Gracie... and those other 2

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

Bat Girl was Gracie's choice this year. I guess that is what happens when your best friend is a boy. Her and Levi are really into superhero's and 'agent's' right now. One day as we were pulling up to school she said, "...sigh... I really hope Levi want to play agent's today". I do like that she picked the pink costume instead of the black one because it means that she isn't a complete tom boy like I was.

Our ward party was Saturday night. Gracie and I went early to help set up and my friend was asking her what her costume was, it went like this:
F: What are you dressing up as tonight?
G: It's a surprise
F: Can I have a hint?
G: ...
F: Is it a scary costume or a pretty one?
G: Neither...It is just awesome.

And so you have it, one awesome bat girl. (Who got tired at 7:45pm and wanted to leave the party to go home and go to bed).

The next day at church Gracie went to give her tithing envelope to the bishop he shook her hand and said, "Thank you Bat Girl". She thought that was the coolest thing that happened to her all day.

pumpkin time

2011-10-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

we had a little family time this weekend and painted and carved pumpkins. i thought i was getting out of the mess of carving because gracie was only talking about painting the pumpkins, but then...levi started talking about 'curving' pumpkins incessantly one day and that was the end of it. we needed to 'curve' a pumpkin too. have you ever seen a rainbow pumpkin? she can make anything into a rainbow!

the finished product.

gracie finished painting in about 5 minutes and then harassed paul and i the rest of the time about when we would be done. she did a little break dancing on the kitchen floor while waiting. then she negotiated my camera away from me and took the next 3 pictures. i was actually impressed that she got the people/pumpkins in the pictures.

waiting not so patiently to carve. mom i know you just really want to get your hands on gracie's hair right now, but lets admit that this is what it looks like sometimes so that is part of documenting the moment right?

paul lucky for me got the dirty job. gracie was all smiles and ready to scoop out the guts.

then she decided that it looked 'bescusting' and didn't want to touch it.

now she didn't even want to look at it.

paul was trying to talk her into touching it, telling her that it wasn't so bad.

forcing herself to try

nope, still didn't like it.

she finally was half way ok with it, but not loving the mess.

the finished products:

paul decided to paint a little byu action. i think it was because i pulled him away from the football game to do this.

2011-05-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

We have been cooking around here. This day Gracie wanted to make cookies so I thought I would let her try to do it herself...I took 2 deep breaths and let her go. I thought the kitchen would be destroyed, but she is a very tidy baker! She was in heaven because every time I cook anything it is a constant negotiation of how many things she can do by herself.

The finished product...I'm not sure what happened to them but I only had one. Paul and Gracie liked them though.

And then there was Gracie's birthday party. Gracie has been spoiled by Candice's extravagant parties so I knew there was no way I was getting away with pizza and a Costco cake at the park with family kind of birthday party. Gracie will actually 'play Candice' now. She will come and invite me to her bedroom. I have to knock and she invites me in and she has a table set and all kinds of games planned, it is hilarious.

Weeks before the party Candice would call or text me almost everyday with a new idea/decoration for the party, but I'm not Candice so I could deny most of them (Candice I'm not downing you in any way...I would love to be you, but I don't have the enthusiasm for parties that you do)

Robyn and I made this cake. It took us 5 yes FIVE hours to make. Candice and April came in for a little while to help too. I guess you could call this a true SG cake as my Mom would say (SG-Stewart girl).

Look, there's Zannie to the rescue of Piper so she didn't get trampled. She is so nice, every time I went outside Zannie was in the bounce house with a slew of kids helping Piper.

After the whole party was over I asked Gracie what her favorite part was and she said, "The Pizza". Ok mental note for next year - all we need is pizza!

One of those ideas that Candice called me about was asking if she could invite Rapunzel to the party. I agreed to that one because Gracie is in love with her.

She was a great Rapunzel and was so fun with the kids. She painted their faces, sang songs, had a treasure hunt and did a magic trick. Gracie couldn't take her eyes off of her.

So in other news, Paul went back to school! He is working on his master's in Marriage and Family Therapy. It took him about a year to actually decide to go because he feels old, but I'm happy he decided to do it. It will be a long 4 years, but worth it. This is him on his first day. He didn't want me to take his picture so he only agreed to stop for a second before he left.

And one last thing. I woke up one morning to this:

Everybody needs a chair on the table to read their scriptures while they watch Max and Ruby right?

4G

2011-03-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

In keeping up with Apple and all the other technology companies I would like to introduce our version of 4G. On Sunday, March 6th our Gracie will be 4!

I'm sad that today is the last day she will be my 3 year old. I wish she could stay little for me. Do I need to stop calling her my baby...because she thinks I need to.

Birthday Statistics:
Height: 40 inches
Weight: 39.5lbs

A few birthday questions... She was answering these as if she were in a beauty pageant:

Favorite color: pink, black, purple, white and green. Me: do you like one better than all the rest? G: I just like all of those colors...and red too...and pink

Favorite food: chicken

Favorite treat: starburst

Favorite thing about school: music time

Who is your best friend: Levi

Favorite toy: my pretend kitchen

Favorite song: Belle song

Favorite thing about Primary: singing "Scripture Power"

What do you want to be when you grow up: Rapunzel

Favorite tv show: Bubble Guppies

Favorite movie: Robin Hood

Favorite sport: Soccer & Swimming

Favorite book: Cinderella

Favorite thing to do with Daddy: playing tickles with him

Favorite thing to do with Mommy: ride my bike

Least favorite thing to do: not fighting

What do you want for your birthday?: Baby alive with teeth

Gracie is amazing! She has come a long way from being a baby and crying if someone other than mom or dad looked at her or when she was a toddler and passed out at the top of the slide because someone she didn't know said, "hi" to her (true story). Now she says hi to everybody she can and gets really excited if they say hi back. She loves to go to friends houses and play and likes to tell me to, "go run some errands" so I don't stay with her. She is our social butterfly, she needs to leave the house at least once a day or she goes crazy by noon. She loves loves loves school and Mrs. Robyn. She is ok with Primary, but 'happens' to get a stomach ache every Sunday around 2:00. She loves to dance, but not ballet or anything close to that, she does some funky hip hop action. Gracie also loves to sing and is constantly requesting different songs in the car depending on her mood. She loves to ride her bike and is a little trooper, she rode 3 miles to the library the other day (our longest trip so far). I miss having my baby, but I know I will love my new 4G version too!

2010-12-30T20:34:00.000-08:00

I have been getting a lot of comments lately about my blog, and well people wondering if I forgot I had one. I remembered...once I was reminded. In the past couple of months we have:

Moved to a new house. That says it all right? Can I just say that there are not many things that I really hate, but moving is one of them. Since we moved out of our ward boundaries I was released from my calling as RS President so you would think I would have tons of time to organize and clean, but we still can't park our cars in our garage. I think I will blame my lack of time on #2...
We survived Christmas. I love to see Christmas come and I love to see it go. One month of craziness is good for me. We didn't get our usual family pictures taken because of our wonderfully timed move, but I did take Gracie to get her own (the picture above).

I would like to put a disclaimer out there that I don't have a working camera right now and it is really hard to blog without one. I will be back when I get a new camera!

Daddy's Little Girl

2010-09-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

A conversation Paul and Gracie had the other day in the car:
G: Daddy why does......?
P: I don't know Gracie
G: But Daddy, you know everything!

Paul for the life of him can't remember the exact question because he said there were too many questions happening one after the other so he just started answering ok, yes and I don't know. Just as a side note, she is wrapped around his little finger and he worries about her all day everyday. He has come around to loving her so much that he doesn't care if we have only girls.

First Day of School

2010-09-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Today was Gracie's first day of pre-school. She has been looking forward to this for month's!

All the way there she was singing 'Sweet Caroline' (her favorite song right now) at the top of her lungs. It takes 6 Sweet Caroline's to get to school.

She is so lucky to have her aunt as her teacher. She didn't even say bye to me, she just ran in to see who was there. That is huge for anybody who knew Gracie 2 years ago she would just cry if you tried to talk to her. When we went to the orientation last week she tried to get me to leave and kept telling me she would be fine.

When I asked her what she did at school this was her reply:

i hopped
do the wheels on the bus
i made a crocodile, ohhh i forgot it at la la's house, can we go get it? (it was really an alligator and it was in her backpack)
i played
i didn't play outside cause it raining

A little side note about Robyn: She was somehow named lala by Garrett and ever other niece and nephew since then have called her that. I told Gracie when she was at school to call lala Mrs. Robyn. When I picked her up Robyn told me she called her Mrs. Robyn, lala and just Robyn. I'm sure it's not easy for a 3 year old to keep all those names straight!

Day 18 & 19

2010-05-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Is it cheating on 'everyday in May' if I blog every-other-day? I'm laughing at myself because I feel my blog dedication wearing down. The only thing noteworthy on 'Day 18' was me making a mental note 30 minutes into my spin class that I needed to get my will finished because I was about to die! I can only do so many up hill city sprints Mr. spin teacher! Today was Gracie's activity day...literally! As if dance and soccer on the same day were not enough we just added swim to our Wednesday line-up. Candice signed Gracie & Levi up for swim and the only day they could have class at the same time was today (Levi is way advanced swimmer so they are in different classes). On the way to swim we made a quick stop at Target because we hadn't been there yet this week and we were going through withdrawals. Gracie picked out these sporty pink glasses that squeeze her cheeks quite nicely!

Half way through her class her goggles were falling off but she really tried to keep them on. My zoom is broken on my camera or I would have gotten closer, but I think they are making her look a little like droopy the dog. She told me after swim, "This was the best day EVER!" I'm sure it was!

Day 16 & 17

2010-05-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

Day 16:
At church on Sunday I sat in the pew and kept turning around in hopes of seeing our favorite bench buddies. After a while I realized that they are gone... Candice, Levi & Piper have moved on from our Ward. I will miss Piper's extravagant Sunday outfits, Levi's little man ensemble, Candice's latest snack container purchase (2 of them of course), Piper cuddles during Sacrament meeting and Candice being on my Enrichment Committee. I will miss everything about her moving especially her house walking distance from mine.

Day 17:
We had our first freezer meal exchange today. It is funny to get so excited about frozen food, but it is more the excitement that I don't have to cook for 12 days! Here is our groups blog if you want recipes or there are tips and guidelines if you want to start your own group: http://myfreezermeals.wordpress.com/

I seriously need my OWN truck!

2010-05-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to plant something new in my yard since I was fixing the drippers anyways. So I drove over and got this wonderful smelling honeysuckle from a generous friend who has too many plants :). I kept waiting and waiting for Paul to get home from work with his truck, but I had a hole dug for this little guy and the sun was going to go down soon. So I put it on the back of my freshly washed car and drove 1/2 mile on a main road with my flashers on.
***Can I make a little side note that it is Saturday and my husband does have a M-F job, but he left at 7:00am and I sit here alone on Saturday night at 10:00pm and he is still not here! They work him crazy hours and a ton of hours. Did I mention he is salary so no overtime? Ok I'm done complaining, I always tell myself that at least he has a job! There is a little ray of hope in his future, but I will post about that tomorrow because this is getting really long!***
Well I hope my little plant lives, it smells wonderful in my front yard!

Today Robyn's neighborhood was having a garage sell and I was riding Stewart's bike around the neighborhood (which I bought from him and I am totally excited to go on bike rides with Gracie) and happened on this steal of an art desk for $5. Gracie was in LOVE with it. She begged me to keep it in the kitchen. I'm not sure how that would have worked. I wanted it in the playroom. We compromised by putting it in her bedroom. She sat at it for 45 minutes creating and not saying a word (if you know Gracie very well this is unheard of). I cleaned the kitchen and made dinner without a helper. I love a good buy and this is one of them! I also bought at little picnic table for $3 from the same person!

My Girly Girl with a Gun

2010-05-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Gracie had some friends over to play today. She is the most girly girl, she will tell you all about her pink dress and braided hair and painted nails until you compliment her on them. Bring a couple boys in the house though and she is in full boy playing mode. Don't get me wrong... when they are playing knights nobody in uninformed that she is the princess. All of her friends but 1 are boys. It is a good thing Levi is with us everyday to train her on what funny little things boys do. Yesterday she had 2 others boys over to play and they all came running upstairs with weapons (Mom, you might want to stop reading now). It was so funny, Levi had a sword, Carter and Devin had guns and Gracie had a little bubble maker gun. She had the smallest weapon, but she was definitely in charge of all 3 of them!
By the way the game they are playing in the picture is great! It is the pac-man plug in game and they have no idea that they are not playing it the right way because the car just keeps on moving, love it!

Goodbye Crib

2010-05-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

Warning, this one is wordy with no pictures:
The day after I'm sick I always want to clean something really good. Probably because I was laying down the whole day before. I decided to tackle Gracie's room. She has had a 'big girl bed' for over a year, but I have never taken her crib down. It was a really good place for time outs. I would also put her in there at nap time if she wouldn't stay in her bed. Recently she decided that she only wanted to sleep in her crib...totally annoying to wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning and go downstairs to get her out of her crib. I liked it better when she would just quietly show up in my face and ask for milk. So that was my project today, deep clean her room and take her crib down. I had her and Levi take their nap in my bed and took it down while she was sleeping. I made a big deal of it when she woke up so she seemed excited about it. Then bed time came and she told me she wanted to sleep in her crib. She was fine though, it just took her a little longer to fall asleep.

Sick

2010-05-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

Today we are sick...ALL of us! A nice little throwing up bug hit all of us with-in an hour of each other (1:30am). I don't think that has ever happened to us, we are usually separated by days. It isn't lasting too long, we should be up and running tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to when Gracie feels good enough to remember that dance and soccer were today.

Birds & Buses

2010-05-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Bird Viewing Preserve in Henderson. It was fun there were birds and ducks and we even saw a rabbit.

Piper came with us (Levi was at school). It was so windy, but she was a good sport. Her hair is cracking me up because of the wind.

When we were leaving a school bus of kids pulled up for a field trip. Gracie is a little obsessed with school buses and yells when ever she see's one. We asked the bus driver if Gracie & her friend Garren could get on for a minute. They were in heaven! I asked Gracie what her favorite thing about the bird park was and she said, "The Skoo Bus!"

Taco Lunch

2010-05-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

Paul has a couple days off. I love when that happens since he on average works 12-15 hours a day 5 days a week. He is the ward mission leader and we have the missionaries over every Saturday morning for breakfast so we get to know them pretty well. One of our Elder's has been in our ward for 8 months and is getting transferred tomorrow. His favorite meal is Stewart taco's so we had them over for lunch. These pictures are Gracie helping make the taco's. She started throwing a fit about me taking her picture so I couldn't help documenting one of those 3 year old fits. She doesn't have a shirt on because she was helping wash dishes right before and got soaked.

Are 3 year old suppose to touch raw meat?

We will miss our Canadian friend! Once during a Stewart Taco dinner he ate 18 yes 18 taco's.

We finished the day off with a visit at Great-Grandma Stewart's house and dinner at IHOP.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

Can I just say how happy I am to be a mother? Gracie is the happiest little girl (with the daily 3 year old fits thrown in). Every mother's day I am reminded of Mother's Day 4 years ago when I found out the day before that my first round of in-vitro didn't work. It was a sad day wondering if I would ever celebrate Mother's Day. I remember getting up and leaving Sacrament meeting early so I didn't have to stand for the Mother's Day present the young men would pass out. I'm so happy to be out of that feeling in my life. I never knew being a mother would give me so much joy.
Today was great:

I slept in for an extra 11 minutes until Gracie absolutely demanded that I wake up.
Paul got Gracie dressed for church and took charge of all temper tantrums for the whole day.
Neither Paul or I had any extra church meetings.
I came home from church and ate cookie dough and took a nap.
Paul & his Dad made dutch oven chicken & potatoes for dinner!
I took full advantage of the day off!

Paul took this picture of me and Gracie at 10:00 last night. We didn't get home from his parents house until 9:30 and then Gracie needed a bath so bad that I couldn't ignore it. I asked her to give me a kiss and this is how she always kisses me: Squeezes my cheeks and kisses to hard that it makes my nose bend.

moving, moving, moving

2010-05-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today was Candice's moving day. We spent the whole day moving and when I told Gracie this morning that was what we were going to do she was very excited and this conversation followed:
Gracie: Are goin take levi's jammies and bed to his new house?
Me: Yep
Gracie: That's goin be so awesome...and we can take my bed and my jammies too.
Me: I would miss you so much if you didn't live with me anymore
Gracie: That's ok mom maybe probably you could just go to your friends house and eat some food.

*That does make me feel better sometimes, but I have been laughing that she came up with that idea.*

May 7th

2010-05-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

This morning Gracie had pictures for her dance class. All the girls have little ballerina outfits with teddy bears that have the exact same outfit. She has been begging me for a month to put "My pretty dalerina dress on". So cute! Nothing better then a bunch of 3 year old ballerina's! After naps Levi & Piper came over to play. I'm not sure why today, but I decided I wanted to pull out the tree stump in our front yard. The tree died a couple of months ago so to avoid the HOA getting after us we did a quick cover-up and had Andrew cut it off. I guess my Dad saw me go in Candice's back yard to borrow a shovel and felt pity for me because not long after that he showed up to help. It was a good thing too because I couldn't have done it by myself. It is a huge hole and my Dad only broke one shovel!

Levi & Gracie played with our beautiful rock landscaping like it was sand and built sand castles. I told Gracie I wanted to take a picture of her in front of her sand castle... can you see it? Me neither, but she kept patting a small pile of rocks saying it was so beautiful.

Piper sat patiently in the stroller watching. When my Dad and I were done wrestling the tree stump I turned around to see piper had pulled out her piggy tails. I think she looks like a Who! She is such a happy little girl.

Day Trip

2010-05-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

Gracie and I took a quick trip to St. George today with my Mom. We made the usual stop at Lazy Daisy so I can add another quilt project to my 9 already spread out in the office (I'm really good at starting projects, but not so much at finishing them). Then we went over to see my Grandma Obray. She had back surgery last week and is staying at a rehabilitation center. It only took Gracie 1 hour to warm up to Great-Grandma to take this picture. She is usually shy, but even more so today because it was a new place. She was spoiled by rides by Apple (April) and Grandma in the wheel chair to go get cups of water and ice for everyone.

Then Jeff and Garrett joined us at Smashburger. Loved it! One of my favorite cheeseburgers, even better then Fudruckers!

And we rolled into town at 10:45 so to stay true to 'Everyday in May' I did this quick post!

Everyday in May...5 days late

2010-05-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

Ok so I am jumping on Jen's everyday in May project. Kind of laughing at myself now...not sure I will finish this one out (I have to be honest with myself!)
Today:
Gracie had dance class. They are practicing for their recital next month and the teacher has them do the dance once with her and then all the parents are invited in to watch. She does great, not perfect, but cute then when all the parents come in she freezes and stares at all the adults. I'm sure she is going to be killer at the recital!
Then to pack all her activities in one day we went to soccer class for the first time. She loved it! I told her last night for the first time that she was going and all she could do was yell, "Am I big now Mom? Am I big?" with some "this is gonna be so awesome" thrown in there. And it didn't disappoint! My favorite 2 things were:
1. While they were stretching she yelled to the other side of the line to Levi, "Your doing a great job Levi!"
2. The teacher was going down the line giving hi-5 and after her hi-5 she picked up her dot she is suppose to stand on and ran it down to the end of the line to get another hi-5.
Since I was a bad Mom and didn't take my camera to the first day of soccer here is her 3 year birthday pictures (60 days late)

L & G

2010-02-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

Can these two be any cuter together?

I love when the belly laugh with each other.

I love when they sing together.

I love how Gracie wakes up every morning and asks for Levi.

I love their little conversations when they don't think I'm listening.

I love my little babies... who want to be big kids.

buddy

2010-01-18T14:51:00.000-08:00

On Friday our very much loved dog named Buddy died. He is Paul's parents dog and even though Gracie only see's him every other Sunday, she talks about him on a daily basis. Paul and I were discussing how we would tell her and my Mom sent me a text saying, "Tell Gracie Buddy loved you very much but Heavenly Father needed him to bless heaven". So Sunday morning I decided to tell her while she was cuddling with me in bed. It went like this:

Heidi: Gracie, Buddy isn't going to live with Grandma and Papa anymore, he went to live with Heavenly Father.

Gracie: . . . (thinking for a minute) And Jesus too?

Heidi: Yep, and Jesus too.

Gracie: Ahhh (happy tone in voice) He is sooo happy!

And that was it, she was off to watch more Dora. Oh how I wish that was my reaction! I think she can teach me a lot more then I can teach her! We will miss our little Buddy.

potty time!

2009-08-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

I'm behind on documenting a lot, but I figured I had better get this one on the page since I have been putting it off for so long. We are officially out of diapers at our house. Yesterday when I was on my potty training supplies trip at Babies R Us Gracie had one big stinky diaper. I didn't have any diapers with me (bad mommy I know) and I was determined to never buy her another pack of diapers, so I took her in the changing room and squeezed her into a free size 1 diaper that the store gives you. Below is a picture of all our supplies: LOTS of juice - Gracie picked all of it out especially the blue kind, her favorite color right now.

Timer

Potty books

Dora potty sticker chart

To-go potty seat with bag

A couple packs of diapers, she picked these out too

Chocolate for pee

Sucker for poo

Day one: after my church meeting this morning we started. 2 1/2 hours of trying every 10 minutes and she finally did it! Her first pee. She had closed the door on me so I sat in the hallway and heard it, I started yelling with glee and opened the door, she jumped off and ran over to hug me and she kept saying, "all by myself". I don't know who was happier. She kept her pull dry though her nap and had one more successful pee. I'm going to ignore the poo in her panties that happened later because that is a harder one to do right? I am pretty happy about day one.

routines

2009-07-29T21:14:00.000-07:00

after many weeks of candice being on maternity leave we are back in our routine again. gracie is so lucky to have levi and piper come over every other week to play all day. levi and gracie think they are siblings they love each other and fight with each other just like brother and sister. gracie wakes up each morning asking if levi is coming and if i say yes it results in both hands in the air jumping up and down yelling "evi yeah evi!" they are both so patient with waiting for me when i am feeding piper. they love to get right in piper's face and say, "baby baby baby" and kiss her a million times (gracie) and grab her nose (levi).
levi takes his naps in my bed and they thought it would be really fun to take naps together. the first day didn't work out because there was too much excitement about being in a big bed together, but day two was success and i snapped this picture. ahh nap time - definitely a blessing!

4th of July

2009-07-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

This year we were in Huntington Beach for the 4th of July. The parade went right in front of the house we rented. For the first hour of the parade Gracie sat quietly and watched, but she broke out and started dancing for the rest of it. The beach was really fun this year. Candice was good about documenting it, at least for the first half of the week - check it out here: http://candicestewart.typepad.com

hair cuts

2009-05-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

the weather starts to get warm and everybody want to get their hair cut short right? well mine can't get any shorter so I moved onto Gracie's. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to Paul that I thought it would be cute if Gracie had a short hair cut not realizing that I would be making her a mini-me of well me. He thought it would be cute too so I called my friend Michelle to chop it off. As you can see she thought it was the worst thing ever. On the way there she kept saying over and over, "no Gracie hair cut". Levi got his hair cut first and even though he gets it cut all the time and never cries, he decided to today. So that didn't help Gracie's panic attack about it. The first few minutes she screamed and I am sorry to anybody who was trying to relax in that salon! She finally calmed down when she realized it didn't hurt, but she still didn't like sitting there.

The after shot. I say it is a short and sassy cut for a short and sassy girl!

This was her actual first hair cut that I did on our porch about a month ago.

choo choo

2009-05-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

a couple of months ago my mom organized a trip for all of us to boulder city for a picnic cand train ride. my mom said it was for levi, but there is a debate going on right now of who loves trains more - levi or mom. it was so much fun and thanks mom for your organization skills!

after the train ride papa bought the 2 footers trains. super cute!

6

2009-05-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I was tagged for this one - you go to your picture file, pick the sixth file and the sixth picture in that file and post it.... I actually miss that hair!

happy easter!

2009-04-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

gingerbread in the spring

2009-04-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

who says gingerbread houses are only for christmas time? not me! especially when we have a kit left over that is dying to be put together. the two different sides crack me up because levi was very methodically putting all the candy on his side while gracie was eating as much frosting and candy that she could before i took it away.

it's warming up!

2009-04-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

i took thes pictures back on st. particks day. i love when the weather starts to get warmer and we can play outside and paint with water (our favorite game that grandma taught us). i also love sundresses and sandles. gracies feet are complete with stamps from gymboree music class that morning. i think she can't wait for the class to be over just to get the stamps on her feet, hands and tummy.

free stuff

2009-03-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

ever since i had gracie i have become obsessed with coupons. i have always like deals (who doesn't) but i guess i finally had time to be organized enough to use them. now i heard about this new money saving thing and i am ALL ABOUT IT! i have been saving a lot of money lately, but i had to post this one because it was the first time that i was paid to buy something, not a lot, but still i got these 4 boxes of wipes for free and then they paid me 50 cents after i used my coupons and store deals! check this website out if you want more info it has the codes for las vegas and st. george: http://www.shopsmartinvegas.blogspot.com

i'm 2!

2009-03-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

this week was my birthday week. my daddy didn't go to work all week! i got to go to st george and play with my cousins and aunt and uncle and their new doggy. these are some of my favorite things about the week:

swimming at the coolest pool ever!

chasing gunner around the house and him chasing me, until he would bark at me.

my new trampoline papa and grandma got for me. i don't think my mommy and daddy knew it was that big! where are they going to put it?

opening presents and sharing my birthday party with papa.

going to all my favorite parks in st. george and my mommy letting me get REALLY dirty!

toys

2009-03-02T20:24:00.000-08:00

gracie LOVES her kitchen we bought her for christmas so much! i'm being facetious here. she plays with very few of her MANY toys. she prefers my oven and a variety of items from the pantry. i have trained myself to look in the oven before i turn it on, but i know that one day i will forget and have a sweet little melted present.
just a little note: today we were in the optometrist's office with paul and she spread bunch of brochures all of the floor. with one word of clean up from paul she proceeded to sing the entire clean up song by herself with her version of all the words. i don't know if i have said it before, but she loves to clean up! she has for quite a while been able to hum the tune, but today was the first time she sang all the words. too cute!

valentines

2009-02-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

tonight (valentines night 2009) gracie and i sat on the ground at the coffee table and at nachos from taco bell. no tv, just a lively conversation about her favorite things: levi, daddy, dora, monsters (monsters inc. movie). she would take a bite of a chip and then say, "mmmmm, deliciouso!". we watch too much dora! i loved tonight - might be on the top of my valentines evening favorites.

just in case you are wondering about paul, we celebrated last saturday in anticipation of the difficulty of getting a babysitter on valentines (thanks robyn!). he work 85 hours this week and needed a movie night. paul's movie nights consist of him going to his parents house and watching a movie as loud as he wants and raiding their kitchen.

too big

2009-02-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

I'm getting the "my baby is too big and she isn't a baby anymore blues". Unfortunately for Gracie who is obsessed with real babies and baby dolls (see the one on the ground behind her) I have not forgotten what it was like to be pregnant. So for those of you who care and those of you who don't I guess this is my announcement that I need another year to forget the 9 months of stomach flu that you call pregnancy. I have Levi a couple of days a week and the 3 of us get a little bored inside sometimes since the weather doesn't let us go outside to the park. My new favorite place is "Pump it up". Its an entire warehouse of inflatable slides and toys. I am amazed that these two don't get scared when they are climbing up the ladder, but they do really good.

This is Gracie's first shirt she picked out by herself. We were at Target and since she refuses to stay in the cart, so she was wandering about in the clothing section. I turned around to see her run around the corner with this shirt. She was so proud of it and said, "gracie shirt". I looked and it was her size so how could I resist?

Big girls get their own new pink bedroom right? After 2 years of tip toeing around and whispering and not watching TV when Gracie was asleep because her bedroom was in the center of all activity, I finally got sick enough of it to move her downstairs. It was a little scary at first because our bedroom is upstairs, but after one night I got over it. Gracie did really good too, it only took her 5 nights to sleep through the night again. The blue stripes are tape. I will post a picture of the finished room, but I am waiting for her big girl bed and that isn't going to go in the room until she can climb out of her crib.

Another picture of 'G' and 'beeps'. This was one day that they were really getting along good (doesn't always happen). Levi came and scooted in next to Gracie for a little lunch. She didn't mind her personal space invaded and Levi didn't mind that he was going to fall off any second,

One happy thing for me is that since Gracie's room was moved downstairs then I get an office! Paul & Brian moved my new desk upstairs last weekend. They were both grunting like the guys on the strongest man competition because it was so heavy. Thanks guys! For the last year I have been standing at the kitchen counter on the computer. Maybe this will help me blog more, maybe not.

christmas

2009-01-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

better late then never on a christmas post right? it was really fun this year although gracie didn't completely understand what was going on she did get excited about things. she helped paul set up the christmas tree while intently watching frosty the snowman on tv. paul is really good about setting up the tree every year even though he isn't home much he will bust it out in an hour or so one day when he sneaks home early from work.

she was more than helpful putting the ornaments on the tree. one glass ball had to be sacrificed to show her what happens when you throw them down the stairs onto the tile. eventually all the ornaments were on the top half of the tree.

paul doesn't do ANYTHING in the morning until he has a shower. christmas is not excluded from this rule. i didn't do it on purpose but the clock is in the background of this picture showing 9:00. we all showered and dressed before we opened any presents.

i took this one christmas morning before paul woke up.

levi came over and gave gracie her traditional winter hat (it is sooo cute) and looked around at what toys he was going to get to share.

there is a lot of thought going into opening this present, so much that it is making her tounge hang out. she opened her first present - an elmo dvd about how he goes on the potty - and she didn't care about the rest of her presents so we had to take a 30min break and whatch elmo.

santa did come to our house - what little girl doesn't need a little pink quad?

it was really fun this year to try to start our own family traditions. the holidays are a lot more fun with gracie around. for years i didn't know if i would have any kids so i really appreciate having her in our little family even more when the holidays come around.

lately

2008-12-23T14:58:00.000-08:00

this is what is new with us lately:

levi and gracie think they are siblings. they love and fight like brother and sister. lately levi will chase gracie around the house on his knees saying, "im gonna get you". she begs him for more as soon as he stops. they also wrestle, yep wrestle. i put this picture here to show their size difference (3 months). unfortunately gracie is kind of feisty and aggressive for her size so levi only thinks wrestling is funny if he is the one on top.

gracie has successfully learned how to take off her diaper and run happily around the house. this picture was one day when i was cleaning the kitchen and then looked over to see her little bare bum on the table. do you see her diaper next to the table? i am putting off the inevitable potty training until... well i don't know when, i guess i am just not in the mood now.

paul was released from the bishopric. he was called as the ward mission leader and loves his new calling already. he still doesn't get his sunday nap but we do see more of him during the week.

gracie is talking a lot. sentences now if you are me and can understand them. my mom said she has a lot of 'L's" in her words and it is true her tongue is all over the place.

it took six weeks of crying, but gracie happily goes to nursery now. thank you christina and laura!

catch up

2008-11-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

I am going to try to catch up so I will start with posting a few Halloween pictures. Gracie got sick an hour before the trunk or treat but I had taken her earlier in the week for these pictures. She started crying when she saw the costume. For some reason it scared her, especially the hat she hates things on her head. Then I had to bribe her with treats the whole time to get some decent pictures. You can see her eating the treats in a couple of them.

I started a new tradition this year to make pumpkin bread on Halloween. I even put my 'perfectionist mom' aside for the day and let Gracie help me make them. See the sugar pouring onto her lap? We haven't cooked together again yet. This was our pumpkin we carved. Paul came home and asked me if it was suppose to be mickey mouse. It does kind of look like him.

I thought Gracie would get totally into playing with the pumpkin guts but she wanted nothing to do with them.

Gracie picking out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch. We went with Candice, Brian and Levi. Paul even took her down the huge slide. The funnest part was seeing Paul and Brian climbing up the 2 story slide while holding the babies!

This is Gracie all ready to go to our friends house for a Halloween party. I think the holidays are so much more fun with kids! I get into celebrating them more because it is so much fun to see Gracie having fun and saying 'ohhh pumpin!'

A weekend away

2008-10-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

So we finally got brave enough to leave Gracie for a weekend. I thought it would be hard for me, but it turned out to be extremely relaxing! April came down to Vegas and stayed with her. She brought Garrett and Hayden. We stayed with my old roommate Lisa (and Erik and Kyson) in Salt Lake which was so much fun to see them. We went to the Saturday morning session of conference. When we were walking out of conference all I could say to Paul was that was wonderful! I tried to take a picture of us while we were there, but it was just poring rain the whole day. We didn't mind the rain at all, really enjoyed it actually. Paul went back to the conference center for the priesthood session and the rest of the weekend we hit all of our Utah area favorites and didn't feel rushed to get back to the babysitter. I honestly thought we were only going to be able to stay one night because Gracie would be freaking out. When we were leaving I gave her the we are going bye bye for 2 nights speech and she seamed to be registering it. April (affectionately named apple by the nieces and nephews) I am sure spoiled her because she is so good at that. Unless April lied to me then the only time Gracie cared we were gone was when she would wake up in the morning or from a nap. The most shocking was that she was actually quite independent when they went to the park.
When we came back yesterday everybody was on my parents front porch and all I could see were her little pig tails and eyes peaking over the fence wondering if it was really us. I picked her up and tried to hug her, but she didn't want me. She went over to Paul and looked at me like I was a stranger. She has been doing a funny thing lately when she gets mad at me about something then she will actually stop talking to me. How does a 1 1/2 year old know how to do that? It took about 20 minutes and a bribe to take her on a walk in the wagon to get her to come to me, but she still wouldn't hug or kiss me. It wasn't until she was going to bed 3 hours later that she decided I was the real thing and it was safe to love me again.
We missed her a ton and talked about her a lot. When we would see hyper kids in stores we would look at each other and say, "that's Gracie". We loved our week away though and can't tell April how much we appreciate it!
Since April has left, Gracie has looked at me about 15 times and said, "Apoo bye bye?". I think she definitely formed a bond with her this weekend. April bought Gracie a little dog and last night I asked her what the dog's name was and she said,"Apoo!". She also learned a new word this weekend: Ahh Dawt (what's that).
Per request I am posting April's instructions for Gracie that we left on the fridge. When I was typing these up Paul was reading it and said, "Wow, you can tell who is in charge in this house!"

Gracie’s words:
Baba – bottle (she likes these a lot – I don’t care how often you give her one)
Poo poo – sometimes she says this when she has too much pee in her diaper or when she toots (I think she has learned that one now).
Ahssshi – outside
Upee – up please
Ei – levi
Nana - grandma
Ippy – sippy cup
How - help
Bah,garble,garble,garble – blankie (this one is hard you just have to tell that she is looking around for it)
The rest of her words are understandable or just garble.

Gracie’s shows: you can ask her which one she wants and she will tell you.
Dow dow – Dora (for some reason she points to her bum when she says this, grandma always mixes it up with poo poo and changes her diaper)
Pabo – backyardagains
Windawella – Cinderella
Melmo – elmo

Gracie tricks:
Save dora until you want to take a shower, give her a bottle and a blankie and put her in the red chair.
Always tell her where you are going if you are leaving her sight. (she actually lets me go downstairs without her now if I say I will be back in a minute)

Are you cracking up yet? I am.

If you can’t tell what she wants and she is vigorously signing please just say show me and follow her.

If she doesn’t want to let you change her diaper you can bribe her and tell her she can have 2 blueberries or smarties if she lets you change it. (I try to limit smartie intake to one pack a day)

If she is super fussy give her a bottle and take her for a drive. Sometimes she is like her mom and gets a little crazy with lots of people and noise.

She takes one nap a day (1 ½ hours to the minute – kind of creepy). She usually goes down between 10:30 and 1:00. She takes a bottle and cuddles to sleep like bedtime.

She is really good at doing something when you ask her to, she will clean up her mess if you ask and humm the song while she does it, and you can get her to do almost anything if you tell her you are going bye bye – she doesn’t care where just bye bye.

Gracie Food: NO NUTS!!!!! She eats whatever you are eating or she also likes this stuff:
Breakfast – scrambled eggs or oatmeal with a blueberry in every bite (she feeds herself the eggs, but you have to feed her the oatmeal).
Lunch – 4 chicken nuggets (in freezer) or grilled cheese sandwich.
Dinner – gerber soup in her cupboard or anything you are eating.
Snacks – she is a mini version of grandpa (snack baby). If you show her a snack she will tell you if she wants it or not. There are a bunch of snacks that she likes in her cupboard.

Gracie bedtime routine:
Books (optional)
Bath in downstairs bathroom (optional)
Jamies (usually have to bribe her with the next 2 steps to get her in her pj’s)
Prayer (girl you better pray with all your might that she will sleep!)
Bottle (8 oz)
Clear the room of all other people, turn all lights off except the one over the sink, turn on baby einstein

Nursery

2008-09-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

I decided that I really need to get back into documenting Gracie's milestones. I realized that I had not recorded any of the cute, amazing and adorable things that she did this summer. Everytime I am at my parents house and they see her do something funny they say, "Have you got that on video yet?" My response, "no" with a huge tone of guilt. And so since I am failing miserably at that I will try to at least put those thing into writing.

Last Sunday was Gracie's first day in nursery. I was all prepared, extra wipes and a change of outfit for when she was going to throw up from too much crying. And as a bonus her small blankie which doesn't get to leave the house even got to come the first day. I took this picture before we left that morning.

So I walked her down the hall giving her the final talk that she had had all morning of how fun it would be to sing songs, read books, color, have snack and the bubbles of course. Everytime I gave this speach she would repeat after me all the fun things she would do, but little did she know they would be minus mommy.

Well when we went in Levi was crying already so that kind of got the ball rolling. I gave her a kiss, handed her off and I was gone. As I was walking out my cousin Eric was walking in and picked up Levi and Gracie, and for the next 2 hours sat on the floor of the nursery in his suit. Gracie held on tight the whole time to her little blankie, and never left Eric's lap. Unfortunatly Eric's calling is not in nursery and I am pretty sure that he can't skip young men's every week so I guess we have spared the wonderful nursery leaders from Gracie's throw up and passing out for another week.

On another note I REALLY enjoyed Relief Society!