A Letter To Gracie

Hey Gracie girl. I know your birthday was a while ago, and I feel awful that I haven't had a chance to write until now. Please know that I wasn't forgetting about you, and that I truly have wanted to write this letter to you...I have thought about it often and about what I want to write to you.

It's hard to believe that you are 4 already. It really does seem like it was yesterday that you went from being my little 2 year old pumpkin to my 3 year old, who loved everything Tinkerbell. I can't believe how much time has passed since then, and how much you have gone through, and how you have changed and grown.

July 2010

Shortly after you turned 3, you finally got the hang of using the potty and you were officially potty trained. You were so excited to be a big girl and wear real underwear instead of pull ups. We did fun things that fall like apple picking, and we all did little preschool lessons to help you prepare for preschool and to help both you and Gwen (and sometimes even Georgia) learn fun new things. You loved doing crafts and learning cool new facts. Your favorite was telling people that you had learned that dolphins slept with one eye open for protection, and you would tell them this after squinting one of your eyes shut.

September 2010

We continued to do little lessons and fun art projects, and you really enjoyed it. You really loved dressing up with your sisters and playing games. You kept making new friends in nursery, loved playing with your cousins, and continued to be as curious as ever. You loved pretending to be a superhero, and dressed up as Batgirl for Halloween.

November 2010

We had a lot of fun during the winter months-playing in the snow, making snowmen, getting ready for Christmas. You of course had a blast at Christmas and loved everything you got. In January you hit a big milestone...you finally entered Primary. It was hard to watch you growing up so much, and even though you were a little scared at first, you loved Primary and had so much fun in your class and in sharing time. Daddy and I couldn't believe how big you were getting, but we couldn't have been more proud of you.

January 2010

We had a lot of fun celebrating Valentine's Day and St. Patty's Day by dressing up and doing fun things like making our own valentines and eating green food. The weather started getting warmer and on some days we took advantage and went outside to draw with sidewalk chalk. We would have fun at playgroup each week, and we enjoyed our trips to Grandma and Grandpa Congdon's house every few weeks.

March 2010

April was a busy month for all of us. We started packing up all our stuff and got ready to move to Oklahoma. You seemed to realize a little what was actually happening, but you were still pretty excited for whatever was going to happen. We had a wonderful time living in Vermont, and we really enjoyed our last few weeks with all our extended family, and a wonderful Easter as well. We got to Oklahoma right in the beginning of May, and while it was a big change for us in many ways, you were still excited for the change and handled it all very well, though you did ocassionally express how much you missed our old home and our relatives in Vermont.

May 2010

We had so much to do that keep us busy after we moved. You helped unpack and clean. You made many new friends in your new primary class. We got you all registered for preschool and starting preparing for the start of school. We got to visit the zoo and the aquarium, and all sorts of new places and along with them, fun new experiences. We even had the chance to go back to Vermont right before school started and got to spend your birthday with both mommy and daddy's families.

July 2011

Through this past year your Daddy and I have seen you grow and change in so many ways. You grew taller, your hair got longer, and you got slightly less clumsy (something that mommy still suffers from). We also saw you start to understand more complex problems, your memory and bravery grew so so much, and we saw your creativity and imagination really begin to shine.

Though you experienced so many new changes, and changed in so many new ways, you still are one of the sweetest and most nurturing little girls that your daddy and I know. You are so concerned for others feelings, and you just show a great love and compassion towards others.

You continue to be so easy going and laid back about things, and always so willing to help everyone in any way you can. You are a very bright little girl, with so much love, and so much heart. Your smile can lighten any sad day, and your hugs are so filled with love. You are an amazing little girl Gracie, and your Daddy and I feel so blessed that you are a part of our forever family. We love you so so much, and just as you would do anything for anyone, we would do anything for you. Thank you so much for being who you are and for being such a wonderful part of our family. We are so grateful to have you...love you so so so so much, forever and ever, Gracie girl!!

Vacation To Vermont

I know it has taken me forever to update my blog-sorry. There's lots I'd like to update on, so hopefully there will be quite a few updates over the next couple of weeks.

Back in June Robbie started talking about how he wanted to go back home for a visit before the girls started school, because other wise we wouldn't see any of our family until December when we go (and we're still trying to figure that out) home for Christmas. Robbie had originally wanted to go back in the middle of August, but the week he wanted to go was also the week Gwen and Grace started school. After a little adjustment, we decided to go back for a week and a half at the end of July and be back in time for the girls to meet their teachers.

It was the first time the girls ever flew on a plane. They were so super excited. They would ask me about it every day for two weeks up until we left. They did so good on the plane and in the airports, even with delays. They are looking forward to flying again.

We spent the first part of our visit with Robbie's parents and had a great time with them. We bought the girls life jackets before we left and brought them with us on vacation. Gwen and Grace have been learning to swim very quickly with their life jackets, so we went swimming at Spring Lake. We also went shopping with Rob's mom, went to see Rob's uncle's goat, visited family and friends, went to Rutlands new children's museum, went to the Rutland farmer's market (ohhh...been looking forward to that...Pakistani/Afghani food stand--sooooooo goooood!) and just had fun playing in and around Robbie's parents house. We also went to the Montshire museum the last day we were there with his parents to celebrate Gracie's birthday. It was so much fun. I didn't get my camera out as much, so I don't really have any pictures from while we were there, but we loved spending so much time with Rob's family.

Halfway through the trip we left Rob's parents and headed to my parents new house in North Hero. Before we moved to Oklahoma, they bought a new house on Lake Champlain and sold the house that we had grown up in for the last 14 years. It was sad to leave the house and know we were never going back to it, but their new house is so lovely. My brother in law did all the remodeling work with a little help from a couple of people, including Robbie (which is when he shot a nail through two of his fingers with a nail gun).

We spent most of our time there swimming in the lake, playing outside, playing with cousins, and having fun on my parents boat. We also took the girls fishing for the first time and just had so much fun. We were sad to leave Vermont when the time came-we love it there and miss it alot. We are so thankful for the opportunity and the job that we have now though and we were happy to get back home to prepare for school. So glad to have had the chance to spend time with family and have so much fun!!

Gwen was so excited to take her first ride on papas boat. She wanted to sit up front and look over the side of the boat the whole time.

Gracie sat up in the front of the boat with Gwen and my sister Melissa. She cuddled up pretty quickly to stay warm.

It was a pretty chilly morning so we really bundled up before going for the ride. Georgia kept snuggling closer to me but really seemed to enjoy the ride.

Robbie did a lot of water skiing and wakeboarding and just had a blast!! I have really poor balance so I don't really enjoy trying to do either, but Rob loved it, and loved riding on the raft and making the girls laugh when he'd get thrown from the raft. Gwen was super excited when we told her she could go for a ride on the raft. She absolutely loved it! She just kept going and going...it took her a really long time to decide she was done, even after they went over a couple of bumpy wakes.


Grace was just as excited to ride on the raft with Rob as Gwen was, but when they started speeding up a bit and it got a bit bumpy, Grace was quick to let us know that she was done taking a turn (though she still wanted to take another ride the other times we went out). I went on the raft with Robbie as well, but only once because we went over a really large wake and the raft came up and smacked me in my mouth really hard so I wasn't too keen to get back on.


Georgia wanted to go out on the raft too, but we weren't sure if she was too young or not, so we didn't let her go that first time like we let Gwen and Grace. We figured out later that she probably could go on the raft for a really slow ride, but after that first time out to play the water was always too choppy, even for Gwen and Grace, so Georgia never went out on the raft. We made it up to her though with all the time she got to go swimming in the lake and looking for sea shells along the beach. She never seemed to mind, and hopefully she'll get a chance to ride on the raft next year.


We took the girls fishing off my parents dock either the first or second day we were there for the very first time. Gwen refused to touch the worms, so Rob and I took turns baiting her hook (well, baiting all the hooks). Gwen has been bugging us for a long time to take her fishing, so she was super excited. She was really pleased to catch a perch.

Grace was just like Gwen and refused to touch the worms to bait her hook, so again Robbie and I had to bait the hooks, but they all loved fishing. Grace caught a perch after fishing for a while and was really excited but wouldn't smile for me when I took her picture.

Georgia was the first to catch a fish that day. She caught a bass and was super happy! She had to run back to the house to tell everyone that she had caught a fish. They had so much fun that we went fishing a couple more times, and all the girls caught multiple fish each time we went fishing-it was such a hit!

We had a wonderful family vacation!!

4th Of July

We weren't sure what we were going to do for the 4th of July this year. We heard on the 3rd that we had already missed the fireworks show that was held in our town, so we debated about whether or not we really wanted to go into Tulas on the 4th to watch fireworks, or to do our own (Oklahoma sells and allows you to shoot off your own fireworks). The girls were really looking forward to watching fireworks, so we decided to deal with whatever traffic there would be and take them into Tulsa for the fireworks.

It turned out great! There were three different places we could have gone to watch the fireworks that were along the Arkansas river. We got there about an hour or so before the fireworks were supposed to start and got a pretty good seat-halfway between the river and the parking lot. We knew it was going to be hot, so a couple days before we had bought spraying fans (and glow sticks). We also brought along the necklaces and flags and pinwheels that I had collected from different dollar bins during the previous two weeks.

The girls had a blast!! They were so excited for the fireworks, but they had so much fun while they waited. We played catch, colored, waved our flags, and even ended up having a water fight with our spraying fans (Georgia got bored halfway through the water fight and decided to wash Rob's and my feet by spraying them with the fan off and then rubbing the water all over our legs and feet).



There was a hot air balloon giving rides up and down, but we didn't check to see how much it cost. Gwen didn't want to go in it anyways.

This was the only good picture I could get of Georgia...most of the time she put her sippy in her mouth to take a drink right as I was taking a picture.

Eventually the girls got hot. We were sitting right next to the sidewalk where the concession stands were set up, and one of them was an ice cream truck. Each of the girls picked out what they wanted, and I was shocked at how huge they were when Rob came back with the girls. Gwen picked a watermelon popsicle that was made out of real watermelon (and unfortunatly had watermelon seeds in it...which Gwen found halfway through her popsicle and became to upset about it to finish her popsicle-lol).

Grace got a fudge and banana popsicle. She loved the fudge parts...didn't like the banana part so much. She ate about as much as Gwen did.

Georgia picked a Dora shaped ice cream popsicle. She ate almost the whole thing. All of the girls ended up with about a third of their popsicles on their cloths, but it was worth it. They were able to sit down for a while and cool down and do something that took their minds off of waiting for the fireworks.

The girls had a great time watching the fireworks, and playing with their glow sticks. The traffic wasn't all that bad...people were pretty nice to one another and we only had to sit still in one place for about 15 minutes, and the girls were great during that. We all had an awesome time, and made some great memories!!

Sleepy Kids

We find our kids asleep all the time in the weirdest ways-hanging off couches or chairs; with their bums in the air; with underwear on their head (Gwen did that a lot before she started potty training cause she wanted to wear them so bad); with blankets over their heads; even with stuffed animals stuffed in their pj shirts or their heads surrounded by every single stuffed animal they own. These are two ways we've found them in the last month:

Georgia climbed into the toy box and was playing before bed one night. The next thing we knew, everything was dead quiet. We went to find out what she had gotten into and found her sound asleep surrounded by her toys.



We've been building a second bed out of the girls extra blanets, pillows, and stuffed animals every night for Georgia between her bed and Gwen's because she doesn't have rails on her bed to keep her from falling out (her bed is part of her old crib-one that my dad made for me-Robbie is in the process of making rails for it though). So we make this little second bed to keep her from bumping her head or falling too far at night. I guess Grace got a little lonely...


...and curled up right on top of the little second bed. It's always so much fun to find them sleeping in so many funny ways!!

House Pics

So I've had a lot of people ask me for photos of the house. I'm not posting pics of the outside (but I'm going to try to do a video tour for family members) cause the house number is pretty noticable but here's pics of the inside. Please keep in mind that we are still unpacking things and organizing and trying to stick to a budget so it'll be slow going but as we complete each room I will post pics again:

This is the living room. You can see the massive pile of stuff sitting beside the couch-it's pretty much all books waiting for the bookcase that Rob is making to match the lovely entertainment center that he just spent the last month making for us (I'll post a better pic sometime this week on the craft blog). The brown bookcase on the right is being moved upstairs for the girls books and games in the playroom (it's too small for all the books Rob and I own).



This is our dining room/part of our kitchen. Really bare at the moment...and in need of a larger table.



Our kitchen. It's pretty nice...I love all the counter space. I don't think we've ever had this much counter space in any place that we've lived in since getting married...or this many cabinets.

This is the laundry room...and my washer and dryer!! After 6 1/2 years of marriage, I finally have my own washer and dryer, and I love them. To the left is the garage.

This is the downstairs bathroom or powder room as it is called. It kind of feels like a closet but it's nice to have a bathroom downstairs.

This is the girls playroom/my craft room. It was advertised as a bonus room, but it's really just a den as it has no closet. I am going to store most of my craft stuff in the spare room, and just have my table and a few things in here. We divided up all the girls toys (hahaha...so I don't have to pick up so many toys at once) so they have some in their room, some in the living room, and some in the playroom. This is where we are going to put the toy kitchen that Rob says he's going to build for them for Christmas (since they destroyed the one we made them 2 years ago out of our old entertainment center).

This is our room. That door to the left is my closet, the open door is the door to our room, and on the right (not shown in the picture) is our bathroom where Rob's closet is. The are both walk in closets, which is super nice since we have so much room in them to store things instead of the garage where Rob does most of his woodworking (and therefore, lots of sawdust on things). This room actually changed a little this past weekend after Robbie finished the entertainment downstairs in the living room. We brought some things upstairs into our room, but I already had this picture taken so this is the one I'm going to use.

This is our bathroom-toilet to the right, Rob's closet to the left.

Hahahaha...so this is the spare room, or what's going to be the guest room/nursery (if we have another baby while living here-and no I am not pregnant). Right now it has all the boxes that I haven't gotten to yet...mainly my craft stuff, the girls boardgames, some of their toys, the preschool stuff I have bought over the years for the girls, and some bedroom stuff.

This is the girls bathroom...it's a small bathroom (smaller than the one we had in Rexburg) but it works for them.

And this is the girls room. I had to take two pictures since I couldn't get everything in one picture because of the angle of the hallway. All three of their beds fit on one side of the room (and eventually we'll get bunkbeds for the older two...probably their Christmas present).

And on the other side of the room is their closet and where we have their big dresser. They love having their own room again (and so do we...) and love to play in their room.

It's a pretty nice place and it's so nice to have so much space (except when it comes to doing my really thorough move everything around so I can clean everywhere cleaning every month-then it stinks). The backyard is pretty nice too-completly fenced in so I can let the girls go out to play (when it's not so hot out) and not have to worry about them getting hurt. It's a nice place to be, for however long we are here, and we are so grateful we found it so quickly. We love our home!!

The Tulsa Zoo

About three weeks ago we had some really nice weather and we decided to take the girls to the zoo before the weather turned really hot (good thing we did-it's been above 100 degrees most of the week). The girls were super excited to go to the zoo.

We saw a lot of cool animals at the zoo. Most we have seen before at other zoos-elephants, zebras, giraffes, penguins, and a bunch of others. There were some really cool things there though that we hadn't seen, like this turtle from Madagascar (which was a pleasing surprise for Robbie, who lived there for two years). They also had a pond filled with local wildlife, including a numerous amount of local turtles. They swam right up to the pier and we could have probably reached out and touched them if we had wanted to.

The flamingos were Gwen's favorite (because they're pink, she says). It was fun to see them and a bunch of other birds, even though Gwen complained and tried to hold her breath when we went inside the bird house because of the smell.

There were a lot of signs at different exhibits about babies having been born recently, including 4 baby penguins (which we saw), a baby chimp (which we saw), and a baby elephant (which we didn't get to see), but the cutest one was this little baby monkey. The sign said that the birth of this baby monkey was really important because there are only about 24 of these monkeys alive in zoos and such here in the USA. The baby monkey was only a week old and just super cute.

Outside the penguin exhibit was this large stone with different types of penguins etched into it. The girls all climbed up so we could measure and see how tall they were compared to all the penguins. We did this at the chimp exhibit too where they were able to stand next to a picture of a chimp and see how they measured up. They also got to compare their footprints with those of a lion, tiger, leopard and bear outside of the lion and tiger exhibits.

The day we went to the zoo they were having an event there called Farm Fest, where a bunch of people came to show what they did on their farms (dairy, chicken and produce farms), and other people with skills like chainsaw carving and a blacksmith and a woodworker. The chainsaw carver also makes furniture out of wood and sells it, and had some benchs and chairs there for sale. We saw this one and loved it.

When we told the guy that we wanted to buy this bench, he told us this really cool fact about it. He said that a company had been removing some trees near an old civil war battleground, and he bought up a bunch of those trees to make them into his benchs and chairs. When he opened up the tree that he made our bench out of, he found three civil war musket balls burried in the tree. Coolest of all? He left one of the musket balls in the wood and made it into one of the arms of the bench. For Rob and I, while the zoo was cool, finding this bench was the best part of the zoo for us.

We all had a blast at the zoo though, and we are excited to go in the winter months (it's open year round here because it doesn't get too cold) and hopefully see more of the animals up and moving around instead of hiding out in their dens from the sun. Our three little monkeys sure had fun and can't wait to go back!!

Sprinkler Fun

Friday was a pretty hot day here, and while Robbie barbequed our dinner, we got the girls in their swimsuits and hooked the hose up to the sprinkler for some fun. The girls weren't sure what to do at first, and they didn't want to get wet, but once they started getting sprayed and cooled off, they couldn't stop!!



When I came out with the camera they all came running towards me-they all wanted to make silly faces for me.



My three silly girls-I sure love them and their unique personalities!!

They had lots of fun, but once it was time to eat they were actually getting cold and ready to come inside. We will definately do it again soon (especially since the neighborhood pool is always so crowded)!!