Christmas Sunday

Our little man in his sweater vest.

Liberty was excited to be "twins" with Hadley.

We only had to take like 48 pictures to get them all looking and smiling.

Hadley insisted on having a turn holding Bowen. These two facial expressions are so "them."

I promised Liberty and Hadley they could do their "ballerina poses" if they cooperated with the first pictures.

I made these for the ward "linger longer." Tasty, but not as good as I expected. They are brownies with a peppermint oreo in the middle.

We wish you a...

Don't feel bad if you didn't receive a Christmas card in the mail from us. I have several reasons and excuses for not sending out Christmas cards this year, but the bottom line is, we didn't send any out. Hopefully next year I'll get it together!

And, while I'm here, here is Bowen's birth annoucement that never got sent out either. Now that he's almost 6 months old, it's probably too late.

Bowen's birth pictures were taken by Trever's long-time friend Chad Westover. Find him here.

Sunday Best

*It's a good thing this boy is so dang cute! Otherwise, he just might be on the "naughty list" for taking such short naps lately!

Straw-b-b-b-b-berry...

Liberty now frequently asks, "Can you put this on the family blog?" Here's another one of her creations.

Fairy

Liberty asked if I'd put this on our blog. She colored this today. We went to the dollar store today, and she picked the "Girly Girl" coloring book for her prize. I liked this choice much better than the princess crown she picked last time that broke an hour after we got it home.

Liberty is quite the artist! She said she couldn't decide what color to use for the wings, so she used several colors.

Liberty's pictures

This is what Liberty drew today. First she drew a skeleton, then a princess. She rolled it up and made a "pirate-scope" out of it. She is preparing for her princess treasure hunt at her birthday party.

Hadley's baby

Today Hadley told me that her baby had "poo-poo's." Coincidentally, Hadley had a poopy diaper at the same time. I laid them both down on changing pads and changed Hadley's diaper. Then I let her wipe her baby's bum, and she helped me put a diaper on her baby. Later in the day she told me again that her baby had "poo-poo's" and she proceeded to change her baby's diaper, even putting the wipes she used inside the "dirty" diaper and folding it up like we do when we change her and Bowen's diapers. She wasn't too happy when I wanted her to put the same "dirty" diaper back on her baby, so she went and got panties for her baby.


Hadley has been taking care of her baby quite a bit the last few days. She has been feeding her bottles, wrapping her up in blankets and saying her baby is sleeping, and like I said, changing her diaper.

Pink Boots

I finally splurged and bought the girls pink cowboy boots. I've always wanted to buy them some, and they were on sale, so I did it. Initially, I was only going to buy Liberty some with the idea that Hadley can wear them when she is older, but I was a little worried Hadley would be jealous. Good thing I bought some for Hadley, because she LOVES them! Both girls do, actually. And I think they are the cutest! I wish I had some! (I've always wanted red cowboy boots, but pink would be great, too!) I am sure when the day comes when they don't fit into them anymore I will be pretty sad about it!

Here are the girls sporting their new boots. I thought it was going to be a super cute picture, until Hadley insisted she wear her hood, and then wouldn't cooperate. Still cute, but note quite what I expected.

Also, for the first time ever, I see some of myself in Liberty in these pictures. I also see some of my mom in her too. That's probably because I look like my mom, especially when she was my age.

Halloween

On Halloween night, we went over to our friends, the Buhanan's, along with the Kelsey's and hung out in their driveway. Diana made some delicious chili and cornbread, the kids watched Halloween cartoons that were projected onto the garage, and we had a little firepit to roast marshmallows and keep us warm. It was quite chilly! The kids wanted to trick-or-treat, so they brought out their dress-up box and all the kids put on a costume and went to a few houses. It was a pretty quiet night with only a handful of trick-or-treaters, but we enjoyed our time with great food and great company.

Trunk-or-Treat

On Saturday night we went the tri-ward Trunk-or-Treat. Trever passed out candy while I took the kids around to get candy. Liberty was excited to go around and get candy, of course. Hadley quickly realized all she had to say was "trick-or-treat!" to get candy, and was loving every second of it! Liberty and Hadley were both pretty intrigued by everything going on, so it took quite the effort to get them to move from trunk to trunk. Bowen was he usually easy-going self and enjoyed the festivities.

Our two little fairy princesses

Dr. Wilkins, Jr.

Hadley, Kiyoko, & Liberty

Hadley & Tayson

This is a typical Hadley and Tayson conversation. Hadley feels like she has to bend over and talk to Tayson face-to-face. It is pretty funny.

It was quite cold that night, so the girls had to wear leggings and long-sleeved shirts underneath their fairy costumes. Luckily some of our friends brought their portable firepit, so we were able to keep warm.

Bowen Today

I couldn't resist taking pictures of Bowen today. For some reason I love babies in jeans!

You know you live in the desert....

when you find a tarantula walking down your hallway!!!!

Last night, I put Bowen to bed, then got myself ready for bed, and was heading into the living room to see what Trever was up to. I turned the corner and started walking towards the living room, when I see a GIANT tarantula walking down the hallway! (I am sick to my stomach just typing this!) I immediately started shouting "Trever, Trever, Trever, Trever...!" And probably a "Waaaahhhh!" in the somewhere a few times to. Trever jumped up and ran to see what the fuss was all about. I didn't know this, but he was asleep on the couch holding Liberty, who was also asleep. A few feet before he reach me and the tarantula, Liberty's glasses fell off, and he stepped on them, breaking them. We took a couple seconds to worry about that as he handed Liberty off to me, and I laid her down on our bed. By then, the tarantula had walked into the bathroom a few feet away, but stopped in time for us to check it out. I was totally panicing, shaking, and freaking out! Trever was obviously trying to calm me down, telling me that tarantulas are harmless. Of course, he was also telling me that I was overreacting, and that when he heard my yells he thought Bowen had stopped breathing, since I was just taking care of him.

So after the initial shock started to wear off, we made sure to take a few pictures and examine this gigantic creature IN our house! It stayed in one place for a few minutes, so we weren't too worried about it running off. We headed into the kitchen next door while Trever was looking for something to catch it with, and I was examining the extent of damage to Liberty's glasses. A couple minutes later we went back into the bathroom, and we couldn't find it for a minute! Luckily, it had just crawled behind the toilet or something, and Trever was able to catch it.

He put a magazine down on the ground and had it climb onto it. I took a couple of pictures of Trever holding it, and it crawled off the magazine and started running away. This time it was moving fast! Of course, I freaked out again, but Trever was able to get it again, and I made him put it into a jar. Trever thought it was such a "cool" creature, and wanted to set it free in the wild again. I wasn't too fond of the idea, but he took it "down the street" (which was actually only one house away) and let it loose. He wasn't sure if it survived his handling of it or not.

After that we sat around reaccounting what had just happened, and trying to figure out how the heck it got into our house! I had some friends over that day for a few hours, and all of our kids were playing, going in and out the back door, so the door was left open quite a bit of the afternoon. We're guessing it snuck in during that time. I don't know how we missed seeing it come in because we were sitting at the kitchen table crafting most of the time, which is right by the back door. But, that is our only explanation of how it got into our house. If that is how it got in, I can't believe we didn't see it until several hours later!

The things I'm most thankful for about the whole ordeal are 1. Trever was home to catch it, 2. We found it walking down the hallway instead of in someone's bed or crawling on one of the kids, and 3. I saw it instead of one of the girls, because I'm pretty sure they would have been traumatized - well, at least I'm sure Liberty would have. Hadley may have thought it was cool!

Aside from the idea that we had a gigantic tarantula in our house, the negative parts were that 1. Liberty's glasses were broken and 2. I'm still traumatized by the whole thing, and last night's sleep was interrupted several times by me thinking about the whole incident, worrying that the tarantula was going to find it's way back to us.

*As a sidenote, we were very blessed in that Liberty's glasses only cost $15.00 to replace, thanks to us buying insurance on them, and they were able to switch out the frames right on the spot. And, after I told Trever I was still worried the tarantula was going to come back, he went back to where he let it loose, to find it still there, and not alive. It didn't survive his transport. Hopefully I'll sleep better tonight. I am still on the lookout everywhere I go around the house, though!

Let me tell you, the pictures DO NOT give it justice! If you haven't already, be sure to click on the images to see them full-size