First Day of School 2012

Happy Father's Day: All About Dad Printable

Click here to get the file

Father's Day is Sunday! This is a little sheet I made for my girls to fill out for their dad. I'm pretty excited about it, so I thought I'd share for anyone who wants a copy. If you click on the link it will print about 6.5 x 8.5 or you can save the image to your computer and print it any size you would like.

My Best Photographer's Assistant

 My fake photography business has been really busy the last little while! We've been doing two or three shoots a month, sometimes even more.  When I say we, it's because when you ask me to take your pictures you usually get me with my whole family tagging along!  I'm professional like that. However, my kids have learned how to help and they love to be my assistants, even two-year-old Lyndlee holds the reflector for me.  As you can see she is in charge of making the kids smile too.

This morning we did a really fun session! I love to take pictures of kids (& babies), they are my favorite! We did Easter pictures of the cute neighbor girl and her brother.  "My Dami" as Lyndlee calls her, is Lyndlee's best little girl friend. These two are sooooo cute together! And by cute I mean: They are going to be BIG trouble one day!

You can see from the picture that Lynd is a dedicated assistant. Most of the time she made her silly faces behind the camera, but she couldn't resist sneaking into a couple pictures with her friend! At one point she had Ducky covering his eyes with his wings playing peek-a-boo! Super cute! What a little helper!

I had another BIG helper today, Everette! She slept through the whole photoshoot! Which was more help than she knows! Thank you, baby girl!

NOW...if only I had that kind of help finding the time to edit!

Happy Easter Faces

This is our most recent family picture. Our awesome neighbor Angie was out taking pictures of her little Easter Family when we got home from church, and she offered to take some of us. So we grabbed our camera and had a seat on her poarch! You can tell how awesome she is from all the happy faces!

I just plain ran out of time to make the girls Easter Dresses. I had ideas in my head, but they never made it to the fabric. So three days before Easter I headed over to Target and found these cute little dresses. Of course, they didn't have all of the sizes I needed so I sewed ruffles on the bottom of them. Which worked out fabulously cause I now feel like I helped make them, and they are a bit fancied-up.

Introducing Everette Lace

Born six whole months ago and finally getting a shout out on the blog! I guess that's what happens when you're the fourth child. Really it's because we spend all our time loving her so there's no time left for the internet. My hopes are that one day I will go back and post about some of the missing time, like her birth, but let's be honest, how long has it been since my last post? We might just have to be happy with this!

Everette has been so much fun! She is the smiliest baby!

 I can not believe she is six months old already!

Tayvie's First Day of School

This was Tayvie's first day of school! PRE-SCHOOL! I was so nervous for Tayvie to start school. She has always been so shy and timid and anxious, so I worried that she would have a hard time. She has done great from day one! She loves school! She really does!

She has become so much more social.

Tayvie goes to pre-school at an elementary school so she feels like a BIG girl with her own locker and everything!

Ayla's First Day of Kindergarten

 Ayla started Kindergarten today. She has begged to go to school since she was two, so today was a dream come true for her!  I kept expecting her to get nervous at some point, but nope, no nerves at all... she must be her father's daughter. She jumped out of bed this morning with a big grin on her face and said "I can't even stop smiling!"

Today was the first day of school, but it was a short day and the parents got to come, so next Monday will be her real first day on her own. She made friends, drew a picture of herself, colored, did a craft project, and took a little tour of the school and the play ground.

This week Tony and Tayvie also start school. Tony starts at SLCC on Wednesday and will eventually transfer to the U to get his Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering. Tayvie starts her second semester at the U doing speech therapy, and then will also start preschool next week.

It's going to be interesting to keep track of all their schedules... especially when the new baby comes!

Summer Summer Summer Time

I'm not so good at keeping up with what we're up to. Probably because I can barely keep up with all we've been up to in the first place. It's summer, need I say more? But it's good. It's really, really good.
Ummm, I'm getting nowhere with this post! Tayvie's insisting on seeing the picture of herself so much so that I can't type cause we have to keep scrolling up to see her beautiful blurry little face! So, I'm giving up and glad I atleast got pictures up and a couple sentences out whether they make sense or not :).
Hope everybody is having a fabulous summer!

I Love Music

I really don't have words to describe how I felt watching Paul McCartney play on Tuesday night. It was so surreal to see an actual living legend in person. When I was young, young, young I remember singing songs from Please Please Me, Sgt Pepper's, Abby Road, & The White Album. My parents had several Beatles records and we loved to play them. When I was older my favorite movies were Help and A Hard Days Night, I had them memorized. I also collected all of The Beatles songs I could find and, as those were the days of the cassette tape, I would listen to Breakfast with The Beatles every Sunday morning and record all the songs. I read books, learned to play their songs on the piano and the guitar, I watched biographies and anthologies, I drew countless portraits of John, Paul, George, & Ringo...I was a fan.

And last night I got to see the one and only Sir Paul McCartney live in concert!

I had heard that he puts on an amazing show, and I believed it, but it was even better than I had expected! This man is 68 years old, but he sings and sounds like he always has, he dances and moves just like he did in those old movies. He was so full of energy! He would bounce from guitar up a few stairs to the piano and after almost every song he would pump his hands up in the air and say "Thank you!" He was silly... classic silly Paul things... just random silly things he would say. He also told stories about other legends, he mentioned Eric Clapton, told a story about Jimi Hendrix, talked about John and George. He played songs from his solo albums, songs from Wings... he did a little Foxy Lady, and of course a whole bunch of Beatles' songs. Hey Jude, Let It Be, Drive My Car, Something (one of my very favorites!), I've Just Seen A Face, Yesterday, Back In The USSR, A Day In The Life, Black Bird, I've Got A Feeling, Day Tripper, Get Back, Helter Skelter, Sgt Peppers, And I Love Her, Lady Madonna, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Paperback Writer, The End and a few more. The best thing though? He did not stop! He played a solid 2 hours and 45 minutes without a break! His band left the stage a couple times while he performed by himself, but he played almost 3 straight hours!

During Live and Let Die the front of the stage lit up in flames and fireworks exploded from behind the stage. There were fun moments of story telling and sing alongs, and then amazing all out rocking out. It seemed obvious that he still loves what he does and I love that he came to Salt Lake and did it. This was definately a once in a lifetime sort of thing for me!

Swedish Pancakes

Just what you wanted: A dark grainy webcam photo of me making swedish pancakes.

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It's been 3 whole months since my last post!

So much has changed!

I have so much to share, I don't know where to start!

Not only the big changes in our lives, (and there are plenty of those) but all the little day to day things too.

Like how Tayvie is on her 3rd outfit of the day and it's only 11:00 am (nope, it's not that she has spilled on them or anything... she just changes her clothes about every hour).

Like how we have a NEW nephew & a NEW niece!!!...and we are so excited about them we can hardly stand it!

Like how Ayla and Tayvie started preschool and love it!!!

Like how our little Lyndlee is 7 months old!

Like how Tony just got promoted to a supervisor at L3!!!

Like how I am the owner of a very well loved Nikon D40 with 3 BROKEN lenses! (& 0 working ones)

Like our little trip to Snowbird last month...that was heavenly!

Like our 3 1/2 week vacation at Tony's parent's new house in West Jordan!

Like how we spent a week with the girls cousins and all the fun and pictures we got!

Like how Aunt Julie sent all three girls rockin' Beatles tee's on the very day we were going to the Imagine concert!

Those things are all much more exciting, but since I don't know where to start,

I thought I'd just tell you about our obsession with Swedish Pancakes since I'm cooking them right now.

When I was growing up (which is in the past, cause I'm not growing up any more), my dad use to make Swedish Pancakes on Saturday mornings... but not every Saturday morning, cause they take so long. So we were always super excited when it was a Swedish Pancake Saturday!

Now they're Ayla's favorite food. She begs for them almost every meal. I usually make a big batch once a week and keep them in the fridge so they're handy for breakfast. Ayla and Tayvie love to help me add the ingredience and stir. I love cooking in our new kitchen, we have a great big bar for the girls to sit at and help with everything, and lots of counter space. Last week, we were out of flour (my big Lehi Roller Mills bag of flour got lost in the move...anyone know where it is?) Ayla knocked on 5 neighbors doors before we found any! But we found some so life was good for the 4 year old!

Here's my recipe:

6 eggs

A whole bunch of sugar

4 cups of milk

3 cups of flour

1 cap full of vegetable oil

a really, really hot griddle coated with butter

...

I put butter and powdered sugar on mine.

Ayla and Tayvie like butter & syrup on theirs.

Tony will some times put butter and jam on his.

Yep, not the most healthy thing in the world, but they are super yummy!!! One of my big goals is to get back to healthier eating, it's been a little tricky to do that the last little while, but we're getting settled now and we're doing good!

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Maybe you should tell me what you want to hear about first...?

Easter Dresses