Instagram Revisted: October

10/01/2013 - My bro has skills! He's whipping these out like they're...
something that's really easy to whip out. You rock Preston! #ilovemybro

10/01/2013 - Lydia's favorite place to be lately = cuddling around my belly, talking to
Baby James, and cracking up when she feels him move. #33weeks #ilovemykids

10/02/2013 - Bye bye hair!

10/02/2013 - Hello swoopy bangs!

10/03/2013 - My part of this little project begins! #ilovemycalling #iloveprimary #abinadi

10/03/2013 - Love is... a man who takes out the garbage for you even when
he is in his Sunday best. #ilovemyhubby

10/05/2013 - Cracking down on potty training today. Lydia is doing awesome!
Mary, not so much. We'll take what we can get. #parenthood

10/05/2013 - After Uchtdorf's talk Robert mentioned how much he liked the
"doubt your doubts" quote. I said "Me too. It's one of those that will be all
over Instagram and Facebook." Sure enough, between sessions my IG had 3 posts
of it in a row. Then I saw the post on the right and could not stop laughing!
#sotrue #mormonsarefunny #ilovebeingamormon

10/07/2013 - Traced, colored, laminated, cut, and done! Thank you
Preston and @sharon_wilcken !! Couldn't have done it without you!
#bookofmormonstories #ilovemycalling #ilovemybro

10/10/2013 - Yay for being off the hook! #woohoo

10/11/2013 - Date night with the hubby. Roasting hot dogs, mallows,
and starburst on the beach while watching the sunset and a pod of dolphins
playing nearby. Life is good! #ilovemyhubby #datenight #santacruzlife

10/12/2013 - Here's hoping the next 100000 miles in this van are
as hassle free as the first. #icandreamcanti

10/15/2013 - Written to-do lists simplify life! #justbreathe

10/16/2013 - Might be pulling an all-nighter tonight finishing some projects.
My sweet hubby literally leaves the light on for me when I don't come to
bed with him. #ilovemyhubby

10/17/2013 - Robert's a man of his word. He "snuck" Sleep on to my to do list
3 times, printed out the new one, and taped it over the old one without me
noticing. #heiscute #ilovemyhubby

10/18/2013 - Putt putt double date. Fun times! #iwon

10/19/2013 - Happiness is... 2 dates with the hubby in one weekend. Great show @gillybilly4!!

10/23/2013 - Heaven in a bowl! #acaibowl #cafebrazil #bliss

10/23/2013 - Say hullo to my new little friend. Available space in our
living room just got that much smaller, but long term meal planning
just got SOOOO much simpler. (Not to mention storage space for liquid
gold when the time comes) #itsthelittlethingsinlife

10/27/2013 - Bassinet is setup! One more check off the to-do list #jamesprep #itsgettingclose

10/28/2013 - Just hanging out and eating suckers. #thisisthelife #sisters #ilovemykids

Ward Trunk or Treat and Halloween

Ward Trunk or Treat

We decided for Halloween this year our family would be Monsters Inc characters. Robert and the girls were easy. I was able to find costumes for Robert (Sulley) and Lydia (Mike Wazowski) on ebay for cheap. Mary (Boo) we just had to find a pink shirt and purple pants that would work, and spray her hair black. My costume was a bit more tricky. I chose to be Roz. Robert the night of the ward trunk or treat even said that he wasn't sure how exactly I was going to pull it off. But pull it off I did ;)

The trickiest part was my hair. But with some gel and ALOT of hairspray and backcombing, I got all my bangs to stand up in a straight point.

The rest wasn't too tricky. Just some makeup and colored hairspray, yellow skirt and shirt, and red cardigan, finished off with some costume glasses, and voila!

And here's the whole crew together :) It was such a fun night!!

Mary's hair was perfectly jet black, but throughout the night the black
rubbed off more and more. We got the point across though ;)

I had been stressing that my bangs would fall apart sometime in the night. Because of that, I may have overachieved a bit.

Halloween Night

With busy schedules we never had time to carve our pumpkins until the day of Halloween right before we went trick or treating. Even then, we had to do them without Robert because he was teaching a class. But we still had fun.

I drew a few different faces and Mary chose the silly one for her pumpkin, but when I asked Lydia what face she wanted on her pumpkin, she handed me this craft that she made at preschool earlier that day.

I did my best, and here's our finished products.

I didn't want to deal with spraying Mary with the color hairspray again for her Boo costume, so I let the girls Trick or Treat in whatever they wanted from the costumes we had. Lydia chose her Red Riding Hood costume from last year, and Mary wanted Lydia's Mike Wazowski costume.

We spent an hour or 2 going around our whole complex with several of our great friends, until Lydia said, "Mom, can we please go home now?" We took that as our sign that it was time to be done and went home. Mary, who had been like a little Energizer Bunny all night, hit a wall when we got home and told her she couldn't sleep with her candy. The following meltdown ensued. This is about 15 minutes into the meltdown, and it continued for another half hour. Poor tired baby! 

Overall, Halloween was a great success, and we still have WAY too much candy hanging around the house!

Until next year!

Dentist and Pumpkin Patch Adventures

Our pediatrician had been getting after us for a while to take our girls for their first dental check up. We finally bit the bullet and took both girls in. The office we took them to was AMAZING. The staff was awesome, and the dentist was great, and they had all of the bells and whistles to make our girls think it was the funnest thing ever. Aside from it costing more than double what I had guesstimated it would, it was a perfect experience.

After the dentist, we headed to a pumpkin patch for the girls to pick out their pumpkins for Halloween. Lydia has been looking forward to this since last Halloween :)

Each of the girls with the pumpkins they picked. I've given up on trying to get a perfect picture with both of them looking. Too much wasted time. My rule of thumb now is to take a handful and make the best of the pictures you got :) So here's the best 2, one with Mary looking and one with Lydia looking.

Fun times!

Primary Chorister Projects: Prophet Posters

Lydia is always a very willing model of the posters. ;)

Every General Conference I try to have a project to work on while I'm listening to all of the sessions. I get more out of it that way because I stay more alert. Well, since I've been serving as Primary Chorister, the projects have been visual aids. The following are 3 General Conferences in the making. October 2012 conference I printed out the pictures of these posters for each verse of "Follow the Prophet" from this blog, projected/traced them onto poster board, colored, and laminated them as well as making additional words/pictures for a handful of the verses. For the April 2013 conference I made, laminated, and cut out all of the extra words and pictures to put on each poster for all of the rest of the verses. This past conference, with the help of my AMAZING little bro Preston who did the drawings, I added 5 verses of "Book of Mormon Stories" to the collection. I love how they all turned out, and the Primary kids love when I use these any time we are singing/learning about a prophet, and my girls love when we pull them out for family home evening. I realize that it is pretty much inevitable that through the years these things will most likely get trashed. So I wanted to get good pictures of them while they still look somewhat new. So without further adieu, here are pictures of each poster with and without the additional words/pictures.

Follow the Prophet:

 

 

 

(Forgot to take one without the extra words and
pictures on it. Maybe I'll get around to it someday)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book of Mormon Stories Verses 3-7:

 

  

 

 

 

BEST.CALLING.EVER!!!