Earrings

I asked the girls what they wanted for Easter a few weeks ago and was shocked to hear the answer. Both of them excitedly wanted earrings. So, after much talk about it, we decided to take the girls to the mall and get their ears pierced, so that the Easter Bunny can bring them earrings.
DD#1 had here ears pierced before. When she had her tonsils out, we had to take her studs out and DH lost them. We put other earrings in after the surgery, but her ears got really infected. We let them grow back in and had to get them done again. They both did good. DD#2 went first and had a great time holding onto the bear and having the girls draw dots on her ears. You should have seen the look on her face after it was all over and she realized that it really did hurt. She cried for about 5 minutes (she holds onto things longer than DD#1). DD#1 went next and jumped right up into the seat and was extremely excited. We had warned her, but it happened and she was in tears. She only cried for about 2 minutes. They are in love with them today and are doing really well not bothering them. We think they look great.




A BIG shout out to my mom. It is her birthday today. I love her so much and I am so grateful that I can call her MOM. Happy Birthday MOM!!

And the Winners are....

I put all the comments into a random number generator and the winners are...... I bet the suspense is killing you.....

#2 Kristen W.
#1 Annie of Bluegables

Congratulations to the two of you. Please email me your pictures and I will get your two page layout done.

Pay it Forward!!

Here's how it works! I'm having a GIVEAWAY! You have a chance to receive a two page layout digital scrapbook page (you just send me your pictures)from me at some point in time during the next year. How fun is that??! If you'd like to be a part of this awesome idea, you need to leave a comment ON THIS POST no later than Friday, February 27, 2009. If you've never commented on my blog before, don't feel sheepish--this is a fabulous time to comment! I will draw three names randomly from the comments left to see who will receive the gifts. My "Pay It Forward" winners will be posted on my blog as well as notified via e-mail, word-of-mouth, blog comment, --whatever works best for me at the time! Here's the catch: if you choose to participate, you need to post some sort of "Pay It Forward" idea on your blog as well. If you don't have a blog, this can easily be done on Facebook, MySpace, etc. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant; just a simple gift from the heart (it can be purchased, homemade, a simple act of kind service...ANYTHING!).

A Giveaway!!

My cousin's BFF is having a great giveaway. Hurry, Hurry over to here and make a comment. I am excited to see what she has. I know it must be great if my cousin says it is. Hurray, Hurry, I am #2. There still is hope.


Here are the rules:
The first 5 people to respond to this post will get something homemade by me! I know what you are thinking....."do I really want something made by Amanda???" But you might just be surprised what I can do!Like any good giveaway, there are restrictions and limitations, as follows:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. I get to choose, you just get to receive!

2. What I create will be made just for you......one of a kind!

3. It will be done this year.....hopefully sooner, rather than later.

4. The gift may or may not be edible, wearable or recyclable!

5. In order to be a winner, you must repost this on your blog.

The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me you did will receive one FABULOUS homemade gift by me! After I choose the winners, you can send me your mailing address! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you receive it!


****In other news, my 2 1/2 yr old and 9 month old are on the floor having their first fight. I am watching and as DS is crying and looking at me so sad, all I can say is, "Ohh, you're first fight. How sweet!" You gotta love firsts!! It definitely won't be the last and I am sure this will be the last time I use sweet and fight when referring to it again. :)

9 Months Old

I love 9 and 10 months and DS is proving why. He is so sweet and loving. He has such a cute personality and we are loving everyday with him. He loves to play and watch his sisters. He loves to say "da, da da" and "hi dad". He loves to whine "ma, ma, ma". We love him to bits.

Picture Princess Contest

Oh my!! I found this contest going on and had to investigate it for myself. What a contest!! I visited their site and loved what I saw. The winner will receive a new spring wardrobe and a photo shoot. They will be featured on their website. Isn't that great??

Princess #1







This princess came with a princess personality. Her favorite past time is to either be dressed up or painting her nails. She has always loved being a "girlie girl". She has one disadvantage. Her mother grew up a tomboy and thinks that dresses should only be worn on Sundays. This princess thinks otherwise and would be in a dress everyday if her mother would allow. She is in need of some cute, fabulous clothes to show how truly lovely she is.

She would be a doll in this dress.

Picture Princess Contest

I read about this contest and knew that I wanted to enter my two princesses into it.

Princess #2







This princess would also be a great picture princess. She loves all princesses with a special liking of the Disney Princesses. Today she is Giselle, yesterday she was Mulan. More times than none, she is "Cinderelly". This princess is always asking what "princess hairdo" she is going to have for the day. She is in need of a new spring outfit to go with her princess hair. She is full of love and personality.

This princess would be a cutie in this dress.

Are you ready for some PHOTOS??

Hooray, Hooray, Hooray!!! I have finally got my pictures off of my camera. When we wiped out the computer, we had to reinstall things. One of the things was our printer. Well, it now will get my photos off of my cards. I am so excited. So, here we go. Sit back and relax, because this will be long.

Here is DD#1 all ready for her first day of preschool. She was so excited. I wish we still had that same excitement today. Mornings can be quite painful with the fits she throws when she is tired and doesn't want to go to school.

Here are the monthly pictures of DS#1. He is 4 months old in these pictures. I will keep them in chronological order.

5 months old

Boo at the Zoo. We took the kids to Hogle Zoo for the annual Boo and the Zoo. It was CHAOS!!! We thought it would be really cute to have the kids dress up as zoo animals and have my nephew be the zoo keeper. We ordered Renew the Zoo signs from the zoo and thought it would be so cute for them to walk around with them. It didn't last long and they were handing out the yard signs at the zoo, so it was nothing special that the kids were carrying them. It was a great idea though!

Halloween...The past two years, my sister and I have tried to keep a theme going with our kids. This year we chose Knights and Ladies/Princesses. It was hard to convince a 4 and 2 year old to want to be ladies, but they were all over the idea of being princesses.

6 Months Old

7 Months Old

We went to Temple Square for the lights. It was fun. They have really cut back this year.(like everyone else). DH went up to one of the volunteers and asked if they were going to have some ceremony where they turn on all the lights. He said that was it. It was still beautiful though.

Making cookies for Santa....We had a lot of fun making cookies for Santa Clause. There was a lot of sugar and candies involved. Santa loved his cookies, but left a few bites of one. There was just too many.
DD#2 had an accident a few days before. She came running in DS's room and trip on a bag of diapers and fell into our wooden bus. We put some neosporin on it and a bandaid and had her go to bed. An hour later, DD1 knocked on the door and said that there was blood running down her head.
We took her to the Instacare because we didn't want to pay the ER copay. Luckily we made it with 10 minutes to spare. They decided to glue it shut with dermabond. I was so glad to not have to hold her down for stitches. She was so brave and didn't cry at all. It did really well and there is only a tiny scar left on her forehead. We got to the instacare at 9:45 and walked out at 10:15. They got us in and out in a flash. I think we will go 15 minutes before closing everytime.

Christmas Eve Presents....Pajamas!! We opened our Christmas Eve presents and were very shocked to find that we got PJ's. The girls loved their princess ones. DS was happy to have his footsies. Nice and warm.

Christmas...Christmas was so much fun this year. The excitement and magic of the day was so fun. The girls are finally to an age where they understand the story of Jesus and also get excited for Santa Clause. They were very cute with all of their presents. From Santa they got DD1 a baby, DD2 a puppy that swims in the water and DS1 a jumperoo. It was a lot of fun. We felt so blessed to have a nice Christmas.

8 months old... Here is our handsome boy's recent montly photos. He is getting so big. He is now 20 lbs. He is rolling all around, but not crawling yet. All my kids moved slow. I think it is coming though. He has his two bottom teeth and acts like more are coming. We still love him to bits and pieces.

Well...there you have it. Our last 5 months of life. Hopefully I will stay up to date and not have to spend an hour on catching up. Hope life is good for all those reading.

We are still alive!!

Okay, so I could post all the same excuses that I have in the past. But the truth, well.... it's still the same. We are busy and our crummy computer is still acting up. My awesome brother in law wiped it out and reloaded it. We are slowly adding back all the programs. I, sadly, forgot to copy our movies over to our external hard drive and lost a lot of my kids over the last 2 years. I haven't asked if they are lost because I don't want to know the truth.

We had a crazy, wonderful, quick, exciting holiday season. When I find my cord, I will post a ton of pictures. Until then, here is one of our family. I am in the process of getting family photos done, but want to take a break for a bit to breathe. Maybe we will send out Easter cards instead of Christmas card.

By the way, if you don't know about Google Reader, write a comment and I will give you the directions. That way you don't have to be dissapointed when I haven't updated in 2+ months. You will all be surprised when it pops up on Google Reader and be happy for the update. Until the next time (hopefully not another 2 months) have a great time!!

Six Months Old!!

Can you believe that this handsome little devil has been with us for a 1/2 a year?? Time has gone so quickly. We had another Dr.'s appointment. It was a mess!! Not because of the shots, but because they said I didn't have the appointment that I had set over 2 months ago. They got a new computer system and said that DS wasn't scheduled today. Yes, I felt like I wanted to cause pain to my son and listen to him whine for the next two days for the fun of it!! Mothers dread these days and count down to when you have to take them in. I know that it was today at 3:30. So I saw the PA, who I am not so fond of, because I was already there and had mentally prepared myself for the dreaded shots!!

The nurse came in and said that they were sorry, but they were out of some of the vaccinations and wouldn't have them in until Wednesday. So, I still have to go back. It will be in 4 weeks because he got a flu shot and will need another one then.

He is doing well. He is still our big boy, but has come down percentage wise in the weight department. We still love him to bits, even though the next 2 days will be long.

Here are his stats:

Weight: 17 lbs. 13 ozs. (55%)

Height: 27 1/2 inches (85%)

Head 17 1/2 inches (65%)

We love you little man!!

It Never Hurts to Ask

Some may not know but I hate to talk on the phone. Okay, I hate to talk to people about bills and things like that. I am a chicken and I hate contention. I make DH make the nasty phone calls to companies that cause us misery by charging us wrong. Anyway, to my title. I found a deal on pinchingyourpennies.com that was awesome. It was a $30.00 code for a photo book. A 20 page photo book cost was $29.95, so you are getting the book for free. You just had to pay for shipping. I jumped on it and scrapped all the pictures from the photo shoot. I like to make these books because they are great to take to Church for the kids to look at. I also thought it might be a nice gift for DH for Christmas. Shhh...I don't know if he reads this. I spent all weekend working on it and got it done on Monday at 6 pm. The code expired that night and I wanted to get it ordered before that happened. I put it in my cart and tried to apply the code. Nothing!! What??? I tried it again...Nothing!! I was sick inside. I had spent a lot of time on this book and I didn't want to pay $40.00 with a code.
I went back on to pinching your pennies and others were having a hard time as well. I tried everything that they suggested. After an hour I gave up. I was okay with it, but very dissapointed.
The next morning I checked on PYP again and people said that the code began working that night right before midnight. Ugghhh....I could have got back on and had it work.
Well....I heard that this company had good customer service, so I gave it a try. I am not one to even question or send something that might explain things. I usually just blow it off because (remember) I am a chicken when it comes to things like this.
Well, I sent an email and guess what??? They sent me a code to use. Hooray!!! I get to get the book printed.
So lesson learned...It never hurts to ask!! Just do as I and put your DH's name on the email!!

THANK YOU MYCANVAS.COM!! I am very pleased that you are helping me out.

School Photo!!

We got DD#1 Preschool photos back the other day. They turned out pretty cute. I can't believe that she is in Preschool already. I remember being put on bedrest and thought the 11 weeks would never go by. And now look...she is 4 1/2. I had to get paperwork from my secretary yesterday so that I can apply for our open enrollment at my school. She looked at me shocked and said, "You need one? She really is that old?" I couldn't believe it myself. She was a year old when I transferred to my current school. Now I will be registering her for Kindergarten in the spring. For now we need to decide if she will go all day or just half day. Thank heavens we have until the spring to decide.

More Photos!!

Okay, so I was sick about leaving DS's outfit home. It bothered me all night. Saturday morning (the next morning) I asked DH if he would mind going back down to Provo and getting more photos done. He was okay with it. Now, to ask my sister in law. She was game!! This time we MADE SURE we had DS's outfit. I am really glad that we did it. I have printed some of them and they are hanging on my wall as you read!! Thanks again Sarah.

Photo Shoot!!

This is only the tip of the iceberg. We have so many to choose from!!
**We forgot DS's outfit. DH asked if I wanted to have him change him into it when we were getting ready to go and I told him we would wait. Well, I grabbed the dinner and he grabbed DS and no one grabbed the diaper bag (with his outfit in it). I was sick about it. I am hoping to do another session with my sister in law and get some of him in a more matching outfit. I guess we can be glad that his outfit at least had some brown in it. :)

http://www.slide.com/r/rp3PK1QZ2z_ohmD-OE5GAsbZbPmcUmkn?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

It won't embed my slideshow. So if you would like to see it you will have to copy the above address and paste it in the address bar. Enjoy!!

My Sweet Children!!!

It is late, but I wanted to hurry and get some of the pictures of the kids that my sweet sister in law took today. She took 527 photos. I have a lot of great photos to chose from. I will make a slide show of some of my favorites, but until then enjoy these few that I love!!

Don't you think she did a GREAT job?? She is just getting into photography. These pictures look like she is a seasoned photographer. We had so much fun and I have a lot of scrapping to do with all these photos!! Thanks a ton, Sarah!!