Kansas Day

Anya's Art

The Cowboy Hat Anya Made

Ally's Turn

Anya posing with her pony

Ally's Art

More Birthday Pictures

I told Anya to pose, and this is what she did. Crazy girl!

Her Usual Pose


The "Extreme" Chocolate Ice Cream Cake She Picked

Ally, practicing for her birthday

Happy Birthday Grandpa Burrows!

I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my Grandpa Burrows, he is 97 today! My girls are so blessed to have 4 sets of great grandparents alive, and doing well.

Operation Move

Operation Move has begun. Today we started by cleaning out our garage, and organizing the Christmas decorations that were never properly put away. Our garage had gotten so bad that every time I opened the door, I checked to make sure no one was around to see the mess inside. I don't think it's had a car in it since early summer!! Now that it's cleaned up, we plan to use one area to store garage sale stuff, and keep another area open for the moving boxes we will pack. We should have room for a car too! I'm excited about purging our house of all the extra junk. I'm not so excited about fixing the house up, just to move out.

Indian Names

I made up Indian names for the girls today. Ally is "Poops A Lot," and Anya is "Talks A Lot." I think mine is probably "Complains A Lot," and Josh is maybe "Games A Lot" because all he does is play video games. He suggests "Beer A Lot," I don't think we should brag about either. When I wrote Beer A Lot it also made me think of Care Bear names. That would be one bad Care Bear. I think it's late, I should probably go to bed, and not post this, but I think I will anyway. :)

Happy Birthday Anya!

Today is Anya Elizabeth's 4th birthday! So far today we had chocolate donuts for breakfast, Anya went to music class (her first Kindermusik class), we bought her a western shirt for preschool tomorrow, ate lunch at McDonalds, played at McD's playground, and now Anya is watching a Strawberry Shortcake video. Later she wants to eat at Red Lobster, and get an ice cream cake from DQ. She's a mini -me, that's exactly what I do on my birthday. I'm not sure she really even likes Red Lobster all that much, I think she might prefer Applebees. On Saturday we celebrated her birthday at Grandma & Grandpa's with a big Ariel The Little Mermaid party. She loves everything Disney Princess, but Ariel is her favorite right now. I made her an Ariel shaped chocolate cake, and decorated it to the best of my ability. :) Josh embraced his inner girl, and decorated for yet another girly party. When we were picking out decorations, he kept trying to get Anya to do a pirate birthday! She would tell him that he could have that on his birthday. Anyway she had a great party! She was very sweet and super appreciative for her presents.

My Little Mermaid



Yes I know, those lips, those eyes!

Ashton, the other beautiful princess at the party!

Our Week So Far

So this week has not gotten off to a great start. We got home from our trip late Sunday afternoon with a very cranky Ally. Turns out the crankiness was not just from the car trip, she was sick. Sunday night into Monday she had diarrhea, was throwing up, and running a fever. After being covered in puke once or twice, I started feeling sick Monday afternoon. Not a great day! This morning Anya woke up saying she had a tummy ache, so I figured I was in for another day of fun. I had to cancel my dentist appointment, and keep Anya home from Mom's Day Out & preschool. It was Anya's day to bring a special snack to school to celebrate her birthday(it's tomorrow), so I was going to go ahead and make the brownies I had planned. Turns out I didn't have any eggs! Anya was feeling better, no puke, and wanted to go to school so I thought okay, we'll get groceries, see how she's doing, if' she's fine I'll drop her off, and run home to make the brownies. We get to school with no problems, and then I step out of the car and fall right on my butt, sliding under the car. It is icy/snowy here with a temp of 15 degrees. I'm embarrassed, but fine, I get Anya out, and the car honks like it's locking. I thought was that our car! The keys were in my purse in the car, with my phone. I'm not sure how it happened, but I spent almost 2 hours at preschool waiting for a lock smith. I just barely had enough time to go buy brownies, and make it to pick up Ally. On the plus side, Anya was thrilled to have me at preschool, and I got to watch her be the leader/weather person for the day.

Anya's Preschool Crown

Off We Go

Today we are leaving to go visit my family again as soon as Josh gets home from work. Josh is going to be working at the local hospital there next week doing some moonlighting, so we decided to go along. We are also going to have Anya's birthday party there next Saturday. It will be a few days early, but she wanted to have it at Grandma's house with all her cousins. The girls are going to miss all their activities this week, so I debated about leaving next Friday, and driving by myself. Part of me wants to, but I'm really tired of traveling alone with Ally. I still have a lot to do to get ready to go, I'm such a procrastinator.

It's Freezing!

It's afternoon here and the temperature has reached a high of 16, and now on its way down. We are so lucky that it's not windy! We also got about 1 inch of snow overnight. The birds are filling the trees, so we went out to see if they ate the bird food we put out on Saturday. They had, and left little bird tracks all over the snow. Anya was very interested, she wants binoculars so she can go bird watching. Ally is getting used to the snow, and enjoyed tromping around this time. It's too cold to play for long, their little faces were bright red after only a few minutes.

We're Moving!

Josh applied for a family practice residency in the fall, and we found out in December that he was accepted to the program at Scott AFB, just outside of St. Louis. I'm sad to move, but we knew this was coming so it's not that bad. He has to be there sometime in early June, so May will probably be moving month for us. This time our move is going to be more complicated because we have to sell our house. We have also had a possible deployment hanging over our heads since Thanksgiving! It started out that Josh was going to deploy to the United Arab Emirates for two months sometime in January. Nothing was ever for sure, and then we got the leave date of January 26. I thought, okay fine, at least we know. Then a guard unit stepped up out of nowhere, and left for the deployment on December 29. So the deployment was off, Yeah! Now it's back on again with a leave date of February? Deployments are bad enough, but on top of preparing for a move - it's terrible!

Sears Photos

I took the girls to get their pictures taken at Sears on Monday. To my disappointment, we didn't get pictures taken over Christmas. It just never seemed to work out for one reason or another. So I got Valentine's pictures done! Anya was cooperative, but Ally not so much. She goes from blah - just staring blankly, usually with her mouth wide open, to super hyper. I scheduled our time at 11:00 so Josh could take the girls during his lunch break, and I could focus and pick out which pictures we wanted. We got several good pictures of Anya, one pretty good picture of the girls together, and only a couple of decent pictures of Ally. Oh Well! I think I'll try taking Ally by herself for pictures when she turns 2.

Tumbleweeds

My Parent's House

While I was at my parent's house over the holiday, I got to experience tumbleweeds like never before. They starting rolling in the morning of the 22nd, and mid morning we had to move the cars out of the drive, because the tumbleweeds were surrounding them. As the day progressed the weeds just kept piling up on the front porch, eventually blocking the front door. We used the backyard to come and go through out the day, but by the evening the yard was full and we couldn't even find a path out. Later that night my brother and cousins came to help us escape our tumbleweed prison. :) I helped clear out the porch by throwing the tumbleweeds up into the air and letting the wind carry them over the house. We could at least get out the front porch, but then all those weeds that were going over the house were landing the the backyard. The backyard weeds were piled up almost to the peak of the house. For several days the wind was too high to burn the weeds, so we just kept clearing the porch. It was crazy! When we left on the 26th there was a high wind advisory, and we ran out to the car dodging the weeds, and sealing our lips to keep the dirt out of our mouths. Poor Josh had to load the car in all that mess! My family is still burning weeds from the disaster that week. I've never seen so many tumbleweeds in all my life!

Early morning, We thought this was bad.



The Boys Playing In the Weeds

Anya and her cousins

The Backyard Filling Up


The View From The Front Door

The Backyard Overflowing Into the Alley

Road Block

Christmas Photos

Anya really loved all her presents

Christmas 2008

Here's some highlights of our holiday.

• Anya finally got up the nerve to sit on Santa's lap. She smiled and talked like it was no big deal. I also paid $14 bucks for the photo. :) Ally won't even let me get near Santa.
• Our Pre-Christmas at home was nice and relaxed. When Anya unwrapped presents she would say, "This is what I've wanted my whole life." Ally would also get excited and jabber something I couldn't understand a word of. I think Ally enjoyed the unwrapping as much as she did the gifts.
• We made it to my nephew's, Chandler, 11th birthday party on Dec. 21. It was a big deal because I had to be organized so we could have our Christmas at home, and get all packed up before we left. Then I taught Sunday school that morning before the 4.5 hr drive by myself. Ally is not a good traveler. :(
• I got to see the tumbleweeds take over my home town (more on that later).
• My mom and I made enough Christmas candy for a small army. The girls got to play with their cousins, and make more gingerbread houses.
• Josh joined us on Christmas Eve, and we went to a candlelit church service. Anya walked in front of Josh's candle and her hair caught on fire! Luckily Josh was cool headed, and quickly put it out. I didn't even know about it until after the fact. She only has a small spot that was singed.
• Santa brought the girls a power wheels car that they adore. Ally spent most of Christmas day just sitting in the car. The girls also got fancy babies with wooden bunk beds from my parents. They love-love-love their dolls. They influence each other a lot with what they like to play. Ally will play with Anya's barbies & ponies, and then Anya will play kitchen and dolls with Ally. They are really cute together, until they start fighting over toys. :)

We had a really great Christmas. I managed not to stress out as much as last year. Josh was kind enough to remind me that Christmas is really for kids, and they don't care if everything is perfect. Hopefully next year I'll be able to relax and enjoy the holiday even more. Hope you all had a great holiday too!