If at first you don't succeed...

Take 1.

Take 2.

Take 3. Good enough.

Long overdue

Don't you just hate when you've been in desperate need of something for 4+ years and then you finally do it and it costs you $1 and takes you 15 minutes and makes you wonder why it took you this long?!!!

Finally we have a bow holder. Yay!

So remember how I said I was going to update our blog?

Clearly that hasn't happened. Here's a brief synopsis of our last nine months and updates on the kids. And it only took me 6 days to do this post! Sheesh.

Last nine months in bullet points....
*September-Emily started dance and another year of preschool. Chase turned two. He got to go see Lion King in the theaters as his special birthday treat. Had a Go Diego Go party to celebrate. *October-Robert and I got a three day getaway to Vegas with friends and no kids. The only time we've ever gone anywhere without our kids. Carly was blessed. Emily turned four with a Rapunzel party (shocker!). Had a baby witch, a cow, and Rapunzel for Halloween.
*November-Celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. Went bowling on Thanksgiving where Emily beat all of us.
*December-tons of Christmas fun. Emily and I went to see the Nutcracker by Ballet West. Emily's first official dance recital.
*January-Robert turned the big 3-0 and I surprised him by remodeling his office in one day while he was at work.
*February-I had a birthday. Boo.
*March-remodeled our kitchen! First zoo visit of the season.
*April-Easter
*May-finally fixed our fence after three years! Emily's preschool graduation/program. More zoo visits.

And some pictures.

Chase's birthday. He was pretty happy. Also the BYU/Utah game hence the clothes. :)
Chase seeing the Lion King on his birthday. He stole the popcorn.
Chase's birthday party

Vegas

Carly's blessing

Love these boys

2 month old Carly

Emily's birthday

Painting pumpkins

Aren't they pretty?

Our kids love Halloween. :)

Bowling on Thanksgiving

We're so awesome at bowling. We lost to a 4 year old.
Our thankful tree

For Emily's dance recital she had to have her hair curly. It was really bizarre for me. My mom put curlers in my hair hundreds of times for dance performances over the years. It was weird to be the mom putting them in my daughter's hair.

Christmas dance recital

Temple Square

Birthday cake for Jesus. Doesn't it look delicious?!

The dollhouse my stepmom made Emily for Christmas. Isn't it awesome?!
Apparently a comfy place to sit

Friday night at our house

This kid. My grandpas assisted living place had an easter egg hunt. There were different areas for each age and we had to wait behind the rope until it was time to start. Chase kept sneaking candy the whole time we were waiting. At one point he snuck his little foot under the rope to slide a piece of candy towards him. Before it eve started he had like 10 pieces of candy. It was hilarious.
Easter haul

Emily's dance picture

Preschool Graduation with her teacher

Some serious bedhead

Sisters


The kids......

Emily. There are no words for this girl. She's one of kind. I really struggled at times with her when she was three. I had always heard the phrase "Terrible Two's, Horrible Three's." Absolutely the case with Emily. Then in October she turned four. Hallelujah! She still has her moments (as she will for the rest of her life I'm sure!) but she no longer drives me absolutely crazy. And I mean that in the most loving way possible! She can have an attitude at times and certainly likes to get her way but she's also really sweet and cares about her brother and sister. She's down right hilarious. You never know what's going to come out of her mouth. And so so smart. One of the most amazing things about Emily is her love for and desire to know the gospel. At four years old she knows more about the scriptures and the gospel than I think I did at 20. She just loves it.

Chase turned two in September. And now he's coming up on three. I still love this kid to death and he's still my bud but man, he can be a struggle lately. Life is apparently hard when you're two. He can be so happy and laughing and then the next instant he's grouchy and whiny and throwing a fit about who knows what. It's exhausting. And from my experience with Emily, three years old is actually worse so I can't wait for that. He is completely obsessed with Cars and Lighting McQueen. As well as Finn McMissile whom he occassionally calls Professor. He is such a crack up too. And such a sweet brother. He takes good care of Carly. Saturday night I wanted to cut his hair before he had a bath since it has been driving me crazy for the last week or so. I took him in the bathroom and said "Let's cut your hair and then you can play in the bath." He takes off running and jumps in his bed, hides under the blanket and says, "I'm going night night." It made me laugh. I kind of ignored him for a few minutes and then he got out of bed, turned off the light and closed the door. I went in there because he didn't have his pajamas on or anything and he said "I don't wanna cut hair!" and jumped down and started running all over the house trying to avoid me. He just kept saying "I don't wanna cut hair! I don't wanna cut hair!" It was so funny. Love that kid. I am reminded often that he is such a boy. So different from Emily. He's rough and tumble for sure. I think he has permanently skinned knees.

Our sweet little Carly Rae is 9 months old already. So crazy. This girl is such a blessing. She's such a sweet and happy baby. I just love to squeeze her. One thing I really love about being a stay-at-home mom is that my babies love me the most. :) I was working when Emily was a baby and she always loved dad more. But Chase and Carly were (and still are) all about mom. Love it. Carly is a big time momma's girl. No complaints here. Carly has no doubt been the best sleeper of all of our kids. Slept through the night from practically day one. That helped soooo much with having three kids under the age of four. She's crawling all over the place and puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. She's always been a very grabby baby and now with her added mobility it is just out of control. I feel like I spend my whole day following her around and pulling stuff out of her mouth. She has two cute little teeth on the bottom and now she thinks she can eat anything we eat. If we're eating we better have something for her to eat or she is going to freak out. She loves to eat. My favorite thing she does is give hugs. She'll grab my neck and bury her face on my chest. OMG. It is the best thing in the world. Gosh I love her!

Okay. Now that that is done we can move on. :)

Family Pics

We got new family pictures taken. They were actually taken about 5 months ago. I was completely satisfied just to get all the kids looking in the same direction at the same time.

Make it stop

Anyone here on Pinterest? I have heard tons about it for months now. I fear that if I get started I won't be able to stop. I also fear that I will find too many things/ideas I want to do. I already have a project list 17 miles long and none of it ever gets done. Do I really want to subject myself to the depression that will ensue when I have even more projects that won't get completed? Hmmmm.....

For your totally unrelated viewing pleasure

Some September stuff

I have a blog because I want to share our life (some of it) with our friends and family. It sounds dumb to say otherwise. I really enjoy looking back and remembering the kids and things we did. So anyway, just forget that last post. But thanks for your comments! Do you ever post something and then read it the next day and realize that didn't quite come out right? Anyway, onto some pictures. I can't decide if I want to catch up or just start from the present. I'll start by trying to catch up and we'll see how far I get!

Emily's first day of preschool. We missed an entire year of preschool on the blog. Kind of weird. She just had her graduation on Monday.

First day of dance. She's goofy.

Emily loves her baby sister. And most of the time the feeling is mutual.

Back

I previously mentioned that we cancelled our internet about 8 months ago after an argument with the Century Link lady. We had planned to get it back a few months later but then decided we kind of really liked not having it. Let's be honest, it's just a giant time waster. Remember when the internet didn't really exist? Yeah. Somehow we managed. Anyway, because of recent circumstances we were kind of forced to get it back. BOO! But alas, here we are. Back to the blog! I have mixed feelings towards our blog. I am kind of weird but I really don't like people knowing about my life. I don't share much of my life with anyone other than Robert and maybe my mom. But I don't even tell my mom everything. So why would I have a blog if I don't want anyone to know about my life? Good question. I've discovered over the last 8 months that blogging was my incentive to take pictures. It shouldn't be that way but I stopped blogging and also stopped taking pictures! Poor Carly has like ten pictures of her first 8 months of life. She'll probably be in therapy over it when she's older. I can't say for sure if there is a direct correlation or if her lack of photos is just based on a busier life but I'm hoping getting back to the blog will help me take more pictures! Well that was a really long and pointless blabber fest. But there will be lots more posts in the near future to catch up on things!