Hooray for the 200th Post!

We hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas! We had a great time and had fun with both families! We were definitely spoiled and our girls have had fun playing with new toys and books. Doug spoiled me and got me a panini press, electric blanket (or so warm) and a

He totally wins. I was so excited! It's the big 6 qt Professional one too. Oh how he loves to spoil his chef! I made him a quilt with pieces of a sweater he gave me when we first started dating and I also compiled the letters we sent back and forth on his mission. It was a great year and we both agreed that next Christmas won't be as big. We're currently waiting to take off for the big reunion in Arizona! We can't wait to see everyone again! Sorry I didn't post any pictures of the big day. I'll be sure to do a picture purge when we get back from the big trip!

A first

Well I guess there's a first for everything. We put Lilly down for a nap a little while ago and she was having a hard time so I kept checking on her to make sure she was okay. I let her cry for a little while and finally went to check on her again and noticed brown stuff all over the crib, her body, and her mouth. Yup you guessed it. She had no diaper on either. We quickly threw her in the tub and stripped her bed. Yuck! Thank goodness she's already on antibiotics. Hopefully she won't get too sick. Sorry I didn't take a picture of this glamorous first. Any of you ever had their kids eat their own poop?

My Twelve Days of Christmas

Some of you may know that I collect "12 Days of Christmas" Books. I do this because I want to be cool like my mom who collects "Night Before Christmas" Books. She has well over 200 of them. What's the count now mom? Anyway, I thought it would be fun to write my own little 12 Days of Christmas sincewe're well into the 12 days. Here goes:

On the...

12th day I got the coolest 12 Days of Christmas package on my door step. Thank you nice person whoever did this for us! We love it! It's so fun to open a new piece of the Nativity ever day. I always wanted this one.

11 days until I get to see my amazing family for a family reunion in warm and sunny AZ!

10 days till Christmas!

9 days of too much sickness in our house! I'm done with the coughing and runny noses.

8 girls (maybe) that I get to party with tomorrow at our Activity Days Christmas Party!

7 siblings that I get to see in 11 days! (I think it's been about 7 years too since we've all been together at one time)

6 days till Brandon and Melissa's Anniversary. Happy Anniversary you two cute cats!

5 days 'till the big Bowl Game. Go cougs!

4 packages to Brazil (I kept finding things I meant to send in each prior package).

3 trips to the post office.

2 days till Stu and Hiromi come and Karen and Lilly get to play!

1 amazing husband who celebrated a birthday today! Happy Birthday Douglas!

Merry Christmas to all!

Baby Brother Update

Sophia clarified this morning that she doesn't want a baby brother. She wants a big brother. Thanks for clearing that up Sophs. I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the offer Erin.I guess we can still take Will since he's a whole 6 weeks older!

In other news, we finally saw the Joseph Smith movie up in Salt Lake and it was fabulous. It wasn't quite what I was expecting and we both loved it!

Another Sophia Funnies

Last night while we were eating dinner Lilly was being silly and so Doug asked Sophia if we should call her Silly. She said , "No. Maybe we should call her 'Lolli-Pop'" and that's exactly what she did. For the rest of the night whenever she said Lilly's name it was always "Lolli-Pop" such as "Come here Lolli-Pop" or "I think Lolli-Pop needs to go to bed." She had us laughing all night.

We heard Frosty the Snowman on the radio while we were driving today and she said, "We did this one in Preschool. It's Frosting the Snowman!" She then went on to sing "Frosting the Snowman..."

She also has been telling us lately that she really wants a brother. She keeps talking about how she can't wait until she has a brother that comes to live in her home and she tells us about all the things she's going to do with her brother. It always comes at random times and then she goes on about how she can't wait to play with her brother and that "she really wants a brother." It usually ends with us telling her that her brother is in heaven and that we'll have one someday. Is she seriously trying to tell me something? I am so not ready for another baby. Have any of you ever had this happen before? At first I just blew it off but she mentions it at least once a week and it's kind of starting to freak me out.

I finally saw it

Stupid blogger. I just typed this whole huge post and then it disappeared. Oh well. Anyway, I finally saw Twilight and I'm sorry to say that I agree with Sarah's review. Thanks again Laura for coming with me (I knew there was no way Doug would go with me and I'm thankful he didn't because I'd never hear the end of it) and for laughing throughout the whole thing with me. I'm sorry but the whole scene in the meadow was a little too much. Definitely one of those where the book is way better than the movie! They did do a good job casting her friends and his family but they were both just painful to watch. He looked so uncomfortable throughout the whole movie. Sorry to dissapoint any of you. I will say that it got better as it went along and here's hoping the next one is better (it's no wonder that they're hiring a new director for the next one).

Aside from all that, Sophia has been hillarious the past couple of days. Our awesome babysitter gave her a bunch of Littlest Pet Shops a while ago and she loves them. Whenever Lilly even looks at them she says "No Lilly! Mom put her to bed! She can't get these". She always tells me to put Lilly to bed whenever she's getting into something Sophia doesn't want her to get.

Yesterday we spent the day at my mom's finishing up some Christmas sewing and I gave the girls some crackers to eat. Sophia came upstairs and said "Lilly is making the biggest mess in her mouth!" She then squinted her eyes while shaking her head iand said, "I'm just like, what in the whole world Lilly! You're making the biggest mess!" She has also been saying "Yikes!" a lot which totally cracks me up. What a funny girl!

Sick Sunday

So here's what a Sunday is like in our house when the kids are sick.
8:30- Wake up and realize Doug has PEC in 1/2 hour.
9:00-Doug barely makes it to PEC and comes home around 10:30
11:00-Joanna goes to choir and comes home at 12:00
12:00-Doug passes Joanna on sidewalk at heads to pres. meeting and stays at church for sacrament meeting at 12:30
1:35-Joanna high-fives Doug while passing Doug on sidewalk and heads to teach primary.
2:45-Doug and Joanna high-five again while passing so that Doug can get back to church to teach Young Men
3:30-Doug and Joanna high-five for a thrid time while passing so that Joanna can get back to the church for a meeting with Primary Presidency at 3:45 (it was originally scheduled for 12:00 but she completely spaced it and Doug was already at the church at that time).
4:00-Doug and Joanna high-five for the fourth and final time as he heads out the door for a temple recommend interview.
4:30-Joanna waits for Doug to get home so that they can eat dinner (love fast Sundays!), bathe kids, watch the Christmas Devotional, put kids to bed, go to Stake Choir, come home and go to bed (and maybe talk to each other for more than 5 minutes today)!

Whew what a day of rest!

Anyway, here's some pictures from the day after Lilly's birthday:

Here's her and Sophia by the fun IKEA igloo/tent!

Last night was crazy as well. We had a family party in Cedar Hills and our ward party at the exact same time. Doug had to be at our ward party and so I took the girls to the family party. Here's a fun chocolate peppermint pie I took as well. The chocolate Christmas trees were fun to make.
Since I couldn't go to the ward party I had Doug take pictures. It was intense and looked like a lot of fun. The theme was "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" and they themed the whole thing around Nauvoo in 1843. Each auxillary was in charge of a different "part" of Nauvoo. Doug and the YM were in charge of the stick pull and he said it was a lot of fun. This was The Mansion House where they served stew, rolls, and gingerbread cake. Notice the real pine garlands running down the tables.
This was the masonry shop complete with a "fire" behind that big gray thing. It looked cool when the lights were off. They had these tiles with vinyl letter sayings that said "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" that people could make. They were cool.

This was the sign to the post office where you could write letters to the missionaries.

They had signs like this all over that made a little time-line of events. Doug thinks there were probably about 500 of these signs.

This was the red brick store. They were accepting canned food donations at this station.

They also had a tin shop where kids could make punched tin ornaments, and a fabulous library put on by the Young Women.

Here's a bonus picture of Sophia having a blast in an early Christmas present. Some friends in our ward were getting rid of this and so they gave it to us. They had lost the charger and so it didn't work. I got one at Wal-mart (best $30 I've ever spent) and now it's a great ride. It really goes pretty fast and I'm sure she needs a license for to drive it. Her and her friend Abby had a great time riding it around last week.

Happy Birthday to the Bean!

We had such a fun time celebrating Lilly's birthday today! We woke up and cleaned the house and then took Sophia to preschool and then took Lilly Kandid Kandids for the yearly free 8 x 10. We got a copy of the first picture and I thought the other ones turned out cute as well.

Tonight we had some family and friends over (thanks again everyone for making the trek down!!!!) for cake and ice cream. We had a great time! Unfortunately all the pictures we took turned our blurry (our LCD screen broke so we can't see the pictures we take - hint, hint, Santa, mommy would like new camera for Christmas) and so we can't see the shots we took. Apparently if you leave the camera on the counter while you cook dinner and it's within range of the cooking spray and the lens gets covered in the stuff, your pictures will turn out blurry. Luckily I got this shot of the cake before the cooking spray incident. My amazing friend Nancy is amazing with caker decorating and so I asked her to make a cake for Lilly. I was sooooooo happy with how it turned out. You're amazing Nancy! After I saw the cake she made for another friend I was pretty much convinced that she needed to make one for Lilly. Thanks again Nance! (I can't saw it enough). Anyway, I did get some pics of the loot but since they turned out blurry they're not here. I think I may take more pictures of her by balloons and wrapping paper tomorrow and just pretend like they were from today. Anyway, she got some books, warm jammies, a cool igloo tent from IKEA, a cute shirt that says, "Smile if you think I'm cute" (I think we'll be getting plenty of smiles) and some wooden blocks. Thanks again everyone for helping to make it a fabulous day!

P.S. Here's video of the birthday song. It's a little blurry as well but you can get the jist.

s

Sophisticated pallets

So tonight for dinner we had this:

It's chickey curry pizza with bananas and it was surprisingly tasty. Doug had it on his mission and has been craving it ever since. I finally decided to give it a try and it really was pretty good. I'll pass the recipe along if anyone is interested. I also made a tomato and cheese pizza for our girls. We sat down to eat and Sophia insisted that she have the yellow pizza. Lilly prefered it as well. I was surprised but pleased at the same time. Way to try new foods kiddos!

P-Town Light show

I just took Lilly and Sophia to see the rockin' light show we discovered a few blocks away. I got some pretty good video but it's better in person. It's crazy because you just turn your radio to 99.9 and the lights go along with the music.

It's pretty good. It definitely made our cute little house look pretty dismal. Here's a few pics from the last week. For FHE we made our own Jaredite barges with things that we build our foundation on. I thought they turned out pretty good.We also had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Lilly enjoyed the Sweet Potatoes. We were able to celebrate Lilly's birthday with the Wilkins'. Brian and Katie gave her this baby and she immediately fell in love with it. I couldn't believe that she immediately figured out how to feed the baby it's bottle. This little girl never ceases to amaze me.

After a fun morning shopping at IKEA and Cabella's for Black Friday we headed down to Wales with some good friends in our ward. The girls had a great time wearing each other out. We had a lot of fun and it was relaxing and nice to get away!