My Baby Turns 1...AAAAAHHHH!

My beautiful little baby Allie turned 1 Year old on Saturday, May 28th! I cannot believe how the time has flown and I have absolutely loved every second of it! I haven't taken her in for her year check-up yet so I am not sure of her stats as of now, but she is a chunky little monkey and we love it! Our nickname for her is squishy :o) She is getting around everywhere by crawling (she is stinkin fast!) and walking along furniture. I'm thinking she will be walking in the next couple of weeks. As of today, she has 2 teeth on the bottom, 2 on the top middle, and the 2 on either side of the top ones are working there way out (which explains the grumpiness lately:o). She loves to eat (go figure:o) especially whatever we are eating. She is not much into baby food, she likes things that are more solid. She is down to just a few bottles a day and I am planning cutting back on the formula and switching to whole milk in the next couple weeks.

Allie is such funny little girl. She fake laughs ALL the time, especially when other people are laughing. She loves her big sister so much and has the most high-pitched squeal whenever she sees her. They fight over toys a lot because Brooklee is so used to having whatever she wants, but now that Allie is older, she is holding her own! It is so hilarious to see them scuffle over a toy! It's funny how fast they learn! I think I am in for it with these two!

Anyway, we celebrated Allie's birthday on Friday, the 27th. We had our family over for dinner and cake and it was a lot of fun. Here are some pics of her big day...

I had to put this picture in :o) It is just a classic Allie face. I was trying to take a picture of her and at the last minute, she came after me trying to grab the camera:o)

It is so hard to get a picture of Allie looking at the camera and smiling, so I just have to get candids when other people make her smile.

Here is my cute little girl laughing at the kids on the hammock!

She was so funny opening presents! She loves paper (she especially likes to eat it) so she tore open the presents and played with the boxes...who cares about the toys, right?

I made Allie her own little cake and let her dig in. Despite what her facial expression says, she acutally liked it, for a little while anyway.

Here is a picture of her standing up on her own. She balances really well, she is just a scaredy cat about moving her feet on her own.

Here is our Allie-gator stealing someones cup.

And last but not least, here is Brooklee enjoying the cake at Allie's party. She usually has a hard time with other people's birthday partys, but she seemed to get that this one was for Allie. She stills asks me at least once a day if it is her birthday yet. We have a long 5 months ahead of us!!!

San Diego?

So I haven't blogged in an extremely long time. It doesn't mean I haven't tried. I have sat down a few times and picked out pictures to upload and then wait for hours only to have it say there was some kind of error. In other words, I have been extremely frustrated with blogging. Not enough to stop because I love keeping it for our family journal. I guess I try to upload too many photos at one time, so I decided to start with one. This a picture from our family trip to San Diego that we took over spring break. It was a wonderful trip. I want to write more about it but that will have to wait until I have more time. This picture was take at the mormon battalion. It was an awesome place to learn about the history of the church. The girls enjoyed it too. They had recently renovated it and made it extremely kid-friendly. It actually almost has the feel of a show at Disneyland in a way. They also have a place at the end of the tour where the kids can pan for gold and learn how to make bricks and pump water from a well. Anyway, I hope I am able to load more pics of our trip the next time I try, but until then, at least I have posted something:o)

We'll Start With...

We'll start with Halloween and Thanksgiving. I keep having so many difficulties trying to upload pictures. I meant to just do it all at once, but I guess this will suffice:o) Not to mention its not even in order. But, oh well, what can you do!

Here is Sam and Allie at the stake center in Snowflake on Thanksgiving day. My Dad's side of the family had a "Merle Rogers" Family Reunion in Snowflake for Thanksgiving. When my grandma was alive, we would all meet at the church for dinner every other Thanksgiving. We would come out from California and everyone else would make an effort to get there as well. It fizzled after she passed away. A couple of years ago, my sister decided to organize a family reunion, and we all decided we would try to have a reunion every 2 years. We'll see if it keeps up:o) I have more pics from Thanksgiving, but they were ones that didn't upload correctly. They, along with Christmas pics, will have to wait til the next post. We better not hold our breath for that one either:o)

Here is a pic of Brooklee waiting for Daddy to come home from work so that we could go to our ward trunk-or-treat. She was so excited. She called him at least a couple of times before he left work.

Here is the fam at the ward trunk-or-treat. I guess Allie wasn't a happy camper. Brooklee sure was. She was in candy heaven!

Here is another one that is out of order, but it is Brooklee waiting for Daddy outside. She was getting so impatient. I was able to get her to strike a pose.

And here are our cute little girls ready to go trick-or-treating. They had fun, or at least Brooklee did. Allie is usually pretty content, so she just had fun observing the festivities:o) It was fun to have Brooklee finally be old enough to get excited about a holiday.

Stay tuned and hopefully, sooner rather than later, I will post again about Christmas and updates on the girls. I have got to be better about Blogging. It really is our family journal. Heaven knows I don't scrapbook or keep any other type of record, which is why this is so important. Hey! I guess I do have a new years resolution I might be able to keep! We shall see:o)

What a Nut!

I haven't blogged for a long time and I actually have a lot to blog about, just not enough time. But, before I forget, I had to post something that Brooklee said the other day that cracked me up. Lately she wants to climb on anything and everything and then jump to Sam or I. Well, the other day, I was standing up on a stool and Brooklee came running up to me with her arms out and said "Jump to me, Mommy! Jump!".

My little girls are so much fun to have around (most of the time:o) but they keep me so busy that I don't have time for much else! I am also teaching full time and a few weeks ago I was called as the 1st counselor in the primary presidency which meant that I was responsible for writing the primary sacrament meeting program for next month! So I think it goes without saying that I have been extremely busy. But life is good:o) When I have a few more minutes I will post pictures of our cute little girls and give some updates on our little Allie who is growing like a weed!

Allie's Big Day...And More!!!

So it has taken me soooo long to publish this post! I get a little done, then have to get a sippy, or a bottle, or run to the store, etc. Anyone with kids knows how it goes! It has really taken me literally days to get this done. Anyway, Allie was blessed in church this last weekend and we had a lot of family come to town. It was really nice having everyone there.

We are lucky enough to have been assigned to the new building next to the temple and we love being able to see it every week. Every time we drive in to the parking lot Brooklee yells "temple!" and is sooo excited. Here is a picture of our little family at the temple.

We didn't really ever have time to take pictures of Allie in her blessing dress, so this is it for now. I am hoping we can just put her back in the dress in the next couple days and get some cute pictures:o) That might be cheating, but oh well!

She looks really silly in this picture, but i finally caught a smile so I decided to go ahead and post it anyway:o) Allie also had her 2 month check up on July 30th and here are the stats:

Height: 22.5 in (35th percentile)

Weight: 10lbs 12oz (15th percentile)

She is currently on the smaller side, which I don't expect to last long because that is how Brooklee started out. I never posted Brooklee's stats from her 18 month appt, but she was 95th percentile for height and 50 for weight. Speaking of Brooklee.....

Here are some of Brooklee's mad photography skills:o) She loves taking pictures and looking at them afterwards.

She wanted to take a picture of Allie, but got her feet instead:o)

And this is just a cute picture of my sweet little girl:o)

Now there is a story behind this picture of Brooklee on the table. I went out the back door the other day to get the mop and our back door knob has always had issues, but this time it locked me out when I shut the door behind me! I was freaking out because Allie was in her little chair where Brooklee could reach her. Brooklee loves her sister a little too much sometimes and smothers her, or else tries to feed her things that Allie shouldn't be eating. So I was so afraid to even run to the neighbors house because I was afraid of leaving Brooklee with allie. I could still see them through the back window. Brooklee even tried to unlock the door, but mostly she just thought it was funny that mommy was stuck outside! I took my chances and ran to the neighbors house to call Sam real quick. The neighbor came over and was able to get the back doors open with a screwdriver(good thing my blog is private! :o) and when we got there, Brooklee had climbed onto the table and brought her dolly and blanky along with her and was eating the ice out of the cup I had left on the table:o) I am just thankful that she left Allie alone while I was gone! That whole ordeal definitely got my adrenaline pumping!

This is yet another random picture, but when we were on our way back from Snowflake for my 10 year reunion (didn't take pictures and not much to blog about) we passed some floats that people had made for the 24th celebrations in Eagar and this was one of them! I thought it was awesome and had to take a picture. It was built on top of some type of motorized vehicle, but we couldn't really tell what it was. Whoever did it did an amazing job!

Happenings....

So this post is pretty random and definitely not in order! It has been a while, again, which explains the randomness:o) Also, I lost my good camera, again, but found it and that is why I am posting pics from there as well:o)

Sam's nephew Cody earned his Eagle and had his Eagle Scout of Honor this last Sunday. Almost all of Sam's brothers and sisters were there, which is rare, so we took the opportunity to take a photo. Kristi and her family are missing, as well as some in-laws and nieces and nephews. He has 8 brothers and sisters, which makes for HUGE family gatherings when everyone is there:o)

Change of scenery! This starts the camping pictures part of the post. My parents decided they wanted to go camping, but just for one night, so we decided to go with them. I wanted to see how the girls would do and use this as our trial run since it was only a one-nighter. Both of them did wonderful! Allie was such a good baby. I think she just needed a change of scenery as much as I did! I think she really enjoyed the fresh air as well! Anyway, this is a picture of Brooklee and Allie together. That is actually Brooklee's favorite blanket. She is such a good big sister (most of the time:o) and always wants to share with Allie...I just have to keep a close eye and make she she doesn't smother her! :o)

Here is a picture of Grandma and Allie while we were camping. Allie is actually wearing one of Brooklee's shirts. I guess while I was packing her stuff, her clothes were left on my bed instead of making it into the bag:o) I am still getting used to the packing for two kids thing!

Here is Brooklee showing me what she found on her nature walk with grandma. Don't you just love her outfit and hair? :o)

Grandma and Brooklee on their nature walk

Cute picture of Daddy and Brooklee camping...once again, don't you just love the clean clothes and face! Aaaw the joys of camping! The best part is that you don't have to care if your kids get dirty because there is no way to clean them anyway! This picture was taken after only being there a couple of hours. It looks like brooklee had been living in the forest for weeks!

We took Coree, Sam's niece, camping with us because her parents were out of town. Brooklee LOVES Coree! Mostly because she bosses Coree around and Coree will do anything she's told to do! Poor Coree probably won't want to be around Brooklee for that amount of time ever again! She is such a trooper!

This is just a cute picture of Allie. I found some pictures of Brooklee at this age and they look sooo much alike! I didn't think so until I had pictures to compare. I will have to post pictures of them at the same age, wearing the same outfits so everyone can see how much they look alike!

So Brooklee actually let me do her hair the other day! (Only because Phineaus and Ferb was on and she LOVES that show:o) I was able to do french braids! Okay, so it didn't last long because her hair is so short and thin, but it was cute while it lasted!

Ok, so this picture is really random, but it was one of the pics from the camera that I lost and I never posted my last belly pics before having Allie...actually I hardly posted any compared to what I did when I was pregnant with Brooklee. Anyway, so I found it and decided to post it for the record. And you wanna know something absolutely crazy? Looking at this picture almost, and I repeat, almost makes me miss being pregnant! Yes, having two kids really does make you go insane!!!!!

4th of July

The 4th of July was a lot of fun...of course it was celebrated on the 3rd with the parade and fireworks. I have not been good at all about taking pictures lately, but here are a few...

Here is Brooklee in her 4th of July outfit..she love to wear suglasses, so I got her these star ones:o)

These pictures obviously aren't in order, but Sam took this picture of Austin, Aubrey and Haley at the fireworks.

We had the arctic cats in the parade again for Pace Gardens. Haley and McKay rode in the back of my parents' and this is what they looked like after the parade:o)

Here is Brooklee getting ready for the parade to start!

My mom and dad during the parade!