Look Who's Growing Up!

Over the weekend, Sadie decided to start using a fork for more than just banging on the table. Pretty impressive considering we haven't given her many opportunities to use silverware!


She also decided to start standing on her own. Her favorite place currently to stand up is in the bathtub. There are some cute pics, but for modesty reasons, they won't be shared. So, here she is standing on her own on the bed.

Way to go Sadie! Such a big girl!

Sadie's Birthday Dinner

Sadie chose Olive Garden for her birthday dinner, after much persuasion from her dad. We had a very enjoyable family dinner, and, believe it or not, the girls were almost perfect angels the entire meal! Amazing!

Here's SadieBug with her birthday balloon (Morgan helped her pick it out...can you tell?)

Enjoying an Olive Garden breadstick...need I say more??

We could get Morgan OR Sadie to look at the camera, not both. So, why not get one of their true characters? Sadie eating and Morgan making a silly face!

After being sung to, Sadie got to blow out a candle (Morgan helped).

Here she is, enjoying her birthday treat!

Good all the way to the last lick!

Happy Birthday, Sadie Dear! We love you so much!

Sadie's Big Birthday Party!

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen. Our sweet SadieBug turned one! In only a short 15 more years, all of these boys that have been chasing her can finally date her!
Here are some pictures from the party:

Auntie Alex designed her custom invitation. For some reason, the colors won't download correctly, but at least you get to see the cool design!

I worked all last week filling in for someone (thanks Donnie and Wanda for watching the girls!), so I didn't have time to decorate a super-cute cake. Instead, Sadie got a tacky "M's" cake. It may not look the best, but it's the tastiest cake I've ever had!

So far, Sadie's more interested in her Water Baby's bottle than the actual baby. I'm sure that will change over time...

Sadie's first bite of her birthday cake!

"Did I make all that mess???"

Of course, the party fell on the hottest day of the year (it topped off at 94 degrees), so Sadie didn't mind a little hose down after her cake.

Neither did any of the kids.

Do we have a future firefighter???

There's one happy kid on her first birthday! (It only took about 100 pictures to get this shot!)

Grandpa and Grandma Boring's Visit

Grandpa and Grandma Boring came up last week to visit and celebrate Sadie's 1st Birthday (on another post). They also were so sweet to watch the girls while I worked last week! Thank you!
We had a nice visit with them. Here are some random pictures.

Grandma and Morgan blowing bubbles.

Grandpa and Morgan sharing a hug!

Grandpa and sweet Sadiebug!

All of us at Sadie's birthday party.

Morgan and Grandpa, acting silly!

Just Stuff

We haven't been up to much lately, but I thought I'd post a few pictures of what "not much" looks like at our place.

Sadie opened her birthday present in California, but we put it together when we got back. She got a shopping cart that Morgan constantly tries to "borrow". It has lights, plays music, and came with accessories!

Here are the girls with their shopping carts. Sadie's not using it to walk around the house yet, but she likes to pull herself up to a stand with it.

Morgan decided we needed a new house, so she constructed one for us. Supposedly, it even has a garage and a doorbell...somewhere.

She's so good at attention to detail. All the duplo blocks inside are beds. She even remembered to put pillows on them also.

Here's how I've foundthe girls asleep over the past couple of days. The key word is ASLEEP. I guess that's all that matters if they're comfortable...

My First Haircut

No, not mine! And, technically, not Morgan's either. This happened to be her first (and hopefully ONLY) time she played hairdresser on herself. It doesn't look too bad, except for the fact that her bangs now consist of the chunk in the middle and nothing on either side.

How did I discover it? Well, she had been playing Play-doh while I was in another room of the house. Usually completely harmless. She came into the office and wanted to sit on my lap while I was on the computer. So, we looked at pictures of her cousins on blogs and she got down to go play a few minutes later. I looked at my shirt and there was a ton of hair on it. I thought, "Hmm, that's odd. I don't have blonde hair and I wore this shirt last night and it was clean. I wonder what happened." A few minutes later, I look at Morgan and she's got a chunk of hair on her shirt. I'm thinking to myself, "That's strange, I think I would have noticed a clump this big when I combed her hair this morning." Then, I looked at her face. Well, you know the rest...

I asked her what happened. She said she used her Play-doh scissors (she learned to cut Play-doh at preschool, not hair). They're in time-out until next week.

I've decided that it's not too bad. If I comb what she has left, she just looks like she has sparse bangs. And, that'll have to do for the next couple of months because I can't glue hair back on. (Plus, I already swept and mopped the floor to rid the house of all the remnants!)

Family Vacation

When you're gone for 10 days, it seems to take 10 days to put life back together!

So, as we're putting life back together in Colorado, here's a long recap of our vacation.

Day 1-- the girls traveled fairly well. We only drove about 9 hours (I know, only 9 hours) to Provo, and Sadie slept a lot of it. Morgan kept herself entertained by using stickers as "hair pretties". Sadie even managed to receive a few on the top of her head.

Day 9 or 10-- I'll just cut to the chase. We're not a road trip family. Somewhere between miles 1 and 2,779 (yup, that's how many we drove the whole trip) we decided that we would rather keep Southwest in business than spend 5 of 10 days driving.

Grandma Ginos introduced Morgan to a campfire specialty--the s'more. Sticky everywhere, and then some!

Our family friend, Mary, thought Sadie was getting too much sun on the beach, so she stuck her umbrella right on top of Sadie. Everyone else shared umbrellas, but somehow, the baby managed to get her own!

Ain't this the life? Morgan spent a week in heaven--sand, Untel Tyler, the ocean, and more sand. I've washed her swimsuit 3 times and there are still sand traces!

Poor Sadie got an ear infection at the beginning of our trip and was miserable for the first few days. After a visit to urgent care and some medicine, she started feeling much better.

Morgan's favorite Raffi song is "Mr. Sun". Alex decided to entertain us all by participating with Morgan. Here's a picture and also a video.

The men went on a bike ride one afternoon. Lucky Tyler got to try out mom's pink bike! Morgan got very jealous!

Morgan like riding her bicycle to the potty, so she seemed to have the need to go quite often!

Here's Alex, cooking in the "kitchen".

Morgan thought she was pretty cool climbing up the ladder to the top bunk.

While up there, she found the camera and thought she'd take a picture of the view from our bed. The blanket on the bottom of the picture is proof that this really was our view all week! Beautiful!

Happy Birthday to Sadie! Technically, her birthday's not until the end of the month, but she opened her gift early. Well, she played peek-a-boo with the wrapping paper and entertained us all for a few minutes. So cute!

We rode a double-decker bus from the fair overflow parking lot to the fair. Sadie loved the ride!

Alex loved the bull-riding. Morgan thought the motorcycle tricks were best (motocross dirt bikes). She said, "They jumped and flipped and landed on the hill. In the dirt."

How could I not put this cute picture of Sadie?

The Turkey Stampede. Ever wonder how to get turkeys to "race" a lap around their pen? Simple. Fill a remote control truck with feed and start driving! Just make sure the driver is faster than the turkeys or this is what happens:

Sweet SadieBug, eating snacks with grandpa and grandma.

The 2-day trip down to San Diego was a little much for us, so we took a 3-day trip back and stopped in AZ to see Brian's family one night. Here's Morgan and her cousin, Macy, just taking a walk.

Somehow, we ended up going home with a loaf of bread. Sadie perfected the art of playing with her food in the middle of New Mexico.

And Mommy learned that granola bars, preschoolers, and carseats should never be combined.

Our final night (4th of July), we stayed in Albuquerque. After spending 9 hours in the car, Morgan was ecstatic when she found out she got to sleep in her own bed at the hotel!

And there you have it. The long recap of our long roadtrip. We all had a great time and appreciate all the help from Grandpa, Grandma, Logan, Alex and Tyler!