I'm dying from all the cuteness!!

Technology is amazing. I think sometimes I tend to take for granted all that my phone can do. I know I used to take for granted my camera and all that it could do. And the Internet? Don't even get me started on how amazing I think the Internet can be. The other day I was perusing my Shutterfly account in search of the perfect pictures to go on my collage wall and I came across these videos. Easton watched them with me and together we had a good giggle. And then the ache set in. The ache of realizing that that part of my life, having babies and toddlers is over. And I cried. Seriously, I cried. I can't believe how blessed I have been to have such gorgeous, precious, funny and smart little kids come into my life. They are growing up WAY too fast and it is killing me. Why does life seem to speed up once you become an adult? My life since I met Kendrick has felt like it's in fast forward. I wish I could go back and bottle up all this cuteness and unleash it on days when I am having a hard time. But then, I guess that is the point of home videos and pictures huh? I am so grateful that I stumbled across these. I am so grateful that they are saved forever. I wish I had the ability to take these memories off of Shutterfly and post them on my blog in a normal format, but I don't. So you'll just have to take this crappy phone recorded version and I'll have to hope that it does these videos justice.

When I was pregnant with Easton, Lisa told me I should record the twin's voices because they were so cute. I remember thinking that I would never forget how cute they were. But I did. I am so glad I took her advice and recorded them talking to each other!

The Halloween of 2009 we dressed all the kids as Super Heroes. The twins wore their costumes every day leading up to and after Halloween. They practiced getting into character by fighting each other. I remember that Clint and Nicole used to come over and we'd have the twins wrestle for them because it was so entertaining to watch.

Myles singing, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" at 3

Baby Easton talking to Aunt Amanda. His cute face kills me. It's not just me, right? He really was too cute for words?!

September randoms

September is over!! I am actually kind of glad. October is one of my favorite months and I am looking forward to a few things it has in store. September was all over the board for me. Parts of it were great (my Birthday and all of our hikes) and parts of it were really difficult. So I am glad September is over and those parts are behind me. But we did do a lot of fun stuff and I was able to take some really cute random pictures. Here are a few (a lot!) of them...

So I won't be watching Dex and Oly anymore. I will miss them terribly but think in the end, this will be easier for their parents. They moved farther out west this spring and poor Tristian was having to wake up ridiculously early just to drive past her work to get them to my house by 6:30 am. I felt bad for her. These pictures and this video were taken on the last day I had them. My kids LOVE Dexter and Oly so much and seriously consider them family. I am grateful that I had the chance to watch Dex for as long as I did. I will probably always consider him my 5th baby.

 
Cha Cha pictures. Turns out she is very photogenic and fun to dress up. Easton and I get lots of entertainment from teasing her and treating her like a human baby. In return, she has absolutely no respect for us. She tolerates us while Kendrick is at work, but once he's home-she ignores us.

Preschool. We had to put the brakes on that. Easton and I don't mesh well when it comes to him listening to me. These were taken the last time we did preschool. As you can see, he was really enjoying himself.

I have to remember he is still a year younger than the twins were when they started doing at home preschool. Also, he only does what he wants to do. He gets that from his parents. Kendrick and I are two of the most stubborn human beings alive. So for now preschool is on hiatus and Easton's day are better spent...

dressing as a ninja

or a Storm Trooper

Or being a ladies man

Or a fireman

or spending his Birthday money on handcuffs and ice cream

or watching makeup tutorials on Youtube while his mom folds laundry

Or showing me the proper way to accessorize

Or relaxing in the car while listening to some Carly Simon

These are pictures of him having a light saber battle with the trees in the front yard. We called it "Battle Of The Big Trees" and unfortunately he was defeated.

 

 

One Saturday night in September Kendrick was invited to go to a Utes game with a neighbor so the kids and I killed time at a pet store just up the street. This is the BEST pet store ever. They took any animal we wanted to see, out of the cage, and let us hold it. We seriously spent an hour there just holding and petting different pets.

Miss Tay is OBSESSED with Melmphs (a Youtube makeup vlogger. Please see Tball Favorites And a Possible Poo) and with lip gloss. It is an obsession I don't understand as I hate to have anything other than chap stick on my lips. But she wears lip gloss morning, noon and night and is more than generous when applying it. I've even caught her putting light shimmery lip gloss on her eyelids. Last night when she got out of the shower she laid naked in a towel on the bathroom floor. She had no underwear or pjs on but you better believe she had a fresh coat of lip gloss! She is now grounded from it for a week and you should see the heartbreak in her face when she walks to school with plain lips (as a 9 year old should). The below picture was taken last week. I came into the living room to see her reading with bright red lips and I asked, "Did you put more lip gloss on before starting your homework?" To which she replied, "Yes. Lip gloss just makes me happy."

Truly random

In one of our favorite shows, the dog dies. Those kind of scenes are always hard for Kendrick to watch so he spent the rest of the episode cuddling with Zoey.

yay! Yes, I am posting my weight. And I don't care because I have wanted to be back to this weight since I gave birth to Easton 4 years ago. Plus, in January (10 months ago) I was a little over 150. Sorry the pic is crappy. And yes my big toes are both a different shade of blue. My goal is to be back to my wedding weight-127.

Miss Tay got to be a lunch room worker.

My vain husband needing a picture of himself in his new visor so that he could proudly proclaim after seeing it, "Man, I look good in everything."

I started painting. Like JUST started after never having painted a picture before (unless you count the elementary school finger painting). After falling in love with painting my kids faces over the summer I decided to take advantage of all the oil pants and blank canvases we have laying around and tried to paint an actual picture. Turns out, it is a lot harder than it looks to carry out a "vision". I need more practice. But these are my first 3 attempts.

Tay took this picture and we cannot figure out how she got it to look like this. This is without a filter-my phone just sucks at taking pictures sometimes. This was my third painting. Flowers are surprisingly relaxing to paint. I feel like anything goes with flowers. I am hoping that a year from now I can post pictures of my paintings and they will be a thousand times better than these. But these aren't a bad place to start...

This was my second. Don't look too close. I don't know any techniques so I really botched the sun and the trees.

This was my first painting. It was supposed to be a beach with two towels but then I added trees and rocks and clouds and too much other stuff. It's too much.

Easton only gets to watch one movie a day. Which is still probably too much but that's how I roll. Anyway, I came downstairs and he was watching this like it was no big deal...

Easton and how he fills up all his spare time...

Cha Cha being an idiot

Proof that our kids were the cutest

The only perk to me having to reactivate my original FB account in order to prove to Pinterest that I am who I say I am is that I found these home videos that I thought I had lost forever. I could have cried when I rediscovered them. Especially the first one. I mourned the loss of that video for awhile. FB is lame and won't let me email them to myself so I just used my phone to record them off my computer and upload them to YouTube. So the quality is poor, and I apologize for that.
My kids really were the cutest kids ever. They still are cute, just a different, more grown up cute. I miss these good old days...
Notice how short the twins are, how cute Tay's toothless grin was and how tiny baby E looked!