9 Months - I could have had a baby in that amount of time. Or not.

I thought I would post before it really has been an entire year of no blogging. Nice. Way to go Sarah.

I'll use this post to update you on last September through May:

SEPTEMBER

Emma started Kindergarten and Lucy kept asking to go to school....the whole year...She just wants to be like her big sis!

OCTOBER

Lucy turned 3 and had a Frankenstein cake. Her birthday party included playing at Arctic Circle and choosing her own cake from Dick's Market. Should I be worried or proud that she chose monsters over princesses?

We also celebrated our favorite holiday - Halloween. Emma won the costume contest with her Pirate Princess costume and Lucy inadvertently dressed as a dress up box that exploded. Hence the picture of the cute carved pumpkins and not the disgrace of a costume for my 3 year old.

NOVEMBER

I met Edward Cullen.

DECEMBER

It started off windy....

 But ended up great! We had a fantastic Christmas. We made the traditional gingerbread houses, did the traditional trip to see the lights at temple square, and Santa surprised the girls with what they had on the Christmas wish list and more! He's so generous.

JANUARY

Matt and I went on a business trip to Maryland and then took a train to Manhattan. It was a really great trip even though we were rained on a lot. The highlight was:

Getting our names pulled out of the WiCKED lottery for front row tickets!

FEBRUARY

The great invention of our personalized sugar cookies took shape and Sarah Martin and I began to realize that Sugar Rush Bakers could be legit. Baking days continue....

MARCH

Emma turns 6 and decides to have a camping birthday party which was actually a blast! We set up a tent in the backyard, sent the kids on a scavenger hunt and had a

Campfire Cake!

We also took a quick trip to Matt's favorite place in the world: Moab. Emma loves camping, just like her Dad and is drawn to the great outdoors.

APRIL

Thanks to the generosity of Grandpa Craig, we lived every parent's dream of fulfilling their kid's dreams by taking them to Disneyland. When there's time I'll most likely do a whole Disneyland post, but for now just know it truly is the Happiest Place on Earth!

We also celebrated Easter. We love doing the traditional Easter Basket hunt in the morning and then the big hunt with the family in the evening.

MAY

Months of preparation paid off in May when we crowned a new Miss Farmington at the Pageant I directed. It was a huge success!

Adorable Emma finished up her year of Kindergarten with a program and a haircut. She grew so much over the last year!

Wow. I did it. Got us to June. Next post....Summer Fun.

Five things to recap the last twelve (plus) months of our lives...

1. Marilyn and Joel came home!

After nearly three years in Ghana, Africa Matt's parents, Joel and Marilyn, returned. Since our lives were so connected to theirs while living in their home, this was a big change in our lives. It was the catalyst to thing #2:

2. We moved!

I yearned for a house of our own for so long and in a very quick twist of events, we ended up back in our old ward, within a quarter mile of our first home, in Farmington. I was happy as Farmington is home for me. Our little yellow house:


Enjoying our front porch:


3. I quit!

I gave away the ending before I even let you know the beginning, but in our pursuit to get a home loan, I started working full-time for Farmington City as the Arts and Special Events Coordinator - essentially an expansion of what I had been doing from home part time. However, after working 13 of 20 Saturdays, nights, and some 50 hour weeks, and with Matt seemingly situated at Jacobsen Construction, we decided that the girls needed their mom and Matt needed his wife. So, I quit the job I loved to be mom. Now I am back to being a volunteer. They complain that they can't get rid of me, but I love it too much. I have now taken on the Miss Farmington program as the Executive Director.

Oh yeah, and every Friday I bake with my good friend Sarah:



4. Emma is a Kindergartner!

The easiest way to measure the passing of time is in watching our children grow. Emma started Kindergarten this fall. I spent the last nine months with anxiety over it and now my days are planned around her drop off and pick up from school - so its safe to say this is a big part of our lives. Lucy gets bigger every day too. I often forget that she is only two. She keeps asking me to go to preschool, but not until next year...

5. A few family vacations...

Since our last post we had a beautiful vacation to Oahu and we went to Park City and Bear Lake.
For some reason I can't find any of the pictures though...

Honorable Mention.....Emma's Billboard

Matt's former employer Jacobsen Construction was asked by Worker's Compensation for some families to have their picture taken for an ad campaign and Matt and Emma were chosen. A few weeks after the photo shoot I was driving down I-15 at the point of the mountain and happened to see this:

She's moved around a lot since the first sighting, but if your lucky, you might spot her on your commute! She has also been in Utah Business Magazine and in a Worker's Compensation mailer. No, we didn't get a dime for it, just the fun of having our adorable child's mug randomly showing up in crazy places!

As requested...

I have been asked repeatedly to youtube a video of Lucy performing "A Dream is a Wish" from Cinderella. Well, this isn't youtube, but if you like it maybe we'll get that big time...later...

Sarah

Um...hey!

I know what you are going to say - or what you are thinking - so just lay off for a sec. It has been almost a year and a lot has happened. I don't think I could easily recap if I wanted to. Let's just say I was working full time and work had taken over my life. Now, I am back home again after a grueling 7 months and am once again a stay at home mom. Oh, that's another big thing - we actually have a home, Matt has a new job, everything is different and yet, oddly, the same. Yea!

My last post was about a glorious cruise with our friends Sean and Sarah. Our final days of that cruise were spent in New York City. Here are some fun pics from that adventure:Matt's first time in the city. I tried to get his "first impression expression."

Sarah and I got cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery - the bakery that started the cupcake craze. So good.

Matt and I in Times Square. It was a quick trip through town. We were there less than 48 hours, but we crammed in everything you can in that amount of time - Central Park, Shopping, Pizza galore, Times Square, Empire State Building, Harold Square, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, Julliard, Street Fairs on the East End, Touring through the Upper West Side...needless to say, our feet were killing us! Funny story of the trip - Sarah and I had to leave our husbands in New York because our genius idea of taking the Subway to the airport backfired when we were enlightened that even Subway trains are effected by rush hour traffic. We arrived at the airport to find that we were too late to check-in to our flight - our only chance was to say farewell to the husbands and book it....Sarah and I cut in line at security and I didn't even put my shoes on to run to the terminal. We ran our guts out (of course our terminal was at the complete opposite end of the airport) and made it as they were closing the door. I sat in my seat on the plane and cried out of anxiety and stress and Sarah and I went home and saw our children and slept in our beds while our hubby's spent the night on the floor of JFK. Ha ha....

Okay....more catching up in the next post...

Bermuda - Day 7

We were very excited about our plan for Bermuda. We had decided to rent scooters and tour the island. We hadn't reserved them ahead of time, so in order to make sure we got some we booked it off the boat at the earliest possible moment and were the first people in the scooter office. The boys (who were the designated drivers) were safety briefed and then we were on our way.

Sean and Sarah knew of a rail trail that we could take to see some of the sights. It was a cool trail with little traffic and beautiful scenery. It was on this trail that we came across Fort Scaur. After walking the wrong trail through some fine Bermudian's backyard, we got oriented and found the cool old fort with interesting catacombs. Here is Matt looking at the cool cannon:

And Sean, Sarah, and Matt in the never ending catacomg tunnel:

Then we braved the streets of Bermuda on our scooters to tour downtown Hamilton and the beaches along South Road. On the way we stopped at Dobb's Hill Lighthouse:

Our last leg of the journey we toured all of the beaches on the way to the famous Horseshoe Bay beach. There wasn't much swimming involved due to the infestation of Japanese Man of War Jellyfish - whose sting is supposed to be highly painful. Nevertheless, all of the beaches were incredible. Some fun pictures from Horseshoe Bay:

Sean offered Sarah his shirt and she forgot to take off her helmet to put the shirt on. I still laugh every time I see this picture.

We kept chastising Sean for getting too much sun. This is him showing us how much he cared what we said!

Bermuda is beautiful and we have decided that it is a future destination for a fun family vacation because our only complaint was that we didn't have enough time to see everything!

Fun on the Ship

Me attempting to win the ship's Karaoke contest: "Princess Popstar"

Matt and me waiting in the Princess Theater for one of the shows to start

Matt and Sean in their twinner outfits waiting at the designated meeting spot

One of the fabulous desserts we ate - the sampling of all things dessert-like was my favorite aspect of the cruise

My favorite picture of Sean and Sarah - those crazy kids.

Formal night.

Crazy Antigua Pictures

Sean pretending to make a phone call

Me being an anchor

Matt working it

Me "sexy posing" on demand

Antigua

Day 3 On Antigua we didn't exactly have a game plan - so as we walked off of the ship and were inundated with taxi drivers looking for customers we found Choci who offered to take us on a tour of the island and drop us off and pick us up from the "best beach" on the island all for the same price as our one taxi ride on St. Thomas - we decided it sounded like a pretty good deal.

Our first stop with a National Park with a fort on the top of a mountain with an incredible view.

Then we went to the Naval Dockyard, which was also very scenic. We toured the museum and learned some of the history of the island and then spent some time taking crazy photos of each other. After one silly pose we adopted a "friend" who must have been entertained by our antics enough to follow us around. He offered to take our picture:

We also shared a cab with some crazy characters that had some interested comments as we continued on our tour through the rainforest and past the many beaches. One couple was from New Jersey and to them seeing a cow in a pasture was like seeing a lion on safari. It entertained me. It was really cool to see the pineapples and bananas growing like crazy among the foilage of the rainforest.

We spent some time on the beach, trying to stay out of the sun and then went into town for a little shopping. I think we bought one thing between the four of us and then went back to the boat.

Antigua was beautiful and ranks second in my favorite ports.

Sarah

At Sea

Days 3 and 4 On our days at sea, we spent the majority of the time eating and relaxing. Our favorite spot on the ship was in the back. We would lounge in our chairs and watch the sea stretch out to the horizon. The boys would swim in the pool with the crazy cold water and the girls would read celebrity news magazines in their lounge chairs.

Isn't Matt adorable?! I think he smiles the biggest when we are on a cruise!

We would get dressed up for dinner and some partying, but we wouldn't last long. Our only really late night was staying up playing "Pass the Popcorn" in our cabin.

Matt and I had pull down beds in a cabin that could potentially sleep four with two bunk beds. It significantly affected the "get out of bed without bumping your head" factor.

Some of our favorite things about our days at sea include:

-Seans Ultimate Kid's Package drink card = all the virgin Pina Coladas you can drink!

-Good shows with the drawback of sitting by annoying people

-The "Movies Under the Stars"

Our Big Trip - Day 2

Breakfast: Day Two. When Matt and I went on our last cruise, my family ate breakfast every morning at what Sean and Sarah lovingly called the "Belly Buffet." They veered us away from that and introduced us to eating breakfast in the dining room. It had all the luxuries of the belly buffet without the belly bumps and competitiveness. Nice. Can you tell our favorite thing about cruising is the food? Matt and all you can eat go together like peas and carrots!

So, now that the boys have full bellys (as pictured above) we could head out to our first port: St. Thomas!

Here you see Matt and I in front of our Cruise Ship: The Carribbean Princess. For our day in St. Thomas, we decided to bask on the beach. After some taxi craziness because we were caught off guard by the outrageous rates, we headed to what we were told was the best beach to snorkel at: Coki Beach. Our taxi ride there was interesting as our taxi driver wanted to avoid traffic and took us straight over what seemed to be the highest hill on the island, using outrageously steep and seemingly treacherous roads in order to speed us to our destination.

It paid off - an adventurous taki ride meant more time at the beautiful Coki beach. As promised, the snorkeling was memorable (according to Matt who spent literally every minute of our time there in the water). The drawback of this particular beach was having natives approaching us every five minutes to try and sell us something - a beach chair, a towel, an umbrella, drinks, drinks, and more drinks - and then, when they could bait us, they resorted to attempting to get us high by smoking weed right next to us in hopes that we'd lose our senses and spend the money. No, I am not being facetious!

The girls had hoped to get a little shopping in, but since the price on the taxi ride was so high, we just headed back to the ship when we were all sunned out. On the way back we were greeted by the indigineous iguanas. They were not afraid of people in the slightest as you can tell by Matt's proximity!

That evening was the first formal night on the ship. Sarah has some great pictures on her blog if you visit the Sean and Sarah blog link on the blog roll. I have some from the second formal night that I will post when I get to that point...

We loved St. Thomas, but more islands awaited and so we bunked in our cabin that night in anticipation of more tropical treats!

Coming up: Antigua Day 3...