Playing Around

Here are a bunch of pictures. I am leaving to go to Georgia for 4 days, so I have been busy preparing for graduate school interviews. Maybe in a couple of days I will post some text for the pictures. Autumn has been keeping busy playing, and Prairie is getting into everything. I think I need to vacuum a little more often, because she keeps putting all kinds of junk in her mouth and Autumn will say "No, no Prairie, don't do that, that really worries me"

A lot of Prairie

So my next daughter is taking bucket baths. These bucket baths work so well, especially when we don't have a bathtub. Prairie was really getting to big for our bathroom sink, and it seems like it would be way to much work to have her bathe in the kitchen sink, so this is working so well. She loves to splash too. If you look carefully you can see splash marks all over the mirror and the wall.


My dad came to visit this past weekend and we went to my grandparents home for Sunday to visit. This is Prairie with my aunt Tanya's dog, Maya. Prairie really like her, and Maya is a really nice dog.


Prairie is really getting old enough that we can play with her. Her new favorite thing is playing with this ball. She gets so excited and flaps her arms when she sees that you are going to play with the ball with her. My sister Jennie gets really excited about playing with her.

Autumn eating snow.

Prairie walking with the assistance of Baba Russ

Prairie so cuddly, so different than her older sister Autumn

Prairie posing for the camera, once she notice Papi taking a picture

The Texas Trip

We drove 3500 miles roundtrip with our kids to Houston after Christmas to see some of our friends from college and for my cousin's wedding. When Ben and I were dating, I spent a lot of time at his house, his roommate, Jared, was just home from his mission and finally decided it was time to start dating. He was kind of interested in my roommate, Emmaly. Well I encouraged him, and look where that led them, now they are married with a really cute 2 year old daughter, Erin and another on the way. Jared after graduating from Iowa State with a degree in Aerospace Engineering got a job with USA (United Space Alliance) and works in Houston. We got to see the house they just bought a few months ago, tour the Johnson Space Center, and all around just hang out and feel like we were in college again, except we are all married and we have kids.

Autumn and Erin and had a blast. They played so well together for 4 days, and then on the last day, Autumn was tired and she got a little more bossy, and Erin doesn't let kids push her around, so they were bickering a little more, but the first four days, we hardly knew what they were doing, because they would off playing in Erin's room, or in the front room, just having a great time together.

I got to spend some time with Emmaly, and we left the boys with all the kids, and that was a lot of fun. We went to Galveston, and went to the state park there and just walked around on trails through the bayous for a while. I was rethinking my idea of bringing only one pair of shoes then, because I had the wedding to go to the next day. I got to the gulf of Mexico and it was pretty neat.

The beach at Galveston, that is the Gulf of Mexico.

Autumn all ready to leave for Houston, she is such a pack-rat.

Autumn with her naked buns running around.

On our way to Houston we drove all night one night, then we camped in Texas outside of Amarillo on the panhandle, and then stayed a night outside of Dallas with my brother-in-laws parents, while my sister and brother and law were visiting there.

We were going to camp in New Mexico, but it was so windy there that we ended up snapping poles on both of our tents, and also there were these annoying little burrs around, that got stuck to everything. Ben was really frustrated and Autumn started crying that she just wanted to go home, so we got back in the car and drove a couple of more hours into Texas, fixed our tent problems and stayed at Palo Duro Canyon State park. We got there a little after 5pm, and we couldn't go into the main park, so we had to camp at this after hours place, that didn't have markers, fire pits, picnic tables or anything. We couldn't find a bathroom that night, so we were just going in the bushes. Well this was a new experience for Ben helping a little girl, and for Autumn peeing in the grass while squatting. The first time didn't go so well, and she ended up peeing all over her pants and shoes. After that mommy took her to pee, because she remember how her parents did it with her when she was little and they went camping.

After Ben took her pee she was just running around our campsite with her socks and sweatshirt on while Ben and I finished putting up the tent. I thought it was pretty comical.

Ben coooking eggs, sausage, potato, cheese breakfast for us.

Erin, Autumn and Prairie in the tub at the Renshaw's house.

Autumn and Erin have a blast playing the tub together.

Ben with the shells of the fruit in his eyes -- just being himself.

Me and Emmaly went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for a get together on new years eve. Well while at the store we found this interesting fruit. It looks like these weird spikey things all over the surface, but they aren't sharp. Emmaly bought a couple for us to try them out. They basically tasted like a grape, but way more dificult to eat. Neither of us can remember what the fruit is called, we couldn't even remember when we got home from the store and showed it to our husbands.

Ben with his mustache at the wedding.

Ben was so excited not to be at BYU for 12 days, and not having to shave. He decided to shave everything except his mustache and his soul patch, because he is allowed to have a mustache. For some reason with the bow tie, it doesn't look as hideous, but it really was hideous. I still wanted him to keep it, because I just thought it was funny, but he just say he couldn't do it, so the nasty-stache is gone.

The Houston, Texas temple where my cousin was married.

My cousin Daniel and his new wife Jenny.

Christmas

We had a really good Christmas. Ben's parents, his two single sisters, and my sister and her husband were all at our house for Christmas. We had the Weinheimer traditional Christmas eve dinner of ham and of course orange rolls. Instead of potato casserole we had amazing mashed potatoes and two varieties, one just regular Russ Weinheimer goodness and the other was carmelized onion. Me, Ben and Jennie were fighting over the carmelized onion potatoes.

Autumn was old enough that she was actually really excited about Christmas. As soon as she woke up she came and got me and told me that she was so excited about Christmas. We then got everyone else up before she was allowed in the front room with the tree.

Here is our family stockings that I have made over the last couple of years.

This is the new stocking I made this year. I did a smiley sun because Prairie is so smiley and happy.

Autumn's stash from her parents.

This is Autumn's stash. The rocking chair was the main gift from me and Ben. We found it at a garage sale for $3. It is missing a couple of rungs, but I made cushions to match our rocking chair, and you don't even notice that it is missing rungs. Autumn has loved using the rocking chair. As soon as she came out I told her that the rocking chair was for her and Prairie. Later on Christmas morning I asked her if she liked her rocking chair, and she corrected me that it was hers and Prairie's rocking chair. I am really glad that she clung to that idea, so that when Prairie is walking we aren't going to have screaming fits when Prairie touches it.

Autumn got to open two new games for our family, Dora chutes and ladders and a bilingual memory game. Ben and I were really excited before Christmas when Autumn really got into games. The only thing we had age appropriate for her was go fish with face cards, so we had been playing a lot of go fish, so we were really excited to get her a couple of other games that we would have a fun time playing with her.

Here are the two rocking chairs. Autumn drags the small one all over the house, wherever she is playing.

Autumn in her new Christmas pajamas

Growing up my mom always made me and my sister brand new pajamas for Christmas. It was the only gift we got to open on Christmas eve. She said she wanted us to have new pajamas to look good on Christmas morning when we are opening our gifts. Autumn kind of ruined that part of the tradition, because she insisted on getting dressed for Christmas, oh well.

I made Autumn her own apron to use, because she is quite a little helper in the kitchen.

Ben and Autumn in their matching River Plate jerseys. Ben's was boughten in Argentina and I made Autumn's.

Autumn a couple of weeks before Christmas told me that she wanted an Argentina shirt like Papi's, and asked me to make it for her. It is really cute that she is that confident in my sewing abilities that I can make her anything I want. I surprised Ben and Autumn by making her a replica of his shirt. I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Autumn chilling in her rocking chair with her new tied Dora blanket from her aunt Jennie and uncle Janardan (Janardan did help make it, he cut one tie, thank you j-dawg.)

Lindsey and Autumn relaxing on the couch on Christmas.

I really liked this picture because exactly three years earlier , on Autumn's first Christmas she and her Aunt Lindsey slept on the couch together for a couple of hours. They both were completely out, and Autumn was just this tiny 6 week old baby. Anyway, I looked and I couldn't find my digital copy of them sleeping on the couch together on Christmas, but this reminded me of it and I thought it was really cute.

The Oviatts

Ben's little sister Lindsay, is on the April to December track at BYU-Idaho, so her parents came out from Iowa to pick her up , we were luckily enough to spend Christmas with them, and a few days before the holiday. It was really nice since they don't live very close anymore. We kind of miss living 45 minutes away and coming down almost every week, and the free babysitting.

Poopa with smiley Prairie

Aunt Laura with Prairie in her jackey made my Grandma Ciccotelli

Prairie playing with Poopa

Prairie eating her cheerios

Aunt Lindsey and Prairie

Poopa and Autumn under her new umbrella from Poopa

My one sister-in-law (Laura) loves babies and was going nuts taking pictures of Prairie with my digital camera, and she kept getting this amazing shots of Prairie looking so cute, so I have a lot of Prairie pictures from when the Oviatts were here.

Let it Snow!

Here is our backyard in a winter wonderland. We used the yellow sled in the very bottom, right hand corner, and Autumn was sledding down the slide with it, she really enjoyed it.

So I am doing a bunch of back-blogging. I only blogged in december once, but I have tons of pictures that I know atleast that the grandparents want to see. We had a whole bunch of snow, but now I don't even really remember when it was, but we got dumped like two nights in a row, and then it was really cold. Just yesterday the snow is almost gone, which is unusual in provo, snow doesn't hang around that long, atleast with my vast experience of one previous winter.

Autumn all geared up to play in the backyard.

Prairie all geared up to watch me and Autumn play in the backyard, next year Prairie you can play too.

So my mom used to make me and my sister new dresses for Christmas and Easter. My mom realized that she had the red velvet dresses that she made for me and my sister for Christmas in 1987. She thought they would probably fit my girls pretty well, so she sent them out to utah so that they could be used for the next generation of girls in our family.

Autumn and Prairie in their red velvet Christmas dresses on loan from Grandma.

Me and my sister wearing the red velvet dresses in 1987. Don't we look cute?

Our whole family dressed up for Christmas in our winter wonderland. I made a new skirt for Christmas and Ben has his abominable snowman tie on.