Happy Anniversary!

Tommorrow is our 8th anniversary but we will be busy with the buddy walk so I thought I would post this now.
Kris-
Thanks for 8 wonderful years of marriage! I am so grateful to have you as my friend, husband and father to my girls. I love you more and more every day and every time I see you with our girls it makes me fall in love with you all over again! They absolutely adore you (as do I) and they couldn't ask for a better dad. You are so fun and involved in every aspect of their lives and you even play dressups and princesses better than I do. I have particularly come to love you even deeper this past year as Bree has come into our lives because I have seen the unconditional love you have had for her from the beginning. You were so positive and comforting from the minute we knew she had down syndrome and it meant so much to me. I still remember when we found out during the pregnancy that it was a slight possiblilty and you said "it doesn't matter because it will not change how much we love her" and you have demonstrated that unconditional love to me and the other girls as well. YOu are so righteous and dedicated to your church service and you always do such a good job of juggling our family,church and work. My dad has (and still does) always liked to give you a hard time, but the other day he said to me "so when did you know that Kris was going to be this great of a guy?" I knew you were a great guy when I met you , but I didn't know then how much more wonderful you would become over the last 8 years. I am very glad that you had the courage to ask me out even after I had dated your friend (ha ha). I love you so much! Thanks for being mine!!!
Kiki
P.S. Clink on the link below to watch the video (if you hadn't figured that out all ready)

happy anniversary 9/25/07

My Ballerinas

Kyra and Adrie started dance class last week and they love it! It was my final incentive to get Adrie to finish potty training and it has seemed to work. Last year when she would go watch Kyra she was so sad she couldn't be dancing with her so when we told her that only big girls who wore big girl panties could take dance she has been working really hard at it. She has had a few accidents but for the most part is doing really well. The last couple times she has had an accident she gets this sad look on her face and in this cute little voice she says "oh man, that's not what big girls do" It is So cute! They are in the same class and they love going together! They get to do ballet and tap which they love. It makes for a noisy kitchen floor when they both get going though! Adrie carries her dance bag with her everywhere she goes and asks if it is time for class yet

This picture is not related to dance but it was so sweet. The first thing Kyra does when she gets home from school each day is hold Bree and yesterday she got her to sleep on her lap and was so proud of herself

Welcome to the family Griffin and Crew

my sister in law had her twin boys this morning and my other sister in law is out of town and was quite sad about not being here so here are some pictures Lacey. They were 5 weeks early and each weighed in at around 5 pounds 6 ounces. They are doing really well and they are so tiny and cute! These first two pictures are of Griffin

The bottom two are of Crew
The girls were sad because they weren't allowed in the NICU so they played in this playhouse in the waiting room. Seeing all the super preemie babies I thought of my good friend and romate from college-Tanna-and how amazing she was to go through all this with Jess-she is a miracle baby!We are excited to have the twins in our family and can't wait for them to come home-hopefully in a few weeks. Congratulations Tysen and Chris (and Ava-the new 11 month old big sister!) We love you all!

Update on the table crisis

Ok so Kris took the whole table apart and was planning to take it to his dad's house where he has a big shop to sand it all down and refinish it but luckily his dad suggested they take it over to his friend who owns a wood store and see what he thought and his friend had this miracle solution-Restore-a-finish-
Kris and his dad and brother rubbed it all over the table and low and behold it worked! It restored the finish just like it says! The table now looks normal (there is one side you can see a tiny bit if you look hard but other than that it looks good as new) We were thrilled that the fix only cost $6 too. Kris just wished he would have known about this stuff before he dismantled the whole table!

Random

Adrie has taken on a new role since Kyra has been in school as she is now the "biggest" sister when Kyra is gone. Kyra even prays every morning that "Adrie will help mommy with Bree while I am at school" so Adrie has been more interested in holding Bree lately.
My girls love to match eachother and when I found matching Pj's for Adrie and Bree, although Adrie was thrilled, Kyra was quite distraught. It is hard growing out of the little sizes! Adrie was sporting great morning hair!
Bree is now being dressed up by her sisters!
Bree doesn't have too many pictures without her fingers in her mouth! She LOVES those fingers!

Kyra had backwards day at school last week and she thought it was a lot of fun! She especially enjoyed that dad walked around backwards all evening when he got home! The girls laughed hysterically at him. what a cute dad they have!

Peaches gone wrong

Ok so these are the beautiful and very yummy peaches that Kris and I canned this week! We ended up with 54 quarts! We were so proud of ourselves being all domestic this year and canning peaches and salsa. We had successfully finished and removed all the salsa bottles from the table with no problems, but even though we laid down two thick towels under the peaches, to our horror, after removing the towels tonight, we found this..............
Yep, that is what my nice kitchen table now looks like-permanantly! We have scrubbed to no avail. It appears that the table finish was worn off by the heat or something-who knows. All I know is that my table now looks like this! After putting the girls to bed I walked down the stairs and looking at the ruined table, I commented that I was going to be grouchy every time I walked in the room now and Kris said "well you better take a picture and put it on the blog so you can at least get a little laugh out of it" (look how he has adjusted to the blogging mindset!) So I took a deep breath and remembering that our family night lesson this week was about having a good attitude I decided I better try and practice what I preach! Unfortunately I don't know what the solution to this problem is (because the funds to buy a new table are not available and I love this square style anyway) for now I better try to have a good attitude because I can't do anything to change what happened. SO lesson for the week-When canning super hot objects, apparantly two bath towels are not sufficient protection for a wood table!

Campout

The girls have been begging to go camping all summer and since we never made it to a campground we decided to try the backyard. Kyra had been learning about camping all week at school so it was a perfect ending to the week. we had a great time (other than my horrible allergies lately). The best part about camping in the backyard is the potty is right inside! Bree even enjoyed sleeping with us in the tent!

We played lots of games and then daddy brought out his laptop and then girls watched a movie (another benefit of camping in the yard-the extension cord). I only made it through a little of the movie before my allergies got the best of me and I fell asleep but the girls stayed up and watched it with dad. The weekend brings a whole new meaning of enjoyment now that we are a school going family and have a schedule every other day of the week! We love Friday nights!

Tysen's twins

My sister in law, Tysen is getting very close to having her twins so we decided to have a shower for her because we are always looking for reasons to get together and eat good food! I tried something new and copied these pictures from her blog-I never knew you could do that-it's great!Her belly is SO cute and we are all so excited to have the twins here soon! My girls love to talk about how tysen has TWO babies in her tummy, and she has baby Ava! (Her daughter Ava will not even be a year old when the twins are born)

Happy birthday uncle Jess

Happy Birthday to my littlest brother Jess! He turned 14 yesterday! He is always such a great helper with my kids and they love having uncles that are young to play with!

Salsa R Us

In our family, when fall comes around it means lots of tomatoes and salsa! We are lucky enough to have wonderful grandparents in Idaho who grow this HUGE garden each year and then all the family comes and picks what they want. We come home each year with more tomatoes than we know what to do with, so because last year the canning process took like two weeks we decided to try a new method to make things a little more efficient. My wonderful husband stayed home to help us and we spent literally all day (13 hours) canning salsa. Kris was so wonderful to help us and we wouldn't have been able to do it all without him! He runs a very tight ship! He also hung some shelves up in the girls room that he had made too-what a productive day he had! Thanks for all your help honey!!

we set up camp at my house this year and had two big pots cooking outside on the camp stove while two batches were processing inside so there was no down time! It worked out really well-until the storm it later and we had to move to the garage.
Lida, mom and me



At the end of the day we had canned 122 quarts of salsa! That is the same amount we had done in two weeks last year so we were very proud of ourselves! We still have a couple more batches to do tomorrow but the bulk of it is done! Now we get to enjoy the yummy salsa!!While we were doing salsa we all went to meet Kyra at the bus stop because Bret and Jess were out of school and cousin Tate was there too. She was so excited to have such a big fan club as she got off the bus!

Adrie gives Kyra a huge hug every time she gets off the bus! It is super cute!

Funny Adrie Moments

Adrie has been such a good, supportive sister to Kyra this past week while so much attention has been on Kyra and starting school! Adrie is such a little sweetheart to everyone! So she had a few funny moments this week that I wanted to remember. First of all we were driving to a baby shower for my sister in law who is having twins and as we were sitting in traffic Adrie quietly says "mom, will there be a little shower for me to use because I don't want to take a shower in the big shower?" I laughed so hard and explained the strange thing we call a "shower" is just a party for Tysen and her new babies. She said "mom that is silly" and started laughing. She seemed very relieved because she is actually not a fan of taking showers at home, she just likes baths so I am sure she was a little nervous when I told her we were going to a shower!
Her other funny moment was on saturday night. We asked the girls what they wanted to do and they of course chose movie and popcorn (they always choose that because they love making a bed on the floor and watching a movie and having dad's yummy popcorn). So we stepped it up a notch and had a picnic with pizza on the floor as we watched the movie. We were all eating our sausage pizza and Adrie was just kindof looking at hers and then she says "dad, can your get all that dirt off my pizza?" She thought the sausage was dirt-it was super cute!

The Bus Ride

So, hurdle #2 for me was putting Kyra on the school bus for the first time last week. She decided that she wanted to ride it the second day of school. It was the weirdest feeling to stand there and watch her get on this big bus with all these big kids and then just stand there helpless as they drive away, hoping that she would make it to her class and know what she was supposed to do without me there. I felt this pit in my stomach after she drove off (she didn't even cry-although she seemed pretty nervous) so I walked back home and put the other two girls in the car and drove to the school to make sure she was ok and had made it. I know, it is embarrassing to admit but I did it! I didn't let her know I was there, I just pulled around the back and watched her from the car as she lined up to go into the school with her class. She was all smiles and playing with her little friend so I felt much better and as I headed home i was much more at ease. I even let her go the second time without following the bus. Luckily she has her friend jaxon (above) and Emma (below) to ride with.
Kyra bravely getting on the bus for the first time
Kyra waiting for the bus the second time
Adrie had a hard time letting Kyra get on the bus because she wanted to go too so she was very eager to go pick her up at the bus stop. She looks so cute watching for the bus!
I can't believe how little she looks coming off that big bus! She was really excited because on friday dad had work off so he got to see her getting on the bus too!