Here's what we've been up to with reasonably warm weather...

Riding the John Deere and playing a TON in the sandbox and garden dirt. I even let the kids take out all the garden sticks and they built a pretty cool teepee out of them

Riding our bikes

 building forts in the living room and playing in them for hours

 and Scott even lost his 3rd tooth, 1st one on the top (although I wouldn't say lost since Dad got anxious and yanked it out LOL)

 Arianna got this huge puppy from Grammy that holds a sleeping bag inside of it and she drags it around the house with her. It's pretty funny to see her carrying around something alomst as big as her. Well today she refused to take a nap in her toddler bed...she set the puppy down on the ground and layed down on it. I didn't mind where she napped as long as she napped- super cute!

 Here's a video of the kids favorite activity to do with me. They get super wound up and think it's so much fun- but my legs can only take so long before they give out. Their favorite part is when I throw them onto the couch. I decided to take a video to capture all their cute little giggles (I always tickle under their arms with my toes)

Untitled from Nicole on Vimeo.

This week I went through the drawers and drawers of fabric my Grandma Lill has given me over the years and decided I needed to use some of it up!

It all started with some pajamas for Hailey, but then she asked if I would make her doll a dress since she only had one outfit (Yes Brittney-she still loves this doll you made her)

 She had so much fun because she got to pick the fabric and the pattern and then she sat on my lap and helped me feed it into the machine. To her, she made the dress :) Then of course she needed matching shoes, so we had to do that too LOL (It was like the book "If you give a Mouse a Cookie"....Hailey is the mouse for sure!)

I found some cute fabric in my mix to make Arianna this dress and then I used the same material for the belt to make Hailey a matching skirt and some bows.

The dress turned out so cute for Ari and really brought out her blue eyes. I joked to my friend, "Yeah and it was free! Of course I had to buy her some cute sandals to match, but still" LOL

and the skirt for Hailey was perfect since she loves all things stretchy- you just sew the side together and put an elastic in the top and hem the bottom-ta da!

My friend Sarra got Scott this cute tie, so he got in on the blue action too :)

The looked so adorable on Sunday which isn't always the case since it's just me Sunday mornings....well actually I have to say I usually get them looking cute first- it's me that suffers if we are running late LOL

I guess I'll officially announce our big news since we've been hiding it for months. We are moving back to Logan Utah!

I think it was the end of November when Kevin was at a training and his boss pulled him aside and said the engineer at the Logan plant was moving up in the company and they wanted Kevin to take over his position there. Contrary to what you might think, we actually weren't jumping up and down. It took almost a month to officially feel good about it. We really really love it here in Missouri. We thought we would be here about 5 years for Kevin to get the experience he needed, but then when we started to love it we really didn't have a time frame at all. I have never loved a place more than I love it here, really. The people here are amazing and it's just a beautiful place to live. (Kevin says "Yeah you say that but wait until tornado season is back"...true)  But it will be really good for our family to be back in Utah where we are closer to both sides of the family, and it will be a great experience for Kevin too. So that's why there's been so much back and forth to Logan Utah....Kevin has started that job there and continuing to work the job here until the end of May. For our newly formed Branch and also for Scott's school, we really felt strongly about waiting until then to move. They have half day kindergarten in Utah, so I think it would be really hard for Scott to go from full day to half day like that. So these next few months are going to be busy to say the least, and we also have so many places to see too like Navoou and Independence and the Kansas City temple open house and dedication too...all before we move the end of May!

This past week we spent without Dad. He was in Logan Utah for work and we finally got the snow-storm the kids have been praying for :) Of course school was cancelled, but it was way too cold to play outside that day. The next day I shoveled all the driveway snow into a big pile and they had a blast. It was like a big giant snow sand box :)

 Ari stuck with the sidewalk chalk inside the garage (smart girl)

 For Valentine's Day it was a date with Mom. We got a heart pizza from Papa Murphys, some IBC rootbeers, and had a picnic dinner infront of the fireplace. Pretty fun I have to say....might have to make that one a tradition.

Don't worry, we snuck some Valentine's into Dad's luggage, and he left me with these to enjoy all week while he was gone :) I had to make a few jokes with him because he's not a traditional flowers and chocolate kind of guy (and I LOVE that about him). I guess he finally gave in to the commercialism after 9 years LOL

 We only get to spend a few days with Dad before he has to go back to Logan, so we made sure we spent it wisely. There are some caves only like 15 minutes from us called Fantastic Caverns so we decided to take the kids over there on Saturday.

 There's only a handful of caves in the country you can drive through-so it was pretty cool. Kevin, Scott and Hailey got to sit up in the front and you can see me, Ari (and her puppy) to the left of the neon yellow/green lady.

I learned something new too - the formations in the cave looked just like sea shells to me and I guess they are made out of the same thing, calcium carbonate...pretty cool

playing around in the gift shop- our 3 explorers :)

Scott and Ari...so cute

Afterwards we played at a park until we got rained out, then ate at our family favorite resturaunt-Texas Roadhouse. It was a really fun family date

From Hailey this morning after getting her Valentine treat and message:

"Yeah Dad always says, 'Hailey do you know how much I love you?' EVERY night before bed he tells me that and it just gives me a headache!"

Apparently Hailey's not into the lovey dovey stuff LOL

Happy Valentine's Day! :)



Arianna turned 2!

26 1/2 pounds (50th percentile)

36 inches tall (95th percentile)

Arianna has been talking up a storm lately. She will repeat anything you say-she's like a little parrot. She's all potty trained too and cries when we put a diaper on her for bedtime. She loves animals especially puppies and loves to make puppy, cat, horse and train noises. She loves to read books and will finally sit still long enough to listen....she loves to point to all the things in the picture and say them out loud to you. She loves to dress up and twirl around and dance especially if she has an audience. She loves to play with Hailey's barbies and is obsessed with the shoes....we are constantly finding shoes all over the house. She still doesn't eat anything but fruit, some baby food, cereal, oatmeal, pancakes and of course fries and nuggets. She's very sensitive at heart and takes in the world around her with caution. She's just a sweetheart and we are so happy she's in our family!

We took big brother and sister to school and headed to her favorite place to play- the library. The librarian knows her by name, but today Ari wouldn't speak a word to her. The librarian says, "you were talking to me last month, but I guess it's a new month" and laughs. Classic Arianna right there.

 you can see how her little eyelashes curl up in this picture- so precious

 after that we came home and made some yummy lemon cupcakes, ate lunch and had a nap. Once everyone was home from school and work we had to go to Ari's favorite dinner place-Wendys and have the only thing she will eat anywhere: fries, nuggets and an apple juice.

Here's a video of us singing to her and also how many times it took her to blow out her candles-so cute :)

Time for presents!

 She only picked the sprinkles off her cupcake, so the highlight of the party was definitely opening all the presents. She was so sweet she would hand a present to Scott and Hailey and want to take turns. It took her a minute to realize they were all hers.

 so excited!

 

 ripping into those presents

 Most little toddlers go to bed holding a cuddly stuffed animal, not Ari. She falls asleep holding a barbie and a few pairs of shoes (and sometimes she's wearing some too)

 I've never seen any resemblance between Ari and cousin Mia until I came across this picture- wow!

 She played with the play dough and all the toys all night. Here's her birthday loot :)

Happy birthday Ari!

It's a wet and humid day out today. We got in the car to take Scott to school and Hailey said, "Mmm! I love that smell in the car!" and Scott said, "You like the smell of wet dog? Because I don't!" LOL

So I cut up an apple with the slicer and I was standing over the sink and starting to peel the skin off one of the wedges. Hailey and Scott were sitting in front of me at the counter watching and Hailey says in this little weird voice,

"OH NO! Not my hair!!" I just looked up at her with a strange look and continued to peel when she says, "Ah! That feels sooo much better! I've been needing a hair cut all year!"

That just shows the kind of imagination this girl has....she was even talking in the apple voice as if she were the apple. Strange I know, but we love it! :)

This weekend we took the kids to check out St. Louis- which is about a 3 1/2 hour (4 to the temple) drive for us. This picture of the arch was taken from my cellphone the night we got in

Here's the view from our hotel room. It was raining and super hazy all day Saturday, so we couldn't do much site seeing.

When we got to the hotel Friday night we took the kids swimming and then Saturday morning I went to the temple while Kevin fed the kids breakfast and then he went to the temple while I swam with the kids at the pool. 

St. Louis Temple

We were planning on going to their super cool zoo, but because of the weather we took the kids to the City Museum. It was absolutely crazy in there- they had these tunnels going up, underground tunnels all over the place and it was just utter chaos the kids LOVED it!

There were tunnels up above the ceiling too. I was sitting there with Arianna and a cellphone fell out of the sky and hit the ground LOL

 I followed Scott and Hailey into this whale and they ducked out into some little hole in the wall, I followed them down a slide which led to 2 more underground tunnels. They were already gone and I was starting to hyperventilate so up I went and that was the last of the underground tunnels for me. LOL Kevin was such a great Dad to spend the whole day crawling through tunnels with Scott and Hailey!

 Arianna and I set off to find our own 'unclosterphobic' fun :)

Cool mirror prism room

Train ride for the girls

And George of the Jungle swing for Dad...wait-is there something wrong with that phrase? In case you didn't know before- now you know where Hailey gets her adventurous side :)

He's like, "What do you think the weight limit on that is?" I knew he wasn't talking about the kids.

Kevin also took the kids on a 10 story slide- fun!

It was a really fun quick trip. It wasn't the weather we were planning on, but it was better than being at home in all the rain!