Catch Up...

This picture is from my Dad's birthday in June.  I love it because Taylor is wearing her new floaty-swimsuit.  I bought it for her the night before and she was dying to use it.  She was crying to bring it and then put it on once we were there.  She wouldn't stop begging to go swimming, so we put her and Emmy in the tub.  She's a nut.  She also brought it with us wherever we went for the next month.  She brought it to the gym, the store, Tori's dance class, so funny.  Below my dad made homemade BBQ chicken pizza, so yum.

These pictures were from Father's Day.  Brittney made brownie muffins with Reese's pieces butter cups inside.  Some 4th of July pictures are mixed in as well.

I love the picture above.  From the other room I could hear Taylor yelling,"Papa, Papa, Papa!"  When I went in there she was two inches from his face, crazy girl that makes us laugh.  If you know my dad then you know he hates loud noise, but he's pretty patient with her.   And then they decided to sport the glasses :).

Since 4th of July was on Sunday this year we had a BBQ-swim party on Saturday at our house.  The girls loved decorating the cupcakes with blue and red sprinkles.  Tori and I had so much fun making the paper lanterns hanging below.  I got the idea and directions from Martha Stewart.

Sunday night on the 4th we went to my parents house and my grandma had left us all a fireworks box.  So the kids loved helping us light up all the fun fireworks and sparklers.  Then we watched fireworks from their backyard.

 

The picture above was from Cow-Day at chickfila.  If you dressed up like a cow you got a free combo.  Tori of course is saying moo!  Tori learned how to swim completely now, yay!  She can also jump off the grotto in our pool. (Such an accomplishment for her).  Taylor has mastered the arm floaties.  It's so nice to relax in the pool now.

My little goose's...

Summer has been really fun so far.  We've been swimming a lot, and Tori can officially swim, yay!  Taylor loves to wear her swim-float suit and spin for hours in a tube.  When I first got her the suit she had to take it everywhere.  She took it to the gym and the grocery store and cried when I pried  it from her hands as we were going into church, lol.

I know, I know, I'm so dorky for dressing my kids alike, but Tori LOVES it.  I found their cute Roxy Capri's at Ross for $3.99.  Can you believe that?  I also got a cute tan and gold pair.  Actually they were for Taylor, but Tori tried them on and they fit her.  When I went back they had a 4T  for her too, but in the tan her and Taylor will both be wearing 3T.  She's so tiny!  While shopping for these there was a shirt that had a skate board attached to it that Taylor became obsessed with.  She now takes the skate board everywhere, lol.  She sleeping with it as I write this.

I've always called them my little goose's.  Maybe because they're always silly.  Tori the other day looked at me as we were about to go to the store and said, "mom, you look scary.  Are you wearing mascara?"  Brett laughed so hard and so did I.  I wasn't wearing any make-up, and will take that as a compliment.  Hoping that means I usually look good, lol.

I love this picture.  Taylor still has that cute chubby look to her and I'm so glad they love each other so much. :)

Little Update and Tori's Graduation...

Here's my little cuddle bug.  Every time I pick her up to hold her she nestles her head into my neck, aw...melt.  She has such a big and funny personality.  She's always making the funniest faces and dancing her little booty off.  Her Chinese language is starting to sound a lot more like English now, ha.  Tonight she was looking in the mirror and telling me all the faces she was making such as mad, sad, happy, and silly.  She was cracking up at herself.  She's a happy little babe who begs constantly for popsicles from the moment she wakes up.  Were in detox right now from the otter pops.  Dang things come in pack of 100!  No thank you!  Her favorite movies right now are Toy Story 1and 2.  She's obsessed and love her new Buzz and Woody doll we got her from Kohl's.  She's also obsessed with her new MR. Potato head which is also in Toy Story.  She's asleep with all three in her bed right now.  It will be fun to take her to see Toy Story 3 in a couple of weeks.  She's so different that Tori because she's not constantly talking my ear off, it's kind of nice, lol.  I'm not going to potty train her until she's 3 in October.  She just doesn't get it still.  She tells me all the time though that she's "leaking" when she pees, it's so funny.  She sometimes has me let her sit on the toilet and she wipes and flushes, but has yet to actually do any deeds in the toilet.  I love how she's easy going and will wear anything I put on her or go anywhere I'm going without a complaint.  I'm loving her 3 hour naps and I know they won't last forever so I'm treasuring them right now.  I catch her counting in Spanish all the time and lately she loves to paint and make crafts.  She's a doll and I really love this age.:)

Here's Tori at her Preschool Graduation.  She really has expressed to me how much she loves and is going to miss Miss Autumn.  She says she wishes she could be her teacher forever.  And there is Taylor trying to get in on the action.

I love how happy Tori is in these pictures.  She's my little sunshine.  At the end of each day I start to think about how lucky I am to have my girls.  Tori's my little good girl and is  always trying to do what's right.  I love how she is so sweet to Taylor even when she's being a stinker to her.  She has me close my eyes sometimes and leads me into her room to show me how she cleaned it all up and made her bed. Hope this last forever...fat chance right?

She had a little part at her graduation and using highest voice possible to said that when she grows up she wants to be a nurse because she loves to help people.  It was so cute.

Here they are singing songs that they listened to everyday.  She got to take home a cd of the music and loves to listen to it.

Miss Autumn said something special about each kid and she said Tori always has a story for everything, ha!  Don't I know that!  She loves to talk, and talk, and talk.  She's such a curious girl and wants to know everything about anything.  Sometimes I'll be talking to myself in the car about how annoying other drivers are and she'll have to know what I'm talking about, AAHHHH! 

Miss Autumn also said that she is such a good little artist.  And Tori is constantly drawing, cutting, gluing, spelling, painting, or stickering anything she can find. (Love these messes)  I love it though, and love how creative she is.  She just started piano lessons about a month and a half ago, and she is doing so good.  She practices all the time and just loves it.  Whenever a friend comes over, she turns into a piano teacher herself and tries to teach them.  I feel bad for them sometimes because she talks to them like their supposed to know what she's talking about, lol.

As for me, I started my new crafty blog and have been a little busy with that.  People keep asking me how I can do all these things or say I wish I had time for that, and I say well I'm sure your house is clean and you actually cook regular meals, lol. I feel like it's so hard to balance life.  Last year my obsession was going to the gym because it was such a stress release.  Now that Taylor is old enough to let me be creative again my new obsession is creating.  I just need to make sure I have time each day to get myself dressed cute and do my make-up, clean, teach and play with my kids, make something fun and creative, cook, exercise, talk to my hubby, read my scriptures and my books, and watch my shows. (lol)  Thank goodness for all of the finales, that takes a load off.  Well happy day, I fulfilled my journaling for the day I'd say. :)

11 Years and Counting...

So me and my babes just had our anniversary on Saturday and it really is crazy how time flies.  I hate being cheesy, but I couldn't have married a better guy.  He loves me unconditionally and uplifts me everyday.

Even though I must have gotten married when I was like 12 to be having our 11 year anniversary, I can say I'm glad I didn't wait until I was older. I'm so happy that I was blessed to marry my best friend :).

My First Giveaway on my craft blog Creative Urges...

If you'd like to win this skirt that I'll custom make to fit you click HERE for the details.

New York Trip...

Oh, how I love New York City!!

That's the Empire State building.  We left on a Wednesday around 10 and flew through the night.  We had a lay over at 3 am our time and thought it would be a good time for a buttery pretzel, so weird.  Then we arrived in New York at about 530 our time but it was 830 their time.  We weren't aloud to check in for 4 more hours.

So half awake we dropped off our bags and hit the streets.  I just love how you can walk around and be entertained at every corner.  So much to look at and see it's amazing.  We went with our good friends the Oberly's.  While Leslie and I went back to the hotel to take a snooze, Brett and Mark somehow got us tickets from a guy to The David Letterman Show.  So we were no longer aloud to take a nap because you have to check into the show early.  So then we are prodded into some kind of foyer and told for an hour how you need to laugh at every word that comes out of David's mouth.  Seriously we were all stuck in roped off lines zig zagging back and forth and I just wanted to sit down, but we had to hear these guys who must have been on some kind of happy drugs tell us how happy we need to be.  Right when I was about to punch somebody in the face they let us into the studio.  Then like 8 more kids on crack start jumping around and clapping like a bunch of idiots to get us to do the same.  It was cool though because Gwenyth Paltrow was the guest, but by the time it was her interview my head was bobbing back and forth because I kept falling asleep.

Please excuse Brett's hair, he was hadn't fixed it for two days by then :).

I was on a mission to find cool pictures for blog backgrounds.  And being a faux painter I couldn't believe how many awesome walls and doors, and architectual elements there were at every turn.  It's funny because people pay me to make things look old and rustic and it's just everywhere there naturally.

Isn't that the coolest crackly wall?  It was right in front of the David Letterman Show.

Sorry if these are boring, I just loved seeing all this stuff :).

Can you see Angel Moroni?  We stopped at the church/temple building.  It was funny cause a guy there asked us if we could help him out and go to a photo shoot at the church building by Union Square.  So we did and it was on the roof of the building with a big tent kind of set up.  They said they needed people for pictures which will be put on Mormon.org.  So ya, were gonna be kind of famous now :).

This is Union Square and we saw this big Immigration Protest on our way to the church.  They had alot of signs saying to protest Arizona.  We were hoping they couldn't tell we were from there, lol.  The guy was yelling that in Arizona if your illegal they take you out of your beds and haul you back to your country, crazy!

Oh, my, did we eat!!!  One of the best things about New York is the food!  They had these awesome cupcakes at every turn.  Something happens to you when your there and you just give up on trying not to spend too much money on food.  I actually bought a pack of 12 mini cupcake which included the one above in mini form ,along with 11 other delicous flavors, and paid a whopping $18 for it.  Who am I?

I wish I would have gotten pictures with Brett's cousin and his family.  They live right by Union Square and showed us this place to eat The Chat and Chew.  It was so good I brought Leslie back the next day.

Another one of my favorites, Central Park.  The weather was absolutely beautiful when we were there.  After the first day, we didn't even have to wear coats at night.  Central Park was packed with people.  It's such a lovely park.  Why can't we have something like that in Arizona!?

Sheep's Meadow is behind us and that's in Central Park where everyone goes to lay out and just sit and relax in the grass.