Our Camera is Back!!!

Hip hip hooray for David fixing the camera! Actually, it was the charger for the camera, but either way...now I can post the pictures that go with previously posted events--and more! Warning--this post is all pictures, and a lot of them!
Olivia by the Christmas tree

Aubrey with her antennae that Daddy put in her hair :)

Christmas Eve jammies!

Posing in front of Grandma and Grandpa Harmon's fireplace.

Christmas morning! Aubrey loved Miranda's Santa hat.

Olivia begged for Santa to bring her two princess Barbies because her Jasmine Barbie was lonely, and she couldn't be a real friend to her because she is a human and Jasmine is a doll--the logic of a 3-year-old!

Aubrey was so excited about this doll--she looooooves dolls in general and constantly kisses them--it is so cute to watch her "mother" any doll she can find.

Classic Olivia--ole!

Tucker makes for a great Christmas present--it really was a present for us to have so many loved ones over at our house for Christmas morning/afternoon. We missed Josh and Helen, though!

Dear Grandpa

Three lovely ladies that I love

Tyson's cute family--his wife, KaDee, and their little boy, Tucker--what a doll, huh?!

Mr. Wonderful making breakfast--wearing the apron Grandma gave me for Christmas :) P.SS. If the French toast looks a little green, it is on purpose ;)

Pretty yummy Christmas trees!

The three cousins

Our little Christmas sweethearts

Daddy and the girls getting ready to go sledding.

My friend Sesha's birthday cake which we made with her kids while she and her hubby went out--I'm sure she's glad I'm broadcasting her age! (Hee-hee, actually, I'm sure she won't care)

McKinley and Rachel licking the frosting...

Kolter--one of Olivia's best friends--we love this little stud!

I am four years old!

Here is the "before" shot of Olivia's birthday cake.

Here is the shot after David's sister Sara got a hold of it--thank goodness for artistic people--I knew it needed something else, but I couldn't figure out what to put where!
WOWsers! I'd better keep up next time so I don't have to post a million pictures all at once!

On a side note, I just had to share--today, as I was struggling to get Olivia bathed and ready to go to preschool, she was giving me a bunch of trouble. I kept telling her she needed to cooperate and let me shampoo her hair, to which she finally replied, "Mom--I will do it when I decide--I have my own life!" This scares me just a little--she is barely four years old, and I wasn't expecting to hear that kind of complaint for at least another few years! Knowing Olivia, I shouldn't be too surprised, but sheesh! Can you imagine this girl as a teenager?! FYI, I quickly conceded that yes, she does have her own life and yes, she can make her own decisions, but then she has to live with the CONSEQUENCES! She laughed and began getting her hair wet. Silly girl. ;)

Highlights

No, I have not changed my hair--I'm too chicken.
I do, however, have some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is that our camera is broken. :(
The good news is that I have determined to not wait until it is fixed/replaced to update our blog, mainly because this is the only "journaling" type activity I have done in a long time, so I had better catch up a bit!
Here are a few highlights from the past couple of months in no particular order of time or importance:
1. Christmas--it was fun! Grandma Lori and Aunt Miranda came out and stayed with us on Christmas Eve, and then in the morning Grandma and Grandpa Harmon and Uncle Tyson and Aunt KaDee and Tucker came out for presents and breakfast. For breakfast we stole an idea from Andrew and Brenda and made Christmas tree French toast. It was both cute and yummy! I did have pictures, but they are trapped on the broken camera for the time being.
Later that evening we went to Grandma Lori's house for dinner and games. It was a nice day overall!
2. Olivia's birthday--she is officially 4 years old! She requested a pink pony cake, which I also have pictures of...anyway, we had a nice celebration with both families--thanks for coming out, everyone--and Olivia is still working on hand-made thank you notes for both Christmas and birthday presents--she looooooves doing crafts from her new craft box (birthday present from Aunt Sara). She literally asks every day to get it out and do a craft, which is great for me--it keeps her occupied in a creative way.
3. Baby Lincoln--We have had our new nephew/cousin at our house three days a week since December. He is a sweet little boy, and the girls adore him. Aubrey is always trying to give him kisses, and Olivia says he is her brother--when corrected, she will only concede to the term "brother-cousin"--no less.
4. Biggest Loser--David and I joined a weight loss challenge in Shelley for six weeks. It ended last week, and David won!!! He lost 29.6 lbs. and 25-ish inches. I didn't win, but I have lost about 17 lbs. We are excited to be feeling healthier and more fit.
5. Preschool--our favorite activity of late was the rainbow cupcakes from the Family Fun magazine--a little time-consuming, but lots of fun! I wish I had pictures of those--oh well.
6. David painted the kitchen cabinet doors and hung them and then we worked together to put the glaze on them for the "distressed" look. It is strange to have to open a cabinet door to get to things again! But we love it anyways.
7. Couponing--I am one of those crazy ladies who is somewhat obsessed with the coupon scene. For me it is time-consuming sometimes, but I really do enjoy it most of the time. Besides, when you can get Dawn dish detergent, 2 pkgs. of Chinet paper plates, 2 boxes of hot chocolate, 1 pack of gum, 4 cartons of cottage cheese, 1 bag of Sun Chips, 8 cartons of Dreyer's ice cream, 2 boxes of Bagel Bites, 8 frozen juices, 2 bags of frozen mashed potatoes, 2 cookie mixes, 2 frostings, 2 Premium brownie mixes, 2 warm delights snacks, 2 potato side pouches, 2 bags of granola nut clusters, and 12 tuna pouches for 10.83--it is worth it! Of course that isn't all we eat--we're on a diet for goodness sakes--but it is fun to have things on hand when you do want to indulge, or a birthday comes along, or you want to make a treat for visiting teaching, etc.
Does this sound like a Christmas letter to anyone else? It probably makes for boring reading for other people, but it is a good update for us to remember what we were doing for the first part of 2010!

Getting Ready for the Big Day

Hello there! So I decided it was pretty sad that I had changed my background three times since the last time I posted--each time intending to do a couple posts, of course, but never getting it done. So now I am trying to catch up! I'll be adding more from Christmas, hopefully in the next few days...
We have been doing a few fun things lately getting ready for Christmas. For our preschool group we talked about snow and snowmen and then for lunch we made a snowman pizza--we thought it turned out pretty cute!
You can't see it very well, but Mr. Snowman has pineapple for eyes and a mouth.

Ever year Santa comes to visit at a house a couple blocks away. They announce it on the school's message board and everyone is invited to come see Santa and get some free hot chocolate. It is done outside, so it was very cold, but definitely fun! Aubrey wouldn't even get close enough for a picture--she was terrified! :)

The same night we visited Santa, we loaded back up and drove around looking at Christmas lights. There is a timed musical display in Shelley and two that we know of in Iona. This is one of the places in Iona that we thought was particularly impressive. David loves his Christmas lights and decorations, but I don't know that we'll ever get quite this technical about it!

Growing UP

The girls have hit a couple of major milestones lately, so we thought we'd share:
Olivia had her first haircut a few weeks ago...
Before...

During...she was soooo excited to get it cut and had been asking to get it done for quite a while.

After! It wasn't any significant amount, just a couple inches off the bottom to even it up, but it looks so much better and is so much easier to brush through now--hooray for haircuts!

Aubrey has started walking; this is a video of when she first started to get the hang of it.

Turkey and Pies!!!

Ever since my college days with dear LeAnne, it has been a tradition to make a "thankful turkey," in the days before Thanksgiving to remember what we are thankful for--big and little things from family and the gospel to snowflakes and chocolate. This was the first year Olivia could really participate and understood what it meant to be thankful.
Some of the things Olivia was thankful for:
Dad
Mom
Grandmas and Grandpas
Ice Skating
Our Shelley house
Her body

One of the very fun parts of Thanksgiving this year for me was making pies with my wonderfully fun sister, Miranda. We made a total of 11 pies late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Here are some pics of our masterpieces: cheesecake pie, coconut cream, chocolate peanut butter, regular apple, dutch apple, strawberry rhubarb, huckleberry raspberry, and pecan. Later, when we got to Andrew and Brenda's, we baked pumpkin and cherry (store-bought-gasp!) ;)

Oh man, now I'm hungry! The pies were great, but the company was better--we had a great time with all of David's family (minus Gram and Grandpa on their mission in New York)--thanks to Andrew and Brenda for hosting all us craaaazzzzyyy people!!!

Trick or Treat!

The week of Halloween was full of fun for us. On Tuesday we went with my mom to her ward's Halloween carnival put on by the young women. The girls had fun throwing bean bags, decorating a bag, doing the cake walk, getting their faces painted, getting balloon animals, rolling in candy, etc.! It was fun to spend the evening with Grandma. Then on Thursday we had our Bears (cub scouts) over for den meeting where we roasted "Mummy Dogs," painted pumpkins, and made the ever-classic ghost suckers. Olivia had so much fun painting pumpkins that day that on Friday we got the paint back out and painted pumpkins some more, and then we decided we should paint each other's faces (brave Mommy)! Olivia did pumpkins on my face and I did a spider web w/spider and a witch on her. It was lots of fun. After raking leaves all day Saturday while Daddy was setting up his shed here in Shelley, we went to the 3rd annual pumpkin walk at the Bingham County park. I thought it was fun and quite impressive for it being only in its third year running. We are thinking we should see about signing up to do a scene for next year. It looks like lots of fun, and the theme will be "Dreams do come true"--any ideas? :) After the pumpkin walk, we headed to town and visited with some of David's family. One of houses we went trick-or-treating to along the way gave Aubrey a Tootsie Pop and she would not let it go--she kept sucking it on it with the wrapper on, and when we asked if it was yummy, she nodded very enthusiastically (that's her new trick--nodding and shaking her head to communicate). Olivia liked practicing her witch laugh, which she has done over the last few weeks, and Aubrey also picked it up, which was really cute. Olivia liked to say to people, "Come here my little pretty!" in a very witchy voice. Altogether it was a great holiday, and our little witch and her black kitty had a blast!

A (Not-So)Recent Roundup of the Goings-On Around Here

Here is a conglomeration of pictures from various activities we have enjoyed since moving into the new house...
Huckleberry picking--we went about three times and got lots of yummy berries! There were a few challenges, though--Olivia threw up two different times, and Aubrey only stayed happy for a few minutes each time--after that we took turns trying to make her happy while the other one picked. This was when she finally just gave it up and went to sleep.

She is such a funny girl. Whenever she is mad she folds herself in half like this and cries. This time she fell asleep that way. :)

I made this flower cake for mine, Miranda's and Grandma's birthdays, which we celebrated at the same time as Aubrey's since we were moving on Aubrey's birthday.

Here is Aubrey's birthday cake!

Eyeing the goods...

Excitement is building...going...

Going...

Gone! She definitely inherited a sweet-tooth! Thanks to all the family for coming out and making it a special day!

This is the sour-face that Olivia has been giving me lately--it is hard not to laugh at sometimes:)

First day of preschool! Some friends and I are doing a mommy-swap preschool with our 3-year-olds. It has been lots of fun so far!

We went to the annual Spud Day (that's right, I said Spud Day:) celebration with my good friend Sesha and her kids and Karen and Troy and their boys. Here is a group shot of the big kids.

And the babies...

My spud princess--this is one of those outfits she wouldn't leave the house without for a while:)

An old-time fire engine

Kolter covering his ears from the siren

Only in Idaho...(well, maybe not)

Daddy, Aubrey, and Matt-bud on the motorcycle

Spudnik--need I say more?

The parade was pretty impressive, I must admit! From there we walked down to the festivities at the park, which included free yummy baked potatoes (loaded!) and chocolate milk, booths of fun activities for the kids, fair food, vendors, etc. The highlight of the day for me was when Sesha convinced me to participate in the spud-picking competition, and then I insisted she come with me. For those of you who don't know (I didn't), the spud-picking contest went like this: each person is set up with a row of piled potatoes dumped from gunny-sacks, which sacks are laid to the side of the row for re-filling during the race, and a metal wire basket. The race is simple; fill the basket with potatoes and dump them into the gunny sacks. It was harder than it looks! Sesha and I were amateurs, so we were mainly just competing against each other--I won;) Next year I'm going for the cash-prize!

We were excited to move our old firepit from the Idaho Falls house to this house--these pics are from our first weenie roast at the new house.

Daddy and his girls chillin' by the fire

Olivia has gotten to be quite a good little roaster!

We have also been doing a lot of canning this year--green beans and carrots with the help of my friend Sesha, salsa with the help of Miranda, frozen corn from Sam's dad's garden, freezer jam from my mom's raspberry bushes, David and I worked together on the pears, Karen (David's sister) and I did peaches together, and Sara and Sam brought out a TON of apples, so we did apple pie filling and apple butter together. This shot is of one of the many times we caught Aubrey snitching a bite of apple. We could have filled a bucket with all the apples that had little nibbles taken out of them. This was also the night that Aubrey took her first steps!

I just had to add this cute little funny video of Aubrey eating Ramen--she was really enjoying it!

The BIG REVEAL Posting

Okay, so this will probably be a little anticlimactic for some family and friends, since many of you who live closeby and even some who don't have already seen the house in person by now. If I had just remembered, in my awake-for-48-hours-straight-state to take pictures of what we had done to the house BEFORE we moved all our stuff in I would have been blogging ever since. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, so I had to first unpack and organize and then try to remember to take pictures on a day when the house was actually looking decent. I should clarify--usually the house looks decent at some point every day--it just doesn't last very long, so I have a relatively small window of time in which to take pictures, and I inevitably forgot for a long time. So finally I decided that I might as well just take pictures of the house the way it is.

So without further ado...

Here are some pics of the inside of our new house, complete with all of our junk!:)

(I still have to paint the doors of the kitchen cabinets and we haven't tackled the master bedroom downstairs, so there is more to come in the next few months!)