Octember Thanksmas

This is another one of those blogs that we are trying to catch up...all the way back to Halloween. This first picture about sums up the recent excitement in our house. Joni took a picture every time Ellie and I sat down for our Sunday night ritual...America's Funniest Home Videos and popcorn. Makes me feel kind of lazy, but this is a happy little tradition Ellie and I love to do together (yes I am wearing the same sweats, they were washed in between these pictures). We also have a tradition now of doing 3 pushups for every point the Broncos score on Sunday, lately it's been a lot :)

Reese is 5 months old, and Ellie is now a 3 year old. Reese still has no hair, but she loves smiling anytime anyone gives her the slightest little bit of attention. I love it when Joni sends me pictures of all the girls while I am at work, it helps me to remember what's most important and also remember how lucky I am to have all these girls in my life.

In case you didn't know, Joni is the world's best babysitter. Some of the kids we watch while friends are out have even said Joni is better than Disneyland. Who wouldn't love a babysitter that brings a bunch of candy and helps you to make your very first gingerbread...car?

Life with a three year old involves a lot of carpet cleaner and stresses us out sometimes. Ellie has recently liked drawing on our kitchen stools with a pen, I guess it could be worse. I have had to literally tell myself so many times to "not cry over spilt milk". It seems to help while I am scrubbing and breaking a sweat while doing it. Every night is a workout to cleanup the aftermath of what looks like a toy bomb going off in our house, I regret having ever judged the cleanliness of someone's house that has lots of kids. I just wish the carpet in our rental home was a little darker...

We got a visit from Grandma. She helped Ellie make a beautiful gingerbread house. Ellie just ate the candy while Grandma made it, but I think she had fun.

Grandma Berger (Maude) always had the touch on these things.

Ellie has been such a great big sister. We used to have problems with her being too rough, now she is starting to understand, I also think that she is truly starting to love Reese and accept her as part of the family. Ellie has really developed quickly in a lot of ways, but really slow socially. She can be so sweet and loving with us, we just haven't figured out how to help her not scream and hit, and how to share and not feel threatened by anyone that looks at her. I look at other kids and wonder how they can seem so "normal", but then again I wouldn't trade this special little girl for anything.

 

Ellie loves to sing and dance and act out her favorite shows, Reese just stares at her every move and smiles between her toots and burps.

 What three year old doesn't like to eat a cookie while sitting on Gramaude's lap?

Oh...hey there...it's Paul and Joni. Lately we seem to literally switch places constantly. I get home, Joni goes out, Joni gets home and I have to leave so that one of us is watching the kids and still be able to get some things done. November and December have been so so busy for us. We try to savor every free moment we have, maybe that's why we haven't been blogging in a while?

In early December we hosted a pie party at our house. This is becoming a yearly thing with some friends. It's so wierd sometimes comparing our lives without kids to where we are now. Priorities are so different, and even what we do is different. The Wii always helps keep all the kids entertained, and eventually is taken over by the dad's while the women chat about...whatever they like to talk about.

We've made some great friends here, we don't really want to leave so we just don't even think about it, hopefully that time won't come for a while. We are coming up on 2 years in Nevada which seems like a record for us.

 Joni loved her spinning wheel of pie samples...

Me trying to understand the "girl talk" while distracted by so many pies, I'm actually better at girls talk than the conversation about guns that was happening at the other table.

For Ellie's 3rd birthday we had a Toy Story themed party complete with alien cake pops. She has been spoiled with all of the Toy Story toys. Just when we made that investment she moved onto Nemo, then Despicable Me, and now Wall E so you can guess what is coming for Christmas. We are going to have a Disney store in our house soon.

Once again, Joni is cool...wooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

How does anyone get any normal shots where everyone is looking at the camera? We haven't figured that one out yet.

Reese is still in the 95th+ percentile in height, and only 20th in weight, she is a long and skinny one who can't even fit into Ellie's 9 month old clothes.

This was our first year trying the trick or treating thing, we went out with some friends from work and just went down one street. It was pretty cute seeing Ellie trying to comprehend that random people would open up their doors and give her candy. She just wanted to go in everyone's house and explore. We had a couple of pretty cute little dinosaurs.

 

It seems like a million things have happened in the last couple of months, serves us right for being so blog lazy and forgetting about so many things. We wish we could be spending some time this Christmas with all of those we love but realize how near impossible it can be. We will be thinking of all of you and wishing you were here with us. We can only hope all of you are in good hands and remember that the true spirit of Christmas is the spirit of Christ. Blog you later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just girls...plus dad

You know you are a true parent when your wife frantically texts you to tell you that your 2 year old stuck her hand in her dirty diaper pants, pulled out a poo, and is in the process of wiping it on her bedroom wall. I felt bad I wasn't there to help but that's also one of those moments I couldn't help but laugh out loud all by myself in my office at work. We have not even tried to get this girl potty trained, but maybe it's about that time to start thinking about it.

Speaking of milkshakes...feels like we've been doing a lot of eating out, when you have 2 little ones sometimes it feels like the options are limited so the times you can get out of the house are typically enjoyed by stuffing our faces. Ellie and I enjoying a chocolate shake at Johnny Rockets, I was able to get a few sips in before she completely took over.

Reese is so smiley, then within a second she is screaming at the top of her lungs. It will peirce your eardrums if you are too close, definitely didn't have that problem with Ellie. I think she is so happy all the time because she always has gas and has 30 year old man toots. They are not dainty at all, I'm so proud of her. Reese's crying literally has 5 levels. Level 1 is louder than most babies at their level 5, by the time you get to 5 she is red and sweating and grunting and choking and screaming bloody murder. It also escalates in pitch with each level change, she is so talented.

Still little baldy, we cannot for the life of us figure out who she looks like, but between her toots she sure is cute. She is starting to use her hands and reach for things.

And...here we are at La Hacienda Del Sazon, our favorite new Mexican restaraunt in town. We have yet to be able to get a picture with all of us looking normal, at least Joni always looks good.

I guess bows make her look like a girl, Joni has taught me that you don't go out in public with a baby girl with no hair and no bow. A little old lady in church told me how adorable she looked in her dress, then she asked me her name and I said "Reese", then she looked puzzled and said, "oh, HE is cute". I guess not everyone is accustomed to Reese being a girl's name. She walked away feeling bad...AWKWARD.

Reese with her sort of cousin Cora, they are 2 days apart. Joni's family came for the baby blessing...

...14 of us to be exact. We ended up moving to our new house that same weekend. We pulled out of the house we were going to buy, long story but it didn't feel right in the end, we found a great place just in time. Moving stinks. I was so worried that Reese would scream during the blessing, she hates to not be held up against you, luckily I had Jim on bottle patrol and he popped that thing in as soon as she started level 1. She was perfectly happy sucking away, then we popped it out right at the end, everyone couldn't believe that she was awake and didn't cry...that'll be our little secret.

cute girls

Hanging out by the fire pit, roasting marshmallows, one of our favorite things to do. It's beard season by the way, but don't judge me as this was week 1.

Tell us who you think she looks like cause we sure don't know.

I know it sounds cliche because everyone says it, but we have been so busy lately. Lots and lots of visitors, buying a house and all of the drama that comes with that and living in a rental that is on the market, busy with church stuff, busy with work, busy with kids...life sure seemed a lot easier when it was just Joni and I.

While we were in the hospital for a week with Reese my mom came for a visit. I'm sad because we didn't take any pictures while she was here, probably because we were all in pajamas and adjusting to a new, chaotic life. She was a huge help to us to mainly just have someone here to entertain Ellie. It's nice to have such strong support, and also nice to taste some of mom's sweet rolls. Between her and all the ward meals that were brought to us, our fridge was full of good food for a long time.

Ellie sure loves her little sister. This is how it usually goes though...Ellie comes up to give Reese a kiss, we say "that's so sweet, thank you Ellie", then she repeats that process 6-7 more times until Ellie realizes she isn't getting Reese's attention so she wacks her, puts weight on her, or squeezes her hand until Reese cries. Since Reese reacts that makes Ellie happy and she laughs. It is stressful to have a 2 year old and a baby, we can't leave Ellie alone in the room with her. We've tried all kinds of solutions but Ellie is just determined enough to do whatever she is going to do.

My dad and Susan also came for a visit. We also didn't bust out the camera other than one short trip to Genoa. We took them up to Inspiration Point. Went for ice cream in Genoa and laid on the grass at Mormon Station.

Ice cream seems to make all your cares and worries go away...as long as you can run it off later. I took my dad golfing, we hadn't seen my dad and Susan since we left Longmont, so it was fun to catch up and hear about all the fun trips they've been taking, and hear about some family we never seem to see or talk to.

Then our good friends from Connecticut, the Barnes, came to see us. They live in Seattle now, and they have 2 girls almost the same age as our 2 girls.

The Barnes are the types of people that make you feel comfortable around them right away, I'm glad they have made the effort to stay in touch because we seem to do a horrible job of that with so many friends. We think about all of our friends from past states we've lived all the time. We just don't make the effort to stay in touch, sorry friends.

We hiked down to Emerald Bay and packed a picnic to eat on the beach. It wasn't crowded at all, I guess the hike scares a lot of people away, we did it with multiple strollers and packs, people looked at us like we were crazy but it worked out.

We all tried paddle boarding to see what all the hype is about, seems like everyone is paddle boarding lately. It was fun but a little hard to balance when you could see 40 feet down to the bottom of the lake, and when boats would come by and leave their wake behind.

Thanks again to all of our visitors, and to all of you who are so good to us when we don't always make the effort to be good friends, kids, cousins, uncles, siblings etc.

We are hoping to move into our new house in October but we've run into some issues with a leaking pipe, hope it all works out. It is a foreclosure so there is A LOT of work to do...as if we needed more on our plates right now right?