Christmas

Christmas was awesome this year! It was so much fun having the kids be old enough to start really catching on to a lot of the things and also being able to include them in on more activities. This year I had to make 21 goody plates!!! Isn't that insane? Yeah, I think it is. I had 21 goody plates to make, an Activity's day activity at my house with eight 10-11 year old girls at my house, and a preschool party to go to on top of all my other day to day things. Seems like there was a lot more, but I can't think of anything else off hand. Needless to say December went by very quickly.
I admit that we spoiled the kids quite a bit this year, and honestly their favorite toys are the $10 or less toys...lesson learned for us. :) We had a nice dinner with our friends next door and just really enjoyed our day. The kids and I also went down to Tucson to celebrate Christmas Eve at my Grandma's. I love that we have that tradition in our family and that we have such a nice gathering place. (Thanks grandma for all your hard work! We love you and that you do that for us!!!) Christmas morning we got to talk to Elder Hine, open more presents, and have a brunch with my Dad, step mom, and Aunt Anita..and again open more presents! I love spending Christmas with family. I love driving by lights on people's houses or taking the kids to see the Temple lights and having Ezra sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" every time we see Christmas Lights. I love showing pictures of Jesus to the kids and them knowing who He is. I love giving to people and knowing they appreciate it. I love Christmas! Most importantly though, I am so thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ and the blessings I have in my life through Him.

Ezra

Ezra, Ezra...where do I start? Ezra is my little man, my sidekick, mi amigo. Ezra is doing sooo good these days, we are very happy with his progress. We have increased our therapy in the home to about 20 hrs a week and preschool has helped a lot with communication too. Some of my favorite things he tells me now are; "one more time", "do you see him" (this is usually said while looking for a piece of mr. potato head), "I love you", "Sissy, where are you", and "ABC song please". I hear these phrases a lot through out the day, and I love it. I love hearing him talk and communicating with me. My absolute favorite thing he does these days though is when he prays. One day when we sat down to eat dinner we folded our arms and I was about to pray, but Ezra busted out in prayer. He even says his nightly prayer too. Its so cute, it really made me happy to know that all those stressful Sundays were paying off. I have to do church a lot by myself and it is not an easy task. I remember about 2 months ago I was struggling with the kids and the speaker from the High Council was talking, and I honestly don't know what he was talking about because I was battling 2 toddlers. But half way through his talk he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, "you know what I am talking about, don't you? Believe me you are doing the right thing coming to church with your kids even when you don't feel like you are getting anything out of it and you don't think they are either, they are. They are learning that going to church is important, that it was and is important to you, and one day you will realize that it is impacting their lives." I was red as he was saying this. Ezra then pretended burp and said "esus me" really loud. Everyone I felt was looking at me and I wanted to cry, but i didn't. He said exactly wanted I need to hear, at the time I needed to hear it the most. Well I can now see the impact that church is having on my little ones, and it really makes my heart happy.

Ezra is also obsessed with Mr. Potato head. Ever since Toy Story 3 we have had to take Mr. Potato head with us everywhere we go and we also have to turn everything into a potato head. We have done tortillas (he gets 1 a day to do a tortilla head), play dough, rocks, bread, a real potato, and basically anything that is round and you can stick pieces of potato head into. I need to snap more pictures of his creativity, its quite impressive I think. He also is a fix it man. He loves tools and he goes around the house with a screw driver fixing everything...literally!

He is such a happy boy and I love his sweet spirit.

Ms. Rylie Jane

Pictures for your enjoyment!

Ms. Rylie Cont.

This video is Rylie playing with her speech therapist. This gives you a pretty good idea of her personality. Robin, the therapist, puts a necklace on like Rylie so of course Rylie has to take hers off b/c now she is not original.

I'm not really sure why we call Rylie; Rylie Jane. Her middle name is actually Dianne, but she just acts like a Rylie Jane sometimes.

Rylie is getting so big so fast! I can't believe she will be 2 in a month. We love our little girl to pieces. I will say she is one stubborn cookie though! We have been trying to get her to not go to bed with milk now for awhile, and well, we are not doing so good with that goal. One night she cried for 3 1/2 hours until we finally gave in and gave her milk. She LOVES animals, Ezra, playing outside, getting dirty, Woody and Buzz, her "baba" (baby), acting like she is a baby, my shoes, necklaces, baths, bubbles, Princess and the Frog, high fives and "rocks", and peaches. She is starting to pick up on some words, but her favorite is 'please' while rubbing her chest and looking super cute, so I always give in. She also loves to color in nursery and her nursery teachers have mentioned to me that they love all her dresses...so do I!

some crafts and an early Christmas present.

Because my husband rocks; he got me a Silhouette for Christmas (OK so I may have ordered it myself, but he said yes..) And he also said yes to letting me open it early because he could understand the logic of that when I told him I could make a lot of really fun, cute, and inexpensive Christmas gifts...I told you, he rocks!

So these are the projects I worked on. The 6 Be mirror project is probably my favorite, that is why it is staying in my house :)

I got the idea for the wall hanging project for a super Saturday thing that my mother in law did. The plates with the Nativity scene I think I came up on that on my own, but I don't know if I did see it somewhere on a blog before and that is why the idea came so easily. So if someone posted it on a blog and I just don't remember, sorry I did not give you credit. The Blessing Block I got the idea from this blog, its one of my favorites to follow.

I'm so excited for the things I can do with my silhouette machine, I will keep posting more crafts that I do...so stay tuned :)

some updates

OK, OK it has been forever since I have actually updated with good pictures. We have been really busy the last couple of weeks that I don't know where to start. The kids and I have made many cookies, mostly for teachers and therapist. It has become one of our most favorite things to do together.

The week before Thanksgiving Devin's dad flew into Phoenix and we picked him up at the airport and went straight to California. In California we met his Grandpa Baker and Uncle Ammon and visited with his Great Grandpa Wilkerson. We were able to get a 5 generation picture with Ezra, Devin, Ben, Grandpa Baker, and Great Grandpa Wilkerson. Pretty cool stuff, unfortunately Ezra was not in the picture taking mood and we didn't really get a good one of him looking at the camera..oh well! It will be proof to him later on in life how hard it was to get him to look at the camera! Ha! Devin's dad was also super cool and let Devin and I have a fun date at Disneyland while he watched the kids. I don't have pictures of that because they are all on Devin's phone...so maybe if I ever get around to it I will post those too.

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house for Devin's family. We had such a great time and I'm so glad we could do it. Everyone was there except for Woody and Laura, we missed them but totally understand why they couldn't make it. Christa and I were also brave and faced the Black Friday crowds, I was determined to get a trampoline. After our house was broken into in Casa Grande and they took the trampoline I knew I had to replace it..and I did! We also enjoyed playing Rook and singing karaoke. All in all it was a great week!

a giveaway

hey everyone here is a new giveaway that i really want to win...but my chances honestly aren't that great so maybe santa will have to consider this :)

the pumpkin patch

We had such a great time at the pumpkin patch this year. Ezra has been a little obsessed with pumpkins so I knew he would love it. Rylie LOVES animals, she would have fed the cow the whole time if we would have let her. It was a great day, the weather was beautiful, and it was nice to get out and do something different together.

Things on my mind

My sister Tannis was married last month. I don't know if I have ever seen a happier bride. I am so happy for her and Clayton. They are so cute and fun together that I know that they will always be happy and always love each other.

It has been a little over a year now since Grandma Vance passed away. I still feel so blessed to have known her. She was such an amazing woman with such amazing faith. I will always look up to her as a woman of faith and of someone that I want to be like. She kept amazing journals and always made people smile.

Elder Hine!! I can't believe he has been out for almost 18 months. I love reading his emails and love to hear that he loves his mission so much. He is such a great missionary and loves the people of Panama, and we love him.

Yay! Finally I can do cute things with Rylie's hair. It has taken awhile but it is finally long enough to do some creative hair styles.

My mom came up this past weekend and helped us potty train Ezra. He has done so well, I am so proud of him! Like my mom says though, potty training is really about training the parent to remind the child to go to the bathroom on the potty.

This is what happens when you turn your back for 2 minutes in my house!

So There you go! Also I want to give a little shout out to my friend Janice who has an etsy shop full of cute felt items. I actually bought some of the preschool games and hair clips and LOVE them, and the kids do too. This is her link to her shop! I highly recommend checking her out. :)

lucky

 

sometimes I feel like the luckiest person because I am Ezra and Rylie's mom. How did I get so lucky to have such cute and loving kids?

Voice of the Spirit

Ezra's birthday

 

Ezra turned 3 today. His birthday is easy to remember, 09-08-07... We kept it pretty low key and celebrated on Monday when devin was home. Breakfast was delicious and as you can see the cupcakes were too!

 

These are some of my favorite pictures taken of Ezra over the last 3 years. Its hard to limit my favorite pictures. I know i'm biased but I just think Ezra is such a handsome boy and has such a contagious smile.

 

These are the birthday pictures for the last 3 years..you can see his eating habits haven't changed much!

Ezra is seriously my buddy. Some days I think I'm going to go crazy because he is such a busy boy but honestly he makes me laugh and smile daily and I wouldn't change him for anything! He has such a sweet spirit about him and I know he is going do amazing things. Not everyone knows this, but Ezra was diagnosed with autism earlier this year. It has been a struggle, but we are blessed with so many people that support us and lead us in the right direction. He is making tons of progress and I know his future is bright. We are so hopeful for him and are willing to do whatever it takes to pull him through this! To learn more about autism I suggest this site.
We love you Ezra!!!

furniture revamp

Before:


After:



We got an older dresser from some friends when we moved here and right away I decided I wanted to make it into a TV stand. So we took out the first 2 rows of dressers then laid wood on the bottom to make it a shelf. We painted it this ungly brown, because it was the only color of oops paint that we liked and felt like we could do anything with. The TV stand has done us well, but the last couple of months-OK really year- I have wanted to repaint it and do something much more fun with it. So this is the results. The hardest part was sanding it, that was a pain. Overall i'm very pleased with the results I just want to distress it more.

The outfit!

 

 

 

 

This is the outfit he ended up wearing after we changed his clothes..isn't he a ham!! how can you not just think he is the cutest thing ever? :)

Ezra's first day of school

 

 

Ezra started preschool today, this is going to be great for him..and me! It is 3x a week and the his teacher is awesome. This is his original outfit today, but then he got peanut butter and jelly all over it so we had to change.
It's amazing how easy one child is. Rylie and I were able to get a tire fixed, grocery shop, get water, send a fax, and rent movies. Easy peasy! I'm excited to volunteer and help out witht he parties and make the teachers fun gifts. I'm a dork i know!

Family Update

 

Rylie is officially in nursery now!! She had a hard time at first, a very hard time. But we have awesome nursery leaders and she is doing so much better now. It's crazy to me that I have two kids in nursery. She is so cute, she still loves to kiss everything. Infact when i put her in time out the other day she kissed the wall. We are really working on getting her to talk..she just doesn't want to. She is starting to love letters as much as brother, probably because thats all we do these days is letters!

 

Ezra my man. He is making so much progress, some days he talks too much! No, we do't understand most of it but its so fun to hear him talk and communicate with us. We had a very busy month for the month of August. We were going into phoenix 2x a week for an awesome therapy program we had him enrolled in. It was 4 hours each day, but it is night and day difference what it has done for him..and us!

 

Devin has been issued orders from the Guard Unit to go down to Tucson to secure the border. This means that he will be living in Tucson for 4 days out of the week and coming home for 3 days. It will be a challenge, it will last at least 9 months, but we are very excited about the oppurtunities it brings. So before he started his job we decided to go down to Tucson ourselves to check it out and where he will be staying exactly. Then we went to the Tucson Zoo. Seriously one of my favorite zoos yet. We were able to get really close to the animals, it was very clean, well shaded, and not so huge that you felt like you couldn't see everything.

what I am looking forward to...

Today was an awesome mail day. A box of sample foods, free food is always good, along with coupons. Our new netflix video...yay! A new ped-egg, seriously these things work wonders and are really cheap on amazon. And my favorite thing I received today was my Mocking Jay book..ahhh, I've been waiting for it.

These are the books that I am currently reading. Can someone please tell my instructors that I am too busy reading to be in class and that I would appreciate it if they didn't lower my grade for it :) kthanxbye!

P.S. Midnight Omen Deja Vu was written by a family friend, you should be able to find it at your local bookstore here is her website I highly reccomend her book. Very easy and fun read.

I heart coupons

So I have been able to get some amazing deals this weekend! Yesterday at Target I scored pretty big in the toy isle for the kids saving 75% off of everything. Christmas is going to be fun this year :) I think I got like 10-12 toys and paid about $4 a toy average. Then I got tons of clothes for rylie at Old Navy and Target. Iwas able to get her 7 bottoms, 8 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes, and 3 ballerina/tumbling class outfits. For all of her stuff I paid $38..not bad. A lot of the clothes are a size up or two.
I really have a love hate relationsip with coupons. I love that I can get soo many things for sooo cheap or free. I love that I never pay for toiletries anymore. I love that it has helped me make friends and that I can share my knowledge with others. I don't like on the other had how much it consumes my life. Couponing is my favorite thing to do now. I love when I can save 80-90% off my grocery bills, but I don't like all the time it takes me to get organized to do so. I don't like how our office is just piles of newspapers and coupons. So just when I think maybe I should just go back to shopping generic and on a very strict budget and menu I have a day like today when I saved over 93% total. Before coupons and savings my bill would have been $233, but out of pocket I paid $31. At walgreens I got the best deal, I got 3 packages of pull-ups and 6 packages of gum for 98 cents!! Crazy, right?!
I know I have hardly any food in these pictures, the truth is I didn't go to shop for food because I have accumulated a decent stock pile of food and I really only shop for that stuff when it's free or practically free...or i'm all out and desperate. We have gotten our groceries down to about $150-$200 a month and that includes baby supplies and cleaning supplies as well.