Happy Birthday Abbi

Abbi turned 7 yesterday on January 15th. This cute girl has a heart of gold. She's stubborn, but really tries to choose the right, and does. Abbi loves to learn. She is an excellent reader, and is also great with math and science. Everything about school excites her right now. She loves dogs and horses, and wants both as pets! She has wanted to be a veterinarian for the last 3 years, and is still sticking to it. She wants to be a professional soccer player, a drummer, wants to learn to play the piano, the flute, and the guitar...whew. There is of course so much a mom could say about her little girl, but we love our Abba Zambizi. She is a dedicated friend, and great example and help as a sister, and we love and adore her!!!

Late Night Pajama Party

Abbi had a late night birthday party on Thursday, and she invited 14 cute little girls. We had a blast! The played a killer game of hide and seek, ghost in the graveyard, a new game we discovered called sleeping beauty, there was a pillow fight, we ate cake and ice cream and cookie sandwiches, opened presents, watched a movie, ate popcorn, and then played more games. It was a super fun time, and after everyone left and all the cleaning up was taken care of we all fell asleep in about 2 minutes, and got a great night sleep!!

Christmas 2009

We open a present on christmas eve. They of course get jammies. This was the best picture I could get sadly. Brynn didn't even need to open it, she just loved holding her present.
Wow! She even has straight hair...maybe next year I will remember NOT to put my kids in pigtails on Christmas eve! (I'm sure she will look back and laugh someday though.)
Down and straight. That's one in three.
Reese will be curly no matter what, so it's just extra crazy and fun.
Abbi and Reese bought this baby for Brynn because they knew she would love it. They were right, she adores All of her babies in her huge collection, and she was very excited to welcome a new friend.

Andy takes the girls on dates sometimes. This one was Abbi's idea. She received tickets to a flash game at school and asked her daddy if he wanted to go out with her. I think it's funny that mommy wasn't even considered... nope, just daddy dates.

I little nostril flare never hurt anyone.

Abbi went to a friend's party a while back, and they had some professionals come and do... well, this! I think it is so beautiful!

We had a really fun time going to our friend's Christmas party the other night. There was good food, cool friends, and a funny white elephant gift exchange.
That Bod spray is from last year, and it was so potent it had to be bagged!
Yeah, that's Viagra.

Jazz Game

On Thursday we went to the Jazz game with our friends T.J. and Lynsey. We had a great time going to dinner and watching the game, that they won! It was really fun going out, especially since we rarely get to go out with these friends! This was the closest Andy would get to any sort of smile, or straight face.

Last week we had our first snow storm. This is Brynn's first time really playing in it also. Last year she didn't care. They were having a fun time until Brynn's glove fell off, for the 15th time, and Reese hid it in the snow, but Brynn kept playing until her hands were so red and frozen she started screaming.

Abbi always wanting to mother the other two was busy scolding Reese for hiding Brynn's glove, and not letting her get a word in to explain, which really makes Reese mad, SO she started to scream and cry. That, is when it's time to head inside!!

So later I thought I would be a nice mom and let them make yummy sugar cookies. They were pretty excited to roll out the dough, cut out the cookies, frost, and decorate them All by themselves. This was a good team builder after the crazy meltdowns earlier.

I have about 20 pictures of Brynn eating frosting, but this one seemed to capture how serious she was about devouring her frosting.

Abbi is always very careful and considerate with projects. She likes to do her best.

Reese likes to see how much frosting and sprinkles she can possible pour on one cookie, and then she goes in for the kill.

That bowl was half full!

Yummy!

One of my Favorites!

I am Thankful for so many things, and food it right there at the top! I love Thanksgiving! It makes me giddy to think about, I think it's fun to help peel 30 pounds of potatoes, and then help to mash all 30 pounds the next day. I love that it takes hours, sometimes days to prepare this feast, and then in 30 minutes everyone is stuffed to the brim, and then it's leftovers...yummy! I love dessert, period! I am grateful for super cool friends who invite us into their home to enjoy the day with them. I am grateful for my family spread all over the world, even though I don't get to see them on holidays. Right now, I am just grateful.
These are All potatoes
Karen's first Turkey! A total success. Don't believe the package for cooking though. This one said 4-5 hours. This bad boy took 7 hours! Good thing she planned for that though.
Check this awesome picture out. I look like I'm sleeping, and nice light...Better luck next time.
Jade, Malia, and Abbsie
My camera has issues. A wicked game of Chess...can't you tell?
There were 35 people in all. We had enough food for about 80 though, no joke.

Monday Night Success Story

So lately we have tried to bring the scriptures to life for our girls, and they are just eating it up! We haven't always been super consistent with Family Home Evening, but this past month has been so much fun, and the girls look forward to Monday nights. We have been in Nephi and this past week we are recreated the discovery of the Liahona...Abbi is holding it between her legs. Reese is being Laman in the picture. It was pretty funny, we were explaining what murmuring was, and it was ALL to easy for them to pick up on that one! Then there is cute Brynny, just happy to be running around in her attire, being apart of everything.

Oh, the girls favorite part of acting out the stories is when we walk around the house, and then one of the girls will pause and say, "Okay Daddy, what do I say now?" And whatever he asks the girls to say they will act it out with all that they have got! Good times I tell ya!

Not Quite, but Close Enough

Reese turns 4 on Tuesday the 24th, but she had her party today and we had a blast. There is nothing quite like 9 little girls (well 13 with the older kids and the babies) squealing and laughing together. I love it! I love birthdays, and I love birthday parties!! Reese has been excited about her party for a week, and today she could hardly sit still because she was so anxious for her friends to come over. The girls played hot potato, musical chairs/(butterflies), a funny game of eating gummy worms with their hands behind their backs (because butterflies can't use their hands), and making candy necklaces. Then there is always cake, ice cream, and presents. There was no breathing room when it was time to open presents. No one wanted to miss a thing so they gradually crowded in more and more until all of their heads were touching to watch Reese open her presents. It was hilarious!

I asked Reese what she wanted for her birthday, and she told me candy, gum, and lip gloss. Her three favorite things in the world, lip gloss winning hands down. She wakes up in the morning and has a lip gloss in her hands within minutes most mornings. Reese is a riot most of the time, she has a great imagination, loves to sing, do ANYTHING with Abbi, and that curly hair bobbing around makes me smile. She is one cute little girl and I am so happy she gets to be apart of our family!

New Moon Girls Night

This picture is supposed to be at the bottom, but oh well. I'm really not rockin' pajama pants. We just didn't want to give up our blankets from being outside.

So this is what we get for buying tickets 2 months in advance and getting in line 6 1/2 hours early, sitting outside bundled up in blankets.

It actually wasn't bad at all. I had so much fun on Thursday! Andy was great and watched the girls and I peaced out at 1:00 for a girls day of shopping, going to lunch, waiting in lines, and seeing not only New Moon, but Twilight also. Score for us to have a girl in our group who knows the management at the theater!

We were so close to the doors, but not quite close enough to get us inside.

Halloween

I love Halloween. It's a great holiday because the girls get to have at least 3, sometimes 4 opportunities to get dressed up and get tons and tons of candy. Both Abbi and Reese had school parties, there was the ward trunk or treat,

( My camera struggles with the indoors at night, so sad),

and of coarse Halloween itself. Oh, and the gym.

Brynn was old enough to care this year, and she was so excited to run around with her sisters to trick-or-treat yelling "treat", and "thank"! Abbi couldn't decide whether to be a good witch or a bad one, so she settled for both. She was a bad witch, with the green face and all that fun stuff for school...no pictures of that of coarse. But then being a good witch won out for her because she was able to wear make-up, and the girl loves her some make-up. Reese was set on being a dog again, like last year, and I was completely fine with that. She was dang cute! Brynn will probably want to be that dog someday also. I had two costumes for Brynn, and I thought she made a funny rat, but I LOVED making her a princess, so that won in the end.

I thought she had some tooth problems for a second, but then realized I just caught an awesome shot of half eaten donut.

Getting her to stand still was, well impossible. So I got an action shot instead.

Reese loved getting her face painted, and Abby Judd did a really good job.

Reese!

These last two are my favorite pictures of the girls. Brynn just started cheesing it when I take pictures of her, funny girl.