thanksgiving week

for thanksgiving week curtis had the whole week off. we found out that vaughn wouldn't be home friday or saturday to go to utah with us, so on macies birthday (saturday 20th) we headed out to utah to visit vaughns brother and his family. it turned out to be good driving conditions pretty much all the way there. after we got there we found out that we brought the flu with us. i was so frusterated and i felt so bad. we passed it to about 27 people. luckily my kids were over it before thanksgiving so we were able to enjoy the eating part of it. vaughn managed to get to utah on thursday morning! so excited!!! friday we decided we needed a trip to salt lake to go to the temple. we've been to temple square several times just never inside the temple. it was soooo beautiful!!!! a whole new experience!!! we went back to the house after that and got dinner and the kids and went back to salt lake to temple square to see the lights. that was so amazing too! kids loved it, i loved it! it was quite cold, i'm just glad it wasn't windy or snowing or anything. we drove back home saturday morning just in time to miss the snow fall at home that started just as we pulled off the freeway in nampa, its the one that covered the roads and cars that day. it was a nice visit but i was glad to be home again where i could sleep more than 7 hours at a time.

curtis' pumpkin has the triangle eyes with teeth in the mouth. my pumpkin has messed up diamond eyes and aris has the open mouth

curtis and his friend joey from school. they are quite the pair. we went to joeys house to carve pumkins- curtis ariana and macie- mid october. i tried to get all 3 to sit nicely for a few minutes. didn't really work

6 months worth of an update!

wow i'm a little bit of a slacker... thats why i have facebook ;)

so since febuary...macie has gone from 3 months to 9 months. she has almost a 4th tooth coming through. thats only since last month that shes gotten almost a 4th tooth with another showing up. she went from rolling to scooting crawling and now walking. at about 8 1/2 months she took her first steps and just over the last couple days has been more consistantly taking 2-6 steps at a time. she also waves hi and bye to certain special people. and says just a few words. you have to listen closely to hear them. words like da da and bye and ba ba and ya. she climbs anything she can get on to herself. (which drives me crazy) she follows curtis and ari all over the house!

ari has finally been potty trained!!!!!! yay for ari!!! that actually happened a few months ago. right around april or beginning of may. she turned 3 and about that time admitted to what she knows like a few colors and shapes. before i had no idea what she knew. now its just getting her to learn the letters. she won't admit to remembering anything! she started riding a two wheel with training wheels bike! so now we need to get curtis a new bike cause his old one is going to ari.

curtis will be 5 in 8 days!!! he finished preschool able to read short words and count pretty well. he decided during the summer he was going to practice riding a bike without training wheels. he did pretty good at that til i wanted him to ride his bike a little more so i put the training wheels back on. he also started kindergarten last week. his first day was aug 16th. he loves it! he loves riding the bus to school too. he gets on the bus at the corner right outside the back of our house. he only has half day kindergarten but i guess that works. his teacher seems like she will do really well with him.

vaughns work is still going! still out of town.. right now they are working in chubbuck (near pocatello) they are hoping to be done there september or october. after there they have a job to do in meridian. vaughn says that one won't take very long. hopefully long enough to find a job close to home. i'm so tired of being a single parent all week. but for now they have been getting fridays off so he gets home late thursday nite! i think he got a raise in april or may. so nice!! he also just seeded the back yard so hopefully in the next week or two i will have more grass than stickers!

as for me i still stay home about half the time taking care of the kids. in may i had found out i was pregnant again. macie was 6 months but after the feelings i had about another and lots of praying i was excited for it. by july things were feeling different. i ended up losing it in july. 8 weeks along. that came just after praying that if i was going to lose it just to let it go so i wouldn't have more time to get attached to it and make it harder emotionally for me. i felt like it wasn't going to stay and my body was working on getting rid of it. it was sad a couple days after it happened but for what really happened i'm ok with it. i'm sad that i don't get to know who it was that i lost but feel like there was a good reason for it. vaughn says we are done with having kids. i tell him we will wait and see over the next year or two. anyway i have lots of pictures to put up eventually when i get them off my phone and to the computer. so keep an eye out for those!

new family pic and update

macie is 3 months old now and i realized i didnt have any family pictures that had her in them too so i asked my mom to get a picture for us. macie is cooing a lot now and she smiles at almost everyone. we just put her in her own room too. shes doing pretty well with the change on that. she just started liking a few toys too. macie can almost roll from her back to her stomach. i have to hold her hip so she can get over. shes starting to hold her own bottle if given the chance.

curtis is starting to read! its amazing! he can sound out several words. if they have an "e" on the end he doesn't understand those yet but thats coming soon. school has been really good for him. when he starts kindergarten in august he will be close to being ahead i think.

ari still has no motivation to use the potty. i have always been told training girls was easier than potty training boys. too bad they all didn't know ari. maybe one of these days before macie potty trains ari will too.

vaughn is still working out of town in shelly by idaho falls. its sad that hes always gone but one of these days he might be working locally again.

macies blessing day

dec 27th was macies blessing day. i wanted to do it close to christmas in hopes that family would be in town and able to be there for it. we did end up with a pretty good turn out. about 25 people at the church and closer to 20 for dinner. i didn't think we'd have enough food but it turned out ok. and macie was a very calm baby all day for it. slept threw her blessing and most of sacrament. tolerated being passed around very well.

christmas morning

christmas morning. the picture of the other 4 of us looking at the camera is the perfect picture of macie.