Kids!!!

Oh how I love those babies of mine!  They CAN be so sweet and loving and other times they might just send me to the mad house one day!  But its the sweet moments they have through out the day that I will always remember and remind me that in the end its all worth it!  We have been doing really well lately.  Kids are happy and healthy.  Its been nice outside, so we've been out to the park a lot.  We've also had a couple nice hot sunny days where I can get out our teeny-tiny little pool that nobody wants to sit in, just stand in.  We also have a little water table the Elliott loves.  I will have to get the camera out next time we play out on the back deck.  But for now, here are some recent photos that I took while we were at the park one day a couple weeks ago...

                                                      

      Sure do love these guys!!

xoxoxo

Footprints...

Last weekend Steve's dad and step-mom, Clayton and Rose, as well as Steve's brother, Mike, came to visit last weekend.  It was a wonderful visit, the kids had lots of fun getting to know their "Omah and Opah" and their "Uncle Mike".  And I had fun cooking and baking for a big crowd.  Making cinnamon buns, baked fench toast, and homemade donuts (oh they were heaven, hehe) just to name a few things!  Along with our visitors they also brought with them a turkey, a giant 25 pound turkey!  It was wonderful to have a turkey dinner, with all the fixings, in May!  But there was a lot of left overs, alot!  We couldn't possibly eat it all, and sadly I forgot to throw the 2 ziplock bags full of turkey in the freezer.  So as I was cleaning out the fridge I discovered the turkey and thought I should probably throw it out since it had been sitting in there for a while.  Instead of taking it out of the ziplock bags and throwing it in the compost, where it belongs (because we all know how fun that can be!) I just tossed them in the garbage (I know, I know, i'm horrible and lazy, but honestly lets face it people, it GROSS!!  lol).  As the garbage started to fill up over the next couple of days, Steve decides to put the garbage out on our back deck and thinks to himself he will later place it in the locked shed.  Well, that didn't happen!  The next morning Steve gets up to find that some animal had gotten into the garbage bag and went right for the turkey!  I was in the shower at the time, so Steve had kindly cleaned it all up for me, what a sweet guy, :)   But it had left a small grease stain on the deck.  I poured some water over it to try to clean it up, but that didn't work so well.  So, this morning when I woke up, I came to find that the animal had returned last night!  It must have thought it found a gold mind with all that turkey!  I never did get to see our little friend, but it gave it self away.  There were these cute little foodprints all over the deck, must have been from the turkey grease!  We're pretty sure it was a raccoon...

All because two people fell in love...

We've had these black and white photos of each of the kids hanging in our kitchen for a little while now.  About a week ago we bought this sign that we thought would go perfectly with these photos and complete the wall.  I love this so much that it inspired me change the name of my blog!  I finally found a "name" for this blog that I'm actaully happy with.  Finally!!  ;)

The quality of the photo is not the greatest, but I think you get the idea. 

Not too much is going on in our house lately.  Both Steve and I have had terrible colds and are trying to recover from that.  The kids have been wild, like always.  They are so busy, it always amazes me how much energy they have.  They are completely and totally obsessed with Toy Story 2 and often pretend Ava is Jessie, Sienna is Woody and Elliott is Bullseye.  Its pretty cute!  Ava has been in love with horses for a couple of years now so I can see why she likes Jessie so much. 

Well better run and see what my little monkies are up to...

Love Amber

Fun at the Park

So, its been like forever since I last posted anything.  Its been pretty chaotic around here lately.  I don't know if its because of the nice weather or just because the kids are getting a little older and starting to play together more often(which leads to fighting of course) but I find my days are so filled lately.  I have been trying to keep the kids occupied with fun things to do but I'm starting to run out of ideas to keep them busy.  Some days we go to the park twice in one day just to get out!(we have a park right across the street from our house).  Today it was beautiful and sunny out so we went to the park first thing this morning.  The kids had a blast, as always.  And I brough the camera along since I don't remember the last time I brought the camera out a took pictures!  Here are a few.  They didn't turn out so well.  I am still trying to figure out this camera....

My sweet Ava.  She is very sensitive to the light.  So it was hard to get a good photo of her.

Ava climbing.  Can't believe how tall she is getting!

Sienna 

Its funny how when you tell a child to smile and say cheese.  This is the face they always make

(this is how all 3 of my kids look when they say "cheese")

 Sienna likes to climb, too!

Elliott, my little man.

We got his hair cut again since its growing so fast.  

We call this the "Daddy-Do" since he looks just like Daddy with his hair like this.

He loves playing with the rocks, such a boy!

My 3 little monkies!  Love them so much!!

We had so much fun with the "Easter Bunny" visitng our house.  That stinky little rabbit "pooped" chocolate eggs all over our living room (this is the story Steve tells the kids, typical Steve, right!?)  We actually had to wake the girls up because Elliott was up first getting all the eggs!  I thought that if I open the girls bedroom door after I took Elliott out of his crib and started throwing eggs into his bucket that Ava and Sienna would wake up.  Not so, We had to wake them up.  I leaned over Ava's bed and whispered "Ava the Easter Bunny came" instantly she jumped out of bed and started collecting eggs, too funny!  Sienna actually woke up with a fever.  So she wasn't really into the egg hunt at first.  After a few minutes on the couch of rest and really giving her a chance to completely wake up, she was good to go and had fun collecting as many eggs she could!  We had fun.  With every holiday that comes, it gets more fun as the kids grow and truely understand whats happening.  I think I get more excited than they do!  Heres some photos of what the Easter Bunnt left...

A bucket for each one of my babies

These eggs were EVERYWHERE!  

It was so fun to watch them run around!

And lastly, On Saint Patrick's Day I made some cake balls for Steve to take to work.  They were fun to make.  Very green!  Green on the outside and on the inside.  I'm pretty sure everybody enjoyed them!

Well I'm off.  Hopefully my next post won't take so long for me to get to....

Love Amber

Slacker...

Like the new background?  Yeah, me too!  I'm new to the blogging world and had no clue you could get pretty backgrounds FOR FREE!!  It feels so fresh and new, I like it!!  So, I know I've been slacking big time on this blog.  Not sure if anybody stops by to read it often but I actually really enjoy it.  I don't get on the computer much lately, the kids are keeping me quite busy.  Not too much going on in our neck of the woods.  Sienna is offically potty trained, woohoo!!  She is becoming quite independent too, wants to do everything herself.  We've decided to sign Ava up for soccer this summer so that should keep us nice and busy.  She loves anything social and is really excited to play soccer.  Elliott is still into everything and anything he can get his hands on.  He wears me out, *sigh*

This past weekend Ava, Sienna and myself had a really fun time making these adorable little "cake pops".  I discovered this amazing new (well, new to me) site.  Heres our version of "cake pops" chickety style!  Not quite as professional looking as I would like, but I'm learning and know what to do next time.  They were so delicious and moist!  The kids had so much fun making them and loved every bite.  Thats right, theres CAKE inside those cute little chicketies!  I hope to make a Saint Patrick's Day version of these cake pops tomorrow for Steve to take to work on Wednesday.  Will post pics of those as soon as their made...

Olympics and Potty Training...

I don't know about you, but I very much enjoyed watching the Olympics this year.  I am filled with so much pride to be Canadian.  We sure do live in such a beautiful country.  It was even more exciting to watch the games from our home land and see all the red and white in the stands, screaming for the Canadian athletes.  Of course, I watched most hockey games and was so excited to see both the women and the men win gold.  I scremed every time they scored a goal, my kids were looking at me like I was crazy!  It was fun.  I made a this special dessert in honour of the Olympcs and made deep dish pizza for our little family to enjoy while we watched the BIG game...

 

  

  

We started potty training Sienna last week since she started to show quite an interest in wearing panties.  She has done so well, I am so impressed with her.  Today we are going on our third day of no accidents and its only been a week since we started!  In our house when we potty train we try not to go anywhere for about a week or two.  Also, I dress them in dresses because its so much easier to take a dress off than it is to pry wet yucky pants off them when the have an accident.  We also completety and totally believe in rewards.  So, everytime she pees in the potty, she gets one "potty treat", every time she poops in the potty she gets 2 "potty treats".  For potty training Sienna, we thought she would enjoy mini peppermint patties, and boy does she ever!  Hopefully she keeps this up, then we'll only have to buy diapers for one, yeah!!!  ;)

Chcolate marshmallow cookies and shopping...

I know its been a while since I posted something, anything.  But to be quite honest, nothing too exciting happens around here.  We do our daily routine of chaos with 3 kids running around, Steve coming in and out of the house throughout the week and me picking up after everybody.  For those of you who don't know, Steve is serving in the Bishopric and works 2 jobs, so he is always coming and going.  We love him for it as he works so hard to provide for us.  He always makes time for us and I know he cherishes the time he has with us. 

If anybody knows me well, they know I love to bake and I do my best to make everything from scratch.  A few weeks ago we had a church activity and I was asked to make a dessert.  Since it was Valentines Day the day following the ativity  I decided to make heart shaped marshmallow chocolate cookies.  These are very easy to make, they just take a lot of time.  To make a long story short, I spent hours on these cookies and when they were all dunked in melted chocolate, I wanted to transfer them from the counter to the fridge.  So I carefully slid the cookies that were on the counter (on wax paper) onto a cookie sheet, then slowly made my way to the fridge.  There were too many cookies on the wax paper so a few of them fell on the floor and as I leaned slightly to see how many I dropped, all of the other cookies fell to the ground!  I was so upset, I wanted to cry.  After spending hours on these stinking cookies and to see more than half of them on the floor!  They were ruined, still "wet" from just freshly been dunked in melted chocolate.  I threw them all away, leaving only 16 in the fridge that I successfully had moved to the fridge.  I certainly learned my lesson!

 

 My yummy choclate covered cookies with homemade pink marshmallow

cookies that fell on the floor that I threw in the gaarbage,  :(

While out shoppong last weekend we went to a furniture store that had a little playarea.  I took the kids over to play on the slide and allow them to run around for alittle while.  This playarea is a little hard to explain, but its very similar to the one at McDonalds.  Know what I mean, Tube-slide, with "stairs" only fit for little ones?  Anyways, Ava loved the slide and was having a great time.  But Sienna was a little nervous, since it was kinda high and closed off.  Ava eventually talked her into going all the way up and going down the slide with her.  Sienna got up there but decided it was just too scarey and WOULD NOT COME DOWN!!  I pretended to leave (you know, every mom does that, right?  Scare their children into listening to them, lol)  She didn't care. I bribed her, nothing.  Finally, I told Ava to go up there and grab Sienna's legs and pull her down the slide, well that didn't work.  Sienna was up there screaming like Ava was trying to kill her!  She did this twice before Steve came in asking what was happening.  So Steve climbed up there, told Sienna mommy was going to catch her and that it was fun.  So, she slide down, smiling and giggling.  Let me tell you, I was not.  It was crazy and I'm able to laugh at it now.  Lets just say one thing, Sienna will NOT be going up any slides like that for a long time!!!  lol

To end this post here are a few recents pictures of the kids, enjoy!  :)

 

My girls!

  

My litttle "spiderman", who is looking more and more like a toddler everyday and less like a baby.