Happy Birthday Kena!

Our baby girl is 3!!  We love our Kena..she always wants to be outside, is always singing a song, and can entertain herself for hours (but unfortunately not without making a mess)!  For her birthday, we celebrated on Sunday and she invited some friends over and wanted a heart cake to celebrate.  We decorated the house with balloons and dangly swirly things and she felt like a princess!  Her nursery teacher made her a darling crown out of felt and ribbon.  Her friends brought her some fancy fake nails, a strawberry shortcake dvd, and princess balloons.

On her actual birthday, we gave Kena a play doh set, took her to burger king for lunch so the kids could play on the play ground, and later that night we attended Lily's school Christmas performance.  I included a video of Lily doing her part.  She practiced to memorize it and we were so proud of her (she is still too shy to go up on stage for Primary, so we were impressed).

Christmas 2011

This is Erin hijacking the blog.

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas this year nice and cozy with our little family.  We spent the day making treats for Santa (we made home made oreos with crushed peppermint sticks rolled around the edges), cleaning the house (since Santa doesn't come to messy houses), and indulging in a traditional candle light feast (consisting of crab legs, gourmet aged steaks, salad, and mormon bubbly).  Later we smashed a pinata (which kena and lily made out of a fruit snack box), sprinkled reindeer dust/oatmeal on the lawn, and tried to enact the nativity with some ward members (...unsuccessfully because the next day we found out that we went to a house that looked similar to theirs a few houses down..we wondered why nobody answered and the house was dark).  The good news is that their neighbors were fortunate enough to receive a bag of homemade english toffee "from the Graybills" on their front porch on Christmas morning.

The girls were thrilled to get a Dora kitchen (especially Kena) from Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas morning (Kena calls it a "dora pie baker").  Other gifts that they enjoyed were books and colored pencils from Nana and Papa, princess barbies, snow globes, and hello kitty watches.  Riki got a rifle and I got running gear and a gps watch.  We are very blessed.

I played my violin with a quartet on Christmas in church and also had a choir performance with a flute.  It was really nice.  We are so grateful for the birth of our Savior and the gift of the atonement.

At the Park

Halloween

Disney Vids

 

Disney 2011

We had a great time on our vacation to Florida, or as our kids are saying now...a super-fun time! We visited Disney on two of the days, going to Disney Marketplace on one and then Epcot. We also visited Sea World two days as well. The girls were able to wear costumes on one of those days and do some trick-o-treating. Each of these days at the parks were long and exhausting for all of us. By days end, the girls were finally worn out which allowed for a peaceful car ride back to our hotel. Our last two days we spent at Cocoa beach lounging and swimming in the pool and ocean. It is super-good to be home!

Zealand army crawls

Someone was bored

Birthday Boy

I had a great birthday.  Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. Thanks Erin and kids for a wonderful day.

Dancing to Dora

Go Cougs!!!

Thanks Auntie Keri for the sweet "B" "I" "U" gear.

First Day of School

Lils loves getting ready and going to school.  She gets dressed early and bounces around the house waiting for one of us to take her.  After her first day, she rattled off the class rules to us: No Screaming, No fighting, & No leaving the room without a grownup.  She loves that her classroom has a hermit crab and a fish tank.

Go Cougs

We put some meat on the Q for the football game today.  Cody and Ashy came over and watched with us.  The coug D is the most physical I have ever seen at the Y!  It looked we marched up and down the field only to shoot ourselves in the foot to end the drives.  On to another tough one this week in Texas!

Cooler Weather

The last week or so have been really nice.  We have gone on some family walks in the evenings enjoying talking to our neighbors who come out to chat.  Our greek neighbor walked with us all the way up and down the block telling us about each neighbor.  I have a feeling gossip travels just as fast here as it does in the relief society.

Mom and Dad left on Sunday and made it home last night.  It was nice to have them out here.  The highlight of their trip was getting to know more about their childhood, and their early married years. A close second would have to be the baseball game Dad and I went to.  The Pirates ended up losing, but fought hard and even took the lead late.  Thanks Mom and Dad for all your help!!

Hershey, PA

Hershey was fun and nobody got heat stroke.