May??

Here it is the middle of June and I haven't blogged since April. I wish I could remember all that we have been up to...it's a good thing I took a few pictures!! Check out this mop on Lila's head. It is so much fun except after she eats and puts her messy hands all over in her hair. We keep joking about buying a shower cap for her while she eats but one of these days we really might! 

 This was during our trip to the zoo. The zoo here is FREE on Monday's!!

 Ever since Chris has been home more Sophie has been a total Daddy's Girl. I love it and I know he does too.

 We went out to Lake Erie to have a bbq with the Owens Family and to play in the sand.

 I absolutely LOVE watching these two play together.

 Here is Sophie's first fish!! It was the perfect size for her.

 And here I am going to have to brag a little bit...I caught this fish on my third cast. It was 28" long and 7 lbs. I was so excited I didn't even know what to do. I have never even caught a fish half that size.

 Here it is again so you can get the full effect...

 Lila has so much energy and personality. She is such a funny little girl!

 Sophie and some of her friends playing at the beach.

 I had to add this face. I told Sophie to smile big and this is the look I got!

I hope you enjoy the photos! We are counting down the days until we fly out to UTAH. I can't believe it is almost here. Lila is walking now. On the 15th we will celebrate Sophie's 3rd Birthday! Other than that we are just busy getting a few things done around the house before we leave and spending a lot of time playing!!

April

Date Night!!! These are cherished times for us when we get the chance to go out together. We went to see the Hunger Games. Of which we both enjoyed!
Easter was a lot of fun this year. We hid our baskets the night before so we could find them first thing in the morning before we headed to our ward's Easter egg hunt. Then Chris had to go to the school so I dropped him off and headed to the CADA (Case Alliance Dental Association) Easter egg hunt. Sophie loved it.
Chris' mom is an amazing knitter. She made these cardigans for the girls for Easter.Check out the detail. The picture doesn't give it justice of course...Ha ha I have NO idea what Sophie was doing in the picture but I had to share it!Lila does this face almost all day long and sniffs. She had her 9 month checkup last week. Weight: 19 lbs. 13 oz. Height: 29 3/4 inches and I can't remember her head size. She is at the top of the charts in everything still. Gotta love it!
That about wraps it up...we just got back from special sacrament meeting in the Kirtland Temple. It was a neat experience. It was the first time I had been inside!

March

First of all...thank you everyone who updates your blog. I love seeing pictures and hearing what you have been up to...especially because it makes me procrastinate posting on mine. And I joined pinterest. That's all that I need to say about that. So sorry it has been so long! I finally got an external hard drive for all of our pictures and videos because my laptop is from the dinosaur age and doesn't hold very many so I had two different jump drives to store everything on, then they filled up and I haven't been able to upload anything else.

Anyways...we are counting down the days until Chris is done with school. Finals are next week!!!! Chris cleaned my teeth on Friday. It was fun to see all that he has learned this last year. The supervisor even told Chris he did an amazing job. :) So now my teeth are very clean.

Over the past month we had spring break...here are a few pics.


We have a HUGE tree in our backyard and decided it needed a rope swing. I wish I had a picture of the tree. One day....Sophie likes to stand on top of her house and swing off of it. I'm afraid that in a few more weeks she won't be able to go high enough. She's always telling me to push her higher.
We thought it would be fun for them both to swing at the same time. ha ha Sophie was pretty squished.

One of the perks about living in a big city (at least out here) there are a lot of fun places to go visit. We went to the Lake Erie Nature Center. They had all the different wild animals that are in the area. After a lot of convincing we finally got Sophie to pet the turtle. This is a tree that was hollowed out. It was obviously very old.Since things out here in Ohio are pretty flat we were very impressed with this 60 foot waterfall. The Brandywine Falls. They have so many beautiful parks here with bike trails so hopefully soon we'll decide on some bikes and be able to go riding!

Life has been crazy this last week. On top of some of my other obligations Sophie got croup Thursday night which equals NO SLEEP for at least 3 nights...Sunday night she only woke up once, unfortunately I couldn't enjoy it because Lila got a cold that night and was up who knows how many times so now it is Thursday and I think I will finally get a good nights sleep! :) And soooon (hopefully VERY soon) they will be over the neediness from being sick. It's a good thing these girls are worth it. It makes me realize how very blessed we are to have healthy kids. So thanks for listening to my rampage...I had to get that out there.

So every once in awhile I remember I have a camera and I should be taking pictures...which results in a lot that day then it gets put back on the shelf to be forgotten once again. Sophie came down Sunday morning after getting herself dressed and asked me to take a picture of her...funny but cute. She actually smiled REAL not her cheesy smile so I'm glad I caught it. She sure is growing these days.

Then of course she wanted to take one of us
(besides her finger over the flash she did pretty good)

And we couldn't forget Lila! Her hair was especially crazy this morning since we had to wake her up to get her dressed before we left.

It snowed 5 inches in one storm so we decided we'd better go sledding because who knows when we'll get more. It was last minute so we had an early dinner and headed to one of the few hills around. Sophie loved it. So did Chris and I.

Lila enjoyed a late nap all bundled up in her car seat, which of course she also enjoyed.

I quite enjoy coordinating outfits for these two!

Getting two kids to smile and look at the camera is much more difficult than one! Go figure!! I told Sophie to make sure she opened her eyes because she tends to squint...love it.

-Priceless expression-

Good news: things can only go up after this last week! Its getting warmer. Spring break is in a week. And we get to go to UT again in July!!!!

I hope they call me on a mission....

My wonderful parents just entered the MTC today. For those of you that don't know, they are going to the Dominican Republic. I am so excited for them and the experiences they are going to have. Lucky for my dad, he already knows Spanish and just needed some refreshing, but my mom has been working so hard and studying for hours everyday. She is learning quick and I love listening to her practice her Spanish. The people in the D.R. are going to love getting to know these two.

These two are definitely some of the most Christ-like people I know. They never stop serving others...always willing to give all that they have. Even though they already had 7 children, they willingly and with open arms took in 3 more. I can't even begin to express my gratitude for the many opportunities they have given me. I have been so blessed to be a part of such an amazing family. I miss my parents like crazy but am so happy for them. Being out here in Ohio sure helps you realize how important families are and I can't wait for the day we can be closer to all of our loved ones. Skype and phone calls are great and definitely worth it, but we long for the times of being WITH everyone.

Mom and Dad we love you!!!!!

Lila

Where does the time go?!? Lila is 7 months old today and I have been reminiscing on all the fun memories we've had since she joined our family. I am so grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows us so well. Lila is a delight to have. She is always smiling and has this little twinkle when you look into her eyes. She has such a special spirit and I just pray everyday that I can help her to become what she is capable of.
At her 6 month checkup she was still at the top of the charts for weight and off the charts for height and head size. She is one loveable little chub!
She just got her first two teeth one after another and is already starting to army crawl and pull herself around. She loves her bouncer and her swing. Even when she is just sitting up she'll bounce. (I'm working on her vertical jump right now ;) haha) She just started fruits and definitely prefers her veggies but still eats her fruit. I enjoy listening to her squeal and laugh when she's playing. Sophie and Lila are quite cute when they play together.

I have been such a slacker lately and once you get so far behind on blogging you have no desire to catch up. Well I made some goals for me to get done this week and this was one of them. I am also supposed to do a million other things that just keep getting pushed out of the way. We watched several Mormon Messages last night and it helped to get me motivated. So here we go...January is always a fun month for us...and here is why

SNOW!!

Our first real snow storm. Sophie couldn't wait to get outside to play.

Then it warmed up again and rained a couple days and our snow was gone. We went out to Penitentiary Glen and went for a walk then checked out their nature center and animal refuge.

Chris' birthday! We had our friends over and played some games to celebrate this big day.

Don't mind Sophie's awesome hair, it used to be in pig tails.

Then it snowed again! But Chris didn't have school on the 16th so we headed to the Zoo. A huge plus was that they have free admission on Monday's to certain county residents! One of the great things about Cleveland. It was an awesome Zoo. Much better than the Hogle Zoo.

So we all bundled up and packed a lunch for some good ol' fresh air and exercise.

Chris snapped this shot of our nightly routine. Ever since Lila learned to sit up she won't lay down for story time.

And then there's my birthday!! We enjoyed a delicious dinner together and cake and ice cream. It doesn't get better than spending these special times with people you love!

Happy New Year!

We hope your holiday season has been as wonderful as ours has been! We had the chance to go back to Utah and spend time with our family. It was so nice to be back. Ohio and Utah are very very different...but different is good, right? We were able to spend a week with Chris' family and a week with mine. We actually celebrated Christmas all month long so it was kind of different, but

as we clarified before different is good! It worked out great. Sophie was able to enjoy each and every present. We were busy the whole time with Christmas parties, bowling, candy making, lots of games, etc. Chris was even able to squeeze in some hunting and I was able to go play volleyball. We had the novel idea to switch the girls' bedtime to Utah time before we left and I'm pretty sure that was the best idea we'd ever had. Instead of waking up at 5 like the first trip to UT they were waking up at 8! Much more enjoyable for all of us. I misplaced my camera for a few days and wasn't able to take all of the pictures I wanted but I'll add some of my favorites.