A Quick Getaway

I know with all the baby room switching, painting and planning Mitch has been needing some time away so the weekend before Pyper was born we went up to East Canyon with Matt, Keira, and Meg. We brought the Ranger and Mitch (i swear) kept purposely getting stuck. He and Matt enjoyed using the wench to 'save us all'. Boys will be boys. Honestly, it was quite uncomfortable for my nine month pregnant self. Being the amazing wife I am, I endured for the sake of a happy husband and kids.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Holidays are always so much fun with kids around. Those naughty little lepracauhns got us again and made a mess all over the house! Why I don't have pics of the kids in the morning is beyond me. I do have some video though.

 Mitch always say's, "Oh Stace". and I always reply, "Oh Mitch" When I start doing things like this.

 Our lepracahn always needs to go potty when he comes to our house. He is crazy.

 Ellie and I made this amazing trap to try to catch one. She knows that the only way he can get out of it is to drop all of his gold coins from his pockets and dissapear. Which is exactly what he had to do to get away from us!

Christmas 2013

Could Christmas be any more fun with kids?!  This was the first year that Ellie understood Santa, elves, reindeer, and any other bit of magic associated with Christmas. It made the entire month of December so much fun.  Max mimicked her every move and every morning they would run out into the family room together to find out what silly thing Sammy the elf would do.  Christmas morning also did not dissapoint. Ellie was so excited to have it come that on Christmas Eve she sat in her room yelling at Mitch and I to get into our beds so Santa could come (we all know that Santa will not come if we are awake).  Mitch and I loved every minute of it.

 On Christmas eve the kids got slippers to open then they joined me for a bowl of cereal. When I'm pregnant me and a bowl of cereal have a date every night between 9 and 10.

Here are the two munchkins on Christmas morning. They were both so excited that they got  battery powered tooths brushes in their stockings. I think that could have been their only gift and they would have been totally pumped.  

Santa really delivered this year by giving Ellie an Easy Bake Oven. She is quite the chef so she loves using it!  I personally, find it a bit of a hassle to get it out and cook with it when I have a perfectly good oven that makes 2 dozen cookies opposed to 6 mini ones. :)

This little toy was pretty difficult for Santa to get his hands on. However, seeing the amount of love that this Buzz Lightyear gets i'm sure Santa was happy to see that he went the extra mile to get it for Max.

 Max also got a football. This ball or one of the many at our house, is constantly being taken up to Mom or Dad and asked to play catch.  He is a bit obsessed. But I do love this picture of these two. Two of the most handsome men in the world in my opinion.

Christmas morning would not be Christmas morning without some tasty scones. The kids loved having them. Our Christmas breakfast was followed up by a skype date with Grandma and Grandpa Dorius whom are on their mission in California. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the kids showing all their gifts to their loving grandparents peering through the ipad.

 Christmas morning was blessed with a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Lifferth. Grandpa Liffreth is getting more and more energy and it's fun to see him interacting and wrestling with his grandkids. They absolutely love him.

 Mom enjoyed Christmas with the help of some loritab as she had a total knee replacement the week previous.  At Christmas dinner she asked me to get her a pain pill and I convinced her to take two instead of one.  In the middle of dinner I looked over at her on the recliner and I saw her feet dancing back and forth on the recliner. I admittedly felt kind of bad as was the one who drugged her on Christmas.  We laughed about it the next day.

We invited our friend Barbara over for Christmas morning and scones. She always gives us nice Christmas socks to keep our toes warm.

Overall, we had a wonderful holiday and could not be more grateful for the girfts and blessings that our loving Father in Heaven has given us.

4 Years of Fun

Ellie celebrated her 4th birthday this week! We have had so much fun with Elz Bellz in our family. She showers us with love and exhausts us with never ending energy. As you can see in the previous post we had an epic Willy Wonka birthday party to celebrate. But I decided to off load some facebook pictures so we can have this year of' Ellie memories' in our family album.

 This is one of my favorite pictures of Ellie to date. As I sat at the table she came up and said  while posing, "hey Mom, how do I look?"

 Ellie loves cooking with me. She helps me make things every single day. At times it gets messy but most of the time it is our special time.

 Ellie decided she wanted to have a movie night, one Friday night, with root beer floats and popcorn. She created her own concession stand for Mitch and I to come and partake of. We did have to pay a penny to receive our food, she's pretty smart.

 This is a picture of Ellie's face when I ate the last gusher and did not properly destroy the evidence. She sat and cried/screamed for 30 minutes. I told her she could cry all she wanted but it would not bring that tasty treat back. Her words included, "how could you!?...I can't believe you! ...and I wanted that!"  The whole tantrum was so ridiculous (especially because I rarely eat their fruit snacks) that I could not stop laughing and had to snap a pic. I know, bad mom.  :)

 This is the first time El came out having done her own hair for a play group. She was pretty proud of herself, I love her style.

 This year was Ellie's first year of soccer. She was absolutely a joy to watch!

 Please ignore the middle finger. On our anniversary we went to the Blue Bird. Ellie chose a little bag of peach rings (her favorite) as a treat. She never will smile for the camera, her silliness always comes through instead.

 Ellie is our little fish. She loves swimming and took swim lessons this year.  She is always one of the first ones to jump into the lake.  She also learned to ride a bike this summer and is quite in love with the joy of peddling that thing.

I can't forget one of her most favorite people, Dad. When he comes in the door at night that little lady is nearly glued to him. She has to sit next to him at dinner, wrestle with him, and read books with him. You would think that would make me feel bad, no no really. I enjoy a break and we are happy to have such a good dad in our family.

 I threw this one in just to remember how much she has grown. Ellie can hardly wait for her new little sister to come. She is always telling me how she will feed her and hold her and get her out of her crib. What I really heard is, "Mom you're going to have to make sure I don't squish her". She told me just the other day, "when I grow up, I want to be a Mommy ."  She melts my heart.

We are so blessed to have this beautiful little girl in our life. She fills us with love, patience, and smiles. Happy 4th Ellie bug.

Ellie's Birthday Party

I have some serious updating to do on this family journal! We seem to be constantly on the go and life always has a tendency to fill up with more adventures with each new day. Our latest celebration (after Thanksgiving of course) was Ellie's 4th birthday. We have been counting down to this for weeks and Ellie could hardly stand the wait.

Because her birthday fell on a Sunday we did a birthday party on the Saturday before. Because Ellie LOVES candy we decided to have a Willy Wonka birthday party. I had so much fun planning and the kids got plenty sticky so I suppose it was a success!  Our biggest dilemma was who to invite. Ellie has A LOT of cousins but we decided to only invite the ones that were within a year of her age. Luckily, a few older ones stopped by at the end to pick up their younger sibling so hopefully no body was sad. We still had 9 cousins within her age group, plus a few little friends.

We spent the day licking the walls, making candy necklaces, playing candy, candy, who has the candy (button, button), wearing Wonka glasses and playing with glow stick balloons. It turned out to be a fun and exhausting day!

 We are not responsible for death or damages contract...very important for a 4 year olds birthday party. :) Silly Ellie cheesing it up. Isn't Mitch a good sport. He said, 'the next time we do a birthday party let's go somewhere that I don't have to wear a costume.'  But you better believe that Ellie loved the look!

 We used Jolly ranchers and made lickable stars. However, we had to re-do four of them throughout the day because Max kept making the rounds and licking everyones.

 Again pulling some goofy face, one day she'll smile at the camera.

 Here is cute Max with cupcake stuffed through his binky. He could not keep his hands off the treats.

 of course, the set up. Notice her VERY important Birthday badge.

These were our tasty candy necklaces.

 Here are some more pictures of the lickable stars

Last but not least, the coveted 'Golden Ticket". Happy Birthday Ellie!

USU vs. BYU

We love our Aggies so much. We have such great memories of Logan which make it all the more special.  The Lifferth family and Matt and Keira Dorius went up to Logan for some tailgating fun. We had so much fun trash talking and teasing.  However, once the Aggies quarterback got hurt, the game was pretty much over and the trash talking came to a quick end. Dang Aggies.

 My handsome man and I. I think He get's better looking everyday.

 Uncle Ryan tailgating with his grilling skills. The kids joined us for the tail gate portion then we sent them off to get babysat at our old bishopric members house, Brother Halling.

 Oh how I love my little buddies.

 Robb's car that every one loved.

Diane Oldroyd came and stopped by and said hello as well. We love good friends!

 The whole group. We had a lot of fun.

 The after math. Sad Aggies, Happy Cougars. :(

To Be as Cool as Dad.

I walked down into our play room just in time to snap this picture of Ellie pouring water on Max. Evidently, it was gel and she needed to do his hair. One day He is going to get bigger and give her a good whack.

It's not so surprising that she was putting 'gel' in his hair. The kids are always reenacting everything that Dad does. Everyday when i'm getting ready Max comes in the bathroom and grabs dad's deodorant, opens the lid and wipes it on his tummy.  If Ellie finds a tool she begins fixing things just like Dad does.  When he comes home from work he is greeted with hugs and kisses while i'm left in the dust like chopped liver. Oh, well. I'm admittedly grateful for the break. :)

Max continues to shower us with snuggles and kisses. However, his 19 month old personality is starting to come out. He throws out the occasional scowl, plenty of high pitch screams and loves pulling everything out. He can say, Mama, Daddy, drink, bye bye, thank you etc. He is a sweet little boy.

    Ellie is getting better at going to pre-school. She has had some anxiety about going but is getting better each time. She continues to push her limits with us as parents but is highly motivated by praise and sticker charts.  Her absolute favorite thing is riding her bike, especially if Dad is with her.  She is overly frustrated if she can't do things that other people can do. Her latest thing is being upset that she can't juggle like you guessed it, Dad.

Ellie is also learning how to write her letters and is getting pretty good. This is the first time i've seen her write her name. She spelled it wrong but is getting very good. I really like seeing her cute little handwriting.

Oh, and I can't leave out all the funny things she says! The other day she was in the potty and Mitch went in to 'wipe' her. She went #2 and Mitch walked in and said, "oh! it smells like roses in here!!", Ellie replied, "oh, well you smell like poop!" Mitch told her that was not a nice word so she thought for a moment and said, "okay, then you smell like crap!". I was outside the bathroom with the giggle fits while Mitch continued lecturing about her poor language. Kids are fun!