Christmas

Christmas. Yes, we did participate. No, we don't have pictures to prove it. We had a blast spending time with family especially cousins who love dress up as much as Reagan does. We look forward to a little Range cousin this summer. :) Can I say that? Pretend you didn't just read that, I think it's ok but I'm not sure.

Now we prepare for our trip to Florida. I think we're all more excited about this trip than we were about Christmas. Don't get me wrong, we love Christmas and the whole season but it's a little hectic and draining and I think we're all ready for some relaxation and some sun. We're spending 10 days in Orlando so we'll hit up Disneyworld and Universal. So excited about Harry Potter!!! Not so excited about flying with 2 kiddos. Yes, I'll have Jared, my parents and Jared's parents but whenever kids on a plane make any noise it's always the mom's fault. Bring it on, scowlers!!

We'll definitely take pictures of our trip but for now here's the 1 Christmasy picture I have from this year. It's at our ward Christmas party with Santa.

Sitting

Elisabeth learned a new trick over Christmas. Woot!!

Christmas Program and Santy Claus

These pictures are from Reagan's preschool Christmas program. So, usually, as told by her teacher, she's in dress-up clothes the whole class time. Her awesome teacher, Ms.Robin, had to buy more dress-up clothes because the ones she had were too big for our little pipsqueak. Can I just say we LOVE Ms.Robin? Anywho, here we are on the big day, the Christmas program where Reagan will get to dress up as Mary and carry the baby Jesus. And what happens? She doesn't want to dress up. WHAT?!? Really? So, instead of Mary, she was the star. Or carried the star. No dressing up. She was still a pretty cute star holder.

This Santa picture was from my parents wards Christmas party. Reagan did awesome this year. Last year she was all pumped to see Santa in line but once it was our turn she chickened out. So, I ended up sitting on Santa's lap (sorry, Bro.Childs) with Reagan sitting on mine. This year she hopped right up and whispered what she wanted (more Strawberry Shortcake stuff. Crap, it looks like I have more shopping to do) and posed with her sister who was WAY more interested in her BF Reagan than Santa.

We have our ward party in a few days so we'll have some more cute pictures soon.

Happy Birthday!!

It's Reagan's 3rd birthday. I have a 3 year old. Weird. We had a little party last night and here are a few pictures.

Teapot. Her signature pose.

Rea and mommy

Auntie Lael and Rea

Cousin Livia

Katie

The Belle cake

We were all really worried about the candles. Belle is quite flammable, you know.

A picture from today with her favorite present. A camera. A REAL camera. I'm sure I'll be posting a few of her genius shots soon as she's already taken a photo of everything she owns.

And what's a birthday post without a few baby pics.

Happy Birthday, my sweet girl!!

Amen

Ahh, prayer time. The part of our nightly routine where Reagan jumps and wiggles like she has squirrels in her pants. Super hard to keep the spirit when you want to murder your kid. So, I thought of this help that has worked wonderfully. We call it our prayer board.

First, we thought of things we're thankful for and things we are asking for. The red writing is thankful and the green writing is need/bless. Then, I let her color them all in.

Next, I made a poster board with our opening and closing sentences and 5 spaces for each color. I attached velcro to the cards and spaces and made pockets to hold the extras. Did I mention that I had the cards laminated? Well, I did.

Voila! She loves picking out her cards for the day and it's really helped settle her down and say good prayers all by herself.

It's in the air...

I love fall. I love it because it means cute holiday decorations, yummy baking and tons of time with the family. We got a good start today with our holiday crafts and Reagan and I managed to get some cute stuff done this morning while E slept. We made....

Cute ghosts made from the girls tootsies. The smaller ones were made later from E's cute little fat feet which made way better ghosts than Reagan's freaky high arched feet. And I don't think you can tell from the picture but our ghosts have white sparkles on them because if your doing crafts with Reagan, something MUST be sparkly.

A family of pumpkins. I wish I knew how to rotate pics on here. Grr....

Some spiders made from Reagan's fingers. She drew the faces. Next year if we do these I'll let her cut. If I let her cut this year, these poor little spiders would have no legs.

I even got out my Halloween wreath

my fall garland

and my little pumpkins and yummy smelling candles

I love the fall.

Trips

The end of August brought our first road trip as a family of four. It went very well. Reagan's always been good in the car and this trip was especially good thanks to her new Nintendo DS games and backpack full of movies. Elisabeth decided to go through a growth spurt and slept all day and then slept all night. Nice. September 1st was my dad's moms (Nanny) 80th birthday party in Vegas. It was held at a cousins house and was a blast! It was casino themed and there were so many people there, it couldn't have been more fun. Unfortunately with all the fun having, no one took pictures. It was great to see so many family members especially Robert, Nanny's husband who had a stroke and passed away a few weeks after the party.

After Vegas, we drove to southern Utah to visit my grandma and Jared's grandpa who live about 45 min apart. Seeing my grandma was great. She's had some health problems these last few years and previous visits had been a realization that she's getting older and we might not have her too much longer. This visit was a definite turn around. She's more active than I've seen her in years and she seemed to be much happier. Jared's grandpa (Melco) is insane! At 90+, he still is going strong. Runs his ranch, works at the temple 5 days a week and lives on his own. I want to be him when I'm that old. He loved seeing Reagan and meeting Elisabeth for the first time. Family is super important to him so it was nice to have him meet some of his posterity. Elisabeth's middle name is Paige after Melco's middle name Page. We did get a few pics although they're mostly the last 20 minutes we were there but they're very cute.

She played this horse game so many times!

Tuckered out. Love those rolls!!

Grandpa Melco and Elisabeth

Aunt Lyne and Reagan

Reagan and Grandpa Melco

Jared, E and Grandpa

The Leavitts

Cute pic of the girlies

Good times with the family

What a fun trip!!

Oh and I got to see a college buddy of mine, Becca when we were driving back home. I think she gave birth to her baby a day or two after we saw her. Crazy!

We did see some of Jared's mission buddies and their families but if I haven't proved this already, we suck at remembering to take pictures. So thank you to the Larsons, Lewis's and Ellis's for letting us visit and crash at your houses!!

Yum

I've been making baby food. A lot of baby food. I never did this with Reagan. I think I was overwhelmed with the new parent feeling and making baby food would have been another thing on my plate. But I've decided to make my own food for Elisabeth for a few reasons.

1. The cost savings. Holy cow! I didn't realize how little it actually took to make my own food. I think I'm averaging about 8 cents a serving. I pay 50-75 cents a serving when I buy prepackaged foods. Wow.

2. The product. I know with baby food, especially stage 1 foods, the FDA is pretty strict on regulating what goes into the food. But how awesome is it to pick the freshest, most delicious peaches and give them to my baby? It's way awesome. And I can mix my own in season fruits and veggies. For example, my yummy plum/banana mixture I made or my fall veggie mix I plan on making in a few months.

3. The waste. I'm a big recycler and try to do my part for the environment. I'm not crazy granola (hello, I drive an Expedition!) but I try to do good when I can. For making my own food, I buy food in bulk, freeze in ice trays and then seal the frozen cubes in vacuum bags. I purchased the ziploc hand pump set for 3.99 and a bunch of quart size baggies. The baggies say not to reuse them but I don't see why not. Probably a ploy by Ziploc to get more of my money. The bags are perfectly reusable! Just wash them out! So, my total waste for this project is the packaging the food comes in, if any. That's cool.

4. It's fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed making all this food. It's fun coming up with flavor combos and I can't wait until Elisabeth is older and can eat more variety. Oh, the possibilities!

So far I've made green beans, peas, carrots, peaches, plums, bananas, mango and I've frozen up some avocado slices. The hardest part is waiting for the ice trays to freeze so I can make more food. The website I used was wholesomebabyfood.com. I really like this site, it tells you how to cook the foods and has different recipes. Yummy!

New

Reagan got her first haircut today. It's been looking a little scraggly at the ends and we'd never cut it, so we decided it was time. And by "we", I mean me and my mom. She was going to give it a little trim but we opted for a real salon professional and I'm so glad we did. Myra is awesome and was so good with Reagan. It turned out adorable and Reagan loves it. Here's the trip to the salon:

The before shots





The "cape"


The first cut


The wash


Being so good at staying still

and cue the cuteness!!!

Buh bye swing

With Elisabeth being colicky her first few weeks of life, we found the only way she'd sleep was swaddled, in her swing with white noise playing. Now that she's starting to be a normal happy baby we are making the transition to her crib. Oh, and the fact that we'll be on vacation in 3 weeks and won't have the luxury of a swing. She's awesome. She's in her crib for her daytime naps and most of the night. She still needs a little help getting to sleep around 7 or 8 pm, so she gets to swing but we're definately making good progress.

Elisabeth is almost 2 months old already which is crazy and very welcomed. She was a rough little stinker for awhile so we're all happy that she's growing out of her fussy stage. She loves her bouncer and her activity mat. She ADORES her big sister! Reagan can always make her smile. Not that she's at all stingy with the grins. She has the cutest toothless smile! Unfortunately, she is suffering a little from second child syndrome and I don't have as many pictures of her as I did of Reagan at this age but I will be making a conscious effort to take more. And not just with my phone.

Here's one of the little champ sleeping away in her crib.

And one of Reagan too. You can see the remnants of her first black eye caused when you sit on the dog and she stands up really quick and you get whacked in the face with a dog tooth.

July 4th

We had a great 4th of July. Once again we made the long trek across the street to our neighbors who through an awesome party every year. Jared was on shift so it was just me and the girls. I was a little nervous but we were only across the street from our house if I needed to bolt. They had lots of yummy food, games for the kiddos and tons of fireworks. Elisabeth slept pretty much the whole time. It was a little chilly so she was bundled up and snuggled the whole time, hence, no pictures of the babe. But, plently of cute ones of Reagan who loves parties especially ones where she gets to eat chips, cupcakes and rootbeer for dinner and watch a pretty cool fireworks show until 11pm. Sorry these pictures are small, they were taken on my phone and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to make them bigger on the computer.

Reagan was pretty excited to have her very own cup with her nap on it.

Playing with Tad



Pinata

Sparklers

Prime fireworks watching spot. Complete with heated seats and earwarmers! Thanks Chad!