Is It Naptime Yet

Today was busy.

I got up extra early for my Stake Relief Society’s woman’s conference. (6:45 am, and I don’t wake up till 8:30 am at the earliest, unless I have to.) They let us choose different classes or attending the temple. I chose to do temple sealings. I wasn’t able to proxy as a wife, but I did proxy as a daughter to a couple that may have been younger than me, or was right about my age. Then we had a wonderful speaker, Elder James B. Gibson of the area 70. I then raced out to get the lunch they were serving with my friend Sam, so I could leave early and met Jon and the girls.

Because, while I was having my fun, Jon took the girls to Science Saturday at the Natural History museum. They packed a lunch and we all met at the Springs Preserve so we could catch the 1 o’clock show of the Wings over the Springs, where they have a raptor bird show going on till the end of January on the weekends. This was the second time we’ve seen it and the girls love it.

Right before the show we spotted Jon’s sister Annie, she was there with her son’s boy scout troop, so Lilah ran up and said hi to her. I loved seeing Annie’s face as she realized who Lilah was, since seeing her was out of place and it took a second for her to recognize her. We enjoyed the show and then got to talk to Annie afterwords.

Then we tried to watch a lizard feeding, but there were hoards of people. Thankfully we have an annual pass and can come another day and hopefully see them feed ’em, since it’s only scheduled on the weekends. If not, it’s OK since we see it happen quite often at the museum.

For fun we paid to see a behind the scenes clinic of the animals. It was so much fun. We got to see the various animals they have there, since they have multiples of them and rotate the ones on display. It was our little family, plus one other family in our group. They had a little boy, only 2 or so, who wanted to hold all the tarantula’s, vinegaroons, and scorpions. Of course he wasn’t able to since the animals are wild, but she did let us hold something at the very end.

(I’m not sure if they regularly let you hold the cockroach, or if it was just our guide and the cute little boy enticing her to let him hold something. It was a giant hissing cockroach. They breed it and feed the babies to the animals.)

The tour was really fun, and I think it was very worth the $3 per person. ($5 if you’re not a annual pass member.) We did it because we thought Lilah would love it, and she did.

After the tour we did some more exploring and saw them feed the cottontail rabbits and the fox. The fox didn’t come out, but hopefully we’ll get to see him another time out and about. He’s usually sleeping in his den, which has glass, but it’s always more fun to see the animals moving and not just sleeping.

After the Springs Preserve Eden and I went grocery shopping. We all ate dinner and then enjoyed Planet 51 on Netflix. The girls were really into it when they watched it earlier this week and wanted us to watch it with them.

Now it’s bed time.

Yeah, it was a pretty busy day.

So just a mere week or more before Christmas we finally got around to getting our tree up. Life was pretty hectic and I had to get some cleaning done before we would have room for it. (It’s already down because we had guests over for New Years Eve and I wanted the room. Two weeks was time enough for me this year.)

The girls had fun decorating and being silly.

It was Eden’s turn to put the angel up this year.

On the 21st we celebrated the Winter Solstice. Jon chose the wonderful centerpiece we had on our table and even made dinner for us, since the girls and I were at Carolyn’s Christmas work party that afternoon. We enjoyed some yummy food by candle light, then Jon read us some Winter Solstice traditions. I wasn’t feeling my best so I was mostly on the couch. Earlier in the day the girls went shopping for one another, so they exchanged gifts and Jon got to open his Winter Solstice present. I had already received one of my presents, voice lessons, and will continue to receive them, so I didn’t open anything that night.

The centerpiece of evergreen, red, white and some gold pine cones that Jon painted. I think they’re rather cool.

I had a headache and was found on the couch for most of the night.

Lilah got Eden a Barbie and Eden chose a Zhu Zhu pet for Lilah. Now she has a toy hamster and a real one.

Jon decided he wanted a Nook, and that’s what he got.

Christmas Eve we spent with my parents and Carolyn and Derek. We had fun talking and then opening presents. Usually we only open one gift on Christmas Eve, but it seemed fitting to just open all the presents they had there. So we had our parents open the gifts we gave them and we opened what my parents gave us, and the girls, then the girls got to open the present the Svilars gave them, and the gift of pajamas from us. I also opened some pajamas from the girls.

Derek and Carolyn.

Grandpa and Grandma Harvey.

The Blakes.

An owl bag for my mom. (She collects all things owls.)

A nativity plaque for my dad. (He collects all things beavers, but I can never find any, and nativities.)

The girls in their pajamas.

So I kinda forgot I already posted about Thanksgiving, but I only had one picture, so I’m posting more. This post is really for my niece Shauntae, since she’s one of the few people who even comment, and because I know she’ll enjoy seeing the various pictures of her family!

Here’s some photos for your enjoyment Shauntae! 😉

OK, maybe this one is for my enjoyment. (Lilah took this picture.)

But this one is definitely for Shauntae. (Lilah took this picture.)

Annie, the host and one of the cooks. (Lilah took this picture.)

Me with one of my pies and a very silly Lilah. (Eden took this picture.)

Justin and his mini me, Daniel. (His son looks just like him.)

Tasia, her husband Danny and their son. (I can’t remember the toddler’s name, and their daughter Emily was hiding rather then wanting her picture taken. Emily is on Tommy’s lap for the large family photo though.)

Me and Jason.

Me and Dara.

The siblings. (Click to enlarge.)

The family who was there. (Click to enlarge.)

A very silly Lilah. Eden was the photographer for this one.

December we had the privileged of seeing the Parks early in the month. We only got to see them once or twice while they were down, but it was fun to let the girls play and visit when we could. I think they picked my busiest weekend ever, because I had madrigal dinners to perform at for my choir class and that took up each evening they were in town except Sunday.

We went over on Saturday afternoon to decorate the grandparents tree and let the girls play. Later we also saw Tangled with them, the Kemple kids, Carolyn, and Grandma and Grandpa Harvey. It was a fun, though short visit, and I had fun seeing Andrea and her growing belly. They’re expecting their second Park girl in early April and I can’t wait to see what she’ll look like. I wonder if she’ll fit in with the three amigo’s and look like them also.

Zarina, Lilah and Eden in front of grandparent’s tree.

Lilah age 2 years and Eden aged 2 months. I found this while looking through some old pictures and it amazes me how much I can see Zarina in this picture of Lilah. It also amazes me that they were once this small.

Later in December we were able to met Jon’s newest nephew-in-law, Tim, and visit with his niece, Adriana. Adriana is Kumen’s daughter, or Jon’s second brother.

We all met at Rawlin’s house and we brought the meal for the group to enjoy. It was just a short meal and some games afterwords, but it was fun to visit and spend time with family we rarely see. Adriana, Tim, Lilah, Eden, and I played the longest Uno game ever. We had to shuffle the draw deck five times until we finally decided a person only had to draw one card when they didn’t have one to lay down, rather then draw until you could lay something down. It was crazy.

After the game we took some photos. As I looked through the ones with Tim I realized he’s just a pretty fun and goofy guy.

The semi-newlyweds. They were married in June.

Rawlin and Adriana.

Grandma Blake and Adriana.

Us and Adriana.

The girls with Tim and Adriana.

Yeah, it’s now time for Christmas, but since I never posted any pictures of the girls from Halloween I thought I would real quick. Now that I think about it I don’t think I even blogged about Halloween.

Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure I missed birthdays and I know I missed lots of fun trips because I just went through all our photos from last year and picked out what I wanted to put in our family calendar.

Yeah, I’m a pretty lame blogger.

Well, our Halloween was lots of fun. We went to Carolyn’s work party for part of our Halloween celebrations. The girls has a blast eating tons of junk food and participating in all the activities. Carolyn was in charge of the Cake Walk while the girls and their cousins were there and I’m pretty sure she rigged it since she was just spouting off numbers and looking at the numbers the kids were on.

We carved our pumpkins Halloween day, though we hollowed them out the night before. We did a little bit of Trick or Treating on Halloween night. I just love Halloween and trick or treating. Something I realized when I decided to limit it this year since it was on a Sunday. We came home a little early, though still late by Jon, and let the girls hand out candy. They had fun handing the candy out and we barely had enough this year since we had some large groups towards the end.

Really I was only going to post one picture, but I felt a little guilty since I haven’t been posting any pictures.

Enjoy, and I hope your family had a Happy Halloween!

Next to their pumpkins. I let the girls draw faces, then I carve them.

Story of the costumes:

I realized I couldn’t post this without telling the story behind the costumes.

I wanted them to be Alice and the Red Queen, but they wouldn’t even listen to my suggestion, even though Lilah wasn’t sure on what she wanted to be, but Eden only wanted to be a princess.

Lilah decided she wanted to be a witch once she saw some really cool fabric at the store, while we were window shopping and I was waiting for a sale. Unfortunately, they did not have the fabric she wanted when we went to go buy it at 50% off. She was still happy and choose this dark purple satin and a black lace that had bats in it. That’s why I posted the last one, so you could kinda see the lace and that’s it’s purple, not black. We found the purple hat, which also has bats on it, at Smith’s, and she just had to have this gigantic harry spider too, so I let her.

Eden wanted to be a princess, but I really wanted her to be Belle, from Beauty and the Beast. We tried to convince her, we being Carolyn and me, and she was kinda sold on it with Carolyn saying she loved Belle, but she did not like that it was just a yellow dress. Once we had chosen the pattern, though not the fabric, she started drawing pictures of her beautiful multicolored dress, and it was different in every picture and it looked like a rainbow in every picture. While at the store she was OK with the yellow fabric and she was going to be Belle, but while Lilah was deciding between purple and green satin, Eden found this beautiful purple and pink organza that had small rainbow colored stars in it. She was sold and decided she had to be a princess with this fabric. So I relented and she compromised on the pink fabric for the dress, because she wanted it to have the purple that Lilah had already picked out. She also thought the dress was a little too plain, so I made the flowers that are at her waist, and added those for her.

They both loved their costumes in the end, which is what mattered the most. I really enjoyed sewing the costumes for them also. I love that I can help them turn ideas into reality.

I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten more than my share of meals in the past week. With having both our families in town it means double the meals, and double for food, which means I eat a lot in one day, but this year we met for Thanksgiving on a different day for Jon’s family, so instead of one day where I eat an insane amount of food, we had two…so yeah, I don’t think I’ll be weighing myself on the Wii any time son.

It was kinda nice to be able to linger with both families this year. We were able to spend a lot of time with Jon’s family on Saturday. All the siblings were in town, and that hasn’t happened since Lilah was a tiny infant. Not all the nieces and nephews were gathered, but it was still nice to spend time with all the brothers and sisters. Sadly, Jon’s parents were sick and the missed the festivities.

I had all the siblings gather around for a picture.

(Conrad, Jonathan, Rawlin, Annie, Jason, Kumen. Then Dara and Elana are in front.)

It was at Annie’s house and Tommy and her fixed a wonderful meal, like always. I brought pies and rolls, and there was plenty of food. I told Annie I would bring 4-5 pies, and for some reason she was still amazed that I brought so many. Fortunately she could use the frozen pies she had bought for Doug’s family dinner the next week.

Of course there was lots of sitting and talking with some debating, but mostly we just enjoyed one another’s company. Jon’s niece Tasia was there with her family, which was so nice since she’s been stationed in Alaska and will be moving there before the end of the year. I can’t believe how his nieces and nephews have grown since we’ve been married. Many have gotten married and are now enjoying families of their own. There are still a lot who are not married yet, but it’s just so different from my family, where the oldest grandchild is only 10.

We celebrated with my family on Thanksgiving Day. I made several pies once more, something I haven’t been able to do since we always eat and then leave for Jon’s family dinner. I attempted to make a banana cream pie, but used cook and serve pudding. This wouldn’t have been a problem had I realized this before I added it to the dream whip. It did not turn out, but my cousin made a delicious peanut butter cream pie, so we still had a cream pie for the family.

My Aunt Robin and Uncle Mike came down this year for Thanksgiving and they brought two of their grandchildren. The girls had lots of fun playing with them, and I went over there again today, since we don’t see them often and Jon needed to get some studying done. Elana is 9 and Talon is 7, so the four of them actually got along really well.

Poor Carolyn was sick this year, and didn’t make it to the family dinner. We thought it was just an allergic reaction to some food with peanuts that she had accidentally eaten on Wednesday. We even had her over to our house on Wednesday evening, but with some of the other symptoms, it seems like she also has a cold or the flu. It wasn’t as much fun to not have her there with us.

I love this time of year and I am so excited for the holidays. I’m totally not prepared, but it’s been so much fun watching the girls enjoy this time of year and getting ready for Christmas. I could do without the long, long, looong wish lists, but it’s still fun. They love Christmas music, and singing songs. I even peeked in and found them making a manger scene where Eden was Mary and her stuffed animals were the animals peering into a basket with a baby doll in it. I don’t think they had turtles and lizards at the first Christmas, but it made for one cute moment.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m posting these now, even though I have tons I need to do, because I fear I will forget, since I’ve been a pretty bad blogger lately.

We had our family pictures taken on October 2. Jon let me buy him a new shirt because he was tired of blue and green being our main colors for family pictures, though last years were different, and I can’t believe how much older the girls look this year compared to last. I bought him this golf shirt, since it was the only one I could find in red, and it’s now his favorite shirt. Score! (The reason why Jon doesn’t like me buying him clothes for family pictures, is the worry that he won’t use it again, and it would basically be a waste of money.) I also added the flowers to the girls shirts so they would coordinate. I could not find anything black, red, or white for the girls, besides these t-shirts, so I went with black and white and embellished them. I really think they turned out nice, though we’ll see how they wear since they flowers now have to be ironed after each wash. Sigh.

I think our pictures turned out pretty dang cute. She wasn’t the best at posing us in natural looking positions, but for the most part I like them because we’re all smiling and looking cute. The photographer liked them so well that she asked if she could submit them to a panel to be used as advertising, since they use actual families and photo shots from their studios. Hundreds of photo’s are submitted, so we’ll see if anything comes of it, but I was flattered that she liked them so much too.

The final note, if you’re family and would a specific pictures for your own viewing pleasure, please leave a comment for which ones you want and you’ll get them with your Christmas cards!

Family 01
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Family 02
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Family 03
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Family 04- This is a favorite pose for JC Penny photographers, it’s the third year we’ve been posed this way, and each have been different photographers.
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Family05- I wish Jon’s smile was in the previous one, that’s why I posted both.
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Girls 01
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Girls 02
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Girls 03-
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Lilah 01

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Lilah 02
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Lilah 03
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Lilah 04
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Lilah 05
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Eden 01
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Eden 02

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Eden 03
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Eden 04
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Eden 05

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Couple
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Jon has puppy dog eyes, but that wasn’t on purpose.

As I look back at previous years of photos I’ve decided to order my children to stop growing. I do this daily, but they never listen.

So a long time ago I thought my computer screen was going out, I’m pretty sure it still is, but for now it works, but the brightness is still bright. I went on a photo posting hiatus because of my screen, and my sheer laziness to upload and edit photos, but I decided that I’d post some anyways, and would just crop them, so the brightness might be off, but at least there are photos!

The girls and me at the Zoo!
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Comparing ourselves to gorillas.

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He was looking right at the girls. I could have sat and watched him for much longer, but everyone else wanted to move one.

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Lots of standing and looking. This was Jon’s view of the Zoo.

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Open your eyes on three! I was trying to not get squinty eyes, I guess it worked, kinda.

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The awkward bighorn sheep. I totally thought it was a goat of some sort because it did not look like the bighorn sheep I know, or even like the one they had pictured.

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After the bird show with the bald eagle.

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The cool owl after the bird show.

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The mama and baby elephant!

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None of the other carousel pictures turned out, and you could argure neither did this one, but I love ladybugs so Jon took my picture with the ladybug carousel seat.

Well I haven’t posted in a while and I thought I’d do one final plug for the play, since I’m plugging it all the time on Facebook.

I took a few pictures of some of the cast and me last week. It’s not everyone just a few of who I could find in the halls at the time. I’ve edited them so I could put them on Facebook in hopes of generating some interest. Not sure if it worked, but I also like play make-up and hair so it was fun to post me in it. I love to play dress-up for the play. It’s so much fun.

Cinderella has gone pretty smoothly overall. It’s lots of fun each night and I’m actually remembering most of the dance steps! ( Knock on wood.) It helps to have a partner though, because when I forget I just look at them and figure it out, or follow their lead, especially since they’re the guy and the one leading. There are many times I forget because I’m so focused on counting, which is helpful unless you’re counting and thinking of the wrong step, or I get lost in something else since your mind sometimes gets bored of counting.

Some fun moments of the play or practise. One week Chuck was just throwing me around for our lift and it irritated my foot. I was getting so high in the air though. Now he’s a little more gentler, but we’re not as high. 🙁

Once Ken became my second dance partner, just a week before opening, I kept calling him Chuck, because I just could not remember two names. He was a really good sport about it and I now remember his name, most of the time.

I put one of my fake eyelashes on crooked on Saturday and it was really bothering me. Dena and Kerri started joking about not if I would fix the eyelash, but when I would. They seem to know I’m a perfectionist for some things. ( I ran out of time to fix it and just left it. I decided it wasn’t that noticeable and I didn’t want to have to re-due my make-up. )

Tonight I forgot my make-up, so some of the cast let me use theirs. I used MAC make-up for part of it and now I want some of my own. The fairy god mother also supplied me mascara, eye-liner and some fake eyelashes. She really has all you need in her magical bag.

So if you haven’t come out and seen the play, please do. It’s lots of fun and you never know what’s going to happen in live theater.

Go to www.lvfamilytheater.org to purchase tickets. We have just 5 more performances!

Me and the girls.
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Diana and me. She’s a The Bad Girl.
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Heidi and me. She’s first girl and I’m Second Girl. We joke that I’m Snow White and she’s Rose Red. (Many cast members have called me Snow White with my make-up and hair done.)

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Dena, our wicked step mother and me. She was Glinda last year.
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Ken, The Herald, and Chuck, The Clumsy man. I made the jacket and gold pants for Ken and the vest for Chuck.
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Me with Ken and Chuck. They’re my dance partners in the play, minus the Prince whom I also dance with. I dance with Chuck most of the time and then I finish the waltz with Ken.
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Kerri and me. She’s one of the choreographers and on the Seastrand Theater Committee with me.

Lilah with our naturally dyed eggs
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Eden with our naturally dyed eggs
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Our eggs. Jon hollowed an egg out and dyed it will green tea the week before.
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Easter baskets.
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Easter morning.
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Easter egg hunt at our house.

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Girls showing love.

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The skirt I made Lilah. (I wanted them really long since everything you find for girls barely touches their knees now.)

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Hunting eggs at Grandma Harvey’s house

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I just loved the look on Lilah’s face

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Happy girls at the end of a long Easter day.