Friday, March 14, 2014

2014...The Beginnings (Jordan's and Matthew's Birthdays)

What do you do when you want to combine a 3 year old girl's and a 1 year old boy's birthday?
Duh!

We weren't very good at taking pictures but here is what we have...Only one and a half months late!


Matthew cheesed it up for every single picture!  He did love the cake!



We did cake and ice cream technically on Matthew's birthday because Rob had class on Jordan's big day, but she didn't seem to mind!




Here's Jordan's actual day.  She wanted burgers...fine by me!!


Oh and she picked a special treat at the store!


Here's Tay showing off one of the two nerf guns that we got... Dad and Taylor enjoy them much more than the two birthday kids!

I had to include this.  I got a new washer and dryer and you would think it was better than TV.  The kids were mesmerized!




Thursday, January 2, 2014

The Holidays

We thought that we were moving to warmer climates!  Well as our luck would have it, it has been unusually cold her in Kentucky!  We got record snowfall!!  One whole inch!  The whole city shut down.  Our neighbor was nice enough to let Rob use his snow blower to get our long driveway cleared!
 Jordan stuck to the garage...
 But Matthew and Taylor enjoyed the snow!

 We also did ginger bread houses with our friends the Weavers.  I was going to pass this year, but I'm glad that Marissa convinced us to do them!
 The girls enjoyed doing their own little houses!

 Here are the munchkins in their Christmas jammies!  
 The kids had a blast opening all their presents!



 Matthew even tried to investigate just how Santa got the presents into the house!!
The presents were really fun and especially Taylor enjoyed opening them this year, but the real present arrived Christmas night!  Grandpa and Grandma Smathers along with Uncle Tyler flew in Christmas night.  Tiffany and her family came the next day and we spent a few days together!  I can't believe that we don't have a single picture....I'll have to check with the others and see if they took some.  I am grateful to have good family and can't wait to see them all again...hopefully soon!


Projects...

Well, we've been keeping busy!  On Labor Day, we started finishing the basement; and when Mom and Dad called in October to tell us that they were coming for Christmas, the work went into overdrive so that we could get it done in time for them to come.  We are grateful that Tiff and Nick are so close because they made a few trips down to help us out.  Nick's expertise was especially helpful!


The girls loved getting in on the work!



 Matthew too...
 Rob by far put the most man hours into our little project!
Carpet went in the Wednesday before Christmas!  Just in time for Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle Tyler to come!!
We took a wall out of the girls' bathroom and had to replace some tile where the door was.  We decided to use a decorative pattern instead of trying to match the tile!
 I also had a couple of projects going on on the side!!  This table was given to us by a member of our ward.  It was originally the color of natural oak with a white glaze on it. (I can't find the before picture!)  I spent hours...and I mean hours sanding it down and then Rob helped me stain it a nice dark color.  We love it!  
Another woman in our ward gave us this china cabinet!  I painted it up and then Rob helped me distress it.  It is a great addition to the dining area...and now I can actually display Great Aunt Pat's china!!


Rob and I aren't sure what we're going to do with all of the time that we will have in the evenings now!!  I'm sure that we will figure something out!!  

Oh and I had to add these!  The girls got to do a project on one of our MANY trips to Home Depot and Lowes!







Sunday, November 3, 2013

Halloween!

Ok, so there are a ton of pictures from our Halloween festivities!!  We only had a million different things to go to!  It all started when our awesome neighbors, Jason and Kristy brought the girls a bucketful, literally, a bucket full of goodies!  Included was fingernail polish, which Taylor was very excited to use!!
 Next we did a little pumpkin carving...the little pumpkin because we were saving the big one to do with some friends later in the week.
 Taylor had decided that she wanted to be Merida from Disney's movie Brave.... I really didn't want to spend any money on costumes and things so I made her a brave dress out of some curtains that the previous owners of the house left.  She liked the dress but said that she needed red hair to be brave.  Well, I was happy to oblige and we set out to dye her hair with KoolAide.


 So the pictures look pretty good, right?  Well, everything I read said to rinse with cold water if you wanted a short-term dye job....well our cold water rinse made it really short-term...like it came right out on the first wash.  After the trauma of the first attempt at dying her hair, Taylor decided that she didn't need red hair, but that we just needed to curl it!



 Well, our first Halloween shindig was at the local Zoo.  You have to get tickets in advance because it is so popular, so of course it ended up that I picked the coldest day of the year!!  It was something like 35 degrees the day we went and earlier in the afternoon it actually snowed!  The girls thought the shuttle bus ride to the Zoo was AWESOME!

 They had all sorts of cut-outs to take pictures with.  Taylor wanted her picture taken at every opportunity, while Jordan, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with it!


 We had to get one of little Matthew!  Everyone thought his "costume" was the best!
 One more cut-out!!
 Don't be alarmed....Matthew just wanted to get into the holiday spirit!!  Jordan was coloring with markers and decided that Matthew might like a red one!!  Thankfully it came off pretty quickly!

 Our next even was the ward Trunk-or-Treat.  This, unfortunately, is the best picture of all three kids that I was able to get this year.  Matthew isn't a very cooperative subject and didn't like to leave his toad stool on his head!!

Here we all are at the Trunk-Or-Treat.  Yes Rob and I were spoil sports!!


Wednesday night, while Rob was at school, the girls and I attacked the big pumpkin.  We looked online and found a witch pattern that we all liked and decided to carve that instead of the traditional jack-o-lantern.  The girls did a fairly good job scooping the guts out, but Jord decided pretty quick that it was too dirty of a job for her!
 Matthew was as happy as can be just playing with the bowls in the cupboard while we worked on the pumpkin!!
 My camera wasn't cooperating, but here is a bad picture of the finished product!


 
It was rainy on Halloween...so I had the bright idea of going to the mall to trick or treat.  You wouldn't think anyone else would have that idea on a rainy Halloween!!!  Well, we got one piece of candy and then walked among a throng of people past about 10 stores before we decided that it wasn't worth it.  We met up with Devin and Marissa and decided to call it quits at the mall and head for home!




 When we got home from the mall, our neighbors up the street texted and asked if the kids where still up and asked if they could stop by.  Their daughter had some friends over, and they each took a turn reverse trick-or-treating the girls.  They would ring the door bell and when the girls answered the door the teenagers would hand the girls handfuls of candy!  They loved it!  I'm hoping they'll come back every year...then we won't have to take our kids anywhere!  

Here's my last pictures!  My little Brave and my little Minnie Mouse.  They sure are cute and lots of fun!