Okay, so this is quite late, but I can’t believe my baby turned three years old!  Time sure goes by fast.  Rylee had a great birthday and is so proud to be growing up. Here are some things I think are great about Rylee:

• She has the most beautiful smile. She is constantly smiling with that big smile and those big beautiful eyes.  Her smile is absolutely contagious.
• When she isn’t smiling, Rylee is doing a 180 and is completely grumpy and scowly. Not that I like this side of her, but I think it is cute how extreme her moods seem to be.
• Rylee loves to cuddle - she loves everything about cuddling. She gives lots of hugs and kisses and always wants to snuggle with someone while she is sleeping.
• She LOVES to cook. She is always asking is she can make something. Any time anyone is in the kitchen cooking she quickly grabs her stepstool and climbs on up to help. She can crack an egg perfectly (has been doing that for a while), can scoop and pack a cup of flour, and even remembers what ingredients go in homemade bread and pizza dough. Her favorite things to make are cookies and pizza (go figure).
• Rylee is tough.  Maybe it’s because of her painful first year, but she can withstand a lot. Of course she has her moments, but when she’s not just looking for attention she is one tough little chick.
• Rylee loves music, just like her big sister. She loves to dance and sing and is constantly performing for all of us.
• For some reason, whenever Rylee sees her grandpa she goes up and slaps him on the butt. I have no idea where this came from, but it is pretty funny. She can wack him pretty hard.
• Rylee loves everyone. She is nice to everyone and is constantly telling me about all of the people she loves. I think this is genuinely a special gift of hers.

I love my little Rylee and am so proud to be her mother. She makes me happy every day and reminds me to be happy and to remember the reason we are all here.

Here are some clips of her 3 birthday parties (one with friends, one with our little family, and one with Craig’s fam):

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYLEE!

(Sorry to be so late!)

I was so worried our Halloween would be ruined with the girls being sick, but they made their recovery on Friday just in time for some Halloween fun. Too bad they had to miss their preschool party, a party they were invited to, and trick-or-treating at Westech with Daddy.  But after missing the fun during the week, they had a great Halloween day!

We kicked it all off by carving pumpkins on Friday night, then when the girls woke up Saturday morning we made Halloween pancakes, yumm (well, yumm for the kids, I really would rather eat something other than pancakes and i especially don’t enjoy them with chocolate chips).

Then we headed to Barnes and Noble for a special Halloween story time (we love story time at B&N) and some trick-or-treating throughout the store.

Ready to head to B&N!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After B&N we came back home for some rest (after all we are still recovering from illness), and then had our traditional chili and finger breadstick dinner, and got dressed up in costumes.

Jaycee chose to be a NICE witch…

 

 

and Rylee chose to be a MEAN fairy…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(she doesn’t look so mean)

And then it was off to trunk or treating and some trick-or-treating to family members. First stop was Aunt Margaret’s house, then Aunt Jenni’s, Aunt Jodi’s, Aunt Tammy’s, and Grandma Wales house!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They both got a great loot!

And I must give a great big THANK YOU to Margaret, Jenni, Jodi, Tammy, and Lindsay for the special trick-or-treat prizes. The girls loved them!!

It was a great night! 

So on with the fun stuff from SC. Our trip was really nice. We flew in Thursday night and got in just in time to greet the Woods family and say goodnight. It was so great to see all of their faces again and being at their house just seemed like being at home. We really appreciate them letting us stay with them and borrow lots of their tools and stuff.

Friday we headed up to the house and were shocked at what we found. Not only were the paint colors horrible, but the renters used super glossy and oil-based paints that made it look even worse, and hard to repair - and they did a horrible job painting. Had they ever heard of painters tape? I think not. We also found they stole curtains and fixtures, which was not fun, and pulled out some of our shrubs and killed one of our trees in the yard, plus removed all of our landscaping rocks. nice. We spent Friday and Saturday mostly working on the house, but I caught some fun time at the pool with Heather and the girls. We also spent time watching movies and hanging out like old times.

Sunday was fun. We got to go to church and see most of our old friends there. Rylee really didn’t remember anyone but she happily walked right into nursery without a word and began playing. That made me happy. We spent a lazy Sunday afternoon with the Woods family eating delicious food, watching movies, and just spending time with each other. Jaycee was thrilled to be playing with Marissa and Sam, and Rylee loved it to - not sure if she remembered them so much from her own experiences or just from us talking about them and showing her pictures of them,but still she was happy and comfortable with them.

Monday was Labor day and we decided to go to the Labor Day parade in Chapin. It was great. We got lots of candy and saw some great friends, sitting with the Woods and the Meyers.

One of the great parts of the parade was this float:

Craig misread their sign and got all excited for the “Fancy hot ladies” only to be disappointed by the senior citizen women wearing elaborate southern hats.

After the parade we had a fun BBQ lunch with some good friends at the Gardner’s house. They had some delicious food, fun stuff for the kids to do - like big rope swings, boating, and trampoline - but also some great company. It was so nice sitting and catching up with everyone there. Thanks Nikki and John.

Tuesday was back to work, and more work Wednesday. Thursday we decided to take a break from that work and headed to Charleston - just us four. We of course went to the market. I love it there.

We took a carriage ride through Charleston, which was okay but the kids got bored too fast. It was fun though to see all of the old places and hear some of the old stories. Here are some of our pics from that:

And we of course ate at Bubba Gumps. yummy!

Oh, and if any of you are in the market for a house in downtown charleston, we found this nicely priced one:

1,200 square feet and priced at only $3.2 million

Taxes and insurance are only $74,000 per year.

And then Friday we finished cleaning up the house, completing our final touches, wrapping up business with property management and realtors, and then spent a nice evening with friends. The Meyers and Slusses came over for dinner and desert, and it was so much fun to talk with all of them. Makes me really want to move back. I miss my old friends the nice greenery - and the beach - and the church - and i could just go on and on. But Utah is good too, right?

Our ride home was miserable to say the least. We flew out of Charlotte to save money, so had to leave to drive up there at 4:00 in the morning Eastern time. We had a layover in Chicago - but due to lake effect we couldn’t land there, so we circled for a while and then re-routed to Dayton Ohio to refuel. It’s a small airport with no flights out anywhere to get us to SLC, except back through Chicago, so we waited there for over an hour and then finally made our way to Chicago.

Having lots of fun at the Dayton airport

Then of course we get to Chicago and even though all departures and arrivals were late (or cancelled) - our flight to SLC was of course one of the few flights that was cleared to leave Chicago while we were still en route from Dayton. And of course there wasn’t another available flight until 7:00pm. Just our luck. So we sat around in the airport for 7 hours. fun stuff. I do have to at least be thankful that we were at O’Hare. It has a lot to look at (like dinosaur and airplane exhibits), but most importantly a children’s museum! That really helped keep the girls entertained.

By the time we got home it was almost 11:00 in Utah (1:00 eastern) and Craig and I had been up for 22 hours. We were absolutely exhausted.

I’m sorry for those I didn’t get a chance to spend more time with in SC. The house was a lot more work then I thought it would be, and our visiting time was limited.

Miss ya’ll so much. Thank you for a wonderful trip!

(Oops… wrote this September 1st but apparently never published)

August flew by so fast but we did have a lot of fun. It’s hard to

The girls spent the end of their summer mostly playing outside with our neigbor Mirae, who is an absolute doll.

Playing in the backyard

Jaycee had a lot of fun with her new bike. Her old bike was getting really small for her and hard to ride, so she sold it on KSL and bought a new one.  The girls have spent a lot of time riding around the cul-da-sac

Early in the month Rylee finally learned how to use the potty. She loved teaching her new doll how to go potty, and once she got passed the “mom can’t tell me what to do” phase she was a pro.

We also spent a relaxing weekend in Park City with Jimmy and Tammy and fam. Thanks guys! It was a nice condo and a lot of fun - and very relaxing.  Here are the girls snuggling on the couch in the condo.  Jaycee loved how big the condo was. She has only ever been with us when we went to smaller hotel rooms, so this was great. She immediately took our suitcases and unpacked them into the closets and drawers in our room, and thought it was awesome that there were 2 kitchens and 2 “TV rooms”.  the fact that there were 2 swimming pools was also an exciting part for her.

August also brought with it the start of singing classes for Jaycee, with her first performance in September. Family reunions (with free cotton candy, mmmm).  And the news of our need to visit South Carolina to fix up our house. Our renters had to be evicted and apparently have done some customizing in our house. $2800 was our low bid for painting, so we’ll fly there and do it ourselves.  I’m excited to be seeing everyone, but not excited about the expense and the work to fix up our house. We don’t trust our property management company much, so we feel like we’ll be in for a surprise.

Thursday night we went to Boondocks for a party hosted by Westech. It was a lot of fun -but it was very windy. Playing miniature golf was a bit of a challenge when your ball was constantly changing directions in the wind - not to mention hair in your face.  but we still had a great time!  We also did bumper boats, lots of arcade games, and had a ton of good food. It was great!

Then on Friday night we met some of Craig’s fam at the Weber County Fair.  Lots of animals to see, but not much of anything else except booths, expensive food, and expensive rides. The kids had a lot of fun though looking at the farm animals.

It was a great start to the weekend. Saturday was no fun for me - I had an exam and then spent the day pulling everything out from the walls of our house to spray for spiders and then putting it all back. exciting let me tell ya.  The spiders we were getting in our house were huge. I can handle little spiders, but when they are bigger around then a quarter they totally creep me out, so I hope they stay away for good. yuck!

Last weekend we were able to go see the Traveling Tribute, including “The Wall” honoring those who served in Vietnam, as well as the “Cost of Freedom” display, and a field of over 5,000 American flags displayed in the shape of the U.S.A. - one for each soldier lost in the War on Terrorism.  It was a very neat and humbling display.