No news is good news

And that is pretty much what I have-no news.  I uploaded all my pictures from my camera and guess what I only had about 7 of the girls.  We have been doing stuff but I guess just ordinary-not picture worthy stuff.  We have hit the park 3 or 4 times this week-I think 3 actually, we went to the library, we checked out the Thrift Store and we have played inside and outside and that is about it.  We went to a BYU women's basketball game with Greg's team on Friday and my girls have been chanting "Go Cougars" ever since.  I am one proud mom.  Thus begins the plugs for BYU as their number one university choice for the next 16-18 years.  I just wanted to include these pictures for Uncle Steven.  He bought this cute green coat for Allie 2 Christmas's ago and she wore it but wasn't overjoyed with it but Miss Brailie is in love with it.  She is so proud of it and always asks to wear it even when it is warm.  What a cutie. 

Oh and I guess I do have other news-Brailie is now an official big girl bed sleeper.  She has been doing that all week.  I usually sit by her for two lullaby songs and then either sneak out of tell her I am going.  She has stayed in her bed every night and during naps too.  I had to let her keep her binkie to make the whole thing work but she has that only for sleeping so I don't consider it a big deal. 

Also miss Allie is adding one new item a week to her Santa wish list.  It is really cute.  I know she will be thrilled with whatever she gets but it is cute to have her want certain things.  I know someday it won't be cute any more. 

And lastly I am including a scan of Allie's name writing book from this week in our preschool. She is so smart and can write her name.   

A Visit from Grammy and Grandpa Sam

My mom and dad have been here the whole first week of November.  They came on the 29th of Oct and left Nov 6th.  We have had a fantastic visit with them.  The girls loved having them.  They took turns asking Grammy or Grandpa Sam to sit by them at the table.  They watched their every move.  The girls loved jumping on Grammy's bouncy bed (when they left Brailie said "Grammy come back and bring bouncy bed please.")  We loved having their help.  My mom helped me organize my fabric scraps and cupboards, she played school and peoples and babies with the girls.  She bought us a bunch of meat to fill our freezer (we are so thankful for that).  She helped me make two huge batches of raspberry jam, we had a thanksgiving dinner, went to the park, took the girls shopping and then my mom and I had a shopping trip too (which I loved-shopping at our own pace and visiting-we stayed out way too late).  It was so wonderful.  My dad helped Greg fix our back step, put shelves in the gun cabinet he build in high school, chop wood and they went for lots of drives.  I think they will probably get home and sleep for a week from the exhaustion of it all but we had a blast.  I am so glad they came.  It was not in the plans but i am glad we were able to change the plans and have them together.  I knew my mom would come as often as possible but I didn't think my dad ever would and it was a real blessing to have him.  Now we have to get back to real life-what a bummer.  My parents play so well with the girls and are so generous too us-especially with compliments and praise.  We don't get that enough so that has filled us up tremendously.  Thank you both for coming.  We love you.

Playing dolls with the girls.

Swinging at the park (this didn't last long because of a cat incident-which my mom and I will not ever be allowed to forget).

Tickling and marching on tummies

Dad and Greg fixing our back step-hallelujah

He is slower and more feeble but he still has some work left in him.

More swinging-there is never enough around here.

What a fantastic picture.  What a great visit.

Trick or Treat

This year for Halloween Allie was a pea and Brailie was a carrot.  I was originally going to have them be fairy princesses but then i found this costume idea I had pulled out of a magazine years ago and decided now was the time to do it because they weren't going to let me choose much longer.  Next year we will wear costumes that involve no hats, not extra outerwear and nothing itchy, poky or anything that may resemble something that is itchy or poky.  We will also not be attending the Halloween carnival.

 This is the gang right before the carnival.  Greg was a chef.  They looked so cute.  We decided to go to the carnival-they have games for the kids and then a parade of costumes in which you can win a prize.  The girls were excited to go until we got there.  The man announcing things spoke in a scary voice and that freaked the girls out (imagine a pea and carrot walking with their fingers plugging their ears).  I was ready to smack said announcer because there were tons of tiny kids and his voice was uncessary but I had a carrot clinging to my body the whole time so it would have been useless.  Also since the carnival is for the whole town there were way too many people crowded in a small space with way too many scary costumes.  Allie saw a wolf costume first and refused to move from her seat the remainder of the night.  It made me grateful for my mom who never let us be anything scary for Halloween.  She never let us do scary things or wanted us to scare anyone else.  It was always a day of fun.  I appreciate that so much.  My kids were not thrilled about scary stuff.  We left the carnival after the parade of Allie's age group happened and a kid wearing one of those cheapo plastic jumpsuit type costumes dressed as a skeleton won the prize.  LAME-just sayin.  We went to trick or treat and things did not improve much from there.  We saw a cat at the second house which happened to be grandma's and it all went downhill from there with screaming, crying, wanting to be carried, not wanting to go to anyone's door.  We hit about 6 more houses and went home.  And you know what the kids didn't care one bit.  They were happy as clams and Allie was glad to help answer the door at our house.  I wish our town was more trick or treat oriented so that we didn't have to drive to houses but could just walk everywhere.  Like when I was a kid and you tried to get the whole town (a small town) before dark-and that was in Canada and we usually had our snow pants and boots on under our costumes.  Those were the good old days.  Oh well-it was a fun night and a good day to celebrate Brailie's birthday.

Brailie Turns Two

Sorry to be so behind on blog posts but my mom and dad have been here and so I have had many other important things to do.  Now I am catching up starting with Brailie's "Hoo's Two" birthday party.

The cake

Take home prizes for kids and adults

Owl masks for the little kids

Candy bars for the kids

Cupcakes

Graham crackers (note-don't make the night before-oops)

The birthday girl

We love Dora-so thank you Aunties that bought this.

Plate and cup set from Auntie Cathy-she loves the cup especially and is so cute when she uses it.



Princesses from Grandma and Grandpa-she loves those (as does Allie)



She loves her new baby doll (I finally got it right and bought the right gift that has been played with more than 5 minutes)

Baby accessories from Uncle Steven-so much fun for the girls.



Loaded up with all her gifts



This picture was taken on Halloween-her actual birthday. 



Things we love about Brailie:
-She has such personality-she keeps us laughing and snickering in moments when we should be serious like saying prayers, family home evening and during time outs.
-She loves her sister
-She has beautiful, sparkly eyes
-She loves to sing songs and currently loves ABC song, Three Little Witches, I am a Child of God, and Scripture Power
-She loves food and is so independent in eating
-Her adorable little gallop
-How she loves to be tickled and laughs
-She loves to give slobbery kisses and big hugs
-Her facial expressions are the best
We are so grateful to have Brailie in our home and as part of our family.

Through a child's eyes

I finally uploaded the pictures from Allie's camera.  It sure is neat to see what she had captured.

crazy dad

Santa

Her watch and necklace

very random picture of mom

another random picture of mom

the first of what I hope won't be weird and random facebook wall photos

the letter E

Her drink cup



Her hair do ( I think I might have took this one for her).



Her view of the pumpkin patch as we were deciding where to go next.

The big pumpkin mom picked.

Deadhorse State Park

So crazy that there are so many beautiful places right here in our backyard in Green River.  Still so many that we have yet to explore.  On one of Greg's days off this past week we went to Deadhorse Point state park.  It was gorgeous and perfect for our family.  Some short walking trails and the main attraction that you could pretty much drive right up too.  Allie was more concerned with what she was going to order at Burger King in Moab afterwards but I think we won her over with the little hikes.  Brailie only had two face plants, neither of which produced much blood.  I would say it was a successful day outing.

Family Pictures by one heck of a great photographer

If you just have to see the pictures then scroll down check them out and then come back and read this.  I wanted to give a little background about how these photos came to be.  

This summer after my friend and neighbor Allisha had her 6th baby by c-section she become very ill-like in the hospital, multiple surgery's, infection throughout her body ill.  It was extremely scary to say the least.  I can't imagine how her husband or children felt but I know for myself I begged Heavenly Father to not take her from her family or from all the people that loved her.  She spent a long time in the hospital leaving her 5 kids at home to be watched by family and friends.  I kept wanting to do something to help but so did everyone else in town.  Seems like every time I had an idea of something to do for the Hughes family someone else had already thought of it.  Meals were covered daily, kids were scheduled to go here and there regularly and I felt like I wasn't being of any help at all.  Right from the start of the ordeal I did have a sick feeling in my stomach about the rising cost of bills as Allisha had to stay in the hospital longer and longer.  I felt right from the start that as a community and as friends we ought to do something to help with the costs.  Fast forward a little bit to a day when Gaylene Erwin wrote me a message on Facebook saying she had saw that I had asked John if we could plant him a garden and she wondered if she could help.  I wrote back that the garden was already planted but I still wanted to do something to help.  I mentioned to her an idea I had about doing a fundraiser-a community fundraiser for the family with a dinner, auctions, games etc.  She said she would love to help and maybe she could even donate a photo shoot and a free picture as a prize to auction off.  I told her I thought that would be an awesome idea and that I wanted to win it if she did it.  And thus was born the Hughes Family Benefit idea (well sort of).  So I posted on Facebook wondering if anyone else would be interested in helping put together a fundraiser and of course there were other friends who said they would be interested, so we planned a meeting.  In the meantime it became so clear to me exactly what the fundraiser should be.  I couldn't hardly sleep because I had ideas and visions in my mind.  I felt it so strongly that it almost brought be to tears on a regular basis thinking about what we needed to do.  I had heard that other friends had a few other ideas (bake sales, car washes, yard sales etc) and I knew those were good ideas but I knew without a doubt what we needed to do for Allisha's family.  Before I went to the meeting I just prayed that the others would want to jump on board with this huge idea.  I knew that we had to do something that provided as many people as possible with as many opportunities to donate money in one evening.  We discussed and brainstormed and formulated a plan to put on a Benefit Event.  The crazy thing is that all these fabulous women just kept listening to my ideas, accepting assignments and treating me as if I had a clue about what I was doing (which I had none-thank you very much).  I kept thinking, "I think they think I know how to do this-I can't believe they are listening to me and trusting me with such a responsibility."  And after weeks of planning, and generous donations from so many local businesses (which I was so overwhelmed by) the day came for the Hughes Family Benefit Event.  Miraculously and I know very humbly, Allisha and John and kids all came to the event (though they did not seek, request or ask for any of it to be done) and let us all serve them and show our love in a variety of ways.  The weather held out until the last dollar bill was counted and then it down poured.  I thought it would be wonderful if we could make $500.00 for the family but we made well over that-leaving the planning committee in near tears as we packed up and went home.  As part of the event we had several items that we raffled off (though raffles are not legal in Utah so we called them "donations or prize drawings"-same difference right!).  One of those prizes was a photo shoot with Gaylene.  I told Greg that we were buying $40.00 worth of tickets and putting them all in that bucket to win the photo shoot.  I was in charge of reading off all the winners of the prizes.  The photo shoot was the last one.  The bucket had way more tickets than I wanted to see (only for my own selfish reasons) in it but when the ticket was given to me I was shocked to read my own name.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to win so bad; I wanted the whole evening to be a success so badly; this was just the icing on the cake.  Maybe it was Heavenly Father's way of saying, "thank you for listening to my voice," or maybe it was just the luck of the draw.  Either way we were thrilled to have the chance to finally have professional family pictures taken. 

Here are some of my favorites though there are many more.  I want to save some for Christmas cards and other projects (I can't share every single one all at once).

After having done the shoot I can't imagine not making it an annual thing.  It was such a fun and wonderful experience.  The photos are priceless and I think it is just too important to pass up on because of finances.  I can remember only having our family picture taken three times (and actually one of them I was a little toddler so i don't remember it) and the other was when I was in High School (and I was super not photogenic at all-so maybe no one wanted to waste their money on pictures after that) and the other was a year ago with my whole family (which I loved).  We should have done it more-I pledge to make it a priority.