Rebecca

Rebecca turned 9 on November 22.  She's been asking for a Monster High party all year long, so we had one for her this year.  We actually sent out her invitations the day William went to the hospital.  The thought crossed my mind that we should cancel the party, but I knew we couldn't do that to her.  We had a plan just in case William was still in the hospital for her party, but he ended up coming home right before, so everything worked out okay.

We started the party with musical chairs and pizza.  While the girls ate pizza, we let them decorate their cupcakes.

Here are two cupcakes that Kevin decorated to match the Monster High theme.  If he wanted to, he could seriously decorate cakes for a living.

We had an indoor piñata since it was raining outside.  And then Rebecca opened her presents.

My mom had been at our house since Wednesday helping with kids so that Kevin and I could stay at the hospital.  She stayed for the party and then went home to southern Utah right after the party ended.  It was so nice to have her here to help all week.

handsome boys

A few things about Rebecca.

• She is in third grade and loves her teacher Ms. McCullough.
• She started taking gymnastics at Mirabelli Community Center this year, and she loves it.  Her cousin Jessie teaches the other class that is held during the same time as Rebecca's class, so she gets to see her every week.
• She is an AWESOME big sister.  She always wants to help with Lia.
• She has been taking piano lessons (from me), and she finished her primer level books.  She just started level one books.  Practicing is not one of her favorite things to do right now, but I have a reminder in my phone to make her practice every night.  I always tell her that she will be glad as an adult that I made her play the piano when she was young.
• She loves everything Monster High right now.  Kevin and I think the dolls are really weird, but if we don't buy them for her, she buys them using her own money.  I guess there are worse things she could be into.
• She finally got her ears pierced last month.  We were at the mall and decided while we were there, she could get them pierced for her birthday.
• She loves her dog Guillermo (she claims he's hers).  Here she is with him and his cousin Beans (my brother's chihuahua):

We're so happy to have this spunky girl around.  Happy 9th Birthday, Rebecca!!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween this year.  It started out with a party at my sister-in-law Emily's house on Tuesday before Halloween.  Kevin and I were shark attack victims to match Braden's shark costume.  Since I had a wet suit on, I had no pockets to hold a camera, so we don't have any pictures from the party.

The day of Halloween, the kids had a costume parade at school.

That night we went to my brother's Halloween party.

Rebecca was Frankie Stein from Monster High, and Lia was Piglet.

William was Spiderman and Braden was a shark.

my nieces Kennedy, Avery, and Abbey with Lia

Hailey, Jessie, Brooke, and Whitney in their super hero onesies.  I can't believe how old these girls are all of a sudden!

I love Halloween every year.  I hope everyone else had a fun Halloween this year!

Jessica's Wedding

As stated previously, Kevin and I got to go to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico last month without the kids to see my friend Jessica get married.

I have to admit - Mexcio made me nervous.  Being in a place where I've heard rumors of kidnappings scared me, especially since neither Kevin nor I speak Spanish.  This fear was compounded when Jessica sent me an email a few days before our trip letting me know that 30+ men in official looking uniforms would aggressively approach us at the airport telling us that they were our ride to the resort and trying to get us to go with them.  Awesome.  I'm so glad she warned us about this beforehand because it happened just as she described after we got through customs.  One guy in the mob asked us what transportation company we were looking for, and Kevin told him.  The guy then lied to us, told us that that was his company, and directed us to another guy at a counter.  When I saw that the guy at the counter had a badge that didn't match the company we were looking for, I turned around and kept walking.  We were out the door when another guy asked us who we were looking for, and we told him.  He also said, "That's us!"  His badge also didn't match the company name.  I was seriously ready to book a flight back to the U.S. at that point, but this guy turned his badge over to show us the name of the company we were looking for.  I was still a little skeptical until he went to his partner and came back to us with a piece of paper that had our names on it.  After all of that, I was very edgy during the cab ride to our resort.  

When we arrived at our resort and I realized our cab driver was not going to take us to a dark alley and hand us off to some kidnappers, I finally started to relax.  I probably should have never watched the movie Taken.  It's really messed me up.

The resort was beautiful.  It had its own private beach blocked by rocky cliffs on both sides.  The two buildings with the hotel rooms were built so that every room had an ocean view.  We kept the slider to our room open the whole time we were there so we could always hear the ocean.  Here are some awesome pictures from Kevin:

view from our room

We spent most of our time at the beach.

the happy couple

The ceremony on the beach:

Jessica's sister Ingrid

The beautiful bride with her mom who doesn't seem to age

Jessica and Kyle

The reception:

Jessica is still quite the dancer, and she requested that all of her female friends and family members join her in a dance performance to Beyonce's song Love on Top.  It's been a long time since I've done a dance routine, but everyone else was doing it, so I joined in.  Kevin got the whole thing on video.  Jessica's cousin choreographed our dance to a condensed version of the song, but the DJ played the regular version.  That's why we all seem a little confused about what to do next a few minutes into the performance. :)

We had such a fun week!  I'm so glad we could be part of Jessica's special day.

10 Months

Lia is ten months old today, and she's grown up a lot in the past month:

• I got her out of her crib a couple of weeks ago, and as I did she said her first word to me, which was "bum bum."  You can imagine the laughs she gets from her three older siblings whenever she says "bum bum."
• Since that day she has also said "mama."  She says "uh oh" when she crawls near the books on the bookshelf, probably because that's what I say to her when she gets close to the books.  Kevin went to put her down for a nap, and she looked at her crib and said, "uh uh."  And she beams with delight whenever she says any of these four things and we recognize that she said something we understand.  
• She had one tooth for a while, and she looked like a little hillbilly.  Her second tooth finally popped through recently.
• She pulls herself up wherever she can.  She loves walking along the couch and the lower shelves on the bookshelf.
• She also loves to climb the stairs.  This week I could hear her crawling around by me in the kitchen and then all of a sudden the downstairs got very quiet.  When I went to find her, she was about four stairs up.  So the next thing we'll be trying to teach her is how to go back down the stairs.
• She's completely bottle fed now, and she refuses to hold her own bottle.  She totally can, but she won't.  I don't mind too much because pretty soon she won't let me hold her anymore, so I'm going to enjoy holding her and feeding her while I can.
• She's back to taking a binky.  As soon as I quit nursing her, she started sucking her thumb again, so I bought her some new binkies that she loves.  She is a lot easier to soothe now that she takes a binky.
• And she naps now!!  When I nursed her, she would sleep through the night but be up for most of the day.  Now she takes a long nap in the morning, and a short nap in the afternoon.  Hallelujah!!

I'm amazed at how much she has grown up over the past month.  We love this silly girl.  

So......

Our seats for Dancing with the Stars were a little better this time than they were last time. Here's how the camera picked us up last time:

Yep. You can't even tell that's us. 

Here's how the camera picked us up this time:

Can you see me on the left? We were basically on camera every time they showed the judges on tv.  

I had a lot of fun last time we went, and I felt so blessed just to be there, but this visit to Dancing with the Stars blew our last visit out of the water.  What you can't see is that all of the stars and dancers are sitting on couches to the judges left.  They were just ten feet away from us.  Mark Ballas' mom and some friends of Val were sitting behind us, so Mark and Val would come and hang out in the row behind us during commercial breaks.  No big deal!  Carrie Ann's boyfriend was sitting in front of us with his daughter, and after she talked to him during one break, she came to our row and talked to us.  She said, "You guys sure got some great seats!"  No joke!

It was so amazing!  I felt like I was in shock during the whole two hour show!  Watching it on tv, I noticed that my mouth was open most of the time.  

Some celebrities we saw in the audience that night were Jennifer Lopez and her young boyfriend, Kym Johnson, Shawn Robinson from Access Hollywood, the entire cast of Glee, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.  Since it was the season premier, we got to see all of the stars.  This season there's: Jack Osbourne, Elizabeth Berkley, Christina Milian, Bill Nye, Bill Engvall, Snooki, Brant Daugherty (not sure who this guy is), Leah Remini, Corbin Bleu, Keyshawn Johnson (football player), Valerie Harper, and Amber Riley, who I think is going to win this season.

Kevin will start working Mondays so that he can have Sundays off soon, so this is probably the last time I'll be able to go down to Hollywood for DWTS.  He was supposed to start his new schedule the day we went down for the show, but some mix up happened, and he won't start working Mondays until next month.  Lucky for me!  If that was the last show I get to see live, I ended on a great note! 

9 Months Old

This little chicky is nine months old.

A few new things about Lia this month:

• She started crawling about 2 weeks ago. 
• She is currently being weened to a bottle because this cute lady is getting married in Mexico next month:

Kevin and I will be gone for five days for Jessica's wedding, so I want her to be used to having a bottle all the time for my Mom's and Mother-in-law's sakes.

• She has one tooth.  I only see it when she cries, so I don't have a good picture of her with her one tooth yet.

And that's all that's new with baby Lia this month!

The kids' first day of school...

...did not turn out as planned this year. I got a call Sunday before the first day of school letting me know that the kids' new school location did not have a certificate of occupancy and would not be able to open the next day. I had a million questions, like "well when will it be open?" But I politely said "okay" and let the office lady continue to make her calls to unsuspecting parents. I'm sure this poor messenger got some backlash from parents for what she was calling to tell them. It didn't help for me to contribute to that even though I was pretty upset about the news.

We waited all day Monday for a phone call or email update and didn't hear anything until 8:30 pm. I was a wreck that whole day! The phone call let us know the school still did not have what they needed to open Tuesday, and they were shooting for Wednesday. Then Tuesday they called to say they weren't ready for Wednesday, so now they would try to be open Thursday.

The hardest part for me at this point was that I had spent the entire summer deciding if I wanted to keep them at this charter school they had attended last year or if I wanted to enroll them at their public school. The new location for the charter school had moved farther away from our house, but I also hated the thought of having Rebecca in three different schools in three years. I ultimately decided to make the drive and keep them at the charter school, and all of this starting late business had me seriously doubting that I had made the right choice.

We got a call Wednesday afternoon letting us know that the school had what they needed and would be ready for the first day of school on Thursday.

Here they are all ready for their first day of 3rd grade and 1st grade. They love their teachers Ms. McCullough and Mrs. Howard. Looking back, it was nice to have them for a few unexpected days. I even took them on a tour of the California Pizza Kitchen on Wednesday I had signed Braden up for. They are happy to be back in school with their friends, and I'm happy to have a routine each weekday again. Hopefully there won't be any more surprises. :)