Finishing up 2012

Thanksgiving

We had a Hale of a time in Atlanta for Thanksgiving this year.  The girls love being with "cousins", especially playing hide-n-seek.  The girls had fun dancing, hiding in the leaves, skateboarding down the slide, hiking in the park, eating turkey, and drinking a lot of "dragons blood".  I had my own fun as Haley took me Black Friday shopping for the first time.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the crowds killing each other over xbox games as I simply reached over the group that took each other to floor for the game we needed.  I also hate waiting in lines, so I managed to sneak us in front of the line of hundreds of people, who were waiting for hours outside target, to make sure we were one of the first people in there...it was definitely worth it!


Christmas Card Pictures

Pretty proud that I took these all on a tripod....Yay for tripods!

CHRISTMAS BENEFIT

The Christmas Benefit was awesome.  I had many different people and dance groups that were willing to participate to help raise money to buy food for people around the community that are in need.  It was amazing to see so many people helping a good cause.  I love watching my girls and all my dancers learn to love dance and want to share it with everyone. Although it was incredibily difficult to put this all together and pull it off without Sampson, I am so excited that he was able to go down to the Dominican Republic and Haiti with doctors from his school.


Christmas in Texas

 Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve we only have one lasting tradition: Eating Hins (The best Chinese food you will ever have) for dinner and watching Christmas Vacation!!!  We are however bringing back a few old ones and starting a few new ones.  As a little girl we would always act out the nativity at my grandma's house.  Now my girls get to do it too!  All three girls picked out who they wanted to be and did an excellent job acting it out.  Eva had the only speaking part, "Fear Not!" and of course she nailed it :)  Derek I think was the best baby Jesus ever though...he didn't cry once!  Luke read the story (with Liz overseeing), Sampson controlled the camcorder, I took pictures, Kenny was a donkey and one interesting looking wiseman, and mom just enjoyed the whole thing. We did miss having Houston, Nate, and Butch there. 

Christmas Day
Of course Phoenix woke up super early and was really excited to see what Santa had brought her, but we had to wait for Brooke to get there before we could go downstairs.  While waiting, I did the girls hair (Phoenix requested a Katniss braid), we sang songs, played with toys, did Christmas crafts....needless to say the girls were really excited when Brooke finally got there.  The girls loved all there presents and Christmas would not be complete without my mom's frittata, which surprisingly was actually good this years and we all ate the whole thing!


Holiday Fun!

For us the Holidays consisted off:
Playing with polar bears, eating pancakes, playing with xmas toys, winning 2nd place in my 5K (the girls were not quite as excited about running as I was, but Phoenix sure liked my medal), having Christmas early with daddy before he left for the D.R., getting the Grinch in the mail from Pitty, rowing in boats, creating Humo's xmas card, getting pulled off the plane in Lexington and watching Disney movies in our hotel, falling asleep in the massage chair at the airport as we waited for our plane the next day, building "Poley" (Phoenix's bear) and "Polar Bear" (Eva was creative with her bear's name), flying in a helicopter at Chuck E Cheese, riding in a bus and collecting tickets with Ki Ki, watching TV with Humo and Nate Dawg, painting snowflakes, tickling each other, and collecting sea shells along the beach in Galveston!

Happy Birthday Eva!

Minnie Mouse Birthday Party

Eva turned 2 last week and she wanted a Minnie Mouse Party.  She asked if her friends could come and I said of course.  If you can name any of your friends I will invite them.  After a long pause, all she could come up with is, "I want my friends to come!"  So with that I decorated and we had a family party.  She was so excited!  She had been helping me make everything for about 2 weeks.  She is a great helper.  I was going to do her party on her actual birthday but Sampson wanted to be there so we waited until after his test on Monday.  We ate Eva's favorite food, mini "corny" dogs and anything with sugar! 

2 Years Old

Eva loves taking pictures.  She is so good at following directions and expressing her opinion....it's almost too good :) She loved dressing up in her fluffy skirt.  She couldn't get over how fluffy it was!  I was trying to get a natural smile out of her so I would tell her to show me a mad face, a sad face, and then a scared face as I roared at her.  Right after the scared face she always got excited and smile so big because she thought I was so funny trying to be scary (Eva doesn't get scared of anything).  Of course at the end of taking pictures she wanted me to take pictures of her dancing and turning.  Eva is a beautiful dancer and loves doing "mommy's moves" which with her interpretation is quite amazing at her age.  She is always saying, "mommy watch this pirouette", "watch this leap", "watch this passe" "watch my floor work".  She LOVES to Dance! 

Phoenix & Eva

Eva is always so happy and she loves being with Phoenix.  They play so well together.  She also loves to bug Phoenix.  If Phoenix ever falls asleep during the day she is always a little grumpy when she wakes up and Eva takes full advantage of this.  Eva will go up to her pet her head and say, "Ohhhh, she's cute".  This makes Phoenix so mad which makes Eva do it even more!  I love Eva and I am so grateful to have her sweet spirit in our family!

Fall
My girls are so AWESOME!! Because no matter where I drag them (photo shoots, volleyball games, freezing cold football games, church activities, visiting teaching, continuous dance projects, long car rides, many airplane rides, and endless errands) they find a way to be happy and love life.  I am not saying that my kids don't whine, cry, and throw fits...but I take them everywhere I go and they make the most of it.  I love that about them!
This Fall has been crazy with running my own dance studio, planning a community Christmas even, taking pictures, and being a wife and mom!  Life is a lot of work, but it is all worth it.  I have been so blessed to get to teach over 60 amazing girls.  I have learned so much from them and I love their positive outlook on the world.  And there is nothing better than seeing improvement after weeks of hard work and practice.  It brings a smile to my face.

Bone Pajamas
These are my favorite pajamas on my girls!  The best part is seeing how excited Eva gets when it's all dark and her bones are glowing.  I took these pictures in between doing photo shoots up by Sampson's school.  The girls love doing everything and Eva is always wanting to do what her big sister is doing.

Halloween
For Halloween I was expecting the girls to ask to be ballerinas or princesses, but not my girls.  Phoenix wanted to be The Oncler from the movie The Lorax.  And of course, Eva was not to be left out and wanted to be the Lorax.  Well it just so happens that after hour of searching the internet and Halloween stores I discovered that they don't make either of those costumes.  So I had to make the costumes that don't have actual patterns.  I crocheted Eva's Lorax hat and after many hours of sewing (I always forget how frustrating sewing can be sometimes) I finally got Phoenix's coat done! It is not perfect, but I am proud I finished it.  We bought her a hat, cane, and blue sunglasses and I made her a Thneed.  If you have seen the movie, her costume was exactly like the Oncler.  When we got to the Fall Festival at Sampson's school, the adults all thought I had dresses Phoenix up as a pimp...come on people would I really dress my 3 year old girl up as a pimp! hahahaha it did make me laugh and then we had to explain to everyone who she was.  At the ward trunk-or-treat, the girls loved the idea of getting candy from everyone and just wanted to keep going around and around.  Eva was so cute!

Witches Tea Party
Last year I was fortunate enough to attend one of the funnest parties I have ever been to.  One of my friends in the ward holds and annual Witches Tea Party at her house.  She goes all out and transforms her entire house.  It's amazing.  Last year I went all out for a scary witch: green paint, nose, and wart.  Even though I won the award for scariest witch, I was a little embarrassed when I saw everyone dressed as cute witches. So this year I was dressing up cute!

TEXAS
I ended up having to fly to Texas early because I got sick and Sampson had a test, which means that I would get no help with taking care of the kids while I get better.  So I ended up being in Texas for two weeks!  Derek is the cutest little baby!! It was fun taking pictures of him....long but fun!  Houston made the bed, floor, and back drop.  She is amazing!

Galveston 
The girls love driving down to Galveston to see Humo and Nate Dogg.  I want to live close to the beach so bad!  Kenny took these amazing pictures...he is so talented, especially for putting up with all the family drama that comes with taking pictures :)

I love this dress on Phoenix.  She always says, "My dress is so fluffy!"

5 Years.....

 Years

The time goes by so fast.  Sometimes I feel like we haven't got to do much together because of school, kids, and work and the never ending responsibilities that go with that.  Then I have to just think about everything and realize we have accomplished so much in the short time that we have been together.  I am grateful for all that we have been through.  It has made us who we are today.  

I put this in the video I made for Sampson