Family Photos

Got these taken last week, stay tuned for more. Taken by April Atwater.

Blue Eyes

St.George, Ahhhh sweet summer

(Ella lounging on the pool chair outside)

CAUTION: These next two posts have a TON of pictures, but too many cute ones of the Lily girl and so I just posted almost all of them. What do you expect from a weekend spent sitting by the pool watching your husband and daughter swim (and every 10 seconds while I'm trying to read my book, "MOM look!") We had a blast though for Chad's birthday, and although I was a little wary to take both kids to a new place for only a couple of days, they did great! Lily slept in the closet of the master on the aerobed, and Ella in our bed. We literally did nothing but eat, watch Olympics, swim, read, and relax. I think we both love it so much there because it reminds us of AZ (especially the fun lightning and thunder storms we watched from the HUGE picture windows in the house). The only bad thing about our trip was coming home! And now I am trying to think of different excuses to make trips down there.


As you can probably tell from the pictures she LOVED this PINK tube that is actually her friend Kylee's and wore it all around the pool



Naked Swimming Anyone?


You can see her squishy leg rolls so well in this one, I LOVE them!!!
The pool has a nice 4 ft. wide little bench that Lily mostly hung out on because she liked standing up in the water

St. George (Tons of Pictures)

For Kelly: High School Musical 2, oh yeah! Our house is just down the street from this.


Ahhh the Hot Tub was Lily's next favorite place in the pool and she spent a lot of time "waxin" as she called it (relaxing).




The Sky was so blue and the clouds so white, I coudn't resist this picture from the backyard.

Yummy Texas Steakhouse rolls, our only eating out.
Ella stared at the lights the WHOLE time, I love sweet newborns who are so easily entertained.

Dumbo story

So I rented Dumbo for Lily to watch, as a change from the princess movies she watches over and over. I remember liking it as a kid and it was fun to watch it all over with her. But the sweetest thing happened. I will summarize the plot in case you've forgotten, but basically at the circus where Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo (his mom) are on display, some kids come to the show and start laughing and making fun of Dumbo's big ears. Well, as any mother would, Mrs. Jumbo starts to protect her baby and then spanks the boy who is being the biggest teaser. The circus folks think she is getting out of control and start to whip her and then proceed to put her in a mad elephant circus car that is all locked up and away from everyone. Well, Dumbo goes to visit his mama there and because she is all locked up, the only way she can touch him and rock him is with her big trunk. Both Dumbo and she are crying and the song, "baby mine" is playing. So I realize after lots of confused questions from Lily about why they are putting her in time out, I try to explain that they don't realize she was just protecting Dumbo from the teasing and they were being kind of mean to her. She has talked to me a lot over the past couple of days about how naughty those people were for locking her up like that and why couldn't Dumbo see his mama. Well we watched it again today, and when that scene came up and Lily started to ask me why Dumbo was sad, and I said he just loves his mama and wants to be with her but he can't, well Lily just starts balling. I felt so bad that this was causing her distress and immediately hugged her and told her that in the end Dumbo is with his mama and they say sorry to her and never put her in the cage again, and I will always be with her. This seemed to settle her down, but at that moment I just realized how I want to just hug her and protect her from all the evils in the world, and I always will. This just reminded me of how tenderhearted she really is and very sympathetic to people around her. I love how sweet she is and this moment was just too cute for me not to remember.

St. George- Froggy Friend

Eyeing the little frog from a distance
Ahhhhh it jumped!
Now peering down at it from a lounge chair, safely distant.
Lily the frog, so aptly named by Lily
Dad was brave enough to hold it for her to get a better look
Then it jumped into the pool and rested on the cleaning hose for a bit.
Warming up to the frog, she thought she might want to hold her
And tried but never quite got the courage to just pick her up. The wildlife in our backyard down there was quite exciting: very friendly dragonflies, lizards, frogs, butterflies, crickets, and beetles.

My Growing girls

I don't know if it's true or not, but whenever Lily asks me why she has to go to bed one of the reasons I tell her, is because that's when our bodies grow. Well it seems like all my girls are doing lately is grow a ton, and if that's the case I want to enjoy some more sleep from them!

Ahh, I LOVE to go and look at my kids when they are sleeping. Ella cracks me up, lately she is determined NOT to be swaddled anymore and I will hear her grunt and groan until at last an arm is free. She has been such an easy going, happy baby so far, maybe this is just a glimpse at her truly determined side. She is all smiles though, all day and is happy just to play on the floor either watching Lily or I do our stuff.










And Lily has started in the habit of putting whatever stuffed animal or baby she is sleeping with that night to sleep on her chest and she makes sure it is tucked in under her blankie too. She makes me laugh so much everyday and is growing up way to fast for my taste. Today she insisted on going potty by herself all day and, after inspection of the bathroom after a couple of uses I realized that she had used up ALL the T.P. and had piled it in the toilet. She is so independent these days, and has even started playing by herself a bit more (Yay!). Yesterday all while I was getting ready for dinner she was so quiet downstairs just playing with barbies. I had to keep yelling down to her to make sure she was okay and not getting into anything. When I finally went down to get her for dinner she was VERY engrossed in finding matching shoes for all the dolls to wear, and coordinating outfits and was very frustrated when she was missing some shoes "But mom she has to have her other cinderella swipper" (these were all my barbie things so shoes have definately been lost along the way). Anyway I just want to remember all these little things because there are new ones everyday and I don't want to forget anything.