November 2010

Linda and Kent came to visit us the beginning of November. We had such a fun time with them. Tradition when Grammie comes to visit is Rice Crispy Treats. The kids love to bake with her. This time even Wyatt got to help her. And of course they were so yummy.

The big thing we did while they were here was we went to the Phoenix Zoo. It was so much fun. We saw lots of animals. Our favorite area at the zoo was where the giraffes were. The funniest thing was to watch Wyatt with the map. The other funny thing was when we saw the tortoises one of them was trying to get out to get Elora. We loved having them here and can't wait to be with them again.

The Wedding of the Century

Dad and Kelsie at The Rehearsal

This is one of my favorites from the weekend. Wyatt helping pull the cooler to the Rehearsal Dinner at the Park.

Our flowers

I painted all the little girls fingers and toes red they loved it.

Front of Ashley's hair

Back of Ashley's hair

Aly putting on Kelsie's necklace

Mom fixing the veil

The bride aka Kelsie

Kathleen (maid of honor), Jalissa (flower girl), and Chrissy (bridesmaid)
3 of the 9 dresses I made

Ashley all ready for pictures and the wedding. She looked absolutely gorgeous.

The 3 flower girls. So adorable.

The centerpieces.

The kids dancing. They really didn't stop till the night was over.

The cake

Derek and Ashley dancing.

Feeding the cake to each other. They were nice to each other and didn't smash it.

Brian (ring bearer), Ashley and Elora.

Derek and Elora. This is towards the end of the night and it was like 10pm and she was still awake and going.

The last dance. Mr and Mrs Pensyl.

So the wedding of the century happened in our family. My sister is finally married. Many of you know that this was a lot of work for me and many months in the planning. I will post pictures of all the things I created to make this wedding come together in a different post. It was so beautiful and we had lots of fun that day and night. Wish I had some ceremony pictures to put up here but Kelsie just got them online and hasn't gotten her disk yet so I will have to do a second post of the ceremony. In the end I will never recommend the Wig Wam to anyone but we still had a blast and they looked amazing. Wyatt refused to walk down the aisle and even started stripping his tux off behind the bushes but I couldn't do anything cause I was at the front as a bridesmaid. Just one of the many funny little things that happened that day. When you have kids you just never know what will happen. So glad that it was all she wanted and that they are happily ever after now.

October 2010

Alright I told you in the last post I was going to start taking everyday photos of us. So here are a couple. Tanis really needed some help with timing on one of his saxophone pieces so Derek asked me to pull my flute out and help him. I am actually amazed at how much Tanis loved me practicing with him. Now he doesn't want to practice alone. It was fun helping him. One day I came downstairs and found Wyatt pushing Elora back and forth from the porch to the other end of the house in the stroller she loved it and they both were just giggling for ever while he did it. These 2 kids love being outside. Wish I had a backyard to let them run free sometimes. Lastly was our Halloween/Pumpkin carving celebration. We decided to wait till Tuesday before Halloween to carve the pumpkins and it still wasn't long enough to wait they were all pretty much gone by Friday which was our trunk or treat at church. But the kids had fun digging the goop out and picking their picture that Derek then carved (cause he is such a perfectionist can't have the kids do it makes me go crazy) but have to say they were amazing looking the 1st night. I love the picture of Elora sticking her hand in the pumpkin. Every year Derek begs me to dress up and I just say no this is about the kids and plus I usually never have time to put a costume together for me as I am working on the kids' till the last minute but this year I decided ok I could do something. We gave the kids a choice of Mario party characters and some others that I can't even remember a week later and of course the chose Mario party. I love to dress the kids in a theme and have them match which is getting hard when you have an 11 year who doesn't want to be a prince or in a theme so I tried really hard this year to find a theme he would like and I nailed it. So we have Mario, Toad, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Princess Daisy, and Luigi. The kids were so surprised to see me dress up and Ashley even said it was the best Halloween because I dressed up. That made me feel pretty good as she and I are always butting heads. We had a lot of fun and the kids got so much candy it didn't even fit in my huge Tupperware bowl that I always put it in. I have enjoyed this last month and the simple things of my kids.

Inspired by another

I recently read a blog of a family that lost their 18 month old daughter this summer. One of her posts was Would you have done anything different? It really touched me and has really made me ponder about the way I am being a mother to these 4 precious children. I guess it really hit me because Elora is almost that age and she is my last and so everything she does are the lasts for me. So lately I've been holding her a little longer, trying to listen to the oldest 2 when they want to tell something without getting impatient or angry with them if it is taking to long, and observing Wyatt while he still explores and figures things out. I don’t want to have any regrets once they are big and grown or heaven forbid something else tragic happen to take them away from me on this earth. So I am also going to make an effort to take more pictures. I know how is that possible cause I am the queen of pictures. But this last year or so I really haven’t taken many pictures of our everyday life. Of course I have it for the big events or when we go somewhere special but I want to remember the everyday things too. If you would like to read the couples blog and see the strength of this couple the here is the link http://patrickandashley.blogspot.com they truly are amazing to me.

September 2010

September brought a couple of things for us. The public library does a reading program during the summer that I have the kids do. The ultimate prize at the end is a free ticket to a Diamondbacks game. There are a few different dates that you can choose from so we try to go to a game when they are playing the San Fransisco Giants as that is Uncle Branden's team and has made us fans also. We are still #1 fans to the Red Sox but we can have a team in the NL also. So we got to go to a game and we sat in nose bleed seats for about 1 inning and decided to move down to where they have bleachers much better. They other fun thing we had was a Bridal shower for my sister Kelsie. We did a pink and black polka dot luau theme. We had a lot of fun. The cake was amazing probably the best cake I have ever tasted. One of Kelsie's friends mom did it so sorry friends that are far away.