♪♫ Happy Birthday Alexys ♫♪

Happy 1st Birthday Lexi!

This day last year was one of the scariest days ever. After being rushed in for an emergency c-section, I was so scared that something would go wrong. It was such a relief to hear that little cry of yours. They whisked you away before I even got to see you. I was so worried about you being so small. It was such a happy moment when they wheeled me into the NICU and I was able to see you for the first time. I didn't get to take care of you myself for the first 5 weeks and we were all so happy when you were able to come home to us. Myra was especially excited to be a big sister. Over the past year we have gotten to see you grow and develop. You are such a joy to us all. Your hilarious laugh makes all of us laugh. Your toothy grin makes all of us smile. A year has gone by and now this is a very happy day for us. We get to celebrate your first birthday. Happy Birthday! We ♥ you!

Here are some pictures of Lexi over the past year...

Easter 2008

We had a really fun Easter this year. We went to my parents house in Sandy for dinner and an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. (Actually, Lexi wasn't much of a participant.) We were sad that Grandpa had to work and wasn't able to be there with us. Myra really enjoyed finding the Easter Eggs that the Easter Bunny left for her. Lexi wanted to get down on the grass, but then she wasn't so sure about how it felt. My mom also put together a piñata for us to take a whack at. Myra got a kick out of that. Luckily we all got a turn before Chad obliterated it. Unfortunately, we had to hurry home so that Chad would be able to start studying for his test this morning. He pulled an all-nighter. Anyway, we took so many pictures from Easter, I figured a slide show would be the best way for everyone to enjoy them.

Tonight we went to Myra's friend, Camille's birthday party. It was nice enough weather for us to go outside, which the kids loved. Myra had a good time with her Best friend. Here are a couple of pictures from that.

Spring is in the Air!

Tonight we decided to take advantage of the somewhat nicer weather. We took a short walk to a nearby park so that Myra could get some exercise and so that we could get out of the house. It was a good time for all! Myra is much more brave this year than she was last year. She wasn't content to just play on the slide. She wanted to try out everything else. She's very brave! We are so excited about warm weather! Myra will be a lot of fun to do things with now that she's a little older. She has so much fun playing!

Last night we took Myra and Lexi to a Gymnastic Meet. Of course we forgot our camera, otherwise we would be showing you some great pictures of Myra cheering for "those girls", sliding down the gym mats so that she can get to the floor to dance around with the gymnasts during the audience dance (this was some kind of line dance that audience members could participate in) and probably a video of Lexi swaying to the music♪. Needless to say, both girls loved it. And Chad and I enjoyed it quite a bit also. Unfortunately, USU lost to SUU.
Today I took the girls to the Mall to participate in their Easter Egg Scramble. We picked up Alessandra and met Janelle and Camille at the Mall. It was pretty disappointing. They had a small area cordoned off for the kids to go in. They were all suppose to go in through on entrance, but parents were lifting them over the line, etc. And it was suppose to be just kids, but there were just as many parents in there, and they weren't mere bystanders. I saw several moms eagerly grabbing candy and plastics eggs and stuffing them in their kids baskets. It was all over in about 2 minutes. Luckily, Janelle had heard that Macey's was having a little Easter event, so we headed over there. The store gave out little bags to the kids and throughout the entire store, there were baskets filled with candy for the kids. Kind of like a little scavenger hunt. They also had some goats and lambs for the kids to pet. One of the guys there let Myra feed one of the goats and after, she gave it a big hug. She's such a sweet little girl. Baby Animals days here in Cache Valley are coming up in April, so I'll have to take Myra to that. I'm sure she'll really love it this year. Well, Happy Easter to everyone! And just to embarrass Chad, I'm including this final picture. (And he says he doesn't like the dog.) ☺

Growing Up

Our Little Lexi is finally growing up. I've been meaning to write here for a while about her newest developments, but the longer I waited, the more and more has happened. About 3 weeks ago, she finally started crawling forward, which greatly attributed to her happiness now that she was able to get into everything. From there, she has progressed leaps and bounds! A couple of days ago, I went into her bedroom after nap time to find her standing in her crib. She was stuck and very unhappy about it. And adding to her displeasure was the fact that instead of helping her out of her predicament, I ran off to get the camera, as any good mom would. Thus the state of extreme unhappiness found in this picture. From there she has progressed to pushing her sister around on her toy car. Actually, seconds after this picture was taken, Myra took off, without Lexi. To see Lexi's reaction, please refer back to the picture of her in the crib. Lexi has just become a little joy lately. She's into everything and loving it. Her favorite things to do now are pulling out all of our movies and strategically arranging them around our front room so that Myra has to walk all over them to get anywhere, pulling herself up on the bottom stair, and scurrying off to the bathroom to taste the delicacy known as dog food. Hmm, Where was Dad when that happened? And now for your viewing pleasure is a rare video of Lexi laughing. Very few people have viewed this spectacle, so I hope you enjoy.


And now to Myra. What can I say? She keeps life interesting! She adores her sister and loves to test her parents. The other night, as we were getting her ready for bed, Chad had been teasing her about her My Little Pony's being naked. So, during her prayer that night, she said, "Thank you for those naked little ponies over there." She's so creative! On Wednesday, we went to Myra's friend, Camille's house to dye Easter Eggs. The girls didn't really want the eggs to die. Some of these words that sound the same, but mean something different have been really confusing to a 2-year-olds mind. Anyway, they had a lot of fun, for about 15 minutes. Myra kept trying to drink the Easter Egg dye. We had a hard time getting good pictures of them. Neither of them would smile at the same time, or they would just make silly faces. Then they spent the rest of the time playing and fighting. It's what they do best. Anyway, we had a fun time with them.

ClearPlay

On Saturday we bought a Clearplay DVD player. It is one of those systems that edits out the stuff that you don't want to see in movies. The DVD player cost about $60 (a little pricey for a DVD play now days), the membership is only $8 a month. We figured that it was about time for us to invest in something like this. Myra learns and repeats so much the she hears and sees from movies and you can't really trust the rating system too much. The first movie we watched on it... Ratatouille, even though it was rated G, there were still several parts the were cut out or words that were muted. Not only can you have it edit bad language, nudity, and violence, but it will also edit out things like Mushiness, disrespect to parents and disrespect to the flag. I don't know if we are the only ones that feel this way but a lot of the PG-13 movies seem just as bad the R. It will be nice to sit down, watch a movie and not have worry about that inevitable (mandatory) awkward part that that often spur random comments about the color of wall paint or the light fixtures.☺

Ever since we first introduced Alexys to solids, she has really struggled with them. We couldn't ever get her to eat more than a few mouthfuls and most of that would end up being spit back out. Lately she has taken more of an interest. She likes the jars of baby food mixed with oatmeal, but anything else is kind of a struggle to get her to eat. However, the other night we were having dinner. I was feeding her some baby food, which she had been doing alright with, when she suddenly stopped eating it. I thought she was just done, but then I noticed her getting upset as I continued to eat. I guess she was just feeling a little left out. This video shows her new opinion on eating.


We are kind of sad though. Her 1st birthday is in just a couple of weeks and I don't think she's eating well enough to be able to try cake. I guess we'll just have to let her play in it.

Matchbox Twenty

For my birthday, Chad gave me Matchbox Twenty tickets and the concert was last night. It was so much fun. Matchbox20 has been my favorite band since they came out over 10 years ago. Wow, I am getting old! I use to have quite the thing for Rob Thomas. I'm not entirely convinced that she is completely over her "crush". (Chad's comments are in red). Anyway, The opening band was called "mutemouth", they played really loud and were not too understandable, the best part of their act was the last song they flipped out and started throwing drums and doing handstand on the keyboard and splashing water all over the place, it was pretty entertaining. Alanis Morrisette was next. She has such an amazing voice although her dancing leaves a little something to be desired. I agree, she danced really strange, almost like she was doing some tribal dance, she was bent over and just ran back and forth on the stage, like a charging bull, most of the time with her back was to us. Amazing voice though. She sang several of her more popular songs and they were great live. Matchbox20 sang probably all of their songs that are popular on the radio. They introduced themselves at the beginning and said that they planned on just cramming as many songs as they could into 2 hours and that's what they did. There was very little talking. It was awesome to hear all of my favorite songs live. I tried to take some pictures and videos of the concert but none of them turned out great since we were so far away from the stage. I stuck the camera up against the binoculars and filmed a couple of the songs. They aren't great, but you don't have to watch them if you don't want to. :-) This first one is of Alanis Morisette.


This one is of one of my favorites, Push. I tried recording it, but it didn't work very well. I found this much better version of it on Youtube, so enjoy!

I think we both enjoyed this concert a lot, although I don't think that I am that fun of a person to go to concerts with, because I don't really sing along, scream or dance (I did try to sway a few times with the beat but that require immense concentration due to my lack of rhythm), I was also very glad that by chance I happened to have ear pugs in my pocket, which made the concert much more enjoyable (I know that it sounds weird to pay to go to a concert and then to wear ear plugs the whole night, but it makes the music much better and you ears won't hurt afterwards). I still had a lot of fun and am glad that Shannon let me come along with her.

We also have included a few of our favorite Matchbox 20 songs in the sidebar.

Thoughts to live by

These are just a few of my favorites, there are a lot of great words of wisdom that can be found here.

Crawling?

Well, Lexi is definitely on the move now, but not exactly in the direction she would like to go. She seems to have mastered the art of crawling backwards. She has the crawling movements down great, but they are just in reverse. She just can't seem to make herself go forward. The other day, I put her on the floor in our room with a couple of toys to play with. I went into the other room to help Myra with something when I hear Lexi start crying. I go back into the bedroom and I can hear her, but I can't see her. Finally, I realize that she's crawled backwards and ended up under our bed. Of course I grabbed the camera before going to her rescue. It was just so cute.



Here are some other pictures we've taken lately of the kids. They are just so cute!