Joy School

Samantha started Joy School this week! For those of you who may not know what Joy School is its a do-it-yourself preschool which involves from 3 to 6 mothers who rotate as teacher, holding school in their homes twice a week. A lady I just met like 3 weeks ago at church told me that she and 2 other ladies from our ward were doing this with their daughters. I had told her that Samantha wasn't in preschool cuz I couldn't afford it. So she invited me and Samantha to join! Oh I was so happy and excited! I had never heard of Joy School so its been an intersting thing to learn about. So Samantha just got done with her first week and she absolutely loved it! The other ladies are so nice and I am just so thankful that Samantha is a part of this because I felt like I wasn't teaching her enough of the things she needs to know for kindergarten. And plus it will help with her social skills. She can be really out going and funny but she can also be really shy. The only social life she has is once in a while with some neighbor kids, primary and the library once a week. So preschool will be so good for her in so many ways! And I'm also excited to teach these little girls...and a little nervous. Luckily one of the ladies used to be a preschool teacher and has a lot of ideas and materials to use. We start again Jan 5th when kids go back to school. I wish I had thought of taking pictures today at preschool so I took pictures after we got home.
Samantha working on the letter I, they learn about a new letter every week. You can see she didn't want her picture taken. I don't know why cuz she usually likes to have her picture taken.

Luckily I was able to get another one with the crafts she made today. The theme was island like Hawaii. So they made a island, turtle and grass skirt. The grass skirt is really cute, its made out of different colored streamers!

YUM YUM!!

Every year the girls and I make Christmas cookies. Most of the time I make about 3 different kinds of treats and hand them out to friends and family. Well this year I had to cut back on Christmas expenses so I chose to just make one treat and I chose sugar cookies. Its the girls favorite thing to make. Monday night we made the cookies and decorated them but mommy forgot to capture this wonderful tradition on her camera! So yesterday when Samantha and I were decorating more cookies, I snapped a pic or two of her. But I feel bad that Kayla isn't in these pictures, but she wasn't there and I knew I wouldn't have time later that night
cuz I had to be at work. I will be making more next week so maybe then I will remember to take pictures. They turned out really cute, the girls are such good helpers! Samantha loves to pile a bunch of frosting and sprinkles where as Kayla is more detailed with her frosting and just a little bit of sprinkles. Don't they look so yummy!

Santa

Last night I took the kids to see Santa at a Frys grocery store. They took pictures with him, colored Christmas pictures and decorated cookies, but the best part was, it was all FREE! When I told my kids, Samantha was sooooo excited! Kayla wasn't all that thrilled about the idea(since she knows the truth about Santa) but she had fun anyways. I thought for sure there would be a long line when we got there but when we walked up to Santa, there was no one in line! They should of got a older guy to play Santa but oh well, its better than nothing and paying high prices at the mall.

Thanksgiving 2008

We went to Safford for Thanksgiving this year because my sister in law who lives there couldn't travel because she's gonna have a baby any day now. We all met at Jake's uncle's house where there was about 50 people. His parents drove down from Las Vegas and his oldest sister drove from Dallas Texas. For the past 8 years or so we have spent Thanksgiving with Jake's family and then Christmas with my family. It works out very well. We eat our Thanksgiving meal usually about noon and then visit, eat more, visit and eat even more for the rest of the day. Then the next day we have our Christmas gift exchange and play games. I already talked about what game we play in my last post where I didn't know the name of it but now I do its called Christmas Basket. We played it a little different this time because one, we had a lot more people and two we didn't just yell out names we yelled out things like, anyone who has a red shirt on switch seats. I thought it was a lot more fun that way!

Some of Jake's family from left to right: Jake's dad Paul, uncle Clay, sister Shera, brother Austin, sis n law Mary, Jake, Jake's mom Joyce, sister Jesa, and sister Tara.

This is Kayla and her cousin Erin, these two are about a year and a half apart but they best of friends! They played the whole time we were there, whether it was getting dirty or playing with dolls. Seeing them like this makes me kinda wish we lived in Safford again.

Samantha getting a makeover! Jake's aunt Shelly's sister who came for Thanksgiving had a bunch of left over Mary Kay makeup where she showed some of the girls how to properly apply on makeup. This is Samantha's before picture.

Samantha applying eyeshadow. She also put on blush, eyeliner, mascara and lipstick! Of course mommy had to help her, she's not that good yet!

Samantha's after picture, doesn't she look gorgeous!

Jake was playing with different settings on our camera. I thought this one was kinda cool. Its just pics before we started playing our Christmas Basket game.

Samantha looking so pretty in front of the Christmas tree!

Thanksgiving 2007

I was looking at some pictures from last year and came across these. We are all at Shera's house(Jake's oldest sister) for Thanksgiving in Mesa. She doesn't live there anymore because she got married and moved far away to Texas. :( Anyways, we had a fun time! Lots of good food cuz we have some of the best cooks in our family! Ok so I'm a little bias! Then the day after we exchanged Christmas presents to the family we've been assigned to because we all can't be together for Christmas Day. But before the wrapping paper flys off the presents we played a game. I don't know the exact name of the game so I'll call it the "Switch a Roo" game. It started a couple of years ago with Jake's mother. I don't know where she came up with this game but I'm glad she did because we all have such a fun time playing it. We all sit in a circle(on chairs) and one person stands in the middle and yells out two names. Then those two people try as fast as they can to switch seats along with the person in the middle which leaves someone in the middle again. And it keeps going until you want to stop. Its a good game for everyone, Samantha was 3 at the time and she loved playing it. So if your looking for a fun game to play with your family, you should give this one a try.

All the cousins anxiously waiting to open presents.

Uncle Matt throwing down candy to the kids. I think we didn't have a pinata so this is what we came up with. Whatever the reason was, the kids had a blast!


Then later that night we went to look at the Temple Christmas lights. For some reason Samantha wasn't happy.

I'm looking forward to doing it all again this year!

Halloween Night

Some cute pictures I took of the girls Halloween night before they went trick or treating. I reminded the girls to say Thank You to every house. And Samantha made sure of that! She would say Thank You really loud, more than once if they didn't hear her. It was so funny!

Our Pumpkin

On Tuesday we carved our pumpkin. At first Samantha didn't want to touch the guts but as you can see she decided to give it a try. We had a lot of fun!

Here's the pumpkin all finished with lots of sharp teeth!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Halloween Party

Jake took the girls to our ward's Halloween Party last Saturday, I couldn't go because I had to work. But they had so much fun dancing, playing games like the limbo and trunk 'r' treating. As you can see Kayla was a witch and Samantha was a cheerleader. They both picked out what they wanted to be which is a kinda a funny story to me. At first Samantha wanted to be a fairy but when she saw this cheerleader costume she said, "mommy I want to be that!" I said, "are you sure?" And she said "yes!" I thought she was going to change her mind after I bought it, but she never did. Maybe she wants to be a cheerleader when she grows up. haha Kayla for the past 4 years has always been something girly like a princess or fairy. She surprised me and said, " I want to be a skelton or a witch." She decided a witch, maybe cuz she likes the dress. But she doesn't want to be a ugly witch so I guess its still kind of a girly costume. Oh well, we'll work on getting her to wear a scarey face next year.

The girls gettin' their groove on!

The New Kids On The Block concert

On October 13th I went to the New Kids On The Block concert. It was so much fun! I sat in the 10th row which was a great view of the stage! I screamed like I was 14 again! The guys sounded really good, everyone was on key. There were lots of lights, videos on the big screen, fireworks and smoke, they went all out for this tour. They sang a mix of their old songs and their new ones. About the middle of the concert they appeared on this round rotating stage in the back. They did that so the fans in the back could get a good view of them. After they sang 3 songs, they ran off the stage down the aisle right next to me! Even though they had body guards with them, girls were grabbing at them like wild animals! Even one girl jumped on top of Joey(guy above in pink shirt)! I guess it doesn't matter how old their fans are, they still act crazy!

Here's a video I took of "If You Go Away", sorry about the bad quality and my screaming. But it at least gives you an idea of how close I was.

Samantha's 4th Birthday

On Oct. 12 which is Samantha's birthday, we had a small party for her. It was us and my stepfather Jerry(her grandpa). My mom couldn't come because she wasn't feeling good. We ate pizza and cake and opened presents. Samantha had fun and she got some good gifts.

The new Dolphin Webkinz she got from mommy and daddy.

She got the Sleeping Beauty movie from grandma and grandpa.

Relaxing after opening presents.

This is us singing Happy Birthday. Samantha blows out her candles and Kayla helps.

Farm Fun!

Two weekends ago we went to a farm where the kids picked out pumpkins, looked at animals and did other fun things!

Las Vegas trip

I know its been so long since I've posted anything lately, just didn't seem like there was anything that great to post. But there's been some things that have happened that I'd like to share so I will be posting a lot this week. I'm gonna be going backwards starting with our trip to Las Vegas last week.

We took a trip to Las Vegas last week because it was Kayla's fall break. We left Thursday morning and our first stop was the Hoover Dam. Of course every one has to get a picture at the Dam, no matter how many times you've seen it. Why is that?

That night we went over to my brother's house for dinner. My brother Cliff met his wife Deise in Brazil where he used to live. They have a son Michael who is 8 yrs old.

The kids being silly! They had a lot of fun together!This is the coolest park I've ever been too! We went to this park down the street from Jake's sister's house on Friday morning. It has really cool slides and things to climb on but unfortunetly it was closed off. :( But we still had fun because there was another playground nearby. These giant flowers were everywhere! Thats the girls with their cousins below this flower. Just over that hill is the other playground where the kids played.Kayla and Samantha sitting on top of a giant snake. They also had a giant lizard, turtle and aligator. The playset was pretty cool too!Then Friday night we went down to the strip and looked at some of the hotels. We looked at the Luxor, Excalibar, New York New York, MGM Grand, The Bellagio fountatin show, M&M Factory(awesome store), and The Forum shops. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to see but there's always next time.

From left to right, Jake's mother Joyce and sister Tara, me, Samantha, Kayla, and sister Lorena with her two girls. The New York New York hotel in the background.
Jake, me and the kids with the Vegas strip behind us, the kids were amazed at all the lights!

Here are the lions at the MGM Grand. They were kinda boring cuz all they did was lay there. But the kids had fun seeing them up close, they were lying on top of glass bridge where you walk through a tunnel and look up at them.

Here's Kayla in front of the M&M's at the M&M factory. The store has almost everything you can think with M&M on it. I love this store!

Here we are in front of the big water fountain just outside of The Forum Shops. We weren't able to spend a lot of time in there because the kids and Jake were getting to tired. What wimps, I could of gone on another couple of hours. lol

On Saturday we went on Cliff's boat at the lake. It was so much fun! We went tubing and Jake and I tried wake boarding but we didn't have much luck with that. This was the girls first time on a boat and they loved it! Cliff's boat goes so fast and it was so funny to watch the kids reaction when he would speed up or turn a tight corner going 50 mph!

We went over to the Dam as you can see. This lake is so freakin huge! We were out for hours and seemed like we saw the whole lake but we only saw about half of it!

Saturday night we celebrated Jake's father(Paul) 60th birthday even though it was the week before. It was a lot of fun just hanging out and watching Paul's Alaska slideshow. We are at Lorena and Matt's house, Isaac and his kids were there too.

Costco

I just got back from my very first Costco shopping experience! We just got our membership last week, but all we did was eat pizza and churros. I know you're all thinking why did it take you so long to get your membership. We just kept putting it off thinking its not that big of a deal. But we realized that it is and you end up saving some money in the long run. Plus for a while before we moved into this house we lived in a apt where we had no room at all to store extra food. Anyways, it was interesting to see everything they had, their prices were pretty good I guess and they even sell Webkinz! We might end up buying our new tv there for Christmas! I don't know, Jake says we'll see.