The events of late March

The last blog update was almost two weeks ago. We had and eventful last week and because of it, I promised my mother I would get our blog updated with pictures. 

I mentioned in my last update that Connor had been sick. 

Turns out that Evelynn got it as well. Poor girl slept for hours on the couch with a fever. :(  

They have both been feeling much better, but they did share with their daddy. He's starting to feel much better the last few days, but he did have a rough week there for a bit.

3/18/2015

 Because I was so busy with school and my sick family, I didn't do much picture taking for several days, until the 24th and our new car purchase. Go ahead and follow the link if you missed that update!

The next big event came on Friday the 27th, which was our 5th wedding anniversary. 

Caleb surprised me with my choice of Origami Owl jewelry. I think I've decided on one of their living lockets. I had heard of Origami owl before but never looked into it. I think they're pretty cool stuff, now that I have seen what they have to offer. 

Evelynn was so excited to wait with me for brother to come home from Preschool that afternoon. She really wanted to call her grandma and tell her about how excited she was. We agreed on a picture instead. ;-) 

The whole family went out to dinner that night to celebrate. I attempted to get pictures with my husband, but he's kinda a twerp. Not one single serious face! 

The kids were MUCH more cooperative! ;-)

We went to Olive Garden (my favorite!) and had a delicious meal. 

I also had to document the fact that my hair gave me an anniversary gift...and actually did what it was supposed to for once! Woohoo! It's windblown in the pic, but hey, it's still proof. 

I ALSO had to document the gift baby #3 gave to his daddy....

Caleb has been trying for weeks to get his attention and feel him kick, but it's been futile. 

While we were waiting to be seated at dinner, he was kicking up a storm and him and his daddy played a little game. Caleb would poke at him, and he would kick back. They did it for several minutes before the amusement wore off. Caleb sure was thrilled! 

 The next day there was an easter egg hunt at a lady in the ward's house. 

She had A LOT of pets, and many of them were what I would call exotic. I steered clear of the snake and lizards, took a look at the bird and turtles, petted the dogs a bit, but I was shocked and amazed by the news of a pet tortoise. 

The kids had their daddy help pet turtles and catch them a ride on the tortoise!

I figure there's probably not that many times in their life they will say they rode a tortoise, so I made sure to get pictures to document it. I would have taken a real video, but there were quite a few kids fighting over turns, so I didn't want to take longer than necessary. The video I have below was a total accident. But I think you can see the tortoise moving with Connor on it in the 2 seconds I took it. 

 In addition to those awesome turtle friends the kids got to meet, they also got to do an easter egg hunt. They were so excited, despite the 95 degree weather that had their little cheeks all pink. 

The kids had SO much fun. When we got home, Connor fell fast asleep on the couch for two hours. He's like his momma... being in the sun is draining! 

Yesterday the kids and I did a little pre-easter dressing up for church. Since next week is General Conference, I will not be dressing us up on Easter Sunday. I decided wearing cute outfits a week early wasn't a crime. Caleb came out and took some pictures before the kids and I headed off to church. 

My kids sure are getting big! 

We have church at 2. About 10 am I decided I should make Evelynn a little headband to go with her Easter dress, which, by the way, thanks for giving us, Sherita! Evelynn loved the headband. The glares in the pictures are due to the fact that she wanted to call grandma west, not take pictures for her. Haha! 

Sacrament meeting is usually hard on these kids. When Connor is having a particularly rough day (he has a sensory processing disorder and sometimes the echoes and crowds of people in the chapel overwhelm him) we sit in the foyer. It was one of those days. The kids tried hard to be reverent, and a sister in the ward commented to me how reverent Connor was being with his arms folded during the prayer and how impressed she was, and I was so proud! Good job kids!  

 And because I was dressed up nice, I had Caleb grab a nice baby bump picture. 

I also wanted a couple cute pictures to go with the little announcement we have:

We have picked a name!

Say hello to Liam Ray.

Before we even knew it was a boy (well, I knew it was from the start) I told Caleb his middle name would be either David or Ray, both after my father, depending on which suited our name choice better. We feel like Liam Ray has a nice little ring to it. 

It's official now. We've been teaching it to the kids and their little versions of it are super cute. 

 Until next time!

New Car

As many of you know from my Facebook... we bought a new car last week! 

We have known we would need to be upgrading to a family sized car ever since we found out baby #3 was on the way. The Jeep we had just couldn't fit three carseats. Connor is technically almost old enough and tall enough for a booster seat, but the poor kid just isn't anywhere near 40 lbs. And considering the fact that he hasn't gained more than 4 lbs in the last two years of his life, I'm not really holding out much hope that he'll gain 8 lbs by July. SO, we were kinda out of options. 

We were originally going to wait until June-ish to buy the car, but we decided to use the majority of our tax return as a downpayment instead and do it sooner so we wouldn't spend the money on bills and things. We really wanted to make a careful decision this time around on our car choice, since we plan to keep this one... well, for like, ever. Forever. We're not planning on getting another family sized car in a long time, so we wanted to get something we would absolutely love.

We asked for suggestions from friends and family, and finally decided that the price and features of a Dodge Journey were what we wanted. We took ourselves down to Carmax on a saturday and were welcomed by 4 options, all 2014 and with low miles and no issues. We decided to look them over, and favored a blue one. We weren't quite ready to test drive or settle on a final decision yet, so we decided to go home and we would come back and test drive in a couple days. 

The following Monday, Caleb showed me a listing a coworker of his had found for the same car, similar miles, but for about $2000 cheaper. It suddenly dawned on me that we might want to do a bit of online searching to see if that was just a lucky find, or if the Journey we had looked at was just priced high. We have USAA, so we decided to look at their carbuying service and found several options in that lower price range, one in particular was another $700 lower, making it almost $3000 cheaper than the Carmax ones we had viewed. We decided to send an email, asking for more info and to schedule a time to see it. It was nearly 10 pm so we knew we wouldn't hear anything until the following morning. 

The dealership was scheduled to open at 8 am the next morning , and not even 10 minutes past the hour I got a phone call. We scheduled to view the car at 7 pm that night, giving Caleb enough time to get off work and us all to drive into Phoenix. 

When we got there we didn't have to do much looking at the car, since we had view the exact same model on Saturday. We had already seen the cool features and knew we liked what there was to offer. All that was left was to test drive. And test drive, we did! 

Evelynn wasn't thrilled. But Connor sat in the 3rd row where the big boys sit (what I told him to get him to sit in the car) and was so excited. When I asked him if he liked it and if we should buy it he gave a loud and emphatic, "YES! I like it!" 

After both Caleb and I test drove, we decided to go ahead and purchase the car, trading in the Jeep. 

The kids were wonderfully patient through all the paperwork. We figured there's no arguing with $3000 cheaper than the same car we had looked at, plus the fact that we got a lowered interest rate through buying with USAA carbuying services. It was the smarter decision by far and we felt confidant that there wasn't a better option for the car and price we were looking for. 

Like I mentioned, we traded in our Jeep. It ended up being the better option financially, rather than have two car payments and insurance at this point in our lives, especailly since I'm usually always at home. The money we wouldn't spend just didn't seem worth the small amount of time it would actually be driven. 

So, it was bye-bye, Jeep!

Hello, Journey!

 It was pretty late when we got home, so pictures waited until Caleb left for work the next morning. I'm not sure why I didn't take my camera out there for pictures, but atleast I got some nice ones on my phone. 

I can tell you that I'm a fan of the new car. I like the way it drives, I like the space, and I like the fact that the A/C works really, really well. And the kids get their own vents to keep them cool. In the past, our car choices haven't brought the best results on that one. And living in Arizona kinda makes that an important feature. It's also awesome to see that I might be able to get 3 carseats on one bench. There's about twice the space between carseats now as there was in the Jeep. I could probably go on for a few paragraphs about everything I LOVE about it, but I won't. Just know I am QUITE pleased with our purchase

A blog update for the month of March

Hello, friends & family!

It's another blog update day.

Starting off with a cute video from the end of February, that didn't make it on my last post. 

Next, I did Jamberry nails on Evelynn for the first time. The picture is crappy, but I assure you that Evelynn was so excited about her "pretties" and wanted to show everyone over and over again. 

 With school and all the busy things going on in life, it's hard to find the time the keep up with all the cleaning and household chores. Thankfully, Evelynn loves to help me on cleaning days! 

 A couple weeks ago I bought a prenatal workout DVD. The kids were so excited about the yoga poses and wanted to do the workout with me! 

 It was obviously an exhausting process, because Connor fell asleep in a most uncomfortable way, watching Mario on the WiiU that evening. 

At some point during this month, I was admiring my daughter's pretty little curls and felt the need to take a picture of them for the world to see. 

On the 6th I had a doctor's appointment. Evelynn always loves to go to these appointments with me and listens very attentively to hear baby brother's heartbeat. Everything is going well! My belly has really popped out in the last couple weeks. 

It's gotten warm here and my latest craving is Bahama Buck's snowcones. My loving husband has taken me TWICE in the last 2 weeks. The kids love to help me eat it, and it's nice that we live so close. We pass right by it whenever we drive Daddy to work. 

On Tuesday the 10th I got quite a surprise! I would say it's definitely blog- worthy. 

Caleb asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner, to which I readily agreed. He said we could go to Olive Garden-- my favorite--and had a great explanation for the special occasion--his recent raise from work! We got there to find it super busy, but we seemed to be in no rush. I was shocked when shortly after we arrived, a familiar person walked through the doors. I was sure I had to be imagining it, or just seeing someone who looked A LOT like my dad, but wasn't. I mean, he lives in Idaho, and that's not exactly the same as Arizona, and it's definitely more than a hop,skip, and a jump away. I figured I was going crazy until he looked at me and asked how I was, with a big grin. I was so confused and shocked that all I could say was "....what are you doing here?????!!!!" He told me he was going out to dinner with us, and I stupidly said "I mean...in Arizona....what are you doing in Arizona....". It definitely got some laughs. Turns out he had a last minute trip for work, and arranged with Caleb to surprise me. They definitely did a good job, because I didn't suspect a thing! 

The kids were super excited to see Grandpa. We had him over on Thursday evening for a little bit and he took the kids outside to play. When he left, Evelynn burst into tears and cried for him. 

We have told both kids that we will take them to see Grandpa and Grandma in another 2 months, and they seem to be ok with that idea. :)

Last weekend we had errands to run and took the kids to McDonald's for lunch while we were out. They were SO excited to play on the toys. I don't think they've ever actually done that before. We usually eat inside, but they were all grins while we were there and we didn't mind them getting their energy out.  

And later that evening, Evelynn posed for a picture of herself and her baby doll. Evelynn LOVES baby dolls. She wraps them up and rocks them, carries them in a carseat, pushes them in a stroller, and tucks them in their crib. I'm sure the grin on her face shows all that! 

On Sunday Evelynn and I ventured back to church. It's been weeks of illness, and we were both feeling well enough to go (Connor was not; he's got a yucky, yucky nose again ). She wore herself out at nursery and that evening, crawled up on my bed with a teddy bear, a blanket, and a pillow, and fell asleep while I brushed my teeth. I was stunned to see her asleep before we even did her bedtime routine, but I guess she was just too exhausted to resist! 

Today is St Patrick's Day! We all wore green and had a playdate at the park, thanks to Spring Break. 

The kids loved it! It was really warm outside and by the time I got home, we were all sweaty and tired. And it was 86 outside! No wonder my little boy had begged to be done at the park and go home! 

 That's all, folks! 

Until next time. In another few weeks. :)