Big News!

I've always thought I can't wait til I get pregnant again and I can have one of those little floating baby widgets on my sidebar. We are elated to be expecting our fourth baby! I am now 14 weeks pregnant and hopefully out of the woods now so I thought it would be a great time to announce the big news. Our baby is due January 25, 2010. A great time to have a birthday I might add. I am grateful it will be after the holidays and I'll hopefully have my house back to normal so that we can welcome our little bundle of joy! We are so excited and can't wait to find out the gender. Stay tuned, my ultrasound is in about a month.

Beach Day with Uncle Chris and Aunt Amanda

We are so excited that my brother Chris and his wife Amanda have moved back to Cali to so that Chris can go to Podiatry school here. They just got down here about a week ago and we headed to the beach with them for some fun. We are looking forward to many more fun outings with Aunt Amanda and Uncle Chris.

Carter was being adorable with Sawyer and was holding his hand in the waves taking care of his little bro. I love that my boys are really starting to be buddies! It makes my heart melt.

Maddie the little surfer

We love Uncle Chris

The look on Carter's face when we told him he had to put his sand crab back in the ocean before we headed home.

Annie

Maddie during the curtain call with two newsboys

Closing Night awards

We all went out to Mimi's after one of the Matinee shows

Maddie was so excited to have her arms full of flowers when her family came to see her.

MUCH of our Summer has been consumed by a play that Maddie was in that just ended a little over week ago. I had no idea the amount of time, money and driving that would be spent on this thing. Since our Summer was really short it made it harder too. Maddie had a great time and enjoyed being in her very favorite play, "Annie". She was an orphanette and was in a scene singing "You're never fully dressed without a smile". I thought she'd get so tired of all the shows, there were 8 performances in all! But she was a trooper and stayed up late and got up early when she had to. One of the requirements to be in this show was to sell 36 tickets that were prepaid for by yours truly. That was a HUGE stress on me and I decided I will never have her be in a play where she is required to purchase a certain number of tickets. At the end of it all I was able to sell ALL of them and make my money back, I even stood outside the last night and sold my last 3 tickets. THANK YOU to all our friends and Family who supported Maddie and came to the play. We really appreciate it. Know that I will not ever be hitting you up for tickets again!

What we do for Free Food

A few weeks ago it was Cow appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A. I had just gotten home from taking Maddie to her "Annie" practice and we were starving and there was no food in the house. I had heard earlier in the day (on Facebook) that if you dress like a cow you get a FREE combo meal but at the time I thought no way, I would never go to that length for food. I was wondering what to do for dinner and I thought to myself, what the heck, the boys will think its fun and I'll get brownie points for doing something fun with my kids. I went online and they had cow costume kits that you could print up and tape to your body. I printed them up and we taped them on and headed over there. The boys thought it was hilarious and had a great time. I didn't capture any pictures of myself thank goodness, and Chris slept through the whole thing (he pulled an all nighter for work the night before). We all got the biggest combo meals we could and brought home left overs for Daddy and Maddie. It was well worth the strange stares. It was great and the boys keep asking, "When can we dress like cows again and get free food?" We'll for sure do it again next year.

The very next day (7/11) was free slurpee day! Again, Facebook is great for reminding you about these awesome days. Throughout the course of the day I think we consumed 4 slurpees a peice. (they were only 7.11 ounces)

Fourth of July

Hanging out on the Trampoline

We had the kids do some poppers while we waited

Sawyer with Auntie Kelli

We had a nice quiet Fourth of July at home and really enjoyed ourselves. We had Kelli, Dave and Jake over. (Faye and the girls were both out of town and we missed them). It was very nice to not have to go to a lot of work to cook. We grilled hotdogs and hamburgers, I got a watermelon, Chris picked up some potato salad, I opened up a can of baked beans and a few bags of chips and we had ourselves a meal. Kelli brought delicious homemade strawberry and peach pies made especially by Marie Callendar. We hung out for a while and just when it started to get dark we packed up some folding chairs and headed over to sit outside of our local stadium where the fireworks show was going on. We could hear the music and we had a great view. It was free, not crowded, and we avoided the traffic by getting out of there quickly. It was a great fourth!

Beach Time

Maddie takes a break from the waves

Sawyer always manages to get the most sandy

This is Sawyer's little buddy Dylan. He lives right across the street and is in our ward. They love each other.

There's my Dream Boat

We've had a busy Summer and have managed to take a few trips to the beach with a couple more planned before school gets back in session. We went once with some friends and once with some friends from the ward and had a great time. I have decided that my kids are the perfect beach age. They are old enough to really enjoy it. Maddie loves being in the water and would stay all day if she could. Carter is happy just being there, searching for sea shells, sand crabs, or jumping in the waves. Sawyer likes to go back and forth playing in the water and playing on the sand. I love the relaxing atmosphere and sound of the crashing waves. Its a wonder we don't go more often.

Ward Pool Party

I'm starting to get the hang of this primary president stuff. I figure by the time I get to a full year I will know what I'm doing.

A tradition in our ward has always been to have a private pool party at the local high school pool. This was my first year and I decided to do it right after school got out on June 21 since we have a very short Summer due to our Aug. 10 start date. The weather was a little chilly and overcast. We had a lot of June gloom this year. Anyway I was freaking out that no one would come, but we ended up having an excellent turn out and the kids had a great time!

we had some pretty strict lifeguards that made everyone pass a swim test to swim in the deep pool (even the adults).

Maddie's first Visit to Texas

Maddie was very lucky this past May to be able to fly out to Houston with Grandma and Grandpa to visit her Jones and Herrera Cousins. Brooklyn had just turned 8 and was getting baptized. Maddie was very excited to be part of this special occasion. We were a little nervous since Maddie has rarely spent the night away from us and of course never clear across the country. With the exeption of waking up in the middle of the night missing Mommy and Daddy she did pretty well. She loved getting to know her cousins better, taking her first airplane ride and fell in love with the Jones cousins pet rat "Tickle". She is looking forward to another get away to Texas, maybe even by herself...

Long time no post....

This could quite possibly be the longest it's been since I've posted on our blog. Really I've meant to post but the longer it got the easier it was to put it off since the catching up is a little time consuming. Anyway, here is my attempt to get caught up on my "digital scrapbook" and journal.