Busted!

Maddie was in her room doing her Saturday chore, cleaning her room, or so I thought. I first saw Kaylie with her "pretty" new face decorations and knew there was a lot more to be found.

Here is the other half of the Dynamic Duo. Maddie informed me that Kaylie did it all. Yeah right! For one, Kaylie doesn't know how to draw circles and for two, there was marker all over the back side of Kaylie's arm. I doubt she could reach there to color it herself.

Apparently their dresser wasn't pretty enough, so Maddie decided to take it upon herself to add some artistic personality. FYI, it's definitely going to need to be repainted! Yay me!

Here is the cute little face that said it all without saying a word! Luckily it came off the kids better than it came off the dresser. Kaylie's entire bed set is also nicely decorated and I'm washing it now to see if it will come out. Wish me luck!

A little update...

Things have settled down nicely since we came home from California for Christmas & New Year's. The kids are back on their normal schedules. And yes it has hit 80 degrees here already!

There was some potentially scary news when we returned home that my blood sugar was pretty high and I had to go back for more testing. Things have since turned out to be fine. The baby and I are both healthy and "active." We only have 10 weeks to go!

I had a bit of a rough week about 2 weeks ago when I broke my glass on my glass top stove and washed my cell phone in my pants pocket. Since then I've replaced the stove with one that I love so much more than my old one, but the cell phone still isn't the same. I'm trying to find a replacement for that without signing another 2 year contract or spending $300 for it!!!

We had a little scare last night when, for some reason we can't quite figure out, Nathan decided to poke Maddie full force in her right eye at dinner. By the time I got a good look at it around bath time it had a nice little dent, yes I said dent, the same size as Nathan's finger nail. I called the doctor first thing this morning and he squeezed her in to get a better look at it. He said it is healing well and she only has a tiny laceration that should be healed by the end of the day. As a precaution he gave us some antibiotic eye drops for her to make sure there is no worry of infection. Needless to say Maddie is ready for everyone to just leave her eye alone, poor thing!

Other than that we are doing great and as always trying to stay healthy from the bombarding colds that keep coming our way. We hope you are all doing well also!

Christmas 2008!!!

As usual we drove out to California this year for Christmas. We left on December 23rd and came home January 1st. It was a short, but very fun packed trip. We had a blast with our family!

Brian & Chrystal Christmas morning!

Nathan & Maddie Christmas morning, Nathan isn't showing the enthusiasm as he had, but that's because we made him wait until most of the presents were handed out.

Christmas morning at Grandma Karen's house. The kids were opening their stockings from Santa.

Grandpa Romer with Maddie & Kaylie. Kaylie warmed up to him very quickly.

The day after Christmas all the girls/women went to have their nails done. Maddie & Grandma Karen are showing off their pretty nails. Maddie was pretty good, but the nail lady had to do her nails twice, because Maddie smudged about 5 of them before I was done with my pedicure. She even did cute little flowers on each nail! That's patience!!!!

Grandma Karen relaxing with her "babies."

I took these pictures of the kids on Christmas Eve day. They had so much fun playing in Grandma & Grandpa's backyard. We don't have trees like this at our house!

Nor do the leaves actually fall of the trees in Arizona! Maddie had fun collecting leaves that had fallen.

I love this picture of Brian and Maddie!

This was the day after Christmas just after we got our nails done. Kaylie missed Grandma & Mommy!

I like to think she missed Mommy the most!

I like to take advantage of having people around so we can take family pictures.

The Saturday after Christmas we went up to Grass Valley where my Grandma/Grammy lives. We spent 2 days up there with her and my mom's sister's family. We had a ton of fun!

Grammy with Kaylie.

Snow!!! My cousin bought a house in Nevada City this past year and they still had snow on the ground. We took the kids up to play. They had soooo much fun.

This was Kaylie's first experience with snow. If you look close you can see the snow in her hands. She would grab hand fulls of it and just hold onto it. Her poor hands must have been very numb!

Of course, the first thing Daddy did was throw snow balls. And anything that makes it okay to throw things at someone the kids love.

I actually caught Maddie throwing one!

My cousin towed the kids around on a snow board, because they didn't have any good hills on their property. As you can tell, they loved it!

On Monday Kellie, my mom and myself took the kids to the Jelly Belly factory. It's just about 3 miles down the road from my mom and every time we drove by Nathan would beg to go.

Nathan, Abby & Maddie in front of the Jelly Belly "Herbie car!" Nathan's favorite!

Temple Lights

Our tradition every year before Christmas for a Family Home Evening (which happen to be on Thursdays for us because of Brian's schedule) we take the kids to the temple to see the lights. It gives us a great opportunity to show them the beautiful lights and to tell them about Jesus' birth. They all seemed to really enjoy the beauty of the temple at Christmas time.

This is the front of the Mesa Temple from Main Street.

Here is a better picture of just the temple itself.

This is the Nativity Scene that they put up every year. These figures apparently were sent here from Italy.

And last but defiantly not least, Mary & Joseph. Although I think at 5 1/2 months along I look bigger than Mary does full term! Must be another one of the great blessing of being our Savior's mother!!!

Nathan's Birthday

Kaylie really wanted to help Nathan open his presents. She didn't even care what they were, she just wanted to rip paper!

Nathan and Kaylie riding bikes. And yes, Nathan is riding Maddie's bike.

Nathan for his first ride on his new bike. And for those of you who haven't seen it, that is Brian's police car behind him.

We decided to get Nathan a new bike for his birthday since a few months ago Brian ran his old one over with the truck. It is pretty mangled and although Brian wanted to try to fix it, Nathan had pretty much out grow it and was ready for a new one.

Nathan enjoying his rainbow cake.

I didn't go over board with the cake this year. I guess being pregnant put a damper on my energy! I could have bought him one, but I like making their cakes for them. I asked Nathan today if he had a good birthday and he enthusiastically said "Yes!" Brian did have to work, but we still got to spend about 3 hours with him before he left, so it was a fun day. Can you believe he is 5 already?!

Chrystal's New Project

Well, today I decided I wanted to make a hair bow holder for the girls and I am pleased to announce that it turned out just how I wanted it to. I bought the sign board with hooks (the hooks are for pony tail holders) at Walmart for $4 and the ribbon to clip the bows on was another $3 and I bought the paint for $1. So this is what I did for a total of $8 plus the time it took to paint it and put it together. I went with the pink and brown theme to match the girls bedrooms sets. Plus, it's cute and fun. It only took me about 2 hours or less to paint it and put it all together. All in all I am very happy with the finished product. I may add some brown dots to the hearts at the bottom of the ribbons, but I haven't decided yet. All the bows that are clipped on the ribbons I made for the girls. I'm sure there will be more to come...

Kaylie's Big Girl Bed

Maddie is LOVING sleeping on the top bunk.

Well, last week we moved Kaylie over to the bunk bed. It has been pretty interesting. She doesn't like it much at naptime, but the past 2 days she has been tucking herself back in bed to sleep both at night and for naptime after she is tired and done playing with her clothes and toys. I hope this keeps up, because it isn't very easy with my growing belly to put her back in the bottom bunk when she falls asleep on the floor!