a few months late

Well now it's Addies turn to have her 1st day of school. We finally moved to our place where we will be living for a while so Addie started school. Addie thrives on learning new things and really enjoyed school.

Her Kindergarten is all day which is nice in some ways but it's hard having my girl gone all day. The night before, I was packing her lunch and I got a little teary thinking of all the things she would have to do without me and have to do all by herself. It was such a sad feeling. I know I can't keep her from growing up but somtimes I wish I could just pause time and keep her little. It is so hard to believe that this is my little Addie Mae going to Kindergarten. It seems like it was just yesterday that she was born

I was able to snap this picture with her teacher when I dropped her off

pick a theme

The INCREDIBLES....Red spandex, black speedo, sounds great to me. Well maybe not the spandex part. or the speedo part, Ok maybe that won't work after all
How about a few different themes. Snow White anyone? Back in May, Addie wanted to cut her hair so she could be Snow White for Halloween. I had been trying to get her to cut her hair for a while so I quickly agreed and so for the last 5 months Addie has continued to say she wanted to be Snow White....ok
What a beauty this Snow White girl is. And she can talk like Snow White too....just ask her

well Snow White needs a little friend. Ahhh it's Dopey. What a cutey pie that Dopey is

Cackle Cackle Cackle, come here little children. Would you like an apple little children?

Thank goodness for that makeup class I took in college. Oh wait, what makeup?
Okay change up the themes

You're a good man Charlie Brown

Man's best friend....and what a cute little friend Snoopy is

Hello Fall Break...SO nice to see you

Here you go Mastercard, I've got something priceless for ya! As I was look at this picture on the road of Addie and Kimball holding hands I thought that this is one of those pictures I will look at in the future when these two kids are grown and just cry for that moment again. But hopefully by then I can just use my Mastercard to purchase an expensive time machine and go back. You rock Mastercard! :)

So have you met my husband? It's true! I have one. I kinda forgot that for the last month...well didn't forget that I had a husband but I just couldn't remember what he looked like. Okay so maybe I'm exaggerating a little but not that much. The kids get to see Ammon for about 1/2 hour to an hour every day. I have adopted the life style of my growing up years. I didn't think anything of eating dinner at 9pm...sometimes later, because that is when everyone was finally home and we could eat together as a family. I thought that was normal and what everyone did. Well, these last few weeks, our dinner time has been around 8 because that is when Ammon gets home and we can eat together as a family. It is worth it.

Anyway...blah blah blah, this week is Ammons Fall break which means we get to see him a little more...
We decided to start off our fall break with a trip to Missouri. We went and saw Liberty Jail, Far West, Independence and Adam-ondi-ahman. IT WAS WONDERFUL!!! I love that area. It's still so crazy to me that it is not very far from us and we actually live out here.

This was at the visitors center in Independence and the kids loved this little play area where everything was just their size and they didn't have to listen to us saying "don't touch that" and "stop running"....and I loved not having to say that stuff.

Here is our little pioneer Cherub... she really was such an angel on the trip


Funny story about our hotel. I got it on priceline for a great deal. I think it is normally $140 and I got it for $50...pretty sweet eh? Well, the room was beautiful

and the swimming pool was fine.


We were a disappointed that there was not a free continental breakfast because that is one of our favorite parts of staying in a hotel is not having to leave to get breakfast...let's just face it, I love not having to worry about what to feed my family and it is just provided for us. Who wouldn't. Anyway, no continental breakfast but at least they gave us some bottled water. That's pretty nice. We are enjoying our water when I look at the tag a little closer. Do you see that? NO? yeah neither did we. Look closer
Let me zoom in on that for ya. Yup, a bottle of water $4.00 What!!! are you kidding me, that's what I was planning on spending for my breakfast that you didn't feed me.
Oh yeah, and parking was $12 that I found charged to our card that was not written anywhere that I saw. The usually free Wifi was not so free after all, just a easy payment of $9.95. No thank you! I think the Super-8 will be fine with us next time.

Yay! Our first visitors :-)

Last week we had our first visitors...my mom and dad came out to see us and it was SO wonderful to see them. Our home really felt like home with them here.
My sweet mom had baked cookies before she left and decided to bring some cookies and frosting for the kids to frost. Addie and Kimball were so thrilled to see Grandma and Grandpa and Ammon and I were just as excited.

I have been searching for a couple of years for a record player for my mom and dad. They have so many records but don't have any way to listen to them. Well a few weeks after moving here, I finally found one...of course at a yard sale. It is an awesome antique one that works great. I couldn't wait until Christmas to give it to them so we had a little Christmas the night they got here with our orange Halloween lights and some Christmas music playing. My parents were so excited about the record player and it's a good thing they drove out because that thing is HEAVY!

"Yes!"
I love that they are wearing Christmas colors

We had to take my parents to the zoo...unfortunately my camera was dying (what a surprise) and this was the only picture I could get before it turned off and wouldn't turn back on. This was in the jungle...which is amazing by the way. The bird really liked my dads hat...or maybe they hated it. Either way, they left their mark. I guess it was a good thing that he was wearing a hat at all

My parents were able to be out here to celebrate my birthday with me. Ammon made my cake...love that hubby of mine.
It was just so wonderful to have my parents here. They kept going and are visiting with my sister in Chicago and will come back to visit us again this week on their way home. We are excited to see them again and will be sad to see them go.

rub-a-dub dub

Rub a dub dub, 3 (dang cute) kids in a tub.

Time was short tonight and since "Saturday is a special day...." I put all 3 kids in the tub together. They all love the bath and Avonlea was the leader in the gang when it came to splashing. Lets just say while they were taking a bath, I was taking a shower.

Check out this cute bummy. I love baby bums, they are just to to cute. She will hate me for this picture when she is older I'm sure....especially since I'm blogging it but its just so cute. You have to pardon my hair. I have a personal stylist living with me. Addie did my hair today. Every one of her hair clippies was in my hair. I wish you could have seen it from the other side. She told me the "password" for this particular do is called "Fancy Nancy" so if any of you are interested, just drop the password and you will be looking like me in no time...wait I guess I should rephrase that if I want her to have any sort of career.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SUPER KIMBALLS cape...and it's moving....on it's own. Tonight as I was putting the kids pj's on, this cape just started moving, which made me start moving too:-) My first thought was that a squirrel (which there are a bazillion here) had somehow got in our apartment and was under Kimballs cape. It turned out that one of the ties had started to fray and had hooked on Kimballs foot. When Kimball ran out of the room, the cape started to dance.


I had to show you all the "Baby dance of Joy" (refer to the belly laughs to the right) that Avonlea does ALL THE TIME! My favorite moment of the day is when I hear Avonlea wake up and I go in to get her. She gets so happy and does the baby dance of joy. When I pick her up, she snuggles into my neck and clings to me...for about 5 seconds...and then she is DONE being snuggly and wants to crawl around...speaking of crawling she is almost there. She army crawls anywhere she wants and gets into everything. She also gets on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth all the time. She will soon begin teaching a yoga class and will teach you anything you need to know about up-dog and down-dog...those are her personal favorites.

Ammon and I have arranged it so that Saturday is my day to sleep in and Sunday is his....but who can sleep in when there are yard sales going on I ask you. This morning, I got to go out BY MYSELF and and birthday shopping with my Birthday money (Thank you Mother Teresa). It was heavenly. Ammon doesn't get home until around 8:30 every night so I am NEVER alone...I love my kiddies but sometimes I just need to shop by myself. This morning, I decided to shop rather than sleep in and I found AWESOME sales...I LOVE finding a good sale. For $35 dollars, I got jeans, a cute top, a cardigan and some shoes. It was heavenly to just walk around the store at my own pace. Here are the shoes I bought...I went more daring than I usually go and it is really fun to be tall enough to kiss Ammon without him having to totally bend over. Thank you shoes, you will save me the cost of a neck brace

But I'll probably have to pay to go to a chiropractor after wearing them a couple hours :-)

I just had to include this picture because it is so dang cute. These clothes were sent by Ammons mommy and I just wanted her to be able to see the end result. so so Cute

Thank you

It is amazing how much comfort I am feeling right now just to have General Conference on in our home. For the first 10 minutes, the sound was not working and I felt so sad. When it suddenly started working, we started cheering! The feeling that it brought into our home was amazing and it was just in time to hear Elder Holland speak.

I love Elder Holland and I felt so greatful for his talk. I just wanted to say my own Thank you to my own mom dad. I am so greatful to you mom and dad for sacrificing so much for our family growing up and continually sacrificing for my own little family today. You are such an example of true service and love and I can see in your every action, an example of serving everyone around you. Thank you for teaching me the gospel by example from the time I was a baby. I have so much to learn from you guys. Thank you mom and Dad. I love you
sorry, this is the only picture I have on my laptop of my mom and dad. we were playing water balloon volley-ball after my mom had given all us girls a tea party

We LOVE the zoo

We have loved being able to go to the zoo whenever we want. This zoo is so AMAZING! So worth getting a years pass. The kids love going of course and love to be little explorers

My little jailbird just likes being in the stroller for the walk and being outside. Wouldn't you like that if you were a jailbird like her? There is a giant aquarium that has a penguin place and this tunnel you walk through where the sharks are swimming over you and it is so cool. Come to visit and we will take you there!

Yesterday we went to a pedestrian bridge so the kids could ride their bikes. We had to take a picture of the state line since we seem to be stuck somewhere in between.

I really like Council Bluffs. I love learning about the history of this area. Each Sunday, we go somewhere to learn about the area and the history. I love it! There are also SO many beautiful old homes that I would love to live in. I will have to do a separate post with just pictures of some of the homes in our neighborhood. There are beautiful rolling hills everywhere and I love going for drives in the country. Yesterday as I was driving home, the sun was setting and I realized it was the first time I had seen a sunset since being back here and I decided a stipulation for my future dream home is that it is located in a place where I can see sunrises and sunsets. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I saw the beautiful sunset last night. Hopefully we will be able to see the sunsets when we move.
Speaking of which, we are moving to Village Green to a 2 bedroom in a week or 2 if everything goes well and are going to sublease it for a bit and we are hopefully going to be able to work out a way to buy a 4 bedroom that will be available in December. We will have plenty of room for anyone who would like to come for a visit. We love visitors and are SO looking forward to my parents coming in less than 2 weeks. Yeah for seeing family :-) I am so excited! Things are going well but I will be very happy to get to a place where I can finally unpack everything and not worry about moving for another 4 years. If everything goes well, it will be 3 moves in 4 months. yuck! but so worth it, to be where we want to be. Anything is possible if you want it bad enough