Hehe, a new background:)

I don't know why, but this background just makes me really happy. I liked the stripes, but this is classy! Thanks again to Natasha whose pointed me toward a lot of great free digital scrapbooking websites. I'm going to put a few of them on my links section.

In other news, we are doing really well, had a great weekend just hanging out with family. Sarah and Nate came up on Saturday afternoon after a semi-successful primary activity. Sarah and I took the girls to Target, woohoo, and Kid-to-Kid, and then came back and put them all to bed. Laura of course didn't sleep, bah, but the rest of the girls were pooped. Then a not so small miracle happened, we all went on a date. Without the kids! I called our two favorite babysitters who happen to be really good friends, and they stayed with all 4 girls while the adults went to Famous Dave's and had the XXL rack of ribs:) I love ribs. I'm not so into steaks or 3 pound hamburgers, but I love ribs. Yum, it was delicious. And it was really nice to have a couple of hours full conversation with two other couples (Nate's brother and his very nice date came too). I'm not saying that I never get adult interaction, I actually feel very blessed in that regard, but a real double date? Very cool. Thanks Sarah for coming and letting us go! Hope everyone had a good weekend too.

p.s. does anyone have Kristy's (Bates) phone number? Is she in Utah now?

WooHoo! Stripes!

Thank you Thank you Thank you Katie for letting me know about that wonderful person's blog about personalizing blogs. What a lifesaver! I highly recommend it to anyone else wanting to tweak their personal space. http://sjhblogdesign.blogspot.com/ Also thank you Ellen for trying to talk me through it, keep checking back, this is just the beginning:)

Rather Frustrated

So I've been trying to do all sorts of neat things to my blog. Unfortunately none of them have worked. My main problem is that my Mom got me photoshop to go with my new computer for christmas, but the program is still in ID, and here I am in UT with no photo software:( So in order to try my hand at digital scrapbooking I've been downloading and trying out various free software that is offered on the web, and I have come to the conclusion that they all stink. Nothing is working. Bah. I'm just annoyed and wanted to vent. I should really just be patient because I will be getting this great software in about a week, but I really want to customize my blog and make it cool. Instead I've got boring blue and blah fonts. Oh well. If anyone has any advice let me know.

In a different vein my house is fairly clean, the girls are napping quietly, the laundry's going, dinner's in the crockpot, I even exercised this morning, and I have nothing I'm supposed to be doing, except that as soon as I wrote that I just thought of at least 5 things I should be doing. Rats, so now I'm just going to pretend I'm having a carefree moment:) But the snow is falling softly outside and it just feels like a nice wintry day. So despite boring backgrounds I'm happy. I hope you are too.

Here are some great pictures from Saturday. We have tons of snow this year and Brent and the girls took advantage of how wet it was. Brent immediately started to roll the two biggest snowballs he could to put on top of each other, the only problem was that they got so big he couldn't lift them. Hence there are two snowmen:) Which was fine because Laura wanted to have a Mommy and a little girl one anyway. Laura mostly made snow angels, and Eden kept taking off her gloves to pick up leaves being uncovered. The snowpeople have itty bitty baby carrot noses and bark smiles, but that doesn't seem to bother them any, a lesson for us all. I had a great time sitting on our porch with a blanket and happily snapping pictures. What a great snowy Saturday afternoon.

A new phase for Laura belle

It seems like the last few weeks Laura has moved into a new stage. She's much more independent, in a very good way! She'll play for a lot longer by herself or with Eden, although she still doesn't like to be too far away from me, and she is very good at sharing with her little sister. As an example we stayed New Year's Eve at Lanna and Scott's house. We took her princess night light to help her sleep, but unfortunately it did not make its way back to home with us. Not so good. But we went and got a new one the next day as a sub until we could get her favored one back, but she surprised me when she quickly offered her old one for Eden so she wouldn't be scared either!

Laura's drawings are also becoming much more recognizable:) The 'person' she's drawing is me. Our conversation went something like this, "Mom, this is you! See your big mouth!" "Oh really do I have a big mouth?" "Yea, sometimes you do." Priceless. If you look closely you can also see my triangle nose, eyebrow and chin details. I know it's not amazing, but for me it's truly amazing.

Finally, Laura and I started something yesterday, inspired by the Stafford's Sea World jar, to help her learn about money and work. Laura decided she wanted a new dress for her doll. It being just a few weeks since Christmas I wasn't about to just go out and buy her something else. So she's earning it. We have two jars, one with some coins in it (honestly about 50) and another one for her to put them into. When she does something to 'earn' a penny she gets to take one from the clear jar and put into her decorated hot chocolate container(pictured above). Previous to this Laura has resisted all charts, rewards, stickers etc. to help her be a helper and sharer. But with a little preconditioning from Grandma's m&m machine she loves her penny jar. It's been two days and she's made her bed, picked up toys repeatedly, shared with her sister, helped me unload the dishwasher, gotten her jammies on quickly, and generally been a great little girl. We'll see how long it lasts, but for now I'm excited to go buy her her dolly dress. She's definitely earning it!

I'm excited for this new stage, especially since next week she'll be graduating into the Sunbeam class:) Yea for my little girl who is getting so big!

Cowgirl Up!

Those darn ears

The last few months Eden has been in to the doctor a few times because of ear infections. Despite oral antibseems they have persisted, especially in her left ear. So yesterday and today she had to have injectionable antibiodics in both legs. Sometimes known as peanut butter shots:( Needless to say she has been quite miserable. For the first few hours she wouldn't even stand up and has just wanted to be held. She had a very hard time sleeping yesterday so when she finally did drop off I snuck into her room with the camera. What a sweet heart. I just learned from Rosemary that her propensity to have a propensity for ear infections is another thing she inherited from herDaddy. Apparently Brent's first ear infection came when he was only 2 weeks old, and he subsequently had tubes. Eden is also scheduled for an appointment with an ENT to evaluate whether she'll need them as well. But in the meantime we're just fighting those nasty ear aches off.

Snow Angles

While we were in Idaho for Christmas we taught Laura how to make snow angels, she actually makes a really cute little imprint despite her not-quite-coordinated flailing. We were in grandma Rosey's front yard and Lesha managed to catch us all, except for Eden who had already gone inside. Thanks Le, I hope you don't mind me lifting this off your blog, but it was too great of a photo!