It's almost time

Tomorrow, Audrey will get to dance in the nutcracker, so tonight she and I enjoyed a mom and daughter date to Olive Garden and then to the Nutcracker at Capitol Theater. It was of course awesome, and I of course, forgot my camera.... I won't make that mistake tomorrow, for sure. We've got up all of our trees now, including Audrey's, her room is nice and clean due to the gut out we did while moving the bed around. I thought it was cute that Audrey had all three of her tutus hung up for tomorrow, she will be Clara, a candy cane and a sugar plum. She loved seeing the ballet tonight and I noticed her mimicking the hand positions subtly while watching. Pretty cute, she really loves to dance. I wish I would've stuck with it when I was a kid...

The performance is 6:30, Friday at the Rose Springs Elementary Gym. Tickets are one dollar at the door.

Holiday Fun

This was the project a few nights ago, notice the lego men out front having a snowball fight, and Audrey's littlest pets placed around the house... The kids got to do it mostly by themselves this year, I love decorating these so it was tough to step back, but I stayed strong.... and let them have at it. Not too Shabby!

Look at those great old ornaments, they are all wrapped in news paper from 1980 but I think most of them were bought in the 50's or 60's. We had fun going to Grandma's and getting her all set for Christmas. My sister Laura and I went on the first of the month. Grandma really didn't want her picture taken because she wasn't ready for the day yet. You couldn't make Grandma look bad if you tried! She's so cute...

Laura Looking cute as usual!

** Party Time **

Reese woke up to being trapped in his room, we like to put streamers all over the house for the kids' birthdays

This took him about 15 minutes to build, I know I couldn't do it that fast! Thanks to Grandma Nyleen and Grandpa Ladd for this great gift!

The Birthday cake, ready to go. Audrey was still in her pjs and Reese didn't want me taking more pictures...Elle just decided to mimic Reese.

We got two of our cousins and two friends and headed up to the indoor pool in Tooele. They all seemed to have a lot of fun.

Elle, ready to swim with Daddy! The girls enjoyed being lavished with Sam's attention while Reese was busy playing with his buddies..

Classic pool picture, had to get one of these. The boys left to right,

Robbie, (cousin), Reese, Nick,(friend), Jacob, (friend), Dallin, (cousin).

What Cuties!!

After swimming for a couple hours it was back to the house for the rest of the party. Reese wanted chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, and chocolate ice cream. I'm sure he would've wanted chocolate soda if I could get it!

He was so excited to get his Legos! He's been waiting for a long time. In fact, he's been on the Birthday countdown since the day after his birthday last year...

Sam asked Reese what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said ribs... you can see the disappointment in Sam's eyes over Reese's choice. Any excuse to fire up the bar-b-q!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY REESE

I put the theme song to star wars on the playlist in honor of one of Reese's first loves...

My sweet Reesey boy, it's AMAZING how fast he's grown. It's funny how much smaller his eyes used to look when they were surrounded by all that chub! Reese was born Dec 6th, 2001. I had just finished taking all my finals early because he was due in three more days. After a grueling day of tests, I got home and started a mad obsession with cleanliness and around midnight that night my body started to get rid of anything I had put in it that day. I somehow didn't see this as a sign for much and so continued to stay home, around 5 am I was still unable to sleep and still hurting so I decided to shower (if I was awake anyway), we finally decided we better get ourselves to the hospital when my contractions were less than three minutes apart. There was a huge Logan snowstorm that night and made the drive to the Hospital all the more slow. We got there finally and just a few hours later we were blessed with our baby boy!


Things I love about Reese:


His sensitivity to my feelings, his great attention for details, his obsession with earning money, saving money, and counting money, his inquisitiveness, ( he's always got so many questions for both Sam and I that we just have to try and patiently listen and answer before becoming tired), his laugh, his excitement about life, his silliness, his obedience ( not all the time, but possibly a tad more than the girls...), his sense of right and wrong, his intelligence, his low-maintenance-ness, his glasses, his eyes, and simply being blessed to have a boy in our family!

Cute things : I was reading a story about David and Goliath once and told him that David loved the lord, Reese matter- of- factly told me, "well, I love the Lord!" Reese likes to tell his sisters ( using a song from a kids show on tv that says "there's a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy") There's a party in your hair, so ugly so ugly; or there's a party in your nose, so yucky so yucky....I of course immediately tell him to stop but can't help but think it is just a little funny, or creative at least. He also was obsessed with garage sales this summer, he has sold something to nearly everyone of our neighborhood kids. He even asked one of my friend's little girls to make his bed for him and he would pay her five cents! Early signs of an entrepreneur?


He was counting his birthday presents and we have one small gift wrapped for each of his friends that are coming to his party, so when he counted his presents, he counted them all and I said, no, those are for your friends, and he said, yeah but they'll all bring me a present, so that's how many I'm going to have! He's often one step ahead of me.

LOVE YOU REESEY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Where to start?

This is the ending goal... but today I'm sitting here paralyzed

by all the things coming up that need doing by me.

So, I am wasting yet more time sitting in front of the computer.

I figured if :

I gave

myself a list,

I could look back

and be able to check things off.

So, here goes...
I need to :
Put up tree
put up lights outside
get Reese's Birthday

invitations out, get his presents

wrapped put together treat bags
find some token of appreciation for Jessica,

my lovely friend who's birthday is the same day as Reese's
Meet with the enrichment committee and start getting

supplies for the Relief Society Christmas program
Assign other parents jobs for Audrey's Christmas party
get supplies and treat bags for Audrey's Christmas party
take Audrey to the Nutcracker at the Capital Theater
get Audrey to her own performance of the Nutcracker
(on Dec 12 6:30 pm @ Rose Springs Elementary tickets are 1$)
Christmas Shop / send packages in mail / Christmas Cards
Get house ready for Sam's mom to come and spend Christmas
Neighbor gifts
Exersize?
Make dinner

I think that's about it for now, I do wish we could get some snow around here... Maybe that would motivate me, make it feel more like Christmas. Yesterday I did help my Grandma get her tree up and we got our downstairs tree up (at least). One day at a time... that's what I'm going to tell myself! Hope you're all doing great, good luck with the busiest month of the year!

** Happy Thanksgiving **

Welcome to the Kienow's Thanksgiving 2008! This year we toyed with the idea of going home to Coeurd'Alene, but with Sam's recent travels, it felt like too much of an effort. I think I was forgetting that staying home also takes quite the effort!

We invited my brother Kyle to come and we were so happy he decided to accept our invite, with five siblings to choose from in the area, he definitely has his pick of who's house to go to.... We got him this year! The kids love having him here and didn't give him any rest, no naps for Uncle Kyle!

We also invited our friends Marrya, Clark and their kids. Marrya recently had a baby and wasn't ready to expose her to the big world that would've been her extended family function, so they opted for the lesser crowd, and we were lucky to have them.

Here we all are, minus me..(behind camera, as usual) Ready to dig in!

Look at that adoring look! How would it be to be so admired?!






























This year, we had all the decorations that were so well loved and used by my Grandma Livingston. She passed away in June and I was lucky to get some of her things that have special meaning to me. I always loved having
Thanksgiving at her house.











Grandma's Tradition... tiny cornucopias with candy at each plate. Audrey decided to make little name tags and create a seating arrangement. Maybe we've got a wedding planner on our hands!

Ahhh Marrya... never boring being with her. We had a great time, they stayed until about 10:30 at night playing wii games and eating pies, many many pies... Hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving too! On the right side of the blog is a list of 100 things for which I'm thankful, there's so much in this world to be thankful for it really is amazing!

She's a Big Girl Now!

I'm dedicating this song to Sam because of Elle, the guy can't get a kiss out of her lately without tricking her into it!


So we FINALLY got our act together and got Elle out of her crib. She was so excited and had been waiting all week for her bed to arrive.


Here's Sam starting the set up.

Making sure all the slats are perfectly spaced...

You know, no matter how big you think your kids are getting.....

They'll still find a way to make good use out of a big cardboard box.

Proud Elle in her "big girl bed."

Since she was now officially a big girl, she asked to use the cell phone. She proceeded to chat with her imaginary friend named "Settie", and told her all about how she had a bed like her sister. She also politely inquired about Settie's current sleeping arrangements...

Lights out! She was so happy, I can't believe we've put off getting her out of her crib this long. I went to pick up the mattress tonight and the store was closed, Elle was so excited though that Reese decided to be a good older brother and give up his mattress for her. He is sleeping in a sleeping bag tonight. He said we could just give him the new mattress later. Makes me smile when the kids come through for each other.

Beautiful day and Bargains

Wow! This is out our front door today, this fall has been strangely warm, but it is beautiful none the less!!

Sam and I have been looking (casually) at a house that's down the road a little. In light of all of this, it's really made me appreciate what we do have....

I really love having a laundry room to hang dry things and have a place to iron...

Audrey's room and "homework loft" are one of the more fun things about our house, Grandpa Ladd and Sam built it for Audrey. She's a lucky girl, and when grandpa builds things you can bet they're sturdy!

I know, Audrey's room is the last unpainted surface in our house, it's that doggone ultra high ceiling, seems like such a project. It's next on my list....

Now for the bargains! I went to Ross the other day and was delighted to find these boots for Elle. They actually have a removable liner and seem pretty decent. They were only $5.99! I love it I tell you... Elle loves them too. I'm not crazy about clothing with characters on it; so lucky for me they'll be worn with snow pants! Yay, then Elle can be happy too!

I think maybe her nickname should be "Belly"

This is one of my good Holiday dress finds... Hooray for Costco!

I was so glad to find Audrey some more dresses, shopping for her age can be really hard; the clothes start to get skimpy and expensive. I was thrilled to come home with three dresses from Ross each under $14!!