And so it starts....

Big sisters messing with the BOY!! :)

Wait a minute....what do I have on my head???

Those girls!!! They better watch out when I get big enough to mess with them. :)

RAIN AND COOKIES!!

We actually got some rain a few days ago and the girls loved it. They ran around and played outside. It cooled off and made it so it was pleasant to be outside!

Makenna is silly though putting that on her head!

They had those dresses on when they were playing (I really don't know why except that they are silly:) I think they were acting like it was Christmas or something.

We also made some cool cookies recently! Grandma Millett gave us some colored cookie dough so we made some cool things with it. I for one will be the first to admit that I have no creativity so these look weird but it was still fun to do with my girls. The top red thing is supposed to be a flower with leaves. Right beside it is a gingerbread man (we only had Christmas cookie cutters) and under that is a snowman with eyes and a nose by Makenna:) And finally, the lower right cookie is supposed to be Micky Mouse. I did the blue part and Makenna felt like it needed the eyes (complete with eyebrows:), nose and mouth!

Aiden needed to be fed so Trav pitched in and did a couple of these. I think the middle yellow thing is a snake or something like that and the lower right one is a Makenna creation. It's a snowman with rain or snow falling on him:) It was fun!

He loves his girls!!

Our new dog never had playmates in his old home! Well, he does now!! He loves his girls and they love to play with him (Jordyn loves to torment him). Lady is a princess and doesn't want to be bothered but Mahler loves to be involved in everything. I caught him climbing the stairs to get up to the trampoline today to play! It was so dang cute. It's nice to have a dog that wants to be playful and go for rides...not that we don't still love Lady. It's just different:)

Isn't that picture funny? He is such a good dog and he loves to be around us...constantly! We literally have to shove him back into the house when we leave because he wants to go every time we leave. He especially loves going over to Grandma's house to play with the other dogs. I'm so glad we got him fixed because he doesn't try to get with them anymore:) I'm actually thinking about letting him sleep in the girl's room. He goes in and lays on Kenna's bed when I am putting them to bed. What a sweetie!!

What summer looks like in our house:)

We don't do hair at our house during the summer:)

Prayers

Truly, the sweetest things are the prayers of little children. I love to hear what my girls will say every night. It usually involves blessing Grandma and Grandpa, Grandma and Papa and that we will sleep good and stay healthy. But lately it has also involved Grandma Great. Makenna would pray for her every time she prayed so now Jordyn has started praying for Grandma "Grape"!! It is so adorable how she says it. And last night Makenna asked that Grandma Great be healed!! She would usually ask for her to feel better but yesterday it was 'healed'! Where did she get that? It was so sweet. I love those little girls and love their sweet hearts:)

It's so nice.....

~when I've lost enough of my water weight that I can wear my wedding ring again! It feels like forever since I've been able to wear it.

~when my girls are actually playing nice together and not fighting:) They decided to make a little picnic in the backyard.


~when my baby sleeps for about four hours at a time (which has been like almost every night). I hope it lasts!!

~when my girls are being silly and not crying:) This is how Jordyn puts on her princess crowns.


~that I can walk without tons of pain in my lower pelvis!!

~when the big sisters are so loving to their baby brother.


~when my hubby brings me Cafe Rio home for dinner.

~that I can get out of bed now without feeling like I'm a 100 years old!! :0)

Fun at the pumpkin patch

Last Friday we went up to the pumpkin patch. Travis' friends were hosting a booth there and they were giving out free rides and pumpkins! Well, I'm all about free so we took the girls out there!
I figured we might as well try to get some pics with the haystacks and pumpkins:)

Unfortunately Jordyn didn't want to take any pics.

We finally got a few cute ones but then there is Trav's shadow on her:)

My Kenna cooperated for me even though she wanted desperately to do the rides.

They had a little petting area with goats.

I'm not a fan of carnival like rides but I was ok with this one since it was pretty low to the ground. Makenna loved it!! There was even a steering wheel thing in the middle that she could turn herself like the tea cups at Disneyland.

And of course the gigantic slide!! This is Makenna jumping up before she slides down. That girl is fearless.

And Jordyn wouldn't be left out either. Thankfully, her daddy climbed up there with her so she could slide down too:)

And then Jordyn wanted on this ride too. She has to do everything her sister does. I wasn't too sure about it since it goes pretty fast but then we saw a little girl that was smaller than Jordyn get on so we decided to let her do it. She loved it too until Makenna started making it go in circles:)

We tried to get one more pic of Jordyn with the pumpkins and that didn't work out either. I had to sit with her and we still didn't get her looking at the camera! O-well:) We all had a great time.

Back to school/work for Daddy:)

Travis was home with us all summer and the girls got very used to it. The first day back, Jordyn came downstairs and didn't see her daddy. She points upstairs and said, "night night??" She wanted to go up and wake him up! It was so cute. And the other day, Makenna asked where daddy was. I told her he was at work and she said that he needed to stop that and come home with us! Love it and gotta love a great daddy:)

We also have decided to not put Makenna in preschool. It's just too expensive right now and I don't know if I was ready to send her to strangers yet:) Fortunately, some wonderful ladies asked me to do joy school with them. I think this will be wonderful and be just as good if not better than preschool. It will be with women that I know and trust and it gives me a chance to participate as well and be with my cutie. I'm thrilled that I was asked to do this and I think Makenna is going to love learning and doing new things and spending time with her friends. We also are going to take turns watching the younger ones each week and I hope that Jordyn enjoys that and that it helps her come out of her shell.

Lots o' ladybugs

We have a ton of ladybugs in our backyard. The girls' favorite thing to do nowadays is to find them and pick them up and show us. They love it.

My dad buys ladybugs to put in his yard because they are really good for your plants. They eat the nasty bugs that eat your plants. He buys them and can never find them. We don't buy them and find a lot. My dad says that his ladybugs came over to our house;)

Miss Kenna has turned into a girlie girl. She screams when she sees bugs but she will let ladybugs crawl all over her ever since she saw her daddy do it.

She brings them into the house often. Unfortunately, by this time, they want to fly off of her;-) And now that Jordyn has seen her sister do it, she uses her chubby little fingers to pick them up and lets them crawl all over her too.

Some random thoughts

I haven't been too worried about the swine flu. I haven't kept my kids from doing stuff (we still go to the park and story time and nursery) or stopped doing what I normally do. Especially since it hasn't hit too close to home. But yesterday there was a case in our school district in a school that isn't too far from us. I'm still not worried about it. It is the flu and like my friend Sarah said before, more people die from the regular flu every year. So not panicking here. Well, at least not yet;)

I've been thinking about doing something different for a job lately. Not seriously thinking but every now and then, I get tired of massaging and my mind wanders while doing so. I have been doing it for ten years and I think I just want a change but I would have no idea what else to do. Nothing else sounds great and there really isn't anything else that I can do for a couple of days a week and make the same money that I do. And since the goal is to be home with my girlies as much as possible, it doesn't seem feasible right now. Maybe I will revisit this when my kids are all in school.

I would love to put Makenna in a preschool but even the rec center is pretty expensive. Is it bad if she doesn't go to preschool? I'm not worried that she will be behind. She's smart as a whip but I just want her to get used to sitting quietly and following directions before she hits kindergarten. I think it would be good for social interaction. Maybe her Sunbeam class will help her prepare and playdates for the social???

I really want to punch our governor. It's like he's using our teachers to make up for everything. He said we lived large for a couple of years and now we have to tighten our belts and take pay cuts. Ummm....teachers never lived large when the economy was going great! They wouldn't even give them raises and the cost of living was ridiculous when times were good but he expects the teachers to take a pay cut and pay for the whole state's debt. He doesn't want to raise taxes because he doesn't want to take even more money out of people's pockets (his words) but that is exactly what he will do to a certain section of people. That makes a lot of sense to cut pay for teachers when a first year teacher can already qualify for food stamps. Niiiiiice!! I'm so glad politicians tell the truth when they are campaigning. He said 'education first' and he would fight to raise teachers pay. What a joke!!

I'm just wondering who's great idea it was to do construction on all roads going North/South??? Well, at least every road that I go on to get to work. It's quite idiotic.

Why does it always get so hot so early!! We are ten degrees higher than normal. It always happens. That's why I don't like spring. We jump up higher than we are supposed to and then never go back down and go right into summer. My girls love to be outside and it's just not pleasant when we are almost a 100 degrees.

I'm over Target. (sorry Jen;) I don't know how it happened. It just did. It just doesn't do it for me anymore and I've moved on;-} LOL! Seriously, I don't go to Target very often anymore. I think it started when I wasn't working much over the winter. I used to use my tip money to buy stuff and since I didn't have any, I didn't go. I don't miss it either. I do my weekly grocery shopping at Walmart and I can get everything I want there! I don't need Target anymore. I will still go there for certain things so I'm not totally nixing it out of my life;)

I'm super excited that all the major holidays this year land on the days that I don't work on. Well, except Thanksgiving. But that will always be on the same day so that doesn't count but it sucks that my manager that would give workers with kids those days off automatically was laid off six months ago. So, I'm not sure what to expect this year. I guess we shall see.

That's all for now. It's time to take the girls to the park (before it gets to almost 100 degrees) and to story time at the library;)

Some cute pics per request

Grandma requested some pics and I always love an excuse to post more pics of my babies;)

Enchanted is J.J.'s favorite movie right now and she will come running if she hears me put it on and will stand in front of the ottoman like this. She puts her arms on it with her head up and leans back and enjoys.

And of course they always have to dance to the songs in the movie.

I also decided to just take a bunch of random pics with my camera and I think these are adorable......

J.J. was sitting on the stairs and the sun was coming in the window just right. Love these;)

I put a necklace on for church and Makenna wanted one too. I found this one (don't even remember where I got it) and she loves, loves, loves it! It's Cinderella's slipper and she wanted to show it off for the camera.

Cheese!!!

Cheese!!!

And I wanted to document another tooth for Jordyn. She got her upper left cuspid yesterday, 2/3 (I think.....she hasn't been letting me feel for it) and so we only have one more left that needs to come through at the moment!! Yay!!

Trip to Texas

I'm finally posting about my trip to Texas!! I had such a great time and Sarah is such an awesome person. Her and James made me feel so at home. I felt just like family!!
In no particular order....
On Friday, we got to visit while the girls took a nap and then they took me to a restaurant called 'Little Mexico'. It was so yummy. It reminded me of Macayos (which I love). That night, we left to the mall to go see Twilight and it was sold out!! It was sold out after being out for two months! Crazy!! So we bolted to another theatre and got there just in time.....and thankfully without getting pulled over. The Grand Prairie police were in full force. They were pulling over like 6 people all in a row and were looking for more;) It was so good to see Twilight again and so fun to see it with Sarah!!
Sarah took me to get a pedicure and it was so nice. I haven't had a pedicure since I was pregnant with J.J. It was a very cute place too!!

We met up with Ashley who is just as cute and funny as I thought she would be. We have only known each other through e-mail and blogs and it was so nice to finally meet her.

A pic of our toesies!! Makenna keeps saying that she loves my flowers (I might have to find a cute place that does pedi's for kiddos for her birthday).

We also had a very yummy lunch at P.F. Changs! I haven't been there probably since we went with Sarah and James;) I don't know why because it is soooo good. What did you order again Ashley? I soooo wish these two girls lived by me!!!! It was so much fun.

Sarah and I also decided to indulge in a mini facial and massage!! Oh my goodness, it was so nice. It was such a pretty place and our massages rocked!! I need to do this more often to remind me why I massage. It is such a good thing to do for your body and to help you relax!! Can't you tell we are in another world???

We also did a lot of driving around so I could see Texas!! This is the new Cowboys stadium being built that I hope the 49ers will be kicking their butt in!! This thing was huge!!!

Miss Aube let me get my baby fix and snuggle with her. She's such a cutie. She calls her Sleeping Beauty doll, Sleeping Dooty!! How stinking adorable!

We watched a lot of movies too. Sarah and I also saw Marley and Me which is so cute but I was glad that I grabbed some napkins with our popcorn because we both needed it;) Prepare to cry but also laugh. I also hadn't seen Mama Mia yet (which Sarah's girls love) and was thoroughly entertained by them both dancing at every song. Aube had to get her tutu on with every song. I guess she can't dance without it. Who could?

Miss Bella singing along with the movie. They also love Phantom of the Opera. It's neat to see little girls having appreciation for music so young.

We got to enjoy some good Texas steak at a restaurant called Saltgrass. They make all their seasonings and sauces from scratch and it was so good.

Right before I left, we went to downtown Ft. Worth to see their cattle 'run'. They didn't go very fast but it was cool to see.

The girls got to ride Pecos Bill!!

And so did I!!! He was such a sweetie and so BIG!! I had a hard time getting up there;) I couldn't quit petting him!

The longhorns are neat to see up close!

Six feet long!!! Crazy!!

It was sad to leave my dear friend. We have been friends since we got married (we got married a day apart) and this distance between us hasn't changed it one bit. I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful friend.

Once I was home, I was happy to be back to see my girls. You don't realize how much your life revolves around your kids until you aren't around them for a bit. Makenna is still saying that she is thankful that Daddy came to get me. She is such a love bug and a Mommy's girl;)

This is the shirt I got for Makenna;)

And I couldn't get a good pic of Jordyn but hers says 'Don't mess with Texas'! I wasn't about to buy Cowboys stuff!! It is against my religion;} Just kidding;)

I got Travis some yummy Dr. Pepper that has imperial sugar in it that is supposed to be so good. I love that you can get Dr. Pepper anywhere in Texas...not just Mr. Pipp;( I also got him a sucker with a worm in it. Only in Texas!!! Gotta love it!!