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)!!

Georgia's Visit To The ER

About 2 1/2 weeks ago, we had our first visit (and hopefully our only visit) to the local ER. We were supposed to get a really bad storm later that day, and the local weather was already warning us that we were under a high risk for strong, multiple tornados. After what happened in Joplin, MO, the company that Robbie works for sent out a tornado prepardness file through email and Robbie forwarded it to me.

Since I have never lived in a place where I've had to worry about tornados, I started looking through the pamphlet Robbie had sent me right after breakfast. The girls were running around and playing when Georgia tripped and fell head first into a kitchen chair. I was sitting right there so I saw what happened, but I thought it would just be another bump. Nothing could ever prepare me to hear Gwen screaming that Georgia was bleeding.

I felt so bad (and still do) that there was nothing I could do to prevent it. They run all over the house (and all over outside) all the time, and all of them trip over their feet and fall. Sure, I could've tried to stop them from running around, but like I said, they do it all the time, and running is what kids do. Grace still trips over her feet and bumps and bonks and scraps herself all the time. It still kills me though that I couldn't prevent her feeling all that pain and having to go through what she did.

I grabbed a washcloth and held it against her head to stop the bleeding, and with the other hand I called Robbie and told him he needed to come home from work. I then called a really great friend who lives just the next street over from us and asked her to watch the girls while we went to the hospital. While I did all that Gwen and Grace, being very concerned for their sister, went upstairs into Rob's and my bathroom and got a bandaid and neosporin (spelling?). Even though we couldn't use it, they were sweet to think of their sister.

My friend came over with her kids and did more than I asked-she took all of us over to the hospital (which is 5 minutes away-hooray for the closeness!!) so we could meet Robbie there, and then took Gwen and Grace back to her house, where they had lots of fun making toothpick kabobs for lunch, coloring, and just playing. Thank you, thank you, thank you Lacie-you are amazing!!

Georgia meanwhile got checked in, looked at by a nurse, and had a visit from the doctor all within about 20 minutes. Because it was such a straight split, and because the skin seemed like it would go back together without any problems, they used a glue that they said is equal to getting stitches. They also used a numbing ointment instead of using a needle to inject numbing stuff into the skin around the split (which is what they did when I had to get stitches 10 years ago). I am soooo glad we didn't have to deal with any needles, because she didn't even like the doctors and nurses touching her arm, much less messing around with her head.

She did really great though, and even though we were told to keep a close eye on her so she wouldn't rub or pick the glue off, Georgia never even touched it. The only time she rubbed the skin up there was to get her hair out of her face, and so we kept her hair in pigtails for at least a week, from the time she got up until she went to bed at night. She really did amazing.

These next two pictures are really poor quality-I had to use my phone because our camera wasn't charged, and my phone doesn't take the greatest pictures. This is the day after her accident.

Robbie did end up putting a bandaid on, but mainly because she wanted one. The sucky part? Every bandaid we put on we had to take off at night because we had to keep an eye on it and make sure it wasn't infected. We also had to put waterproof bandaids on for baths because the glue wasn't supposed to get soaking wet, and if I feel like I've had a bath after giving them their bath, we figured she really needed a waterproof bandaid to keep it dry.

I took this photo tonight. So far this is what her scar looks like. The doctors told us the glue would start peeling off within 5 days, but it actually took about a week, and I didn't peel the glue off at all-I just let it come off on it's own because I didn't want to peel the scab off with the glue. Turns out, when the glue came off on its own, it took the scab with it anyways. When there were big pieces just hanging there I would use their baby nail clippers to trim it off, and the final piece fell off earlier this week. With the glue and the scab on, it looked like the gash had actually healed completely back together, but there is actually a little dip in the skin where her scar is going to be. As disappointed as I am that it's not a smaller scar, it looks tons better than the big gash she had, and for that I am grateful (and it looks huge in this picture because it's close up, but when compared to my thumb there, it's really not that big at all).

In fact, her scar is so small that you can hardly see it in the photo (and it's only really noticable in person because it's still really red). It's the small red line above her right eye. I love the face she was making in this photo-what a goof. We're using Mederma (recommended by the doctors and nurses at the hospital) to help reduce the redness and make it less noticable, but I think you'll always be able to see it some. The cream we got also has sunscreen in it, which we were told we need to put on every time we go out (even if it's cloudy) for the next 6 months to a year to prevent the scar from becoming more noticable. She says it tickles when we put it on.

She's doing so good though-didn't have a concussion at all. We also had to prevent her from bumping her head hard, to prevent her head from splitting back open, so I had to watch her closely for about a week, and we also put a body pillow up against the wall of her toddler bed so she wouldn't bump her head on the wall, and made a second bed on the floor between her bed and Gwen's out of all the stuffed animals, extra pillows and blankets that the girls have, high enough that if she did roll out of bed she wouldn't hit her head on either her bed or Gwen's. I still feel bad, but as Robbie put it, you can't always protect them from everything, and I am really grateful that it wasn't anything worse and that she didn't have any other side effects from it. I'm so grateful that she's alright and that the Lord seems to be looking out for our little Shmoo.