What we have been up to....

We spent Christmas in Northern Idaho with my family. We got a cousins picture. We were missing a TON of family, but we had fun. I love this picture with Tytan sticking Riley with a dart!

Santa Came to make a little visit, and bring Ava her Christmas Jammies. The little cousins had a great time! Ava saw Santa and said, "It is Santa, I know you!"

Here is a cake that I made for my friend, Jessica's birthday, which happens to be the same day as Ava's. I didn't give the bow long enough time to dry, so it was a little droopier than I had planned and I had to use some toothpick support, but it was all good.

This summer when I was pregnant and Riley was in California for his internship, I made flower clipies...and I just didn't stop. I made about a bazillion, and I just hung some up in Viv's room. I am addicted to these cute giant clothes pins. I have some in the office for the mail and things, some for Ava's pictures, and now they are holding flowers.

Here is Ava's bunch of flowers...the really sad thing is I gave away a lot to cousins and friends, and I still can't even fit them all. Good thing I have two little girls to share them!

Ava requested a few pictures be posted...one is her name in her room. So here it is.

The other is her table and drawing easel. We rearranged today and so she wanted new pictures of where she put her things. She is hilarious!

Here is another little something I made for Viv's room. The funny thing is, for some of the things I collected the envelops we got in the mail that are the security ones and used them. So if you look really close, some have names of companies on them. Oh well they were free!

I decided that before school starts again and things get crazy I needed to finish some projects and get really organized. With both of us in school, with alternating schedules, so we don't have to get a babysitter, and Riley in the bishopric we aren't expecting to have a lot of time to get things done, so I went crazy and organized everything. I was working on a project for Viv's room. We got an old rocking chair from Riley's Grandma Belle, but it had been stained and painted so many times it was all different colors, so I painted it black and antiqued it, so it is rustic and really cute. Then I decided to do the crib to match, because we have moved 6 times with this crib, it had a little wear and tear, but I just love it, so I painted it, and roughed it up a little. It turned out really cute. I did a thin coat, so you can still see all the wood grain. Viv's room is finally done!

Riley and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday. Riley was sick, so we just had a low key dinner at home. After dinner we played a little gin and had some mini eclairs...yummy! Perfect night! I love you Ri!

Here is a cute one of Ava that she requested, because Elmo's world is on the background, and she just loves Elmo's world, so she wanted a picture with it.

Here is one that Ava took of Miss Viviann. Big blue eyes! I love it!

So that is the last few weeks in a nutshell. We hoped that everyone had a great Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Birthday Pictures

Here are a few pictures from Ava's 3rd Birthday party. The Lines Family (pictured, Debbie, Ava and Henry) came over for pizza, which Ava doesn't even eat, but we couldn't invite them over for Vanilla yogurt and peanut butter on a spoon...so we opted for a pizza party.

She picked out the colors and the shapes for her cake. It think that it turned out pretty cute. It looks like a Dr. Suess Cake or something. It is chocolate cake, which she picked out too, but she didn't even eat it, she just ate the fondant.

Enough with the pictures mom....I want some cake! There is cutie Elizabeth!

She had a lot of fun opening her presents. Grandma and Grandpa Crebs sent the scooter. She loves riding around the apartment with it, just practicing for spring!

Henry wanted to help blow out the candles....it was pretty cute! Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Ava Belle!

AVA TURNED 3 YESTERDAY!

I can not believe how big she is getting. She is so much fun, and just so cute! She always says something funny, or does something funny. She never fails to surprise! She is amazing at puzzles and letters. One of my favorite things about her is last winter when we were really working on learning letters and their sounds she started calling the letters by their sounds and not their names. So instead if calling 'A' an 'A' she would scream 'AHHHHHH!" She still does it every once in a while and the best is when we are in church and she starts sounding out words and screams 'AHHHH!' She says B is a BABABABAAAA! Oh I love her. She is such a great big sister. She baby talks a lot to Viv and says, "Oh you are Gorbus! (how she says gorgeous) you are just so Gorbus, Mommy sister is Gorbus!" She also says, "Hiiiiiii, Hiiiiiii, Hiiiiiii" all in different tones and lengths. She is so stinkin cute! She is so excited to be a sunbeam and she gets to start preschool for two mornings a week in January. I can't believe how fast she is growing! I will post pictures later!


WE LOVE YOU MISS AVA!!

Free Christmas music

Just letting everyone know...iTunes has a free Holiday Sampler CD. It has 20 songs on it for FREE! They are a pretty good mix of genres and things, and it's Free. We are hurting for Christmas music, and Riley will not listen to NSYNC Christmas one more time, so I thought I would search for new music :) Just go to the iTunes store and there is a David Archuleta Single for free this week and then next to it is the Holiday Sampler. Hope you enjoy your free Christmas music!

Born To Ride

This weekend Ava wanted to go out into the FREEZING cold snow...really it is freezing here. Today the high is 13 degrees and the lows are down into the negatives. Mix that with the Rexburg wind and it is unbearable! Weather only a two year old would want to play in. Luckily, Riley doesn't mind it so much either, so he took her out into the snow. She wanted to sled, but we don't have sleds, so Riley got out an old snowboard. He adjusted the bindings as close as he could and strapped her in. SHE LOVED IT! She would go down the hills, and then Riley would give her a push, and she would just cruise! She was too cute! XGames here she comes!

3 Months Old

Today Miss Viv hit the 3 month mark. I can't believe how fast it has gone by, but then again, and can't remember life without her. She is such a fun baby to have around. She smiles at everything and has quickly moved from "cooing" and laughing to squealing and shrieking. It is the funniest thing ever. It is like her alarm when Ava gets to close..she just starts squealing and shrieking really loudly. Ava was never this loud as a baby. Maybe it is because Viviann has an older sister for a roll model on how to be loud!

She has started drooling like mad..she drenches every shirt she wears. In the picture above she was in her cute dress for church, but that was soaked by the time we got home so she's just in the leftovers.

She is still a super sleeper.

She loves to sit up and stand up. She gets mad when I make her lay flat or take her out of her bumbo and does mini sit ups to try to get back upright. I think it is because she doesn't feel as vulnerable to Ava's mauling attacks when she is upright.

She is loving the lights on the Christmas tree. She could stare at it all day.

She is just so fun. I can't say it enough. We are so in love with her!

SuPeR CoOl

I was looking at Viviann's hair this weekend, and thinking that it needed some kind of trim. It is in that weird falling/out growing in stage and she has no hair on the sides and a mohawk/mullet combo that I refer to has her Hawkllet. Anyway, we were watching the LA v. SLC game Sunday night, and I realized something...Viv's hair is totally just like Sir David Beckhams! So she really has the coolest hair on the planet, I mean she must if it is just like Davies!!

28 is GREAT!

Today was my birthday! Hurray! It was a lot of fun. Riley and Ava pampered me all day long! I woke up to French toast, my fav! Then Riley asked what I wanted to do, and I told him...I wanted to rearrange the entire house! I know we have only lived here for a few months, but I was in need of change and super deep cleaning and dejunking...IT IS MY FAVORITE THING! So Riley and I moved all the furniture from room to room and it was like we just moved again! I don't know why, but I love to move and organize. Ava loves her new room, we love ours too and I am sure Viv is loving hers. It is like playing musical rooms! Then Riley made me dinner, Chicken Cesear Salad, another favorite thing of mine. Then the finally was Ava and Riley's cake that they made me...so good! We ended the night, riding the roller coaster...it was a great birthday!

I was feeling a little sad this week when I was thinking..."I am turning 28 and still living in Rexburg, Idaho and going to school...what the heck!" But today made it all better. I have a wonderful family who love me very much and great friends who care. Thanks everyone who dropped a present by or mailed one, it meant a lot! Shaun and Emily, we saved you cake for when you get back from Utah. it's birthday cake, so it is zero WW points!

TWINERS!

My friend did this on her blog with her boys and I thought it would be fun to look back on in a few years. I was looking through some old photos and I thought this was pretty cute. I think that they are super similar. Viviann is the first picture, and Ava is the second. Viviann's eyes are a little wider set (like mine) than Ava's (like Riley's), but they have the same ears and nose and mouth and face shape. This was Viv at two months and Ava around 4 months, so she could still change a little, but I love my twiners!

Viviann's Blessing and other happenings

Last weekend we had the opportunity to give Viviann her blessing. It was really sweet, and great to have family around. My parents came down from Coeur d'Alene and brought my little sister, Darbye and her new hubby, Lyle. We really had a lot of fun. Here are some cute pictures of Miss Viv on her big day! (and I finally posted about Halloween too, just below this post)

No one told me that my eye makeup was smeared, and my hair looks funny, but here are the pictures anyway.

Shaun and Emily came and participated. They have been here in Rexburg with us from the beginning and it is fun to watch our little families grow. Ava loves their little man, Lincoln, and calls him BLincoln. She talks about him all the time and tells stories with "her friend BLincoln" in them. So fun to have such good friends!

Here's the fam.

Ava had a blast with Grandma and Grandpa. She was so sad to see them leave and kept saying, "I lost my Grandma and Grandpa!"

I also did my mom's hair while she was down here. That is an essential part of every Rexburg visit. It is a lot of fun to get to talk and catch up.

She has been asking me for colorful highlights for a few years now. She wants red for chirstmas and blue and red for 4th of July, but I have always told her no, because her hair is so light they would be rediculous to bleach out to a nice platinum again, so this time, I got her extensions! I cut them into her hair so she can clip them in and out for the holidays and there are no horrible effects. She now is the proud owner of red and blue ones! I think that I have created a monster cause now she wants green for St. Patricks day and who knows what other colors! hahha. Love you mom! Ava kept saying, "Grandma's hair is bleeding!" What a fun grandma to have around!

The cold weather has decended upon Rexburg, and so I am going into crafting mode like crazy...
What do you get when you mix old thrift store sweaters and a sewing machine?
Cute little Sweater Dresses for a cheap price! My favorite blog, Make It and Love It, gave me this idea and I went crazy...I made 5 dresses in like an hour cause they are so easy and so cute! They are made from Ladies sweaters. This one was from The Gap and in great shape and I just cut it a little and there you go! Ava loves wearing dresses all the time, and now she has some warm ones for the winter!

Then I was putting in a load of laundry and noticed soapy water EVERYWHERE! So Riley got to take it apart and fix it...this is what our house looked like for a few hours while he diagnosed the washer. Turns out the drum was cracked on the bottom. He put a little Apoxy (sp?) on it and it is working good as new. Hopefully it will hold out for another year or so.

I LOVE MY HANDY MAN! He always leaves presents behind when he fixes things too, like a few screws and what not :) Not too shabby for having no clue what he was doing...and it works great, it is even better balanced than before, so obviously those screws served no real purpose in the washing machine anyway! haha

"Arrrrrgh! I'm a Pirate!"

Finally a Halloween post! We have been experiencing quite a bit of technical difficulties with uploading pictures. Finally I just uninstalled the internet filter...and Vola it worked! (Thanks Emily) so now every time I want to upload pictures I have to uninstall the filter...sounds great! ha.

We started out a few days before Halloween carving a big family pumpkin and painting Ava's little pumpkin. Ava had a blast! We realize now that we never got a picture of the finished product, but Riley is quite the carver! Ava just like posing for the pictures.

Halloween started out with a bang this year. Riley had been up until 4 am the night before finishing up everything for school so he could spend the WHOLE day with us! WOO HOO! So he was sleeping in, and I was up with the girls. Everything was going well until little Ms. Ava decides to take apart part of her costume and stick one of the beads up her nose. It was so far up her nose you could hardly even see it, and it was a pretty large bead. So I wake up Riley and we pin her down to try to get it out. She was wiggling and saying it hurt, so I thought we were going to have to go to the Immediate Care for sure! We were stressing out because we already have enough medical bills with Viviann's birth that we didn't need more for a stupid bead extraction. We continued with the tweezers, but I didn't want to push it further up there and she was too wiggly. We all got ready to go, and as we were heading out the door Riley had the great idea to try to blow it out....duh! Genius! It worked! You can totally tell we are first timers. Needless to say it shot out across the room, which Ava thought was SO funny! We caught her trying to stick another one up her nose a few minutes later! SO I checked the whole apartment for any beads so she cant do it again. I think the bead might have given her brain damage...she's not too bright sometimes! So no doctor after all...few!After all the hoopla of the morning, she had a Haloween cookie, ate the frosting off of it and crashed on Viv's boppy. She is a true older sister...She can use Viv's anytime, but if Viv were to lay on her boppy it would be war! Oh memories of my childhood with an older sister :) haha just kidding Heather!Ava picked the family theme this year, which of course was a pirate! (She's pretty obsessed with them) She went everywhere saying , "Arrrrgh! I'm a Pirate!!" She got such a kick out of Riley and I dressing up as Pirates as well. She really loved Halloween this year. Here she is with her parrot sidekick. They both looked too cute! I tried my hand at making their costumes this year, and luckly they were really easy to make. I had a lot of fun doing it too, so I think I will try it again, at least until they get too old and it becomes and imbarrassment for your mother to make your halloween costume!

Here are her serious pirate pictures....she didn't take this dressing up thing lightly...she scowled and Arrrgh'd all night long.

Signs your child might have OCD...she organizes everything! haha. She went through all he candy and threw away everything but what is shown below. As parents, we didn't object. She unwrapped all her lollypops and lined them up by size. She takes a lick of each and throws them away as well. Riley and I are both a little guilty of over organization sometimes, so she comes by it naturally...and it runs in the family...haha dad!