ummm, I don't have a fun title today

sooo...yes, I know it's been awhile. But in my defense, we've had some problems. Our computer completely shut down (we think it was a virus) and we went to Texas for a week. So I haven't been able to post for awhile. But now I'm back.

In Maricela news, that girl is movin!! She's crawling all over the house. She can pull herself up to stand (and does it quite often). She follows her sisters wherever they go and has so much fun playing with them. And the girls are so sweet to her. They bring her into their little clubhouses that they make, they make special clubhouses just for her, they share their food with her (not always a good thing), they get her toys to play with, they read to her, etc. It's so neat to watch them play together and know that they're developing this strong sister bond. You can tell that they all just really love each other. Hopefully they won't lose that closeness during the teenage years.....

Yesterday was a great day. We had so much fun together. We went up American Fork canyon to swim in a lake in the middle of the mountains. The water was a little cold at first, but once you got used to it, it felt SO nice. Here are some pictures of us at the lake.


There was a little prairie dog (I think that's what it was) that came over to where we are to beg for some food. The girls thought it was so cute and Elena was trying to get it to eat out of her hand. He was just about to when she moved her head and it scared him off. She got bored of waiting for him (she really did a good job of staying still - I wish she would stay that still at church!) and never did feed him out of her hand.

But Keith did and one of our friends that was there did, too. It got to the point where we had to shoo him away because he was trying to get into the Doritos bag!

Amya definitely won the "staying in the lake the longest" award. She was like a fish! She had her goggles on and was swimming around in tubes and with water wings. She did not want to get out of the water. Her lips were purple and she was shivering, and we couldn't convince her to come out. After she finally did, she ate a little, warmed up, and then said she was going back in!!! Crazy girl!

Tea had a good time. She loves rocks and dirt, so she was totally in her element. She didn't like the cold water very much. It took her awhile to get used to it, and she didn't want her whole body to be in it. She sat on top of me while I was in my tube.

And Maricela had fun as well. She has recently discovered the amazing taste of rocks and dirt and we had a hard time keeping her from eating every one she could put in her mouth. She didn't like the water at all. I tried to put her in it, but as soon as her feet touched the water, she lifted her legs up to her b*tt so that she wouldn't have to feel the cold water. Needless to say, she spent her time on the blanket, trying to eat more rocks.


When we were all tired out from the lake, we packed up our stuff and headed down to the farm. We rested up there and hung out with Bonnie, Joseph, George & Angie & their kids, and Keith's mom. We lit some fireworks around dusk and the girls had a lot of fun with that. They must have thrown hundreds of those little poppers, and the girls had fun going around and stomping on the ones that didn't explode. (Notice that Elena's barefoot but that didn't stop her!)

We also had a lot of fun with the sparklers.


Amya took this shot of Keith, Maricela, and me. I like how she's looking up at us.

George and Angie brought those little neon bracelet and necklace thingies. I think the girls were more excited about those than the fireworks. They had a lot of fun making necklaces, crowns, and bracelets.


One of my favorite shots.

july desktop

Just thought I'd show you guys what my July desktop looks like. All of these pics were taken at Keith's family reunion we went to in Texas. I love the picture of Amya dancing in the top right corner. She was doing "the swim". Enjoy!

8 years

I'm on a scrapping roll or something, cause this is my second one for today. These are pictures of me and Keith, taken just a couple of days before our 8th anniversary. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by!

For credits, click here.

Taylor

Here is a page I did today for Taylor. She's so cute!!

For credits, click here.

Houston, we have lift-off!!!!!!!

Maricela is crawling!! I can't believe it. We are just so excited. Not really excited about all the messes she will now be making, or all the cleaning we'll have to do now that she can find anything on the floor anywhere to put into her mouth, but excited about the fact that she was able to lift that big tummy off the floor and move across the rug on her own! (And I know that was a really long sentence, sorry.) I was sitting on the rug with her yesterday and she was playing with a cup. The cup rolled away from her and she got into crawling position (which she's been able to do for awhile but would previously just rock back and forth then go back to sitting) and took a couple crawls over to the cup. I don't know if you call them crawls, but there has to be a word for that right? Crawls is to crawling as steps is to walking? (Trying out my analogy skills here, how'd that work for ya?) Excited, I got down on the floor with her (and the video camera of course) and took away the cup so that she could crawl to it again. After a couple minutes of prodding, she did!!! I got it on tape and everything. Later on last night, Keith's family was over for dinner and she crawled again for them. They said it looked like she had been crawling for awhile, not that she had just started that day. I was going to put the video up on here, but it's a little too long and I'm way too lazy to edit it down to just the crawling part. When she wakes up from her nap I'll try to tape her again. I'm just so excited that she's moving now. You can tell that she wants to play with her sisters and she gets sad when they leave the room. Now she can try to keep up with them.

And in other news, she also has five teeth now. Three on top, two on bottom.

And sorry about all the run on sentences and use of parentheses in this post. I don't know what I was thinking.

sunshine

Here's a page I did for Téa, using those cute pictures I took of her last month.

For credits, click here

Sharkgirl is gone...

...only to be replaced by the toothless monster. I can't remember if I told you guys about Amya's extra tooth. I'm pretty sure I didn't. But if I did, you can just skip over this part.

Back in January, I was playing with Amya and thought I saw something in her mouth. I had her open wide and, right behind her two front teeth, I saw another tooth growing in. Her two front teeth were loose, but not anywhere near loose enough to come out. I thought "Oh great. Here's her permanent tooth coming in, way out of place. We're gonna have huge orthodontist bills." So I called the dentist and scheduled an appt to have her two front teeth pulled out. When we got there, he looked at it and said they needed to take an x-ray to see exactly what was going on. When the x-ray was ready he showed it to me and said it was exactly what he thought it was - an EXTRA tooth!! I couldn't believe it, how do you get an extra tooth? He said it's really not that rare, but that it usually happens when they're younger. He said since it wasn't in very far that we should wait a few months before we had it pulled. He needed more of it to be out so that there'd be more to grab on to when he extracted it.

Fast forward to Tuesday (two days ago). We set up Amya's appt to have her tooth taken out. She wasn't too scared about it, although she did ask me why we couldn't just leave it in. But seriously, that tooth was taking over her mouth! We were calling her sharkgirl, cause she had that tooth growing in like it was a new row or something. Here's a picture for proof. (By the way if you click on the picture, you can see the tooth in all its humongous glory.)




After they pulled out the extra one, the dentist asked if I wanted him to pull out her two front teeth as well. They were about to come out, and since she was already numbed up, I told him to go ahead. So now we have the toothless monster.


She did really well at the dentist. They asked if I wanted her to have laughing gas to help calm her down. The only time I had laughing gas it made me feel awful and I didn't want that to happen to her, so I said no. She got a little upset while they were numbing her but after that she was fine. I was so proud of my brave little girl. She asked if she could keep the extra tooth because she thought the tooth fairy would give her more for it. That thing is huge! But, she hasn't remembered to put it under her pillow yet, so I don't know what the tooth fairy's going to do. :)

you & me

Here's a layout I did for Amya. She wanted to take a picture with me, so we took some self portraits, and I really liked how this one came out.

Click here for credits

Our new niece

So Keith's brother Ian and his wife Laura welcomed their newest daughter to their family on Mother's Day. She's a tiny little thing - she was born at 28 weeks and weighed in at 2 lbs. 1 oz. We went up to see her and Laura yesterday (and Ian and the kids too). I have never seen a baby that tiny before. But she's got some spunk to her - she had already pulled out her intubation tube all by herself. The doctors say that she's doing fine right now and they'll just have to keep watching her. Laura seemed to be doing good as well. We're so happy for them. Here's a little clip of their new baby. Look at how her hand compares to Ian's fingernail, and the size of the pacifier compared to her little tummy.



P.S. I didn't put her name because, when we left, Ian and Laura still weren't decided on a name for sure. But they were thinking Sofia Rose. How pretty!

Mexican dancer

We had a Mother's Day party in our ward, and they asked each group (Primary, Young Women, etc.) to participate in a little talent show. The Primary had some of the older girls learn a dance and perform it. Amya was asked to participate in the dance and we were so excited for her. She did such a good job - it was really her first time performing in front of a group. Isn't she great?!?!?!

An era has ended

The other day we were watching TV with all the girls. Keith was not liking whatever show it was and said "This show is G-A-Y". He spelled it out so that the girls wouldn't know what he said. Almost immediately Amya says "Gay? Why is the show gay dad?" We were laughing and saying that we couldn't spell things out anymore. About half an hour later, we were watching another show and Keith says "This show is Y-A-G". And sure enough, after about 2 seconds, Amya says "Dad, that's gay spelled backwards." We couldn't believe it. It's gonna be so hard now to talk about stuff we don't want them to know about now that Amya can figure out what we're saying. We also won't be able to talk in Spanish for much longer, cause she's figuring that out too. That smart little booger is ruining everything! :) Oh yeah, I forgot, then she started spelling stuff out herself, like "d-a-d i-s g-a-y" and stuff like that. Crazy.

In other news, Maricela's other top tooth is coming in now as well.

funny of the day

Elena: Why do you love me so much?
Me: Cause you're my beautiful girl.
Elena: No I not, I your funny girl ... but I still beautiful.
Me: Oh, you're my funny girl today?
Elena: Yes, and not a mean funny girl, a beautiful funny girl.

dance

For credits click here

I made this page today. As I was posting it, I realized that the last three pages I've done have all been about Elena. Well, one had Téa in it too, and obviously this one has Benjamin...but I better do some for the other girls before they get jealous!! The journaling says: "We already knew that you were a dancer, but we were surprised to see that Benjamin loves to dance as much as you do. It was only a matter of time before the two of you started dancing together. Spins, twirls, booty-shakin', what next?"

Houston, we have a picture!

(I'm not quite sure why I'm stuck on that saying.)

Last night we were playing outside and the baby was in her little swing that hangs down from the awning of our porch. I was taking some pictures of her swinging and then realized that I could get a shot of her tooth. So I got her to laugh and got the shot. Her fever is gone now, so that's good, but she still has boogers. I'm thinking maybe the other top tooth is coming in, you can kind of feel it underneath her gum. Anyway, we're excited for her.

Also, I forgot to mention what Amya did on Sunday. She was assigned the scripture for Primary, so she had to read a scripture (John 3:16) during opening exercises. I don't know if all of you know, but we go to a Spanish ward, so she had to read it in Spanish. She did it PERFECTLY!! We were SO proud of her and how quickly she has picked up reading - in English AND Spanish. Here is what she read: "Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo aquel que en él cree no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna." Isn't that so cool? And she's reading everything. Everywhere we go, she reads signs. "Mom, did you know they're hiring at Wal-Mart? It says so right there - Now Hiring." "Who knows what tomorrow will bring (on the wall at Sam's)" I can't remember any more right now, but believe me, she's reading everything. It's so neat to see how much of the world is opened up to her now that she can read.

Here's a picture of Téa that I took yesterday. I put her hair in pigtails, dressed her up, and then thought she looked so cute that I took some pics of her outside. The only way I could get her to sit still was to bribe her with dandelions, and she was waving them all around while we were taking the pics. Keith is not going to be happy about that when he sees all the new dandelions start to pop up.

I have some pictures and stuff to share - I just downloaded over 1000 pics from this month onto my computer, and I had already forgotten stuff that we've done. So after I get some breakfast, I'll come back and put up some more pictures. TTFN!