Santa & The Tooth Fairy

Have you ever wondered if Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy work on the same night? We can tell you that they do! We were surprised when at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve our doorbell rang and guess who it was ... it was Santa Claus. He wanted to stop by in person to let the girls pick a present out of his bag. Kenna chose a puppy and Ashlyn picked a moose. They were so excited. Santa was a little bit sad because he was hoping to see Cousin Walt here, but Walt was at home sleeping. Maybe next year. Now to the Tooth Fairy part - at dinner tonight Kenna lost ANOTHER tooth. This makes 6 so far. She was worried that the Tooth Fairy would not come because Santa was coming. Not to worry ... they both came and left gifts for her - she was so happy!

It's All Fixed Now ... As Much As Possible!

We finally got a break in the snow today and Castle Cuts for Kids was opened. What would normally take me about 15-20 to drive took me 75 minutes today. I should have been driving with chains since there was so much snow and ice on the road ... but everywhere was sold out and I couldn't get any and I didn't have any. So I put the girls in the car and we drove VERY slowly to get Ashlyn's hair fixed. This is the best they could do. The gal said if we went the route of the pixie cut - then it would show the bald spot in the front that she gave herself. Oh well - at least we got out of the house for a little bit today!

ArCtIc BlAsT 2008 - dAy 8

Here are some picture taken of our yard and house. This is the most snow we have had here in over 40 years. Can you believe it? School was cancelled all last week and Christmas vacation started today so the girls are having a blast playing in the snow and sledding. I on the other hand am starting to feel the cabin fever and want to get out!! Maybe tomorrow. Take a look - I did get some beautiful pictures.


View from front door

Question: How do you spell troublemaker? Answer: A-S-H-L-Y-N!

Well she did it AGAIN! Ashlyn decided that she did not want bangs anymore - so what did she do? She cut her hair ... ugh!!! Look at that a lot off the front and a bit off the sides what do we have now? A mullet!! I can't believe that she did this again. We talk about it every time we go to get their hair cut. She know that the only people allowed to cut hair are the people at Castle Cuts ... that is their job. So I wanted to take her to get it fixed today ... but of course we are snowed in still. They are not open and even if they were, we could not get there because you can only drive if you have chains and I do not. So when we get the chance we will go and get it fixed as best as they can. She does know however that she will not be allowed to have hair pretties, sparkles or a lollipop on the way out. She is in BIG trouble.

aRcTiC bLaSt 2008 - dAy 3

Let me start off by saying we have the BEST neighbors in the whole wide world! The girls have been waiting all day to go outside sledding with our neighbors Lauren, Emma, Rachel and Ellie. When it was finally time - not only did the "big girls" let Kenna and Ashlyn use their sleds but the pushed, pulled and carried them up the steep driveway to make sure they had a great time. Our cousin Walter even came outside to watch all the kids have a blast. Towards the end of play time Micha, Eli, Bella and Natalie came to join us. We had the whole gang out there sledding down the steep driveway (thanks Starts family). Again we are so blessed to have such amazing neighbors ... we love you all! Thanks for making our snow day so much fun.

Playing In The Snow

We had our first real snow day today. We got just over 3 inches of snow here at the house. We got up early to go to a birthday party and from the moment we got home the girls kept asking if they could go out and play. They wanted to build a "girl snowman". We all got bundled up and went out to play. We had a fun time, but the snow was not wet enough to build a girl snowman. It was plenty wet to have a snow fight and to get super cold. On top of that we got back inside and found out that tomorrow will be a SNOW DAY! That means no school or day care for the girls - just more snow play, movies and hot cocoa. Here are some pictures from today.

Kenna got ready all by herself. She couldn't wait to go outside to play.

It took Ashlyn a bit to get used to the cold. She didn't last long outside.

Kenna had a blast ... when it was time to go inside because it started to get really windy - she cried.

Here the girls and daddy were attempting to make a "girl snowman". They got a base started, but the snow was not wet enough.

OuR cOoKiE pArTy!!

We had a cookie party and it was so much fun! I made 14 dozen sugar cookies and lots of different colored frosting from scratch. I allowed the girls to invite a few friends (8 kids - 10 total) and we had a blast decorating all the cookies. There were some pretty intresting results. At least they all had a blast with the frosting and all the other sprinkles, candy canes and candy. Each child got to go home with their plastic container full of cookies, their Santa cup for their hot chocolate and their apron. They are already talking about when we do it next year. I think I am going to need that long to recover! Happy Holidays

Ashlyn LOVED the sprinkles ...

Kenna took her time and went into great detail with all her cookies, and Ash just wanted to be done as soon as possible so she could get on to the next one.

This is a sample of some of the cookies that went home. I believe these belong to the Ivanoff girls!

The most BEAUTIFUL Christmas tree in the whole wide world!

Here we are at the Plumper Pumpkin Patch and Tree Farm looking for the "perfect" Christmas tree. The weather was great and the girls had a great time looking for our tree to cut down. Here it is ... we found it.

The girls were there to help daddy cut the very big tree down. It didn't take daddy that long. Now we were ready for the big trip back to the barn to pay for our tree and take it home. That is of course after we make the tree "dance" to make sure all the bees and bugs stay at the farm and do not come home with us. Last year we had a few hornets get into the house. We do not want that to happen again.

Here it is ... can you believe how big it is? Daddy had to cut a bunch off the top and bottom to make it fit in the house. This is the biggest tree we have had so far. We had to go out and buy more lights because we did not have enough from last year.

The girls were having so much fun. I tortured them into taking a bunch of pictures before I would let them decorate the tree. They are so excited about Christmas this year - it is way better seeing Christmas again through their eyes.

GiRls TrIp To SaN FrAnCiScO

Thanks to Auntie Julie for giving us the tour of her town. All us girls had a fabulous time in San Francisco. Look at everything we did!


We started out at Ghirardelli Square. Here is grammy, Kenna, Ashlyn and Auntie Julie at the fountain.

Here we are at Fisherman's Warf - Pier 39 to see the sea lions. The girls thought is was stinky but a lot of fun to see all the sea lions.

Here we are on the cable car. Kenna thought we were going to go on the big double decker red bus and was a little disappointed that it wasn't the cable car. But once she got on, she was excited for the ride.

We couldn't leave without some ice cream and a tour of how they make the chocolate at Ghirardelli. The girls were pooped by the time we got to the car for the ride home. Kenna said she want to go to school there when she grows up so she can live with Auntie Julie and do all that fun stuff every day. We will see.

Grammy and Grampy's House for Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in Portloa Valley with Grammy, Grampy and Auntie Julie. This was Kenna's second time there and Ashlyn's first time there. They loved playing on the carousel horses thay grampy made and swimming in the "hot pool". Here are some pictures from our trip.

Kenna and Ashlyn have been asking me to make a pumpkin pie with them since we picked our pumpkins out of the garden in October. I passed this on to grammy and she said she would make their first pumpkin pie with them. Grammy is a very good pie maker and me not so much. I was so excited when she volunteered for the task. They turned out really well. Kenna really liked the pumpkin pies and Ashlyn didn't ... but she did enjoy making them. Thanks Grammy!!

Happy Thanksgiving!! Here is the Turkey that Kenna named Ashlyn because the turkey weighed 23 pounds and Ash only weighs 26 pounds. She said it was like eating an Ashlyn so she named it Ashlyn.

On Thanksgiving morning the girls decided to draw Thanksgiving pictures. This is Ashlyn's picture of a turkey. She drew it for the farmer - whoever that is.

This is Kenna's Thanksgiving picture of a turkey, Kenna and a cowboy. We really had a good time at grammy and grampy's.

Our Visit to LA

We went to LA just before Thanksgiving to visit all our family down there since it has been so long since we have seen everyone. Here are some pictures from our trip.

This is almost all the cousins. Joshua, Annika, Kenna, Adeline, Kodee and Ashlyn. Kirra was already in bed. This is them being scary ... are you scared? Look how fast they all grow up. They had so much fun playing together.

This is Kodee and Kenna getting along. They have their moments. They are both actually growing up. They hardly fought at all this time. Kodee is now 5 years old and Kenna is 6.

They all got dresses up to take Christmas pictures with gramma and grampa for their Christmas cards. Do you know how hard it is to get 4 kids between the ages of 1 and 6 to all look at the camera at the same time and be smiling? We had 3 different cameras taking pictures at the same time and I think we only got 1 or 2 good pictures to choose from.

Before I left I got the chance to go see my very good friends Tracy and Mark and new baby Dylan. He is such a good baby and look at all that hair ... he is so adorable!!

Ashlyn - Our Star!

I got an email from Miss Kamina last night. There is a gal in Milwaukie, WI that was looking on the internet for an idea for marketing a charity event that benefits elementary school children. She came across this picture of Ashlyn on Kamina's web site (www.kcpgalleries.com) and sent her an email asking if they could use this picture for their invitations & advertising for this event. She said it was perfect because the theme for their event this year is "Future So Bright, You Have To Wear Shades". I gave my OK and asked her to have them send us an invitation so Ashlyn can save it.

Kenna - and Another One Makes 5!

Kenna has lost ANOTHER tooth. That makes a total of 5 teeth missing - 3 on top and 2 on the bottom. There always seems to be DRAMA surrounding Kenna losing her teeth. She told me when I picked her up from day care that she had another loose tooth. She was very worried that she was going to lose it soon. I felt it, and yes it was loose ... but not very loose. I figured that she had another 2 to 3 weeks before it would actually fall out. She is VERY self conscious about having so many teeth in the front gone. She says she "looks like a clown". We were eating dinner and she yelled OUCH! I told her to eat on the other side. Later on she was standing in the kitchen and she yelled OUCH again - who know what happened. At bed time I gave them their vitamins and was looking at Kenna and something looked different. I noticed that her tooth was missing. We looked around on the floor for a little bit but I think she swallowed it!! This was not good, you all know our little drama queen. She started crying because she knew that without a tooth the tooth-fairy would not come. It took some convincing but finally we decided that the tooth-fairy always knows when a little boy or girl loses a tooth, and she can always find it even if we can't. We also decided that if she did not come that night, we would write her a letter the next day explaining what happened. Luckily she came and all is well again. Let's hope there will not be any more missing teeth until some of the others grow back!

HaLLowEeN ..

Here are some pictures from our Halloween this year. Kenna was one of the new fairies from the Tinekerbell movies and Ashlyn was Ariel. We were lucky with the weather again this year, It rained off and on all day ... but was really nice tonight for the girls to go trick-or-treating. I have also included a picture of Brad's pumpkin this year. hope you all had a good and safe Halloween!

A TaG oF RaNdOmS ...

My lovely friend Becca tagged me to list 6 randoms things about myself...

1- I LOVE the smell of gasoline. I help mow the yard sometimes just so I will get the chance to fill the mower up if it runs out of gas and I can get a good whiff.

2- I LOVE to eat the pickled cabbage from Sakura of Tokyo in West Covina, California. I have searched every restaurant around here for it and can't find anyone who makes it the same way. I have my parents bring me 2 big tubs of it every time they come up. I can sit and eat one whole tub in one sitting.

3- I LOVE to watch Reality TV. I Tivo everything so I can go through them and watch without the commercials. It is ridiculous!

4- So the hair on my legs does not grow very fast and what does grow - there isn't much of. I sometimes pluck the hairs on my legs with tweezers. Courtney and Erin used to tease me about this growing up.

5- I have many subscriptions to multiple cooking magazines and I love to watch the Food Network and all shows about cooking. The weird thing is ... I NEVER cook.

6- Whenever I am exercising whether it be running on the treadmill, the elliptical, stairs or on the bike - I count. 100 times stepping on the right foot, 100 times stepping on the left foot, 100 times trading off feet and then I start the routine all over again. Is that OCD? I have always done this.

I have to tag my friends via e-mail because everyone I invited to start a Blog have not done so yet. So until I have more friends who Blog - I will just have to wait and do it this way. Have fun!!!

You're Invited to my Pitty Party!

So I went to the foot doctor yesterday ... I do not have a stress fracture ... I BROKE my foot in two places. Nice huh? I am now in a "cute" walking cast for the next three weeks. After that I get to wear these special inserts for both my shoes for the next six-nine months. On top of that, he said that I shouldn't be wearing any heels. Can you believe my luck? Now I have my stomach tear (which I find out if I will need surgery on next Friday) and my foot. I have never felt so old. Welcome to my pitty party!

All About Me!

Ok - So I got many messages from you asking what about me? Well - I didn't realize that almost everything I wrote was only about Brad and the girls. So here is what is new with me.

1. I have been concentrating on losing the "baby weight" that I gained six years ago when I got pregnant with Kenna. So far since April 1, 2008 I have lost 30+ pounds. I still have 20-25 pounds left to go to hit my goal.

2. I have been having problems with my big toe since May. I have a stress fracture and it has really been bothering me. I go to the foot doctor this Friday - I will keep you all posted on what is wrong.

3. I fell down the stairs on Sunday and hurt myself. I have been having pains in my stomach so I decided to go to the doctor yesterday to make sure everything is OK. So guess what - I have a tear in my ab muscle above my belly button. That means absolutely NO exercise for 10-14 days. Ugh - that just throws EVERYTHING off. What am I going to do?

4. I got my hair cut last week. I cut 6 inches off and I love it.

5. It seems like I am on the go all the time. I am busy with my doctor appointments, Kenna's doctor appointments, soccer practice & games, school and homework, then of course all the housework and laundry. Does it ever end? Thanks to everyone for asking about me ... I love you all too!!

Ashlyn's 4th Birthday

Our little girl turned 4 on October 14th. We had a birthday party for her at Plumper Pumpkin Patch. We had a great time. The weather was beautiful and we had a lot of friends and family there to help us celebrate her special day. We rented the greenhouse and the theme was Strawberry Shortcake and Tinkerbell (she couldn't choose just 1). Our friends came and got to go on the slides, pet the animals, go through the mazes, watch pumpkins being shot on a sling shot at old cars, go on the hay ride and we all got to go pick a pumpkin to take home with us.