A wall finally decorated!

With the addition of the Christmas tree, I had to move some stuff around. I finally decided to put photos in this collage frame I've had sitting in my bedroom for way too long (i.e. at least 4 months...), and while I was at it, I also hung some frames that have been sitting in the garage. I've been meaning to do something with this poor, boring wall ever since we moved in 18 months ago, so I'm tickled to have finally gotten around to it! Now this spot is warm, inviting, and it is filled with all sorts of wonderful memories! I was only planning on moving the table here until the tree comes down, but I love how it looks and will be keeping it here from now on!

Our Christmas tree, 2010

We got our Christmas tree today! It was a few days earlier than I'd planned, but the kids were too excited. We had a fun night of decorating the tree and playing Christmas music! Bring on the holidays!!

(P.S. Derk, CUT YOUR HAIR!!!!!!!)

Asher and Bri have a "sleep-over"

Kyrie's friend invited her to spend the night tonight, and Asher and Bri were feeling a bit left out. So we decided to have a "sleep-over" of our own in the living room, which they were super excited about! Derk blew up the air mattress, and we all laid out together and watched a movie. Here are Asher and Bri, snuggled up in their sleeping bags, zoning out to the Land Before Time. :-)

Thanksgiving 2010

This year we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with our good friends the Wilhites. It was so nice not being alone, and it made the sadness of not being with our families a little easier.

Our day was filled with delicious food, great friends, and lots of fun! :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!

High frequency words: Mastered!

Asher has been getting so good at reading and loves to practice his new high frequency words each week. :-) I am so glad because he was showing zero interest (despite us trying and trying and trying!) before starting kindergarten. It's so fun to see them learning so much!

Way to go, Asher!!

Cambria's 4th birthday!

I finally realized my baby was turning 4 whether I liked it or not and that I'd better get her party planned. I've been pretty busy lately with school, so I decided to keep this birthday a lot more low-key than normal. I scheduled the party specifically so that I wouldn't have to feed anyone a meal, and that freed up a lot more of my time to put together some fun games for the kids. We ended up only having one family over (we invited more, but nobody else could come), and it ended up being really easy and fun.

Bri loved picking out her own decorations this year. I took her to Party City, and she had a blast picking out her streamers, candles, balloons, napkins, party favors, and a new plate and cup set that she could use at her party. She wasn't very happy with me that I wanted the decorations to match ;-) , but she got over it pretty quickly.

She ended up taking a nap today, so we were able to decorate while she was asleep and have her be surprised when she woke up. We decided to have the kiddos decorate their own cupcakes as one of the activities, but Bri did NOT like the idea of not having a cake and INSISTED that she HAD to have her own cake. ;-) So I just made her a little Bri-sized cake of her very own to eat while everyone else had cupcakes. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that she decided to sneak a few tastes of the frosting. ;-)

Bri was WAY too impatient, so we opened presents as soon as the party started. She just had a one track mind and couldn't focus on anything else with all those pretty packages staring at her! ;-) I didn't get pictures of every single gift she opened, but I got quite a few!

Kyrie and Asher had so much fun picking out gifts for Bri this year and were so excited for her to open them. I LOVED seeing their reactions to her opening the gifts, and then Bri was so sweet and gave them both the biggest hug after she'd opened the presents. Kyrie picked out a new sleeping bag (Bri's got ruined several months ago), and Asher picked out a Play-Doh ice cream set.

Aunt Katie, Uncle John, and cousin Jonni sent her a package! It was a little Disney Princess wallet, and inside was a chapstick and a necklace. You can see by her face how much she LOVED it! :-)


Nana sent her lots of little gifts that were a huge hit!




For Kyrie's 3rd birthday, I was 7 months pregnant with Asher and decided to give her a Graco baby doll set (high chair, stroller, and play pen). That thing lasted forever, and we literally just barely threw out the play pen this year. We still have the stroller. The high chair was tossed a few years back, but still, that's a long time for a toy to last. So with only the stroller left to play with, last year for Christmas Bri got a new set, but it broke a few months ago (less than a year old). Toys seriously are not made the way they used to be! Kyrie's old set was metal, so I searched for weeks and weeks to find a set for Bri that was metal and would hold up better. I found one online for a good price, but then Derk suggested I check Toys R Us before ordering the one online. And they had one! I was so excited and could barely wait to give it to her for her birthday!!


I didn't get any pictures of the games, but we sure had fun! I put together 2 scavenger hunts for the kids, and they LOVED it. My original plan was to split the kids into 2 groups -- older and younger. For the older kids, I had clues typed out. For the younger ones, I took pictures of where each clue was hidden, cut them up into easy puzzles, and then the kids had to put together the puzzle to figure out where the next clue was. At the very end, they would find their prize. But since we only had a couple of kids, all the kids decided to do the scavenger hunts together. It was a huge hit. After that, they really just wanted to play, play, play, so the adults just enjoyed our time to chat and let the kiddos have a blast.

After all that playing, they finally decided it was time for cake/cupcakes. :-)


After the party was over, we let Bri decide how she wanted to spend the rest of the day. She wanted dinner at Arby's and then games at Chuck E. Cheese. So that's what we did! She also insisted on wearing one of the new outfits Nana sent and looked so cute all dressed up. I cannot even tell you how many people stopped me and told me how darling she was. :-)

Here's our little princess, passed out (wearing her new nightgown and necklace, sleeping in her new sleeping bag, and cuddling her new baby doll) at the end of her very busy, but very happy 4th birthday. :-)

Happy 4th birthday, Cambria!

Asher's pumpkins

This is a belated post, but I completely forgot to post about it back in October. Before Halloween, Asher did a little activity at school that had us laughing. They had to color these pumpkins and then tell what each pumpkin was feeling. Asher's pumpkins are sad, mad, happy, and silly. :-)

Derk's hair

He may or may not kill me for posting this, but I think it's too funny.

Ever since Derk turned 30, I've joked with him that he's getting old. The past few weeks, I've been joking that he was going through his mid-life crisis early. Why, you ask? Well, some guys may go out and buy a Farari. Some may go out and buy a whole new, younger-looking wardrobe. Some may dye their hair to deny they're going gray. Some may simply get into a depressed funk. But my husband? He just refuses to cut his hair.

If you can convince him to cut his hair, I will pay you a million dollars.

Children's Festival of the Arts

Today was our town's annual Children's Festival of the Arts. We actually didn't hear about it at all the past 2 years we've been here, so I was super excited to find out about it this year! It's a free event downtown where there are tons of booths set up for kids to make all sorts of art/craft projects. They had painting, pottery, "junk art", sidewalk chalk, you name it, they had it! We spent most of the day today down there crafting to our heart's content!

First they made hand puppets! The girls made cats, and Asher made a snake.

Next up was the "junk art" booth. They had a couple of long tables that were FULL of "junk" -- random scraps of ribbon, paper, beads, tons of glitter, fabric scraps, anything you can imagine. Kyrie decided to make something for her friend Savannah, which turned out so cute! Then Asher and Bri both wanted their names done, too. Asher just wanted his done simply with glitter, and Bri got a bit more creative with hers.

After that, it was time for a quick stop to get slushies. All that crafting is hard work, you know! ;-)

After that, we headed over to do some painting. They spent quite a bit of time here. Note the red and blue circles on Kyrie's painting. Those are peace signs, which she has recently become obsessed with. I have no idea why, but it's pretty funny. She draws them ALL over her homework, on random pieces of paper, etc. Asher's painting is Optimus Prime. He's so funny because he LOVES to write now, but we can't seem to make him understand that you write from left to right. He says he LIKES to write backward and that he only needs to write "forward" at school. :-) Bri did hers all by herself, until the very end when she asked Kyrie to write her name on it.

As she was painting, Kyrie saw a boy from her Primary class there with his parents. She has her first real crush on this cute little guy, and it was so adorable to see her get all flushed when she saw him walk by. Then the look on her face when I asked her if she'd just seen Henson was priceless! :-) The cutest thing was that this boy was Harry Potter for Halloween (Kyrie was Hermoine). So, according to her 8 year old logic, they are "meant to be!" I asked her to try her best to wait just a few more years before she springs boyfriends and/or marriage proposals on us. ;-)

They did some cool sketch art thing. I forget what they called it, but they had these black pieces of paper, and when you draw on them with something pointy, the black comes off and reveals a cool design underneath. Notice that Kyrie's not only has peace signs but also has "hippie" written on it. Too funny! Again, I have no clue where she's picking this stuff up, but it cracks me up!

Our last stop of the day was the beading booth where the kids each made their own necklaces.

We really hope we're not still living here next year, but if we are, we can't wait to go back to the Festival of the Arts! ;-) In all seriousness, it was super fun. So much thought and effort was put into it by different volunteers around Yuma, and it was such a blast for the kids. I was very impressed, and we all had a very fun day!

Lesson learned

Have you ever wondered, "What would happen if I gave my kids free reign of the house, completely neglecting everything because I was in a mad rush to complete an assignment I so stupidly procrastinated?" Well, luckily for you I can put an end to your curiosity! Observe!

And that's just the kitchen, family room, and dining room. Trust me, the rest of the house was even worse. *shudder*

I had a paper due for my philosophy class today, and I procrastinated big time. By that I mean that I didn't even look at the handout to see what was required until last night! It was then that I realized the paper was supposed to be 6 pages in length and that I had less than 24 hours to get it done. Oops! I did as much as I could last night, staying up until 2am working. The hardest/longest part was sorting through all the info and deciding what I wanted to write about and which sources to use. Once I got all that figured out, the actual writing part went pretty fast. But even so, at 2am I was still only less than halfway finished with the paper. I knew I had to call it a night and get some rest.

I had errands to run this morning and wasn't able to get home to work on my paper until after I'd picked Asher up from school. So the mess was a result of having to leave 2 kids pretty much to their own devices (with a few exceptions, of course) while I frantically typed my paper. I'm happy to report that I did finish with about 8 hours to spare and was able to spend the evening relaxing with the fam (after I spent about 3 hours cleaning, that is!).

So yeah, lesson learned! I guess that means I'd better get started on the English essay I have due a week from now, eh?