta ran together into one big beautiful blur of delicious treats, wonderful visits with family and loved ones, decorating, photographing adorable families, Christmas movies, and festivities, and editing photos until the wee hours of the morning. Ahhhh... the Sweet Life. LOVE every second of it, I'm tellin' ya!

Christmas Eve we went to an awesome place called Holiday in the Park in Manteca. It was such an awesome place. They had petting zoo, train rides, santa, pony rides, tricycle races, and a HUGE snow hill to sled down. The kids lived it up and did everything and had a TOTAL blast!

We came home and did all of our favorite Christmas Eve Traditions. Made Chocolate Chip Molasses Cookies for Santa. YUM! Watched Polar Express, Sprinkled Reindeer Food in the front yard. Put the kiddos to bed and read them Twas' the Night Before Christmas. Then of course stayed up until like 3 am wrapping presents and stuffing stockings. :)

On top of the other 10 million unnecessary but totally fun and awesome things that the kids got for Christmas, they all got Air Soft Guns. They LOVE them. We go out to the fields by our house for Target Practice.

Arri managed to score 4 Lizards and 3 Frogs for Christmas. It all started with one tadpole who died. Went to the pet store to replace him but they were all out of tadpoles. So instead of spending $3 we got talked into a $150 dollar Chameleon and his lights, insects, food, vines, plants, etc. Well of course 3 days later he died. But nothing could be returned because it was all opened, so we ended up trading poor Kieko for a reptile Zoo! They are all holding up pretty well and Arri thinks they are Fascinating! :) Which of course is all that matters. :)

So Much More to Say...but its so so so so so late, and Mommies need sleep. More to Come.

Ezra Turned Two...

2012-01-25T04:00:00.001-08:00

Can't believe that this little dude turned two. Kills me! Yikes! he is such a fun little crazy man. Totally Eli 2.0. No sweet little Arri in there at all. Don't get me wrong, he's got a sweet side, but he is all boy. Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails. He LOVES a good "Fight Fight Fight" whenever the mood strikes him. He will sit on you and hold your face to his face and talk to you in his scary Monster Voice until you fake cry. Ha! He cracks me up. He sleeps in till noon daily. never fails unless we dare wake him before then. He stays up hangin' with Mom and Dad playing my iPhone and running around causing trouble till One Am daily. He's just the King of the Castle. Not sure how that happened. But he's such a chill fun little guy that no one seems to mind. He loves to jump on the trampoline with Arri. Joke around and be silly with Harper. He loves for Annie to read to him. And with Eli well of course he loves to "fight fight fight!"

Ok, Here it Goes

2011-06-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

So my wonderful friend JoLynn asked my why I don't blog anymore. Oh goodness how the months fly by and away! I never meant to not blog its just that the days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, and there are exciting adventures happening all day every day around here, I feel like if a few days get away from me then so much has happened that I don't even know where to start! But here I go on this rainy day, in the middle of June as I listen to THUNDER storms in the middle of June! (Harper took this picture of the rainy clouds out our back window of our van this afternoon on the way home from swimming.)
Ok so I got a new little Puppy named Penny! I've wanted a Golden Retriever ever since I was a little girl. We got Rex a year ago, and he has proven to be a pretty amazing dog. We wanted to get him a friend doggy and we got a Greyhound / Australian something dog. She was Craaaazy, could jump over our fence totally tore down the fence, never really mellowed out and was just really super needy and panciy. We got a second dog who was a little Chocolate Lab puppy. She was really mean to Rex, and not so nice to the kids. She destroyed everything in her path. I felt bad but we found new homes for both of them because they were just very obviously not good fits for our family. I felt ok though because we took both of them out of bad situations and found good loving homes for them. Then we got our good friend Oscar. He was a great dog. We got him on New Years Eve last year. Him and Rex warmed up to each other after just a little while and became good buds. Saddly, yesterday we found him a new home. (I KNOW! This sounds awful like we just cycle through dogs). We rescued him from the pound and had him for about 6 months. He just never seemed to warm up at all. He was ALWAYS scared and sad seeming. Hiding under Eli's Bed, in his crate, next to my bed, in the garage, under the table. He never much cared to just be out or playing. I talked to Penny's trainer about him and she sounded like she though that Oscar would be much happier in a quieter home. That all of the noise and chaos of the children and people in and out at our place was just too much for him. Towards the end he started growling and snapping at me, Arri, Eli, and even Robert, so we found him a new home with two adults (ladies) and a young teenage girl. He will be so loved. They already took him to the dog park and have a camping trip planned. I know he will be happy. But he will also be missed. He was a good dog, and we love him.
Penny has been a wonderful little puppy so far! She has her naughty little puppy habits, I've never met a puppy who doesn't love to jump up on a couch, shred up toilet paper, or chew on yummy flip flops and expensive baby shoes! She is such a kind happy little spirit though. She LOVES to play with Rex, and all the kids. She is going to little puppy obedience class right now, and she is actually picking up on stuff REALLY fast! I've noticed with her that she is always very eager to please and she is a good little listener. She is so cute. We go on our SUPER long walks and she always stays real close. She loves the kids so much and they love her. She is gorgeous just look at that little face! :)
Summer time is HERE! (Well, maybe not today, but last week for SURE! The week before that, kinda, this week, not so much. Maybe NEXT week will be summer again! Haha! Regardless, it has actually been really nice having the kids home. I wish we could swing homeschooling because I really do love having the little boogers around, seriously. I love their company, I love the chaos, I love the amazing conversations they have and the ideas that they come up with. They are hilarious and crazy and wonderful and I love them. ...Honest. ;) The girls have Camp Menzies Girl Scout Camp starting next week! I can't believe it! And the Boys have BOYS CAMP at CheeChee's house! Too Fun! It's going to be WAY TOO QUIET around here! Can't even imagine. Last week my Mom came up for a visit and she brought my little neice Marlee who I have not really had a chance to meet until then. We had a WONDERFUL time! My Mom always totally brings the fun! So many adventures were had. We went to the pool because it was HOT HOT HOT! And we had a nice adventure to the water park. Fun Fun!
We also took the doggies to the dog park and watched movies, ate sushi, all of our usual fun adventures! While Grandma was here, Dad was at the LA Film Festival for 12 days with Rod. My Mom often plans her visit when Robert is on trips out of town for festivals, and shooting films. She said its because then she has less competition for kid attention, but I know that really its because she knows I can use all the backup that I can get since I'm so out numbered with kids. Having 6 (with Anna) most days. This time we had 7 with Marlee! Little Miss Marley, what a feisty little cutie! I have no problem saying if a kid is a brat, I call it like I see it, but Marlee isn't bratty, she is bossy, but then she's just got SPUNK! She knows what she likes, she lets you know what she needs, but not in a rude way, just very matter-of-fact. I love her, she's pretty awesome. I asked the kids, if we were allowed would you guys want to keep her? Joking. Everyone was like, "YEAH!!!!!" Except for Annie. I thought that was interesting. I did a little photoshoot of the two sisters:
What beauties. Marlee and Arri were TOTALLY inseparable the whole time. They were in LOVE. So sweet. Arri really liked her and is still talking about how sweet and cute she was.
Seriously though. Saying goodbye was harder then it should have been. She is just one awesome little lady. Maybe I felt connected to her because she's my niece, or maybe because she kinda looks like me. Or maybe because Robert and I have been talking about the possibility of her someday ending up under our roof who knows, but we'll always have a place for her.

Side note, sounded like Robert had a BLAST at the LA Film Festival!!! He saw lots of celebs. Shared time and food with lots of great friends he has met along the way. Secured some promising contacts and visited with family. Roberts parents and aunts and uncle and cousins all came to see the Waiting Room premiere. So Cool! http://433pictures.com/film/waiting-room/

I actually have a very exciting venture going on myself. Our children and family photography business: www.snapshotsisters.com has really been taking off and doing well. I am LOVING taking pictures, and doing all of the post-editing. Working with Jen has been a blast!
We have had several shoots this month and have some newborn shoots lined up as well! Woot Woot! We are saving up for the 5D but have been doing great with the equipment we have. Pictures are beautiful and the moments are just so precious. This is one of my favorite pictures so far of a sweet little 9 day old girl we were privileged to shoot:

Seriously, how precious is that?!

We are still trying to get our name out there. We just ordered some new business cards, and post cards, and are trying to spread the word, but so far we are getting wonderful feedback. Yay! Tell Your Friends! haha!

Well kids are "Staaaaaaarving!" better go start dinner:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/04/sloppy-joes/ then off to a Relief Society meeting. I love you guys for caring enough to read this! :) Take Care!

The Littlest Ninja

2011-01-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

So Arri has always been part Ninja somewhere deep inside him lives a little Japanese Assassin. Haha! Anyhow I thought it was just a phase but he has started incorporating his little Ninja lifestyle into different aspects of life, and even into his dance moves. I had to tell him absolutely NO MORE DANCING until he gets his cast off on Wednesday. Not realizing that this was going to be absolute TORTURE for him. I feel like the Mom in Footloose! (Well the Dad I guess, he was the real jerk, the Mom wasn't so bad.) He just gets WAY to into the dance moves, can't control himself and now with the Ninja kicks, and his little solid rock leg, its just not safe for anyone. Especially little Ezra.

Anyhow, getting off track, so he has been wearing his little Ninja Costume from 2 Halloween's ago for two days straight (size 12-24 months because Eli's 3T one is too big for him. Ha! he's such a little guy!) He has been filling me in on all of these little Ninja facts such as, "Ninja's do not wear pajamas Mom. They sleep in their Ninja Clothes incase they have to fight." and "Ninjas don't wear undershirts Mom, because they never get cold." and "Ninjas do NOT eat Pizza, only Chicken Nuggets." "Ninja's like Bananas because they make them Strong!!!"

[Side note, I LOVE his little Ninja costume because to me he is just MUCH to sweet to be a Ninja so in my mind he is just an adorable little Sushi Chef! (mmm...sushi!) ]

So love all my kids, they are all awesome but Arri just has an imagination like no other kid I've ever met. Love It. So today, Ninja Arri is just hanging out around the house and he's like "OH NO!!!" and I'm like "What?! What?!" and he's like "My EYEBALL FELL OUT!!! FOR REALS MOM!"
And so I was like "Oh No!" So he grabs his little eye and is holding onto it while he searches for his eye. And Harper and I get on board and start searching for it too. and he whispers in my ear, "But really I'm just joking" and I'm like "I know me too" and he like "BUT FOR REALS it FELL OUT!" and I'm like "OH NO!!!" and he says, "But not for reals Mom. I'm just joking" ha! So this went on for a good 40 minutes NO Kidding! FOR REALS like 40 minutes. He did not let go of his little eye.
When he finally did after almost an hour his little eyelashes were all sweaty and stuck together. It was SO silly. I was like "AHhhhhh! There it is! Right where it belongs! You put it back in!" he was like "I KNOW! (but not for reals, I was just joking you.)" Love this little guy. For reals.

Ninja Fact: Ninjas do NOT have Bedtimes. They DO like Waffles with Fruit but NOT FROZEN Strawberries. (oops!)
The other day we were at Walmart. Robert was picking up a bunch of stuff that he needed for a film shoot that he was doing that following weekend down in Monterey. He was getting some stuff in the cosmetics section that is right by the fish. Arri asked Robert if he could get some fish. Robert was like, "Not today, we're in a hurry." and Arri was like, "No, Dad INVISIBLE fish!" (love when Arri says invisible because it has like 12 syllables!) (Invisible Fish are like Imaginary Fish.) So Robert was like , "Oh, yeah, Totally! Have at it!" So Arri picked out a few super fancy invisible fish. One little baby one. And he's carrying around this bag of invisible fish (an invisible bag too) for 10-15 minutes, just keeping his little fist so tight so they didn't drop. Then comes Big Brother Eli out of NOWHERE and just totally SMACKS the (invisible) bag of (invisible) fish right out of his hand!!! So the (invisible) fish just go a'flyin' all over the Walmart floor! (Invisible) water just splashing all over. And ALL of his (Invisible) fish totally died right there. Annie being the animal lover that she is like tries to pick them up dust them off but Arri is just devastated. He ran sobbing to Robert, "Eli killed my fish!! All of them!" He seriously cried for like 5 minutes, which is 4 minutes longer then any of our kids ever cry about anything. Ever. So Dad took him over and he picked out a couple new ones. Eli was so funny, just trying not to laugh the whole time, but you could tell he felt bad but was like 'Seriously?' at the same time. So then of course EVERYONE wants invisible fish. But we're like "No, its Arri's thing" Arri carried them around for the rest of the night, everyone wanted to "hold the bag" for him or "feed them". So funny.

He has an invisible friend named Burrito.They just met, but it seems to be going well. He seems like a nice kid.

Can't Believe my Littlest Ninja is turning 4.

Over heard Eli say this yesterday:
"Arri You and Me are the KING of the NINJAS! And Harper is the Queen. Ezra is the Master of CUTENESS!!!"
and Arri just said, "Eli Ninja's don't have Kings they're just Ninjas."

2010 Top 10!!

2010-12-30T23:06:00.000-08:00

Ok So I thought it would be fun to do a top 10 count down of some of our BIGGEST and BEST events of 2010. It has been quite an eventful, exciting year for us! Lets see if I can narrow it down to 10...here it goes (Not in order, except for #1):

10) Sweet little Arri Broke his leg on Christmas Eve. He was playing with cousins on Grandma & Grandpa Graham's elliptical machine and slipped and either landed on his foot or just twisted it wrong. Anyhow, poor little guy. He was swollen and sore all Christmas. But he got his cast put on yesterday and is feeling MUCH MUCH better. He is such a little trooper and he still had so much fun even though he couldn't even walk! He could not be more excited about his "blue walking cast." :) Big thanks to his aunt Sarah who was so helpful with him Ice it and Elevate it. And Shelly who talked to him and helped prep him for what would happen at the hospital and made him excited about getting a "walking cast". (Arri being a little trooper Christmas Morning. Couldn't walk but loved playing his new Remote Control car from Santa. )
9) Elias Graduated from Preschool and started Kindergarten!! He has the COOLEST teacher EVER, Mr. G, and is LOVING every second of it!

Bye Bye Preschool!

Hello Kindergarten!! (Eli & Mr. G after the Butterfly Parade)

8) Robert Graduated UC Davis with his Masters in Fine Arts Degree! Woot Woot! GO ROBERT!!! And not even a Semester after he was already working as a Professor at Sacramento State University, teaching Film and Digital Art!

7) Harper and Cheyeanne Bridged from sweet little Brownies to JUNIOR GIRL SCOUTS!!!

6) Harper, Cheyeanne, and Elias all took a SUMMER DARTS Swimming Class all summer long. It was an hour a day, EVERY day Monday through Friday! It was SO awesome because none of them were very strong swimmers at the beginning of the summer, but by the end of it, they could all swim great, and Elias was going of the HIGH DIVE at the Swimming Pool by our house! We would go swim for hours and he would just stay in that line going off the high dive over and over and over again! SO AWESOME!

5) I lost 56 lbs on Weight Watchers from April 20th to present day. What Up! Super exciting! It was a really awesome inspiring journey. I hit my goal about a month ago. And am in the maintaining stage which has proven to be pretty difficult. I'm excited for the holidays to be over so that the ENDLESS stream of cookies can forever LEAVE my house!!! I was surprised at how easily I have been able to stick to my diet, but more so surprised at how much Weight Watchers really does WORK! So exciting. I wish I had some really good before and after pictures to post. But honestly I made a pretty strong effort NOT to be in pictures before. Here are two fairly horrible pictures of me that don't show much of a difference at all. The first one is just after Ezra was born, at the Whole Earth Festival, so April, just after I started Weight Watchers, the Second one is a few months ago, me in my SUPER FLY Exercise clothes, when we were on one of our big hikes with Rex. =)

4) My Great Davis Mom Friend Jen and I started a small little Photography Biz here in Davis called Snapshot Sisters! We have been having a blast with it. Photographing friends and family and then we have also had a few paying gigs as well! SUPER EXCITING! I told Jen the other day, you know you've made it big with your photographing STRANGERS babies and they're actually paying you to do it! Woot Woot!

3) 2010 Sundance Film Festival!!! Robert, Rod, and Eli's film Charlie and the Rabbit played at the Sundance Film Festival! This was a HUGE DEAL, and a huge accomplishment! VERY exciting for our whole family. Its a really big deal to be accepted into this festival, one of the hardest to get into, so we were all so proud of our boys that they were accepted. FUN FUN!

3) We adopted the absolute COOLEST BEST dog EVER. His name is REX, and we just LOVE LOVE LOVE him. He is the sweetest, cuddliest, funnest, most polite dog ever. He lets Ezra lay on him and pull his tail. He lets Eli snuggle him for hours on end but will also let him get in his face and play and get him all riled up. He loves other dogs, he never barks, he only poops in the back yard. He sits at the gate and waits even if we forget and leave it open. I know that these are all little tiny things but when you put them all together they make Rex, the BEST DOG EVER.

Another really great thing about Rex is that he has been encouraging us to take him on walks, so these walks turn into major adventures! We walk and walk and walk for hours through the fields across the street from our house. We run into things like beehives, coyotes, rabbits, and snake skins, we cross rivers, and climb haystacks. It is always, ALWAYS an adventure! Rex will weave in and out of the bushes, dissapear for 15 minutes at a time and come back soaked. He has a BLAST and so do we! I have to admit, ever since it has been wet and muddy I have totally wussed out of the walks and stayed home with Ezra and Arri but Robert still takes Rex and the kids even in the rain!

3) Yeah, I put 3 3's lets just pretend I didn't because top 10 of 2010 sounds way cooler then top 12. =) We went to Six Flags a whole bunch but the best Six Flags trip had to be when we went the week before Halloween to FRIGHT FEST! We had such a blast. The kids went on TONS of Rides. Elias just loves scary rides and the more scared he got the more he would just be cracking up! So funny. But when the Zombies came out ALL OF US (except, big cool Robert) turned into little screaming babies! They were SO scary!

Speaking of Halloween:
Cutie Clown

Mario

Rock Star

Harry Potter

Stinky Skunk

2) Sweet little Arri started Preschool. He Originally was going to the Korematsu CDC where Elias was going, but then I decided to switch him to another preschool, which is where he goes to Speech Therapy and Oh My Goodness. It is SUCH a wonderful school we LOVE IT! He is learning SO much SO fast and he just has the greatest time. He is constantly bringing home art and projects and just all sorts of new ideas and songs. It is a wonderful preschool with great teachers. I'm so happy that he is there, and so is HE! Its also an afternoon program which is so great for him because he loves to sleep in, like today, since we're on vacation, he slept in until 11am! GO Arri! :)

1) And our NUMBER ONE most EXCITING event of 2010 would absolutely HAVE to be, welcoming Sweet Little Baby Ezra into our family! Hooray! We absolutely LOVE and ADORE him! I can NOT believe that he will be ONE next month! And I can not believe what a Crazy, Silly Fun little Dude he is! He LOVES joking around and making people laugh. He is just a total little goofball, and that being said, he is JUST like his big brother Elias. Loves to laugh and be silly, but is a total love bug, super sensitive little snuggly dude. :)

Born on January 19th 2010

Such a Little Love Bug!

Its Not All Snuggles and Smiles, We have hard days too.

Ezra's First Christmas, Awesome Cape, Awesome Smile, Awesome Dudes.

Ezra LOVES his Brothers and Sisters more then Anything.

Of all his Siblings, Ezra is by FAR the most like Elias.
Such a little adventurer, no fear at all.

Which brings us to today, I took this photo about an hour ago,
this is his new face. He makes this little "O" with his kissy lips.
He blows on his food but usually it just seems like he is doing it
to try not to smile. SO cute.

Today he also started talking on the phone. He will pick up
different toys or like today it was his crackers and he puts them
up to his ear and makes his little sound that is the exact tone
of how I say "hello?" then he just talks. "Da Do Da Do Doooo" SO
Cute! He does it till I look at him smiling and then he makes his
little "ooo" face. Haha! He is so funny! He cracks me up.
Love This Sweet Boy!

What can I say, 2010 has been absolutely AMAZING! I can not even begin to imagine what 2011 will bring. The fun and excitement, the good and the bad. Every day is seriously an adventure with this bunch, never knowing with the next day, week, month, or year will bring. But I can't wait to find out!

Thanks for Reading! (Hugs!)

This is My Favorite Thing...Ever.

2010-12-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

Love My Boys...Life is Good.

Beautiful Carmel Beach...Pre Thanksgiving Thankfuls

2010-11-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

Robert and his sister Sarah scheduled an awesome Pre-Thanksgiving weekend BBQ at Carmel Beach. His whole entire family got together. Unfortunately it was SUPER cold and ended up being really stormy and eventually raining. So we didn't end up having the Bon Fire. We just went with our family to Carmel beach after having a yummy yummy breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa McGreal and Aunt Trisha. The storm clouds were SO GORGEOUS in the sky! I tried to talk the kids into staying dry but after about 15 minutes they were all soaked....of course!
(I Love That Rex's Footprints are in the background.)

The storm clouds set in and it started to drizzle.
The kids were soaked and sandy and started to cry!
Robert and I couldn't help at laugh at how perfect the moment was.

After the rain there was a HUGE RAINBOW across the entry way to Carmel Beach.
BEAUTIFUL!

ARRI WAS HERE 11.20.2010
(So Cute, Arri wrote this all by himself!)

After our long day at the beach we all went back to Chelsea's house. We spent the whole weekend together the whole family at her house. We had such a wonderful time, all the cousins playing together. Its so amazing watching them all grow up together and the friendships they all have. Hanging out with Chelsea is definitely one of my favorite past times, so it was just overall, a perfect, perfect weekend!

BENTLEY 7 MONTHS, EZRA 10 MONTHS, ROCKY 13 MONTHS
BUDDIES FOR LIFE

I Fell SO hard for Sweet Little Bentley last weekend.
She is the SWEETEST SNUGGLIEST little Love Bug EVER!
Oh, Um, Besides Ezra Of Course ;)

Rex had the TIME OF HIS LIFE Running up and Down the Beach, Chasing the Waves!

CANDY DAY 2010!!!!!

2010-11-28T22:31:00.000-08:00

So Saturday was THE DAY! Candy Day 2010!
Every year after Halloween we let the kids eat candy here and there
at their leisure for a month or so. But then there comes a point, where
we realize that the candy will NEVER EVER be all gone, and something
must be done or they will be still eating it here and there at their
leisure come Easter! So about 4 years ago we started the CANDY DAY
tradition, where after about a month of snacking on candy, we have a Saturday
where we just lay out ALL the candy and starting at 12 noon its just a
candy FREE FOR ALL! Everyone can eat as much as they can possibly consume
until dinner, or until they are just totally sick of it. (Which usually comes first.)
Graham Kids FAVORITE HOLIDAY!!!

30 Pounds of Candy Dwindled down to 11 in just a month! WOAH!
I'm proud to say I did not eat even one piece! Not a single skittle, M&M or Fun Size Anything! So Hard. Dad took the kids on a huge run with Rex after they got all good and Sugared up. When they got home the candy was GONE (as far as they know) and dinner was on the stove. Now I'll just slowly give it back to them in Christmas Stockings and Easter Baskets! Hahaha!

The Walks...

2010-10-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

We have been going on long long walks with Rex. We try to go every Sunday. For at least 3-5 miles. There are huge fields across the street from our house that stretch out for miles. If we walk to the east we just walk and walk and walk the is water for Rex to swim around in. And huge haystacks for the kids to climb on. If we walk to the west there are tons of bee hives, hay stacks and Race Tracks. The big races are on Sundays so sometimes we stop to watch for a few as we walk past them. Elias LOVES that! We never put Rex on a leash, he loves to BOLT out after the wild Rabbits that are ALL over in the fields.
Sometimes we be detectives and find different animal tracks and clues and things:
And we always ALWAYS play Hide n' Seek! Elias LOVES the big huge tractors and Hay Caves. :)

This is one of our many favorite things to do together. I love the feeling that we could just walk and walk and walk forever. We don't turn around until the sun starts to set. Robert and I both just love being outside letting the kids and the dog just run run run and be free and loud and crazy and then they come home exhausted. Love That!

Love these Guys! Love these Walks. Love this Town! I love this crazy wacky time in our lives. Can I please please please just pause right now.

Couch Creations...

2010-10-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

So awhile ago, we did a bedroom re-shuffle and stuck the four kiddos into our smallest room, double stacking the bunk beds into what we now call the "sleeping room". Then the bigger second room we have turned into the "Hang Out Room" which after like 2 months of calling it that I decided today that I will start referring to as the "Art Room" because its MUCH easier. Anyhow so we gave the two rooms a total make over and we bought a few items at Ikea for the Art Room. Including a cute little white loveseat. Yes, that's right, I said WHITE loveseat for the Kid Room. Great idea right? I was really hoping they would have slip covers for it but they didn't. So of course needless to say after approximately 2 weeks the couch was pretty gross looking. It had dirt, food, pen, crayon, and even blood on it. What the heck? So I was like ok, something MUST be done with this couch! So we took action and completely SPLATTER PAINTED the WHOLE thing! It actually turned out Awesome! The kids LOVE it, its a totally fun funky functional work of Art! We had only just begun when I took these pictures.

Good thing we put up that paper behind the couch or this could have gotten messy huh. ;)

YummY Yummy Fall Apple Cake!

2010-10-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, So for starters, I would like to dedicate this blog to Chrissie for the AMAZING recipe and Suzette for the delicious Granny Smith Apples and to my Mom for giving me a reason to make it! Hooray for Fall!!!

This weekend Grandma came over to visit. We LOVE Grandma visits! We threw her a little Birthday Party Tonight and Harper and I spend the afternoon making her an APPLE CAKE! My Wonderfully Talented Chrissie shared this recipe with me and I just knew my Mom would love it! Its very similar to a carrot cake only with Apples instead of Carrots!

The weekend before last Robert had gone down to his Mom's house and came back with TWO HUGE BAGS fully of delicious Granny Smith apples from her tree. They are PERFECT for baking! We also made a great batch of apple sauce! Here is the story of this yummy Apple Cake that Harper and I made:

...All Photos By Harper:

Apple Chunk Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Cake:
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (We Used Apple Sauce)
2 tsp vanilla
5 cups peeled and cubed Granny Smith or Pippin apples
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup chopping walnuts (We Used Sliced Almonds)

Frosting:
1/4 c butter
1 (3 oz) package cream cheese, softened (just get a regular cube of it and it has oz. marks on it, just cut to 3 oz)
2 cups sifted powdered sugar (I never sift, haha)
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. In large bowl mix sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Stir in apples. Sift together flour, baking soda. cinnamon, and salt (I don't sift, just stir, but whatever floats you boat). Combine with apple mixture. Stir in walnuts. Pour into greased 9x13 pan.
(All Mixed Together Before We Baked It)

and bake for 45-50 mins. Let cool completely.

This is after we took it out of the oven:

To make frosting beat all ingredients until fluffy, frost cooled cake.
(We forgot the "until fluffy" part and didn't wait for it to cool all the way.

The Finished Product:

It was SOOOOO GOOD! Just Ask Ezra!

Happy Birthday Grandma! We Love You!

New BIG Things...

2010-08-31T22:42:00.000-07:00

Our sweet little Ezra is just doing all sorts of new Big Big things! He has been sitting up for over a month now. He just loves to be sitting up and so quickly went from tummy time to sitting up time. He likes to grab a toy then sit up and chew on it. Fun Stuff. But he feels like a big big boy when he does this I can tell. :) He is seriously just the smiliest, happiest little DUDE. He has the biggest fan club. When he wakes up in the morning I try to keep him very very quiet so that I can have him all to myself for a few moments, because the second he makes the very first squak our bed is FULL of boys, Eli and Arri run into snuggle him. Next come Harper and Annie, talking baby talk and telling him good morning. He is just so loved. So Loved!

Ezra is ALSO CRAWLING now! He started a couple of weeks ago. He did the rocking back and forth on his little knees for a couple of weeks and then one day (of course while I was out at a wedding, I leave the house for two hours one day and he decides that THAT is when he will start crawling!) he was just a little pro after that! He LOVES crawling now. He would rather be crawling then anything else, snuggling, nursing, eating, being held in any way nope, he'd rather crawl! We are going to parks just about every day to walk Rex, Soccer Practices, etc. And he just crawls along with the grass between his little fingers and toes and he loves it! So Cute!

Ezra also has started CLAPPING! He loves to give himself a little round of applause! He claps and claps. I felt very special today because I sang him a little song and when I was all done he got his big beautiful famous Ezra smile and started Clapping for me! :) Finally someone can appreciate my musical talent around here!

This is a video I took of Ezra and Rex Yesterday. It is so cute, but be sure you watch it all the way till the end. It gets fun. :)

Happy Birthday Harper

2010-07-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

We went to Six Flags the day before Harper's 9th Birthday. Harper is totally tall enough to ride on all the big crazy Rollercoasters and she LOVES them! It was SO great to watch her expressions before and after them. She was so excited! Robert was even crazy enough to RECORD her whole trip on "The Boomerang" (the roller coaster above). I LOVE this video the kids have watched it at LEAST 50 times!!! Ha Ha! So Funny! We had so much fun.
Here is the video:

I posted it on YouTube too so you could see it bigger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tby2fB00QAk

Fun Times! Thanks to Robert and Happy Birthday to my Sweet Harper

Many Summer Adventures...

2010-07-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

So we have just been all over the place this summer so far.
Oroville, Los Angeles, Camp Menzies, Six Flags, Lake Tahoe, and Monterey!

We had a WONDERFUL visit with some WONDERFUL friends and family down in Monterey. Even though the last few times I've been able to travel down to Monterey I have had to spend my Friday at court. Yuck! I have still been able to end my weekends surrounded by friends and family, loved ones and some of my very favorite people in this planet. I always spend my drive home and weeks following reflecting on how very, truly LUCKY I am. I am absolutely head over heels in LOVE with my Mom, and my sweet darling Monterey FOREVER Friends, The Awesome Word Family and the Ocean! We had a lovely picnic at George Washington Park. It was cool because when I was there I kept thinking about how when I was a little kid George Washington Park was the very first place my Grandma ever allowed me to go all by myself (because it was a straight shot right down the street from her house.) So then out of the blue my Mom says to me, "You know this was the very first place I was ever allowed to walk all by myself!" Ha! I couldn't believe it! SO funny! But I guess we were both granted the Right of Passage from the same amazing Woman. :)
Here are some pictures from our Wonderful day at the park:
Grandma & Her Boys

Yasi and Harper with her Daisy Braids

Lilly, Michelle, Yasi, Me & Ezra, and Rachel

Eli & Yas, Annie, Arri, Michelle, Harper & Skipper

We had a WONDERFUL Picnic & Day at the Monterey Beach with Chelsea & Seth
and the Kids:
It was a Perfect Day, A Perfect Weekend.
How very VERY Blessed We are for this Life,
For Our Friends and Our Families.
Just days after getting home we got our dog REX. And he has just lead us on one adventure after another. We take him on big walks every single day. We walk him across the street to the Dog Park behind Slide Hill Park, but our favorite thing is to take him on big adventures where he can run and sprint. Last Thursday we took him to Lake Berryessa! SUCH a beautiful lake! We had taken him here once before with the Ditty Family. He LOVES it here. He chases the waves and just runs through the water and swims around like crazy! I love watching him. The kids all went Skinny Dipping in their Undies (don't tell the girls I told you that) they all swam until the Sun went Down! SO Fun To watch! So exciting that Eli and the girls have all become SUCH strong Swimmers this Summer! Eli even goes off the Diving Board now!!!

Eli and Rex as the sun was setting at Berryessa:
Last weekend we all went camping up at Lake Oroville. We always plan a family camping trip each summer. Partially for Harper's Birthday, but mostly because we all love camping! We had SO SO SO MUCH FUN!!! It was SO super hot the first day 112! It was 101 at 9pm when we were getting ready to go to bed! Woah! The lake is almost (but still like 20 feet deep) but we just had to hike in to get there. We did a little hike (which Rex LOVED) the first day, and just picked the first cool little spot we could find and hung there while the kids played. Then went pack to camp. But the second day we did a HUGE hike up and down and up and down mountain sides. Serious. It was SO Hot and really intense hiking. But it was so worth it because we found our very own little Peninsula where we could be off on our own and Rex could run and play. The kids all wore life jackets so they could swim out almost to the other side of the Lake! They LOVED that, they would swim and swim then just like camp out in the middle of the Lake and hang for a while. So Fun! Amazing Ian and Robert hiked back in the middle of the day and grabbed lunch for us! Rex had a blast swimming and hiking around on his own then coming back to hang with us. Ezra and I loved to just sit and splash around in the shallow water. We made S'Mores each night. We made a big campout dinner Friday but Saturday we were all so beat and it had gotton dark so we drove into town and ate the BEST BURGERS and Ice Cream at a little Drive In Restaurant. YUM! It was SO cool that Ian and Zane came and spent the weekend with us, we seriously had a BLAST!

Today we took Rex to this HUGE Hay Field across the street from our house. There is just acres and acres of Hay, then next to that, is just acres and acres of these Tall Green Plants. The kids all played Hide N' Seek in the plants, it was soo cool because they were just about as tall as Arri but then when they sat down they would TOTALLY dissapear! They'd look for each other for like 10 minutes until someone could not stand it anymore and stuck their little heads up! So Cute! Arri usually lasted about 30 seconds and then was like "Here I Am!" The FUNNEST thing, Rex absolutely LOVED running through these plants. When we got home his little feet were all stained green. But it was so cute because he didn't just run through them he TOTALLY Leapt Over Them! We were all cracking up about this, Here is a Video, watch as he leaps in from off in the distance then he pauses and does another huge leap.
He is such a fun dog, he cracks me up!

In other news.... Oh My Gosh Oh My Goodness, ROBERT and ROD made the COVER of Filmmaker Magazine!!!!! The Summer 2010 issue. The 25 New Faces of Independent Film! What Up! So exciting for them! This is HUGE! Another super cool thing about it is that they got a call today that they've been invited to play at a Film Festival in Tacoma Washington, and they are flying them out, All Expenses Paid (Ahh Yeah!) and they are letting them show as much of their work as they'd like while they're there! So Excited for them!

AND... Did I mention, ROBERT GOT A JOB! Not just A job but THE job he has been aspiring for, he got a job teaching film and photography at Sacramento State University. It is just for two Semesters (so one year) for NOW that is. He also has another job in the works at Sierra College in Sacramento. That one is more part time but also more long term. It sounds like the two of them together might possibly work out to be totally perfect! Which means we get to stay in this wonderful little town for at least at LEAST another year! YAY!

Summer Adventures.
Prayers Answered.
Good Times.

Happy Half Birthday Sweet Ezra!

2010-07-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Rex Machoian Graham

2010-07-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

We adopted an AWESOME dog!
The kids LOVE him and he LOVES them!

He is so gentle and sweet, but he is still a big puppy so sometimes he plays rough and we are working on that. We've taken him to the dog park every day that we have had him so far and he loves that. He is such a mellow dog around us then turns into a bog playful puppy around other dogs. He is super soft and fluffy. Hes like 1 1/2.

Today we took him to Lake Barryessa with Jen and her family and their cute dog Moobie. They all, WE all had a blast!! Rex LOVED swimming!! He is such a great companion for all the kids, but especailly for the boys. I'm really excited to have him in our family. :)

Bridging & Camp

2010-07-10T10:48:00.001-07:00

Harper and Cheyeanne bridged from Brownies to Junior Girl Scouts! They got their wings and now they get to sew (well I get to sew) them onto their new Green Vests! SO Very exciting! It was a beautiful ceremony at the UC Davis Arboretum bridge.

Now it's beautiful summer and both the girls are off to Girl Scouts Camp Menzies! Cheyeanne went the last week in June to "Horse Lovers" camp and had a TOTAL BLAST! She LOVED it!
Harper is there NOW at a Six Day Sierra Safari Camp!! Where she gets to do a little of everything, Ride Horses, Canoe, Kayak, Archery, Sleep Under the Stars, And TONS of games!!! We love Girl Scouts!

Lucky Girls!!

Ezra is Eating Big Boy Food

2010-07-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

Ezra is starting to eat REAL food. I have to admit he has had vanilla frozen yogurt (which his pediatrician said wasn't so bad :) more times then he's had rice cereal, and he seems to like it a LOT better. But what can ya do. :) Its a process, but a REALLY cute process:

eZra

2010-07-10T00:47:00.001-07:00

Ezra fell asleep sitting up on the couch! Ok so maybe this is not exactly ground breaking news or anything but its totally adorable you have to admit! Harper made me take this picture. He's just like his daddy. Ha Ha! :)

Ceatching Up... Pt. 1

2010-07-10T00:45:00.001-07:00

Ok so you know you're in trouble when you log in to blog half way through summer and the last blog you wrote was titled "Many Spring Adventures" Yikes!! But ok so here we go...we have had many many exciting Graham happenings over the past few months.

Graduations...Reunions...Family Trips...Ezra Milestones... and much much more. :)

I'm going to maybe write about them one at a time but I just wanted to write this to start. Its been just crazy and hectic and wackey around here. Robert has been down in LA, Monterey, King City and all over this state lately trying to shoot and produce as much solid work as he can so that he can get into festivals next year as well as so that he can apply for jobs. He has a couple of leads one at Sacramento State and one at Sierra College. They both sound really good. We just have to wait and see what happens from here. So it has been a whole lot of me and the kiddos, a whole lotta crazy and a whole lot of praying for patience. Some days are such a breeze, easy-as-pie we just go through our comfortable little routines. Some days are crazy, and hectic and just plain hard. But every day, every single day there is laughter, and love and communication, and chaos those are the things that you can count on daily in this family. Our fundamentals. :)

Ok so here it goes, I'm going to post some of our summertime UPDATES, some of our Monumental Graham happenings. See Above...

My BOYS are GROWING UP!!!

2010-07-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

ROBERT GRADUATED!!!!
He officially got his Masters of Fine Arts MFA from UC Davis!
I could not possibly be more proud of him!!!

It was a long hard road but when I look back on it it all seemed to go by relatively quick and painless. Just knowing how tallented he is and how treasured he is I know that he will find a great job. I'm not worried about him at all. He is truly amazing. Big BIG Congratulations to Robert! (as if he actually reads my blog, he thinks its so silly when I try and make him read it, he's like "Uh, yeah, I was there, I lived it!") Here are some of his graduation pictures:

His final thesis show was AWESOME! He showed a ton of work, he had some still prints of his American Others series, which blows me away. Then he put together a collection of his works, American Nobodies, Dance of Days, Charlie and the Rabbit, and a few other shorts on a DVD and they have him a whole little small room to project them. He had a good size packed crowd in there viewing them at the opening. They played on a half hour loop. That was great, everyone seemed to be really enjoying them. (Of Course!) Then at the end he had an ORCHESTRA come and PERFORM the score that Ian wrote, to his film The King And I! It is SUCH an amazing piece. The film is a "Portrait" of his father with small little glipmpses of himself in there and just the reflection on his father's life in contrast with his own and things like that. It is so beautifully shot. Anyhow Ian wrote a score to accompany it which is ALL made up of found sounds from a school classroom. Such as desk drawers, pencil sharpeners, door handles, chairs on the floor, things like this. Then some stringed instruments, as Bruce was a music teacher. They brought in UC Davis music students to perform all of the "instruments". It literally made me tear up just watching it all come together it was absolutely breathtaking and beautiful. I'm so proud of him.

Speaking of being proud, we had ANOTHER graduation in June, Mr ELIAS graduated from Preschool and will be at Birch Lane with the girls in August! He was so so excited about this! Here are some pictures:

And Arri started... Wait for It... PRESCHOOL!!! Here's his first day!!!

It was really such a simple transition because Eli went to this preschool for two years, so for two years Arri has been walking him in and picking him up with me every day, little by little getting to know the teachers, when we'd be early to pick Elias up Arri would sit down in closing circle time as the went through the goodbye exercises. So as far as he knew he was already part of the class. And the whole time we'd been saying like pretty soon this is going to be YOUR school and Elias will be going to Harper and Cheyeanne's school! So he was just so prepped and ready to go for this. So just two weeks ago this was Elias' preschool and now it is Arri's! Arri could not be more excited! His teachers say that he is still pretty shy and keeps to himself, no surprise there, but that he is a huge helper and participates with everything which is great. He loves it. I'm so excited for him! Can't believe Eli is going to be in Kindergarten next month! WOW! Can't believe how fast they ALL Grow Up!

Many Spring Adventures

2010-05-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Once the sun comes out, Davis comes alive and there are just so many fun exciting things to do, especially for kids, its so wonderful! Picnic Day, Picnic in the Park every Wednesday, Farmer's Market, Spring Fling, Celebrate Davis Day, and the Whole Earth Festival! Fun Fun! So many festivities, so little time! But somehow we managed to make it to all of them! Woot Woot!

The Whole Earth Festival was Mother's Day Weekend. Robert was shooting a film in King City Friday and Saturday which I was bummed out about...but only until I realized it was Whole Earth Festival Weekend! There is no way I could have dragged Robert and even if I played the Mother's day card he still would have been so out of his element that none of us would have had any fun, believe me I've gone with him before. :) The Whole Earth Festival is one of my favorite things! I had SO much fun! I was there with just the kids for a while, they Harper & Arri got their faces painted:

Yeah, so Arri was some kinda bearded monster. Ha Ha. Love it.

Then we met up with my wonderful, awesome and hilarious friend Jen and her 3 kiddos! Gabe, Brady and Maegan. They are always a blast. We had so much fun chasing the kids around loosing them and then of course finding them. Our favorite line of the day, Jen kept getting swarmed with people wanting to pet her adorable little bull dog puppy "Moobie" and I had Ezra sprawled up on the grass and I was all, "What? Nobody wants to pet my baby? Seriously?" And the people petting Moobie just looked at me strangely, NOT laughing and like slowly walked away. Ha Ha! It was awesome.

That's cute little Brady next to Arri.

Then our Wonderful friend Ixchelle and her Awesome Kiddos met up with us.

We relaxed while the kids climbed and danced and painted each other and themselves from head to toe. =) It was just a free for all at the face painting station. Mae and Harper set up shop. It was the cutest, how I managed to not take pictures of that I have NO idea! Once everyone was fairly pooped out we decided to pack up the troops and head home. We did a once around the festival on our way out. Which may have not been the best idea because during the once around the festival the following things happened... Arri walked by a group of sorority girls in Mini Skirts and grabbed 3 butts in a row. Just one two three, squeeze squeeze squeeze! I have NO idea what brought that on but it was SO embarrassing and SO hilarious at the same time. Harper and Annie had a Hula Hooping competition Arri got in on it tooo. It was actually quite cute.

The kids played Hitachi for about half an hour. Sounds harmless right. Well to make a long story short, Eli just totally got into some trouble involving a 10 year old making him really mad and a hitachi stick. Don't even want to get into that one. Next up was a huge Indian song and drum circle march thing. The kids LOVED that! We just stopped to watch and they came and grabbed their little hands and took off with them. So cute! They had a blast!And we had a blast watching!

It was a wonderful day! I love Ixchelle! And I love her kids, I just hope that my kids can always have friends that are such great little examples, and just so sweet and so much fun. They all have the greatest little spirits. I just can't say enough great things about them!

Then I spent $20 on four awesome tie dyed shirts, not bad right? Then we headed home. It was a great day. Followed by a wonderful Mothers Day. Took a nice long nap after church then we walked down to the girl's school and played handball and then had a major kickball tournament in the pouring rain. THAT was a BLAST!!

Celebrate Davis was lots of fun! Just like ever local business in Davis gets together for a big festival and they all set up booths and give away free stuff! They also have live bands, fireworks and all that good stuff. We had a really great time.

Today was the super, SUPER fun Spring Fling Carnival at the girl's school, Birch Lane Elementary. We look forward to Spring Fling all year. All of the classes set up carnival games and there are tons of bounce houses and just fun fun FUN! We had sunch a blast! The Wonderful Waite family joined us again for some good good times.

When we first got there, again, the kids got their faces painted and this time we even got our hair dyed!! Yup, that's right, WE. I went Purple! Ha Ha!

Annie was hanging out with her little BFF and she didn't want to get her hair or makeup done. But she had a great time running around with little miss Erin. Harper and the boys spent HOURS going up and down the bouncy water slide. They had SUCH a fun time. We even came prepared this year with bathing suits and board shorts!
Harper's class hosted The Birch Lane Jail. It was soooo cute! They got locked up until they confessed to something. Eli was like, "OK, I ate my Mom's gum!!!" Too funny! Here's Harper in jail:

They decorated it soooo cute too love everyone's bad guy face:

Each kid had to put what they're wanted for, I love that Harper's was, "For being too funny!"

My favorite part of Spring Fling (and Picnic Day) is the UC Davis "Band-UH" They are SOOOO Awesome and SOOOO Fun to Watch!!! They do all sorts of crazy running around, dances and just play the funnest song. I always enjoy seeing them especially at Spring Fling because its so up close and personal. Today was perfect because there was a big Hula Hooping booth right next to where they were playing so there were just tons of Hula hooping girls right in front of them. Some of the trombone players marched over and were Hula Hooping while playing. Awesomeness!

And for the record...Ezra had a BLAST Too!!!

Brielle and Cheyeanne both won BIG CHOCOLATE CAKES in the Cakewalk.

Cheyeanne didn't want any of hers, but the other kids did! I told them that it couldn't come home with us under ANY circumstances! So we found a bench and they devoured it!! (PS: I got a new iPhone App that takes really awesome square old looking pictures):

Robert is in Santa Cruz today. Charlie and the Rabbit is playing at the Santa Cruz Film Festival. Go Robert!

Annie turned TEN on the 12th! Super fun! We had a nice little Sleepover with her best friend on Friday! She loved it we also had a fun family party for her too.

Just for Fun, Two Other Pictures I like that I took with my new iPhone App:

PS: Ezra is the cutest sweetest little baby EVER! Can you believe he's FOUR Months Old!

Lovely Life Lately

2010-05-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

Ezra's First Hoodie:

Ok so that picture has absolutely nothing to do with anything I'm about to write I just absolutely LOVE it and had to stick it in there. Ha! SO Cute!!!

So it's totally SPRING around here! And its WONDERFUL! The sun is shining almost DAILY! The kids can actually play OUTSIDE and at the park everyday! I LOVE IT! I missed the sun so much and its just been wonderful having it back!

Last Saturday, not yesterday but the one a week before that, I joined Weight Watchers (Yikes!) I never totally thought that I would do something like that but after the anniversary kite experience (ha ha) and just wanting to be more active with the kids, etc I just really felt like it was time to step up my game! I went to a meeting again on Tuesday just 4 days later and I had already lost 3.4 lbs! Woot Woot!! So Exciting!!! Its a really easy lifestyle to life so far, very do-able. I'm really excited about it!

Side Note: I had saved up all during my pregnancy for two baby items that I really wanted and just finally was able to buy them, I got the Joovy Kooper Stroller:
I love love LOVE everything about this stroller! Its so lightweight, folds up compact, has great storage space, steers so easily, super squishy handles, pockets inside where baby sits too, and today Ezra fell asleep in it and I was able to recline the seat so he was basically laying down flat! The sunshade is amazing and it has a big window so I can spy on him. Just the perfect stroller, wish I would have got it 3 kids ago! Then my other big baby purchase, is the beautiful Scooter Beco Baby Carrier:
These are by far the BEST baby carriers on the market. They are so supportive and so versatile. You can wear baby on the front, hip or the back. They can hold your babe all the way up until they're 4! I LOVE it! Its so comfortable. There are tons of great designs but this was SO my favorite, It was really hard to find, took me almost a year to find this print but I finally did and its here and I've used it almost every day on our long walks, LOVE it!

Ok, so NO I'm NOT taking up a new job in baby gear sales, just very excited about my two big purchases!! Especially because we have been super active lately and going on long LONG walks almost every day!!! One of my very FAVORITE things about Davis is that from our house there are basically parks in every direction from our house if we want to do a 2 minute walk there's a park if we want to do a 20 minute walk there's a park, if we want to walk for 1/2 an hour, 45 minutes, an hour there's a park. And they are all beautiful clean nice safe parks that the kids LOVE. And not only that but there are beautiful clean walking trails leading to each one of those beautiful parks, usually cement surrounded by grass and trees off the side of the road! Have I mentioned that I LOVE DAVIS? So the kids usually ride their scooters, roller skates, wheels. And Robert and I walk fast to keep up with them. If we're going SUPER far then I'll bring the stroller and a carrier and Ezra and Arri trade off in the stroller. Arri will scooter at least half the way but his little legs get tired after playing at the park for a couple hours. I like wearing Ezra in his carrier because even though I can't feel his weight I always feel like I"m getting more exercise having him there. :) Once we get there, Robert and I lay in the sun and chat while the kiddos play like crazy then we walk / ride / stroll home. We have been doing this pretty consistently for the past couple weeks.

Our Friday Walk, we walked 2 miles or so to John Baravado (?) Park and met up with our friends, the Waite family who hung out at our house that night. So Fun! Right when we got there I spotted a lonely dragonfly so still on the ground. He was very friendly!

Brielle & The Dragonfly

(Side Note: Brielle is one of the sweetest little girls I have ever met! If Harper can just always have a friend as sweet and kind and just awesome as Brielle I will be one happy Mom! She just has the best head on her shoulders, great since of humor and is always looking out for other people's feelings. I just love this girl!)

Harper's Hand:

Its so awesome because the Waite family has the same number of kids that we have! And they are all similar in ages! Us: 10, 8, 5, 3 Them (sorta guessing): 11, 8, 6, 5 and they all get along SO well! We do date night swaps and its just SO awesome! So lucky to have made such great friends here, Seriously! The kids were so tired out from our long walk, came home fed them a huge dinner and they all zonked out during their movie!

Yesterday we filled our wagon up with all of our new kites. Because Friday was SUPER windy so we were sure that Saturday there would at least be a breeze. So we packed a picnic, loaded up the wagon with jackets, 4 kites, and a picnic lunch. And Nothing, not even a breeze! We did pick a beautiful grassy spot under a tree and relax and listen to music while the kids danced, and played at the park. We ate our picnic lunch and wove little twig crowns for all the kids. Harper took out one of the kites and it soared behind her while she ran in circles pulling it around the grassy field and she loved that. It was such a warm sunny perfect day. Not windy enough for kites, but perfect nonetheless!

Sleeping Ezra and Me, Under our tree. (Daddy took this one.)
Silly Girls
Sweetie Boys
All Of Us Ezra, Dad, Eli, Arri, Harper, Annie, Me

After the park, we all went down town for Frozen Yogurt. Yum! Harper stuck one little toe in the fountain and I knew it was all over. Her and Elias were soaked from head to toe with in 5 minutes! Arri took off his shoes and socks, ran over got splashed once and came running back over saying, "Mommy you put my shoes back on me please."

Today we left the camera at home. We actually made it to Sacrament meeting in time for Sacrament!!! Woot Woot! Such a HUGE accomplishment. Ever since they moved it to 9 its just been the biggest challenge. We came home and took a nice family nap (the kids didn't even argue!) and then all woke up and put on our walking shoes. We walked a good mile and a half to the park down a beautiful green grassy tree lined trail. Took out our kite (only brought one today) and it shot straight up into the air. Harper could not have been more excited. She flew it for hours and even gave her brothers turns they all loved it. So cute! Arri and Annie and I laid flat on our backs and watched the kite fly, it kept diving down looking like it was going to land on top of us but Harper would pull the string tight just at the right moment and it would shoot back up into the sky again. It was a blast. A Beautiful Sunny Sunday. I love Spring!!

Harper and Cheyeanne are all signed up for Girl Scout Camp Menzies this summer! They can not wait, they're so excited! Elias is registered for Kindergarten in the fall and Arri is registered for Preschool starting in July!! Yikes! Eli, Harper and Annie are registered for Fall Soccer, and for Summerdarts which is a Summer swimming program that is Monday-Friday all summer long. Very exciting. So much excitement the future has in store for these guys! :)

EZRA is Growing Up!!!! No matter how much I beg him to quit it, he just keeps growing! I'm at this stage where I"m like seriously PLEASE just stop growing, its happening way to fast! But at the same time, I love it because the more he grows the more his Sweet Wonderful little personality just shines through and I just can not get enough of it. He is SUCH a darling little boy! He Smiles at me every time we lock eyes and its not just a smile its like this Wide Open Mouth just whole face lights up happiest boy in the world smile! Makes my day every day!!!

Easter, 10 Year, New Toys, Picnic Day, Lets Just Call This the Official APRIL Post. :)

2010-04-18T13:04:00.001-07:00

I have so much catching up to do so I better just get down to it! Its so hard keeping up to date with all of our happenings. Not so much because so much is happening but more because when the fun stuff does happen, I'm an over-documenter. Yes I made that diagnosis up, but Robert brought it to my attention. I write about our exciting happenings here, then I scrapbook them, then the things that involve each individual kid in their journal, so if I'm not careful I can end up writing about the same day at the park like 8 times! That being said, if I get too overwhelmed and don't write for a little while then so many amazing things just pass us by only to be forgotten forever!

So here it goes, April, before I forget it. We had a wonderful Easter Sunday, it was conference, so we woke up and watched that together. Well Robert and I tried to watch while the kids ran around the house like little crazy people and did every possible thing to get our attention so half we through we gave in and let them find their Easter Baskets. Both the girls got beautiful Easter Dresses (Pictures to come), Arri got Swimming Shorts and Eli got two cool dude church shirts. Then other little toys too. Towards the afternoon the Motts came over! I made us an Easter feast, and Robert and Eric ran over to the park in the POURING rain and hid almost 100 Easter eggs for the kids. Then Rebekah and I drove them over there so the kids could search and find them. I wussed out and waited in the van with Ezra, they all searched and searched in the POURING I mean really just POURING rain. It was so fun to watch them. Here is the picture I made Robert take of them before they all got turned loose to go hunt:

Arri, Eli, Annie, Nolan, Max, Harper and some Big Kid who Showed Up. ;)

It was a really special Easter, we all had so much fun! definitely one for the books! I'm not even sure the kids noticed it was raining as totally excited as they were to go find eggs. Dinner turned out kinda weird, the ham was just weird, good but weird, not sure anyone noticed that either though so all in all it was a pretty perfect Easter!

I have officially been married to the man of my dreams, my one true love, my prince charming, for 10 YEARS! I can't believe that it has already been a decade! That just seems crazy to me. I feel like I was in high school just a couple years ago. But then when I sit back and think of all the things that we have done and accomplished, raised 4 (5) wonderful children, bought and sold a house, got sealed in the Temple, Robert is graduating from Graduate School, as well as just really settling into ourselves, growing up and building this life together, its amazing. I could not for one second imagine building a family with anyone else. I am still to this day so completely head over heels in LOVE with him, with us, with this life we share...and always will be!!
Big Big Thanks to the Motts, who watched our boys, we had a WONDERFUL Anniversary weekend last weekend. We just stayed here in Davis, our favorite place. We ate at some of our favorite restaurants. We flew kites, bought some fishies, watched movies (For the record: Date Night was HILARIOUS) , went on walks, and just RELAXED, it was WONDERFUL to say the least. Who needs Hawaii eh? All we need is peace, quiet, and each other. (and saving $200 from our tax return was nice too!) Flying kites was my favorite part and definitely the climax of our weekend (I mean minus the stuff you don't write about in family blogs). So this is why... we're laying on the grass in the middle of a wide open filed. Enjoying the warm sun. It is just perfectly windy enough to keep our kites up in the air without any effort at all but not so windy that it was super cold. Then Robert sat up to tell me something and he accidentally let the kite string go. So the kite string went tumbling a few feet away and I jumped up to grab it because he was holding Ezra. The closer I got to it the further it would tumble away as the kite was pulling it. So then it started moving faster and faster away, and got to the point that I was in a full on SPRINT across this huge field. I threw my cell phone that I had had in my hand trying to make a dinner reservation. I threw off my jacket because as Robert likes to say "It was holding me back". And I just ran as fast as I could for as long as I could. I was very worried because at the edge of this huge field is a very busy very fast street. The string handle from the kite is HUGE and could do some real damage to a fast car. Plus if the kite fell it could cause an accident too. I'm playing all this in my head over and over as I run after it. Finally JUST at the very edge of the street is this little tree. Nothing around it at all just this one lonely little tree, and at the very last second it caught the string and held onto the handle! I could not believe my eyes! The string was just barely stuck on this one branch and the kite was just soaring so high directly over the busy street with cars zooming by under it! So I stopped to catch my breath and wait for Robert and Ezra to run over. We wrapped Ezra up, snug in my jacket and Robert boosted me up into the tree. (Keep in mind that Robert and I could both stand to loose a good 50 lbs (a work in progress) and running, climbing hoisting, these are just not things that are part of our daily routines. I can only imagine how any or all of this looked to the passer-byers. So there I am up in this tall but tiny little sticky tree. And I reach out for the kite string / handle and no matter how I maneuver or reach or stretch, I am literally like 1/4 inch too far away. I just could not grab that thing to save my life. (or anyone elses.) So its Robert's turn. Only I was stuck and it took me like 5 minutes to get out of the tree and at any given time that kite could have just dropped right on a car going 55. So finally, a few scrapes and scratches and pulled muscles later I managed to get out of the tree and one pulled back later Robert managed to get up into the tree and REACH the kite string and hand it to me to roll up. The rest was history, but that was just the craziest little Moment in time. Definitely going to have to re-play that one when all is said and done.

So little Mr. Ezra is just learning and growing and doing all sorts of exciting things! He has started PLAYING with his new toys!!! After shower time the other day I opened up our curtains and my whole room filled with sunshine. Our bed was so warm from the sun that I laid him down and he stopped crying (was crying because he was cold from getting out of the shower). I set his little toy mobile right over him. At first he just stared intently at the colors and shapes for awhile.

Then he started reaching for them:Then he started hitting them and actually holding onto them!

He is just growing and changing and learning so so fast! he amazes me! He is so sweet and precious and happy and full of joy and love ALL the time! I just love this sweet boy with all my heart! A couple cute pictures I took of the kiddos last week. It was the first Sunny day we had had in a while.

Yesterday, was PICNIC DAY at UC Davis. Reason number 5,932 that I absolutely LOVE our little town. Picnic Day I think was intended for all of the UCD students and new prospective students to invite their families to come and check out the town and campus. They have hundreds of booths, displays, events and happenings all over the town. Most of it is free and just SO SO Fun! This is our second time going and our second time walking in the Parade with the Girl Scouts! I had been nervous trying to figure out how I was going to get us down there as I thought that there wouldn't be any parking but I just drove and we found a spot. So here goes the story...

I started packing us up last night, wanted to make sure that we would have EVERYTHING we needed so we didn't have to spend a bunch of money on food, or be cold, etc. I packed, A lunch, snacks, water bottles for everyone, sun screen, jackets for all of us, a picnic blanket, the good camera, money (just incase), sunglasses, a change of clothes for Ezra, Ezra's carrier, two diapers, wipes, and my phone. This came to roughly 35lbs in my backpack. Found a spot right on 5th and Ast, so I thought we got like Primo Parking! Got out wrapped Ezra in his wrap to glue him to me, strapped on the backpack and we started walking. I think we got to the first stop sign and my back started hurting. This was a new backpack I was trying out and it was the WORST. There was like no weight distribution. It cut into both of my arms, on of which is freshly tattooed. (oh ps: I added Ezra's name and lots of detail to my lovely owl tattoo) and it just pulllls on your neck and shoulders. It was bad. So we're walking and I'm checking the map. Walking more, checking the map more. Finally stopped to ask directions, and the person tells us we need to go one mile "that way" so we do, then we stop to ask directions and they tell us to go one mile back the "OTHER way" so we're on foot at 8 am, carrying major baggage and have now walked two miles from our parking space. It was about half an hour after that point that we FOUND our Brownie troop at "Lot 41". Lot 41 turns out to be just outside of a gigantic parking garage. A Parking Garage who is in fact offering FREE Picnic Day Parking! Woo Hoo!
So then about 10 minutes later the Parade Starts. The TWO MILE Parade! Ha Ha! But all whining aside it was so so SO much fun! The troop used their cookie sales money to buy two big bags of candy to hand out to all of the little kids watching the parade. There were hundreds of little kids watching and they had SO much fun handing candy to them all watching their little faces light up. SO SO CUTE!

I LOVE My Little Brownies:

Along with all of the smiling happy children at 9am were hundreds of already drunk frat dudes. You'd be absolutely amazed the kinds of things drunk frat dudes will yell at a troop of brownies, can't even tell you how many cookie puns we heard. Gotta love college towns! But the girls didn't catch onto a thing and they just LOVED the attention and cheering. One guy was yelling "YEAH BROWNIES!!!!! YOU ROCK" and playing the kazoo. I dared Harper (who was on ultra shy mode) to go give him a high five and a candy and she did. SO for the next like two blocks we could hear him yelling to her about how "TOTALLY AWESOME" she was. She thought that was like the funniest thing EVER! One sorority house had a bout 5o people up on the roof watching the parade and cheering. We watched one (drunk) girl trying to climb up onto the roof slip and fall of head first to the ground!!! Harper later said at the end of the day, "Well I know at least one person whos' in the hospital right now" we went home and had a loooong talk about college, choices, alcohol, drugs, drinking and driving, responsibilities, etc. They had lots of questions. :) After the parade the girls got to take a picture with the UC Davis Cheerleaders! Who we were behind in the parade the whole time. (We actually opened the parade right after the cheerleaders, all the other girl scouts were further back, but we got to hold the picnic day banner! :) Then we went and ate, and started the festivities. We went to several booths. The girls and I were a little tired from SOOO much walking that we sat in the shade and relaxed a bit while I fed Ezra. Then we ran into some friends (who knew which way they were going) and we headed over to the Weiner Dog Races!!!!
This was one of the CUTEST Funniest things I've ever seen! These little dogs are soo silly! It took place in a HUGE basketball stadium. I didn't even know it was there but it was HUGE like you could see the Lakers play there. They had the replay screens for everyone to see and everything. There were THOUSANDS of people cheering on these little weiner dogs, and half the time they would just run all over the place or run out of their kettle and then back in. One kept just attacking the orange cone. It was SUCH a crack up!!! Loved This!

After the races we went and met Elizabeth and the Overton Girls and watched the Battle of the Bands! Which is always my favorite part. The Wackey Marching bands from all the different colleges come out and play. SO much FUN!
After the Battle of the Bands, per Payton's request we headed over to the water fountain that she remembered playing in last year! With in 2 minutes all of the kids were totally soaked from head to toe.

Watch Payton:

They had SO Much fun! About 20 minutes after this picture 5ish the girls decided they were done. We came home, the girls took showers, Ezra took a long nap. Everyone ate a big dinner, we watched a Girly movie and the girls went to bed. I scrapbooked until about 3am and went to bed. Which brings us to today, this beautiful sun shiny Sunday! Time to go play outside! Thanks for reading. :)

Me and My Cousin

2010-03-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

99.9% of my childhood memories involve my cousin Jessica. Her and I, playing outside, in the back yard, in the back back yard, under the table, under the house, on the Monkey Bars, picking plums, selling plums, roller skating, exploring, using our imaginations, climbing trees, making up games and clubs, eating pudding pops and just being KIDS until the streetlights came on, or my mom came to pick me up, whichever came first.

My grandma and grandpa watched me everyday after school until my Mom got off of work at 5.
She worked in Castroville in an office for a chain of grocery stores. So for as long as I can remember I came home every day after school to Grandma and Grandpa's house. I would go out into the back yard and head to the Monkey Bars. Jessica lived next door and her bedroom overlooked Grandma and Grandpa's back yard. Jessica would get home and go to her room and peek out her curtains and then would rush over and we would play and play and play until the sun went down. I often have dreams about this time in my life.

Sometimes we would help Grandpa with his picking plums, or raspberries. Or watch in fear while he did his beekeeping! A couple of times a year the bees would swarm and we would be forced to play inside. EeeK!
If we were really good Grandpa would give us Pudding Pops. But only after we checked with Grandma first. Grandpa helped us build a playhouse on the side of the house out of bricks. We LOVED it, but eventually ended up moving it to under the big house. We made up and played SO many fun games, we had a little book of rules. So much fun!
Jessica was my childhood. My little partner in crime! ha ha! I always wanted to have a sister close to me in age that I could spend time with, confide in and grow up with, and I realize now, looking back, that I have had one all along.

And lucky me, we have kept in touch after all of these years. I'm so thankful to have her in my life, someone who has always been a constant steady source of support and love. She amazes me and I'm so thankful for her. Jessica came up to visit last week and it was just such a great feeling to be together, to catch up, to see her interact with the kids and how they all love her. We've both come so far in our lives since the Roller Skates and Pudding Pops. But there is nothing more comforting then having a Cousin, Friend, Sister, that you can just pick up where you left off with. Someone who has known you since forever and will know you until forever.

I'm such a lucky girl, I'm so in love with my family, my AMAZING husband, Darling Wonderful Crazy House Full of healthy children, My Loving Mother and Father, and all of my completely amazing forever friends and cousins. I also absolutely won the Jackpot marrying into Robert's family, but that is another blog for another day, I could go on and on and on about how Grateful I am to be a Graham! I just want you to know that if you are reading this then there is a REALLY good chance that I absolutely love you with all my heart and thank Heavenly Father for you each and every day.

2010-03-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

Our Sweet Little Ezra is starting to smile, when he's awake even! Its the absolute CUTEST thing you could ever imagine!! I haven't had a chance to take a picture of it yet because every time he gets smiley I can't bring myself to take my eyes off of him. He is just the sweetest little darling boy EVER! And we just love him, love him, LOVE him so very mucH! He is so wonderful and snuggly and soft and cuddly. I love that every member of our family is head over heels in love with him. And that we all know how lucky we are to have him in our family.

Robert and Annie were out of town for the weekend, we were sad to see them go, but we actually had a nice weekend. Friday night Harper and I had some girl time, we watched Fame, she had been waiting to see it for months. It was nice to have some one on one time with her. Saturday we went to a super fun birthday party, then Harper had her best little friend come over for a sleepover (minus the sleeping over because he's a boy :) They played games and the Wii and watched movies and ate lots and lots of candy. They had such a blast, super cute!! Lucky me, I was able to have GIRLS NIGHT with Jo Lynn, Katie and Ixchelle, three amazing, wonderful ladies. We had such a great time catching up and talking and watching a movie. I love those girls, and I know I'm so so lucky to have found such AMAZING women to confide in and share life with here in Davis. Love Them! Wish we could all just stay here forever.

Today we had a nice quiet Sunday at home. We did some Spring Cleaning and amazingly it was actually SUNNY enough that the kids could play outside. I was taking pictures of a ton of stuff that we're getting rid of, and then looking at the cute cute kids playing outside I just had to go out and take pictures of them, here are some of the highlights of our photo shoot:

Love Those Guys!

The Girls in a Play and a Day at the Park

2010-03-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

The Missoula Children's Theater from Missoula Montana came to Harper and Cheyeanne's school again this year. Last year they came and they put on The Princess and the Pea. It was ADORABLE. This year they put on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It is such a cool program! The directors come to their school on Monday and they do the auditions after school. There are usually about 50 spots available and about 100 kids auditioning. Luckilly for us the girls both got parts. Harper was a forest frog, and Cheyeanne was Dumpty one of the Seven Dwarfs. They change up the story so there were all different Dwarfs and they make it really funny. So then each day after school they have practice until about 8:00 and then they have two performances of the play on Saturday and then they drive on to the next town. It was SUCH an adorable play! Big thanks to the Motts for coming and supporting the girls and enjoying the day with us!

Fun Fun!!

So Saturday Robert told Elias that it was haircut time. Elias said "I want you to cut my hair like Ezra's!" and then Arri said, "You cut my hair like Ezra's too!" I totally tried to talk Arri out of it because I LOVE Arri's long hair. But they both totally had their hearts set on having Ezra hair! Eli kept saying that they have the "Graham Brother Hair" ha! I love that they're already a little crew. Here's how it turned out:
Ezra was so NOT loving the Sunshine in his eyes. But he Love that they all had matching hair, I know he's REALLY excited about it! :)

We had a lovely Sunny Sunday in the park today, it was so SUNNY and actually WARM!!! Ezra and I laid in the sun and soaked up the rays while Robert and the kids played frisbee and the kids played on the playground for hours. One of my favorite things about Davis is that they have SOOO many parks, any given weekend we can choose to just drive around until we find another park we've never been to to try out and then spend the day there. And that's what we did today! We had an absolute blast!

I love our little town of Davis. I love Sunny Sundays and I love these Kiddos!

Birthday Boys & Birthday Mom!!

2010-03-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Well gosh, its been so quiet around here. Everyone has gotten, and pretty much gotton over bad colds. Even Ezra and I got it. We have just been laying low, resting and taking it easy. Enjoying the finer things in life like our new baby, the park around the corner, American Idol Family Nights, Puzzles, and Dad's Yummy Popcorn! Snuggly Blankets on Stormy Days and glimpses of sunshine in between weeks of rain.

We have had TWO Birthdays that I have to mention.
I already wrote about Ezra turning a great big ZERO! Very exciting,
Then...
Our One and Only ELIAS TURNED 5!!!
His birthday was January 31st. The day before Robert got home from Sundance, but sweet Elias wanted to wait to celebrate, wait to have his cake and his presents until his Dad was home. So that's what we did. I thought that was the sweetest thing. I mean what kid can WAIT to have CAKE, ICE CREAM AND PRESENTS!!! But he really wanted his Dad there. So Sweet.
So on his birthday Michelle and I took the kids to the Explorit Science Center here in Davis.

We had never been there before. The girls had been there on field trips. It was really fun a great place to spend an afternoon! We had a really fun time! After that we came home and ate Popsicle, watched movies, and ate Chipotle! Yum Yum!
The next day, after Robert got home we had a great little family party. Miss Amazing Michelle wrapped up all of his presents and helped me make him a Skateboard Cake (my mom's awesome idea!) before she left.
He was thrilled! My Mom and I got him a bunch of skateboard Tech Deck toys. Ramps n' stuff. He was VERY happy about that!!! Eli's favorite things are Family Time, Making People (Especially His Dad) Laugh, Skateboards, Harper, Going to the Park, Dance Parties, Being Crazy, Salami, Movies, The Wii, Knowing how to Work Stuff (like the tv remote), Bike Rides, Scooter Rides, Being Awesome, Visits with Grandma and Skipper, Making Annie Mad, Getting Mail, Bug Catching, Hanging out with Cousins, Boys Night, Oh I could go on and on, Elias is a lover of all things. He literally just came up to me and said, "Hey That's my Birthday Cake!!" and I said, "Yup, I'm writing about your birthday" and he said, "Awe, You're the BEST MOM EVER". awe. He's the sweetest kid ever! (That being said, he also accidentally smacked Ezra in the face yesterday and then when I was so in shock that I didn't even know how to punish him he told me, "Mom I didn't MEAN to smack Ezra in the face, I was TRYING to smack Harper in the face, Ezra just got in the way because she was holding him!" Like that would clear things up and make it all A-Ok. These kids, I'll tell ya! Oh and my other favorite Eli moment of the week. We were all sitting around eating dinner and Harper was talking about her friends at school. Saying that she's been playing with her friend Cameron a lot again lately. She said, "Cameron is pretty much my best friend. Well, Cameron and Eli." Then Eli's whole face lit up, and he whispered to me, "What did she just say?" and I told him and he got the BIGGEST smile EVER and said, "Yeah, that's what I thought." so then I said, so Harper out of "Cameron and Elias who's your BESTEST friend" and she said "Eli of COURSE!" and he said, "Yeah, I KNEW it! You're my best friend to Harper." and Arri yelled, "AND MEEEEEE" and then Harper and Eli told Arri that he's their bestest friend too. It was just one of those super sweet sibling moments. I Can't Get Enough of Those!!!
Speaking of little Mr. 3-Year Old Arri...
Our Sweet Arri turned THREE last Saturday!!! Hip Hip Hooray!
He was Soooo Ready for HIS birthday after celebrating Ezra, Elias, and Me!
He was super ready for some Arri Attention, not to mention some of his OWN
presents! Ha Ha! he was so excited. We had a wonderful day, there was a
break in all the rain and we went to his FAVORITE park, which is "Pirate Park"
he got to play with some of his favorite cousins, aunts and uncles, and he even
got to see his Grandma and Grandpa Graham! He had Such a FUN time! Then
everyone came home we had a Dance Off and Pizza and Cake and More Fun! It was
a perfect day I have to say. Arri is such a little sweetheart and he just loves time with
his family. It was so cute to see him come out of his shell for the dance party. He always does when its just us guys but there was a LOT of people there, so that was brave. :) Unlike his brothers he's not a huge fan of all eyes on him. For example, we all watch American Eagle together as a family, that's our one show we watch with the kids. So every time the opening song comes on, and even after the commercials Eli gets up and does this little dance to the theme music and he does this thing that I can't even put into words at the end and we all crack up laughing every time. So Arri just couldn't resist and in the middle of the show he got up on the coffee table, shook his booty and did this little pointy dance while making funny faces, and everyone started cheering and laughing and were like "YEA ARRI!!!" and he totally just got down and put his head in Robert's lap and like wouldn't come out for a looong time, until he knew that everyone was just watching the show and had forgotten it. Ha! He even got mad at Robert all over again for even bringing it up. :) Our Sweet Little Shy Guy. What I think is so amazing about Arri, well one of the MANY things... is that even though he is the shyest of all our kids, and even though most people can't understand what he's saying most of the time, he just has this sweet little magical charm about him, something that makes people feel a connection to him. People just click with him and can tell what a little sweetheart he is. Its really neat. He has a special little friendship / bond with everyone he knows. I love that.

So on Sunday after church, after dinner, we had a special little celebration for Arri with just our family. We had cake and sang to him again. We just hung out as a family, played the Wii and had some silly fun time. Arri's favorite thing.
(I bought this little cake for the party. So cute but the second I saw it I knew there was no way it would be enough for all those cousins, so Robert whipped up a lemon cake as soon as I got home with this one. Everyone loved it though so that totally worked out! I love Arri's little sneaky finger in this picture. :)
(The Second I held up the camera this is the pose that Arri Struck. Ha Ha!)(I asked Eli like 10 times to smile but this is the only pose he would make. What the???)

Arri's favorite things: Family Time, Sleeping In, Morning Snuggles, Dance Parties, Hide N' Seek, Sword Fights, Dora, "Bunny Yogurt", Teacher Lexi, Being a Big Boy Like Eli, Rain & Snow Boots, Bouncy Balls, Bike Rides, Scootering to the Park, Dad, Puzzles, Getting Picked to Go Somewhere, Making People Laugh (just not a lot of people all at once.) Drawing. Arri is just the sweetest snuggliest little coolest guy.

Oh yea, I guess we had one other birthday too. I turned 3o! Yikes! Pretty Exciting! I don't feel like an old lady or anything. I feel kinda the same. :) I feel lucky and blessed and loved and excited for whatever my ever after will bring.

A couple days before my birthday we spend the day at the park. We packed a big picnic lunch and the kids just played all day. Robert plotted out obstacle courses for them on the playground and then timed them as they ran and did them. They all raced. Within like 3 minutes of doing this he had a line of 8 kids all waiting for their turn. Every single kid at the park wanted a turn. So they did this for at least an hour. So Cute.
(Arri checking out Harper up on the Rock Wall)

Ezra and I hung out on the blanket most of the day:
Ezra is SUCH a Party Animal!
Peek-A-Boo!

For my birthday I went to Ikea and picked out some new dishes and silverware. Very exciting! Then we went to the park for a bit then met up with the Overtons for dinner at Red Robin and we all went to see The Princess and the Frog. It was another wonderful day! So much Fun!

I love love love this little life of mine.

The Birthday Boys and Birthday Mom:

Welcome Sweet Little Ezra...

2010-01-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

He's Here...

Sweet little Ezra Machoian Graham was born January 19th at 1:20pm. The labor was ok, and everything kinda went the way we expected it to, possible details on that to come later. It was such a rainy and stormy day, Robert and the kids kept talking about how it was so stormy that it was raining Sideways!! The doctors kept talking about how big he was. He weighed 7lbs. 15oz. Which is pretty average for our little babies. He is just perfect.
The labor was ok, and everything kinda went the way we expected it to, possible details on that to come later. I dunno. It was such a rainy and stormy day, Robert and the kids kept talking about how it was so stormy that it was raining Sideways!! The doctors kept talking about how big he was. He weighed 7lbs. 15oz. He was 21 inches long. Which is pretty average for our little babies. He is just perfect. He has his first Dr. appointment tomorrow. Hope it goes well, I know it will.
Robert got to "trim" his umbilical cord. The doctors had already cut it, then handed him the scissors and let him cut it a little bit shorter. Ha Ha. He is a really good little sleeper. Nursing has been going pretty ok with just a couple of things we're working out. He's such a sweet sweet boy, we just snuggle all day every day. He's very sleepy, and so am I so we're both adjusting, healing, and snuggling all the time. He likes to just be held close all the time which is A-Ok with me. Especially for now. He's riding in his little swing for the first time right now and I already miss him. =)

As for me, recovery is going ok. Still in a lot of pain. Trying to stay positive, trying to heal and not miss Robert too much. Its been really nice having my mom here to help out with the kiddos and with all things. And the ladies from church have been bringing dinners which is just the sweetest thing ever! I've actually been able to relax a lot and just fall in love with little Ezra. Its been really nice. I've been missing Robert like crazy. That has been really, REALLY hard, but I'm trying to think of other things. It sounds like he's having a really great time at Sundance getting to see lots of movies, and do exciting things. It sounds like he really wants to be back home with the family too though, I know it was hard leaving while Ezra and I were still in the hospital. But I think he's still totally making the most of his time there, and Charlie and the Rabbit has gotton really good reviews and everything, they have had good responses at the Q&A and people are recognizing them and talking to them on the streets n' stuff. Really Exciting for them. I just can't wait until he can come home and we can all be together.

Daddy made this video while we were in the hospital, before he headed off to Sundance.

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2010-01-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

Gosh so much time has passed since I last wrote a blog! I've been so sleepy I just haven't done much reading or writing because whenever I open a book or a journal I just feel so sleeeepy! But I know I must blog, especially before the baby comes!

Ok, just to play a little catch up... We had a Wonderful Thanksgiving down in King City. The whole Graham Fam was there. That is Always a Blast and Tons of Fun! Hanging with the fam and getting ALL the cousins together!! Just crazy party time all the time! Woo Hoo! The food was super yummy as always and the cousins all play so great together! Love these guys!
While we were at Grandma and Grandpa Grahams house for Thanksgiving we found out that ROBERT'S FILM: Charlie and the Rabbit got accepted into the Sundance Film Festival which is absolutely AMAZING! Huge accomplishment. Close to 10,000 people submit films to Sundance each year and less then 200 get accepted. So this is a major honor for him, for our whole family. Very Exciting. Here's a link to the bit about Charlie and the Rabbit on the Sundance page: http://sundance.bside.com/2010/films/charlieandtherabbit_sundance2010
So this was sorta the best possible news for Robert, and our family, but then it was followed up with some pretty stressful news for me, which was that the festival lasts 10 days and starts the day BEFORE our baby was scheduled to be born. Baby due 1/22 Dad leaving 1/20. Noooo! So luckily my awesome OBGYN agreed to move up our C-Section to 1/19 so Robert will be able to be there for the birth and a day, but then will have to fly out to Utah the next day. Luckilly I've got an Amazing support system here. And between some Awesome Sister-In-Laws and our Relief Society at Church, and My Wonderful Mom who's going to come and stay up with me, I think I'll be all set! I was feeling so stressed and just upset about the whole thing, but now I'm feeling really like everything is going to be ok. I mean its a big bummer that Robert will be gone for the first week that the baby and I are home out of the hospital, but at the same time, we'll be fine at home and he will be off, in dream-come-true land, doing big huge amazing things!

So begun the Christmas Craziness. It was a crazy holiday season with Christmas Parties, Christmas Vacation, Christmas Visits, and of course, Christmas Shopping! But we had SO Much Fun!!!

Here are the Girls After Cheyeanne's Christmas Play:

Here are me and my FAVORITE girls at Rachel's Cozy Christmas Get Together:

Here are the Boys Meeting Santa:

So much Christmas Fun! Good Good times! The kids TOTALLY scored for Christmas!!! My Mom got Elias and Arri an awesome little Wood Clubhouse This One:
Its perfect size for the two of them! They love it, I can't wait for it to warm up so that they will be excited to play out in it more. They have already played in it a lot though. Robert and I got both of the boys DRUM SETS! Then we got both of the girls cruisers. Harper got her exact same orange cruiser as last year that she's really been missing ever since it got stolen. Cheyeanne got the exact same one in blue.
They were absolutely THRILLED about their bikes, and even more then that, thrilled that they got TWIN bikes! =) With Twin Baskets, and Twin Bells! Yay! So cute! We had so much fun. We were so lucky because we got to have Grandma and Grandpa Graham come and visit us for like THREE whole days! The kids LOVED it! Usually when they get to see Grandma and Grandpa they have to share them with their 15 other cousins and all their aunts and uncles, but this time they got them all to themselves! So much Fun! Christmas Eve night we just relaxed and visited and then we watched The Polar Express. The kids all got to open their one present so they all opened their Jammies.
Christmas morning we all woke up, (our awesome kids let us sleep until 8! Not Bad!) and opened our presents. We used our Christmas Money from Grandma and Grandpa Graham to buy Band Hero! So we played that a bunch on Christmas! Super Fun!!!
The kids LOVED playing it with Grandma and Grandpa. They were all great at Drums, Eli loved singing. Grandma is great at the singing too. Daddy and Grandpa rock on the Guitar! Everyone had a blast!

The kids have been really enjoying their Christmas break. I'm sure they'll be ready to get back to school next week. But they've had a great relaxing break as well. It'll be nice to get back to our regular schedules though.

That being said, our schedules won't be very normal for very long. Only 18 little days until Mr. Baby shows up, and Daddy flies off to Utah! I think we're pretty ready for baby time. We've got the crib set up. My wonderful friend Jo Lynn is throwing me a baby shower next weekend! Can't Wait! Its gonna be so much fun! Today I am officially 36 weeks pregnant. Which if you're dividing by 4's makes me 9 months pregnant today! Yikes!!! Crazy! Just a little over two weeks and it'll be Baby Time! Can't wait. We're still going around in circles about names, but I think that we actually narrowed it down to TWO! We'll see how that goes. =) So far so good.

We had a wonderful New Years! The super fun annual party for Elizabeth, always a blast! WE love our New Years celebrations, can't wait till next year! Can't believe its already 2010! I know that some seriously big big things are going to happen this year! I just know it. Robert is graduating, baby coming, who knows what else 2010 will bring! Yay! Can't wait to find out!

Ok so that's it for my updates for now. I guess I have a lot more to tell but I also have a house full of "STARVING" children to feed so I better get a' cookin'!

Fishes & Stitches

2009-11-17T18:02:00.000-08:00

So, its been a month of many catastrophes, starting with Harper's Dog Bite, then last week Cheyeanne and Robert came home from shooting (a flim not deer) in the forest with a horrible case of poison oak. I do childcare and BOTH of the girls I watch came over sick (even though I pretty much BEGGED them not to) for a whole week, so the whole following week (last week) into this week OUR kiddos have been sick. First Arri, who plays with the girls who were sick, Then Elias, Then today Harper stayed home with a cough. Poor kidzos. Anyhow, last Thursday, to top off our crazy couple of weeks, Arri, who is learning how to ride a two-wheeled scooter, was riding outside then fell and smacked his little head on the house. :( All I hear was crash, cry then Elias going, "WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH OH WOAH MOM WOAH!" It was all he could say. So I go out to get Arri and all I can see is a little red line. SO I'm like Awe, Arri, poor guy come here and I'm giving him a hug and as I'm hugging him he is crying and he frowns his little eyebrows, and then the next thing I know his whole eyebrow (where it frowns) like SPLITS OPEN and there is this HUGE FLAP of skin that just opens up. AHHHHH! So scary. Luckily, it happened just hours before Robert was headed out of town so I called him and he rushed over and took Arri to the ER. We thought they were going to just glue it shut (like they've done to Elias more then once) but instead they had to actually STITCH him up! I guess it was too deep and too close to his eye for glue. Scary.
The Dr. told him that he was the TOUGHEST toughest two year old he's ever seen! Ever, he didn't cry AT ALL. He was super brave. He said he stitched up smaller cuts on 12 year olds and they cried like babies. :) He is healing really well, he got his stitches out yesterday, and is doing great. I'm still a little overly protective of him but that's my problem.

So this weekend Robert was out of town again. Him and Rod got an invitation to apply for free to the Sundance Film Institute, which is a HUGE deal, so they went down to King City to work with Bruce on a script, they just wrote and wrote all weekend. We had an end of Soccer Season party, and a Girl's Night with Harper (and Arri). We had a lot of just hangin' time, but Saturday I just could not figure out what to do with the kids, then I remembered that we had a nice fancy fish tank just waiting for some fishies that we had never filled up. So we got it all set up, then headed to PET EXTREME! We each picked out one goldfish and one guppy. Harper automatically picked out one big Orange Goldfish out of about 300 other ones, and said "That's IT, That's Sunny!!!" and never took her eye off of him! Then she picked out a little guppy with a red dot on his cheek named "Honey." Eli picked out a dark orange one with a black stripe across the top and named him "Mohawk" and a Guppy named "Dude" Arri got a big orange goldfish named "Daddy" and a Guppy named "Baby" I got a White Goldfish with an Orange spot and ONE EYE!!! (He lost the other one in battle) named CYCLOPS! And a guppy with a red tail named "Squiggles" Very Exciting! Ok so the fish are cute and fun and everything but seriously for the past THREE Days the kids have been like GLUED to the Tank! Like This:

Saturday, 1pm

Saturday, 2pm
Saturday, 4pm
(I love above picture because it looks like Arri's fish came up to say hi to him.)

And so on, ever since then, for the past 3 days. :) Its so funny, they are SO fascinated by them! I love it, so cute! Would have got fishies a LONG time ago if I had knows how much the kids would dig them! Good Times! Gotta go, Family movie night we're watching Aliens in the Attic, very cute!

Mommy & Arri's Specail Weekend

2009-11-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

So this weekend Robert too Harper and Cheyeanne to Scotts Valley to shoot a film he's working on with Annie. And the Amazing Chelsea Word family offered to have Elias for the weekend so he could play with Linkin. Fun Fun! So I had Arri all to myself and he had me all to himself. We had a wonderful time. Friday I watched Anna and Lilly, but then after they went home Arri and I headed downtown. We went to Blockbuster and rented two kid movies. It took him about half an hour to settle on Reef & Peter Pan. But we weren't in any rush at all. Then we walked over to Chipotle. "Beans Cheese Beans Cheese!" he was saying the whole way there. So that's what he got! We had a super fun time eating out and talking. I could tell he was loving the one on one time, and we never really get to eat out with ALL the kids so it was nice.

Eating, Eating, Done! Then we came home and snuggled in and watched Peter Pan.

Saturday Arri slept in until 11am!!! Then we got up and ate Mini Pancakes, his request. Then we had some errands to run. We went to Target where they had 90% off of all Halloween stuff! 90%! So that was exciting, we got some fun party favor stuff for next year's party! Then we went to Costco just to run in and pick up some pictures. Speaking of pictures, so Arri started to get bored and decided to take some pictures with my iPhone while we were shopping and he snapped these two pictures of me. I would just like to first add a disclaimer that, while I realize it looks like he caught me picking my nose and eating it, what is ACTUALLY happening is I just happened to be SCRATCHING the back side of my nose and then TOUCHING my lip. I just thought it was really funny when I saw these pictures on my phone later. Arri's little statement to the world Busted Mommy!:
After Costco we walked over to the new HUGE pet store Pet Extreme! We looked at lots of animals, Bunnies, Hampsters, Snakes, etc, but our favorite was THE SHARK!!! Here is cute little Arri looking at the shark, there is a glare but you can see it at the top of the picture:

The Shark:

My View of Arri from the Other Side of the Tank (Cute!):

After our pet store adventure, Arri was requesting "burgers" so we walked over to In-N'-Out. Arri LOVES In-N-Out, I think its his favorite restaurant ever, here is our In-N-Out ad Campaign, seriously how YUMMY do those fries look! Remind me not to blog about food when I'm hungry:

(I LOVE this picture, his little waving foot, so Sweet. I took it under the table.)

So after our yummy lunch we walked back to the car and headed to the grocery store to do some major grocery shopping, then home for dinner and another movie. We read stories and had some major snuggle time, then Arri fell asleep on the couch with me while I scrapbooked a little.
Here's Arri's picture of ME watching the movie:Sunday morning Arri slept in till 11 Again! I couldn't believe it. I was wondering how late he would sleep in all the time if his siblings didn't wake him up every morning! We had a nice big yummy breakfast Sunday then played outside:

Arri was doing so good on his tricycle that he decided to ride it ALL the way to the park!!! And so that's what we did: He loved going up and down the hills on the way. "I ride bike park, I go up up up up up then I flip I go down down down down down down" That was him telling Grandma and Robert about his park adventure. We came home and relaxed ate a yummy dinner and Arri fell asleep on me on the couch again. Robert was all frustrated last night because Arri wanted to sleep on me on the couch and he was like "What in the world Arri, go to bed!" I guess I sorta spoiled him this weekend. But we had SUCH a great time with our late night and late morning snuggles. All of our little adventures. I just loved having him all to myself he could talk and talk and talk and tell me all the things he was thinking about with no interruptions. We had a great time, me and my little buddy. I just love him so much he's such a sweet, funny, silly thoughtful, insightful little guy.

Today Elias is home with a cold and Cheyeanne is hope with poison oak from her forest adventures. Her and Robert both went to the Dr. this morning about their poison oak and got some medicine. Hope it works fast, I'd hate for her to miss another day of school. I can't stress that enough.

Well I'm off to try my luck at making Tamales! I already started the homemade beans, going to start the tamales now then the Spanish Rice! Yum!

Autumn Adventures and Halloween Happenings!

2009-11-02T15:36:00.000-08:00

We have had a such a wonderful, beautiful fall season so far with pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and Halloween festivities, and its still been reaching the 80's!!! It would be really hard for me not to say that this is my favorite time of year!

Last Thursday we all went to the Pumpkin Patch on a Field Trip of sorts, with the Girl Scouts. Impossible Acres where they have a large pumpkin patch, we got to go on a train ride all around the farm. They also have a barn with all sorts of CUUUUTE little BABY ANIMALS! SO cute a soft and sweet! Little Calves, Pot Bellied Goat Babies, Pigglets, Chicks, a Pony, KITTENS, the really cool thing is that they are all in their stalls but the kids can just walk right in and pet and hold all of them!
We had a great time. It was SOOOOO windy! Like 35 mph winds!!! Arri literally could not even WALK on his own with out getting blown over. His and Eli's hats kept just flying off and up into the air! It was Amazing! And so funny and fun. The kids favorite thing I think was the little kittens. They all had big puffy jackets on and Cheyeanne found out that if they put the kittens inside of their cozy little jackets they would almost instantaly start purring and fall fast asleep!

Next came all of the crazy HALLOWEEN Happenings! I absolutely LOVE Halloween, its my most favorite Holiday of them all. SO MUCH FUN every year! We spent most of Friday decorating and cooking for our big party on Saturday. Then like halfway through all this cooking craziness our neighbor across the street put a beautiful, perfectly good dishwasher out by the street because they got all new matching appliances I'm guessing because they also put a nice stove and other things out there. Well the dishwasher we had was all rusty, falling apart, was barely working, etc. Well Robert went over and got the other dishwasher and it was a PERFECT FIT! And it works WONDERFULLY I mean like a NEW ONE! And its SO QUIET its the nicest dishwasher I've ever had, I'm SO happy about it and excited! So then after a long day of decorating, cooking Chilli, Cornbread, Cookie Cut Outs, Pumpkin Fluff, etc, etc, we got all dressed up and went to TRUNK or TREAT!

The kids had a blast, Robert and I were SO impressed that not only did almost our whole ward SHOW up but almost our whole ward DRESSED up! It was awesome. People are so Creative and CUTE, there were some SUPER adorable costumes!

The next morning was PARTY DAY! I spent the morning cleaning and decorating and getting ready for the party while Robert took the kids to their soccer games. My WONDERFUL friend JoLynn came over and helped me decorate and get everything set up which was a HUGE help! We had SOOOOO Much fun at the Halloween Party, We had tons of friends come from Church, School, Preschool, Girl Scouts, and of course Family! Here are some pictures of OUR costumes, so bummed I don't have full body shots of anyone but Arri. I am proud to say that we ALL had homemade costumes this year! Very fun! I made Harper the Funkiest little bell bottoms, note Arri's little Fringed Pants & Skull Applique Shirt! (I didn't make the hat though), and Elias' Ultra-Real looking scraped eye!!! Not Bad Eh?

Robert Was a Paparatzi Guy w/ a Black Eye and I was decked out in Orange & Black from Head to Toe.

Arri was a Pirate "IPirate ArrrrrrMatey"

Harper was a Hippy "but not one of those ones with the weird glasses"

Elias of course was a "Skateboard Dude who Got Hurt."
Note: Robert tried so hard to get him to be a dead Skateboard Dude but it just creeped Eli out too much. He had to keep his kneepads on so people could tell he was in costume.

Here are some of our Party Pictures, the kids played and played on the swing set,

we played "Freeze Dance", decorating cookies, pin the "Wart on the Witch", Build a Spider Web:

And the famous "Make a MummY":

There were TONS of Awesome And Adorable Costumes:
Nolan Won "Vampiest"

Casey & JoLynn, Mr. & Mrs. Claus won Best Couple

Max the little Ghost won Creepiest (in Creepy in the Cutest Sense)

Zoe & Maddy, Harry Potter & Harmione Granger won Fanciest

There were many many other winners also! Robert won Funniest, Arri won Cutest, Eli won Awesomest and Harper won Most Classic. =) Go Family! Everyone had so much fun and just played and played.

Our long day of Partying, Dancing and Playing was of course followed up by a long night of Trick-Or-Treating! The kids actually wussed out and only lasted like two hours, but it was a really fun! They were SO Cute! Eli was very particular and kept getting in trouble because he kept asking people if he could "trade in" candy and would take like 3 minutes rifling through their bowls. Arri had his BEST mannors and said "Trick Or Treat" and "Thank You, Happy Halloween" at EVERY HOUSE! so CUTE! I brought thermoses of hot cocoa and some pumpkin bread to snack on along the way. Arri camped out in the wagon half way through and ate and held flashlights. Brave Harper even went to the SCARIEST Haunted House! OF course Robert did tell her, if you don't go to it we're going to one more WHOLE BLOCK! She was so proud after though, and is still telling the story of the Scary Guy in the mask! (The same guy I ran SCREAMING from last year, not a proud moment.) All in all it was a perfect day, and a perfect night. I love Halloween, I Love our Little Family! Can't believe we'll have ONE MORE little guy next year! Amazing. Only 3 little months to go!

Tired Kids on the Long Journey Home from Trick or Treating:

Grandma's Visit & Dog Day Afternoon

2009-10-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Well we had a very fun adventuresome weekend with Grandma!

Thursday Grandma (My Mom) and Skipper came to down and we all visited and played and had a great time. We went out to eat at Plutos (YUM) I actually snuck a few doors down to get myself a burger, was totally craving a burger. We had a really nice time. The kids were all sorta, almost well behaved, it was amazing! =) Then we came home and put the kiddos to bed and my Mom and I visited and caught up. Its always nice to have some late night girl talk with your bestest friend.

Friday we got up and got the kids to school. My Mom went over to Cheyeanne's class because they were having a "Grandparent Tea Party." It was so cute how VERY excited Cheyeanne was about the whole thing. She worked really hard making this place mat for my mom, it was really sweet.

So anyhow, after school, Harper and Cheyeanne were riding their bikes home, like they do everyday, and out of nowhere, this HUGE BROWN DOG came running at Harper, barking and he just charged right at her completely breaking the metal chain that he was chained up to and he totally BIT HER! He just chomped right into her leg. She came home absolutely TERRIFIED! She came home screaming I took off her little leggings and found this huge bite mark in her leg! It had these like streaks at the top where his top teeth were then deeper cuts from his K-9 teeth, then on the bottom, where one of his big sharp K-9 teeth sunk all the way into her poor little leg! It looked just awful! It didn't stop bleeding for TWO DAYS! Soaking band aid after band aid. I totally flushed it out with hydrogen peroxide and the health dept. guy said we didn't need to go to the ER, but I was really tempted to. The only reason that I didn't was because Harper had decided that she was NEVER leaving the house again EVER! I mean she literally was telling me she was going to have to drop out of school because there was no way she was leaving the house again. Poor Thing. I called the police. Cheyeanne went with Robert to get the number off of the house. They went and picked up the dog and they've basically put him on a little doggy time out for 10 days and that's IT! The cop was like, oh don't worry they're going to get a big fine. I'm like why do I care that you're going to make them pay the city or whoever a ton of money, when now my daughter is going to be forever scared of dogs and bikes, and going to school, etc! I've had to drive her every day since it happened she won't even get on a bike! I don't mind, it just makes me so mad that this even happened. It was the WORST bite I've ever seen EVER! I took pictures, but don't really want to post them, it was just awful though. Its healing up good, I took her to the doctor, its mostly just scrapes, a shallow hole and LOTS of bruising. She's been SO tough about it every since Saturday. Here's a picture of the bite: OUCH!!!
Friday night my Mom watched the kiddos and Robert and I were able to go out, we ate at the Village Bakery and watched Zombieland. AWESOME really FUN Crazy Movie. It was REALLY nice to get to go out.

Saturday and Sunday were lovely as well, Saturday we had soccer games, then after we went to go see Where the Wild Things Are. Which as I'm sure most of you already know was Amazing! I though it was really sad and depressing, but really beautiful and wonderful and all those things. Eli and Arri were over it after the candy ran out, but what can ya do. Harper made fun of Grandma for crying. I fell asleep for 5 minutes, because this is the SLEEEEEPIEST pregnancy ever for some reason. But in the end it was a wonderful beautiful movie.

Sunday we woke up, the kids went to church with Robert, Annie gave a talk, Arri and I stayed home to keep Skipper and Grandma company. We had a really nice visit, as always. Harper and Robert went to Harper's concert recital. Harper is in the Birch Lane Chorus. She sang the whole time and knew all the words, Robert said she did great! I'm really proud of her. :) Singing in public in front of other people takes major guts and she was so brave!

So we're having our big annual HALLOWEEN PARTY on Saturday! I'm super exited I have SOOO much to do, but I'm SUPER excited about the party! As long as we have enough food and goodie bags (my only concerns) then we'll be Good To Go! Can't Wait! Can't WAIT to see all the kiddos in their cute little costumes! I made Arri 2 pirate shirts and Harper some hippy pants, I'll take lots of pictures! We already started decorating the house. Fun Fun!

Ok I'm like falling asleep as I type! I'll write more tomorrow (I hope) or the next day soon more updates and PICTURES EVEN!

These Days,

2009-10-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

So I've been having all of these realizations lately... like I totally realized last week that soon, VERY soon little Arri isn't going to be the BABY anymore. I was remembering how Harper was always our little babe, then Elias was born and all of a sudden Harper just seemed GIGANTIC, just so big and mature and I think part of it might even be like expecting her to be more grownup. I don't know. Anyhow then after Arri was born Elias seemed like SUCH a big boy and he wasn't the baby anymore. I mean of course they all my little babies, my little munchkins, but at the same time they just grow up SOOOOO fast!!! Sounds cliche but I mean SERIOUSLY they grow up SOOOO fast! Ok so Arri is SUCH our little baby. I mean more then any of the other babies were our babies. He's just so little and so snuggly and so cute and sweet and lovey and needy (but in a good way) and he's just our little baby. He LOVES being the little brother and he LOVES looking up to his older siblings. Ok so ya they were probably all that way but for some reason I can barely even remember Harper and Eli's Baby Days. (Which makes me all the sadder.) Ok so anyhow I was just realizing that Arri's baby days are so numbered! Of course we will still baby him and nurture him and all of that, but once the baby comes I just know that Arri is going to feel like a giant. He's already super tall. I guess I'm talking in circles but to summarize this paragraph... I'm just not ready for Arri to not be the BABY!

I also realized this week that we only have one more year of secured life here in Davis. I mean, Robert has only one more year of school, which of course is very exciting to think that in one little year Robert will have his MFA!!! Go Robert! But I just get all nervous when things are uncertain, and our near future totally is. The hardest part is how head over heels in LOVE we all are with DAVIS, every member of our family is just so happy and content here. Our ultimate dream would just be to settle here and live happily ever after. Ok my ultimate dream, Robert still has his heart set on the midwest. I'm not so so picky about where we end up, its just the getting there and settling in and mostly just the finding our spot and Robert finding a job that makes me nervous. He will have to do adjunct teaching for 3 years before he can get a good permanent position as a professor it sounds like. Which means more moving and less settling but as long as we're all together (and we always will be) I feel like we can make a home wherever that may be.
Just times like this that I wish I had a crystal ball. But I guess I'll just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.

The baby is moving SO much now! Like all the time. I've been having contractions and stuff. The doctor said all that is normal. She said that with this being my fourth that I can pretty much just expect everything thing to be four times as intense. Like everything happening sooner and more of it, movement, contractions, being tired, all of that. Which has pretty much been the case. Arri and I took a big snugly nap today. Even if its not true, still totally made me feel better! He is SIX months along already. Isn't that crazy! This pregnancy has just been ZOOMING by! The baby is just moving and kicking SO much all the time! Its exciting, but Crazy! I've been thinking about him So much because I'm just always feeling him all over the place. Its funny. We're very excited to meet him.

We had a nice full weekend of KIDS and FRIENDS and FAMILY! Friday night we had all the Lovely Waite kids over. We've been doing a date swap thing and it was our turn with the kids. They are SUCH awesome kids. So polite and sweet. They also get along SO well with our kids.
They have two older boys and two younger girls, just like us. And they all play together really really well. Saturday was lots of Soccer. Then later on the Overton girls came to hang out. Then Sunday was even a bunch MORE cousins and family and friends, we BBQ'd and the kids just played and played and played like they always do. It was a looong weekend because I sorta feel like I'm getting sick and our kids were up so late every night. But we all had a really great time. I love family time, its always the BEST. We went on a lovely bike ride with Chelsea, Seth, Linkin and Sadie, and just talked and played. It was so nice to catch up with them!

Ok, I have more to say, but I started this blog on Friday and its Monday, and I have go to cook lunch then I have a Dr. Checkup, so I can either just post it already or just save it more for later. I think i'll just POST it. :) More to come....

99

2009-09-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling fairly whiny lately, been so stressed and bummy about my job and all the heat and sleepiness of being pregnant. I just had this overwhelming feeling of being in so completely head over heels in LOVE with my Family, my Friends, Our Home, Our Life, etc. this weekend. So I just wanted to document some of the little JOYS in life that I just can't get enough of. My favorite number is 99, so I thought I'd shoot for 99 things that I absolutely couldn't live with out...

Here They Are in NO Particular Order:

1. my eternal family
2. my forever friends
3. public libraries
4. our little home
5. sunsets & silhouettes
6. building things with robert
7. water with lemon, hot or cold
8. swimming pools
9. super heroes
10. fancy bread with olive oil and vinegar
11. pacific ocean
12. striped socks
13. date nights
14. our little toyota echo
15. owls
16. sleeeeeep
17. listening to the kids play make believe
18. board games
19. movies
20. books
21. thick green grass
22. dandelions
23. relief society
24. iphones
25. target with out time limits
26. burts bees chapstick
27. old cameras
28. garage sales
29. watching robert wrestle all the kids at once
30. baking with harper
31. staying up till 3 am talking with robert
32. watching arri "conduct" the music at church
33. smelly markers
34. vintage pyrex dishes
35. thrift store shopping
36. lover's point
37. monarch butterflies
38. halloween
39. paper lanterns
40. kids artwork
41. turquoise & amber
42. swings
43. old photos
44. scarves
45. wooden blocks and puzzles
46. arri's early morning snuggles
47. hoodies
48. converse
49. elias being protective of his family
50. sewing
51. trying new recipes
52. bike rides
53. water slides
54. honey vanilla chamomile tea
55. pacific grove
56. polariod cameras / pictures
57. roller skates / skating rinks
58. podcasts
59. really funny stand up comedy
60. sharp pencils
61. camping
62. starry starry nights
63. music
64. watching the kids have dance parties
65. storytime
66. graphic novels
67. when robert goes all out telling the kids stories, accents and everything
68. harvest festivals
69. cheezy shower games
70. gyap
71. photobooths
72. the beach / collecting seashells
73. lists
74. disneyland
75. big sur
76. ridiculously soft baby blankets
77. cloth diapers
78. elephants
79. loved stuffed animals
80. jammies
81. backrubs
82. being pregnant
83. family snuggles
84. really good pizza
85. my mommy
86. big dogs
87. soccer
88. girl's night
89. flip flops
90. sisters (robert's)
91. girl talk with harper
92. childhood memories
93. play dates
94. gardening
95. pouring rain
96. roberts films, music, writings
97. ice cream & froyo
98. funky crafty artwork
99. holidays

I'm so very thankful for all of the above and so SO much more. I am blessed. Life is Good.

Our First Weekend of Fall

2009-09-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend was our FIRST weekend of FALL! Yay! And we did it up just right. We had our usual Saturday morning of Soccer Game Hoppin'. Both the Girl's & Eli's team Won so it was a very VICTORIOUS morning. (ya know, not that we keep score or anything. ;) So after the games on the way home Eli talked me into stopping at ONE garage sale and I was so excited to find a BABY bicycle helmet. These are like next to impossible to find and if you do find one they're SUPER expensive. Anyhow its super cute, just a solid white one, more the Skateboarding style but with extra padding inside and perfect little baby size. $2.00! Woo Hoo. :)

After our long exciting HOT HOT HOT morning. I mean seriously hot, like two soccer games right in the sun felt like it must have been well over 110. But that might just be the pregnant lady in me talkin'. Anyhow, we came home ate a big lunch and drank a bunch of water. Then headed out the door to the PUMPKIN PATCH and more importantly to THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS WORLDS BIGGEST CORN MAZE!!!! It was CRAZY HUGE!!! This picture is from the website it's an overhead view but NOT even of the whole thing!! This is just part of it.
Inside the maze it was super humid. I've been in corn mazes but this one was crazy. We were seriously lost after the first oh, 5 minutes! Literally lost in there for like 2 hours. We were leaving little markings of dead corn leaves here and there to mark the places we had already been and just walking around in circle after circle. Cheyeanne, being the little trooper that she is of course decided she was dying of heat stroke about 20 minutes in and decided to cry and pout and mope and whine the entire time which added to the fun. ;) Elias was just loving every second of the adventure of it all. Harper decided to be our official Corn picker upper so she would find fallen ears of corn, peel them and leave little trails of the kernels to mark where we've been. Arri was "The Lookout" on top of Dad's Shoulders. Here are some of the pictures we took:

The last one is Elias emerging from the little secret corn hallway he found. It was just his size, like a little cave. He loved that. Arri was pretty much loosing it at that point, but then pulled it together when we told him he needed to be the leader. :)

So just as I was thinking, ok so we're going to have to start peeling some of this corn for dinner, and if Robert digs out some of these corn husks we could have a little fort to sleep in, we walked past someone holding... you guessed it, a MAP! They even had an extra one! So before we knew it we were HOME FREE!!! (we later found out that they give out the maps when you pay the $10 per person entrance fee to get in the maze. WHOOOOPS!)
So after looking at the crazy map we realize we didn't even get through like 1/4 of the maze!!! So next weekend we plan on going back with WATER, Lunch, a MAP fully charged cell phones, a compass and no Cheyeanne. (what? she'll be with her mom anyway.) SO after our loooong journey through the depths of the corner of the Corn Maze, we headed over and got two gigantic (expensive) Slusheees!!! YUM! Then we took a journey through the Pumpkin Patch, they had every kind of Pumpkins imaginable!!! Then we found a HUGE swimming pool FULL of dried CORN!!!

Elias was Literally DIVING IN. (As you can see :) Then we BURRIED Harper!!!

This weekend I was TOTALLY HAUNTED by Adorable little Yellow Lab PUPPIES! These are my All time FAVORITE Puppies! Any kind of Lab / Retrievers are my favorite dogs and the puppies just KILL me! I kept seeing them everywhere, soccer games, bagel shop, Corn Swimming Pool!
The kids LOVED that little Doggy they chased each other ALL over the corn! SUPER CUTE!!!
After the corn pool they all RACED to the top of a HUGE HAY MOUNTAIN!!! Then we ran around the pumpkin patch and ducked inside of some little play house barns. So Much Fun!!!
Then we headed back to the car just in time to make the Sunset.
Then Bath, Pizza, Cookies, BED! They all (WE all) crashed super hard last night. This morning was church and then Harper and I came home and made two Yummy Apple Pies! Harper's first pie from scratch! They turned out great and we were able to go over and share one with the Motts. Such a lovely visit! I am so thankful to be so close to family! I'm so very thankful to live in such an amazing little town filled with WONDERFUL people, and endless Adventures!

Hooray for Fall!

The Day We've Been Waiting For...

2009-09-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting for this day for MONTHS, the day we find out if there's a little baby BOY in there or a little baby GIRL and most importantly that (s)he is growing Healthy & Strong! I know that everything will be ok, still makes me SUPER nervous, but more its just So SO very exciting! So last night, after Making Arri's Movies. :) I was just so excited that I could hardly sleep!!! I mean I was soooooo tired that I fell right asleep, but I had SO many vivid dreams of Dr. Appointments, Ultra Sounds, etc. After each one I'd wake up and think and ponder a bunch. Had a very insightful night! The dream that I remember the most vividly... I was talking to Robert, I had already had the Ultra Sound, and the Dr. hadn't revealed THE NEWS to me yet. So Robert was talking about how he had told his Mom that it was a GIRL and that she was saying, "Oh, that's a bummer now Arri won't have a little baby brother to play with." and I was like "Oh, so wait, its a little GIRL?" and he was like, "Ya, the Dr. Called." anyhow, so I was SUPER EXCITED for a second then I got super bummed and was like that's so true, I want a little girl to dress up and have girlie time with, I want a little girl so Harper can have a little sister, stuff like that, but REALLY what I'm hoping for is a little boy, because the three boys together will be the BEST of FRIENDS their whole lives, etc. and I just had this vision of having a little boy and him, Eli and Arri growing up together and how amazing that would be and how they were going to miss out on that and I got super bummed. I woke up from the dream, my first reaction was like "WOAH that was a dream??? Felt SO real!!" my second reaction was "So it's NOT a Girl, I knew it!" then realized I didn't really know one way or the other, but I pondered the whole thing and realized how fun it would be to have a sweet darling little baby girl, Awe, who doesn't LOVE baby girls. But then I realized how completely awesome it will be to have another boy, and how strong their little brotherhood will be. Harper will always be protected and they will always be so close. I don't know. I really can truly honestly say at that point at like 3am I did NOT have a preference one way or another. [Ok let me just say, that I started writing this blog entry this morning after I woke up then got totally sidetracked with childcare, Eli pickup, cooking, and life stuffs, so the second half of this blog I wrote AFTER our ultrasound...] Harper rode her little bike home faster the EVER before and burst through the front gate all sweaty and out of breath, "Am I too Early? Or To Late???" I was like, "you're right on time babe." So cute, and silly! So we packed up and headed into the van. We drove there, and we talked about babies, how they grow, what they do, how she's going to be a QUADRUPLE Sister (for some reason she kept calling it a "Fripple" sister.) How she will be old enough to hold the baby and be an extra big helper and how much it will love her. She closed her eyes and said a little prayer for a Sister. So being all overly anxious and really having to pee (because they make you drink about a gallon of water first and HOLD it!) we ended up getting there like half an hour early, but it was super awesome because they just took us right back! The first thing she said to us was, So is there anything you're hoping for, one way or the other? I said, "I'm just praying he's healthy! But I know you can't tell me that." and Harper said "YES!!! I want a SISTER!!!" so she puts the blue goop all over my belly, sets the little probe thing down on my belly and says, "Well, That's a Leg, and That's a Leg, and That's... Oh... I'm sorry Sweetheart" Harper was like "WHAT??? Are you KIDDING ME????" and she's like, "Well that's just Boy stuff right there." and Harper says, "Just keep checking." Ha!! The two of them were cracking me up. We were in there for about an hour playing guess the body part. "FEET!! HEAD! LEG!!!" She had Harper convinced she was going to be an EXPERT Ultrasound Technician when she grew up. :)

I think Harper was disappointed, initially, but after like two minutes of checking out her little brother she was so excited and amazed. He held up one little finger and the lady was like, "Ooh he just told you he's #1!!!" and Harper was joking around, "What! You're not Number One! I'm Number One, You're Number 4!!!" So cute.

So on the way home Harper tried to call Dad, but he didn't answer (found out later he was cleaning up large quantities of poo, poor guy, not even our kid's poo, that makes it SO much worse!) so she remembered that she and I had promised we would call Grandma as soon as we knew too. So we called Grandma, she had been rooting for the Girl Team like Harper, so they talked about how they couldn't believe ANOTHER little brother, but that it would be fun and wonderful and all that good stuff. After that Daddy called and she told him the news too. She kept trying to sound bummed but was very obviously, still, just very much on Cloud 9 from seeing her little Brother wiggle and move and all his little parts stretching out.

We talked about the PERKS of being the only girl. I know that right now she is not the ONLY girl, but Cheyeanne might or might not be with us forever, and lately it has seemed a lot more like she is not going to live here forever. Also who knows maybe someday there WILL be a little sister, the future is so very uncertain, but we talked about the PERKS of being the oldest and being the ONLY GIRL! I'm pretty sure my first point sold her, that if she didn't have a little sister then she would always have her OWN ROOM!!! To paint and decorate with HER things however SHE liked. This was a big one for her. And that while Arri and The new guy would most always be wearing hand-me-down clothes that Eli picked out or I bought for Eli or Arri, that Harper would ALWAYS be able to pick out her OWN clothes for HERSELF! And there would be NO ONE to steal them from her. (Another HUGE PLUS) That all Barbies, Nail Polish, Pinky Fruffy Girlie things would belong to her and HER ALONE. While all things Spiderman, Superheros, Hot Wheels, and Boy Stuff would have to be shared a minimum of three ways! And that Boy Nights Will consist of Dad and the 3 dudes while Girl Nights would continue to be special Mom & Harper time. We also talked about how we would always be the very best of friends just the two of us girls that we would always have each other and how our friendship will just continue to grow and grow, not that a little sister would come between us but that She'll always be my very first baby girl. And that we've grown so much together and we will continue to. It was a really cool really special talk. Loved it.

Then we came home, Robert had waited to share the news with the kids so Harper could tell them. She ran in the gate and Eli's like "BROTHER OR SISTER OR BROTHER OR SISTER OR BROTHER OR SISTER??????" Harper was like "BROTHER!!!!!!!" and Eli was all super excited! Annie said "Oh." and walked away, (not totally sure she would have cared either way, And Arri said "Broderrrrrr?"

I, myself, could not be more thrilled. We are blessed, so very very blessed over and over again.

More Arri At Bedtime...

2009-09-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

He Really Comes Alive at Night Doesn't He... Ok I think it's mostly because all his siblings are in bed (or supposed to be) so its his time to SHINE because he knows the cuter he is the harder it is for me to put him to bed.

Arri has been seeing a Speech Therapist, "Teacher Lexi" for a couple months now, she is Amazing!! He absolutely LOVES her!!! He talks about her all week long and runs and gives her a big hug first thing when she gets here on Mondays. She just completely adores him and even though they just lost some funding in her department she is pushing really hard to be able to see him two days a week which would be WONDERFUL. She works so well with him and he really responds to her, he also works so hard through out the week to pronounce things the way he remembers her telling him to and has just been really making an effort to think about his words and how to pronounce them while he's talking. It slows him down, but he's been working really hard on this, I think its awesome. You'll see what I mean in the interview. He's such an insightful little guy. I love it.

(Don't forget to turn off the other Music. Towards the bottom of the right side just click the pause button on the little music player.)

Ok, so this first Interview Arri discusses, life, love, cousins, Grandma, burgers and other current events. It is a little lengthy, so if you get bored just skip ahead to Video 2, Animal Sounds.

Animal Sounds:

OUTTAKE:

ROBERT SHAVED HIS BEARD!!!! Well... Sorta. =)

2009-09-15T15:02:00.001-07:00

Seriously, how GORGEOUS is my husband?!?!

REACTIONS...
Harper: Mad and Pouty, she LOVES Daddy's big beard.
Arri: Confused, but Sorta Excited.
Elias: Dad, WHAT DID YOU DOOOOOO???? Why Dad? Why did you shave your beard?
What happened? How did you do it? etc. etc. etc.
Me: Waited till the kids went to bed then kissed him, A LOT!

One Day Runs Into the Next...

2009-09-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

I don't know where the time goes, One day I'm thinking ok the weekend after next I have to... and then the next thing I know that day is long gone. It just FLIES by and by and by and by! I think its been a couple weeks since I last wrote and while we've had no major events its just been a whirlwind of meals, baths, school, homework, appointments, childcare, soccer, books, laundry, and the wonderful chaos of daily life.

Harper is starting to warm up to her new teacher, she was having a rough start I think mostly because she WASN'T Mrs. Sater. That was hard. She had the BEST teacher in the world last year, she just really clicked with her and they just were the best of friends. SO then this year we originally were going to move her to Korematsu because we heard good things about the school, and Eli goes to Preschool There, but then we didn't, we decided to keep her at the school she's at now, Birch Lane, because we love it, its a great school, anyhow, we found out at the VERY end of Summer that not only did Mrs. Sater get moved to Korematsu but she's teaching 3rd Grade Now!!! Oh No!! I could have not told her but she would have found out eventually. She was SO upset. She had a really hard time with her teacher at first as this new teacher is somewhat strict and really got on her for the first week. But sometimes Harper just needs a little kick in the butt to get her movin'. She's been a lot more happy about school n' stuff the past couple weeks, so I think it'll be fine, it might actually be really good for her, because sometimes she can really use the extra push.

The kids have been playing soccer like crazy. After doing some switching around I managed to get Harper and Cheyeanne on the SAME Soccer Team (Go Surf & Turf!!) And Eli has his awesome team (Yay Sharks!!!) so we're down to practice 3 nights a week plus games on Saturday! There's a Whole Lotta Soccer Goin' On around here. We FINALLY get Eli his own team just in time for Arri to be mad that he doesn't have his own team!
Soon enough. :) Today just after half time during Harper & Annie's soccer game they had to call it and end it short because there was THUNDER and LIGHTENING!!! Crazy, it was crazy crazy weather today like 85 but cold, and Thunder and Tiny Bits of Lightening but still Hot. Just wackey.

After dinner I came home and made The Yummiest Dinner if I do say so myself! =) I made awesome Chili in the Crock Pot, The BEST Cornbread Muffins, Corn on the Cob, and Build Your Own Baked Potatoes. YUM!!! Robert's sister Sarah was over her and Robert were working on some projects so she stayed for dinner and for the kids to tackle her and ask her 10,735,842 questions, and then of course do the talent show they have to do whenever we have guests: The Couch Acrobatics, The Break Dancing, The Bed Trampoline, The Hall Race Track, etc. *Good Times*

I went to court on Friday. In regards to our guardianship of Cheyeanne. I've been going like monthly / bi-monthly. Ugh, I'm pretty sure I don't even want to get into all of that. That's like the one major part of my life / things I deal with on a regular basis that I haven't really touched on in this blog. Its just SUCH a major stress factor, I've never left court feeling anything besides just COMPLETELY livid. It just never EVER goes our way. And its also never really shown any signs at all of looking up or progressing in any way. I will, I will write a blog on this someday, just not today, don't want to get into it, don't want to write another whiny blog today.

All that being said, after court I shared a LOVELY brunch with My Wonderful Mom and Amazing Aunt Trisha, at our Favorite Monterey Restaurant, First Awakenings. It was a really nice opportunity to unwind, vent, de-stress, and move on. After that my mom and I did some shopping, i got him a little pair of Thomas The Train snow boots (we used to call them Moon Boots, they're the puffy kind) he LITERALLY has not taken them off except for to sleep since I brought them home. So cute! he wore them with his shorts today, and with his jammies tonight. After shoppin' we headed over to our OTHER favorite Monterey Restaurant for Lunch, Gianni's Pizza. YUM! It was a really nice visit, almost WORTH the awful morning just to get to end on such a lovely note.

I'm / WE'RE All Soooo VERY VERY VERY excited because in just FOUR LITTLE DAYS we find out the sex of this BABY in my BELLY! We also get to hear about how wonderful (s)he is growing and that everything looks great! I'm ALWAYS looking forward to hearing that news! This little babe will be the Tie Breaker. Because as long as Cheyeanne is living with us we're 3 & 3. Three girls and three boys, so H & C are TOTALLY rooting for a little sister and A & E are totally rooting for a little boy! As much as I would love to have a little baby girl all over again, I can honestly say that I will be OVERJOYED to find out either way, as long as (s)he is growing healthy and strong. YAY!

Arri and Elias have been super into Break Dancing lately, they have these little dance offs. Its AWESOME!! They crack me up! Will definitely have to post a video of that in the near future. :) So many blogs to look forward to!

Being Good vs. Being Better

2009-09-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

Ok here goes, so I went to see that movie, Julie & Julia, it was beautiful and adorable and fun and I love it. However, when I was driving home I started feeling inspired, or more feeling like I should be feeling inspired, that I should be going home and cooking and creating and nesting and doing all of these things. But how and when? Soo , maybe its the pregnant lady in me, but the next thing I'm just completely like sobbing, just crying just like overwhelmed with this gigantic feeling of inadequacy weighing down on me. I think it was a mix between the hormones and the end of summer beginning of school, the constant transitions happening with Cheyeanne , the pressure of raising 4 human beings and having one on the way, things like that. I don't know, the flood gates just opened up ya know.

Anyhow I've been reading lots of blogs lately, 99% of them written by other mothers, a lot of them other mothers of 4,5,6, and many of them sound something like this...
"First Day of School, Even though I home school our 6 children they still like to wear a new outfit on the first day, so I had taken them to the fabric store last week and they all picked out their favorite patterns, then we came home and I made them each their own 3 piece outfit for our first day of school with matching lunch totes and hair ribbons for the girls. For breakfast we had Handmade Waffles with fresh fruit and milk from the local farm. Today we made play dough , and sculpted it into famous US Monuments. Followed by reading time. Jackson, our 4 year old is now reading at a 3rd grade level, we're so proud of him. At nap-time I repainted our den to match the curtains and log cabin quilt I stitched up last week" Ok ok I'm guessing you get the idea. Out of all the blogs I've read I've never ever read one that was just like, Holy Crap what am I doing with these 4 kids, I'm so in over my head....Ok that's where I come in. I wasn't going to write this, and if I did I was going to write it in my OWN private journal not post it on the Wonderful World Wide Web, but something (and Jo Lynn) kept telling me to just write it, get it out, I don't know maybe it will benefit someone else to read it and feel not so alone or something, I know I would have liked to have read it somewhere written by someone else last week.

Ok so I guess that there are times when I just feel inadequate, maybe even often times. Like when I watch a movie like Julie & Julia or I read these blogs of these amazing crafty women who were just BORN to raise amazing crafty children and create amazing things, I have these like ‘where do I come in’ moments. I feel like everyone HAS to have SOME sort of calling in life right, and maybe I just haven't found mine. I have several things that I LOVE doing and being a part of and any single of of them I would be more then happy to have be my lot in life, I just want to be a Master at Something that I Love doing… Examples: ( I realize that this may just sound like self pitty and feel free to skip this blog and tune in next week for cute kid stories and such :) Here goes...

Being a Mom: I love being a Mom I love it. I love almost every single second of it. But there are days (more lately then ever, being so tired from pregnancy) where I feel just so overwhelmed, and I don't know how other Mom's do it. Between juggling soccer and homework and SO MUCH FOOD they're ALWAYS hungry, bedtimes, story times, arguing over toys and space and who looked at who for too long, grocery shopping, Doctor Appointments, library books due, its just always go go go. Someone is always falling or fighting or hungry, or just wants to show me something amazing. Anyhow this is all just life, its chaos but its our chaos and I've grown quite accustomed to it, its motherhood and its childhood and its what we signed up for and while I feel every mom should get to whine about it, this is not the part I struggle with, the thing is, I don't want to just be a Mom, I want to be a GREAT MOM, I want to have time and energy to be on the PTA, I want to make little funky skirts for the girls to wear, I want to build amazing scrapbooks filled with memories and stories, and I want to sit at home with Arri for hours a day talking about colors and numbers and shapes, I want to write in their journals every night and to read to them 20 minutes a night before they fall asleep, but as it happens, I'm either so exhausted by the time they go to bed or just so frustrated from the 12+ straight hours prior to bedtime of them not listening to me that come 8pm I'm like “that's it... everyone in bed!!!” I can't figure out how to overcome this struggle. I pray daily for peace and patience and structure and discipline and cooperation and more patience from Me, Robert and the Kids, I start off each day with a deep breath and just know , today will be a good day, but man, some days are sure better then others. Is it just us? There are just times when I look around in church or at the library , on the soccer field or any other public places and there will be families with like 3,4,5 kids just sitting quietly all in a row sharing, caring, listening respectfully, and all I can do is look in amazement while I have Eli in a headlock, Annie trying to chase Arri down and Harper is only being quiet because she's on time out. Deep Breath. I love my kids, I love each and everyone of them from the bottom of my heart, they are amazing inspiring beautiful brilliant little people and I am so thankful for each and every one of them. I want to be a more patient and inspiring Mother.

Being a Wife: I Looooooooove my husband. I really REALLY scored. I totally married up, I just feel bad sometimes when I'm so drained from Momn' it all day long that I don't have any compassion, patience, focus or energy left in me by the end of the day. I'm just drained. Robert is so understanding and everything we don't argue much at all, he's just been so busy with school and projects and I've been so busy with life and all things that sometimes I just wish I had so much more to give once we finally sit down at the end of the day. I want to be a better wife.

Being a Mormon: I'm going to respectfully choose not to go into this one too deeply. The church is a huge part of my life and my home and my family and I'm so very thankful to be a part of it, there are just so many things I could and should do to be better at it. Like reading scriptures, teaching my children the gospel, things like that. I do the basics easy-peasy, its the going the extra mile the I struggle with. Sometimes, (Sundays Mostly) I just feel like I'm the only one. I just feel like religion isn't something you should really just like squeeze by with a passing grade on. I want to be a star student.

Being a Photographer: I love photography, always have its one of my most favorite things, thing is I don't really remember many of the things that I learned when I was in photography classes in high school. Robert knows all that stuff. He's offered to teach me but its always like when I'm in the middle of taking a photo. So that is a goal of mine. I want to learn how to operate a camera not just how to take beautiful pictures. I want to actually know what I'm doing.

Being a Chef: Kind of the same thing as photography, I absolutely LOVE COOKING! I love every second of it when I'm making a new recipe! (as long as it turns out!) There is something so tranquil and relaxing about assembling all the ingredients and cooking and stirring and simmering and all of these things. I love cooking I love making and EATING yummy food. I just want to REALLY be a Chef, like a GREAT Chef. I think I’m a decent chef, I mean on a housewife level, like I can think of something to make, find a recipe and whip it up. But I want to make amazing things in amazing pots and pans. I want to cook for lots of people not just my family (No offense to my family but Robert is always dieting and the kids just Don't like ANYTHING new I make ever. Well except Annie, she'll eat anything, then usually tells me, "Eh, it was ok") I just really want to pursue cooking on a wider level, not that I want to set out on some big career path or anything, I just Want to Cook Delicious Food For People who will Appreciate it!

There are so many other things I would LOVE to be better at like sewing and novel reading. There are also things I feel I’m fairly good at like being a daughter, sister and friend, I think its all just finding a balance. Ok so I say myself, maybe you’re just spread too thin, maybe if you just cut back, gave up one or two of these things then you would have more time to excel at the other things you enjoy, but there’s nothing on this list that is negotiable, these are the things that make me who I am. So its more a matter of prioritizing. For example I guess I could take photography and / or cooking classes later in life, when all the kids are in school. I’m a Mother and Wife first and foremost, these kids will only be young once, and it’s SUCH an amazing time. So I’m thinking I just need to set some goals for the here and now… Sleep More, Facebook Less, Read to the kids Every Night, Breath Deeper and Yell at Elias Less, Talking, Understanding, Make Time, and Continue to Pray and Strive for Patience, these for now, for today are my goals.

I’m so Thankful to be Surrounded by Beautiful Amazing Mothers in every aspect of my life. You inspire me, every single day.

Arri's Bedtime Interview 9:03pm

2009-08-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

(((Note: Pause The Music First, On the Left Side, Towards the Bottom of Our Blog :)))

Goodnight, Love Arri and Mommy

20 Minutes Later...

Goodnight, For Reals!

This is Why we Photoshop Our Christmas Cards...

2009-08-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

All I Have to Say is... Watch Elias...

None of this is prompted, this is me saying, "Elias, Stand Up! Eli, just Smile. Elias Quit It." Maybe that in itself is encouragement, Who knows. :)
PS: Arri got a haircut!

Sushi Withdrawls...

2009-08-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

I LOVE SUSHI, I seriously think about Sushi every single day, and ever since I've been pregnant its like ALL I've been wanting to eat, I mean I start craving it when I wake up in the morning! I've loved Sushi ever since I was a little kid, it was always a special treat when my Mom would stop by Ocean Sushi and pick us up a tray or two to share. It's just SO GOOD and healthy and YUMMY!!! Especially in the summer when you don't want anything hot. Its just... perfect! Ok so being pregnant, there are Soooo Many things you can't do, and so many things you can't eat. One of them being RAW Fish otherwise known as my good friend Sashimi:
I actually completely understand why you can't eat raw fish during pregnancy, I understand that it can have certain bacteria on it that could harm the baby. I also understand that we're allowed to have cooked fish up to twice a week, but California Roll just doesn't really do it for me. Plus I've just been having these like CRAZY cravings for the Salmon & Tuna Rolls.
Ok so confession time. I had already hit my 2 Seafood Intake quota for the week by like Wednesday. And then Friday my WONDERFUL Mother was up for a visit and Robert and I got to go out on a date. Well I was like starving by the time we got the kids all settled in and got out the door. We were trying to make a 7:30 movie time. (which for those of you who don't often go to the movies with Robert, this means in the seats no later then 6:50) It was 6:15 when we left the house. So we go to some BBQ restaurant and we start to order and the guy asks us for here or to go. We both answer at the same time only my answer was "For Here" and Robert's was "To Go." (awkward.) I'm like, "Ok babe, I'm not eating a BBQ Burger in the middle of a movie theater," and he's like, "Its opening night! We should already be there" So I decide we'll just eat after, Robert wasn't really hungry anyhow.

So we get in the car, and I start thinking... ok we're probably going to see 2 movies minimum (that's just how we roll) Which means we probably won't be eating for the next like FIVE hours, and I'm starving now. What to do... So we park get out at the theater, and right next door is this big SUSHI restaurant!!!! And not only that, but they have this HUGE sign out front that says: "HALF OFF ALL SUSHI REBECCA!" (ok maybe not that last part) So I'm like, "Oh My Gosh! Robert get me a ticket, bring it to me, and go get the best seats in the house babe." So ya, I got 2 rolls of the fanciest, rawest Sushi they had, and oh MY GOODNESS, they were AMAZING. I mean so so so delicious. I can't even put into words!

But then, like 2 minutes into the previews, the guilt set in... I was just sitting there, thinking, "What have I done?!?" How selfish could I have been, to jeopardize my precious little baby's life for some fancy food? I just totally started feeling just AWFUL! Then started having little cramps (I have been this whole pregnancy) and pretty much convinced myself by the end of the first movie that that was it, our baby was a gonner, and it was all my fault.

Anyhow, needless to say, I'm 99.9% sure that our babe is fine, and I'm fine, but I'm taking a vow, here in print, for all to see, that I'm not going to eat ANYMORE SUSHI for the rest of this pregnancy. Ok, wait I just rethought that while typing and it seems pretty harsh, almost irrational. I hereby vow not to eat anymore Raw Fish until our little baby is Born!!! Wish Me Luck.
There, Much Better.

PS: Who's up for SUSHI Night In February 2010??

Poo Art...

2009-08-12T16:02:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is my third time around at Potty Training, so I like to consider myself... experienced in this field. Arri has done really great so far, we've had a few days of NO accidents at all, and a couple days like yesterday with just one or two accidents. Not bad at all. He's actually doing things like getting up from playing to run to the bathroom and go with out being asked which is awesome. Harper is keeping up his little potty chart and that's going well. Anyhow for some reason today was a little harder, he'd gone in the potty 2 or 3 times and had 2 or 3 accidents also. But we're still keeping at it and he's still in his undies. I'm trying to go a little easy on him because in the same we we also decided to totally cut out the pacifier which he hasn't minded and hasn't even ASKED for amazingly enough, however Robert pointed out it was his soothing mechanism weather he realized it or not, he's been waking up in the night a lot more and taking longer naps, stuff like that. So I'm totally trying to be sympathetic with him.

Ok so we're still doing diapers at nap time and bed time. So today we took Robert to school and came home and Arri was looking super sleep in the car so I asked him, "Arri, do you want to go Ni-Night?" and he said "Yesss" So of course I was like "Woah he must be really tired, poor guy." Then we were coming inside and I said, "Arri, do you want a snack first?" and he said, "No Mommy, Arri go Ni-Night" so of course I was like, "WOAH he must be REALLY tired!!!" So I took him to bed, put his little diaper on him and tucked him in. I heard nothing for like two solid hours, and then it was time to take the girls to Girl Scout Day Camp, so I told Harper to go in and wake him up and stick his little shoes on. Well the next thing I heard is just one of those things that you never EVER want to hear as a Mother of 4... your oldest saying, "Um Mom... Ya, you better come here you're going to want to see this." Because in actuality you really REALLY DON'T want to see whatever it is.

My initial reaction was to run in the other direction, but there's laws. So I went with my second reaction, which for some reason was to just ignore her and pretend I didn't hear anything, as if the problem would just solve itself and 2 minutes later little clean Arri and Little Brownie Harper would come walking around the corner and say, "Ok, Ready to Go Mom!!" But ya, it didn't really go that way, it never really does. Instead about 30 seconds later I hear, "No Seriously Mom, You need to come in here!"
........ Sigh........

So I took a picture specifically for blogging purposes then realized that no one, not even you would have any desire to see what happened next.

Right in the middle of Arri's floor was a BIG I mean big like it didn't scientifically make since pile of runny poo. And then trailing from the poo was a perfect little trail of Arri sized foot prints leading across the (hardwood thank goodness) floor up his ladder and onto his bed. His sheets were pretty soaked too but nothing a load of laundry couldn't fix. Ok so the gross part is over. There were two very interesting parts of this story however.

1) Right next to the Ginormous pile of poo was his perfectly folded up perfectly dry diaper I had put on him. I took this as a sign of rebellion but ALSO as a good sign that he really is over diapers and doesn't want to sit in a dirty diaper anymore. *Good!*

2) Right in the middle of the pile standing tall and proud were Two plastic Army Men. As if they had conquered some battle or were declaring ownership over new found land. Funny, yes, but the weirdest thing... This is not the first, not the second but the THIRD TIME that I have found a pile of poo in the middle of Arri's floor after naptime with two perfectly positioned little green Army Men in it!!! WHAT?!?! I kid you NOT! I think I actually sent my Mom a picture the first time this happened. It's not the same soldiers everytime either, because I throw them away with cleanup each time. He literally poo's and then searches out, digs into the depths of the toy boxes to find these little green dudes. It all seems very pre-meditated.

I'm just trying to figure out what it all means, like if its some deep political statement, or a little sculpture/art piece to him, his own little way of reflecting on the war and the state of our country. It's always the same, pile of poo, two green army men. (The trail of poopy footprints were new today, not sure if they were an intentional part of the piece or not.) So interesting. Arri is one intense little dude. He really does put a lot of thought in everything he does. Ok I'll quit before I sound like I"m bragging or something.

Anyhow, its been a rough day... I've cleaned up two more little puddles just while trying to type this out. Hopefully Tomorrow will be a New Better, DRYER day!!! ...I'm off to fold laundry.

My Oh So Wonderful Weekend...

2009-08-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Started the weekend early, on a Thursday, always ALWAYS nice to start the weekend on a Thursday!!! Got to Chelsea's house and dropped off the kiddos. Swapped cars with Suzette (Grandma) who was taking the kids for the weekend. (You know she's got a first class one way ticket into heaven!!!) Then I headed over to Michelle's house. By the time I got there I was absolutely STARVING! (No big surprise there I'm sure!) She was like, "Ooh if we make it to Bahama Billy's in Carmel by 6pm all the yummy food is HALF OFF!!!" So her, Colin and I hopped in the car as fast as we could and headed for The Barnyard. On the way I spilled the beans about being Pregnant, I couldn't wait. I was too excited, and wanted to excuse myself in advance incase I threw up, because, still, I was STARVING! We got to Bahama Billy's with lik 6 minutes to spare! They had SUCH a yummy looking menu I wanted to order one of EVERYTHING! Michelle and Colin got these YUMMY looking rice bowls that you see to the right. I think theirs were less meaty and more mushroomie though. I got the Fried Calamari, one of my all time FAVORITE things, and Yummy Fish Tacos. Everything was DEEEELICIOUS!!! And I was soooo stuffed to the max by the time we left. But it was So VERY worth it!!! We went back to Michelle's house and veged on the couch until we all felt like we could muster up the strength to move again! And then I had talked to Yasi on the phone and she told me that they had just gone on a fun walk and I was like, what a PERFECT way to move some of this food around. So Michelle talked us all into driving down to the beach, Asilomar. We got there JUST as the sun was setting. We even watched it bolt under the horizon. AMAZING, it was GIGANTIC! After it was gone we parked and walked down to the beach, ditched our shoe and then walked along the beach. We took lots of pictures...
And then just when the night couldn't get any more magical... we decided to drive back to Michelle's we turn the car around and start heading to Monterey and we see behind the Marina Skyline The HUMONGUS Orange Moon is starting to rise. We pulled over again and watched it until it was in the sky. AMAZING!!!
So after a crazy amout of beauty intake, with two wonderful friends... we headed back to Michelle's apartment, and got all cleaned up and presentable and went out on the town!

We first stopped by and picked up the LOVELY Miss Yasi. Yasi has lived in Spain for the past year so its been WAY tooooo long since I had seen her. It was SO great to go and get her! I've been missing her much to much!
Then we headed down to Jose's for our friend Tobin's birthday party. This crazy band called Trip Delight played, they had some really fun funky Samba beats with lots of dance tunes. They were really fun. Everyone kept saying that they used to be better, but I really enjoyed them. (That being said, they were the first band I've seen live in a few years. Ha!) The funnest part was seeing some really great friend that I haven't seen in a long time at Jose's. Especially catching up with Rachel!

Friday morning I had to wake up and go to court, in regaurds to the Cheyeanne, gaurdianship situation. (Booooo! Thumbs Down! No Fun!) I wasn't really sure how to feel about the outcome. I had a lot of really mixed emotions. There are just so many mixed emotions on the issue already and that just complicated it a lot. But it did really just shed some light on the fact that we need to make a strong effort to get out of the situation as soon as possible because its just not going to get any better. More on that in another post possibly?

Next I went down to Monterey to my ALL TIME FAVORITE breakfast spot EVER. First Awakenings, in the American Tin Cannery. We've been eating there every since I was a kid. I remember it used to be called First Watch and we would go eat there with My Grandma when my Aunt Trisha and/or Uncle Joe would come visit!! This time I was the one visiting. =) I met up with My Mom, Trisha, and Mom's Best Friend Debbie. It was SOOO nice to see 3 of my favorite Women on this planet! We had a wonderful (delicious) breakfast and a really nice visit! Lots of great conversation, I just really enjoy all of their company and we had a great time visiting. We sat and chatted for so long. Wish I had taken pictures! It was such a nice way to completely 100% transform what had started out as a pretty rotten morning. Totally took my mind off everything. After the lovely breakfast we headed over to Trisha's favorite little thrift store. I got a really nice Mixing Bowl. (Incase you didn't know I LOVE funky big mixing bowls! And they always have great ones at little Thrift Shops.
Next my Mom and I went over to Chatterbaux a little kids consignment boutique in Pacific Grove. Its such a great little shop I still bring my clothes in there even though I live way up here now. But LUCKY me I had like $200 in credit there so I was able to get the kids lots of great school clothes and Eli was OVERJOYED by the Batman & Spiderman Jammies I scored him! =)
After a Super Fun day of Eating and Shopping, I dropped my Mom off and headed down to Lover's Point to meet up with Michelle, Yasi, and Rose.

I Haven't seen Rose in over a decade, and it was SO wonderful to see her and ceatch up. We had a nice relaxing visit. Soakin' up some rays and just talking on and on. A lovely afternoon and it was even WARM!!! On the BEACH!!! That almost never happens in PG!
Are My Girls the CUTEST or What?!? So then I dropped Yasi off at home and visited with her family for a little bit. I absolutely LOVE every member of Yasi's family. Then I headed back to Michelles and relaxed for a bit. Then we swang by Trader Joes, Grabbed some Goat Cheese, then over to Rachel & Lilly's House. We visited and played while Rachel fixed an absolutely DELICIOUS dinner of Mushroom Puff Pastries, Corn On The Cob a Basil Tomato Mozzarella Salad (With Harper's Home Grown Tomatoes), a Salad Salad, Roasted Garlic Potatoes, And Lilly's Yummy Lemonade and Sparkly Lemonade Coctails. (those were the only two ingreedients btw, but they were delish!) We had such a lovely time visiting, catching up, and chatting. Rachel & Lilly's Step Mother was there for a visit too. I love those girls so much!
After the yummy fun dinner at R & L's house we went back to Michelle's and had a MUCH NEEDED Late night Girl Talk Fest! There's nothing on earth like staying up late talking with your best girl friend. Good Times!

Saturday morning I woke up and ran over to Salinas and switched cars with Chelsea. Harper was there so it was REALLY nice to be able to squeeze in a few hugs and smooches with at least ONE of my kiddos. :) She was right smack dab in the middle of having the BEST WEEKEND EVER! She was ALL dressed up fancy in her new polka dot dress that Chelsea had given her, with her fancy little headband they made. (really wish I had a picture). It was too cute! She told me all about the Seahorses at the Aquarium that Chelsea and Linkin had taken her to see. I decided I just HAD to go and see them for myself!

After Chelsea's I went and picked up Yasi and then we headed back over to First Awakenings. (Its actually EVERYONE's Favorite breakfast spot, not just mine!) But it was A-Ok because this time I ordered my favorite lunch. The CHIC-ADO! (I had tried to convince my mom that itw as the Tur-Cado, but this was much better.) Michelle met us there and we hung out and chowed down! Then we went and stopped by Rachel and Lilly's again and visited their Aquiarium passes. Then we went and saw the Seahorses & Jelly Fish!!

The Leafy Sea Dragons Were My Favorite!!

Little Baby Seahorses! Look Close!

The Jellyfish are Always Hypnotizing!

As beautiful and amazing as it was it was soooo crowded and I could hardly wait to get out of there! We decided to go run a few errands, Michelle's House, Yasi's House, Trader Joes, Etc. and then go out to Carmel Valley to our Friend's Todd & Tara's House! But first we had to take advantage of Monterey's Endless Photo Oppourtunities!!!

So, after running our errands, and meeting up with Rose at Trader Joe's, we drove waaaaay out to the deep valley of Carmel Valley to our friend's Todd & Tara's Metor Shower BBQ / Sleepover!
Oh MY Goodness They have the most BEAUTIFUL home! Just the perfect little artsy love shack!
This is the family:I took a bunch of pictures of their house to show Robert how absolutely adorable it was but maybe should respect their privacy and not post them on the internet. Ha! Fun times were had. Yas and I grilled up some Yummy Salmon (I know I went way over my alotted pregnant lady seafood allowance last weekend. But everything was SO good!) and we all made a big yummy salad Michelle got some Yummy Nan Bread and Hummus. Then just another night of Great Friends, Great Conversation and FUN!!! I actually had so much fun I forgot to search for Metors!

Spent the night at Yasi's Sister's house in Monterey, that overlooks the WHOLE PACIFIC OCEAN it feels like. I met Vanessa's Awesome husband and I felt like such a nerd because Sunday Morning when I woke up I couldn't get dressed fast enough ALL I wanted to do was run to Chelsea's and pick up the kids I missed them all so much. Isn't it silly how that happens. We grabbed them, visited for a bit, got all my goods out of Chelsea's car, packed up the kids stuff and then headed home. We stopped at the Bagel Bakery for Breakfast. And so that Yasi could spend some quality time with the kiddos, she loves them so much and they love her, its really awesome to see! Her and Eli & Harper have a super special relationship.

We dropped Yasi and Adash off in San Jose and then headed home. For some reason I got the crazy Idea to stop and go Grocery Shopping on the way home!!! Not sure what I was thinking, I was hungry, knew we were out of food, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Even though we were all exhausted! Robert spent the weekend in Los Angelas so we came home to an empty house, the kids ate dinner, took a much protested bath, and went to bed. I ate, read, and slept.
It was a wonderful WONDERFUL weekend, Made me SO thankful to be able to call SUCH a Beautiful place HOME and such WONDERFUL people my Family. I Love You All. XO

Home Sweet Home.

My Curly Boys...

2009-08-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

So as you can plainly see... The boys are both growing their hairs out. Eli pretty much goes straight blond in the Summer. They're both getting kinda curly. There are days when I'm like Ok I can't take it anymore, Where are the clippers!!! But then there are days when it's just totally cute and I can't get enough of my hairy little dudes. Of course if it were up to Robert, they'd both have full beards and mustaches. On a side note, I don't know why I chose to take Eli's picture after he ate a bowl of spaghetti with out wiping his little face off. Still Cute. =) Arri is showing you his little puppy's feet and for some reason though this was like the funniest thing, EVER!