She did it!!!!

Merry Christmas!!! Thank you to the Matsudas for the great gifts, and Tracy for the extras for the kids. It was great seeing Alison and family one last time before they leave for Utah. We're really going to miss them :( It's great that most of you will be together soon. We wish we could be there!

Katie's walking! This happened today... a few times. She takes miniature little steps with her miniature little legs. So cute!

Cutting Dads hair

London wanted to help me cut matts hair!

Merry Christmas!!!

1. Merry Christmas!!!
2. Made gingerbread houses at our church's "Breakfast w/ Santa" activity.
3. Awesome birthday party we went to!
4. Charlise got a bit carried away with her water painting. Crazy girl!

Love you all!!!

Old pics

Sorry I just finally uploaded these from the fall...mom came out to visit and of couse my kids loved every sec of it. Here are some from the fall festival and London eating her fav. popcorn..

Utah, here we come!

So, the cat is out of the bag...we are moving to Utah at the end of December. Michigan is home to me, even though I haven't lived here my whole life. There are so many things that I am going to miss. I LOVE having family close to us! I am obsessed with Michigan's fall season. I will miss going to U of M football games. I am so sad to leave my ward here, they truly are AMAZING...book club, cub scouts, the youth, girls camp, RS (the list is endless)!

I am going to miss all of my favorite places to eat: Rexy's Thai Cuisine, Mongolian BBQ, Pi's, Applebees (girls night out), Leo's, Blimpy Burger, Costco hotdogs, Los Tres Amigos...that list is endless too! This is the only home my kids have known. They will be lost without having their PaPa and MiMi to kiss every night. Our new tradition of "Tuesday's at LuLu's" will come to an end. So, so sad. We truly are blessed to have a job offer in Utah though. The possibilities are exciting, and hopefully endless. Thank you all for your support in this decision we have made!

A couple of weeks ago I pressured my friend Laurel into checking out Detroit, and taking some pictures of my family while we were down there. I promised to take her to eat good Mexican food in Mexican-town, so she agreed! She is super talented, and so nice to do this for us! She captured a fun adventure that we shared, and that I will never forget! She is like family to me, and I am going to miss her and her family terribly!

Darius was practicing the other day and from upstairs, I thought it was Jarom playing. He has found his "thing" that he's really good at and enjoys. He and Eli have been taking piano lessons for about 6 months now and love it!
The first sign on the kids' new bed says "If you have no pants, no slide." That was Darius getting mad at Charlise and Eli running naked on his bed after bathtime.
Gotta love preschool art. We laughed for quite awhile at this one!

Bye Bye Hair

It's gone - about 9 inches. I have a little over 8 inches to donate to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. Yippee! It's all gone!

It's Been a While...

I haven't blogged in FOREVER! But I love all the pictures you guys put up. Makes me sooooo flippen happy to see my nieces and nephews all the time on here. Makes me smile! This past week I was able to be a single mom to both kids here while Jason is away in New York for work. Ross's mom was also away on business, so Ross stayed with Jazz and I the whole time. What a different world to have two kids day in and out. Can I just say how I loved every minute of it! I got to have Family Home Evening and read scriptures and put both kids to bed each night. Just knowing they were both totally in my care made me so happy. And the funny thing is it wasn't even all happiness the entire time. One night, I could hear Jasmine and Ross arguing so loudly that it rang through the whole house. I was upstairs letting them work it out and just hoping they wouldn't come to blows over the dumb thing they were fighting over...the TV! Finally after all the yelling, they decided they needed a mediator...and came to get me. They had already worked it out pretty much so I just pointed out how each of them could have dealt with the situation better. I know this is dumb, but I felt so blessed to be able to have that go on. I dropped Ross at school this morning and told him how much we have loved having him here. Especially fun was when we all three stayed up late and went to the premier of the movie New Moon and didn't get home on a school night until almost 3am! I got the "mom of the year" award that night, especially when I gave them Pepsi for breakfast the next morning haha! Just wanted to throw this note out...I am blessed. Miss all you crazy ho's!

Fall fun...

Well, winter is here. Last week we had such beautiful weather, almost felt like Spring was coming...but we all know that is not the case! Here are some old pictures I have been meaning to post!

Some of our latest pictures

Derek took Mikey to the LDS church for nursery... his first time ever. He had such a great time and cried when it was time to leave. I guess the Catholic church isn't too much fun compared to the toys at nursery. Point - Mormons.
























Katie's playing outside on a beautiful and warm fall day. She's going to love the playhouse next summer.





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Here are Derek and Mikey coming out of a waterslide at the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, OH. Mikey started asking to go back to the waterpark before we left the parking lot.




















Here's our little pumpkin and duck before trick-or-treating on Halloween. We made it to 3 houses before Mikey saw some jack-o-lanterns and ran home saying, "Me all done."

Halloween

So i know this is super late..here is my little Buzz.
London was the best Monkey every. She loved trick or treaten..wanted to do it every night for the past week.

We got snow just for one day thank goodness, Zac and L were all about it. Just wanted to play in it!

Katie at 9 months

Katie will be 9 months tomorrow!!! I really can't believe how fast the last 9 months has gone. She's 15 lbs 12 oz... the size of a nice Thanksgiving Turkey :) She's still growing at her 10th percentile curve. She's such a tiny little girl.

It's been a long time since I've posted a video. (I put all our videos on the computer the other day and they dated all the way back to July 4th!) She is SO ready to walk on her own. Here's a little video of her getting ready to walk... or run.

There's my Spidergirl at her school party, or "Harvest Festival" to be politically correct. Retards - its HALLOWEEN!

haha? Gotta give some credit to my friend La for coming up with that. Anyways, here are some fun cookies we made the other day. The perfect Halloween treat!

First, you need a really enthusiastic 6 year old to help make the gingerbread men

I am just glad I don't like gingerbread cookies, therefore am not tempted to eat all the batter!

Help from a almost 2 year old is optional...

Last, cover your gingerbread men with frosting to make their mummy costumes


Looks good! Guess which one I made? :)

I LOVED your fall pictures, Joni! So here are my Southern California fall pictures! (looks more like spring, huh!?) Eli and Darius took these pictures and are entering a photo contest with them. Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Family Pictures

Hey Everyone... I just thought I'd add some pictures from the last month. It's been a great fall.

Mikey's first haircut without crying! He did such a great job.


Katie's pulling herself up on everything and cruising. She's going to be a walker before we know it!


Here we are - getting pumpkins at the market down the street.

We went to a corn maze last weekend. We had a great time. There was a hay bale mountain that Mikey loved climbing.

Fall outside our house!