Abbys birthday

Well i am FINALLY posting pictures just over a month late.......no comment on why just not a blogging fool this year like the last....and just BUSY! :)  SO here are a few.  Y'all are friends with me on face book you can see more there

 Abby loves clothes and shoes she would not put the shoes down that she got!

 more shoes HOW EXCITING! this girl is crazy into shoes

SHE LOVED her party...even if the game did not go our way.  She loved the attention and the presents and cake :)


It was a fun day and we love that we have so much family and friends around to party with us! :)

yeah yeah i know

I am sure you are all thinking, "where is Jessica's blog post on Abby's birthday, and Where is Jessica's blog post on Jackie's first talk?" Well they are coming.  When ever i have time when i am at home i will post them :) Just know Abby had a blast despite the horrid game and Jackie rocked her talk!

Now on to what I wanted to write.  I want to talk about being a mother.  Can I just say how blessed i feel to be a mom.  I love it!  Being a mom has completed me and made me into a person i never thought possible.  I cherish moments with my daughters when we can just play and have fun.  I love to watch the world through their eyes.  They are so sweet and so innocent.  They love to hang on to every word, and watch our every move. 

Sometimes i am amazed that someone decided we should be allowed to have such sweet kids and be left to raise them :)! I hope and pray daily that I am making good decisions and parenting them in the ways that they need to grow up and hold true to what we have taught them. 

Know don't get me wrong parenting is in no way all roses and butterflies. We have our 2 year old melt downs, our four year old defiant days our mom is so tried she needs a break days, and the days where i want to pull my hair out. But you know what life goes on, its all part of it.  I am learning how to take those crazy moments and love them more, move past it and cherish every moment.  

Being a mom/dad rocks! I hope we can all take time in midst of all the chaos of parenting and remember how lucky we are to be a parent, and how lucky we are to have our darling kiddos in our life! :)

Happy Birthday Abigail!

My dear sweet Abigail,

Oh sweetheart i love you so much! You are a wonderful little girl who has added so much to our family.  You  are definitely your fathers child.  You have his temperament and his personality. You will be happy one moment ANGRY another and right back to happy :).   You are my stubborn baby, you will do what you want when you want to do it. When mommy wanted you to give up your bottle you did not want to do it until you were ready, but when you were ready to do it you did it and had no issues with doing it when you were ready to do it.  I am going to assume potty training will be the same :) I have learned that when your upset you just need time to get over it and you come running back happy as can be. 

You are SO dang sweet and cute.  You love to cuddle, hug, and kiss.  I love that when i am sitting down you want to just come up and cuddle with me (or dad) and snuggle :) It makes my day and i always need and abby cuddle fix to get through!

You are going to sleep just fine now with out anything, makes my day! Before you go to bed though you love me to come lay down in bed with you and we sing wheels on the bus a few times.  Then we say prayer which you love to say all by your self, then you tell me KISS, then you give me a kiss and say love you night! Its super cute and I love our little routine.

Jackie is your best friend.  You love your sister so much.  You always want your sister to be with you and do what ever she is doing.  When she goes to preschool you point to her seat and ask me "wheres jackie? i need my jackie this is jackies seat" its funny and cute.  I will say I love our mommy and Abby time while Jackie is at school.  You seem to really love the mommy only attention and i love having some time with just you!

You love to talk! Everyone tells me how good of a talker you are.  The last few months your vocabulary has exploded! I love it! :) 

Most of all Abby, I could not imagine my life with out you.  You have added and brought so much into our family.  Your cheese grin is my favorite thing to see when i pick you up after work, when i get you from a nap, or up in the morning.  I sure love you!

Love forever and always,

Mommy

life

blargh! That is how i currently feel right now.  This day really needs to end.  54 minutes I can make it!  :)

Whats going on with us you would ask, well life is crazy as usual! Derek is STILL working 2 jobs which means he works ALL DAY AND NIGHT YUCK!  Great news today is his last day working 2 jobs! YAY! :) He will be HOME at night (unless there is a game of course!) so yes we are excited about that!

The girls are doing good at going to a sitter, jackie says that she misses us but she has fun. 

I am liking my new position and only working 1/2 days T TH :) life is good! Abbys b-day is tomorrow so a post will happen! :)

We made it to year 6!

So i am a blogger slacker.  Yes i am bad lately.  I am busy, life is crazy. 

I should blog though lots has changed and happened! What i want to blog about first is our 6 year anniversary!

Our anniversary feel during labor day weekend this year.  We decided to go to Las Vegas so we could hang out with my family and go out on our day and have a sitter! :)

Our anniversary also feel on the opening day of college football! Since BYU was playing and we are who we are i asked Derek if we could find a sports grill/bar and watch BYU and eat some yummy food! We went to Buffalo Wild Wings, and WOW they were AMAZING to us!  They were so nice and sweet and gave us the best customer service we have ever had! haha It also helped that our cougars figured out how to pull out the win! It was a good fun anniversary and just perfect for our us.  It was fun to just hang out eat yummy food talk and of course watch our Cougars without children around!

I still find it crazy that I have been married for 6 years.  Its been a fun crazy 6 years full of ups and downs, twists and turns, changes, changes and changes!  I would not change any of it though, I love my husband I love our time together, I love our kids and our life.  Marriage has been a million times different then i thought it would be. It's also been even more wonderful and difficult then i ever thought possible.  I know i have grown and learned while i continue to try to give up more of my self and learn to care more for others.

I love you Derek! Thanks for a wonderful 6 years, i am sure the next 6 will bring more twists and turns, ups and downs, but i am excited to see what happens!!

Our family is a growing!

By one car that is!! (please tell me I got at least one person on that!) And by car I do in fact mean Van.  That is right we bought a van.  There is a long list of stories that go a long with why so lets start back at the beginning :)

A while ago Derek had an interview with the Utah Grizz.  We did not hear back from them so we did not think much of it. 

About a month ago now he got a call asking him to come back for an interview.  So he went in and the job sounded perfect for my husband.  The job was to help the community love hockey and plan events for the games.  Go to schools and do assemblies.

They called him back and offered the job on a Friday and wanted him to start the coming Monday.  So we talked about it and got excited and then realized all the CRAZY amount of things that would need to be done to have him work.  We felt great about the job as long as he could wait a week to start. 

So he accepted and we had to find sitters for our daughters and another car since he needs a car for his job, and i needed a car to transport the kiddos.  So we went car looking and found HOW much car prices have gone up since we bought our car last year.  I was shocked.  So i decided why not just buy a van they cost the same as a car right now.  So we did it.  We want another kid in a year or so....so it made sense.  I LOVE having a van can i just say! Its so nice to have a bigger car and one that can hold others if needed!

We were lucky and able to find some sitters for the girls and they seem pretty happy with them :) I switched my Tuesdays and Thursdays to half days so i could take Jackie to preschool and be home with them more.





Oh also did i mention, i got a promotion at work?  They made me supervisor which means my raise will pay for our extra car payment! YAY for things finding a way for working out.



Derek is still working his other job and being superman doing both....we figured why not we could use the extra money to pay down some debt.


This week has been crazy and hectic i DO hope it slows down a bit and feels more normal as we all adjust.  Good news is, my kids still love me :) they don't hate me for sending them to a sitters.

I am so grateful for the Lord and to know he is watching out for us. 

So to wrap up i am not pregnant, Derek has a new job, our life's are crazy but we are happy! 

The Bottle

Abby had an obsession (yes i said HAD! :)) It was called her bottle.  Man she loved that thing.  She asked for it all the time.  She wanted to with her full of milk.  You could not put water in there that would mean a stink eye and a bottle throw from her. Try to water down the milk she would take a sip look at the bottle then back at you take a sip look at you and say, "no! Milk please". Give her a sippy she would put it in the sink

I was pretty sure any hopes of bottle breaking would incur me going insane and Abby becoming a devil child.

I decide we would just talk about it.  For 2 weeks i told her big girls don't use bottles big girls throw bottles away.  Big girls use sippy cups.

Then on Thursday i found her next to the trash she had one bottle in there and another in her hand she kissed it said, "love you baba bye bye" and throw it in.  She left and found 2 more and did the same thing.  i got some more out for her and again kissed it said love you bye bye and throw them away....CUE DISBELIEF.

I was super scared for how bed time would go.  I put her down gave her a sippy (yes horrid mom i let her have milk at bed time i know i know...I do like to go for the worst mom award) she cried for like 5 minutes and was asleep.  More shock, all previous attempts have inured crying for well over an hour until i give in. 

i knew there was no way it could be that easy.  2 am i had an hysterical child who wanted her baba.  I put her in the kitchen in her pack n play and she went to sleep. 

The next night we had no issues and since have had no issues.  I let her go to wal mart and pick out her very own sippy cup.  She was pretty excited and loves her new sippy cup (just hoping we wont have as many issues getting rid of that! haha guess she will be old enough to reason when i need to break that habit)

I guess i did know my kid well enough to wait until she was ready to do it.  It made life WAY easier on all involved parties.  Abby is my stubborn kid who wants things done her way.  I am sure we will have many more battles i just hope they are all as easy as this one! :)

Now if only she would decide she wants to use the toilet...........

4 wonderful years

Today my sweet sweet Jackie turns 4 years old.  I can hardly believe its been 4 years since i became a mother and had this sweet little girl placed in my arms.

 It was a wonderful day and i still remember the instant love i felt for her and how my heart melted when i saw her for the first time.  Since then my love has only grown as I have watched her learn and grow.

Here she is at her 1st b-day 

She was such a cutie!! We love her so much! It has been amazing to watch her grow and learn.  I still remember her learning to walk and toddling all around!


This is her at her 2nd birthday party 

Abby looks a lot like her big sister now if only we can convince Abby to potty train like Jackie did! She was potty trained at her b-day party! :) this year she wanted a water party again! I still remember all her talking at this age and how much more she has talked since then! its crazy to think how much she as grown and how mature she has gotten in such a short amount of time.

And her third birthday.

and this year


My kiddo is for sure a little princess with some tomboy in her.  She loves to dress up, paint her nails, ride her bike, run throw sprinklers, play with grandparents, play with her friends, take care of her little sister.

• Jackie is such a pleasure to have in our family.  I love her so much.  She brings such a sweet spirit into our house.  She is such a loving little girl, she is always so concerned about everyone else and wants all to be happy.  She is my peacemaker and I love that. 

• Jackie is our talker.  She started talking when she was 6 months old and has never stopped talking since that day.  Its very rare that she stays quite for more then a few moments.  I love her all the same and love hearing the stories she likes to tell me again and again and again.  She sure has SOME GOOD memory!  (like hey mom remember that time at stake conference i threw up ALL OVER YOU! that was funny, (that was in june) Or hey mom remember that time that kid ran over me with his bike that was mean ( july of 2010) or "mom remember that time me and my friend Marie went to that party i miss Marie (october 2009) 

• Jackie is a little mom she always wants to take care of everyone and everything.  She loves to tell Abby what to do and well us too :) its a good thing she is so cute! 

• Jackie is still our good little eater, she loves to eat anything and everything (well tomatoes she wont eat right now unless you tell her they are melted no idea why......but she does know she has to have 3 bites of foods she does not like wonder how she will feel about it going up to 4 on her birthday ;)

• Jackie is not the most coordinated girl the whole world and tends to run into things....hopefully this will get fixed or she just may be too much like me and end up with bruises she has no idea how to explain haha :)

• Jackie loves friends.  She always makes friends were ever she goes.  When we are at a park any little kid running around will become her friend while we are there

• She always asks me to call her grandparents she loves to talk to them on the phone.

• Since we have started our activity a day thing she is in LOVE.  As soon as i get home from work she asks me what are we going to do today?  And if its something she is REALLY excited about she will try to get Derek to leave for work sooner so the fun can start! 

• She LOVES her sunbeams class and going to sunbeams.  She prides her self on being the most reverent and tries really really hard to be that way haha 

• Since we got the pass of all passes and introduced Seven Peaks Jackie has been in love she got brave enough to go down the kiddo slides all by her self (us not catching her) and is SO proud! Although her fav are the bigger kiddo slides the ones on there on the blue tube slides she LOVES those i think the other day she spent close to an hour going up and down while Abby and i watched.   Abby loves to watch her after she makes it down and gets out abby yells and claps "YAY JACKIE!"

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I love my little Jackie so much, its hard for me to see her grow up she is getting so big and i just want her to go back to being my little baby (although she did tell me she would try really hard to stay little).  I thank God i was blessed to be this little ones mother, i know she has lots of special work to do in this world and I only hope i can teach her enough!

Happy birthday my sweet Jackie I love you!!!