A Wonderful Christmas Season

This was probably one of the best Christmas seasons I can remember. We had lots of family around, were blessed with plenty, and our girls were old enough to feel the excitement that comes with the holidays. It's one that I'll want to remember.

GGW '09 was a blast! We shopped till we dropped, ate tons of yummy food, and got to spend time together, which is really the best part! My favorite memory - Andrea spotting a stuffed animal that looks just like ALF (aka Gordon Shumway) that I bought for Joey for Christmas!

We had a fun celebration with the whole Gentry side of the family. We ate TWO full crockpots full of Chili and an entire sheet cake! Yeah baby! :) It's a good thing we celebrated when we did, too, because Mom went into the hospital for low blood counts on Christmas Eve and is still in, at the time of writing. Poor thing.

Santa Claus visited our house! Gracie asked him for Littlest Pet Shop toys and he delivered! She also got a Nintendo DSi, which she loves.

I didn't get many great shots of Janie, mostly because she's so wiggly and into everything that the camera shutter speed just wouldn't cut it ;) But I liked this picture because you can see the cute PJs that Joe picked out for the girls, and the cute expression on Gracie's face. AND that Janie was indeed present :)

Sweet baby Jane is getting so big. She was a rock star unwrapper!! She went for the gusto! Which is totally opposite Grace's unwrapping personality. I swear they are polar opposites in just about every way.

This is my favorite shot from this year. Daddy's girl. My little Gracie is growing up to be a beautiful, happy, awesome helper! She liked her new snow hat, and especially loves Daddy's lap. This may be the age that I want to keep her at for awhile. Alas...

I feel so very blessed in my life. A beautiful family. The gospel. Those two things pretty much sum up the contents of my heart right now. Happy 2010!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a terrific Thanksgiving holiday with Joe's family this year. This is a FIRST for us! We got to celebrate turkey day last year with the Tanners, but we have never celebrated it with Joe's parents. Ever. Seriously!! So, needless to say, we were stoked to be able to have an Alexander Thanksgiving! (Though we did miss the Popes!)

We saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox!

We ate at the Roof Restaurant in Salt Lake.

We went light gazing in temple square!

We grew as tall as the temple! :)

We went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point and Janie loved dressing up as a dino!

And the Tanners slew their first Mammoth!! Sa-weet!!

We had our actual feast at Mom and Dad Alexander's home and everthing was truly delicious! We even played Beatles Rock Band (my Christmas present from Joe's parents!! Am I lucky, or what?) together and brought the house down :) It was a great holiday weekend and I hope we'll be able to do it again (and include the Popes!) sometime soon!

Tiny Dancer

Gracie had her first dance performance at the South Towne Expo Center. I was nervous about her performing because in some other "performance" type settings she has really had a hard time. Boy was I surprised! She absolutely LOVED dancing in front of the audience and was happy as a little Gracie could be the entire time! I was so proud of her and my heart was so full of mommy pride as she was up on the stage. It was darling. She was awesome!


These girls are in our ward.

Beautiful Gracie.

She was so excited!!

song of the day, the snowman's music box dance, george winston

Canning!!

I completely forgot to blog about canning! What was I thinking?

Earlier in September, Joe's mom found a family who have two mature and very productive apple trees in their yard. They told her that we could come and pick all the fruit we wanted for free. So we loaded up the kiddos in the van and headed over to their house. We picked TONS of apples! Gracie thought it was some kind of amazing miracle (which is totally is, if you think about it) that food as yummy as apples just grows on trees. Janie just loved to pick up an apple on the ground and gnaw on it for a few minutes before moving on to the next one. It was pretty cute.

Anyway, the point of all the picking, was to make some applesauce for our food storage. I'd never canned anything before, so Sue taught me how! Dave did all the peeling, we did the cooking and canning, and Ta Da!!! Lots of delicious, chunky, cinnamon applesauce to eat through the winter. Delish!! Thanks for helping us do such an awesome project GrandpaSue! (That's what Janie calls Grandma Sue and Papa Dave, collectively.)

Quote of the Day:
"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner." ~Lynda Montgomery

song of the day, super trooper, abba - my favorite abba song :)

Halloween Week!

We had a fun Halloween week. Janie and Gracie wanted their toenails painted...

We had our first snowy day of the season...

We carved and painted pumpkins with Grandma and Grandpa Alexander...

And Gracie got to dress up and trick-or-treat!!! On Friday, for preschool and trunk-or-treat at the church, she dressed up as Cinderella. But on Saturday, for the real holiday, she was a dragon. Janie was Belle, from Beauty and the Beast but somehow I didn't get ANY pictures of her in her costume! Can you believe that?? I can't.

Quote of the Day:

"A box of new crayons! Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic." ~Bill Watterson

Trade!

My brother-in-law Brad introduced us to this awesome website called swaptree.com. You can go on and list items (books, music and video games) that you own and are willing to trade with other people on the site. You also list items that you want and the website matches you up with people who have those items. When you've settled on a trade, you can print a shipping lable right from the site and shipping is way cheap. We've shipped about 8 items now and they have never been more than about $2.50 each. The shipping is paid through the website, so you don't have to worry about calculation, etc. You just print their shipping lable, slap it on your package, stick it in the outgoing mail, and receive the item that you chose, in return! Joe and I have totally been into it this week! We've traded old books for others that we've wanted and a Wii game too :) Anyway, we just wanted to spread the word that we think the site is pretty darn cool! Check them out!

All In A Day's Play

Janie, Janie, Janie...was in full-blown "toddler aka master of chaos" mode today. She snuck downstairs early this morning to wake up Grandma and Grandpa and came back up wearing this cute bow on her head! As you can see, she's wearing her favorite piece of clothing, her Little Mermaid nightgown, which is as essential to her as chocolate milk and I couldn't pry it off of her wth a crobar. We went to the doctor to get flu shots and she emptied the garbage onto the floor in the exam room, ate little pieces of the paper on the exam table, spilled the contents of my purse all over the floor, turned my camera (which resides in my purse) on and off about eighteen times, and said, "I want a sucker now!" at least as many. All this while the doctor was talking to me about Gracie's cough. (Roughly 2 minutes total.) Then we went Grocery shopping...which I don't even want to talk about...all I've got to say is, if your local grocery store has those mini, children's size carts, don't let your child push one around unless you'd like to have both of your Achilles' tendons severed.

(Deeeeeep breath.)

After we came home from the store we were downstairs talking to my mom and she said, "Why don't you let the girls watercolor today? They haven't done that for a while." So I totally gave in later, just before Joe got home from work. The results of said artistic expedition are the second two pics...

Quote of the Day:
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~Pablo Picasso

song of the day, coldplay, life in technicolor ii

A Weekend in Boise!

Last weekend we drove up to Boise to visit with Andrea and the girls! We were sad that we didn't get to see Ryck, but we're looking forward to seeing him at Thanksgiving.

The drive up went really well. The girls were so excited to see their cousins and play with different toys that it kept them happy the whole time! They read a lot of books, watched Kung Fu Panda and Disney Princess Sing-Alongs (their current favorite) and ate lots of snacks. We stopped at a rest stop about half way there and had a few races on the grass to stretch their legs. Gracie was so into it...she's got a seriously competetive streak. There were some other people there at the rest stop and one guy said to me, jokingly, "I thought this was supposed to be a rest stop." :)

While we were in town we went to a Birds of Prey center where the girls got to see a Peregrin Falcon, Kestrel, and Turkey Vulture, among others, up close. The Tanners even had a hawk on their back fence watching squirrels eating out of the feeders!

We had a great time! Thanks for hosting us, Tanner fam! We love you guys!

Janie with my swanky glasses.

We ate at Joe's Crab Shack and they had these outdoor tables with holes where the shell buckets go. The girls loved them :)

There is a LOT of attitude sittin' on that couch!!

On our way home.

Quote of the Day:
"Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply..." ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814

song of the day, i can't help myself, the four tops

To Scrap or Not To Scrap...

I had basically decided that I'd never scrapbook again. My blog acts as a scrapbook for me now, and that really is enough for me. But Gracie has recently discovered my old scrapbooks and loves to look at them! There are lots of pages of my high school years, Joe and my wedding and early years, and just a few of Gracie as a baby, but that's where they stop. As I've started looking at them with Grace and she asks so many fun questions about the pictures, I realized that scraping the pages of Grace were my very favorite to do. Finally, there was a cute little kid to fill the pages with! That's what REAL scrapbooking is about...capturing the essence of a unique family growing up together. (And the cute kids in the pictures loving to look at their younger selves.) So, I decided to start scrapbooking again! I even comandeered April's cool, rolling, hold-it-all holder for scrapbook stuff! Sa-weet! (Thanks April!)

Here are two pics that I found. It really is shocking how quickly I forgot how my babies looked when they were small and how life was at that time. Grace was an absolutely adorable toddler (if you disregard her diva attitude!). She looks completely different to me now...all lanky legged and beautiful instead of cute and little! Janie is in that adorable toddler phase right now. But it is so fun to see the pictures of her birth and first days. She was such a lovely, perfect baby. (Sigh)

Quote of the Day:

"Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other." ~Ed Howe

Mmmmm...Grass...

Do I even need to write a caption for a picture this awesome?

Quote of the Day:
"Cows are not just made out of milkshakes, you know. Some of them is hamburgers too." ~ I'm not sure where we got this quote from, but Joey says it all the time.

Always Good For A Laugh

Gracie is always good for a laugh. She's hilarious! The way her smart little brain is buzzin' keeps us all entertained around here. Here's her latest...

G: "So, when I die, my body will stay down here while my spirit goes up to Heavenly Father?"

H: "That's right. Our body and spirit are separated for a while."

G: "Oh. So I won't be able to toot?"

Now if that doesn't make you laugh, then you need a stiff drink or something ;)

Viva Las Vegas!

Last weekend, Joe and I had our first "getaway" since the girls were born! Dave and Sue, and April and Brad, were awesome enough to watch the girls for us so we could have some fun times! We went to Vegas and stayed at the M Resort, about 10 miles south of the strip. It was perfect! The hotel was beautiful and clean and our room had an awesome view...especially at night.

This pic really doesn't do it justice! It was awesome! (This is standing in our room, looking out on the strip.)

The world's largest chocolate fountain inside the Bellagio.

The cool garden atrium inside the Bellagio.

The "shell" is fresh roses!

We love Margaritaville, but it's been a little "Vegas-ized" since we were there last. There was a dancing hoochie (spelling?) that we really could have done without...well, that's just me. Maybe Joe's of a different mind ;)

We actually missed, both our flight TO and our flight HOME from Vegas, but I don't even want to get into it here on the blog. It was a bit traumatizing for little 'ol Heather. :)

Quote of the Day:

"In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number." ~Steven Wright

Too Cool For School

I love these sunglasses because I bought them on Castaway Cay. Now I love them even more because they look super swank on Gracie!

Quote of the Day:
"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone." ~Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel

(Aristocats, Everybody Wants To Be A Cat. It's the girls' new favorite song to listen to in the car.)

Little Singers

We had a fun afternoon at the Children's Garden by our house yesterday. They have a great splash pool with a big Noah's Ark sculpture and the girls love it! It was almost empty because school has started up again. Yesterday made me realize that I truly am an introvert. I LOVE it when it's just us there. There's no one to gab at me, no one to threaten to obscond with my kids. Basically, I just enjoy the peace and quiet.

Anyway, as we were exploring the garden the girls found this cute stage and danced and sang on it for about half an hour. They loved it :) I just sat in the shade of a tree and took video. It was fab. Here are some snippits...

Quote of the Day:

"How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy." ~Paul Sweeney

Possibly the CUTEST picture ever!!!

Quote of the Day:
"A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life." ~Irish Saying

The Aquarium

We have a local aquarium that's housed in an old grocery store. Wierd, I know. But they just finished a new wing with more exhibits and the girls dig it. We have passes so we go about once a month or so. We went yesterday and had a grand 'ol time!

Janie checking out the flamenco fish. (Okay, that's not really what it's called but this frilly orange fish - another pic below - looks like a fancy flamenco dancer to me :)

This cool tank has these funky upsidedown jellyfish. I think they're alien-style wierd, myself.

Here's a pic of the flamenco fish :)

I thought this was a cute one.

This is part of the new wing. It's a rainforest exhibit and has some big tanks with interesting animals like pirhanas, boa constrictors, caymans, turtles, poison dart frogs, etc. They did a great job with the space they had. I'm so glad it's close to our house.

Quote of the Day:

"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it." ~Doug Larson

Farm Country

We have a great petting zoo just down the road from our house and we have been going at least once a week all summer. The girls love it because they get to have a pony ride and feed the animals out of their hands. I actually secretly love it too because the baby cows are darling. Anyway, Joe surprised me with a new camera that fits in my purse so I can take pictures wherever I want! So last week I busted out my cool new toy and took some shots of the girls with the farm animals.

Nubian goats. My favorite animals at the petting zoo :) They have these itty bitty tongues that lick the corn out of your hand and it's funny! They are kind of slobbery though. I want a nanny goat of my own someday for the milk. (There something you didn't know about me, huh?)

Janie on her steed. This was the very first time she rode without me walking alongside her.

Gracie always chooses this same pony. It is black and white and she loves it!

A forced portrait for sure. They keep the bunnies in cages, which I think is dumb for a petting soo. There's nothing softer than a bunny, people! Let the kids at 'em!

Here are the two baby cows. They are adorable.

Whenever we get close to the petting zoo, Gracie inhales deeply and says, "I smell animals!" So that's the quote of the day.

And she loves this song, "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, so that's the song of the day! I realized yesterday that for many years I thought that Chevy Chase was "Garfunkle" because of the music video for this song...LOL. I'm a little slow, okay?