November Updates!

We celebrated Ramon's 32nd Birthday!

"Monkey see Monkey do"- Celebrating Thanksgiving and Jonna's Birthday a day early!
We had a nice Thanksgiving with family.
Here's a few pics of the recent house progress. Looks like we should be in before or soon after Christmas. We're very excited and looking forward to the move...hopefully it's a smooth one!
Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and here's to a Merry Christmas!

Baby Beck will be here soon!

Saturday we had a baby shower for Tamra and baby boy ?Beck

We can't wait to meet him. We had such a fun time with family and friends.
Tamra looks beautiful and is definitely glowing. So glad we could share this time with her.

Aaron was here too. They guys were able to go golfing that day.

Here's Tam playing our A to Z shower game.

The girls were so cute playing too! Dakota and Paityn helped serve dessert.

Girl cousins on mom's side. What is this boy going to think of all of these girls?

Halloween Festivities

Pumpkin Carving...the girls love to do this with their daddy!

Dakota got to dress up for tap class (Alice in Wonderland)

"Rodeo Cowgirl" Dakota. Her Preschool class had a Halloween Party! And Indian Sawyer in the background.

The "Sandlot" Halloween Party/Carnival...thanks to "Vava's" beautiful property. We all went as characters from "Alice in Wonderland". Ramon- the "Madhatter", Me- "Queen of Hearts", Dakota- "Alice", Sawyer- the "Cheshire Cat"

It was such a fun time for everyone. There were several booths for the kids to play games and get candy, a pig roast, a costume and baking contest, a live band, movie showings of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Monsters vs. Aliens!

Fall Updates!

The house is moving along. This was taken about 2 weeks ago. Since, they've put the garage doors on, the doors in the house, front door, etc. They're now working on the driveway and walk way cement and starting to paint the inside. They should be putting our cabinets in next week.

More pics to come!

Here are the girls at the Pumpkin Patch. We met Dakota and Paityn's Preschool class there. We got to go on a hayride, go through a corn maze, listen to the pumpkin story and finally pick out our own pumpkins.

4 cute little mice!

Here's Dakota and Paityn at their tap, ballet, gymnastics class. They love it and sure are good at it! All that dance works up an appetite. Here the girls are at Papa and Nanny's making a pizza.

We hope all is well with you! We're looking forward to the nearing Holidays!
Have a FUN and safe Halloween!!!

Recovering Quickly

Just wanted to tell all of you thank you for praying for Dakota and her surgery. She is doing awesome! The whole time leading up to it she kept saying, "when is it, I want to get this over with". Well the day came yesterday and she was cracking us up the whole time in the waiting room in her "scrubs" acting like a little old man! Anyways, she went back to the O.R. with a smile on her face looking forward to the cotton candy air she got to breath in through the mask. They repaired her right inguinal hernia orthoscopically. She has a small incision below her belly button. It was only a 20 minute procedure but we didn't see her for about an hour and a half. They give her time to wake up, etc. Now that we've been home almost 24 hours it's been a challenge for her to relax and rest. She had a couple visitors and wanted to play. Luckily she slept all night and hasn't really had any pain. She'll return to school Monday and will still have to take it easy. So again, thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

Bend a what???

Maybe it's my lack of patience or creativity, I don't know. But I can't seem to figure these darn BENDAROOS out! If you've seen the commercial and have a child 10 or so and younger then you know what they are. Dakota requested these fun little wax strips for her birthday. So my sisters got them for her. She got the Flowers and Butterflies and the Animal Bendaroos. They come with an instruction sheet of the different creatures, etc. you can make with step by step instructions. These are for age 3+ mind you. After trying on her own for awhile, "D" asked for my help. Note: no pic. of my "pinky the pig" creation. I couldn't even show you how my pig turned out. When I got about one third of the way through it was falling apart. I know we tell our kids, "practice makes perfect"...ummm sorry not with these things. Even a twenty-something, mother of 2 can't make a step by step pig! So I suggest getting rid of the inventors ideas before your child has you trying to do them and let them make up their own creation!

Letting kids be kids!

So as you can see in the picture above, Dakota is a lover of all creatures. There's rollie pollie's(which the girls play with daily and are no longer allowed in my car) and praying mantis' on our porch. After school today we noticed there were 2 praying mantis' on our chairs. Dakota's immediate question..."Oooh, can I touch it?" My response, "Ewww, no!" This coming after me telling her they're good bugs and they get rid of the bad bugs. My reaction changed her mind and she settled for a picture with Mr. Mantis!
This morning before school Dakota put on her gingham dress w/ matching headband. It was time to go and she needed to get her shoes on. She asked what shoes should she wear. I responded with, "either your gold or pink sandals...either one would match and look cute." Then out she walked in her shin-high brown boots...not very matchy matchy but I let her wear them.

So like my title says, let kids be kids. I'm trying to relinquish control of the things that don't really matter! I want to watch my kids enjoy life and God's creations and make some of their own decisions.

Labor Day, Birthday and Move-in Day

It's been a month since I had a post up, so let me fill you in on what's been going on!

It's official, we sold our house Sept. 4th. We moved out and moved into our rental. Luckily the transition has been an easy one on both the girls and us. We settled in and went on a mini vacation.

For Labor Day we drove up to Dinky Creek and spent the weekend camping with family and friends. Unfortuantely I didn't get many pics...I forgot to charge the batteries in my camera. But we had a blast. The kids played all over the campsites making "houses", fishing with daddy, exploring the river and of course making s'mores. Dakota is definitely our little explorer. She loves to search for and pick up bugs. She's quite the climber too. She made her way up, down and through rocks down on the river. Sawyer sure keeps up with her big sister doing everything with her. Above Dakota and Sawyer Saturday morning up about 6:30am. Luckily our friends' kids were up too!

Dakota is now 5 years old! I can't believe it!!! Daddy came home with a bouquet of flowers for the birthday girl. We went to Lemoore and celebrated D's birthday where she got a cute new pair of "cowgirl" boots from Grandma and Grandpa.

Dakota had her 5th birthday party with her friends. There was a big waterslide and they made ice-cream sundays. It was so much fun to watch.

And finally, we went out to the house Monday to go over all the electrical. They started laying the roof today. We should see some big progress within the next couple weeks. We've been told our move-in date should be sometime in December before Christmas. We're so excited and can't wait to be in!

What 1 week can produce...

Wow it's been a week, and a busy one at that! First off they've been moving along quickly with our house. They poured the foundation a week ago, framed on Monday and then had the trusses up on Wednesday. We have to be out of our house in about 2 weeks so its all becoming quite the reality.

Next, Dakota started preschool on Monday. She'll be attending 3 days a week this year. She has the same teachers and is in the same classroom. I had a knot in my stomach all day. I don't think it will ever get easy for me not having her here all day. She's totally fine though and loves it!

Then there's Sawyer. I figured with moving in the next couple weeks we should take her crib down and get her used to sleeping on a bed. So we had her just on the crib mattress. Yikes, that was a mistake. She took advantage of her freedom and came to mommy and daddys room a couple of times the first night. Then the following nights she cried and cried when it came to bedtime. So with little patience and lack of sleep, I put the crib back together and we're all readjusting!

Throughout all of this we had a nice visit with my mom's side of the family. Most of her siblings were able to make it for a weekend along with my cousins. AB and T-Tam were her too! It was a nice time with family!

Forms are in!

Yeah, our forms are now in! We drove by our lot today after church to see the first step in the building of our house. I'll periodically post the progress on it.

1st pic: Our Lot! 2nd pic: Front of house 3rd pic: Our backyard

*Dakota thinks we have horses because of the small horse ranch behind our brick wall*

Updates!

So I'm sitting here Sunday afternoon while Sawyer naps. Ramon and Dakota left Saturday to go camping up at Edison with some friends from work. I opted out. Thought it would be nice for Daddy and "D" to have some father/daughter bonding. Dakota kept telling everyone, "I get to go camping...just daddy and me".
Thursday Sawyer had her 2 year appointment. She got a shot and didn't even make a sound. While we were there I had the Ped. check a bump on Dakota. After a quick look and exam she told me Dakota has a hernia and will need to have it repaired. I was like, "are you kidding me!?!" I was still stressed and anxious over the fact that we were going the next day to Valley Children's to hear the results of Dakota's vesicoureteral reflux. So Friday came and after a long wait we found out she has outgrown the reflux. We were so relieved!
Then there's the whole house buying/selling situation. Talk about STRESS! We're in the process of selling our home. It's in escrow and we have to be out in 45 days. So I'm waiting to hear back on a little place we're going to rent 'til our house is done being built and ready to move into. My days have been filled with appointments, filling out paperwork, inspectors, appraisers, etc. So I'll be glad when all of this is over. Don't get me wrong, I'll definitely miss our little home...it's just that opportunity presented itself at an unlikely or unexpected time. We knew we were going to take this step at sometime, its just that actually doing it is a little scary. I'm realizing I haven't even gotten emotional about it but I think that's because I've been so occupied with everything else. We have so many memories here.
I have a feeling that the rest of 2009 will go by very quickly for us!

Swim Lessons

The girls had private swim lessons last week through the city.

They were fun to watch! The first day Sawyer cried the whole 30 minutes, so Ramon got in with her the rest of the week. It was awesome to see their progression in just one week!

Sawyer loves the water. She can swim to us under water. She still needs to work on moving her arms and coming up for air. She looks like a little fish.

Dakota's swimming has definitely improved. She's becoming a stronger swimmer. She learned how to dive and to get rings from the pool floor. She's holding her breath a lot longer too.

Here's some cute pics of Sawyer watching Dakota. The last two days she had had it and ended her lessons about 15 minutes early.

Mommy had to get in the pool the last day. I couldn't take watching on the sidelines in the triple digit heat!

July isn't even over yet!

So far our July has been filled with some fun and busy events! Here's a few pics to share what's been going on!

We celebrated Sawyer's 2nd Bday a day early with family before we took off for our Coronado vacation!

We stopped by SeaWorld on our way to see "AB" and "T-Tam". Sawyer enjoyed celebrating her Birthday there with her sister and cousins.

Uncle "AB" and Sawyer share the same Birthday!

Sawyer got her first haircut or trimming of the bangs. Daddy said to make it look like those "Emo" kids wear their hair. I think he's trendier than mommy! She just sat there with this same expression the whole time.

Coronado's 4th of July Parade. It's right outside our hotel. The girls LOVED it!
We also celebrated Tia's 31st Bday!

We LOVE the beach. We were there almost everyday! The girls couldn't get enough!

Our vacation was a BLAST! We'll miss T-Tam and AB and our walks to and from their house but are so happy they're happy in Coronado. . .besides it's a great place to visit!

Here's looking forward to swim lessons and the start of our new home!