Pictures of the Kiddos

The other day, we went to JC Penny's to get some professional pics taken of these two little munchkins. You may notice that there are more pictures of Ethan than Ellie and for good reaason.. she had a really hard time wanting to cooperate (really, who can blame her? she is only 5 months old) And Ethan was in a huge hurry to get it over with so he could continue watching The Incredibles on the TV in the waiting area.

Sometimes I wonder why we try :)

So here are some of the best ones we could get of these two cute kids:

I love this one of Ethan!

Cute Ellie....

And I just had to throw this one in there...

She refused to sit down. All she wanted to do is stand and jump. Obviously she cant stand on her own so in a few pictures you can see my arms jetting out holding her. Very classy, right? :)

I do love this picture...

How cute is that?

Even though it was a little difficult getting our kids to cooperate, I felt like I got some good shots of the kids and walked out of there terrifically happy only spending $30. Perfect.

Ellie Marie- 5 Months

Ellie is actually more like 5 1/2 months now but better late than never right? Oh this little girls personality is showing itself more and more everyday!

I love this stage that she is in! Here is why:

• She lights up when she sees one of us walk into the room and shows us her huge gummy smile..
• I love, love, love seeing her "happy dance" when I lean over the crib to get her when she wakes up
• 
• I love her BIG and wet open mouth kisses

• She is a bouncing machine! Therefore, she loves her johnny jump up..
• She can't sit up by herself yet and nor does she want to. All she wants to do is stand and jump! I will try to make her sit down and she just pushes those feet out to stand up. I think she will walk before she can sit up on her own :)
• She can now roll from tummy to back (she has perfected this because she hates being on her tummy) and from back to tummy, which she doesnt ever want to do but can do. She hasn't quite figured out though that she could roll herself to wherever she wants to go.
• She is starting to babble more but all in all, she is a pretty quiet baby
• She LOVES watching Ethan. Her eyes never leave him and he is pretty much the only one that can get her cracking up
• She is 100% a mommy's girl. If Justin is holding her and I'm walking about in the room, she will do everything she can to keep her eyes on me... I really don't mind that she is attached to me- Ethan never was so I welcome the love :)
• She sleeps from 7:30-8pm to 6:15-6:30am. She naps from 8:30-10:30am, 1-1:30-3:30pm and then sometimes a short nap in the evening. If you are wondering how we fixed her early waking issue that i posted about earlier, I didn't. If she wakes up at 5:30am though, she usually gets to fuss or play until 6:15 or 6:30. I'm hoping that with some solids she will be able to sleep a little later. She is still little too. And with napping, I spent a week just trying to figure out what her sleepy cues are and playing around with a napping schedule. This one has worked the best so we are sticking with it for now.
• Amazingly, I have never had to sleep train her. If I lay her down before she gets overly tired, she will just go to sleep on her own without a cry. She has always been like that, Amazing, I know.
• She LOVES to eat her feet. She is perfectly content to simply roll around on the floor eating her feet. Ethan never ate his feet to this extent and I think it is really cute!

We are pretty sure that she is teething. Her bottom gums are swollen and she is drooling like

crazy! See pic below...

Oh how we love this little girl! She is so easy, content, loving, fun and beautiful (at least we seem to think so :)

And let us not forget our little Ethan...

(Don't you just love the awkward smile phase they go through?:)

We love him so much! He makes us laugh everyday and brings so much joy to our home. We sure love our children and feel so blessed to have them!

First Day of Preschool!

Ethan started preschool this week and loves it! He is going to a lady in our ward, Mrs. Terri, who had a preschool set up in her home. It is 2 days a week for 2 hours a day and it is called, Tiny Sprouts Preschool and so far I have been impressed with what she is doing with the kids.

The preschool actually started last week but Ethan's first day was Tuesday since we were in MX for the first week of school. They had show and tell on Thurs and I'm sure you could probably guess what Ethan wanted to bring. Yep, his Buzz Lightyear. The teacher said he was so cute up there showing the kids what Buzz can do and then he made it play the "buzz song" while flying it around the room.

It sure is weird to be home and not have Ethan running around and jumping off things during that time, but I won't lie...It sure is nice to just spend some one on one time with little Ellie and try to get stuff done :)

Here is a picture of our big preschooler on his first day...

I think he looks so old in this next picture!

I think Ethan was so ready for preschool and I'm so excited for him!! He will do great!

P.S. Does anyone else think it's funny/sad that I have a degree to teach preschool but yet I pay to have my kid go to someone else? I think it is :)

Oh Mexico

Last week we returned from our old stompin' grounds in Mexico. We were there for a week and had a lot of fun seeing old friends, eating yummy mexican food, and we even attended our first Mexican wedding!

The drive down was long. Very long. What usually took us 2 days, took us 3 days of traveling. The kids did great but it just takes a lot of time to stop for feedings, potty breaks, etc. When we finally got there, we stayed with our good friends Eduardo, Gladyss & Anette. Eduardo is Justin's go-to man down there for work so they have become great friends while I just adore Gladyss and her sweetness! And here they are:

The day after we arrived, we attended the wedding of Ramon & Daniela. Justin also works with Ramon down there and his wife is from a smaller town just outside of Culiacan. Apparently Daniela's family if super wealthy (and she just obtained her law degree) and well known so needless to say,it was pretty extravagant. I really felt like I was at a celebrity wedding complete with paparazzi, BMW's, the works. Her dress and hair were gorgeous! I wish I would have taken a pic of the dress... It had to have cost thousands!

Here is a pic of the happy couple:

After the wedding, which was held at a very quaint and pretty cathedral, we went to the reception held at the Salon Ingles. It was very nice with a dinner, drinks, and dancing. The only down fall (which is apparently pretty common at big parties like this) was that the music was so so SO loud! They had a band in there blaring away trumpets into microphones with the speakers on super loud. We couldn't even think. If we go deaf in the future, I really think it will be caused by that music!

Anette had a hard time with it...Bless her heart..

But Ethan could have cared less as long as he had juice. After 3 glasses of juice, I had to tell the waiter to stop bringing more to him. He never gets it in our house so it is quite the treat for him :)

Amazingly, Ellie slept the whole time we were there. We put her underneath the table in hopes that the table cloth would drown out some of the music and help her to not become deaf :) It must have worked!

And here is the other happy couple....

Ethan and I had so much fun dancing out on the dance floor! I don't have any good pics of us bustin' our moves but everyone was staring at us so we must have been good. Oh wait, maybe they were staring because we are blonde haired, blue eyed and I was about 8 inches taller than any other woman out there trying to make my hips move like theirs.. That was probably why :)

After the wedding festivities, we had fun visiting some of our old friends and neighbors like Elias, Ana, and their two kiddos Juanpi & Santiago..

Visiting with Rafael y Isabela

I love this picture because it shows the apron that everyone had to/ wanted to wear to preserve their clothes when holding our little spit up baby..

And we also had fun playing around the house while the boys were out working. Ethan and Anette had lots of fun playing doctor. They would give each other shots and feed each other "medicine." It was funny watching these two play together. Anette would speak Spanish and Ethan English yet somehow they played well together despite the language barrier!

Just one of me and little Ellie for kicks

We were so grateful to Eduardo & Gladyss for housing us while we were down there visiting! They are such a great family!

After a whole week of no naps and no schedule, I think our little boy was tired...

And sure, Ellie wasn't all that tired at night but who could resist not smiling when you look over at her hotel crib to see this cute little face staring at you?? I sure couldn't!

It was a great trip and we look forward to the next!

Motherhood: An Eternal Partnership with God

This video is by Mormon Messages and comes from a talk given by one of our apostles in a session of general conference. It pretty much sums up why I love being a mother and why we want many more children to come to our family. I love the important and sacred work that I am doing in raising children. I hope that I can be the kind of mother our Heavenly Father wants us to be and the kind of mother that our children deserve. Enjoy!

Help With Ellie!

So Ellie is an early waker, like 5:45 or 6am, and I would love for her to be a 7:00am kind of a girl so I can get some of my stuff done before she is awake. I'm not sure how I can train her to do this so I thought I would ask you guys for your opinions!

I'm a Babywise mom but I haven't been following it near as well with Ellie as I did with Ethan. She is still on a schedule of eating every 3 hours, and has no interest in moving that space to 4 hours quite yet, but her naps are all over the place. I really want her to be on a nap schedule and I'm kind of at a lost as to how to do it. I really think that if she would just wake up at 7am, she would be on more of a consistent schedule. I would love for her to nap in the morning at 9:30am after I take Ethan to preschool, until around 11 or 11:30am- when I have to go pick him up. Then she would go down for her other nap at around 1 until 3 or so, and then a little quick nap around dinner time. This schedule would be ideal but I have no idea how to train her to do it!

Right now she eats around 6am and plays until 8am when she starts to get tired. I dont want to put her down since she eats at 9am so I usually try to keep her awake but she is a grump. Somtimes she can stay awake until 9:30am, other times she cant and that is where the schedule gets all messed up! What have you guys done with an early waker and one that wants to nap around 8am -ish? What schedules have worked for you? I really cant remember what I did with Ethan... I really wish I would have wrote it down!

Her feeding schedule is pretty much every 3 hours starting at 6am and then 6pm and 8pm in the evening. I don't think she is necessarily hungry at 6am, I just feed her anyways. Today I didnt feed her until 7am and she was just fine. She was just awake the whole entire time! Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

*Oh and I don't think blacking out her room would work for helping her to sleep longer.. We have stayed in hotels where it is pitch black inside and she is still like an alarm clock. 6am everytime :)

No matter what her nap schedule is though , she is usually always this happy...

Weekend Getaway!

A few weekends ago, Justin and I decided that it was about time for us to have a weekend all to ourselves. The last time we got away was Europe and that was almost a year ago! We were originally going to leave both Ethan and Ellie with the Smith grandparents but on such short notice, I couldn't make enough food for Ellie. So she came with us :) We still felt like it was a getaway though...Ellie is really easy. We left Friday afternoon for Tucson and had fun exploring a little bit of what there is to see.

We went to a fabulous mexican restaurant called "Nana's kitchen" on Friday night....

And then took a drive up into the mountains to watch the sun set. We arrived up in the canyon a little late and only got to see the very end of it. It was still beautiful though. I'm such a sucker for a beautiful AZ sunset!

I really don't remember being that close to the edge... Don't I look like such a dare-devil :)

We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express that night and I love that we can use Justin's points to stay there for free! That makes for a very cheap weekend away. The next day we drove up the beautiful Mt. Lemmon. It was so cool to see the scenery go from desert-like to pine trees the higher up we went.

We stopped at a few places and hiked around...

It was so cool to be up in the clouds! Not to long after this picture was taken, we were completely surrounded by clouds. We couldn't see the valley at all!

It sure was nice to be able to spend a weekend away with my cute husband. I think we should do that more often. It's good for a marriage to be able to talk to each other without being interrupted every .3 seconds :)

Happy Birthday Ethan!

"Ethan is 3 years old!" This is what my sweet boy has been telling me for the past few weeks (or for the last month, since I am over a month late on this) and I refuse to believe it. Where did my little baby boy go? They just grow up entirely too fast... if I think about it too much I will cry so I will move on before the flood gates open :)

Ethan turned 3 years old on July 9th and we such a fun time celebrating his birthday (twice!) We were in Minnesota visiting my parents and we had a little party there for him. Nothing too special. My cousins, Uncle and of course, the grandparents were there and we had some simple cupcakes to celebrate with. Justin and I did spurge however and bought him a Toy Story table cloth, balloon and plates- he loved it. My uncle and cousins gave him a heavy duty tractor, which he loves! And grandma and grandpa gave him a cool, new Buzz Lightyear doll!!!

They actually gave him the same present last year. But considering that Buzz looked like this at the end of that year....

it was time for a new one :) Buzz was a well loved action figure, may he rest in peace.

The first thing he said when he saw the Buzz was.. "Mommy, look! Buzz not got died anymore!" and he has been referring to it as "the real Buzz Lightyear" ever since. It even talks in both English and Spanish just like in Toy Story 3!

Ethan blowing out his matches.. yes, matches. We didnt have any candles...

My Uncle, and cousins, Brittney and Brock came to join the fun as well..

Enjoying his Buzz doll...

When we came back to AZ, we had another little party with the Smith side and Ethan racked up big time with the Buzz Lightyear paraphernalia!

He got a Buzz Lightyear/ Toy Story: tent, comforter for his bed, pillow case, computer hand-held game, t-shirt, kite, and I know there was more.. I just can't remember it all!

Here he is with his cake. I am not one of those fancy schmancy cake makers so we went with a Texas Chocolate Sheet cake. Not Ethan's favorite but mine :)

His big present was a cool Spiderman bike! We used the money grandparents had given us and bought this for him. Justin and I were so excited to give this to him and the first thing he said when Justin brought it out was..."Umm... no thanks, Ethan don't like Spiderman." We just had to laugh! He is now ok with it and loves to ride it around.

Things about Ethan at 3 years old:

• He is quite the talker! He loves to practice talking and is learning how to form correct sentences more and more everyday...
• He has quite the imagination. I love to hear him play with his toys and pretend with them...especially when he puts them in time out for making "bad choices" :)
• He loves to sing songs.. In fact, one of his favorites to sing is "I Will Go Sailing No More"(or whatever the name of it is) from Toy Story. It's pretty impressive how he knows every word to it!
• He is still just as crazy busy as ever. I just don't have to worry about him hurting himself anymore so my job has gotten easier :)
• He LOVES his little sister and can get her to laugh more than anybody else can.
• He has an incredible memory.. do all kids remember things pretty well?
• At his check up he was:
• Weight: 31 lbs- 50%tile
• Height: 38in- 75%tile
• He still eats more than I do and eats a wide variety of foods.
• Instead of sitting down on the potty, he is now "making rainbows" and is very proud of it :)
• He is "so afwaid" of everything! I think it is a stage he is going through ( I hope!)

Ethan is such a special little boy and we feel so blessed to be his parents! He makes us laugh everyday and we just love the cute things he says. We cant imagine our lives without him. He has brought so much happiness and joy into our home and has helped us to be better people. He deserves the best parents we can be! And, he will always, always be my sweet little boy.