Easter 2013

It wouldn't be Easter without our annual shopping trip to buy Easter dresses. Each year as the girls have grown older it gets easier and easier for me to take all three of them shopping. Each of them tried on several dresses, and each made a great choice. They looked beautiful!

We even ventured out to the mall this year, and had dinner together. I love being with these sweet girls. They were very good about picking something modest. Abbie and Avery knew exactly which dress they wanted after shopping a bit, but Aliza had a hard time picking just one. Maybe going to the mall gave her too many stores and dresses to chose from.

Easter morning was perfect. We had just enough time to do Easter bunny stuff, and then head off to 9am church. Avery and I sang in the choir, and it was a beautiful Spring day. We then had a few friends over for Easter dinner. Ham, potatoes, and the works. It was a great day.

Silly girls! :)

Spring Break

We took off to Utah for the week of Spring Break. Micah stayed at home to work and take care of the cat while we made the journey to see family. Since our trip was only a few days after Aliza's birthday my mom had a fun cake ready for her when we arrived. She opened presents from them, and basically had another little party. Lucky girl!

This cake was so delicious. Kneaders bakery is the place to go for birthday cakes. It had layers and layers of yummy chocolate. Yum!

It has become somewhat of a tradition to have the girls nails done when we go to Utah. They love it.

We went to Planet Play one day, and then decided to check out a new sports store "Scheels" with a ferris wheel inside. I'm still not sure how President Lincoln is linked to a sports store, but they had this statue outside along with a few former United States Presidents inside. Strange.

The ferris wheel was a lot of fun once we finally got on. It broke down when we were inline the first time, so we went to the snack bar for a bit and came back later. Aliza and I tried to take a picture of ourselves on the ride.

We have been looking for kid size BYU shirts for awhile, and found them at Scheels. The girls like to tease Micah because he went to the U of U, and they joke that they will all go to BYU. We have a small rival right in our own home. The girls made sure to wear the shirts home to show Micah.

Upstairs they had this mini bowling alley which was fun. We were entertained at the sports store for quite some time.

We met up with Micah's family one night at Leatherby's, and the next night at a trampoline place called "Airborne." We were so excited that everyone made time to see us, and we had a great time seeing cousins and grandparents. It was a great trip.

Aliza's 6th Birthday

I can't believe that our baby is six years old. Aliza's request for her birthday was to take her friend Violet to lunch. Before school I took these cute girls on a lunch date to McDonalds (their pick). Aliza opened one present before school which was this pink tennis shirt from Abbie. Luckily, it was a free dress day at school so Aliza could wear it all day. She was patient to wait until after dinner to open the rest of her gifts.

We were in such a mess on Aliza's actual birthday. Our kitchen was just getting put back together, and our house was filled with dust and fumes from spraying the top coat that day. So, we ate outside and one of my dear friends made her this cute pink cake. I didn't even have an oven at that point. I really have the greatest friends!

We had family coming into town that day and had many people working on the house, so it was kind of a crazy day. Luckily Aliza's cousins were headed into town that weekend, so we were able to make it up to her with a fun party at Chuck E Cheese. Her younger cousins Brooklyn, Shad, Kennedy and Bailey were able to join us while Micah and his brothers went on a long bike ride together.

We were at Chuck E Cheese early enough that there weren't many people which was nice. They were able to play lots of games, eat pizza, and do a lot of dancing with Chuck E.

I could hardly keep up with Aliza. She was all over the place.

This is Avery, Brooklyn and Kennedy dancing with Chuck E Cheese. Such cuties!

Aliza was thrilled with this new Hello Kitty outfit from her Grammie. She is looking good there with Chuck E Cheese.

Aliza was really looking forward to the ticket blaster with Abbie. Aliza's glasses were so big it was hard to catch tickets and hold them on at the same time.

Abbie was even using her feet to catch tickets.

I love this picture of Aliza's cousin Shad. He is adorable and we were so glad to share this day with cousins.

When Chuck E came over to give her the birthday crown Aliza wasn't so thrilled, but we made it through. He sang a few songs with us and I could hardly get a smile out of her.

Not a very happy birthday face. Maybe she was really concentrating on what to wish for.

We ended the party with a few dances. We were so glad to have these cute cousins with us to celebrate!

Happy Birthday Aliza!

Fun Happenings

Avery played her violin at Festival a few weeks back. She didn't just get a Superior rating, she received Superior with Honors. I'm not sure exactly what that means yet because we haven't looked at the judges sheets, but I did notice that the other students around us just got Superior. I will be excited to look at the judges sheets at her lesson this upcoming week. We were laughing because both last year and this year Avery was relieved when she realized she was not first to preform. Then both years they have rearranged the schedule to make her first. Poor girl. We were laughing about it, but she REALLY didn't want to be first. But she did it with a good attitude, and did a fantastic job!

Other fun happenings at our house would be that Abbie got braces. The first few days were rough just trying to get used to them and they were uncomfortable, but she seems to be adjusted to them well now.  I think she looks adorable. :)

And last but not least I was able to get my kitchen cabinets painted. I have been wanting to do something different with them since we moved in over three years ago. They had a lot of damage from the previous owners. I had a wonderful friend in the ward who does interior design help me pick the color. We decided on this grey green because we thought it would work will with my white appliances.  Little did I know that while in the process of sanding the cabinets my oven decided to go crazy on us. It just decided to turn on by itself one day at a really high temperature and we couldn't get it to turn off. We were so lucky that we were home because we had to trip the breaker to get it off. It melted the racks and buttons inside of the oven when it was on, so we needed a new oven. With that being said our dishwasher and microwave were kind of doing weird things too so we replaced all three. I was so bummed that we had planned this whole paint job around my appliances that I ended up replacing. I most likely would have picked something different color wise if I would have known, but it was too late. I still love them and I am so grateful that Micah finally said yes to painting them.

Here are the lovely before pictures.

And the after pictures.

The color really makes the granite pop which I love. We decided to paint the island white, all the banisters white, and a small cabinet area in our living room white to tie it all together. The lady I hired (Leticia) said it would take her 6 days. Almost a month latter and with Micah and I doing the stain work ourselves each night it was actually done just a few days ago. She did take the week of Spring break off, but REALLY. She was so slow and my house was covered in dust FOREVER. We even had family come into town in the middle of this mess that was suppose to be done. Thankfully they were very understanding and nice about things being a little crazy at our house. I had some wonderful friends who were here helping me clean. My dear friend Kristi brought us dinner one night that I was really stressed, and I even had a friend cook Aliza a birthday cake because we didn't have an oven. I am so blessed with wonderful friends that take such good care of me.