5 Year Annivesary!!

Yesterday was our 5 year wedding anniversary. I cannot believe it has been this long. Though sometimes it feels longer. I look at these pictures and now I think they were so young, what were they thinking? But obviously we made the right decision, though we didn't really know what we were doing at the time. But we have learned and grown together and have come a very long way and I wouldn't change a thing. We have been so blessed in our marriage and I am so happy to have a such a wonderful husband who puts up with me and still loves me!! Man did I get lucky. And to think I found him at a fraternity house. I love you babe and here's to many more years of wedded bliss!!

I got some more cute pictures of Mr. Stinky from a women in our ward. Just thought I would share with everyone!! (PS Jack looks cute too..hehe)

My birthday/Family Pictures

So I know my birthday was like a month ago, but I guess I am little behind on the blogging. So my birthday was on the 8th of November, which was a Sunday so we celebrated on Sat. That morning I went and got my eyebrows done and then Ryan took us to chick fila for lunch and we ate it at the park. He surprised me with my present. He hid it in the stroller so when I opened it to put Jack in it was inside and guess what it was?? A new camera!! He is such a great husband. He got me a great new digital camera. Only one problem...I miss placed the box that had the USB cord in it to upload my photos to the computer...and the other day Ryan says he thinks he may have thrown the box away when he was cleaning out the car while I was gone...ahhh Ryan. So who knows when I will be uploading all my photos I have been taking with my new amazing camera. Good thing I have a big memory card in it!! But I do have pictures from the family pictures we had taken at JC Pennies. I could sit here and write a book about all the complaints I had about our experience, but instead all I will say is I don't recomend going to JC Pennies for pictures. These are the most decent pictures we got. Come on like it's that hard to get good pictures of my kids? They are so cute and Jack smiles at everyone all the time. Anyway it will do for my Christmas Cards this year! But I think we will look back and laugh....look at the shirt Ryan is wearing....it looks like a redneck Christmas. He bought it that day while I was getting my hair done at Target. I laughed when he showed it to me. I also went to MD for a visit just Jack and I recently, but once I can get my photos off the camera from the trip I will blog about it! Oh and he also got me some of those super yummy cup cakes from cookie addiction!!! So good!!!

Halloween Picture!

Here is a picture of the three of us. Thank you to Jessica Flores aka Jack's women for taking this picture for me!

Happy Halloween!

So I know Halloween has passed already, but I thought I would blog about Halloween even though we have no photos cause of the camera hiatus. We took some video, but I'm not sure how to upload those. I will learn I promise. Caroline was a bumble bee and Jack was a skunk. (What Caroline was 2 years ago) They were so cute. Sorry you just have to take my word for it. Friday night we went to the ward trunk or treat. It was alot of fun, but chilly and lots of people took pictures of my kids so I'll have to get copies from them. The day of Halloween was HOT. I never thought I would say I was hot on Halloween. We were outside carving our pumpkins and I was dying. Of course it isn't as hot as this summer but still it is supose to be cold. It was so warm Jack couldn't wear his costume when we were fixin to go trick or treating. We went to a friends house for dinner who have a little girl Caroline's age and went trick or treating in their neighborhood. Caroline had lots of fun doing it! We got home around 7pm and there were lots of trick or treaters out not like in UT where we would get maybe one. We sat outside, seeing it was so nice, and handed out the candy. Caroline loved giving out the candy more than she did collecting it. When we ran out she was happy and ready to give out the candy she had just gotten from trick or treating. I was more than ok with this. We saved a few pieces for Caroline and gave the rest away. We still ran out before 9 and had to come in and turn out our lights. Though some people still came to the door. All in all we had a fun time.
As for other news Jack started crawling!! He is all over the place now. He also started pulling himself up and getting to a sitting up position all by himself too within a few weeks of each other. He will be walking in no time. It's so sad my baby is growing up. His new favorite thing to do is pull the books off the shelf now that he can get there. He also likes to come over and mess with whatever Caroline is doing. Hehe its funny, she gets so mad. Caroline just recently got some safe sissors to practice her cutting skills during preschool time. Well I think you all know where this story is going. Yes she cut her hair. Ryan was "watching" her and she was cutting away at her paper when he heard her saying, "I'm cutting the crazies out of my hair" Still not a reason for concern according to him. Then he noticed her hair in the trash can and I hear him say "Oh no" so I come in from the bedroom where I was getting ready for church and Ryan is hiding the hair and I was like what happened? She didn't cut too much thank goodness. But it is so frustrating cause her hair grows so slowly. I explained to her that you don't cut your own hair and no more sissors for Caroline for a while.
So we survived another three weeks of Ryan being in the field. They let him come home to watch the kids while I did YW in Excellence which only one girl ended up coming but it was still worth all the hard work that went into preparing it! We had the most amazing cup cakes there. They were from a place called cookie addiction. I am have been dreaming about them ever sense.

Texas State Fair

So it is Friday and I told myself I was going to post every Friday a weekly update...yes yes I know I haven't been too good at this. But anyway, nothing to exciting has been going on here. Two weekends ago we went to Dallas! We were planning to go to the State Fair on Sat with our friend Kirby from college and her husband and daughter. I was so excited to see my old friend whom I haven't seen since our wedding. It's always fun to get together and remember all the old times. Anywho I have pictures from this excursion though not many and not many good ones. I was out of it this day. Probably from the crazy night in the hotel with Caroline who didn't want to go to bed and Jack who woke up like every 10 minutes. Also where we stayed didn't have continental breakfast. WTH. So all I had eaten that day was a nutty butty and diet coke and of course the Texas State Fair is the capital of fried food, so I ate real good that day. There is a contest to see who fries the best food. This year fried sweet potatoes won. That sounded semi-healthy but I never found where they were selling them. Fried butter came in second. Yeah nasty. Anyway we had corn dogs and tried fried cheese cake! That was good!! The Texas State Fair really was awesome. I'm just sorry it was such a cold dreary day and that I was soooo tired. It was huge and there was tons of stuff to do and see. There is no way you can see it all in one day. Well here are some pics plus a couple of others. Sorry if there are no pictures for a while after this. Our camera has been acting weird again. It does this from time to time but this time I think it has done itself in. That camera will be 5 years old on my birthday this year...which reminds me my birthday is coming fast...not as exciting as it used to be.
On another note the little monkeys are doing good. Mr. Jack is trying so hard to crawl finally, the little fatty. He is still such a happy boy! He was especially cute in the bath tub tonight. He was sitting up as he usually does and noticed a duck out of reach that he wanted. So he reaches reaches, can't get it. So he is like this sucks I can't move. So finally he reaches again and this time falls onto his belly. Now he realizes hey this is great I can get around in the tub this way. So he is swimming around and finally he corners the duck. And he grabs and as he gets the other hand up to help maneuver the duck into his mouth, splash, and his head falls in the water. He didn't realize that he wouldn't be able to hold and play with the duck in that position without his head under water. So he promptly puts his hands back down and pulls his head up looking around like oh man I didn't think this all the way through. So he proceeds to chase the duck around the tub and just tries to get it with his mouth. Of course he has no luck with this. He is too cute. Caroline is still as crazy as ever. I wonder when all this craziness is gonna end? She is getting a lot older and smarter too! We lost our bag of random crayons that we have collected over the past year or so. Some are reminisces from boxes of crayons some taken from restaurants. We are just always finding crayons all over the place and we put them in this bag. Anyway we can not find this bag the other day. I think I left it at church opps. So I take Caroline to the store to get some crayons and of course she wants to big box of the small ones that aren’t WASHABLE. So I agree under the condition that she keeps track of her crayons and makes sure they are always put back in the box when she is done. She has been sooo cute about it. She gets one crayon out and colors and then puts it back and she is so careful with them. Hopefully this doesn't change and I'm not back to finding random crayons everywhere. Caroline loves to color though. I have to say she has pretty sweet coloring skills for a 3 year old. She recognizes every part of a picture and colors each part a different color. Not that she can stay in the lines...I can hardly do that...but she tend to keep the color in the correct region of the part she is coloring. I would have taken a picture of the picture she colored tonight, but you know about our cameral. Hopefully we can figure something out by the time Halloween comes. Caroline is going to be a bumble bee and Jack is a skunk...what Caroline was two years ago when she was about 15 months and Jack is about 9 months and the costume is kinda snug.
Wish me luck with another busy week, which will include YW in excellence. Hopefully this goes well.



Me and my handsome boy!

I thought Carolie looked cute here in her Texas dress.

Fun at the park on Columbus day.

"Daddy got me McDonalds!"

Naughty Daddy.

Sweet little boy.

Caroline on a ride at the Fair

Daddy and Caroline on the carosaul

Caroline doing one of her favorite things. Coloring a leaf to put on a fake try they were making. I have to say Carolines leaf looked awesome. I should have taken a picture of it. She sat here and colored her leaf for about half an hour.

Haha they said Caroline was too short to go on this one by herself and she needed an adult to acompany her so I volunteered Ryan hehe.

This one scared Caroline a little.

I thought this cow was beautiful. Which I am sure sounds weird. It was so clean and its colors so rich and look at them utters hehe j/k



Look at the size of that one. Everythings bigger in Texas especially when it comes to cows!!

Little miss biggy even eating in the picture.

Mr. John Deere

They had this whole cute little make believe farm for the kids to play in. Here is Caroline pretending to milk a cow.

First picture we got of all four of us. We should of had Kirby take one of the four of us at the fair. But I had everyone dressed up for church so I made Ryan ask the neighbor to take our picture. He was willing and this is what we came up with. Ryan looking annoyed that I made him ask the neighbor. Caroline all the sudden at the time of the photo not wanting her photo taken and me looking chunky...at least Jack is cute even though he looks chunky too. Sadly this may end up being the picture on our Christmas cards if we can't ever find the time to get pictures done for real.

It's finially Fall!

So I decided I should post something considering I haven't posted in a while. Our fall has been so busy I don't know where to start. We had flat Max come visit us from our friend from Utah's class and we showed him around. Caroline was sooooo excited about it. She ended up ripping his poor little arm off during all the excitement. But we taped him together so he will arrive back in UT in one piece....good thing he was with us and our military ins. hehe....little guy had the full military experience. I think the little boy who sent him will enjoy the picture of all the tanks, trucks, ect...Pictures to follow.
Caroline and Jack are getting so big. It is so sad Jack isn't a little baby anymore. He is rolling over all the time now (finally) and scouting all over the place and trying to crawl. He says Dada as well as Mama now, along with plenty of other sounds. He also waves. And this past week he finally got his first tooth! The poor boy had been waking up so much at night and not napping well. I was starting to wonder what was wrong with him. It is always better after they get that first tooth. Caroline LOVES music. She loves the sound of music especially "My Favorite Things." She knows the whole song. She also loves primary songs. "Book of Mormon Stories" and "Follow the Prophet" are her favorites. Everyday it seems like she is singing a new song and I'm like where did you hear that one? Caroline has also finally learned her letters. We checked out this book called "A is for Annabelle" randomly from the library and Caroline loved it and can recite the entire thing. It goes, "A is for Annabelle, Grandmothers doll." It does this for each letter for the alphabet and we say the A, B, C is for thus and such part and Caroline finishes the second half for each letter. I don't know how she remembers so much. I wish my memory was that good. I will try and find the book and post it on here for everyone to see. (it is at the top) Music, Books and Oreo cookies are probably Caroline's favorite things, as the song goes. We tell her to sing it now when she says she is scared...hehe..and it works!
So it is finally cooling down here. We can go out and play again! Though, it doesn’t feel much like fall. It mostly just rains…a lot. But this is good for my garden…as you can see below. Apparently here in Texas you want to do your garden in the winter basically cause everything I planted in the spring died this summer, but the stuff I planted at the end of the summer is doing great! It is really more like spring here. Everything is very green now and in the summer everything is brown. The trees instead of turning all the beautiful fall colors are nice and green. (not that there are many trees where we live) So, here are some more pictures of Caroline picking these pretty purple flowers that grow everywhere in our backyard. Sorry there are a million pictures, but I haven’t posted in a while and there is more to come from our trip to the Texas State Fair in Dallas!

My garden. Peas and zuchinni and squash.

The tomatoes I planted this summer were

looking really pathetic by the end of summer.


Caroline loves to pic flowers and put them in

mine and her hair.

YeeHaw

Between Caroline not looking at the camera and Jack trying to take his hat off we are lucky we got this picture. They look so cute though!


Evidence that Caroline got a hold of the camera. I have to say her skills are getting better and it makes us laugh when we find what she has photographed.

Of course she took a picture of her favorite movie these days.



Our two little monkeys

We have crazy storms here in Texas! One night they sounded the tornado warning and we had lightning like I have never seen before in person. It has several bolts going accross the sky it was wild. But this is the result a beautiful rainbow.



Caroline loves to sit on top of the car

Sweet little boy


The fam minus Mommy with flat Max in front of Ft. Hood

Whose that sexy army guy with my family?

The boys


These pics are from the military museum on post.

This huge thing is used to like tow helicopers.

Ryan called it the Wasp.


Caroline sitting on a tank with flat Max, though, you are definitly not supose to do that.

Flat Max in Austin



One of my crafts. These are the things I do to avoid the things I should be doing. But I thought Jacks room was empty and he needed something to hang on the way so we went to hobby lobby (amazing store) and came up with this! Caroline helped paint too...and by paint I mean get paint everywhere except the board including the carpet.


I also love to knitt. I made this blanket for Jack.

I have made much more than these two but I usually give them away so i don't have them anymore.


I managed to get a picture of this one before I sent it to my sister.

It is my favorite thus far of all the blankets I have knitted.

More to come. I am currently working on a few.