Be Warned: Trip Itinerary

A couple weeks ago Kirk and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary. We drove up to Payson Tuesday night and stayed with our friends Joe and Brenna. Audrey spent the entire night screaming and when she finally fell asleep Kirsten woke up and picked up where Audrey left off. Nothing sounded better to us at that moment than a few days away from the girls and a chance to sleep uninterrupted for a few nights! Brenna was sweet and made us yummy pancakes even though she had to listen to our girls scream all night. Part of me wished we could just vacation at her house with her green backyard, fields surrounding her house, and swing for the kids we were all in heaven!
Maybe next time.
We then were able to visit Dione and her sweet 6 week old baby boy. Seeing my friends swoon over their baby boys makes me think just maybe we should order a boy next. It was kind surreal to sit there with my friend and realize there were 6 kids between the 3 of us.
Weren't we just driving the "roller coaster" hills in Vernal?
Next we met up with Kirk's mom at his brother Aaron's house. Joriel made yummy coffee cake and we spent a few minutes visiting before we kissed our beautiful babies good bye. It was a big deal for us to leave them, since it was our first over night trip without them. They waved goodbye to us with wide eyes that were screaming "are you seriously leaving us? seriously?". But we totally did and did so before Karen realized how much like the girls like to scream at night!
(But they both totally slept through the night for her, SO not fair!)
We met up with some of our best friends Mark & Camille and had lunch. It was awesome to have time with friends without the kiddos around, even though all we talked about were the kids!
We stayed in Salt Lake that night and were delighted that we could go out at night and didn't have to stay home with sleeping babies. We spent time shopping at Tai Pan and Gateway before driving up and over Big Cottonwood Canyon into Midway where we enjoyed our honeymoon suite at the Johnson Mill. It was heaven and it turns out Kirk and I still like each other, alot!
But we were more than ready to see the girls on Friday. It about killed us to wait until 9:00 for our breakfast to be delivered so that we could get on the road and see our girls. They ran(crawled) up to us as we got out of the car, those girls are our piece of heaven.

In Vernal we were able to meet Eliza Jayne, have a Tea Party with my mom and some of my sisters and nieces, go boating with Liz and Derek(yes Kirk was really hot wake boarding), go to Women's Conference, go to the movie You Again with my mom, aunt janet, and kristy, Kirk and the girls went to Alex's birthday party, but mostly the girls loved playing in their grandma's backyards swinging on the swing set, playing with the dog, and rolling around in the grass (which was Kirsten and Audrey's piece of heaven). We met up with the rest of my family (Riley, Josh, Brett, Amanda, Garrett, Chelsey, and spouses/boyfriend) on Sunday at Riley's house. It is so much fun to be with family. It was the perfect trip! Maybe, just maybe we will do it again :)

Audrey 1 year

Kirsten Sue at 30 months

Our adorable girls

We had some professional pictures done of the girls in our play room. I love how they turned out (especially the kiss picture!)

A Sunday post while Kirk is gone

Today I turned the AC down to 77 degrees...3 degrees down from the usual 80 it's set at. Within minutes my girls had goosebumps the size of Rhode Island. Kirsten feel asleep cuddle like this trying to warm up. We better head to Target tomorrow and get some winter clothes before heading up to Utah in a 10 days!

Motherhood sure showed up today. We have 8:00 church. Kirk had to be to the airport at 10:00 (he is in DC, he was only in Vegas 36 hours, sad I know). So we went to sacrament then the girls and I took Kirk to the airport during the second block. I had a friend sit with my primary class during primary then I would be back just in time for class. Perfect plan. But no one planned on Audrey looking like this by the time we got back to the church. Luckily my friend was more than willing to teach my class while I got to endure of the not so popular joys of motherhood!

Someday I hope Kirk puts me on an airplane while he drives away with this situation in the back seat!
Maybe Audrey should finally get a new car seat while we are at Target tomorrow?

Newborn babies are my favorite

My sister Camille just had this beautiful baby girl, named Eliza, yesterday.
Do you immediately love her as much as I do?!
I have snuck a peak at this picture about 43 times since yesterday.
I want to hold her in my arms so badly it makes me cry!
She's so adorable it actually made me baby hungry.
Maybe Audrey will have a younger sibling someday.
Not anytime soon (don't worry mom) but yes, someday.
12 days Eliza and then you just plan to spend the entire day in my arms!

Update? ok!

Kirk really enjoys his job. (He is an instructor for a software company. What does that have to do with facility management? It's facility management software) He loves meeting new people every week. He is so wonderful at explaining technical things to people. He travels about 10% of the time with his job and right now he is in Canada. And he just got his first raise! He is the 11 year old scout leader in our ward and is awesome working with that age group. Over the weekend he put in our patio with the help of a friend. It looks awesome and I think he enjoyed getting dirty and being a manly man.
I have gained status in the world and purchased my very first dyson vacuum! Exciting I know! I have started babysitting a little boy from our ward who is about the same age as Audrey. I thought 2 kids was hard, but having 3 kids to care for makes me appreciate my 2 little angels! I am really enjoying getting to know the girls in my ward. Recipe group, book club, play group, there is always something fun going on. I am enjoying decorating my house and will hopefully finish a room soon and post pictures!
Kirsten had an appointment with a ENT doctor last week. We have a cat scan (sp?) scheduled for next week to see if she has an inner ear. The did a test on her left ear (the normal ear) and it indicated she has some hearing loss in that ear also. So we also have an appointment to how severe the hearing loss is in both ears, hopefully it's not much less that 95%. She is signed up of for a tiny tots sports at the local rec center and I'm excited to see her get involved in sports with other kids. We had a picnic with our friends a few days ago and they brought their cute little dog. Kirsten fell in love and with "Belle" and stayed within a few feet of the dog the entire time. She even cried when Belle didn't come home with us. Don't be too surprised if there is a Howcroft puppy at our house someday. She is still a princess at heart and is always dancing, changing into a different dress 3 or 4 times a day, and yes she still dances during the songs at church (no matter how much we stress reverence). She loves to brush everyone's hair and I am always untangling her hair from the brush.
Audrey is walking 5 to 6 steps at a time. So close to taking off! Whenever she starts walking she throws her arms up in the air and puts on her scrunched nose huge grin. love it! She enjoys reading books and always gets her pointer finger out and points to things on the page with gusto. Audrey is my little climber. Every time I turn around she has one leg up on a chair saying "uh uh" so I will help her up. At the park she will climb all the way up the slide by herself. She is a girl that knows what she wants and once she decides there is no changing her mind. Curse the person she inherited that from (wink). Her favorite toys besides chairs? Does tormenting Kirsten count? She played with a doll the other day. She likes to turn everything into a car and is usually scooting things around the floor making the "bbbrrrrr" sound. She gives the best open mouthed kisses, when you have convinced her you are desperate enough for one!
We are settled and happy here in Vegas and aren't anxious to move anytime soon. We have a trip planned to Utah in 2 weeks for Kirk and my 5th year anniversary. The grandma's are each taking the girls for a night and we are staying here. I'm soooo excited!