Little Pyper Grace

Hi Pyper! Welcome to the world! Ellie, Max daddy and I have been so anxious to meet you! You came into the world just a hollering! As soon as you could you let out a beautiful cry. It filled my heart with so much joy to know you were healthy and alive.  They then brought you around the sanitary sheet so I could look at your beautiful face and it filled my eyes with tears to see you up close! Both Ellie and Maxwell were whisked away when they were born so I had to wait until I was sewn up before I met them. What a beautiful splendid moment for mommy.  Then you were having a hard time getting your temperature up but instead of putting you under a heat lamp they brought you to me to do skin to skin bonding and warming. After a few minutes you were toasty warm and we were immediate friends!

Pyper, your older siblings absolutely adore you. Ellie is four and max is two. They have come several times for 2+ hours and simply sat and held you ( usually they run like wild monkeys, but you calm them). Max holds up his arm when we try to take you away and says "no, no, take". And Ellie will let visitors hold her only for a short moment before she asks for her back. When she first saw you all bundled up she said,"dad does she have any arms or legs?" We all laughed about that. 

   Right now it is NCAA March madness and your dad and I have watched a lot of basketball while we have been in the hospital. We also had the kids over the night you were born and watched 'Frozen' togethe. It came out the week you were born so this was pretty exciting for Ellie. You have had visits from Robb, Carlie, Ethan, Olivia, Kendal, aunt Ashlee W., Matt, Keira, great grandma Murray, and grandpa Lifferth. Grandpa and grandma Dorius are on their mission (they will come home next week) and grandma Lifferth has not come yet bc she is back at a very special hospital in Cleavelandland helping little cousin David (5) get ready for brain surgery to help his epilepsy. She will be home tomorrow and will likely come by to see you tomorrow. As for now, it is you and I in our hospital room 225 at midnight doing some feeding. How grateful I am to have these special hours with you. You truly  are precious Pyper. Or as Ellie likes to call you, lil Py'. Welcome to our family!

Her birth weight was 6 pds 7 oz. this picture was taken a few days after she was born and she had lost a few pounds. We just can't get enough of her!

Every Photo Has a Story

 These two really are good little buddies. They snuggle up every day and watch a show together. They usually fight over the ipad, but in this sweet moment they agreed on being best friends.

 Between my cousins and I we each take turns spending a family night every couple months with Great Grandpa Lifferth. We usually pick up some Wendy's hamburgers and frosty's then have a lesson. Today's lesson, grandpa told us about Great Grandma's (my gg) butterfly collection that was sold to a local university to pay for their passageway to America. We love these special times.

 Being very pregnant (9 months to be exact) I've given up running and started doing Yoga at the church. Whenever I tell Ellie we are going to workout she runs and puts on her exercise clothes and does everything right next to me or literally on top or underneath me.  She is a really great friend and sister to have around.

 While I was out working in the garden El found some "rollie pollies" so she put them in this bucket and spent a few hours playing with them. Then I looked in the bucket and saw it was full of water. I asked El why she did that. She said they were thirsty so she gave them a drink. But now they are sleeping. I told her they probably are sleeping, let's put them outside. :)

 Sporty little El, ready to go workout with me. She always has to wear 'her Puma's. I got a good deal on Puma's once and now she is crazy insistent that she ALWAYS have her Puma's. They make her run fast like a real puma.

 Such an explorer. El LOVES being outside. Here she has caught her very first Butterfly. It's great to be a kid!

 No mother should have to deliver a baby without a decent pedicure. Unfortunatly my kids think they need one too! So we had a spa day at home. Max was insistent that he join the fun. We even painted one finger on each hand green. Silly Max.

 This little boy is full of love and snuggles. He absolutely adores his little sister and usually that cute little smile gets him out of all sorts of trouble. What's a mom to do? It's irresistible!

 While I lay in bed recovering from my C-section. Mitch has been home helping with the kids. Yesterday, Max came running in and said, "Hi Mom" then ran out. He always comes in to make sure that i'm doing okay. Like I said, he is full of sweetness.

 Can I sing praises to Mitch any more? The day I got home from the hospital Mitch set this up so I could enjoy the outdoors while he worked in the garden. It was just what I needed. He is so great.

Every day Max comes up to Pypers bassinet, pokes his little head over the edge and says, "Hi PyPa" with a little wave. He then takes one of her binkies and sneaks it into his mouth. The little stinker. 

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!