Christmas 2010

Well another 3 months have came on gone. Life in the Lillywhite household continues to be filled with love, laughter, and a lot of busyness. I guess that is just how it goes when your living life. I can honestly say I am quite possibly the happiest I can ever remember being. This year Christmas came unlike any other Christmas we have had. Texas greeted the winter holidays with a few days in the 80's. Luckily for us Christmas was a little cooler and it rained on Christmas eve. We had big plans to go home for Christmas but were not able to go. We missed everyone, and had to fight the waves of sadness that came as we faced the reality of Christmas without extended family around. This though brought with it the excitement of a little Christmas with just us. We spent Christmas eve at some friends of ours and filled our tummies up with all sorts of deliciousness. It feels so good to have friends that we can share the holidays with, kind of a pseudo-family I guess. Christmas morning the kids were awesome and let us sleep in until almost 8am. Elle even slept through the night in her own bed (big news in our house). I think it may be due to the fact that she was scared of running into Santa should she venture out of her room. We had a fire in the fireplace both last night and this morning. It was awesome, especially once we figured out how to fully open the damper, (my hair still smells like campfire, and Tom likes it ;) ). It was such a fun Christmas morning, we just took our time and spent a good hour and a half opening up and playing with all the toys. Riley was excited to get a Nerf gun set from Santa, along with some Lego's. Brooke got her Fur-real kitty and a whole bunch of princess stuff. Elle got her 7 Disney princess barbie set and all sorts of other goodies. The big present for the family was the Wii that we bought the kids (no way was I letting Santa get credit for that one). We spent the whole day today cuddled on the couch watching movies, playing with toys and snacking. Poor Elle is sick again, tummy troubles, and Brooke is complaining of an earache so I am hoping we don't have an ear infection brewing. But all that considered it really has been a great Christmas. I was surprised by Tom with a Iphone 4. Sadly for me I accidentally came upon it 2 days before Christmas and ruined the surprise for myself. It actually turned out great because I was able to do Facetime with my family on Christmas eve. Almost as good as being there....almost. The best part of all of this is I have a healthy (mostly) and happy (again...mostly) family. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ and are surrounded near and far by those who love us. Merry Christmas!!!

Happy Birthday Brookie Girl!!!

Today my oldest "little girl" is 6 years old! How does that happen? She is the light in our family and we are so lucky to have her in our family. She is so excited to be turning 6 and asked me last night if she was going to be able to even wear her clothes today because she was probably going to grow so much while she was sleeping and turned 6. We had a good laugh about that and had to spend the next little bit explaining that she would only feel different on the inside and that the outside doesn't change that fast. Happy Birthday Brookie girl, we love you so much and are so glad you were sent to our crazy little family!!!!

Brookie and Daddy

Brooke has a ongoing love affair with her daddy. She has him wrapped around her finger and vice-versa. Tom left for a short work trip today and Brooke decided to draw a picture for him. I love that she even drew his goatee and that they are holding hands.

She also is learning how to write her last name. I had written it on top of a sheet of paper and had her copy it over and over. Then I gave her a new sheet of paper and told her to write it without looking at the name. Next thing I know she is giggling and had her eyes closed trying to write her name, yeah I needed to clarify. She was however able to write her name with her eyes closed. Silly girl. I love that her and her daddy have such a close relationship and hope they always will.

Anaconda.....Texas Edition.

So when the first week in June when we moved here, Tom went out to his car to go to work and there was a note from the neighbor saying he found a 5 foot water moccasin in his back yard last night, chased it into our backyard but it went behind the fence and he lost it. He was just giving us a warning to watch out with our kids. So what does Tom do with the vital information? Go to work, and I continued to let the kids play in the backyard unattended for the rest of the day, when Tom came in that night he gave me the note and I asked him if he knew what a Water Moccasin was to which he replied....nope. I proceed to Google search and find out that the Water Moccasin does in fact live were we live and is a highly aggressive, poisonous snake. Yep in my backyard. We had a good laugh after that and I check the yard before the kids go out and they know not to pick up any snakes. On to last night, Tom and I did a babysitting swap with the Dinkels (the watched our kids in the morning so we could go to the Temple and we watched theirs in the evening so they could go). We had a great night, pizza, splash pad, ice-cream and then home to watch Benji (yep the original...quite possibly the weirdest 70's movie ever....OK probably not the weirdest but it is bad). I thought I was being an awesome mom and made a huge bed on the floor for the kids to watch the movie on. We got everyone snuggled down and proceeded to watch the movie. About 1/2 through the movie I noticed a huge cloud that had a ton of lighting inside of it. We all went outside and watched it on our front porch, and left the door open for a good 3-5 minutes. We then all went back inside and kept watching the movie. Well the movie got over and we started picking up. Riley then says, "Hey, there's a snake." several times, all the lights are off except for the TV at this point and I think he's just pulling our leg. Tom then looks and goes, yeah that's a snake. The screaming started. Brooke, the poor thing, was the most freaked out. She just heard a story at school from her teacher about snakes, and how the baby ones are more poisonous than the adult ones. She was freaking out, so I had a choice, comfort the children, or video. Yep, I am a awesome mom. The video's kind of speak for itself. Hopefully none of the children are too scarred. By the end of the night Brooke went from screaming, "KILL IT, KILL IT" to asking if we could keep it. It is currently residing at the Dinkel residence. What a night!!!

Grateful....

I am feeling so grateful tonight. Grateful for good friends that arrived in our lives when we needed them most. Grateful for long weekends that I get to spend with my little family. Grateful for long warm showers to get rid of sand on sun-kissed bodies. Grateful for Aloe Vera to help heal those sun-kissed bodies. Grateful for 2 of my favorite people in the world willing to take time from their family to come and visit us with their darling baby. Needless to say it was a good weekend.

Back to school!

So we are back in the swing of things. My little Brookie is in Kindergarten and I am just trying to figure out were all the time went!!! She is in full day Kindergarten and loves it. We are all slowly adjusting to the early bedtime and even early mornings but we are getting there. I was so proud of myself that I didn't cry when I dropped her off. She is adjusting to all of it in stride minus the automatic flushing toilets. I forgot to take her potty one morning last week before she went to school, as soon as she was gone I realized it and was worried but figured she would go at school. Yeah, not so much. She came running in the door from school and barely made it to the bathroom. When I asked her if she had gone at school she said, "No, the toilets flush by themselves and scare me." AHHHHHH! I felt so bad, she had not gone to the bathroom since 8pm the night before, yep 19 hours of holding it. That girls got one tough bladder. After a lot of discussions and bribing (yep not below me) she came home triumphant today and informed me she used the toilet and it only got her tush a little wet. What a silly girl!!!

Riley started 3rd grade and though back to school night was a rocky start he seems to be doing great. Tom and I realized that he has finally reached the age that this move was a little harder on him. He makes friends so easily that any fears I had about him adjusting to school have disappeared. It is weird to think about Riley being in 3rd grade. I remember a lot about 3rd grade, and it is weird to think that all the parenting mistakes I make now he just might remember. Let's hope he remembers the good parts too.

Elle is adjusting to being home with Mom all by herself but she is kind of like a lost puppy. She follows me around and I hate to admit it but has watched Shrek 2, at least 4 x in the past 3 days. Yep awesome mom here. She is back to taking naps (she stopped during the summer) and that has made a world of difference. The house stays so much cleaner with 2 less kiddies but I miss like crazy and am happy that they are walking back in the door by 3:15pm. Now if I could just get use to the waking up early part!

Arachnophobia.....Texas edition

This is what I killed yesterday (Go ahead, click on the pic and take a good look). There was a lot of screaming involved and not all of it was by me. Guess we are spraying this weekend. Add to this the fact that we just finished reading Charlotte's Web, and I am fairly certain there is an egg sack with 514 babies in it hiding somewhere. It's times like this that I wish Tom didn't travel, I should not be in charge of killing things like that!!!!

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Elle has been fighting a little bug for the past couple of days. Just a low grade fever and general wanting mommy to cuddle her. Last night she fell asleep on the couch at 8pm (early for summer). We woke her up tried to get her to take some Motrin and then put her in bed. Around 4:20am I awoke to Elle standing next to my bed, she was awake....really awake. She told me she couldn't sleep so I brought her up into bed with me thinking with a little cuddling she would be able to fall back asleep.

Not so much. For the next 1 1/2 hours she proceeded to kiss me all over, cuddle me and inform me that I was her best friend, and that daddy was her best friend and we could be in her club. Pretty darn cute, more so when it is not at 4:30 in the morning.

Needless to say I am glad I am in her club, but what do ya say we have the next club meeting at a more reasonable hour?

(Mental Snapshot)

I thought I would just post quickly some of the little things my kids are doing right now, so I won't forget them. The other day Elle was outside with me while it was getting ready to rain but the sun was breaking thru the clouds. She looked up and said, "Oh Jesus is coming down, he's coming right now!" It was so cute and funny and just made me realize how much faith little ones have. Riley has been bored out of his poor little mind. He is constantly talking about his cousins, and how much fun he could have if we were in Utah. He talks about how Byron would act like an old man and chase them around. He also was sad like us all that he wasn't able to go to Bear Lake with the cousins. He nearly cried when we watched the video Becky posted for us. I feel horrible when he has a hard day and will be glad when he has been able to make some friends, it is hard to only have your baby sisters to play with. The other day I put him and Brooke in time and then forgot that I had. It had been quiet for a while so I went and tracked him down, he was laying in his bed crying. I asked him what was wrong and he just told me he was tired and bored. Again, I had forgotten he was in timeout so I just said OK, take a nap. It was only later that he asked how long he was going to have to be in time out that I realized what I had done. Whoops! Awesome mom moment. After I went to check on Brooke and she had fallen asleep on her bed. It did make for a quiet afternoon. Riley is super helpful and always looking for ways to help, he definitely is a first born and sometimes forgets to just be little and not worry about everyone else. He is anxious to start school. Brooke is always wearing her heart on her sleeve. We were watching Cheaper by the Dozen the other day and she started crying. She also started crying at Charlotte's Web, and Chronicles of Narnia. She just is emotional and it is pretty darn sweet to see her be so empathetic. She is starting Kindergarten this year and is so excited. She keeps wanting to try on her backpack. I don't know what I am going to do without her home with me. It is full day kindergarten so that is even harder...on me. So this fall it will be just Elle and Momma, that is going to be weird. But I am thinking I will be able to catch up on some of the things in my life that have been neglected. Life is good, busy as usual and I find myself needing to really slow down and enjoy the moments. I have found myself trying to take mental pictures of the kids doing different things, because I know soon it won't be cool for Riley to play school with his sisters, and Brookie won't be happy with Elle nipping at her heels like a puppy. They are growing too fast and I want to try and remember all the good and the bad.

Happy Birthday to the man who gave me three beautiful babies, and the man who I would be happy to make at least that many more with. ;) You have made me a very lucky girl, I love you.

Sunday, that one day.

Sunday, the day I dread/look forward to all week long. It is nice to not have to go anywhere but church and be able to really get to spend time with the family. The not so nice part is 1:30pm church. Yep, 1:30 church people, also our ward house just happens to be 1/2 hour from home so we have to be leaving by 12:50 if we want to even think about sitting in the chapel on a bench. Well today we were awesome, we were all ready to go by 12:45 and made it to church with enough time to get a bench. I was so glad, I am so tired of sitting on fold up chairs in the gym and trying to wrangle my kids on them. It is so much easier when they can't see the kids directly behind them, also the fact that we don't have crayons rolling off the chairs onto the wood floor is great!!! Well today I passed out the crayons, and notebooks (after the sacrament of course) and snuggled in next to my hubby to listen to the testimonys (I mean who dosen't like a good testimony meeting?). It was so nice to just sit and listen and have the kids behave and color quietly and not fight.....or so I thought. I look over to see Elle coloring, not on her paper not even almost on her paper but on the bench cushion, with a white crayon (how else would she be able to see what she was coloring?). She managed to write a B and several circles around it. Once I saw what had taken place I did what any mom would do, I grabbed her and gave her "the look", she started screaming immediatly and ran to Tom(He's the nice one). I motioned to Tom to see what she had done and then proceed to take her out. After she had her moment we got a wet paper towel to try and wipe it out, yeah didn't work. Needless to say we are cleaning the church and I am going to have to take a couple of different things to try and get it out. Gotta love those Sundays.
P.S. Note to Self, when attempting to take a photo in the middle of sacrament meeting on your hubby's cell phone, check to make sure the flash is off, thus avoiding everyone realizing you are taking a picture in the middle of Sacrament meeting. (Yeah, I'm going to that hot place ;) )

The lake.....(not Bear Lake...obviously)

Well this weekend was a good weekend. Tom and I knew we had to do something to keep our minds off all the fun the Lillywhites, Smiths, and Goldthorpes, were having in "our" beautiful Bear Lake. Oh how we wish we could have been there. On Saturday morning Tom talked to one of the neighbors and found out there is a lake about 45 minutes from our house that has a beach and decent swimming. Tom and I being fly by the pants as we are decided to load the kiddies up and take off. We were there by 2:00pm and after a couple of detours and mini hikes we made it to the beach. It was...well not Bear Lake. That being said, there was sand and water and it was a lot of fun. The water was not the beautiful sapphire blue of Bear Lake, more of a dingy dish water brown but it did have one thing on Bear Lake. It was warm, like 84-88+ degrees warm. Yeah that was nice and the kids had a ball. We even attempted to make poop castles (gotta be a Lillywhite to get that one). After a couple of hours at the lake we packed up and headed home, we showered and then went over to the ward house to watch 7 brides for 7 brothers. Yeah, that's a whole lotta hot redheads. I'm still trying to convince Tom to grow his hair out like those boys. On Sunday it was nice to actually have a hubby sitting next to me, what a difference that makes. All in all it was a good weekend even without a raspberry shake. ;)

Smelly Elle Belly....

Well a week has almost past since it was my youngest babies 3rd birthday. Can you believe she is 3? I can't. She is growing up so fast. It is weird to have a 3 year old that is the baby, see with all the other times one of my children turned 3 we had a new baby, usually less than 2 months old. Just how the spacing happened. Not such much right now. I know we have more babies to be had, just not quite yet. Here's a little recap of Elle's first 3 years of life. Elle was born on July 16, 2007 within a week of her being born we were closing on our first house. A house that as I am sure many of you remember needed a lot of work. We spent the first 3 months of her life gutting the house and getting ready to move in to it. Finally right before her 3rd month we moved into the Roy house. I thought life was getting settled only to have Tom come home in early December asking me if I wanted to move to Denver. Sure why not, so we placed the house on the market, miraculously sold it and moved to Denver right before Elle's first birthday. We spent the next year and a half slowly adjusting to life outside of Utah and managed to move from one place to another. Once again just 2 months into a house in Denver (luckily we were renting) Tom came home and asked if I wanted to move to Texas. Why not? So now here we are 3 years and 3 states and 5 different homes later. We are happy but I must say a little tired. I have learned to not expect life to settle down but I am pretty content with us just "being" for a while. Elle is just about the funniest little girl you would ever be blessed to meet. She has her daddies sense of humor and has for a long time. What other 4 month old laughs at her own farts? Really? She is obsessed with babies especially Candi's newest addition baby Zack and keeps asking if someday we can get a new baby like that. She is already writing her own name and loves coloring. She has mad skills on her new bike that she got for her birthday. Seriously, she's crazy good. I remember buying Brookie a 3 wheeled scooter for her 3rd birthday and thinking that she was probably too little for it. Not Elle, she is always trying to keep up with Riley and Brookie and usually succeeds. We went to Rain forest Cafe for her birthday and she had a blast. I didn't even bake a cake since we were able to convince her that a "Brownie Ice cream Volcano" was way cooler than a homemade spongebob cake. We then opened presents with cousins (via web-cam) and on Saturday went to a concert in the park. It was a fun birthday, but we definitely missed having family and friends to share it with. I am so grateful to get to be this little girls mommy and hope that she knows how glad we are that we have gotten to spend the last 3 years, no matter how crazy, with her.

Hey, hey, hey...

Well we are surviving with Tom being gone. It is amazing how slow the days go when you don't have a daddy that is going to come home. Any noise that Elle hears she assumes is the garage door, to which she screams, "Daddy's home!!!". Yeah a lot of disappointment is going around my house. The kids played outside in the swimming pool today and it was so nice to just sit and read my book. The fun was short lived though because Brooke has a mosquito bite on her calf/ankle (cankle?). Now a mosquito bite is not really anything to shake a stick at in the usual sense but Brooke and I have seem to become allergic to them and so they turn into a very sore blister. Brookes are way worse than mine and she has a nice blister right now. She ended up in bed with me the past couple of nights because it hurt so bad. I don't know what to do with it, so we cover it with a band-aid and hope it will get better. Poor girl! We struggle to find things to do with ourselves to past the time, this includes trips to the library, the park were the kids feed ducks and actually have better luck feeding the fish, and the ever popular watching of movies. We stumbled across a gem that was lost in the Lillywhite vaults. Fat Albert, the movie....yep live action baby. I think I bought it out of a $3 used movie bin, we had actually never watched it before and I though it would be a good deal. So the kids found it Sunday and we have watched it, several times. This is high quality entertainment people. It is so funny the things your kids like. Now Elle is walking around saying, "Hey, hey, hey!". Yep that's how we roll around here!

I love a rainy day.....

I don't think we are going to the park.

The game of Life

Well here we are in Texas. We are getting more and more settled everyday and are slowly adjusting to the heat and humidity. We happened to move here during record breaking heat and I guess it was a good way to jump right in. The weather this past week has actually been really pleasant minus the humidity. The kids and I spend a lot of time inside as it is usually too hot to spend more than 15-20 minutes outside at a time. Bed times are all but lost around here as we usually go outside around 8:00pm when it has finally cooled down enough. Yep 2 posts in the past year and I am writing about the weather. It has been hard moving to a new area yet again, This was our 11th move in 10 years and it is almost getting harder with each time. Hopefully we will be here for a little longer than previous times. The kids are adjusting to the move good but miss their cousins. We have all had out bouts of homesickness. We especially wish we were going home for the Lillywhite reunion, and Candi's new baby Zacks baby blessing. A lot of tears have been shed and most of them have been mine. If I have learned anything through all these moves is how important family is and how you all should take advantage of living so close to one and other. The 4th of July just isn't the same with no extended friends and family to share it with. Wow, I sound whiny!!! Life really has been good and I have enjoyed getting to stay home with the babies all day. Riley is still just a good big brother who usually plays awesome with his sisters. I had been getting on him about waking up early and then sneaking into Brookes room to wake her up. Brooke is my girl that needs her sleep and if she doesn't get enough she is all drama all day. (In fact she is crying right now about Riley not wanting to play "puppy" with her, yeah drama) Well yesterday I found a note that said "Brooke, Come and play with me. Love, Riley". I asked Brooke what it was and she said Riley had put it in her room in the morning while she was sleeping but she didn't wake up. I just had to laugh, I guess there are worse things than a big brother wanting to play with his little sister. Elle is a character and a half. She makes me belly laugh at least once a day and makes me want to lock myself in the closet at least once a day. She is the funniest little girl, I need to post a video of her. Anyways hopefully I will be more current with my blog postings and post some stuff on our awesome vacation. Oh the creepy cruiser, super sunsoaker and all the other characters. Such a good time. Anyhow until then....

Howdy....

Almost a year and just now I am posting, our life here in Denver is just crazy crazy. Luckily for me that will all be changing, our life will no longer be so busy in Denver, it will now be busy in Dallas. Yep, we are moving.....again. It's just the way our life is going right now. We get settled in a house (luckily we are renting) and Tom gets promoted and transferred. There are definitely worse things and we are actually quite looking forward to the move. I mean who wouldn't want to move somewhere were you can wear extremely tight fitting wranglers and sequined vests. Bring it!!! Tom is now a Regional HR Manager for Saia motorfrieght. I can not tell you all how proud of him I am. We were talking about how he just started at Saia almost exactly 3 years ago as a Dock Supervisor, and here we are nearly 3 years later with the position of Regional HR Manager. I am filled with such gratitude to our Heavenly Father and his blessings he pours on us. God is so mindful of us all and what we need. Anyways we are actually leaving on a 7 night Cruise to the Mexican Riviera for our 10 year anniversary. We are going with Eli and Asia, and Chris and Krystal. It is going to be so much and so needed. I am looking forward to reconnect with my cute redhead hubby! Life is good and I will try and post when we get back!!!!