On Our Way to Disneyland

One of the best parts of anything exciting that happens is the anticipation. Nathan agrees with me. He loves to talk about "anticipation". Anticipation for Christmas, for a Birthday (for which we wait all year), Disneyland...

So here are our "Anticipation" pictures.

I love these pictures. The girls are just so excited. And they even loved the bus that took them to Disneyland the two days we were there.

Here's Rebecca and myself on the bus to Disneyland.

It was a short ride to Disneyland on our bus, and yet here is Rebecca with 3 pictures and each one on a different lap. Can you tell what game Rebecca played while we were waiting in lines at Disneyland? Yip, Musical arms.

Waiting in line at Disneyland. Like I said, I love all of the excited faces.

Emily, getting her first glimpse of Cinderella's Castle. We had been looking at Disneyland pictures online, so she had at least a few things in her mind that she knew she would see. Cinderella's Castle and "Finding Nemo"!

My Grandparents 50th Anniversary Celebration

My grandparents celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer. They celebrated with a float in the morning parade (for the corn festival) and a party that evening.

The girls on the float. (Yes, this was the best picture I could find of the two of them.)

Most of the grandchildren in this picture. I came on the float later, even though I wasn't planning on it. I sat next to my Grandpa. The seat of honor. :)

Me and My girls.

Aunt "Candy" as the girls like to call her. She received her nickname at the hand of Emily. I have no idea why she started it. She was saying Mandy just fine. Here she is with Becca on the float.

Aunt Candy serving the girls Ice Cream at the party. (Mandy, this is the best picture I got of you. Smile!)

Yummy!

Rebecca who wanted NOBODY else except Mommy.

Best "Sister Friends" is what Emily started calling the pair of them. I LOVE it and have continued to use the term.

Meredith at the party.

Emily at the party. In the back is a quilt my Aunt made with the pictures of all my Grandparents children, the temple they were married in and a picture of the two of them. They had 8 kids.

Lots of fun. And definitely WAY past overdue to post. I loved celebrating my grandparents' anniversary with them. They are a fabulous example to my family. Love you tons, Grandma and Grandpa!

Rebecca's First Trip to the Zoo

We love the zoo. You know that by now. So, here's a few pics from Rebecca's first trip to the zoo.

It's blurry, but I love Emily's smile.

Me, with the precious baby with all that HAIR! And I hope she keeps it, but I don't want to hold my breath.

This picture of the two older girls is just SO adorable.

It was a little bright for Rebecca.

All 3 girls together. That was the best we were going to get w/o waking the baby.

Grandma Twyman and Meredith looking at the Polar Bear.

Visitors

My Grandparents came to visit our newest addition while we were at my parents' house. I'm so glad they came.

Miranda's Graduation

Mandy graduated last weekend! It was fun to go spend time with her and see her graduate. Congrats, Miranda!


Now, for the rest of the story. Nathan and I went to bed the night before leaving late. Before we had a chance to fall asleep I hear this very pitiful, "Mommy" come from the other room. Nathan got up to tuck her back in bed. Then Nathan quickly called me into the room. Meredith and the stomach flu. Nathan had Meredith in his arms so he took her to clean her up while I started changing the bedding. He came back in (he doesn't have his contacts in) and I told him he had to give her a bath because it was ALL in her hair. We get up and do this at least 2 more times. I took Emily to her last day of school and finished packing and cleaned the house and loaded the car. After picking her up we got in the car to go. Meredith was doing well. Nathan was in the passenger seat studying (for the lovely testing he is currently doing which takes 2 days. The dreaded core exam.) and Meredith starts acting sick. I brought along a bib to take to Grandma's house (which I LOVE because of it's big pocket to catch everything.) and Nathan put it on her. Meredith threw up in the car and the bib thankfully caught almost everything. Just a little bit got on the car seat. After getting to my Mom's house we went to Graduation. Waited an hour for it to start, waited another hour for them to get to the point, and Mandy was the very first to graduate. Now, you're asking why in the world "Jones" would start first. They say it's because they just wanted to do it differently. I said it was because they finally wanted to start with the most important person first. Then I began to say it was an answer to a prayer that would be said by me at graduation. We quickly left after Mandy walked because we were quite frankly scared. Meredith threw up 2 more times when she went to bed (maybe 3). Then she was on the mend. We went to sleep the next night and had barely fallen asleep when we started the whole process with Emily. After she was up the first time I just made a little bed in the bathroom. It made the whole thing so much more simple and clean. She was up for a minimum of 5 times. I could still say I LOVE being a Mommy right after the experience and in the middle of a LOT of sleep deprivation. So the next day after church I find out Dallin went home early. Then Matthew kept my parents up that night (of course my Mom is a light sleeper so I'm sure we woke her up a LOT during the previous two nights. Sorry, Mom.) My Dad, and Sister quickly joined the list. Anyhow.

We finally left Monday afternoon. We went through the canyon, got halfway through before Nathan smelled something burning. I saw smoke and we pulled over. It was our brakes. It was so hot that Nathan ended up breaking 3 posts trying to see if he could do something. After putting the wheel back on we decided to try and find a police man or keep driving until we had a signal. At one point we had a signal but nowhere to pull over so as I finally hear the emergency line pickup I lost the call. Then I had a signal, we pulled over and lost it. I look up, and there is a police car at the side of the road who had just pulled someone over. We pull up across the street from them and decide we can make it to Globe. We get to Globe and we decide we can make it (very, very slowly to Tucson.) Then we had an undisturbed nights rest. :) Nathan took the car into the shop the next morning and studied for the core exam while he was there. Couple hundred dollars later we now have a working vehicle. Of course, sadly, we had to miss our playgroup (hope you guys had fun). It was supposed to be our letter "D" day with dinosaurs and whatever else anyone could think of. Can wait for next weeks Letter "I" though. (We're doing ice cream of course.) And the weather outside is HOT!

Feast of Carols

So at the very beginning of December (yes, another late post, I don't think I got the full 24 hours in a day in December.) I went back to good old Show Low to go watch Feast of Carols. It's a performance the high school puts on. Miranda was one of the two queens and Matthew was able to be her little prince. This is one of the few ok pictures I got. Here they are dancing. The camera (since it wasn't mine I didn't know how to really work it) was not cooperating. Plus it doesn't help that it was dark and they did lots of moving around.

Matthew and I practiced his song together a few times. He was the best little singer. Here he is singing with the group of little princes and princesses. The pair on the right belong to the right queen and king (thus they are all in purple and white). Matthew and the other little princess belong to the king and queen on the left (thus the red and black). It was fun to go see and brought back some memories (both pleasant and otherwise :).

Christmas

So, I survived my first Christmas away from home. For anyone that knows me you might know what this would entail. I get really sick or something. To everyone's surprise I did not though. Even my surprise (even just writing this I get a wave of sickness just thinking about it). I came home though and realized what I had done instead. I gained weight. Ugh. So now there is even more motivation to jump right on my New Year Resolutions. I'd show you the family pictures we took as a big group, but I can't. I look absolutely awful, Just my family picture looks ok considering Meredith is covering me up. Meredith was not smiling. It was really hard to get any of the kids to smile since it was so late at night.

Here's a few pictures from Christmas.

Meredith opening up a present. She's really gotten quite fast at taking the paper off.

If you look closely you can see a little strip of orange that is a chocolate orange. I told her I wanted her to open another present and she did not want to relinquish her orange.

Santa Claus couldn't have been more pleased that the girls liked Emily's Santa gift so much. Emily didn't want Meredith touching it, but Mommy made her share.

Here's Nathan playing with the toys before the girls could get up for Christmas. The huge stack of Christmas presents in the back come from being with all the extended family. (Even the family that wasn't there had some Christmas presents under the tree for later in the day.)

Nathan's Christmas present to me was a little getaway. He had coupons for a motel room in Salt Lake, dinner there as well, milkshakes, and $100 shopping spree. We ended up in South Jordan instead and ate dinner at the Spaghetti Factory in Salt Lake (my all time favorite restaurant, so if you ever are in Salt Lake you have to go to the Spaghetti Factory there. If you have ever been to Spaghetti Factory but not in Salt Lake you are still missing out. This one is the best. Need help ordering, order this: Manager's Favorite (spaghetti with 2 choices of topping) mizithra cheese and meat sauce, with milk, salad (with whatever their equivalent for ranch dressing is. I can't remember the name, but it is WAY better than ranch in my opinion.), and spamoni ice cream at the end. They also serve all of this with some yummy bread. It's sour dough, but Nathan even likes it and he claims he doesn't like sour dough bread. They also give you garlic butter to go with it (Nathan also claims he doesn't like garlic, but he still puts it on his bread and loves it, lol.)

OUR SMALL MIRACLE
After making reservations at a motel we realized something. There aren't very many hotels with a Spa in the room. When I was pregnant with Emily we moved to Michigan for a time, and on the way home we had to stop at 2 hotels. (The trip on the way there was a little longer, but we only had to stop once.) It was a tough trip for a pregnant person, so when I was even more pregnant we had to stop more. Our first motel stop we got a spa in our room. It was wonderful and was just the thing I needed from the traveling and for the rest of the traveling. Then the second motel we stopped at had a wonderful bed and I had the best night sleep I have ever had because of a VERY comfortable bed, which is really something to say for someone pregnant. (although come to think of it, if you haven't had a good night sleep for a while from the tossing and turning of pregnancy and you get one night after months of that where you are finally comfortable, it would definitely seem like it was the best night sleep you ever had, even if it wasn't.) Anyhow, we knew that this was a wonderful miracle for me, but didn't realize how much of a miracle until we were looking for the same thing again.

Halloween

We had fun for Halloween. We went to a party instead of trick-or-treating. Of course I'm well known for forgetting my camera, but I remembered it. But, I didn't have a memory card in it, so we used the internal memory. It was full, I thought there was a memory card and that we were deleting the memory card, but we deleted the pictures that I couldn't take off the camera. I can't remember all of the pictures that we deleted, I can only remember one that I could just cry about, so I really don't want to remember what else was on there. It wasn't very much because the internal memory is minimal. So now I've got a cord coming for my camera dock (since the original one got lost) and I should have some Halloween pictures up. We also went to the zoo today with my family. It was fun. "Pictures?" you ask. Well, we won't mention the fact that I forgot my camera, but my parents have pictures. When I get the pictures from them, I'll post them.

Memorial Weekend

My mom's camera has all of the pictures I took. Her camera was just so handy. I either left mine in the car or my suitcase. But, I forgot to get the pictures from her and now I have a limited number from our fun weekend.

Me, the official picture taker. (Nathan using our camera to take a picture of me taking a picture. Very funny, Nathan :)

Meredith enjoying her pizza at Bits and making a mess. (Do ya like the bib? Whew, that was some quick thinking.)

Emily enjoying her pizza.

Group picture. (Look at that. Emily is such a great photo taker.)

When I get the other pictures, I'll post them.

Visiting with our Cousin

We were able to spend some time with Nathan's sister, Kristen while she was in Arizona for a visit to a friend. They were kind enough to drive her halfway to Tucson, and we met them there.


Kristen and her daughter Genavie. She was so happy and smiley.

Emily loves the slides at the park.

Finale picture.

My favorite. I love watching Nathan play with our girls. What a great Daddy. I love you Nathan.
The girls enjoyed seeing their cousin. Emily went and gave the baby a hug and kiss. And Meredith was fine with hanging out, as long as her Mommy wasn't holding the baby (jealousy issues there, lol, what a clown she is sometimes). Thanks for visiting with us, Kristen and Genavie. We were so glad to see you.