Our Trip to Farmington and St. Louis

This last weekend was very nice and relaxing to say the least, even though it seemed jam packed with fun! It was Nick's 4 day weekend, which we love as it comes every 5 weeks and love the extra time with Daddy at home! So on Friday we got up and headed to St. Louis to the Temple where we met Grandma (Nick's mom). She graciously watch the girls so we could do a session at the Temple. The girls of course loved the time with Grandma, in fact when I called her on our way there to make sure about what time we were meeting, Cora got extremely mad that we weren't seeing Grandma right there at that moment! I sadly didn't get pictures of the girls at the temple, but looking back I should have taken the time to and will try and do that next time. I'm glad though that they do get excited to go to the temple even though they aren't old enough to go in. I look forward to the Kansas City Temple being built soon so they can go through the Open House.

After the temple we headed to the zoo in hopes of catching a few animals. We were short on time, so everyone was great troopers (including us adults) as it had been quite a while with a decent meal. I was glad I packed a lot of snacks, which tided us over. Luckily the girls each had their own animals they wanted to see and they were both in the same area. Cora wanted to see the Lions and Kayley wanted to see the baby Camel. I was just glad no one wanted to see the elephants...they always seem to take forever to get to! Here are some pics of our animal sightings!
More animals, including the baby camel, it's kind of hard to see them all underneath their shedding coats! The baby camels humps were laying flat, which was weird too. I guess that's something that comes as it gets older.

Then after the zoo, we headed to Chilis for some yummy food then headed to the condos in Desoto. Thanks to Grandma being so willing to come and get us in the condos, we got to stay for the weekend. The next morning we said goodbye to Grandma who wanted to head home and then headed to Farmington for the JDRF (Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) walk. We were amazed at how many people were there. Apparently their goal was to raise $1500 as this was Farmington's first time doing a walk (I think), they actually ended up raising $15,000! We were amazed! We were just glad to be able to be there with family! The Farmington Felkers were there of course and my Mom and Otto also made the trip. It was great to see them as well as all the other Farmington family/friends! I just love this picture of Elizabeth and Kayley (thanks to Stephanie I have more pictures as I had my camera, but didn't get very many taken at all!)

Here are some pics of the girls (Kayley, Mallory, & Cora) playing. My girls loved playing with this hot wheels car...I think Santa or the birthday fairy has her work cut out for her to find one of these! Also some random zoo pics that didn't get in the spot earlier. We also got to go to Lix, the beloved Ice Cream shop that is only in Farmington. I have to say, Nick and I are not fans of Custard at all, but this one was the best custard place ever! It almost took the place of Maggie Moos! Too bad it's only in Farmington...I guess we need to take more trips there now!

Here's some more pics of the kids playing on Saturday. Edward and Stephanie were gracious enough to let our kids play all day with their kids! They loved spending time with their cousins!

Nick got schooled in basketball by Elizabeth...and by me of course!! We had many fun games of Horse and Pig! It brought back memories playing Edward as he and I used to play many games when I was younger...all of the time I would beat him of course!! :)

All in all it was a great weekend seeing lots of family and having lots of fun! We were sad to see it end all too quickly!

Lately and Projects

Well, about a week ago, I opened my camera to take pictures of the Carles before they left and found out that my camera was broken! It still took pictures, but the screen was messed up. So, I was very upset at first as we only paid $15 for the camera and now we were going to have to pay tons more money, but honestly once I started looking for cameras, I started to get excited to have a new camera with new features! So for about a week we've been casually looking at any store we can think of that has cameras and found some I liked, but I didn't want to pay that much! Finally I decided if I wanted the features I wanted, I was going to have to pay a little bit extra and the fact that my other camera was so cheap, I felt I could splurge a bit. I had it narrowed down to two and I was headed into the store to buy one of them, then we forgot about another store we hadn't checked yet, so we went there first. We are glad we did as we found a camera that was on a great clearance price and it had all the same features of the other cameras I was deciding from before for about $100 cheaper! I was way excited and I have been pleased with this camera. So, the girls have been my guinea pigs on testing out all the features, so here are a few of the pictures.

The girls cheesing...
Then we had to take them to the park to test out some other features and for the girls to play. I won't bore you with the pictures of the sunset, landscape, distant pics, etc...so I just included the pics of the girls! Einstein also had his share of sliding down the slide...as well as Nick!

Then last night we went to Liberty so Nick could go to his favorite store, Great Guns. The girls and I stayed and played with Ashlyn and Preston while Daddy did his boring gun shopping! Kayley has lately been into working on things like Daddy works on things with his tools. We don't have any tools at our house, so she's had to pretend, but she was in 7th heaven being able to play with Preston's tools. I guess we are in really big need of a boy in our house! So here's our Handy Manny!

Then, here's my projects I've been working on...the outside of the house! Here's one project to check off my list. I pulled up that nasty black plastic stuff that just kept pulling up more and more with each mow and replaced it with the smaller landscape rock. I'm also in the process of changing out some landscaping on our retaining wall along our fence as this is where I got these small rocks! I'll put pics of that up later once I start planting the new plants I want to put in there. Here's the rest of my to do list for the outside of the house:

1. Paint the front door

2. Put up the new doorknob on the door

3. Paint the trim along the garage doors

4. Put up the new lights on the outside of the garage (this is Nick's job with my assistance)
5. Build a retaining wall in the front landscape (also Nick's job with my assistance)

6. Plant plants along the retaining wall

7. Put the extra small landscape rocks around the willow tree in the backyard

8. The small landscape rocks around our trees in the front need to be dug into the yard, they are just sitting there and get turned everytime you mow/weed eat

9. Start our garden...it will be on a much smaller scale this year than usual with the baby coming

10. Pressure wash the deck (more of a spot clean as I did this last summer) then stain the deck

11. Lay the tile in our bathroom

Don't worry Grandmas and Grandpas, I am not over doing it! I just want these things finished before the baby comes and Nick won't let me paint anything inside that I want to paint, so I have to settle for the outside projects! Plus I want to get these done before it starts to get stiffling hot and before our pool opens so we can go swimming instead of working!!

Here's the before pic...notice how it's all coming up!??!!

Here's the after pic...I have to seed some of the lawn now as it's much easier to curve the black plastic stuff than it is to curve the landscape rocks! I just love it so much more now this way!

Easter Festivities, etc.

We haven't been up to much lately, but for some reason I have a lot of pictures to post. Here is what we've been up to lately...

Preston celebrated his 2nd birthday in the middle of March. It was a fun quiet celebration. I'm going to have to take tips on cake making from Michelle when I'm ready to start baking boy cakes.
Also this last month we've had to sadly say goodbye to the Carles. JT got a job in Idaho, which we were really glad for since Fed-Ex has been making some changes lately due to the economy and his job here was going to be non-existent in the next few months. However we were really sad to see them go. The girls have just loved having them so close! When Cora wants to play dress-up, she always asks if she can play dress-up with "Olivila." I'm not sure if it's clicked (for either of us) that they are so far away now. I'm still half-expecting them to be just down the road from us.

Here are some pictures of them the night they came to our Ward Talent Show with my cousin Jack, who is also getting ready to be deployed. The other pictures are of the girls when we went to eat dinner with the Carles at Minsky's the night before they left.

I didn't get one of Judson posing with the girls, but they played with him with all the games. I'm just glad they aren't old enough yet to know that the games actually take money. They are still ok with just pretending to play!

Then the Saturday before Easter Bass Pro was having a fun day with the Easter Bunny, an Easter egg hunt, and an Easter craft. The girls were excited about all of the events! When we first got there we started the egg hunt. Apparently it was just all around the store. Nick's first thought was "This is my kind of egg hunt, let's go to the hunting section first!" Well, no luck, so we ran into someone on our way off the elevator who said someone was putting out eggs in the camping section. Sure enough we found some there. There was a 5 egg limit, so it didn't take long for the girls to hit that limit. Then we headed over to the line for the Easter Bunny while Nick went to the shooting range. After about a 45 minute wait, it was finally our turn. I was worried Cora would be scared as she still got scared with Santa Claus this year. Surprisingly though she did great and even let the Easter Bunny put her up on his lap for the pictures. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Then Easter morning the Easter Bunny hid the girls' baskets with lots of goodies in them! They both got a June from Little Einsteins and a copy of Princess and the Frog and of course lots of candy! Then we all got to watch the "prophet movie" (General Conference) and then headed to the Walkers for the afternoon session and an Easter dinner.

We did an Easter egg hunt at the Walker's house too. Originally our plan was to have it outside, but it started raining a bit, so Nick hid all the eggs inside...there were a lot of them! The kids had fun finding them, so much fun that later that night they were just hiding the eggs and taking turns finding them! It was cute and a great Easter!

Disney on Ice

Last week we took the girls to go see Disney on Ice. It's come every year (which I think it does come every year to KC area), but we've (I've) been wanting to take Kayley especially since every year Ariel comes, but we finally went this year and I was glad we waited as Cora is now old enough to love and be into princesses too. She's not quite as much into Ariel as Kayley is and has been since she was 18 months old, but she does love princesses and loves Ariel the best only because her older sister does!

It was a crazy night! I started out driving even though I had asked Nick to because I hate driving in the city because he's more daring than I am and we always get into an argument! So, finally after driving around for 15 min, we switched and he dropped the girls and I off to get in line while he did the stressful parking. Note...he hates to pay for parking, so he will drive around forever until he finds cheap or next to cheap parking! It about killed him to pay $5 to pay for parking for Phantom and it made me crazy that he took so long to park because we were about to miss the show!! So he finally got a spot as we had finally waited in line for 15 min and found our seats. Then he calls me and tells me he has to run back to the car for the 2nd time because he left his set of keys (since he was driving with my set) in plain view and of course he parked in no-man's land because it was free...but the first time he had to take back his conceal carry gun because they had metal detectors at the door. So he actually only barely missed the very beginning and then we got to enjoy the show with him.

Here are pictures of Mickey and Minnie's introdution:
Here's pictures of Cars...they were pretty impressive cars I thought...

The much anticipated, Ariel. Kayley wouldn't talk to me during this, she was so embarrassed that she was liking it so much! It was cute to watch how excited she got!

Lion King pictures...neither one of our girls have actually seen this movie, so it wasn't as exciting to them...but Nick got a little bit of his own excitement about this time as a kid behind him ended up throwing up on the back of his head. I didn't hear it and he didn't say anything about it until Cora mentioned that she had to go to the bathroom and Nick said he'd take her so he could wash out the throw-up. Apparently the parents didn't even apologize, but I'm not really sure they knew their kid had thrown up on him either. I was just glad Nick didn't throw up trying to clean himself up in the bathroom.

The Tinkerbell pictures...it was actually the longest of all of them. I think just because it's the newest of all the Disney movies. By the end of it, both my girls were ready to go home. They should have ended with Ariel and they would have wanted to stay the rest of the night!!

And the MAIN EVENT...our girls! Cora dressed up as Tinkerbell and Kayley dressed up as Ariel, or at least wore her Ariel dress. I forgot to get a picture of them all dressed up before we left, but I did get a picture of Cora in her outfit, Kayley refused to take her jacket off during the event. And at the very beginning some small fireworks went off during Mickey and Minnie's debut and Kayley from then on until the very end plugged her ears. It was cute and took lots of coaxing to get her finally take her ears down. It was a great night and we all had a lot of fun!

Rice Fun

Well, I can't take credit for this at all as I got my idea from my cousin's blog http://hersheykissed.blogspot.com/2010/03/preparations-for-rainy-day.html She had done this with her girls and it was a huge hit, so I thought it looked pretty easy so I thought I'd attempt it. Anytime I mention doing any type of craft with the girls, they both get SO excited! But they had tons of fun making the rice and even watching it dry! Once it was dry and I was ready to let them play (I have to have the floor completely picked up so that it's easier to clean up afterwards)....they dove right in and couldn't stop playing!! They ask me to play with rice almost everyday! You would think that I would make it easier on myself and let them play outside and let the birds/animals pick up the mess, but our dog likes to eat the rice too, so I had to nix that idea! So that means I get an extra clean carpet each time they play with the rice, which is almost everyday...but that's good for me too because I know some of you might think I'm crazy, but it's very therapeutic for me to vacuum and I love nothing more than a freshly vacuumed floor...especially with a dog in the house! So here's some pictures of the rice drying after we dyed it (by the way, you can find all the directions on my cousin's blog above). Here's some pics of the girls enjoying watching the rice dry as well as playing with the rice! It really is one of their favorite things to do now! It even replaces chalk with a water paintbrush outside...which they love to do too! Thanks for the idea Sarah!!

Welcome Emmeline

I didn't want to post about this until I for sure had the correct spelling, but on Monday (the 8th) our newest niece was born, Emmeline Sarah Reall or "Emme" for short. Katie was induced on Monday morning and everything went well with everything. Emme definitely looks like a Reall to me, apparently baby pictures she looks more like Sam...either way, she's just cute! She was 6 lbs 14 oz and 20 in long I believe. Perfect size in my book!! Here are some pics of the family meeting Emme...apparently Ellie still calls her "Baby GG"....which was what she called her the whole time Katie was pregnant with her! She's a funny girl! We are glad all went well and are excited to hopefully meet her soon someday! She's the first born of the three due in my immediate family this year...so far anyway, apparently Mallory has been working on Edward telling him she wants a real baby! We'll see what happens!!

Aloha!

Ok...I'd like to say that we are saying Aloha after coming back from Hawaii, but we aren't! Sadly we'll have to live through the experiences of others until we get to go to Hawaii someday ourselves. Grandma came back from Hawaii this week and brought the girls some souvenirs. They both got a shirt and a necklace. Well, of course Kayley would be the one to be a sour puss about the color of the shirt. She wanted Cora's pink shirt so she wasn't a good sport about taking a picture with them on. Cora on the other hand could have probably cared less, but her shirt would be too small for Kayley and vice versa. So here are pictures for Grandma of the girls showing off their prizes! Cora even tried to get Kayley to smile, but it didn't work. Sadly, I'm afraid to say that she got that from me. Oh well!

Once Upon a Time...

Last week Grandma (Nick's mom) was in town so we decided to meet Michelle and Grandma at the Crown Center for their "Fairy Tale" display. I really wasn't expecting much of a display as I wasn't as pleased with the last display we went to with Legos. I was mistaken on this one though...it was pretty much a play place of make believe stories. It was great and the girls loved it! I'm now looking forward to the Clifford display in May as well as the girls...we love Clifford at our house!

Here's some pictures of "The Three Little Pigs" (upper right), "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (two bottom right), "The Princess and the Pea" (bottom left), and our cute Cora (top left), which is not make believe cause she is really cute!
Here's pictures of Kayley, Ashlyn, & Cora (top left) in Cinderella's Carriage and Cora and Preston also in the carriage (bottom left). The girls trying to climb the beanstalk from "Jack and the Beanstalk" (top right) and the girls holding onto Rapunzel's hair (bottom right). Then Kayley just being cute (left middle) and also not make believe as she is really cute in real life too! The girls were way excited about Rapunzel's hair as almost every night they request Nick to tell them this story as their bedtime story once they are tucked into bed. It's pretty cute! So we took this picture for Daddy who had to work while we were having fun!

Summer Anyone?

I don't know about you, but we're ready for summer here at our house!!
Also a funny thing that Cora did the other night...Kayley and Cora went visiting teaching with me during the day and one of the sisters I visit taught gave them a brownie and a cookie. Kayley's not a big dessert person, but Cora is. So Cora ate her immediately and all day was asking Kayley to eat hers, but Kayley was just waiting to eat hers later. Finally at night Cora asked again and Kayley finally told her (with some coaxing from me) that Cora could have one bite. So, while Kayley wasn't looking Cora's one bite consisted of her trying to shove the whole thing in her mouth. She got in trouble and Kayley of course then wanted all of her brownie. But that little Cora is really sneaky...thanks to Nick that is!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We had a fun Valentine's Day/Weekend. On Saturday we took the girls to the Events Center to go Ice Skating. This ironically was mine and Nick's first time ice skating together ever. Apparently that was one date he never really liked to go on with girls and we just never went when we were dating or since we've been married. I think it's cause he just doesn't want to admit that I'm WAY better than him!! So, it took Kayley a while to be ok with ice skating. She mostly just wanted to stay in the box and rest. But towards the end she did really like to skate, we just had to be holding her hands tightly the whole time!
Cora on the other hand seemed to love it! Nick actually got her to try and skate a bit by herself without us holding her hands or coat or anything. She actually did pretty good skating by herself too...we were impressed. She wouldn't let me let go of her hands at all though...must be a Dad thing. But boy was my back tired after skating with her...not only did I have to bend over the whole time with her being so short, but if he skates got mixed up or crooked or anything, she would just pick up both of her feet letting me carry her the rest of the way!

Then later that night....ok don't laugh, but let me just start with the fact that you all know that Nick and I are cheap. So for dinner we had found some Captain D's coupons and I just LOVE their jalepeno cheddar bites, so we decided to do dinner there. We get there and waited at the counter for at least 15-20 minutes waiting for someone to come and take our order. Nick even got on their microphone that they use to call out the order to the back and said that we were up there...still no one. We could hear them in the back talking, but no one was coming up. We wanted to wait and let them know they lost our business because of their bad customer service. So as we were waiting we went ahead and called Texas Roadhouse to do call ahead seating. They finally came out and asked us what we wanted as if we had just walked in. We told them how long we had been waiting and they apologized....there were 3 workers!! Apparently one was training two of them and she told the trainees that this was why you never left the registered unoccupied. They again asked us what we wanted and we told them we weren't giving them our business b/c of their bad customer service. We even told them we got on the microphone to let them hear us and no one came! Needless to say, it felt good to walk out, but I was really sad I didn't get my jalepeno cheddar bites. Nick said I should just order through the window and then I could eat them on my way to Texas Roadhouse, but I didn't want them to have the satisfaction of getting our business. Anyway, so we went to McD's next door to pick up our movie from Redbox and headed to Texas Roadhouse. We received GREAT service there!! And yes, I know you're wondering...we also had a coupon for there too and they didn't even take our coupon, so we get to go and use it again...with the great service we got, we may just go there next week! :) Then we headed home and watched Love Happens...such a great movie! It was pretty predictable, but I was just so relieved to finally watch a movie where you're not having to screen the scenes...there were absolutely NO inappropriate scenes! A little bit of language, but nothing like most other PG-13....for instance, no F word! I hate how it seems like they feel like they have to put in the F word only b/c it's a PG-13. Anyway, I highly recommend this movie to anyone it was a really good movie. Nick even dreaded watching it, but actually enjoyed it!

Then Sunday on Valentine's Day we exchanged our Valentine's Day gifts. We got Nick some candy and made him Cashew Chicken for dinner (without him helping me at all!)...it's a big meal to make and clean up for those that don't know it! He got me some perfume that I've been wanting for a long time, but wasn't wanting to spend the money on it. Then he got the girls each a small gift. He got Kayley a little bowling set...she loves to play it on the floor, table, chair, everywhere! He got Cora a small basketball goal...that is all she talks about since our new McDonald's has a little basketball court. I am very excited to say that I think she may be our sports child! Overall it was a great Valentine's Day and we hope everyone else had a great day/weekend as well!