It's that time of year again!

NONE= the amount of willpower I have when it comes to these babies! I walked into the grocery store today very set on sticking to my "list" when I was greeted by some sweet young girls waving these babies and I just couldn't resist. So I brought them home and swore I would eat only a couple before I had a sensible lunch.

Half a sleeve later....I finally ate something healthy, but after dinner guess what was for dessert? If this baby comes out smelling slightly of mint I will not be surprised. So much for not gaining a thousand pounds this pregnancy. All I know is they are worth it!

Happy girl scout cookie season everyone!

Fort Fun!

We are officially sick of Winter in our house! The kids have been good sports about it though and staying busy, despite their serious Vitamin D deficiency due to lack of sunlight exposure! Their latest distraction is playing with every single toy in their rooms as you can see.

When that gets boring, they usually end up tearing the couch apart and jumping on it, until I tell them to stop. Then they always make a fort out of the misplaced couch cushions.

This is the result.

Rylynn has obviously been cooped up too long!

After their attempts, they decided to call in the expert fort builder, Daddy.

The result was pretty cool!
Darn that stinkin' groundhog!

Preschool Days

I just realized that I get pictures from Rylynn's teacher each week of an activity they do in preschool and I have never posted one. This is Rylynn's teacher Suzanne and the class during "meeting time". Rylynn loves her preschool!

This one is from a couple weeks ago of Rylynn doing an art project with her friends Keira and Emma

This was their first time using clay. She loved it but got her clothes filthy!

Oh Happy Day!

We have officially arrived as parents! Our daughter actually asked to do the dishes for us!




Last night after dinner I started washing the dishes and Rylynn just pulled up a chair right next to me and said she was going to do the dishes tonight. I had already rinsed most of the dishes so she had the pans to do and she loved it! She scrubbed forever and got them sparkling clean! I have to admit that I didn't think she could get them all clean by herself but she actually did a great job! I love that she had to wear my apron too. I'm feeling better about having a third kid now that I don't have to worry about the dishes anymore:)

Happy Hearts Day

Valentine's Day has been going on for weeks at our house! The main reason for that is because my husband hates Valentine's Day because he feels that it is dumb that the commercial world has to pick an arbitrary day to express your love to your loved ones when you should actually be doing it every day. Before you get the idea that he isn't romantic, let me explain that I actually love this about him. It just means that I get showered with gifts and flowers at random times unexpectedly. Ironically, the only day of the year I know I won't get anything from him is on Valentine's Day!

The festivities began a couple of weekends ago when we went out and had a "Valentine's Day" dinner at Maggiano's with Ben and Molly. We had so much fun with them and the food was AMAZING! We of course ate family style so we could get more of anything we wanted, plus it comes with the added bonus of lots of yummy leftovers! Then about a week later he surprised me with a gift card to a maternity store that I like since he knew I had NO summer maternity clothes because I have never had a summer baby.

Then a few days ago, he brought these home as a surprise!

I have to admit though that since I have become a mom, Valentine's Day has mostly become about the kids. My Grandma Allred surprised the kids and sent them each a Valentine Card in the mail a couple weeks ago and gave them each a few dollars to spend. They are always excited to receive mail of any kind but they especially like the kind with money:)

Notice how Carter has his money in his hand. He is keeping close track of it! The kids were so excited about this little surprise from Great Nana and we went to Target a few days ago to spend their money. Rylynn bought a Cinderella polly pocket doll to add to her collection and Carter bought a new Thomas train to add to his. They were thrilled! Thank you so much Grandma!

Then this Wednesday it was Rylynn's Valentine's party at school. I signed up to bring in some heart cookies for a special treat.

Rylynn was so excited to help me make them.

Carter just wanted to eat them. They both ate about five before I realized they hadn't even eaten lunch yet! Needless to say they didn't eat much lunch.

Rylynn's class has been learning about mail for the last couple weeks so they were so excited to make these giant envelopes to keep all their valentine's in from their friends. The only sad thing was that Rylynn was so excited about taking the cookies that we had made that she totally forgot to hand out her valentines to her friends. When I picked her up I noticed they were still in her backpack so I told her teacher and she felt really bad, but they said she could pass them out next week. Oh well.

They also made homemade valentines at school to send home to their families so we got this beauty in the mail a couple days ago.

This morning, we all got up and I made everyone a special French toast breakfast and then we gave the kids some little valentines gifts.

Rylynn named her little pony stuffed animal "pinkypie" and Carter calls his frog "froggy" very original I know. The other thing that Carter says about his froggy is "church" because he is wearing a tie. He loves pointing out church clothes in pictures or when people are wearing them. He is so funny. He always follows "church" up by saying "snack" because for him they go hand in hand. Snack time is definitely the highlight of nursery for him! They also got candy necklaces/bracelets and Rylynn got a new princess nightgown and Carter got a Bob the Builder movie. They were pretty happy campers. I asked Rylynn what her favorite thing about all of Valentine's Day was and she said without hesitation "the Cookies!" So we made another batch tonight. Hey what can I say, I'm pregnant:)

Hats, Cleaning, and FHE

Carter has been a little obsessed with his baseball hat lately. Garrett felt very strongly about getting Carter a Seattle Mariners hat for Christmas this year, so we found a baby one to match Daddy's. At first Carter would only leave it on for a minute or so, but this week he has been all about his hat. Since Carter was wearing his hat Rylynn of course had to wear her hat too.

I love how the hat makes his little ears poke out like elf ears! He loves that there is a beesball(baseball) and a stah(star) on his hat.

Hers is NOT a baseball hat, it is a pink princess hat, of course!

The kids thought it was so cool when they wore their hats just like Daddy. Doesn't Rylynn's hat go so well with her outfit? She wants to wear her ballet leotard everyday lately!


Rylynn has been on a cleaning spree lately which is just fine with me. She always wants to help me wash the dishes and her favorite thing to do is to wipe off the table. It usually turns into scrubbing the walls and the cupboards too. I have to say Rylynn is a little me and this just proves it even further. I have always loved cleaning and organizing (I know it's weird). Rylynn gets so excited after we clean her room and loves having everything in it's exact place. One time her friend came over right after she had cleaned her room and her friend came out of her room looking very sad and said that Rylynn wouldn't let her play with anything. I went in to check on the situation and saw Rylynn standing very protectively in front of her book shelf with all her toys. I asked her what the problem was and she said she didn't want to play with anything because it would mess up her room. After reassuring her that we would clean it all up again after her friend left, she reluctantly stepped aside and let her friend grab some toys. She is so funny! I remember doing the same thing in my room when I was little only I was protecting my stuff from my messy little sister (who has since become very neat).


We have talked about taking the kids to Chuck E Cheese's for awhile but we have never gotten around to it, so finally on Monday we decided to take the kids for FHE. The kids loved it, but I have to say, that place is a little more ghetto than I remembered it being. First of all the food was way overpriced and gross, but the real disappointment was that there was no ball pit!! That was the best part when I was a kid! To add to it, we got our cup of tokens and decided to play a couple of games while we were waiting for our mediocre food to arrive. Garrett set the cup down on the ground for a minute to take off Rylynn's shoes so she could climb through the tubes. Next thing we know some kid stole our entire cup. We had seriously been there for 2 minutes and used two tokens before we got ripped off! We went and explained it to the guy in the front and he gave us the look like, "yeah that happens all the time here!" but luckily he gave us more tokens. Since I didn't feel comfortable putting anything down unattended after that, I didn't get to take many pictures. Carter's favorite things were the tunnels and slides and the basketball game. Rylynn loved the tunnels too and just running around mostly. She also liked the water gun racing game. It was a fun family memory and the kids have been asking to go back ever since. Another complaint I have is against the cheap toys that you get with your tickets! They were so lame. Why did I used to think those were the coolest things ever when I was a kid? I guess your tastes change a bit as you get older. Oh well, the kids didn't seem to mind that their toys fell apart the next day.

Bring on Number 3!

Yes it is true, my clothes are tight and I feel really fat, but it is because I am pregnant! I am due around August 10th and we are so excited to have another baby in our family. Rylynn is convinced it is a girl and I fear what her reaction will be if it turns out to be a boy, but we will cross that bridge in a couple of weeks. I am 14 weeks and feeling great. We had a little scare at the beginning of this pregnancy similar to Carter's but we are feeling good that everything is fine now. All we have to do now is figure out in which state I will be giving birth to this child and if we will be employed at that time. No pressure honey:)

Freezing February

I got an email from my grandma in St. George yesterday saying that it is now officially sweater weather there now as it is in the mid sixties everyday. Well that may be how February is in some places of this country, but here in OH this is what February means to us. SNOW, SNOW, and more SNOW!

We have been just dumped with snow here the last couple of weeks, which has been fun and also a little bit of a pain. It has been fun because the snow is very pretty and the kids LOVE to eat snow so they are in heaven.

We have been promising them that we would take them sledding and playing out in the snow for the last couple of days, so tonight after dinner we all bundled up and went out to play!


It was getting dark so we were worried that we would freeze, but it was actually okay. Luckily the sledding hill is right across the street so we knew if the kids lost it we could just run home. However, I did learn rather quickly that it is very difficult to run in snow that is up to my thigh! Rylynn tried to tromp through it herself but she lost two boots in the process so we ended up just carrying her most of the way. The kids loved the sledding!

Our next door neighbors built some really cool snow forts and a snow tunnel on Saturday before the second big storm hit so we decided to check those out too.
The tunnel was a big hit! After it got dark the kids were ready for a hot bubble bath and some hot chocolate.

These two pictures represent what we do all morning long these days.

I split my time between talking with Rylynn's princess dolls and playing Thomas or "slides" with Carter. Sometimes Carter will come in and play dolls with us for a little while. My favorite is that he calls Rylynn's Nephi figurine "Ne-pie". I make him say it like 10 times.

Carter calls the tracks slides. He can't get enough of his trains. We seriously need to invest in a train table.

Just Some of the things I Love Here

I have been getting really sad about leaving our wonderful home here in Ohio since I know there are only so many months left. So I took some random pictures of things that I love about living here. We have been just dumped with snow lately, but I don't mind too much because of this great guy!


This is Paul our awesome landlord! No matter what time it is, or how cold it is, Paul is always outside clearing our driveway when it snows. The driveways here are so stinkin' long and he has to plow two of them every time. The other day during our yearly winter storm warning, he was up at 6am plowing and then he did it three other times before the day was over. Paul lives right next door, so if we ever need him to fix anything he comes over right away. He is the best!


We are really going to miss this little bunch of munchkins!! We love having our date group every week. I swear it is the kids favorite night of the week. We all switch off watching all the kids once a month and get to go out on dates the other nights. The kids all love each other and it has been so good for Garrett and I to get our date nights regularly. I don't know what Rylynn is going to do without Emma and Olivia. She already tells us that she wants them to come with us when we move and that she will NOT make any new friends where we move because she is already friends with Emma and Olivia!


Luckily, this next thing I love gets to come with me! I just had to post this picture for posterity. This is Rylynn's first shiner compliments of her little brother Carter. Last weekend we were trying to get the house ready for the date group kids to come over and while I was vacuuming, Carter pulled the extension rod out of the side of the vacuum and threw it right at Rylynn's eye! At first I didn't think it looked too bad, but as I got closer to her to comfort her I realized it was growing by the second and turing purple and black. Poor girl. After she cheered up, I asked her if I could take a picture and she put on the dramatics big time with this sad little face.

I know Rylynn is really going to be sad when we move. She is already very worried that we will leave something from her room behind. We keep having to reassure her that we will bring all her toys and her bed. We are all going to miss this place a lot. We have such great neighbors and friends that we are going to miss so much. I will really miss our house too. It is the first house we have ever lived in and it has really become our little home, although I must admit, I won't complain about a little more room for the kids to run around:)

Cousin Fun

Here are some more random pictures of fun with family throughout our visit. I just couldn't leave these pics out of the memory books!

We had so much fun making gingerbread houses. The kids mostly just ate candy:)

Aunt Abby's masterpiece!

Rylynn and Mommy's finished product!

Rylynn ate as we worked, a lot!

Mommy and Rylynn working together. We had so much fun!


The "kids table". Rylynn and Carter had so much fun with Thais!

They got to ride Nana's friends horses together! They loved the horses, but Carter was scared of one of them because he kept neighing really loud.
Some of the gang on Christmas Eve sportin' our new Christmas jammies.

The day before Christmas Eve, we had a special breakfast at my Grandma's house. It has become a yearly tradition. This year she read the grandkids "The Christmas Orange" after the breakfast. It was such a sweet story. Rylynn really loved it, and talked about it for days.

After Grandma read the book, each of the grandkids got to open a present from her. They all got a book of their own. Rylynn was very excited to receive a barbie princess book.

The kiddies on Christmas morning piling on Uncle Garrett.


Carter can't ever get enough of baby Reagan. He made sure to show her all his toys on Christmas morning. He calls her "baby".


Carter got to know his "auntie" a lot better on this trip. They were good buddies.

Carter, Rylynn, Braden, and Logan being silly at the Temple lights.

Rylynn and Braden were monkeys in Grandma's trees.

Rylynn thinks Auntie is so silly!

Braden is such a great older cousin. Carter loved his piggy back rides!