Phone pics update....

A sampling of our life lately via pics from my phone..i don't know why i cannot get rid of the huge spaces between all my photos.. sorry.

Violet checkin on her baby doll

Olivia enjoying some popcorn at the beach!

Olivia heading out to sea

Violet really went for it playing in the waves this time. She was wiped out, obviously.

I made a new recipe Sunday that was delish. Here is violet enjoying it...

And here is Olivia napping through dinner at 630! (she went down at 2:15. What can i say, we keep it low key on sundays)

And here is a picture of our dinner. Yes, that white spot on the plate is calling out for a big, fat piece of garlic bread but I opted not to make it for fear of death by carb overdose. But my plan probably backfired because it just left more room for pasta or salad...and you can guess which one we chose!

See the recipe here...

A first for these 2. It's the only way we can shop and have room in the actual cart for food!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New stuff

We got 2 new chairs for our living room and they came today. Olivia came in and apparently noticed our new items because for like 20 minutes, she could not get enough of her newfound seat! I guess she just wanted to help break it in.




Went to the beach today... That's about the only place I can go and not be annoyed at the obscene temps at the end of September. I'll blog pics of that and all the amazing things we've been doing (not) later. BTW- did anyone slash everyone watch biggest loser last night?? Holy depressing. Every other story had some tragic death in it. Too much. But I guess that's the point of the show. I told Adam I sometimes want to be a trainer because I like the idea of giving people the tools and opportunity to get to the "other side" and see how much happier they can be..... But then I remembered I like mcdonald's and don't particularly love working out. Nevermind.

Goodbye baby carseat...we won't miss you

Babies-r-Us is doing this exchange program right now where you bring in an old highchair/carseat/stroller and you get a coupon for 25% off a new item in one of those categories. I have been sooo ready to move Violet to a big girl car seat so I figured now was a good time! And, my infant carrier has seen better days so I had no problem trading up. They're doing it to get older models of stuff out of the community...newer/better safety features nowadays... Anyway. Violet thinks she is a big timer like her sister now. The whole way home she wouldn't lean back- she wanted to sit upright at attention in case something exciting happened.

She'll still face backwards for a while but I don't think she minds. She can watch Olivia's every move which is what she loves to do anyway! Bonus: this print was on sale so I got an even better deal. Definitely dulls the annoying-ness of the fact that we have to own 2 gigantic car seats that take up my entire backseat. Luckily the 2 babies using them are so cute! Do you love Olivia's sock feet in the background?

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

in case anyone is wondering...

this is REALLY good. olivia loves to it too. she just had some with her lunch. yes, i give her popcorn with her lunch. sue me. it's high in fiber and better than plenty of other options like chips. thankyoubye.

Potty talk (really creative pun, I know)

Luckily, if I need someone to talk to while I'm going to the bathroom, this little one is right next me in the shower. Don't worry about how I had my phone in the bathroom to take this picture.



Fine with me if she wants to play in there.... Hopefully she doesn't attempt to turn the water on though!

(Sorry for the borderline TMI-nature of this post....)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

proud to be an american

can't imagine being in this situation but i'm sure it happens a lot.. probably should've posted this on 9/11 or something, right?

Coming Home from Ryan Southwell on Vimeo.

had to remember this

before school on friday... it was "God Bless America" day in her class so she had to wear red :)

olivia's preschool carpool is in a little U shape. you hold up your number and they bring your kid and buckle them in. easy peasy. usually they make their way a few cars back to see numbers and start gathering those kids so by the time you are rounding the bend, your little tot is ready. i love to try and get a look at what olivia is doing waiting with her little class before she sees me. yesterday i saw the cutest thing. the carpool person was getting her from her teacher and her teacher was kneeling down in front of her blowing a kiss-- i guess she was probably wanting olivia to do the same. instead i saw olivia wave/say bye bye and then literally jump in to her teacher's arms for a hug. then she ran to the car with the carpool lady. i'm sooooo happy she likes her teacher and that this is working out well. it was really cute to see.

that being said, i need to structure my short tuesday/friday 3 hour "break" better. some days i try and pre-plan what i'm going to do the night before, otherwise it totally wastes away in 2 seconds. case in point--yesterday. somehow all i did was go to the grocery store and i'm pretty sure i was NOT there 3 hours. not sure how that adds up. oh well. happy weekend!

i picked her up from school with lunch and bathing suits so we could cram in a quick hour at the pool. she is not quite ready for a nap when we get home from school so the pool is our favorite time killer....as you can see, she loves mom's "gasses"...

labor day in the pool

we had a pretty low key labor day. did a few things around the house, went to west elm and ikea to look at a desk (note: do NOT go to ikea on a holiday...death), and then we broke in to adam's sister's house to use their pool. they were out of town and we had permission. :) olivia loves swimming and violet has only been one or two other times so she had a good time. she was very serious about her splashing. 

twinners

apparently there was something in the water...doesn't it look like they're both looking at the same thing?

best i could get of my busy swimmer girl

she seriously thought she could swim and wantd adam to just let go

trying to swim laps!

love that face. she was loving adam throwing her up in the air.

she fit like a perfect little wedge in the tube

i don't even know what to say about this one. she looks a 200 lb boy with some slick hair (today someone at the grocery store commented on "what a cute boy" she was. she kept saying he this and he that and seriously referencing how she was a HE like 25 times so i was just hurrying to get the car loaded up so she wouldn't notice she was wrong and feel awkward and embarrassed. it doesn't bother me at all, she kind of does look like a boy.. .but a super cute one! she was wearing a freaking dress too, btw. people have said it when she has a pink blanket also. HELLLLLOOO?)

just lounging!

fun times

friday night we watched the byu game with our friends tyler and rachel. olivia had a blast running around in her cheerleading outfit constantly trying to put her grubby hands all over their TV (sorry!) and violet looved meeting their little guy jackson... they are about 2 months apart. we had a good time. i just had to document my little cougs in their finest fan gear. and maybe i got carried away with the polaroid app on my phone. whatever. they aren't the greatest quality photos but they are pretty cute!

this is just a funny one of my mad little girl the other day. jail bird in her crib wanted OUT and i just decided to take a picture instead. mean mom.

blueberry baby

so, this post is actually serving a legitimate purpose. i have a question. do you think it is totally necessary that i give violet baby food? i'm thinking the answer is no. for some reason, she doesn't really care for it. i mean, i might be kind of impatient and maybe i haven't let her experiment with it enough to realize the proper thing to do with it is actually EAT it, but i can only take so much sweet potato puree spit in my face.  however, she loves big people food. she will munch on whatever little bits i give her like she has a full set of teeth, even though she doesn't even have one. she's really only had a few different breads and small pieces of fruit, but she loves it. my only concern would be that she won't get as well rounded nutrition this way, probably, since with baby food, you can cram in the vegetables before they know what's going on. i would give it to olivia still if i could. just the other day i mixed a jar of violet's that she was clearly not eating into olivia's spaghetti in a desperate attempt to get her some vegetables. she had no clue and i was feeling very satisfied that she got like 315% DV of vitamin A from my sneaky sweet potatoes. olivia eats approximately 200 servings of fruit a day, but vegetables......maybe 2 a week. or maybe zero some weeks. well, i don't know.. maybe it's not that bad. but i do know it's not enough.

anyway......i don't know if i should keep shoving the baby food on violet until she finally likes it, or if i should just give her teensy, barely-there pieces of whatever i'm eating and see how she does....

today she had blueberries for the first time and she was a big fan. looking for the perfect little piece to eat!

too sour!

"can you stop taking pictures of me while i eat? it's embarrassing."

delicious!

all done! (not sure why i neglected to take off the white shirt.)

(other notes for me...aka....not required reading for you! ) violet has now committed to a real crawl... no more army. and she also mastered sitting up from the crawling position. it's funny to turn around and think she's just crawling around, only to see her popped up sitting so straight waiting for some attention. she is starting to be really interested in what olivia is doing 24/7, and she will take little detours on her crawling path to go over and get right in olivia's business. sometimes olivia is okay with this, but lots of times she is not. today olivia was looking at a book with me and violet came over and rested her hands on the book for some support while she looked at it too and olivia totally pushed her hands off the book. but she did it all delicately like, "mmm. no thank you. you are not welcome here." so mean! i kind of understand though... olivia has been kind of whiny to me the past few weeks and i think she is probably just sick of violet being everywhere she is. they probably both need more individual attention i guess. ahh. anyway, back to violet. she still sleeps soooo bad at night and i'm seriously going to lose my mind. if she goes down with olivia at like 830, she will usually wake up again at like 1230, but definitely at like 330. sometimes she skips the 1230. it's like no different from when she was 2 months old?? i've been feeling sick the past week and i swear my body is shutting down from lack of sleep. i'm gearing up to let her cry it out all night sometime soon. i just feel like i need to get her solid food routine down a little better during the day so i don't feel too bad when she's screaming her head off. for the 20th time.. i did not know how easy i had it with olivia. i mean, to my credit, i was a little more organized with her whole schedule...but still... she was much easier to work with! one day bad baby will sleep through the night... and at this point, that is going to be the best night of my life!!!!!

PS- speaking of sleep, adam and i downgraded from a king to a queen in this house.. we felt like we had to because our bedroom here seemed smaller. we were wrong. a king can totally fit. worst decision of my life. we sleep bad too. we are going to have to make the switch again for our sanity but it's so annoying because it's such a waste!  so combine this with the above and now you know why i am a zombie.

i don't know what to call this post

last night we made our way to a wholesale appliance place. unfortunately, we are in need of a new clothes washer and a new dishwasher. (i don't really know who says "clothes washer," but i felt the need to differentiate.) it took some restraint to not go ahead and get the new dryer as well so my delivery could be a shiny, new complete set. but, we decided to keep our current dryer and only replace the piece of junk washer that came with the house. it's seriously from 1960. the dryer is newer. anywhooz. it was a quick trip and we found what we wanted in no time. correction: we found what we wanted that was in our price range. who knew you could have appliance envy? maybe someday i'll have a w/d set that costs like $3,000. do the clothes come out ironed and folded?

i'm sure you probably don't care about this family purchase, but i wanted to blog these pics from our adventure. this place doesn't have AC, so i was dreading it... but i knew it would be no biggie with the kids. we went there for our oven/microwave during the renovation and olivia loved it. she just runs all over the place sweating to death with super high power fans blowing on her from every direction. i know what you're thinking. sounds awesome!!!

i asked for a "cheese" and this is what i got. 

these pictures do not adequately reflect how much she was sweating.

somebody else did NOT like the no AC situation. at all.

"hi folks. can i help you find something today?"

here's a project we finally finished this week. in reality it took a total of only a few hours but we just kept putting it off. i don't have a before picture, but they were an ugly cream color with no seats at all. that's what was holding us up. had to find the weekend energy/time to cut the wood. done and done!