God Bless the USA!

It was fun to have some friends invite us over for the 4th of July. They also have some relatives who are Americans so we had a chance to even celebrate with actual Americans. ;-) Don't get me wrong, Canada Day was a blast and we'll sorely miss all the fun, family friendly activities around here to participate in but we didn't see any fireworks (gets dark way too late for the kids) and even though we were dressed in our red and white, we were really also missing the blue. I wish the two independence days were farther apart because I would like to keep celebrating Canada Day in the future but having the two holidays just days apart and all the festivities being so similar it does make for a lot of work and prep. We'll see though, who knows for the future. In this case, I was glad that Katie did the work and I got to enjoy it. It was awesome! Katie is Tati's teacher at church and she LOVES her! Katie seems to really enjoy her except those rare times when Tati loses her wedding ring (but we found it). She also loves Katie's husband, Slader. They are some of the most kid friendly people we know so the girls had a great time over there. They even borrowed a jumpy castle thingy. I mean, come on.

I thought this picture turned out awesome--especially color wise--at least we're all looking.

The glasses were courtesy my friend, Jeanette. I have to give her a shout out for some awesome patriotic decore that she gifted us after her trip to the dollar store in AZ. She knows me too well. I am a sucker for the dollar store. I'm always a little hesitant to hang too much USA memorabilia around here. I don't know why but I guess it is because in California when I would see people with all these flags and stuff from other countries, it is more like the attitude of "Then go back to ______!" And I don't want people saying that to me. :-)

Here are some other fun pictures. I can't take credit for them all since I didn't take them, but I can take credit for the cute subjects of the photos--most of them anyway.

(photo courtesy of Sami)

We didn't do any fireworks but we did do sparklers. We've never double and triple lit them before though so that was a big thrill.

(photo courtesy of Sami)

And I never get sick of this cake idea. It was beautiful and delicious! Thank you Katie!

Canada Day

It was Canada Day on the 1st and we had so much fun doing stuff all together. Greg has been putting in some pretty intense hours so we can go on a much needed vacation, but that means we don't see him sometimes until breakfast the next morning because he'll roll in at 9 or 10 each night. Anyway, it was great to have the whole day together. We were going to try something new this year or maybe a new venue but Chloe was telling Tati about all the cool things they'd see at Festival Park so in the end we decided to go there again. It is just so fun and family friendly that we couldn't resist.

The girls got their spray tattoos that they love so much. Tati got a fairy and Chloe got dolphins (again).


Then they played inside of the butterfly pavillion which turned out to be a bit depressing because Tati wasn't the only coo-koo inside and there were dead butterflies all over the ground and Tati kept grabbing their wings and telling me, "Look Mom, isn't this powder stuff WEIRD?!" and I had to keep explaining how she was killing them.



We packed a picnic this year and found a nice, quiet place on the grass to eat it. Greg was being all artistic like and took a diagonal shot. Whew, whew! Way to work the camera, Greg!
Gavin ate first and layed down and enjoyed a few minutes with the girls on the blanket.

And we even treated ourselves to some cotton candy. In the past, Tati has always said that cotton candy is gross but suddenly she thought it was the most delicious thing she ever tasted. It was pretty delicious. I am a sucker for cotton candy. And of course we named our cotton candy. We name everything. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when the girls are naming mosquitos before they smash them. Anyway, our cotton candy's name was "Marge" and hopefully you can see why.

And that's pretty much it, all of it, or the end.

5 months old!

And somehow we love him even more than we did last month!

The Unforgettable Necklace

I don't know if it is just me but I find shopping online so weird. I mean it is thrilling because it is so instant but there is a problem with that too because you can commit to something and then later find out that in "real life" it isn't as cool or awesome as you thought it would be. Enter the website The Vintage Pearl. I had seen some stuff they'd made and thought it was super cool. I mentioned it to Greg on more than one occasion dropping hints and hoping he'd do something maybe for my b-day or Mother's Day. This year he did but it wasn't a surprise. He asked me what I wanted and we ordered it together. I was super excited.

When the necklace arrived, it was nice and shiny and I really loved the pearl but as I looked at the names, I couldn't help but feel like it looked like it said, "Javin" instead of "Gavin". It was a poor font choice by us. We contacted them and even though it wasn't their error, they said they'd made us a new one for just the cost of the disc portion discounted 20%. We thought that sounded perfect so we went for it and Greg carefully told them the new font we wanted.



That's when necklace #2 arrived. This time, Tati's name was misspelled and it was in the other font that we didn't want.

Greg changed it all up and the girls were all really funny at the VP too. Here's an excerpt from her email:
Hi, Greg-

I certainly don't know what to say....I am SO sorry about that....we will get the new charm made and sent out to you tomorrow.

I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the third necklace. 3rd time's the charm and all that and lo and behold but what happens? Post strike here in Canada. Yeah, no mail for like 2 weeks now. I'll be lucky if he ever attempts to get me a present again in my life.

Baby Bonanza!

So many people have had babies in our ward this year. Between December and now, there have been 9. Yeah 9. 4 girls 5 boys. That's a lot of babies. It is a little bit crazy but also super fun. The mother's lounge is quite the place to be on Sundays. Here is a picture that was taken at a baby shower for 6 of them. Having a baby shower for 6 babies at once. Do you think that has happened before? Anyway, the picture is of those 6 plus me and my friend who had her baby a bit after me. There was still one baby missing.

Isn't that a trip?

Life is Rough in 'da Hood

So Chloe comes into our room and goes straight to Gavin's bassinet where he is cooing. She loves to see him in the morning and he loves her too. Suddenly she gasps and says, "Oh no, there is blood all over Gavin's face!" Sure enough, his crazy hands and witchy nails got him good. It wasn't too bad after the blood was wiped away.

It is so sad to see blood on a beautiful baby face--especially with their perfect, little skin. He has become so busy with his hands. He is constantly moving them, sucking them, flailing them, finding ways to get them out of hand covers and blankets, etc. We can already tell he's a smarty but then again how smart is it to scratch your face off?

Dr. Doolittles

We had a lovely, lazy Saturday yesterday. We probably broke some parenting rules as well. We decided since it was cold and dreary that it was a perfect movie day. Then the girls decided that they wanted to watch "Jurassic Park". Greg and I kind of looked at each other and thought, "Why not?" We figured we could skip any part that was too intense and just explain how everything was fake. Everything seemed all fine and dandy until they dropped the cow down for the raptors to eat then it continued ok until the power went out on the island. Then it was all a blur between Tati laughing, Chloe hiding under a blanket and me fast forwarding. After the kids went to bed, we watched Harry Potter and suddenly appears Tati crying, telling us our movie was too loud and it sounded like dinosaurs were walking in their room. Greg finally turned on their Primary cd to listen to so they could feel safe. I guess we won't be watching Jurassic Park 2 for a while. ;-) I actually told Greg I forbid Jaws until they are at least 16 because once you watch Jaws, there is no going back and swimming will never be the same.

Anyway, after all the drama of the dinos, we decided to get out of the house and headed over to this little festival. There wasn't much to do at the festival but they did have an awesome Petting Zoo. The girls went nuts in there. Chloe was determined to hold a goat but they all wanted to run away from her. She finally settled with a cute little bunny who sat patiently on her lap and let her pet her. Chloe said it was because her jacket was so soft that the bunny wanted to sit with her.
Tati held a rooster (bad idea), a bunny and then a baby goat. The little goat was so cute! We want a baby goat. The only problem is that the goat would grow up. The little goat just sat on Tati's lap so cute and still and then the next thing we knew, the goat was SLEEPING! It was so funny and so cute. Tati sat there for like 10 min. just with this smile on her face while the goat slept.

It was fun to get out with the girls and do something as a family!