Dowdle Dayz

So it's been a while!!

2012-01-20T20:16:00.005-07:00

Sometimes life gets in the way of what I want to do. What do I want to do you ask? Well I want to blog. Sure it's been a while, 2 years as a matter of fact. Oops, my bad! I love blogging and sharing my thoughts, experiences, and pictures of my life. I was doing so well keeping up with Dowdle Dayz! Then...my life got CRAZY!!! First, we got a new dog, love him, but honestly it's harder than having a baby (just an FYI). Second, we bought a new dental practice. Love it, but I feel like we live there and that the work takes up my blogging time. Third, my camera died. We bought a new one and it never worked right (took red pictures). Fourth, my computer died (printer too). It took hours to upload pictures to the computer and more hours getting the pictures on the blog. Then I got a new computer and it was so different, I had no idea how to use it. Couldn't figure out how to upload pictures. It was maddening!! So with all these things (plus running a family) I gave up blogging. I wanted to blog but it was just so frustrating with my little obstacles. I have felt guilty not keeping up on the blog and I have missed it a ton. So I made a goal that I was going to figure this all out! And here I am BLOGGING again! I can't promise that you'll see a post every week but hopefully every month. That's my goal for this year, a post a month. I might surprise you and add more a month, but we'll start with just one for now!

Quiet Rylee!!

2010-03-09T20:37:00.005-07:00

I just love this little monster! Rylee keeps us laughing all the time (that is when she's not in trouble!). We had a funny moment with her in church last Sunday. Of coarse it had to be during the Sacrament. She is waiting patiently for the bread to be passed around. It finally comes to her and she looks at me and asks "My turn?", I nod my head and tell her yes. She starts digging to the bottom of the tray for the biggest piece of bread. She says, "I want a big one!" Dan and I both tell her to just take one and to stop touching the other pieces. She finally finds her big piece and then looks at it, sits there for a minute and then YELLS, "I want butter, where's the butter?" If you know Rylee you know when she talks it's not quiet. There were many people around us turning and laughing. We both told her to just eat it and to be quiet. So much for being reverent during the Sacrament!?! Oh how we love these funny little moments!!

facebook

2010-02-22T22:57:00.003-07:00

I finally gave in and joined the facebook world. If I haven't added you as a friend yet, find me and I will.

Dancing Queen

2010-02-09T22:49:00.002-07:00

My little caboose has joined the dancing world and it couldn't have come fast enough for her. This girlie loves to dance (probably because her older sisters do too)!!

Rylee has been VERY stubborn about potty training. My other girls were completely potty trained before they were 2 1/2. Rylee however turned 3 last November and well let's just say she's doing better. The one and only incentive I had left (I had tried about 6) for her was dance. She wanted to take dance soooooooo bad but I wouldn't let her until she was potty trained. A couple months ago she wouldn't even go near a toilet. So dance has worked. Yippee!! She's almost 100%, she just has an accident every once in a while.

She was so funny on her first day at dance. I stayed to watch her and she was telling the teacher what SHE wanted to do. She would constantly look over at me and wave and yell "Hi mom, you watching me?" I would just nod my head and remind her to watch her teacher.

She loved every bit of it. She was mad at me though because when dance was over we left without a costume. It was only the first day, the teacher still needed to order it. So everyday this month she has asked me if her costume is here yet when we go out to get the mail. She also reminds me all the time that she has dance on Fridays and not to forget.

What can I say, she's a doll. I haven't gone back to watch her again because I want her to focus on her dance and not me. She just shows me what see learned when she gets home and all week long until it's Friday again and then it all starts over. I love it...you go Dancing Queen!!

**Early January 2010**

More about Max

2010-02-07T11:17:00.006-07:00

Max was a great dog on Christmas day. We drug him around all over town. He didn't wine or bark, he just went along with everything. He played with the girls and the rest of the family. He seemed to be enjoying his new toys and family. He didn't sleep much either. The day after Christmas though, this little guy slept almost the entire day. I think we wore him out.
He was so funny. He would hide under our couch and just sit there watching all of us. His little nose would stick out from under the couch every once in a while. It was his safe place. He slept there most of the day. It was so cute to see his little furry nose sticking out.
Despite the potty training, he has really been a sweet little dog. He's made us laugh and brought a lot of smiles to some little girl's faces. Some fun facts about Max:
-He was born on October 29, 2009
-He is the oldest of 3 boys
-His Mom, Sadie, weighs only 3.5 lbs and his Dad, Cooper, is about the same

-His entire name is Maxwell Cooper
-We got him when he was almost 8 weeks old
-At his 8 week old vet appointment, he weighed 2.5 lbs, he is now 3.5 lbs
-He loves to attack his moose and blanket
-He loves his belly tickled. I think if he could laugh he would when we tickle him We love having him in our family!!

**End of December 2009**

Love, love, love them...

2010-02-07T10:57:00.002-07:00

I love these 3 little girls!! **Christmas Dresses 2009**

Man's Best Friend

2010-02-06T22:20:00.002-07:00

So after getting the girls to bed on Christmas night, I go into our bedroom and find Dan with his new best friend. I had to laugh because Dan was the one who did not want to get a dog. He fought it for years. It's funny, because of all of us I think Dan likes Max the most. I guess it's a male bonding thing?!?!

I think that Max likes Dan too!!!

Yep-that's my cute boys. It's kind of fun to say that.

**Christmas Night 2009**

Christmas Day 2009

2010-02-04T16:57:00.004-07:00

So Christmas is always busy for us, but I wouldn't have it any other way. We get to spend the day with family. There's nothing better than family. After opening presents at our house we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Cowdell's house (Mom's side of the fam) for Christmas Casserole (my favorite part of Christmas!!). It's so yummy! I love this picture of Grandpa Jack and his favorite furry buddy Jade.

After breakfast, we head to my parent's house for lunch with my Dad's side of the family. We open more presents, eat and sing karaoke. My Mom always makes good food!!

It was a couple of fun filled days. It's always a marathon, but we love it!! I think this picture of Rylee sums it all up...nap time!!
**December 25, 2009**

Christmas Morning 2009

2010-02-04T15:42:00.003-07:00

Another successful Christmas has come and gone. As always we were blessed with some great gifts. Grandpa Dowdle gave the girls Grandma Dowdle's keyboard she used before she passed away. He just made us promise that we would take good care of it and get the girls in piano lessons. I'm working on that!! Our Christmas piles were a little smaller this time because of our new furry little addition. We told the girls that if we got a REAL dog that would be most of their Christmas. They didn't seem to mind at all.

Dan picked Max up on Christmas Eve night while I put the girls to bed and made sure they were asleep. When he brought Max home, we had so much fun playing with him. He was a little nervous at first but we quickly became buddies. I was surprised that he sleep most of the night. I was prepared to stay up all night with a new puppy. He was a trooper though, not even a little noise came out of him.
We woke the girls up and they were nervous because they didn't hear a dog barking. Way to cooperate Max and stay quiet!! Good dog!

On the way out to see if there is a puppy...

"Way to go Santa!! He brought us a dog!" That's what we heard from Brinley when she opened her eyes. Baylee was speechless and got BIG tears in her eyes. She just froze in her place. I think she was in shock. Rylee was excited too but went quickly to her new Princess piano.

It was instant friendship with this little guy!!

After we finally got them away from Max, we opened the rest of their presents. It was sheer delight!! Baylee got her LIV dolls, Brinley got an iPod, and Rylee got a Princess piano. They also got some DVDs and stocking stuffers.

Then they opened their presents from each other. Rylee had chocolate for breakfast. Half of her candy out of her sock was gone before we knew it. O-well, it's Christmas, you can have chocolate all day if you want.

It was a fabulous Christmas. This little guy made a few little girls very happy!! We're excited to have him be part of our family!!

**Christmas Morning 2009**

From the Elves

2010-02-04T14:35:00.003-07:00

It's no surprise what's inside the boxes that sit under our Christmas tree for a month that is from the Elves. The girls love these boxes. All month long I hear them talking about these boxes. They sit and guess what their Christmas PJ's will look like. It's always a fun surprise when they finally get to see them!!

They were a hit!! The Elves sent them with cute little Minni Mouse bags.
It was almost impossible to get a good picture of them. They were bouncing all over the place.
I think they liked them. Thanks Elves!!
**Christmas PJ's 2009**

Christmas Eve with the Dowdles

2010-02-04T13:22:00.005-07:00

We had a fun Christmas Eve!! We go bowling every year with the Dowdles. The kids are all getting older so it makes for some fun bowling watching them.I am the Queen of Gutter Balls. My girls had higher scores than me. At least I try!?!?
After bowling we head back to Grandpa Dowdles house for dinner and the presentation of the Christmas Story. Aunt Lacey gathers all the kids and they perform, with hand puppets (made by Grandma Dowdle), the story of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Rylee was pretty excited that she was the Angel and the Star. Good job kiddos, watching these guys is always a favorite tradition of mine.
Then it's time for presents. We draw names with all of Dan's brothers and sisters and their families. Out of 7 Dowdle kids, there are only 3 that still live in Utah. This is a way that the family can be unified at Christmas even though they are scattered all over the country. We all know that somewhere out there all the other Dowdles are opening presents on Christmas Eve too!! We always love the gifts we get.

Picture time with Grandpa Dowdle. He has 15 grandkids, but only 6 of them live here.

Say "cheese" Green Family-Paul, Mindy (Dan's sister), Nathan, Ben, and Collin

We had a great Christmas Eve! Lots of presents and lots of fun!!

**Christmas Eve 2009**

Christmas Eve at the Harris'

2010-02-04T11:11:00.006-07:00

Everyone close your eyes and see what Grandpa and Grandma Santa left for you...

Rylee was so excited to see what she got for Christmas from Grandpa and Grandma Harris.

We mixed things up a bit this Christmas. Usually we have "Christmas" 5 times on Christmas Day, but this year my Dad worked on that day so we decided to celebrate on Christmas Eve morning with them. It was very nice and made for a more relaxing Christmas for us. Grandpa and Grandma surprised them with a karaoke machine. They all love to sing (I didn't say they sing on key, but they like to sing). They all got just what they wanted. Baylee got an iHome for her iPod, Brinley got her 3 Musketeer Barbies, and Rylee got a hospital bed for her babies. I'm loving this picture of Dr. Rylee!!

We had a fun morning watching everyone open their gifts. There were lots of smiles and loves. Dan and I got a very nice surprise from my parents. We got this Christmas sock that is as tall as me filled with newspaper. At the bottom of the sock was a new bowl. I pulled it out and handed it to Dan. He opened it and it was full of cash. No those are NOT ones in there. BIG variety of bills. Lets just say that it covered the cost of finishing our Consult Room at the new dental office and then some. Thanks Mom and Dad for the bowl full of "greens" (that's my favorite kind of greens, I'll take a serving of them anytime!!)

The girls got these cute ruffle skirts that we could not get off of them. They have become the new fav at our house. So cute!!

I would say it was a rockin' Christmas from Grandpa, Grandma, and Krista. Aunt Krista gave the girls this guitar. Rylee never seems to put it down.

**Christmas Eve Morning 2009**

Christmas Candle Light Dinner 2009

2010-01-28T14:18:00.002-07:00

If you were to ask my girls what their favorite Christmas tradition is, they would all tell you the Christmas Candle Light Dinner. We love this night. The table is decorated beautifully, the food is absolutely wonderful, the cheers bring us many laughs and tears, the lights are lovely, and Santa well I don't have to say much about him--they love him.

My Mom always has the table full of fun goodies. Treats, prizes, presents galore!! We love it.
My parents give all of us a new ornament for the tree at this dinner. It always has something to do with our life at that time. I think Dan was the most excited. We got an ornament from the TV show "The Office". That's his favorite show to watch and my favorite time watching Dan laugh so hard.

We each give a toast while we eat our dinner. Even the girls come up with a sweet toast for our family. Then we celebrate Christmas by opening these firecrackers and find the prizes and crowns inside.

After dinner we drive around town to see all the pretty lights. We have our favorite places to go and we come across new ones too. After we head over to see Santa. The girls get their picture taken with him and tell him what they would like for Christmas. It was unanimous this year--a real dog that poops, pees, sleeps, and barks. However Rylee wouldn't stop talking to Santa. She had several other things on her list to share with him. Santa told them they had to be EXTRA good this year to get a real dog!!

Yes, we love this tradition. My parents do a great job with this dinner!! Thanks Mom and Dad!!!

**December 12, 2009**

Christmas Dance Concert

2010-01-28T12:37:00.004-07:00

Boy have we been bbbbuuuussssyyyy!!!! It's been a good busy though and I'll give more details in a later post on why we've been so busy. But first I need to play the "catch up" game and continue where I left off. I have so much to tell about Christmas, our little puppy Max and our BIG purchase. I promise to get those posted soon!

First though, I have to post about Baylee and Brinley's Christmas Dance Concert. They look so cute and they had so much fun!

Brinley made Mini Team this last fall and absolutely loves going to dance. You can find her movin' and groovin' to any tune on the radio. She got to perform 2 dances this time-one ballet and one jazz. She was especially happy that her costumes weren't itchy this year, which made for an extra cute little dancer.

Baylee made Sr. Team this year and is lovin' it. She is one of the youngest girls in her class. This girl has rhythm!! She gets to go to competition later in the Spring and is working hard on learning 3 new dances.

Nice leg lift Bay!!

After the concert Grandma spoils the girls with flowers. Even little Rylee got some. Which by-the-way, Rylee started dance earlier this month (more to come on that one too, she's so funny!!).

I love having little dancers!!!

**December 12, 2009**

Meet Max

2009-12-24T22:39:00.004-07:00

For those of you that got our Christmas card this last month and was wondering what we meant by "a new addition to our family this Christmas", well here you go...meet Maxwell Cooper. No Heidi is NOT expecting! Our girls have asked for a dog for Christmas the last couple of years. Last year they actually got one, even the kind they wanted--a Yorkie, but it wasn't good enough, it was stuffed...
Since last Christmas, Baylee has been VERY specific about the kind of dog she wants. She wants one that eats, sleeps, barks, poops and pees. Well this year we finally gave in. We decided to get a male dog because Dan is a little out numbered here. We picked him up tonight, he's so cute and little. Hopefully our girls will be satisfied with a REAL dog!!

35 Wonderful Things...

2009-12-16T21:43:00.004-07:00

In honor of Dan's 35th birthday, here are 35 things you didn't know about him...

1. He would eat, sleep, and drink FISHING if I would let him.

2. He hates carrots. But will eat them so his little princesses will eat them too. He tells them they give them princess eyes.

3. He pulled out his first grey hair and 2 grew back in its place. He's decided that touch-of-grey is sexy.

4. He WON'T wear pink. He gets enough of it being around his girls.

5. He has vanilla ice cream every night before bed in some interesting way. He's always coming up with new ice cream float ideas. Everything goes with vanilla.

6. He reads every morning before starting the day.

7. He talks in his sleep. We've had some fun conversations while he's been sleeping away.

8. He was born in California but grew up in Utah.

9. He won't let me mow the lawn. He's very particular about his yard!

10. He can't clap on beat. He took me to a concert on our first date and tried to clap on beat but it just didn't happen. I giggled the entire time.

11. He has more shoes and coats than I do. He loves the shoes!

12. He'll eat anything I put in front of him and say that he likes it even if he doesn't.

13. He tells his family he loves them every time he talks with them.

14. He graduated with high honors from dental school and received many awards in dentistry.

15. He loves sports! He always has time to watch the sports segment of the news.

16. He never wants to own a mini van.

17. All of his pants (besides his Levi's) are brown, just in different shades. I never knew there were so many shades of brown!

18. He brushes his teeth SEVERAL times a day and flosses too. I guess dentistry is a good job for him.

19. He loves being surrounded by his little girls.

20. U2 is his favorite band, with John Mayer and Jack Johnson right behind them.

21. A Utah Man is he! He loves the University of Utah. Go Utes!!

22. He always has to be doing something or he'll fall asleep. Even watching TV he has to be moving or eating something.

23. He doesn't like his picture taken. We only get family pictures every few years. It's his worst nightmare to get them done.

24. He speaks Hungarian.

25. He only likes one person to cut his hair--me.

26. He doesn't use any product or brush or comb to do his hair. It's all with the hand.

27. He only likes to eat one thing at a time off his dinner plate. He doesn't like to mix food.

28. He thinks eating celery is like eating dental floss. He doesn't like it at all.

29. He doesn't worry about what others think.

30. He dug all the trenches in our yard for the sprinklers by hand. He wouldn't spend the money to rent a trencher. He had some help from family but you would still find him outside at 11:30 in the dark with a flash light digging.

31. He loves to explore and find new things. Or learn about something new.

32. He likes to take me on a walk up and down our street after the kids are in bed asleep and tell me about his day and ask about mine while we eat Popsicles.

33. He likes to get a deal on things. He'll never buy the first thing he sees, he'll have to shop around to make sure he's getting the best thing for his money.

34. He loves when he gets home from work and the girls run to the door yelling Daddy, Daddy. It always puts a big smile on his face.

35. He is out numbered at our house, but I think he likes that. He is a wonderful daddy and husband and we love him!!

Happy 35th Birthday!

Thanks Kelsie for the fun birthday list idea!

*November 30, 2009*

Dear Santa...

2009-12-15T12:29:00.003-07:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE DOWDLES!!

Every year our cute neighbors, the Palmers, have a Christmas party in their backyard. They invite Santa and Mrs. Claus, have all you can eat donuts and hot chocolate, and fire pits to help keep us warm. It's our Christmas present from them and we love going!! Before the party my girls wrote up their Christmas lists to give to Santa. This is what they wrote...

Dear Santa Claus,

This year I want a REAL dog that barks, eats, poops, and pees. DS games (Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure and Phineas and Ferb), Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure DVD. If the dog thing doesn't work out, I'll take a Wii.

Love, Baylee

Dear Santa,

For Christmas I want the 3 Musketeers Barbie movie, Barbie 3 Musketeers dolls, a pink doll with skin that looks like mine, a doll that can talk and is as tall as me, and a REAL dog that barks, eats, poops, and pees. That's all!!!!

Love, Brinley

Dear Santa Claus,

I want a Belle doll, a Belle dress, Tinkerbell doll, a Barbie, a REAL dog that barks, eats, poops, and pees, Snow White, a butterfly fishing pole, and a hanger!

Love, Ry Ry

At least they're not asking for much!?!?

**November 28, 2009**

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-12-15T11:04:00.005-07:00

Well we gobbled 'till we wobbled again this year on Thanksgiving! The food was so good, who could resist?!?!We started with our first dinner at my parent's house with my Mom's side of the family. We ate until we were stuffed. It makes me hungry again just thinking about it.Rylee had a little bruise on her cheek and insisted on wearing a band-aid to make it feel better. Isn't she so cute??

Dan caught a little snooze in between meals. Sweet dreams honey, dream of more mashed potatoes and yams...
We ended our day with the Dowdles and another delicious dinner. The mashed potatoes Lacey made were mouth watering--so good!! I always love the way the Dowdle kids fight over who gets the last slice of pie for leftovers.
We are very thankful for our loving families, the support they give us, and just for having them in our lives. We love you guys!!

**Thanksgiving 2009**

*November 26th*

The Best Hubby Ever!!

2009-12-11T16:16:00.006-07:00

He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me...I know he loves me (and I'm not talking about Edward), I'm talking about my fabulous hubby!! I know he loves me because he puts up with the quirky things I get myself into. For the last 2 years our wedding Anniversary has been on the same day as the Twilight and New Moon releases. And for the last 2 years I have drug my hubby to the mid-night showings on our Anniversary. He says it's hard to compete with Edward at mid-night on our Anniversary. Yep he loves me!!

This year I bought tickets to the Edward themed theater. We got a bag full of Edward merchandise (yes Dan got one too) and we got to sit in the Edward theater. I had to use the ladies room so I sent Dan in to our seats, when I walked in the theater I looked up and saw Dan sitting in the middle of a ton of Edwards--it was so funny! He looked thrilled. Yep he loves me!!
I feel very lucky to have a hubby like Dan. This year we celebrated our 13th Anniversary. It's hard to believe we have been married that long. He's a great hubby and yep I love him too!!

**November 20, 2009**

My 3 Bed Bugs

2009-12-11T15:47:00.004-07:00

November just flew by for me, probably because I spent most of the month taking care of all the little sickies at our house. Baylee came down with the flu first, the next afternoon Brinley got it, and the day after that Rylee was down too.
I had all 3 with high fevers, horrible coughs, and sick bellies down at the same time. And it stuck around for about 6 days with each girl. They loved it though, being sick together taking over my bed. They snuggled each other and watched lots of dvds. It made for a very long 2 weeks for me though. Although I think they're pretty cute all snuggled in the bed together.
**Mid-November 2009**

Princess for the Day!

2009-12-10T11:00:00.006-07:00

So Rylee's birthday celebration didn't end at Red Robin, it continued on to the next day (which was her actual birthday). She was the Princess for the Day (although in her mind she is THE Princess everyday). She has on her new birthday outfit. Her skirt has sparkles on it and really sparkles when you are outside. Dan said it reminded him of Edward and asked if I bought that particular skirt on purpose, I really hadn't thought of it that way but now it is my favorite skirt on her. He calls this skirt her Edward skirt and thinks I should take it back to the store. I wasn't surprised when I asked Rylee what kind of cake she wanted for her big day and she answered with "pink cuk cakes". It seems to be the favorite birthday dessert with my girls. If you look close you can see that Rylee put her finger in 2 of the cupcakes marking them for her. She wanted one with sprinkles and one without. She blew out her candles and quickly had her 2 cupcakes gone. She didn't waste anytime because she new presents were next.
We told her she had to go sit on the birthday chair and be good and we would open presents. She quickly got there and folded her arms and waited patiently.

She got some fun presents...money, baby dolls, Christmas dolls, a princess crown, Sleeping Beauty dress, glitter ball, really cute clothes, and some magnet letters. Can you say spoiled?!?! She loved it all!!

We had our family over for pizza and cupcakes which made for a fun filled day for her. She was the Princess for the Day and she knew it. We love you our little Princess Rylee. Happy Birthday!

**November 8, 2009**

Thriving Threes

2009-12-09T23:05:00.005-07:00

Where does the time go? I can't believe my little baby Rylee is 3. She's not much of a baby anymore. She definitely does not act like one, she acts like she's 17 with an attitude. Attitude or not we still love this funny little girl!!Red Robin was the choice for her birthday dinner. She loves, loves, loves the mac-n-cheese and chocolate milk there. She was being silly at dinner and loving all the attention.
They brought us some ice cream for her birthday. It was bigger than her, but she didn't have any problem eating the entire thing with a little help from her older sisters.

Since Brinley's birthday back in August, we have been telling Rylee that she has the next birthday in our family. So for the few months before her birthday she kept telling us that "her birthday was next year". Everyday we would hear her say "My bird day next yeear". We would try to correct her and say that it was next, not next year and she would get mad at us and say next year. So we just went along with her until the big day. Then on the big day she kept saying "my bird day all da time". Happy 3rd Birthday you crazy little monkey!! Our family would be pretty boring without you!
**Celebrated the day before on Saturday, November 7, 2009**

Silver Lake

2009-11-16T15:09:00.003-07:00

A few Sundays ago, we went with Grandpa Jed, Grandma Debbie and Krista for a drive up in the mountains to see the changing leaves. Dan decided that he wanted to go for a little hike around Silver lake. It had just snowed a few days before and we didn't have our coats-only jackets and sweatshirts. It was cccold!! The scenery was beautiful and made for some fun picture moments...
My Mom and Dan are such a cute couple!

The girls were being silly with Aunt Krista!

It ended up being a lot of fun, cold and all. We ended our little hike with a snowball fight. I think Grandpa and Baylee won.

One More Week...

2009-11-13T10:34:00.003-07:00

One more week, one more week!! I can't wait! Can you tell who my favorite character is?

Halloween Fun 2009

2009-11-12T14:20:00.006-07:00

BEWARE OF THE SCARY MEGA HALLOWEEN POST...

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love this time of year, dressing up, the delicious food, and the candy! My cute girls love it too. They spent a month on the computer deciding on their Halloween costumes.
Baylee had the hardest time deciding. She just couldn't make up her mind. After many long hours of searching for the right costume she came up with her Peaced Out Hippie attire.

She went into full character as soon as her costume was on. She boogied all night long and flashed the peace sign to everyone. Love it girl!!

Brinley has known for a while that she wanted to be Jasmine and what a beautiful Princess she was.

She walked around gracefully for the night and loved combing her beautiful long, black hair. What a beauty!!

Rylee was thrilled that she got to wear her Belle dress so much. She loves this dress and asked me everyday for a month if she could wear it (I had to finally hide it).

She twirled and danced around all night. Her favorite part was her "globs" (gloves). My favorite part was her eyelashes. We put make-up on her and her eyes were beautiful. Watch out boys!!

Dan is always creative! He comes up with his own attire at a cheap price. This year he dressed as Dwight Schrute from The Office (he LOVES that show!!). He spent a whopping $6.00 on his mustard shirt from the DI. He borrowed the tie and glasses and had the suit. He was in full character all night too, he even brought beets from the beet farm to the Halloween party we went to. What a nut!!

This year I couldn't make up my mind on what to be. At one party I was a Spider Witch. At another party I was Facebook (got the idea from Jim on The Office TV show). And on Halloween I had a "Bat Hair Day".

Halloween is always a fun and crazy time for us. This year we partied all month long. The girls had their Halloween Carnival at the school. We hung out there for hours playing games, doing fun crafts and activities. The cotton candy is always the favorite part. Brinley has a new friend named Brinley. They are in the same kindergarten class. Their teacher calls them Brinley D. and Brinley M. They had fun hanging out at the carnival.

Then the youth in our ward host a Halloween Party for the Primary kids. We have some great youth in our ward. The kids had a blast playing all the games there. It was crazy fun!!

It's tradition to make our favorite sugar cookies every year for Halloween. I had my 3 little helpers "helping" me. Really it was more of a big mess but that's OK we had fun. The cookies were so delicious!!

My sweet sister had a big Halloween party, however she doesn't look so sweet in her bloody police outfit. We had yummy taco soup and played Halloween Bingo. I won Twilight prizes--yippy!!

We stopped by Grandpa Dowdle's house to wish him a scary Halloween. We had pictures with Dan's sister Mindy and her family. Say cheese...

To top our Halloween off we finally went Trick-or-Treating. We went to the Carter's house and partied with the neighbors. There was more yummy food and lots of fun. The kids had a blast getting all the candy. It didn't take long for them to have it spread all over the floor and eating it.

I love, love, love Halloween. It's a good thing it's over, I think I gained 10 lbs from all the food and parties!!

Pumpkin Carvin' 2009

2009-11-12T13:06:00.004-07:00

My 3 little girlies were so excited to carve their home grown pumpkins this year. They had so much fun watching THEIR pumpkin grow all summer long.
Cleaning out the guts is sooo messy!

Oooey Goooey!
Brinley even got pumpkin guts on her head. She was trying to look inside her pumpkin and went a little too far in.
Rylee loved it. This is the only time she can make a big mess and get away with it.

The top green pumpkin is Baylee's she painted at school and named Frankin' Poo. The next one down is Brinley's. She wanted the whole family on her pumpkin. We only cut out one person and she drew the rest on. That one person took a while to cut out. The bottom pumpkin is Baylee's also. She cut out a Tiger and it was her own design. She wouldn't let any one help her or see what she was doing.
The big U was Dan's this year. I usually do the U but let him do it this time. Our neighbors give us a bad time because we like the Utah Utes so much. My pumpkin is a bat. I never go into this much detail for pumpkin carving but thought it would be fun to do this time. It took way too long (thus the reason Brinley only got one person cut out of her pumpkin!). It took forever and made it hard to help the girls. It was fun though. I think I'll stick with the U next year.

Rylee wanted Polka dots. Her idea. It turned out crazy though. I bought a LCD light to put in a different pumpkin this year and it had colored flashing lights (I didn't notice that when I bought it) so we put it in her pumpkin and it was like a disco ball. She loved it!!
I love Halloween and carving pumpkins!!

Pumpkin Pickin'

2009-11-04T14:19:00.006-07:00

We have really enjoyed having our backyard finished this year. Dan and my Dad worked very hard putting our yard in and I have to say they did a great job. We love having grass to run around on, the girls love their new swing set, Dan loves the water fountain he made and my favorite is having a garden.

I love the fresh veggies you get from having a garden. We decided to grow our own pumpkins this year and they took over the garden. The vines were growing half way down our patio. We also had tons of tomatoes and zucchini. We tried watermelon, green peppers, and squash too but didn't have a big success with them.
At the beginning of October we had cold weather and most of our plants in the garden froze, so it was time to clean it out and pick the pumpkins. Rylee was Dan's little helper. She was bossing him around telling him to pick the pumpkins faster.

We ended up with 12 pumpkins. We thought we only had 10 but as we were cleaning up the garden we found 2 more hidden in the mass of vines. Most of them were still green, but they quickly turned orange as the weather warmed up again.

Dan gave Rylee the job of picking tomatoes. She loved it. Our tomatoes were mouth watering. I would eat one almost every night with a little salt and pepper--yummy!!

Rylee found that the zucchini was quite entertaining. She kept "calling" us. She was on the other end of the patio and kept yelling, "hello, hello are you there". She would call Grandma, her friend Hudson, Grandpa, and then Daddy...

To her surprise, Daddy answered and they had a great conversation over the zucchini. It was fun entertainment!

Our zucchini was a huge success. I made zucchini bread for 2 months and just kept giving it away and freezing some. My good friend Jami gave me a great recipe that freezes well. We just pull out a loaf when we want some more. We'll get to enjoy it all winter long.

It's seemed like the vines never ended. They just kept going, and going, and going...

It was fun to say that we grew our own pumpkins this year. Although I do love the pictures you get at the pumpkin patch. O-well, sometimes it's good to mix things up a bit. I think our pumpkins looked great in our yard!

Homemade Suckers

2009-11-03T13:21:00.003-07:00

One of my favorite things helping my Mom make as a little kid was her homemade suckers. They were my favorite and so fun to watch her make. Well I still love making them and so do my little girls. We have a little sucker business as Baylee likes to call it. During the warmer months we make suckers and sell them to the kids in the neighborhood. Our neighbors love them and ask all the time when we're making more.

My job is to make the candy. Call me crazy but I just don't like the girls around the hot syrup. Baylee and Brinley's job is to get all the sucker molds set up. Rylee likes to help too but usually she is off in the corner with a sucker she in not suppose to be eating.
We have scouted the valley out for all different kinds of flavors and coloring. Banana Creme is my favorite, but the girls love Cotton Candy and Bubble gum.
It usually takes us about 5 hours to make 155 suckers (the syrup takes awhile to boil). I have two batches going at the same time. What takes the most time is the clean up. I have to scrape sucker syrup off my stove top.

We then head outside to start selling. We are usually sold out in an hour. The girls make about $45.00 each time we sell them. They have been putting all the money in their savings. They have to pay me first for the ingredients but that is usually only about $5.00.

It's been a fun little business for us. We even have people come by for custom orders. Some people even ask us if this is job security. They say there is something wrong with the dentist's wife and kids selling suckers. I just smile at them and tell them to eat up and then hand them a business card!

Only kidding about the business card. I just have fun making them!!

More Camping Fun

2009-11-03T11:55:00.007-07:00

We had to sneak in one more time camping for the year before the campgrounds close for the season and the snow arrives. We headed back to one of our favorite places--The Uintah Mountains.We went back to Mirror Lake. We had so much fun last time that we decided to go have some more fun! Grandma Debbie had some fun crafts for the girls. They enjoyed the paints and painting on each other.
The rest of us enjoyed a little nap in the fresh mountain air...

We headed to the lake to fish. Baylee put a "curse" on Grandma Debbie and she was pouting because she wasn't catching any fish. Poor Grandma!!
But then Baylee lifted the "curse" and soon she got a fish and a big one at that!! Now she's happy.
My second set of parents, Gary and Rozana Wilkey, went with us this time. They have been a big part of my life. It was fun to be around them again and enjoy their company. Their oldest son Tyran and his family came up too. Gary or who I like to call Nerd got a baseball game going, right in the middle of the trees. It was crazy fun!

The weather was cold and it even snowed a little on us. We sat around the campfire and tried to stay warm.

We just couldn't get enough fishing though. It was great catching tons of fish.

Baylee is our official worm refiller. Every time we needed a new worm on our hook, we would just go to her for one. She loves it and I think it's gross!!

Brinley sat in her special spot waiting for her fish to bite. She was looking for bugs she said.

It was a nice time of year to go. We went over Labor Day weekend (I'm a little late posting this). The weather was beautiful and so was the scenery around us. It was nice and relaxing.

It had to come to an end though. Winter is coming soon, whether or not we want it here. We left the fishing and headed back to pack up camp. We were the last group to leave the campground for the season. The Park Ranger was there waiting for us to leave so he could lock up the gate for the winter. We can't wait! We'll be back!

*Labor Day Weekend 2009*

Where's My Chopsticks?

2009-10-02T14:09:00.005-06:00

So last weekend we went out with the girls in the family. Dan went to the Utah football game (they won by-the-way) with his dad and brother, so I drug my 3 little girlies with me to dinner. Crazy I know! We went to a new restaurant called Blue Fish-Japanese Grill and Sushi Bar. It's a small very nice restaurant and not many (if any) other kids there. Well I'm eating my soup and talking to my Aunt and Grandma when I hear Brinley calling me. I turned to her only to find her chopsticks sticking out of her nose. Krista was doing it too...

I look at Baylee and sure enough she has her chopsticks in her nose too! That would be my chopstick that she borrowed right under her nose. Gross!

The best part is seeing Mallory (she's new to the family, marrying my cousin Ryan in November) doing it too. We were all laughing and causing the other people at the tables to look at us.
Oh what a pretty site! Needless to say, we had to ask for more chopsticks. Something about the other ones being in noses just didn't work with my dinner!
If you like sushi you'll really like this place! I don't like sushi but still liked the food I had.

School Time

2009-09-26T20:49:00.009-06:00

School days, school days oh how excited we are for school days! With summer coming to an end and fall quickly coming, we all know what that means...School Time!

Baylee entered the 3rd grade this year! She is so excited. We switched year round tracks this year, so she's a little nervous because all her close friends are on the other track. I'm not worried though, she's a sweet girl and finds friends easily.
**Baylee's first day August 17, 2009**

Brinley is set for kindergarten! This girl has been counting down the days. Baylee started school a week earlier than Brinley and that was torture for her (and me). All I heard was, "is it school day today Mom?" for a week. Finally the big day came and she couldn't be more excited!! Baylee was excited to have her little sister join her at school. She told us that she was going to keep an eye out for Brin!
They ride their scooters to school.
And they're off...

Brinley has all her best buddies in her class. I feel sorry for her teacher!! She doesn't know what she's in for. Maddie, Brinley, Jane and Easton...they're all so excited waiting outside for their new teacher to come out to get them.

Brinley joked that she was in jail. Really she's just in the kindergarten drop off. I thought it was a cute picture of the

"jail bird".

Having fun before school starts...

At the very last minute, Easton decided that he didn't want to go to school and took off running. He made it off the school grounds and was headed home!! Bobbi had to chase him down (with the help of another mom) and carry him back to the school. He even took his shoes off so he could run faster. I'm pretty sure that Bobbi didn't think it was funny (at the time) but the rest of us did! I felt bad though, Bobbi had to go to school with Easton. It was the only way he would not cry and cooperate with the teacher. It made for a very memorable first day of kindergarten for all of us!!

I took Bobbi's other little boy home with me while she had to attend school with Easton. It was Hudson's birthday that day. He didn't mind though, he had fun playing with Rylee. By-the-way, Easton didn't have a problem going to school the next day or the next. He's doing fine! He just wanted to have a good story for his first day of kindergarten. It will make for a good story when it's time to put his wedding video together.

Brinley loved her first day. They celebrated her birthday and everything. Who could ask for a better day. She's the youngest one in her class and that worries me a little, but so far she's doing just fine! I think we have another "smarty farty" in the family. Just like her older sister Baylee.

**Brinley's first day August 25, 2009**

So Long SUMMER!!

2009-09-21T21:40:00.007-06:00

It's always a sad time of the year when we have to raise our Popsicles in the air and wave goodbye to SUMMER!! We will miss you SUMMER!! We're not ready to let you go. We love the long warm days, running around in our swimsuits, having fun. It's been another great SUMMER. We were busy as always...camping, fishing, swimming, bike rides, swinging, playing at the park, picnics, family walks, ice cream, BBQ's, counting the stars, selling suckers, playing with friends, getting a tan, relaxing, and just having fun!
Until next year...I think I need another Popsicle to make the sadness go away!
Elsie, Brinley, Baylee, Lillie, and Maddi enjoying their last days of SUMMER!!

Build-A-Bear Fun!!

2009-09-18T10:05:00.005-06:00

After a fun birthday week of presents, presents and more presents and parties, parties, and more parties, Brinley ended it with some Build-A-Bear fun. My girls love BAB (so do I--where was it when I was their ages???). We gathered Brin's best buddies and off we went...
They started out picking their bear (or animal) and decided on a name...

Then it was time to march around the store with their animal on their heads-singing...

Time to bring their friend to life at the stuffing machine...

Give it a heart and make the BAB promise to love, dress, cuddle and play with your bear...

Time for a bath before we dress them...

Way too many clothes to choose from, but I want this one and that one, and over there that one too, oh and the shoes...

Finally they are all dressed and everyone is happy! Don't forget to sign the Birthday Bear for Brinley

Did we have fun??

YYYYEEEESSSS!!!!!!

We love our new friends! And Brinley loves her friends...Jane, Lillie, Easton, Brinley, Maddi, and Kaden

How cute!

Seriously more presents?? This girl is so loved (and spoiled)

Cake time (or should I say cupcake time)!!

Cupcakes are so yummy! Brinley had so much fun with her cute little friends.

What a birthday!! Turning 5 is so fun.

Happy Birthday Brinley Bear!!!

**August 28, 2009**

Fun To Be 5

2009-09-18T09:02:00.004-06:00

Happy 5th Birthday Brinley Bear!!
Wow where does the time go. I can't believe that Brin is 5. This girl loves to be in the spotlight. She had everything for her birthday planned out exactly how she wanted it. First on the list--PRESENTS! She loves presents and who doesn't? So many fun things--money, Barbies, a new alarm clock for kindergarten, HSM dolls, and clothes--everything she wanted!!

She had plenty of helpers there to open her gifts with her. Her "boyfriend" Easton and his brother Canon came over to bring us some cinnamon rolls and stayed to help open presents. They're like the sons we never had. We love the Carter boys!!! Of course Baylee and Rylee were right in there too.

Her birthday was the same day as the Oquirrh Mtn. Temple dedication. So it made for an extra special day for her. We had a quiet and relaxing Sunday. Most of our family was out of town so we just celebrated with our own little fam. Brinley ordered fish sticks and homemade mac-n-cheese for her birthday dinner (yum I guess?!?). And she wanted chocolate cake puffs for her cake (last year for her b-day all she wanted was the Pancake Puff you see on TV--and that's what she got. She loves it!). So we made chocolate puffs and filled them with hot fudge and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. They were yummy!

She loved her day. Everything was how she wanted it except for one thing. I decorate their door to their bedroom on their big day. This year I bought big stars to stick on the door (like a movie star). I put a silver star on her door and she wanted pink because that is what Sharpay from High School Musical would have!! Oops! I'll have to get it right next year!

So much fun, so little time! The fun didn't end on her birthday though, we celebrated for a week. More birthday fun to come...

**August 23, 2009**

To Live In The Shadow...

2009-09-09T10:33:00.007-06:00

What an exciting year it has been for us watching this new beautiful temple come to life. We feel so lucky to live in the shadow of the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple. It brought us many opportunities to serve even before it was dedicated. I worked with the Youth in our Stake as we prepared a dance to celebrate this new temple. We performed the dance for President Monson. Then Dan and I volunteered with the open house that was held during June and July. We helped with food, parking, security, and I even got the chance to sit at the front door and count (with a clicker) the many people that came from all over to see the beautiful inside. In my small 5 hour shift that day, I counted almost 2000 people. I read that over 600,000 people came to visit the temple before it was dedicated on August 23rd.
During June we had horrible weather. Rain, wind, hail, and lots of lightning. Angel Moroni was struck by lightning during that time and his right arm and face turned black. It looks like a shadow on his arm but really it's burnt. It stayed that way until right before the dedication. They replaced it with a new and very shiny Angel Moroni. We sat out in our driveway and watched them take down the burnt one and replace it with the new one. It was pretty fun watching that amazing task.
We went with Dan's dad Dave and sister Lacey and my family to the open house. The inside is beautiful. It was nice to be able to share this experience with the ones we love.
This is the view we get when we drive down Bangerter Highway. Every time we drive by it, Rylee will yell "there's the Temple!". You can see it from all over the southwest end of the valley, so she's constantly yelling that. Sometimes she'll break out singing I Love To See The Temple.

This is my favorite! At night, the the temple lights up the sky. It sits on a hill so it looks like it's just floating. Some times I find myself just staring at it. You could say it's breath taking!!

The Oquirrh Mountains behind it make the perfect back drop. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful place! And we're extra lucky to have a temple so close to our house.

Temple Dedication

August 23, 2009

Camping...Harris Style

2009-09-02T22:26:00.005-06:00

We love to go camping, especially when you get to go in the 'Harris Hilton". My parents bought a new trailer at the beginning of the summer and what a nice trailer it is (flat screen TV and all). OK, so it's luxury style camping but it's still camping and we have fun!
Grandpa Jed and Ry Ry just chillin'. What better thing to do when you're in the middle of the mountains?!?!
Fishing tops the list too. We all love fishing! We went to Mirror Lake in the Uintah Mountains over the 24th of July weekend. The fishing was awesome. The girls loved reeling them in. Baylee played with the worms and loved re-worming the hooks after everyone caught one. GROSS!
Rylee loved the fire. We would catch her just staring at it. The s'mores were pretty tasty too. Can't go camping and not have s'mores!!

It was a little cool and rainy that weekend. We spent a lot of time in the Harris Hilton watching movies on the flat screen, playing games, and doing crafts with Grandma Debbie. No complaints here! It was fun times.

The food was delicious too. It's always better in the mountains.

Dan loves fishing the most. He would eat, drink, sleep fishing if I would let him. He went out on the lake in his float tube for hours.

The girlies loved watching Dan in the float tube. They would cheer him on every time he would get a fish.

There's just something about being in the mountains camping. I love it- always have! Can't wait until the next adventure in the Harris Hilton!

*July 23 - July 27th 2009*

Scary Moment

2009-08-26T22:51:00.003-06:00

Tonight we had a very scary moment. Our cute little Brinley Bear fell from the monkey bars. We were at our neighborhood park, Dan was coaching Baylee's soccer team and I was sitting in on a Neighborhood Watch meeting while Brin and Rylee were playing on the playground. About halfway through the meeting, I heard someone fall and hit the ground-hard. I looked and saw it was Brinley. I ran to her and when I got there she could not breath. Her face was turning red-fast! She wasn't moving much either. I heard my neighbor say that she fell on her lower back and bum. I tried to help her get her breath and laid her back slowly. Mean while one of the police officers there for our Neighborhood Watch meeting came running over to help. He could see that Brin was struggling. He immediately got on his phone and connected with the Unified Fire Department. The paramedics were on their way. Brinley was still having a hard time breathing and her eyes were rolling all over. She was in a lot of pain. I just wanted to pick her up and hold her, but I knew that I couldn't move her in case her back or neck was broken. Dan quickly came running over to us. Soon after the paramedics were there. They quickly checked her out. We sat there watching her for several minutes and she was getting better with every second. After they assessed her and told us that her back wasn't broken, we started to move her slowly. All she wanted to do was go home. They continued to watch her and offered to drive her to the hospital to have further testing done, but didn't feel like it was absolutely necessary. We all decided to take her home and watch her for the night. I called my Dad (who is our favorite paramedic) and asked if he would come over to check her. He agreed with the others that we should just watch her. As the night went on, she was moving a little more, but in pain. She was very sad and most worried about missing her 3rd day of kindergarten tomorrow. I told her we would see how she is in the morning. It was not the evening I was planning on. It was a very scary moment! I'm thankful for the kindness of so many people tonight stepping in to help. I think she'll be OK, but she'll be sore that's for sure.

When The Sun Goes Down...

2009-08-25T13:20:00.025-06:00

We'll Be Groovin'...right on over to the Rio Tinto Stadium for the Kenny Chesney Sun City Carnival concert! Last February, my sweet little sister Krista gave me one of my all time favorite birthday gifts, a ticket to the Kenny Chesney concert that was coming in July. She bought one for my Mom also for Mother's Day. What a sweetheart! We all love Kenny and have seen him in concert every summer for the last 4 or so years. Krista told me they were good seats, but I didn't realize how good they were until we kept walking closer and closer to the stage...

We were right down next to it! Holy cow I'm thinking, how fun is this concert going to be!!! Fun, fun, fun!!
It was so HOT that night. It seriously was like a 120 degrees (and that's not an exaggeration) in that stadium. We were sweating so bad. We joked all night that Kenny was sweating on us because we were so close to him. Might I say he is a hottie with one sexy voice!

The concert was awesome! I filled all four of my camara disks up with pictures. He is quite the entertainer. We were groovin' all night!

We all had so much fun that each one of us bought a hat and t-shirt to remember this fabulous concert.

So my favorite part of the concert, well every part was my fav, but my absolute fav was when Kenny left the stage for a minute and came back out with a University of Utah hat on. Go Kenny!! The crowd went wild. How can it get any better than that? My favorite country man with my favorite sports team. AWESOME!!

The show opened with Lady Antebellum on stage. Great group! I didn't know many of their songs but loved their style. I will be looking forward to many great songs out by them in the future.

Following Lady A, Miranda Lambert came out on stage. Can you say Snooty! She's a little to "Redneck" for me. She put on a great show, but what an attitude she has. O-well, it was still fun entertainment!

Thanks Mom and Krista for a wild night! And thanks Krista for the fun birthday gift. That was one concert I'll never forget!!

**July 23, 2009**

Portage Reunion 2009

2009-08-18T15:23:00.008-06:00

Every July, my Dad's side of the family holds the famous Harris Reunion in good old Portage, Utah. It is a very little town that truly does exist. Sometimes when I tell people about it, I wonder if they really believe me. So here's the proof...

Portage is a small town that was founded in 1867. There is a population of about 218 people but when we have our reunion we almost double that. There use to be a little store called Moe's that was just outside of the town, but Moe died and the store closed up. So now it looks like this (above picture). Someone painted part of it. It was all white.

Portage is about 5 minutes south of the Utah/Idaho border. Seriously if you blink you will miss it. It is a little clump of trees just west of the freeway. When you get off the freeway you take a llllooonnngg road into town. The top picture is driving into town (see the trees?). The bottom picture is heading back to the freeway. Funny both pictures look the same. Did I mention that it's in the middle of well nowhere?!

This is the white house my Grandpa Harris grew up in. There are 6 brother and sisters that grew up in this very small house. When it was first built, the right side of the house wasn't there. It was added on years later. It's very old!! Sometimes when I'm in the house I wonder if the floor is going to fall in. All the pictures and furniture are the same from when Grandpa was younger.

This is my Grandpa Norman Harris. He is 1 of 4 still alive from the Big 6.

We have family come from all over to stay for the week. We all just pick a favorite spot on the lawn and either set up our tents, trailers, or tent trailer. That's my parent's trailer in the front. They park their trailer there every time. This is the front of the house...

This is the back of the house...

This is my Grandpa's motor home. He parks it there every year, exact same spot!

We have a family auction. Everyone contributes homemade items. I brought bags of chocolate chip cookies that sold for $7.00-$8.00 a bag. Baylee decorated the bags for me. Kevin was the auctioneer this year.

It doesn't take long for Dan to find his favorite spot. Sweet dreams honey!! Really there's not anything else to do.

We just sit in our lawn chairs and talk or sleep or eat or sleep or play games or sleep or do the Portage wave or well...sleep.

There's like a hundred lawn chairs on the side of the house.

We do manage to walk up to the park, which is right behind the house. There we play baseball, swing, eat, sleep some more, and visit.

We take a night and go swimming in Malad, ID. The pool is in the center of town and they close it to the public so it's just us Harris' having fun.

After, we invade the Malad Drive-In. The food is really good and the shakes are delicious. I always feel sorry for the people working there when they see us coming.
We have been going to Portage for years. I remember being this age standing in front of the house. My girls love it and love seeing their cousins. We always joke that it's so boring and hot, but I think if you asked any Harris, they would tell you they love going. Until next year...

**July 18-20, 2009**

Fun Under The Stars

2009-08-05T11:26:00.008-06:00

If anyone really knows me, they know that I always have some sort of crazy project that I am involved in and stressing over! Whether it's with my girls, church calling, dental stuff, my husband or just life. Well life threw me for a loop on Father's Day. Dan and I were called to be a Ma and Pa for our Stake Trek. Our Stake was headed to Martin's Cove in Wyoming for 4 days. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and an experience our Stake Presidency said "would change our lives". Awesome right? Well yes, except for the fact that they gave us 2 weeks notice and expected us to have everything together the other Ma's and Pa's had who have been working on this for the last 7 months. EEEK! Plus they asked us the same week as Baylee's birthday party, birthday, and baptism. NO STRESS!?!? I cried for 2 days trying to figure out how I was going to do EVERYTHING. Dan was a great support and stepped in to help. We had wonderful neighbors and parents who stepped in too and volunteered supplies, babysitters, stories, taking my other responsibilities with my YW calling, and everything else. Other Ma and Pa's called and helped also and miraculously everything came together. We were ready in one week with a week to spare (really we were walking--trying to get into better shape to master all the walking ahead of us, reading Pioneer stories, and praying for the Lord's help with this exciting last minute adventure. I felt better about going and stopped stressing (mostly). Then the very next day I ran into some health problems (sorry don't want to explain and NO I'M NOT PREGNANT!). I talked with my doctor and she suggested that I not go on Trek. WHAT??? I didn't know what to do!! My Dad came over and gave me a blessing with Dan and said I would be able to make the right decision to go or not. So for 2 days I prayed, prayed and prayed and on Friday morning I felt that I should not be going and didn't feel well either. I couldn't figure out why everything had fallen into place for us to go except for me. Even worse I felt bad for Dan that he wasn't able to go either. It was very frustrating! So to make a long story short we had a very stressful 2 weeks (thus the reason I'm soooo far behind on my blogging), 3 days off work (and we hardly ever take time off work), a Mom that felt like crap (to put it nicely) and nothing to do. Why do these things always happen to me I thought. Hardly ever does something happen right the first time for us. Usually there is some sort of a challenge involved!

Well my cute and very spontaneous husband that I love very much stepped in to lighten our Spirits and decided that we needed to go camping. First I thought, OK I can't go on Trek but I can go camping? How does that work? Well he meant camping in our very own backyard. He took care of everything! What a sweetheart!!

First it was time to set up the tent. The girls had fun "helping" if that's what you want to call it. Hey at least none of the poles broke right!?!

Then it was tinfoil dinners on the patio. They were so good!
OK, this was my favorite! S'mores over the BBQ. This was so fun, everyone loved it.
Best dang s'mores I've ever tasted. I love camping and s'mores over the fire but these were even better.
After our very tasty s'mores we headed into the tent. We played games for hours under the lantern. I know it was almost 1:00 in the morning before we finished the last game. Baylee who usually wins every game kept losing and Brinley won everything. It was pretty funny. I think Rylee wore herself out eating 4, yes 4 big s'mores. She was out after 1 game.

We slept with the rain fly off so you could see all the stars and the very BRIGHT moon. It made for a cool night. It didn't matter though, we snuggled into our beds and slept tight.

The sun came up fast and was very bright. The girls headed into the house and made us breakfast. What sweet girls I have!!

After breakfast, the girls wanted to go swim in the "lake". OK so it was our blow up pool but hey we were camping so to them it was the lake. They spent the entire day playing in the lake.

Life has slowly started to settle down, however every time I say that something new pops up. We enjoyed having Dan home for 3 days. That doesn't happen very often or ever. I'm sad we missed out on Trek, but I'm sure there will be a time that we get to go. Thank you to everyone that helped with our Trek preparations (you all know who you are!). We couldn't have gotten everything together on our own. Thanks also to everyone and their support with my crazy health issues. I'm very thankful for all of you and the service you have shown to our family. Seriously I should right a book with some of the adventures we have, actually I guess that's why I have a blog!

**July 9, 2009**

Daddy Dan

2009-08-03T17:33:00.004-06:00

What a great Daddy we have!!

We love you!!!

Father's Day 2009

4th of July 2009

2009-08-03T16:36:00.008-06:00

I may be behind at posting this, but at least I'm getting it done (I guess)!! The 4th of July is one of my favorite Holidays (only if it's not a 100+ degrees outside). This year the weather was pretty nice, not too hot. It helped make for an extra fun day!
Why is it that I can only get Baylee to smile normal and Brin and Ry Ry love to pull faces?!?
We started the Holiday off with the Riverton Parade the night before. I can't remember ever missing this parade, well maybe once since I was a kid. We sit in front of Aunt Enda and Uncle Ruke's house, eat our Subways and wait for the taffy. You can count of getting plenty of taffy at this parade. They just keep throwing and throwing and throwing... Then it's time to get up early on the 4th and head to the park in Murray for breakfast with the Dowdles. We had so much food there we could have had breakfast every morning for a week. It was good food though and it's always fun to eat outside in the early morning!!
As Rylee would say, "Yummy, yummy to my tummies!"
The kids love to play at the park and ride their scooters on the Jordan River Parkway.

Most of the Dowdle cousins live out of state. These are the only kiddos here in Utah. Mindy (Dan's sister) has 3 boys--Nathan, Ben, and Collin.

After an afternoon nap for all of us, we headed to our neighbors, the Carter's, and had a BBQ. Bobbi always has good food for us. We enjoyed our food and then headed to the fireworks here in Riverton.

Our little buddies the Carter boys--Hudson, Canon, and Easton.
After watching the fireworks at Riverton Park, we headed back to Carter's house for more fireworks. I think we were the last 2 houses to go to bed that night. We just wanted to stay and play outside!

Baylee's Baptism Day

2009-07-28T16:41:00.007-06:00

Baylee's Baptism Day was a very special day! She was very excited to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We were very happy that she made the decision to be baptized.
The night before her baptism we had a bad rain storm. After the storm we had a double rainbow. It was the brightest and biggest rainbow that I have ever seen. You could see where it started and where it stopped. It was absolutely beautiful. This picture doesn't even come close as to how pretty it was. Baylee said it was a sign that her baptism day would be perfect! And it was!!
We started the morning off with pictures in the backyard before we headed to the Stake Center. Baylee was very excited, so were her sisters.

Here are the famous pictures of her and Dad in their white clothes.

Right after Baylee was baptized, I met her in the dressing room to help her get dressed, but before I did, I took a minute to hold her. I knew at that moment she was perfect, no sins, I thought to myself I want her to stay this way forever. I know that she can't stay perfect forever, but I will always cherish those few minutes that she was!!

After her baptism we had a luncheon in our newly finished backyard. Dan and my Dad worked very hard to get it done before this day. We had a BBQ and cake. We had a very special day celebrating with our family and friends. Thank you to everyone that gave her a special gift for her baptism day. She has enjoyed all of her gifts! My sweet and perfect Baylee. Mom and Dad love you very much!

**June 27, 2009**

More Birthday Fun

2009-07-28T16:11:00.005-06:00

In our house we seem to celebrate birthday's all month long. Here is more birthday fun for Baylee...

First it was off to Chipotle for dinner. This was one of our favorite places to eat while living in Oregon. We were so excited when they finally came to Utah! Yummy chicken tacos...
Then it was back to our house for PRESENTS!! Aunt Krista gave Baylee this Hannah Montana wig. It made her look so different with long, blonde hair. Baylee got a new Madam Alexander Birthday doll to go in her new room, lots of money, clothes, and some toys. She also got her new scripture bag and scriptures, and her CTR ring.
It was a busy but very fun Birthday for her! Happy 8th Birthday Baylee Rose!

It's Party Time!!

2009-07-21T20:39:00.009-06:00

That's right it's PARTY TIME!! Baylee has been planning her High School Musical Party since last year. We didn't let the girls have parties last year because they got their swing set instead (although they really didn't get it until a couple of months ago because we were trying to get the backyard finished). So since March Baylee has been planning the food, games, prizes, friends to invite, and even the PJ's.

We found a great deal on these cute HSM PJ's--$2.00 a set, can't beat that! We had 11 girls running around in their cute PJ's.
We started the night making little pizza's and playing in the backyard. About a half an hour into the party I started wondering what was I thinking letting Baylee have 11 friends over for a sleepover. It was total craziness. Pizza sauce EVERYWHERE and lots of high pitched giggles and screams. Dan and I looked at each other and said it's going to be a long night. These girls were so excited for the sleepover. You could just feel the energy in the air. I just wanted a cute "normal" picture of them but it took a few shots to get one. It was hard to get them to smile for a normal picture, they wanted to be silly.
After cleaning up pizza sauce, we managed to get them to settle down a bit and play some HSM games. Baylee planned all the games and even helped me put them together. We played Wildcats Basketball (throwing paper balls into a laundry basket), High School Musical Walk (like a cake walk), Wildcats Bingo, and HSM Trivia. Again lots of giggles and screams. They ended up having a screaming contest to see who could scream the loudest. The dogs in the neighborhood all started barking because they were so high pitched and loud. They wanted to stay outside all night, finally at 10:00 we made them come in.

Then it was Baylee's favorite time-time to open presents. She got some fun gifts. Her friends spoil her!
You can't have a party without cake, however my girls like donut cakes better, especially when the donuts are from Dunford Donuts. Yummy!!

We finally sent them upstairs to make their beds and to try to settle them down (it was almost midnight). I turned on HSM 1 for them to watch. Some of them watched while others played in the toy room. As soon as HSM 1 was over they quickly put in the 2nd one. At 2:00 AM I went back upstairs to tuck them all in bed and turn the lights out and told them they had to go to sleep. Lets just say I ended up going back upstairs 4 more times before most of them were asleep.

Morning quickly came and I thought they would at least sleep in a little, but no they were wide awake by 7:00 AM and watching HSM 3. It was High School Musical marathon here. We had blueberry pancakes, eggs and bacon with Sharpay Smoothies for breakfast. It was finally 10:00 AM and time to go home. Baylee said her party went by too fast, for me not fast enough. We had fun but I don't think we will have anymore sleepovers until Brinley turns 8. That gives me a few years to prepare!

**June 19, 2009**

It's Great To Be 8

2009-07-15T13:47:00.004-06:00

My sweet little Baylee Rose turned 8 on June 24th. Here are the top 8 things I love about her...

**She has the biggest heart**

**She is always happy**

**She always puts others first**

**She is a great helper**
**She is a wonderful example to those around her**

**She is a peace maker**

**She is very smart**

**She is very talented**

Shop 'till You Drop

2009-07-12T11:30:00.007-06:00

One of my favorite times of the year is when we go to St. George for our girls weekend out. We have so much fun! I go with my Mom, Sister, Grandma, Aunt, Cousin, and Baylee. We decided to go in June this year because last year when we walked out of Tuacahn at midnight in August is was still over 100 degrees outside. Way too HOT for me!! The weather was perfect this time, I really can't complain. We left on Baylee's last day of school and headed straight to Cracker Barrel in Spanish Fork. We always spend way too much time there eating and SHOPPING. It's a little country store with some fun items to buy. From there it's off to St. George. As soon as we got into town we headed to get pedicures. We had to prepare our feet for 4 days of SHOPPING and having fun!

Here's all of our pretty toes. My cute Grandma has the green-plaid toes. I think we all liked hers the most. She's so stylish and might I add the best SHOPPER of us all.
Then we checked into the hotel and snarfed some pizza down before we headed over to Tuacahn to see Annie. Loved it by-the-way!
We made it just in time. Here is my Mom Debbie, Sister Krista and Baylee...
my cousin Brooke, Aunt Judy, and Grandma Ina...
Baylee sat on the edge of her seat during Annie. She sang along with the songs and even danced a little in her seat. She thought it was pretty cool to get her picture taken with the STAR of the show--Annie herself!
And the other STAR of the show--Sandy the dog. Sandy's real name is Booger. Baylee thought that was the funniest name to give a dog.

The next day, we started the day off with a nice relaxing massage from Massage Envy. Baylee plays her DS and eats circus peanuts in the waiting room while the rest of us are off relaxing. After our not long enough massage we headed next door to see UP in 3-D. We loved it!!! After the movie it was off to the stores for yes-SHOPPING!

You can't go to St. George and not go to Pancho and Lefty's. It is my all time favorite place to eat (I just wish there was one up in Salt Lake). We all ordered the Shrimp Enchilada, even Baylee loves it. I think Baylee drank most of the salsa. She just kept stuffing the salsa in with a few chips.

After dinner we headed to Tuacahn again to see the opening night of Footloose. Loved that one too. I didn't get any pictures that night. Oops!

We usually only go to St. George for 3 days, but decided that wasn't long enough, so we stayed one more day and drove into Las Vegas to do MORE SHOPPING!! The new outlet mall there is amazing. So many fun stores to SHOP in.

I spent most of my time in the Disney Store with Baylee. She was in Disney Heaven and wanted everything in the store and if she didn't want it for herself, she wanted to buy it for her sisters back home with Dad.

Later we went SHOPPING down the Strip. We headed down to the M&M Factory and SHOPPED some more. Now Baylee was in M&M Heaven. She loved to see all the colors of M&M's on the wall. I think she would have stayed there all day if we would have let her.

Later that night, Krista and Brooke wanted to try gambling for the first time. They both had beginners luck! Krista walked away with $100.00 and Brooke almost $800.00. Fun for them! Instead of gambling I walked around with Baylee. We went to a lion show in the MGM Grand and saw it twice. Then we headed across the street to the Excalibur to play games and SHOP some more.

After a couple hours of playing games we went on the Sponge Bob 4-D ride. Finally it was time to drive back to St. George, but not before we drove down the Strip so Baylee could see all the lights. She loved it but we wore her out and she fell asleep before we even got half way down.

Gotta start savin' now! Can wait until next year!!

June 12-15, 2009

The End of Spring

2009-07-09T16:04:00.011-06:00

I'm really behind in the blogging world. We have had so many fun events the last couple of weeks and I'm excited to tell about them, but I need to get caught up and post about our Spring activities.

Soccer

What a fun Spring soccer season we had! Baylee is awesome and so fun to watch. In the picture above she is calling Grandpa Jed and Aunt Krista letting them know that she scored a goal and that they owe her $100.00. They had a running joke that for every goal she got they owed her yes $100.00 (really it was only $1.00, but it was fun motivation for her). She had a great season and scored several times. She has been with the Green Sharks for the last 2 years, but sadly this is her last game with them. She is moving to an all girls team next year. The exciting part is that Daddy Dan will be her new coach. She's excited about the change, but sad to be leaving Coach Rob and the boys on the Green Sharks team.

Yes we did see some improvement with Brinley this Spring season. We have a deal with her, and that is every time she kicks the ball she gets $.05. Last fall she only got a quarter, but this season she totaled $1.15. Yippy, we're excited. My favorite thing she told me this season was at her first practice, she told me that she really needed to listen because she doesn't know how to play soccer. Just FYI, this is her 4th season playing soccer! She was on the Red Dragons team this time with her buddies Jane and Easton. Easton was our star player. He scored several times each game. I'm not sure, but I don't think we lost one game (who's keeping track at this age??). Brinley is moving to the same league as Baylee next year and will be on a team with kids from our neighborhood. We're excited for her and have our nickels ready for her kicks in the fall.Seriously, she would rather pose for the camera instead of playing!!!

Dance

Another fun year with dance is over again. Both girls are great dancers and I'm very proud of them for their hard work. Both of their dances were so cute to watch. My family told me it's like watching a "Minnie Me" up on the stage and that is stirs up old memories of my dance recitals years ago.

This is Brinley with her buddy Lillie (daughter of my buddy Mandi from dance many years ago). Brinley gets to move to the Mini Team next year. We're excited for this move for her. It's going to be more challenging for her but it will be a good move. She'll get to learn another dance to perform and be at dance an hour longer. Yeah Brin!!

This is Baylee with her dancing buddy Elsie (again daughter of Mandi, my dance buddy). We are super excited for Baylee. Her dance teacher wants her to move to Sr. Team and completely skip Jr. Team. Huge move for her! She'll get to compete next year in the Spring and her dancing will be more challenging also. She's been stretching everyday and preparing as much as she can for this exciting move next fall. Yeah Baylee!

Monte L. Bean Museum

2009-07-09T15:06:00.005-06:00

Baylee completed the 2nd grade in the middle of June. She loved being in the 2nd grade and loved her teacher Mrs. Rouse! She also has a best friend named Madi (Brin's best friend is Maddi also). Baylee and Madi have been in the same class the last 2 years.

Mrs. Rouse is a great teacher. We are sad that she will be leaving our school this year and moving to another school. I was hoping Brin and Rylee might have her also. At Parent Teacher Conferences, Mrs. Rouse could not come up with anything Baylee needed improvement in. She gave Baylee a perfect report card every term and nothing but great things to say about our Baylee. Yes, I'm very proud!!

This is Baylee's 2nd grade class smiling big!

At the end of the school year, I volunteered to help with the 2nd grade field trip and go to the Monte L. Bean Museum in Provo. It was a fun day with Baylee. We had a scavenger hunt finding different animals around the museum. I had 4 kids to watch over and help with the hunt. This is Cooper, Baylee, Madi and Drew.

Cooper had to touch EVERY animal even though there are signs everywhere telling you NOT TO TOUCH THE ANIMALS!! If the Liger hadn't have been in a glass case, I'm pretty sure he would have climbed on it and pretend to ride it. He also asked me the entire time there if he could swing on the elephants tusks. I think if he could have reached them he would have!! As a group we all decided that we liked the elephant the best. It was huge!

Baylee really liked this butterfly. It was a big butterfly made up of a bunch of different little butterflies. It was pretty cool.

Well again, it's hard to believe another school year has come and gone. My B Rose is growing up way too fast. It's off to the 3rd grade. Sad, but I still remember the first day of the 3rd grade for me.

Brinley's Graduation

2009-07-05T20:11:00.006-06:00

I can't believe that my little Brinley is all graduated from preschool and moving on to kindergarten. She has been attending Golden Start Preschool for the last two years. What a fun night for her. She loved getting all the attention!!
Miss Kathy is a great teacher! She's so creative with these little kids. Brinley just loves her. She kept asking me the day of her graduation what she was going to do without seeing Miss Kathy everyday. I told her luckily Miss Kathy lives down the street from us, so she could go visit her anytime. It really has been a fun two years watching Brinley grow and learn. We have all seen huge growth with this girl.

Their little program was so fun. They sang songs that they learned from the school year. Every song had some cute prop to go along with it. They even did a little play about the 3 Little Pigs. Notice Brin's piggy nose. These 10 little kids kept us laughing and definitely entertained the entire night. We had so much fun watching them having fun!!
These are 2 of Brin's best friends, Jane and Maddi. Maddi (the one in the middle) is like my 4th daughter. She lives next door and is here almost everyday. We love having her here, she just seems to fit right in with the fam.
Here are some of the little grads...

(Notice Brin's face looking at her tassel) She stood there most of the night like that. We kept telling her to move it to the side, but she didn't want to.
Hopefully by the time she graduates from High School she won't have this same look. This was the perfect way to end a perfect preschool graduation. Good job Brinley!! We're so proud.

Sleeping Beauty

2009-07-03T15:55:00.005-06:00

Rylee loves her sleep! She's always been a good sleeper. She takes a great nap, and you really don't want to be in her way if she misses her nap. However, she doesn't like to sleep in her bed. We put her to bed, snuggle her in and kiss her goodnight and remind her to stay in her bed every night. When we go into check her before we go to bed we usually find her like this...It really can't be that comfortable!! The best part is when we drag her out from under the bed, she wakes up and tells us that she needs to stay in her bed!!

Sweet dreams Ry Ry!!!

Come Up To The Mountain

2009-06-04T15:18:00.011-06:00

Yeah, I survived! Boy am I happy May is over!! At the beginning of the month, I was thinking to myself "how am I going to do ALL this?". Stress set in and we just took it day by day, sometimes minute by minute. It was a crazy month for us, but so worth the many things going on. We were busy with our usual things like soccer practice and games, dance, tumbling and swim lessons and I've got the "Taxi Mom" thing down. The thing that made it so busy was the opportunity to serve. I am in the YW Presidency in our ward and I absolutely love my calling. My cute Beehives keep me young (at least I think so). They are the sweetest girls ever and I look forward to seeing them at our weekly activities. However in May I saw them almost every day. Our Stake had the privilege to participate in the Youth Temple Celebration for the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple. "Come Up To The Mountain Of The Lord" was the theme. We have 14 wards in our stake, so that made for 325 kids that participated and ready to Come Up To The Mountain. It was AWESOME! For the last 8 weeks they have been learning a Latin American Dance that they would show at this wonderful Celebration. During May we would have practices on Tuesday nights and rehearsals at the Conference Center downtown on Thursdays and Saturdays. It was a very special opportunity for our youth and leaders. During rehearsals, we were able to walk in the "Sacred Hallways" that President Monson and the other General Authorities walk in. We went behind the stage and into areas in the Conference Center that most people don't get to go in. It was very touching. We were told that when you enter the Conference Center there is a special Spirit there and there is, you can feel it, but as you get closer to the stage were the Prophet stands it gets stronger and stronger. I could feel it. It was a very special opportunity for me and just made my testimony of the church stronger. We saw all the chairs that the Leaders of our church sit in for General Conference. They were covered in black covers. It was fun to see the view that the speakers in General Conference have. I stood where the podium usually is and looked up into all those seats, it was crazy. That room is soooooo big. It was amazing! However, I don't really want the opportunity to speak from that podium! I think I would pass out. This is some of our Mia Maids on our last rehearsal night. They are just waiting for their costumes. This same night some of the leaders were starving, so during the second time through the program we snuck out for some Lion House rolls, but unfortunately it was closed. So we headed up to the Garden Restaurant at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and the sweet Hostess gave us some rolls and tons of butter and we headed outside by the Reflecting Pool in front of the Salt Lake Temple and ate our rolls. What can I say, we had been there since 4:00 PM and didn't get home that night until 11:15 PM and we were starving. It was a lot of hard work watching the youth dance. It was a very stressful time watching our youth trying to pull this dance together. Many long hours and some very tired kids and leaders (myself included!!), but on the night of the Celebration it all came together. Many prayers were answered. President Monson was there and sat right below us. I could see him all night. President Eyring and Elder Perry were there also, along with many members of the Seventy. It is always a privilege to be in the same room as our Prophet. He brings such a special feeling to the room. Our youth were thrilled to see him. The Temple Celebration was amazing. There were 15 dance numbers from Stakes in our Temple District that all danced from some era or country. They were all awesome. They ended the Celebration by raising a Temple above the Mountain while the choir was singing. So cool! As tiring as it was I am so thankful that I got to be a part of this special Temple Celebration. Check out our Stake's blog on how it all came together. Scroll down far and you might see a familiar face teaching the dance.

Our ward also had the chance to host a Special Needs activity for the Special Needs Ward at the beginning of the month. What a very humbling activity. My cute Beehives played musical chairs with these special spirits and had so much fun. We also had our Stake Standards Night the middle of the month where they talked about the new value Virtue. The Young Men in our stake gave every Young Woman a white rose and said to them, "Thank you for being a virtuous woman". Wow was that a touching night. At the end of the month, Dan and I had the opportunity to serve in the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple for the VIP tours. I was in the Hospitality tent serving food and Dan was over parking. We spent 5 hours helping out and serving this beautiful new Temple. We get to go back and serve again next week. I can't wait!!!

I'm so thankful for this month of service! I didn't think I would make it through the month but somehow with lots of prayers I did. I will forever remember this fun experience!!

Victory!!

2009-05-21T15:05:00.005-06:00

We don't watch a whole lot of TV at our house, however there is one show that brings us all together and brings out the competitive side in all of us. Tuesday and Wednesday nights for the last 4 months have been spent watching American Idol. We have cheered, argued, and yes even cried over this year's Season 8 of American Idol. From the beginning Baylee (the MOST competitive one of all) has been cheering for Jasmine and Danny Gokey. We had many tears the nights they were both voted off. Dan was leaning towards Matt and lost interest when he was voted off. Brinley and Rylee just cheered for anyone that was on the stage, but I have loved voting for Kris Allen from the beginning!! I would come home from our YW activities and hurry and watch American Idol and start voting right away for Kris. Baylee would make me send a vote in for Danny (usually I would "forget" his number) every once in a while. Since Danny Gokey was voted off a week ago, Baylee has been plotting how she can vote for Adam Lambert (sorry fans, but his screaming makes my stomach sick) instead of Kris. She has been teasing me all week, telling me that Adam is going to win and Kris will never make it. Ha Ha!! Actually on Tuesday night Baylee and I had 3 phones going voting for Kris. She however thought that she was voting for Adam, but I'm the one that dialed the phone (with Kris' number of course) and handed it to her to keep hitting redial. I'm such a mean Mom, but I'll show her!! So last night it was sweet victory at our house (even though I was the only one jumping around with excitement!). I went on a field trip with Baylee today and have reminded her ALL day long who won. Yeah Kris!!

Captain Harris

2009-05-14T12:51:00.004-06:00

A big CONGRATULATIONS to the newest Captain in the West Jordan Fire Department, my Dad!!

My Dad was just promoted to Captain in the West Jordan Fire Dept. Out of 14 guys, he came in 1st during a long couple of weeks of testing and interviews. It's been a long road to get here and we are very proud of him. He definitely deserves this!! He worked for Salt Lake County Fire for 26 years and then moved to West Jordan where he has been there for the last 10 years.

My Uncle Brad (who is the Chief of the WJFD) presented his new badge at the City Council Meeting and my Mom was able to pin his new badge on. So it's official!! We had our family there to celebrate. From the picture below, I think Brinley was the most excited!!

Congrats Captain Harris!! We are so very proud!!

Baylee's Roses

2009-05-06T21:37:00.005-06:00

My cute little Baylee Rose had so much fun taking pictures of "her roses" at the St. George Temple. She spent quite a while trying to get the perfect shot in every color. Roses are her favorite flower (so are mine) because of her middle name, which she is named after my Great-Grandma Rose (her Great, Great-Grandma). I think she did a pretty good job...

This lavender one was our favorite one. Nice job Baylee Roses!!

St. George Fun

2009-04-29T13:19:00.016-06:00

This last week we took the girls to St. George. Dan had some CE (Continuing Education) courses down there. We met up with some of our dental school buddies (Hansen's we missed you!). While the guys were in class and then golfing, the girls went for what else but pedicures and swimming. We had all the kids with us. So it made for some interesting pedicures. Not as relaxing as they normally are. Rylee who is 2 loved her "pink piggies" (that would be her toes). I've never seen her hold so still. She loved it, actually they all loved it!!

We had 7 little girls under 7 lined up getting their pedicures. It was so cute and so fun. They giggled and giggled and giggled.

Shanae (left) and Kristie (right), what cute Moms!!

After pedicures it was off to lunch at In-n-Out Burger (quickly becoming a new favorite of mine). After that we went swimming. I didn't get any pictures because I was in the pool. Later that night we met up with the guys and left the kiddos with the babysitters and enjoyed dinner at Samurai 21. If you're in St. George you should try it. Yummy! Another favorite place to eat is Poncho and Lefty's. Best Mexican food in town. You have to try the shrimp enchilada!!

We only got to spend time with our friends for 1 day but it was a fun day. Our girls loved staying in a hotel. The first thing Brinley and Rylee did was jump on the bed. Of course this is not allowed at home, but hey they were on vacation so jump away!!

Baylee didn't want to jump, she was too busy watching Disney Channel. We don't have cable so she had to get all she could while in the hotel.

My 3 bed bugs. They thought it was pretty fun to sleep together in one big bed. They didn't want to go to sleep, they were having too much fun. It was cute watching them all in the bed playing until it was almost 1:00 am and I wanted to get some sleep. Then it wasn't so cute anymore.

We then headed off to Zion's National Park. I never thought that I would say I was cold in St. George but we were cold that day. Infact it snowed on us in Zion's and rained most of the day. A little rain never stopped up before though (we still have our webbed feet from living in Oregon for 4 years). We got up that morning, got dressed in t-shirts and shorts and headed out to the car. We then quickly went back inside, changed into long sleeve shirts and pants and grabbed our jackets. Despite the colder weather we had a lot of fun. The girls loved the tunnel. Rylee said it was scary and covered her eyes while driving through it. Baylee couldn't believe that we were driving in a mountain. I loved the beautiful scenery around us. The colors and shapes of the rocks were amazing. We did a little hiking in the rain but soon got very cold. We even saw a wild turkey--two of them, but they ran into the trees before we could get a good picture. Rylee stayed on Dan's shoulders most of the day. She was his ear muffs. While eating lunch, there were a lot of caterpillars on the ground. Rylee freaked out over them and refused to walk. She kept saying "the color papers get me, I hold you Dad, I hold you". It was pretty funny watching her run from them.

I think we wore them out. This was the last morning in St. George. They are going to hate me someday for posting this picture. I still think they are cute!!

Sunday morning before heading back home, we stopped by the St. George Temple and walked around the temple grounds. The weather was perfect!! The Temple was beautiful!! It was a nice way to end a very busy week.

Rylee still refusing to walk. She's searching for "color papers" (caterpillars). Dan packed her all day. She wouldn't come to me, she wanted the safety of her Daddy.

Pictures in the rose gardens at the grounds. More pictures to come from Baylee Rose and her roses...

Heading out of town, we stopped at the Red Cliffs above town. Dan and Baylee went rock climbing while I stayed in the car with the 2 sleeping little ones.

I love spending time with my cute family!!!

Easter Fun!!

2009-04-19T21:11:00.011-06:00

Hippity, Hoppity Easter is here and gone!! My girls love all the fun activities that come along with Easter. They scope out all the places in our house that the Easter Bunny might hide their baskets, love picking out their new Sunday dresses, can't wait for the egg hunts, and live for Monkey Bread. This year was another fun Easter despite the cold weather for our Neighborhood Egg Hunt. We had it the weekend before Easter and we woke up to a massive snow storm! We thought for sure they would cancel it but no, our good neighbors shoveled their lawns and went forth with the egg hunt. We bundled the kids up and off we went searching for eggs. It was cccccoooollllldddd!!

Easter weekend was better weather (sort of). Instead of snow we had rain and wind, but again that didn't stop us from enjoying our Easter traditions. Saturday we made our favorite Monkey Bread. We started this tradition while living in Oregon. We had some cute neighbors up there that made it for their family egg hunt and invited us each year. It is so yummy!! Then it was time for egg dying. Brinley giggled the entire time dying eggs. She thinks it's so cool that they can change colors.

After dying the eggs, it was off to Grandpa Dowdle's for dinner and another egg hunt. We finished the hunt just in the nick of time. The last couple minutes it started raining. We're not sure we found all the eggs, we think there may still be eggs in Grandpa's gardens. I'm sure he'll find them sooner or later!

After this egg hunt it was time to see what everyone got. It was a competition with the cousins to see who got the most money and candy. Guess who always wins...Baylee.

Finally it was time for Easter morning. The girls searched our house up and down for their baskets. Rylee's was in the shower (that's where she hides to mess her pants), Brinley's was where the garbage is, and Baylee's was hidden deep in the coat closet. Silly Bunny (those are Ry Ry's words).

It was then time to get dressed up like a "Ballabina" (again Ry Ry's words) that would be a ballerina. The girls loved their new dresses. However it was almost impossible to get a good picture of these 3. Baylee smiled perfectly, Brinley kept pulling faces and Rylee wanted to sing the ABC's instead of holding still for her picture. O-well, they're still cute anyway!!

After attending church we went to dinner and yes another egg hunt at Aunt Judy's house with my side of the family. Dinner was delicious and can I say that we had so much food that we could have fed everyone on the block--twice! It was sooooo very good though. This family loves deviled eggs. We fight over who gets them and how many we can have. Baylee has caught on to this quickly. She would eat a whole plate herself!!

Rylee likes them too!!

YUMMY!!

After stuffing ourselves with so much yummy food we headed outside for our final egg hunt. There was over $100.00 in these eggs, so the competition was on. Baylee kicked off her new dress shoes and was ready to go. She wanted to win this hunt too. Her older cousin Ryan walked away with the most this time. He did not want to be beat again by a 7 year old like last year when he walked away with only .12 cents! Baylee did OK though. She came home with $12.00. Go Bay!!

We had a fun week and a wonderful Easter. It's a great blessing to be so close to family. We are really lucky to have such special people in our lives and great examples. Even with all the fun and games at Easter time, we can't forget the most important example to us, our Savior Jesus Christ. I am thankful for the sacrifices He has made for us!! We hope you had a great Easter also.

Tag Time

2009-04-16T16:43:00.003-06:00

OK, I know that I have been a MAJOR slacker with the blogging world!! What can I say, LIFE gets in the way sometimes. I got Tagged, for the first time, about a month ago from the cute Brandy that cuts (and colors) my hair for me. I then got Tagged again from one of my bestest friends in the whole world, Mandi, about two weeks ago.

I'm starting with Brandy's (sorry to take so long to respond to the tag!!)

Tag......Picture 6

This is the 6th picture from the 6th folder...

This is a picture of Baylee 2 days after her 4th Birthday. We had just moved back from Oregon 2 days before (yes we moved on her 4th birthday). We were excited to be back in Utah. We were living in my parent's basement. My parents bought this swimming pool for Baylee and Brinley and had it all set up for them for our big arrival back home. Baylee loved being in the water (still does, she is my fish). In this picture she was trying to catch the water spraying up from the side of the pool. Everytime she was in water she had to have her favorite pink goggles on (still does). She also got her new purple Tinkerbell swim suit for her birthday. She loved this swim suit. She wore it all the time and now it's too small for her.

When I opened this picture of Baylee, it brought back a bunch of memories and emotions. I remember being excited to be back home in Utah, but I was very sad to have left the beautiful state of Oregon and the wonderful friends we made up there. It was bitter sweet for us. It was a time in our lives that was very new to us. Dan and I had been married for 9 years then and had always been in school trying to reach our goal of Dan becoming a Dentist. We finally reached our goal and during this time we would often look at each other and think "now what?", 9 years of school was over, so now what are we supposed to do? What is it like being in the "real world" of working people and not in school anymore? You could say that we were sort of lost, but we quickly caught on and sent Dan to work, bought a new home, and let the student loans kick in.

When I look at Baylee in this picture, it is amazing to me how fast time flies. She is now 7 (almost 8) and becoming a beautiful young lady. She's a great help to me and a wonderful example to her younger sisters!!

I Tag Mandi, Amy, Ashley, Wendy, Kelsie, and Kim

Go to your 6th folder and then to your 6th picture and tell us about it. I'm excited to see your picture!!

Stay tuned for my second Tag from Mandi...

Happy Birthday To Me

2009-03-06T08:47:00.006-07:00

Wow another year has come and gone and now I'm a year older. I'm not sure I like this getting older stuff. I still feel like I should be in high school or something, not celebrating my 33rd birthday. Time really does fly these days. It's all good though. I'm very blessed to have a wonderful hubby and 3 adorable little girls who all make my life so wonderful! Speaking of which, my wonderful hubby took me downtown to the Little America Hotel for my birthday. We went to dinner at PF Changs (FYI, make sure you make a reservation before you go, we didn't and it was an hour and a half wait before they seated us--I was starving). I love PF Changs! My cute dental school friends introduced me to this place and I was hooked from the very first bite! Later we went back to the hotel and picked a movie to watch. Dan said it was my choice, so of course I picked Twilight! We watched it once together, then Dan fell asleep so I watched it again. Room service woke me up in the morning and guess what, I watched it again. Yes that is 3 times in a 24 hour period. So that brings my total to 6 times seeing this movie. You don't have to tell me that I'm a Twilight nerd, I already know that! Honestly, I think the reason I like watching the movie so much is because it was filmed in Oregon and for the 2 hours watching it, I feel like I'm back home up there. I miss Oregon and Twilight just takes that homesickness away. By-the-way, if you're a Twilight nerd like me, you should check out this blog I found called Lauren's Bite (see my sidebar). This girl is hilarious. She is by far worse than me when it comes to Edward. Her blog takes you on adventures with "Pocket Edward" and she is totally in love with Edward. She named her husband Tedward (who's name is really Ted). She definitely has way too much time on her hands, but it's fun reading for us crazy Twilighters.

OK, back to my birthday. My parents took the girls while we were downtown. We met up with them for a birthday dinner my Mom made. My Grandpa and Grandma Cowdell joined us. I got my cute hat and Bumbles watch, an exercise bike and a ticket to the Kenny Chesney concert coming in July. My ticket is right down next to the stage--3rd row. I am so excited. This will be my 4th time seeing him, however this time I will be right there up close and personal!! Yippeeeee!

I had a great day. Everyone spoiled me! Besides watching Twilight 3 times, the best part of the day was just being with my family. I love you guys!!

Valentine's Day Fun

2009-02-24T10:29:00.011-07:00

This year we mixed things up a bit. We usually spend the day before Valentine's Day making our favorite sugar cookies (see recipe below) but decided on trying a new recipe this year (besides I had to make the cookies for a YW activity the next week and didn't want to make them twice). I found a new recipe for Homemade Oreo Chocolates (yummy) and the girls had a blast making them. Warning- They can be messy!!We also made chocolate covered strawberries. Baylee and Brinley were my good helpers!! They had a blast eating all the leftover chocolate.

Rylee however, was the BEST helper of all. She slept the entire time we baked. I can only imagine what my kitchen would have looked like if she would have been out there to "help". She also insisted on wearing a heart sticker on her forehead all day. She didn't take it off until she crawled into bed that night.

After delivering our Valentine's to our friends and family, we had a fun dinner. We ate heart shaped pizza, pink drinks (as Brinley calls it), and our favorite Frozen Hot Chocolate (as seen on the Oprah show). Yes it's as good as she says!! We started this tradition in dental school when Baylee was only 1. We all gather around the drink with our own straw and drink till it's gone. We all get a brain freeze but it's worth it!!

The girls thought it was funny that I broke the pizza's heart.

We had to remind the girls to come up for air.

Rylee finished it off to the very last drop!!

I think she liked it!!

Sugar Cookie Recipe

2009-02-24T10:05:00.002-07:00

Here is my favorite sugar cookie recipe for all of you who have been asking me for it. Caution though, you can't eat just one!! Enjoy!

Special-occasion Sugar Cookies
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
3 tablespoons whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

In large mixing bowl, combine the sugar, butter, egg, whipping cream, vanilla and almond extract. Beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Beat at low speed until soft dough forms. Cover with plastic wrap. Chill 1 to 2 hours, or until firm

Heat oven to 400. On floured surface, roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut desired shapes into dough. Place shapes 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes, or until edges are light golden brown. Decorate as desired.

Butter Cream Frosting (this is my Mom's recipe)
2 lb bag of powder sugar
1 cup shortening
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2/3 cup water (approximately-only pour in 1/3 c. then slowly add rest of water until it is smooth. I don't usually use all the water.)

Mix the above ingredients at high speed until well blended.

"Rylee Style"

2009-02-18T13:05:00.008-07:00

My little Rylee is 2 going on 17. This little girl is a handful!! She keeps us on our toes 24/7. There's not a minute in the day when she is not trying to make us laugh. She is always putting a smile on our faces. However, I could not get her to smile for these pictures. This was on Valentine's Day and she wanted "tails" in her hair. She looked so cute and I wanted to get some pictures, but she was not about to smile.

After I gave her some candy, she started being silly again. Still not the smile I was looking for.

This is the cute smile that puts a smile on our faces. I had to offer more candy to get this smile.

At age 2 here are some funny things she does...

Still calls her milk "coke". It's so fun in church when it's quiet and she is yelling for her COKE. All drinks are coke to her.
Calls herself Ry Ry. When we ask her her name she says "Ry Ry". We'll say no it's Rylee and she corrects us and says no Ry Ry!
Colors on everything with every pen, marker, crayon, pencil, or anything that will make a mark. I have become very good at removing artwork.
When I do her hair, she will ask for a bow. When I put the bow in her hair, she looks up and down at her clothes (to make sure it matches), and then in the mirror and says, "Oh, I lub it" or "Oh, that's so coot". Beware, if the bow doesn't match, WATCH OUT!!
Her new thing is when we ask her a question she replies, "I don't know". You can pretty much ask her anything and she'll reply "I don't know" and she usually gives you that cute smile.
Loves to watch movies. Her favorites right now are "Tinkabell" (Tinkerbell), "Wash Away" (Flushed Away), and "Pooh, Pooh Panda" (Kung Fu Panda).
She reads stories to her stuffed animals. We don't have a clue what she is telling them!
She definitely thinks she is BOSS around the house. She is constantly telling her sisters and parents what to do. The sad part is that we usually end up doing what she tells us to do.
Loves to do somersaults. Watch out though, she'll roll right on you. I'm thinking of getting her in gymnastics. She's not afraid to climb, jump, flip, or fall off anything. I think it's perfect for her!!
When I put her to bed, I have to blow her 2 kisses from the door and she blows them back to me. If I forget to do it, she gets out of bed and tells me "kisses Mommy". I love it!!
The one that melts my heart and is my favorite thing is her singing. She LOVES to sing. She'll sing anytime, anywhere, any song. Usually her own made up song. She has learned "I Am A Child Of God" and it is the sweetest thing to hear her sing it. It goes something like this "Lead me, guide me, walk a side me, HELP (is really loud) me find a wake". We hear that same line all day long, even when we put her to bed she is still in her bed singing until she falls asleep. I will forever sing this song "Rylee style". It just puts a smile on my face!!

Preschool Field Trip

2009-01-22T21:36:00.003-07:00

Oh how I love a field trip! Especially when I get to come along. Brinley's little preschool went to Dr. Dave's Dental Office (no it's not Dan's office). Dr. Dave is a pediatric dentist. My Mom is his Office Manager. I volunteered to help with the field trip months ago, not knowing that these little preschoolers were going to Dr. Dave's. How fun!!! Brinley was tickled to find out that she was going to "Grandma's dental office".

Here they are watching x-rays being taken on a little girl...

Watching Emma cleaning someone's teeth...

Grandma Debbie showing them cavity bugs taking over some teeth...

Watching all the instruments being cleaned. Notice Brinley paying attention (that's her in the pink coat) and Tanner picking his nose...

Thanks Dr. Dave, Grandma Debbie, Robin, and Emma for a fun tour of the dental office!!

I'm a little late posting this...

2009-01-22T21:17:00.006-07:00

Happy 70th Birthday to our favorite New Year's Baby!!

Dan's Dad, Dave, celebrated 70 years this year. How exciting! We had a birthday breakfast at IHOP to celebrate with him. Can you say YUMMY!

We love you Grandpa Dave!!

Greatest SNOW on Earth!!

2009-01-12T14:12:00.007-07:00

The day after Christmas we went sledding with the Dowdles. We had a ton of snow fall on us and it was great to be outside enjoying it. It was still snowing when we went and the wind was blowing, but the kids didn't mind. They loved it!!

I can't say that Rylee enjoyed it so much. This was her first time sledding and she was so good. Her checks were bright red and her hands were frozen. I don't think she quite understood what we were doing. She just watched all of us act silly in the snow. She did enjoy eating the fresh snow though.

I think we wore her out!!

Baylee and I giggled while making snow angels.

After making snow angels we had a contest to see who could catch the most snow flakes on their tongues. I think we tied. It was a fun day. Having all the snow for Christmas was perfect. I love it when we have a white Christmas!!

Priceless!

2009-01-01T17:10:00.013-07:00

Hundreds of hours shopping for and wrapping the perfect gifts...

Ten minutes waiting patiently to see what Santa brought...

Watching your kiddos enjoying Christmas morning...

PRICELESS!

Christmas morning with our 3 very excited kiddos was so fun. We enjoyed watching the excitement on their faces. It was all smiles. Baylee and Brinley really wanted a Yorkie, but Dad was not so excited about the idea of having an indoor dog. So Santa brought them a Yorkie and told them that they needed to be a little more specific about what kind of dog they wanted. He wrote in their letter to ask for a real dog next year and this is what he left them...

My favorite part of the morning is receiving the homemade gifts the girls make for us at school. Brinley was tickled that she finally made an ornament like Baylee to go on our tree.

Baylee made us this fun card with her ornament inside.

I will treasure these moments forever. I hear to enjoy them now because they grow up so fast! We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, we definitely did!!

Christmas Day 2008

2009-01-01T16:18:00.011-07:00

Our Christmas Days are always crazy. This year we celebrated 4 Christmases with 4 different families before 12:30 PM. We had to get our girls up at 6:45 AM and have our own Christmas. Then it was off to my parent's house at 8:30 AM for Christmas all over again (they spoil us!!). Open presents there and then rush off to my Grandma and Grandpa Cowdell's (Mom's side) house for the BEST Christmas breakfast ever! It is my favorite part of Christmas Day!! Then race back to my parent's house for the Harris (Dad's side) Christmas party at 12:30 PM. CRAZY but fun! However this year we had soooooo much snow that we were late for everything because the roads were horrible. It usually takes us 8 minutes to get to our parent's houses, but with the snow it was over a half hour before we got there. As crazy as it always is, we have a lot of fun.

Looking at all the presents with Aunt Krista at Grandma and Grandpa's

Yeah!! More presents to open!!

This year my Mom made all of us a patchwork quilt. Each one fit our personalities. My Dad's was a fireman one, ours was a Utah Ute one (AWESOME), Krista's was horses, and the girls were all fairies, flowers and princesses. She started sewing these well before Halloween. She made us all think that she was just making them for the little girls, but surprised us with one for each of us. There were hundreds of hours of sewing in all of these. We love them! With it being so cold lately we have enjoyed having them to cuddle in and stay warm!! Thanks Mom!

All the GREAT Grand kids with GREAT Grandpa and Grandma Harris. Brinley was not exactly happy to have her picture taken. I think she was a bit tired from our marathon day.

When we finally got home on Christmas night, we couldn't even get in our driveway with all the snow we had that day. Thank goodness my Dad followed us over to help remove the snow. We had to park our car on the road and make a path to get the girls into the house. I always love it when it snows on Christmas. I wish for it every year. This year my wish came true and then some. I will always remember all the snow we got. It was beautiful!

Jammies from the Elves

2009-01-01T15:46:00.005-07:00

Some how in mid December the Elves magically drop off Christmas presents for Baylee, Brinley and Rylee. It's always a fun surprise to see them magically appear under the tree.

It's no surprise that the presents from the Elves are jammies. However this year the girls didn't get Christmas jammies, they got Princess jammies.

Merry Christmas you three pretty princesses!! You look beautiful.

Christmas Eve 2008

2009-01-01T15:02:00.003-07:00

A favorite Dowdle family tradition is to go bowling on Christmas Eve. It's so fun to see the excitement in all the kids. They have so much fun bowling and with a little help from the bumpers, they do pretty good.

The kiddos also put on a puppet show of Christ's birth with some hand puppets Deanna (Dan's Mom) made before she passed away. Rylee however did not want to participate (you can she her frown in the picture). With almost all the grand kids in town this year, it was cute to see them all get so involved in an activity that their Grandma had made for them!

After dinner, it's time for presents, presents, presents!! We couldn't get Rylee to take off her new dress-up dress. She loved it! Thanks everyone for the great gifts this year.

Meeting "The Girl"

2008-12-30T09:13:00.004-07:00

It's time to have a party when Crazy Uncle Don brings home a girl for the Holidays. Meet "The Girl" (as Don refers to her), Nicole. Don is the most loved sibling of the Dowdle bunch. There are 15 grand kids that absolutely adore him. We were so excited to hear that he has a girlfriend and what a doll she is! She's a great match for our Crazy Uncle Don!

It's not very often when we have the Dowdles all together in Utah. They are spread out all over the country. We had everyone but the Bulkleys (they're in Montana) in for the Holidays this year. So we decided to have a party to meet "The Girl". It was great to have everyone there and of course eat yummy food.

The party started out normal, enjoying food, visiting with one another, but before long it turned into WRESTLE MANIA on my family room floor. It was CRAZY! The kids tackled Don to the floor. Then the other older cousins were in on it too. It was tiring just watching all the action. I thought for sure the Christmas tree was going to get knocked over.

Thanks for always keeping the party going Don. Nicole is a cutie!!

Sing It Loud Brinley

2008-12-26T23:13:00.007-07:00

Little Brinley Bear loves preschool. We have seen her grow so much over the last couple of months. She had an adorable little Christmas program with her other adorable little classmates. They sang about 10 songs. It was so fun to watch these funny little 4 year olds.

Here they are singing with Santa hats...

singing with chimes... singing with red noses...
singing with sticks...
singing with bells...
Brinley took a picture of her best friend Maddi. She is in the same class with Brin and lives next door to us. They have so much fun together!

Dancin' Toes

2008-12-26T22:16:00.007-07:00

I'm so excited that I have girls (however I would take a little boy anytime!). One thing I love about having girls is that I get to dress them up in their cute dance costumes and watch them dance. Baylee and Brinley had their Christmas Dance Concert a couple of weeks ago. They both did a great job. I think they were the cutest ones up on the stage (Mandi, your girls were the cutest too!!). They take dance with one of my best friend's little girls.

This is Brinley's 2nd year taking dance. She loves to dance but doesn't like the costumes, "they're itchy" she tells me. She won't put her arms down because it will itch her arms. She's cute none-the-less!

This is Brinley and Lillie (Mandi's little girl)

So Cute!!

Baylee has been taking dance for 4 years now and it shows. She's awesome!! She loves to dance and to perform. This girl can shake her hips. She is taking 2 dance classes, one jazz and the other ballet.

This is Baylee and Elsie. They are dancing buddies. They remind me of Mandi and I some years ago.

Guess who joins the dancing world next fall. Yep, it's Rylee's turn. However there's not much girl about her except for the girlie clothes we dress her in. Who knows, she might surprise us!!

She's practicing here and showing us that she too can dance!!

Temple Square

2008-12-16T23:53:00.006-07:00

Another favorite tradition for us is to visit Temple Square and see all the lights. Our friends the Carters were sweet enough to invite us to come along with them. We ate a delicious dinner at The Pantry in the basement of the Lion House. I worked at the Lion House while I attended Weber State some years ago. It was fun to be back there and to enjoy the yummy rolls. After our very good dinner we headed outside in the cold to enjoy all the beautiful colors of the temple grounds.

It was cold, but we all managed to stay warm.

The lights were as pretty as ever. It's amazing how many strands of lights they can string on one tree.

We went inside the Visitors Center to warm up a bit and to see the Christus. While in there, Rylee decided to make some new friends. She went and sat next to these girls and cuddled right into the one girl to get warm. She sat there the entire time we were in there and didn't move. She didn't want to leave either. We have no idea who these girls are, but they loved Rylee. They took pictures too to blog about Rylee. She's such a social bug!!

These pictures were taken from the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The girls thought it was cool to be up so high looking down on Temple Square.

BEAUTIFUL!!

Happy, Happy Birthday!!

2008-12-16T08:56:00.008-07:00

Happy Birthday to you and you and you! A couple of weekends ago was birthday celebration for us. We had 3 birthdays right in a row.

Happy 34th Birthday Dan!!

We love you!

Happy "39 & HOLDING" Birthday Grandma Debbie!!

(I'm still trying to figure that one out because I am 32!)

Happy Birthday Grandma Deanna!!

We miss you!

We took a little tree over to the grave site to celebrate Deanna's birthday. She passed away a year and a half ago from cancer.

Christmas Candle Light Dinner

2008-12-08T14:07:00.008-07:00

One of our favorite family traditions is our Christmas Candle Light Dinner. It's the one night of the year that we eat the best, give cheers to our blessings and best wishes to the new year, get new ornaments for the tree, check out all the Christmas lights around town, and get our picture taken with Santa (that's Dan's favorite part)! My Mom & Dad do all the work and they love this night. We have done this dinner since I was--well I can't remember back that far. The table is set beautifully, with no extra room on it. It's filled with fun surprises and yummy desserts.

This year we had a few extra Elves running around the house helping. My Mom had these hats made and gave to the girls. They loved having them on all night.

My brother Doug and his wife Paola were in town from Rhode Island. It was an extra special treat having them here to enjoy this celebration! Our girls love these guys and miss them while they are in RI but get all their attention while they are here.

We also had Grandpa and Grandma Cowdell (my Mom's parents) there to help us celebrate. We always love having them around too!!

After dinner, it was time to see Santa. Rylee didn't like him very much so she just stood in front. Later we did get her on Baylee's lap. That's as close as she would go.

Every year growing up we had to sit on Santa's lap, even when I got married. Lucky Dan to have married into this family! My Mom made Dan a deal that when we had kids we wouldn't have to sit on Santa's lap anymore. When Baylee came around 7 years ago, she took center stage and Dan and I were free of Santa--UNTIL this year. The last picture she has of us sitting on his lap was when I was pregnant and VERY SICK. I look like I'm going to lose is all over Santa and his white beard. Since Doug and Paola were in, we had a family picture update.

Everybody say "CHEESE"!

We have a ton of fun on this night. We laugh and cry together and build new memories every year. I think I am still full though from all the good and I mean good food!! Until next year. Cheers!!

Turkey Day

2008-12-08T13:56:00.004-07:00

As always, Thanksgiving was another successful day of eating. We enjoyed two turkey dinners, one with my family and one with Dan's family. You could say we gobbled 'til we wobbled!! It was a fun day to reflect on all our blessings. We have so many!

(Sorry Dowdles, I didn't get any pictures at Dave's house--I left the extra memory stick at home!)

Blessings...

2008-11-26T21:42:00.007-07:00

3 of my most special blessings wear me out, talk all the time, follow me around the house, ask a ton of questions, need my attention every minute they're awake, get into everything, and even drive me crazy some days BUT I love them very much and are so thankful they are in my life! As Thanksgiving is approaching quickly, I sit back and think of all the things that I am grateful for. There are so many that it would take forever to list them. I just wanted to list my top 3...

Baylee is a very dependable girl. She's smart, loving, and always cares about others. She helps me with whatever project I have going on. She's very creative and curious, always wanting to learn. I'm very thankful she's my oldest. I can always count on her. I love you Baylee Roses!

Brinley is my laid back girl. Not much bothers her. She is my cuddle buddy. We can't start the day off without our cuddles. She is the quiet one of the bunch and the most like her Mommy. She has a big heart! Always watching out for others. She has quite the imagination. Always making up stories. She's my funny one that always has something crazy to say. She's also my shopping buddy. This girl likes to shop. I love you Brinley Bear!

Rylee is my adventurous one. She is not afraid of anything! She is our family clown. She loves to be center of attention. She will give you the biggest squeeze ever and tons of kisses to go along with it. She loves to follow me around and ask a billion questions, sometimes the same question all day long. She will light up any room with her big smile.

I love you Ry Ry!

May we all GOBBLE 'TILL WE WOBBLE!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Twilight Review

2008-11-26T21:21:00.006-07:00

My cute hubby and I celebrated our 12th Anniversary last Thursday. He took me to dinner at Geppeto's (that's where we went on our first date). After we went to the mid-night showing of Twilight. He kept telling everyone that he had to compete with Edward on our Anniversary at mid-night and that's why he took me. We both loved the movie. I was disappointed a little though because they left a ton of important (at least I think) parts out of the movie. I saw it again Friday night and enjoyed it more the second time around. I picked up on things that I'd missed. All-in-all I think they did a great job with casting and they did a great job portraying the characters. My favorite though is the fact that it was filmed in Oregon and we were able to see many sites of the beautiful state we lived in for 4 years. In a weird way it made me homesick for Oregon. I'm curious to hear what you thought of the movie! Thumbs up or thumbs down?

PS-The soundtrack is really good--a good combination of music.

A New Trick...

2008-11-19T21:41:00.005-07:00

I learned a very cool new trick tonight and wanted to share this cool new trick. When your 2 year old decides to color all over your beautiful kitchen tile with permanent marker and herself, a dry erase marker will take it off. I found my sweet 2 year old in my kitchen tonight looking like this...

And my tile looking like this...

All the way from my back door to the other side of my kitchen table. Not a small area. She worked fast!!

I only panicked for about 5 minutes, screamed for another 5 minutes, then I calmed down a tiny bit and the idea to google "how to remove magic marker" came to mind. I love Google! Thank you Google!! The instructions were right there telling me what to do. It's a good thing they were or I may still be panicking about my tile and maybe even screaming. After about 45 minutes of coloring over the magic marker with the dry erase marker and then wiping it off, I had a pretty good high from the dry erase marker. I felt much better about the situation and didn't care about anything, just flying high. I have to wonder how many more brain cells died tonight while cleaning this up. It worked though. I just need to find something to take it out of my grout. Any ideas??

She was supposed to be on my bed watching a movie with her big sisters, but somehow managed to sneak past them and me and head to the kitchen.

So as of 6:40 tonight, I have a 2 year old for sale. Anyone, anyone?? I might throw in the 4 and 7 year olds too.

And So It Begins...

2008-11-17T09:03:00.006-07:00

Rylee has only been 2 for a week now and I wanted to remember her first week of the TERRIBLE TWO's. So we started off at the store shopping for Dan's Birthday. She kindly let the entire store know that she was there by SCREAMING, CRYING, and THROWING things off the shelves. Needless to say I had to leave our shopping cart, which was full of items, and walk out of the store. She reminds me of a Baylee incident some years ago when I was cited for kidnapping my own daughter at Target. Oh the memories!! Then in one week she gave herself a facial with blue toothpaste, emptied 3 brand new Kleenex boxes, helped herself to an entire box of fruit snacks while I thought she was taking a nap, emptied both book shelves I don't know how many times, unrolled the toilet paper out into the family room--twice, wrote on my newly painted walls, sang as loud as she could at church when everyone else wasn't singing and it was suppose to be a quiet time, undressed herself down to the nothings 3 to 4 times a day, she climbed up on the kitchen table and was jumping on it, pulled the bar stools over to the cabinets were the gum is, climbed up on the counter, got the gum off the top shelf and managed to eat half the package, had a few more temper tantrums, came up to me and gave me a spankin' and told me to be nice as I was getting after Brinley for something, she kept sneaking into our food pantry--helping herself to whatever she wanted including Baylee's Halloween candy, gave herself a bath in my favorite lotion, and crawled out of her play-yard every time we put her to bed. She's been sleeping in that because she keeps climbing out of her crib falling to the ground. We figured that with the play-yard she wouldn't have to fall so far. Oh and she snuck outside in the front yard and was in the flower bed trying to pick a dead flower. To top the week off though, she ended up in the Emergency Room getting stitches. She fell at my cousin's wedding reception off a chair and cut her chin. I was helping with the food so Dan had to take her to the ER. The doctor put 4 stitches in Thursday night and by Friday night she had all 4 stitches out. She kept pulling on them and I kept covering them up with a band aid. I went through a box of band aids Friday trying to keep her from touching them. It didn't work. She is only 2 and this is the 2nd time she has had stitches. The first time was last spring when she bit her tongue almost off. She had to have 10 stitches to fix that one.

I have to remind myself all the time that this is only a phase and it too shall pass. I just hope fast!! It's not that I'm not watching her, I am. I have a pile of "stuff" needing to get done but can't get to it because I am always cleaning up a mess. While I'm cleaning up one mess she is into another. I've even tried putting her in her bed to keep her contained but she climbs right back out. I put her upstairs in the toy room and she climbs over the gate and comes back downstairs. She's very quiet and fast. We've decided that she may be the boy we never had.

Soccer

2008-11-12T10:04:00.004-07:00

Go Green Sharks!!

Another successful soccer season is behind us and what an improvement Baylee has made. This last season Baylee's team was able to have a goalie. They all loved it and would rotate each game. The field and nets were bigger and the games were much more exciting and competitive. Baylee made huge improvements this season. I'm not sure if it's from everyone offering her a dollar for every goal she scored or her new soccer shoes and PINK shin guards. When she first started playing soccer back when she was 5, she had more interest in looking at everything BUT the ball and skipping down the field (arm's linked) with her friend. We would get so frustrated because some games she wouldn't even run up and down the field. But this season she was AWESOME!! She scored many goals and was very aggressive with getting the ball. She loved playing goalie. We're sad that the games are over until the Spring. We were enjoying cheering for the Green Sharks.

Baylee and Canon after their last game.

OK, then there's Brinley's soccer experience. This was Brinley's second season playing soccer. She reminds me of her older sister. She would run up and down the field but never watched where she was going. There wasn't one game that she didn't run into another player, either on her team or the other one. Yes there were tears either from her or the other player. We finally told her that we would give 5 cents to watch where she was going and 10 cents every time she kicked the ball. She never made it to a dollar. She had fun and enjoyed playing. We loved watching and laughed our heads off at her games. The ball would go out of bounds and all the little 4 year olds would keep running after the ball even onto the other fields with other teams playing. Their uniforms were so big on them that the soccer shorts came down to their ankles and the socks we would have to fold over 3 times. I asked her if she wants to play again in the Spring and she told me she'll have to think about it. Maybe I need to get her some PINK shin guards.

She was more interested in posing for the camera than focusing on her game.

Brinley and her buddy Easton after their last game.

Go Lightning Bolts!! Yes, she was the only girl on her team. That was good because she probably would have linked arms too with the other girls like Baylee did.

We love Archie!

2008-11-11T10:03:00.002-07:00

So we scooted on over to our favorite Target store this morning to purchase the long awaited David Archuleta CD. We loved watching him on American Idol. Too bad the wrong David won!! We've listened to it all morning and would recommend it to anyone. It's a great album!

He's such a cutie patootie (those are Baylee's words).

Little Ry Ry

2008-11-09T18:29:00.003-07:00

Rylee got this dress for her birthday from Grandma and Grandpa Harris. She wore it to church today and of course told everyone that she is "coot". She also twirled around like a princess too (she must get that from her sisters). I just had to show how "coot" she really is.

"I'N TWO"

2008-11-09T17:27:00.010-07:00

Happy 2nd Birthday

Rylee Mae!!
We celebrated Rylee's 2nd Birthday yesterday at Chuck-E-Cheese. What a party! We partied with the Grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles and of course Chucky himself. We ate yummy pizza, cake and cup cakes, played all the games, and rode all the rides. I think the kids wore the parents out.

Ry Ry loved her pizza and her cupcakes. She kept telling everyone around her, "I'n two". In between bites she would remind us that she is two.

After we had fun watching her open all her presents. She got a new baby doll, books, a tiger that really talks and moves, "coot" clothes that she kept calling jammies, money and a new toddler bed (are we really ready for that?!?!) It's actually back-ordered so we have a few more weeks of her still in her crib. However she climbs out of it all the time-thus the reason for the toddler bed.

We love you little Ry Ry. Thanks for always keeping us on our toes. We never know what you'll be into next. We have loved the last 2 years with you. Your smile brings so much joy to all of us. We think you're "coot" too. Happy Happy Birthday to you!!!

Why??

2008-11-02T22:36:00.006-07:00

Why do we love Halloween so much?

JOB SECURITY!!

Need I say more?!?!

Eat up!!!

What a Week!

2008-11-02T22:04:00.006-07:00

Wow, you would think it was Christmas around here with how busy we have been. What a busy but very fun week we had. It started off with the Halloween Carnival at the school. We spent almost 5 hours there dancing, eating, playing games, painting and watching magic shows. Then it was pumpkin carving, making Halloween sugar cookies, Primary Halloween carnival, showing our costumes to the Grandparents, Brinley's preschool Halloween party, Kendall's (Baylee's friend) Halloween party, visiting Daddy's dental office in costumes, Baylee's school class party, dance class Halloween party, eating "Intestine Soup" (taco soup) with our neighbor friends, and of course Trick or Treating! No wonder all the kiddos went to bed at 7:00 tonight.