Thursday, September 27

My 26th Birthday

My birthday this year was pretty laid back and relaxing. 
The night before my birthday Jeff, the girls & I went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen to celebrate.


On my birthday the girls & I spent the day with my mom. We had Cafe Rio for lunch and then spent most of the rest of the day making Halloween crafts.
What could be better than spending my birthday with my mom & these two little goofs? :)


When Jeff got off work he picked up some Papa Murphy's pizza and brought it over to my parents' for a little party. 


My mom made the most delicious raspberry pie for dessert. 


I'm a lucky girl! 
And just a little freaked out that I'm now closer to 30 than to 20. Yikes. 


Monday, September 24

18 months

I have the two cutest 18 month olds on the earth.
They are so much fun right now. I love this age. And I love hanging out with them all day everyday. It's the best.

Fun facts about the twins at 18 months:

~They say so so so many words. Too many to put all of them on here but here are some of my favorites.
*Binky-Wrigley says "binky". Morley says "binka binka binka binka".
*Horsey-Wrigley says "heesee".  Morley says, "Neigh!" 
*Shoes-They both say "oosh".
*Stuck-They both say "guck!". 
*Gabbie-Wrigley calls her "Babbie". Morley calls her "Abby".
*Noah-They both call him "Nona".
*Water-Wrigley says "bwa bwa". Morley says "otter".
*Pumpkin-They both say "punky".
*Morley-Wrigley says "Mo Mo". Morley says "Mo-wee".
*Wrigley-Wrigley says "Yiyi". Morley says "Iggy". 
*Snack-They both say "nack". 

They say new words every day and it is so funny! I can pretty much have little conversations with them now & they know what I'm saying & I know what they're saying (mostly).

~Morley loves hair. She plays with my hair all the time and she is actually very gentle. On their first day of nursery I sat in there with them for a little bit & Morley walked around the room touching all the kids' hair. Most of them didn't like it and looked at her like she was crazy but she just kept doing it.

~They go to nursery now & are doing so well. Morley doesn't care at all that we leave but Wrigley will usually cry when Jeff or I leave. The nursery leaders say she doesn't cry long at all and then is fine the rest of the time.

~They love love love to color! Whenever they are coloring they point the crayon at me and say their name, meaning they want me to help them write their name. And then they repeat the letters after me. Sometimes I catch Wrigley trying to say the letters on her own while she's drawing but it's usually just, "i.....i....i....i". 

~Wrigley is obsessed with babies. We go to a little music class once a week and one of the kids has a little baby brother who Wrigley just can't get enough of. She would rather play with him than participate in the class.

~Morley still loves to sing. If I turn music on or if I start singing a song, she will sing right along. (Not the actual words.)

~Both girls are super clingy to my lately. I don't always love this. Especially when they both want me to hold them everywhere we are and won't even go to Jeff. They're getting too big for me to carry both of them around for long.

~Morley climbs out of her crib now. First she would just climb from her crib into Wrigley's but now she climbs out and comes to find me.

~They are both getting really fast and pretty much run everywhere they go.

~They both still love books and we spend a lot of time reading every day. I took them to the library for the first time a couple weeks ago and let them pick out 10 books for us to check out. They basically thought it was the best thing that's ever happened.

~Their favorite foods right now are probably avocados, cucumber slices and cheese. They also really like cherry tomatoes and pizza. Oh, and pretzels.

~Morley has the biggest sweet tooth. She loves treats! Wrigley does occasionally but not like Morley.

~They both love the "Wheels on the Bus" song and can do all the actions.

~They are both great sleepers still. They have been sleeping until after 8:00 every morning for the past couple months and it is so nice! :)

~Morley has an obsession with shoes. She is basically a pro at putting her shoes on by herself and has different ones on all the time. There are shoes all over our house all the time, no matter how many times a day I put them away.

~Wrigley is such an obedient little girl. She listens so well most of the time and is such a big helper. Morley.....oh Morley.....she does not listen and is not obedient. She will look me in the eyes and do whatever I just told her not to do. I don't know what to do with her sometimes.

~Both girls have 12 teeth and 2 more coming through right now. It has been the worst few weeks. None of their other teeth have been this bad. I am just praying they cut through soon.

~They still don't really like to watch TV. We had an obsession with Lion King for a while but not so much anymore. They still would never really sit down and watch it for more than maybe 5 minutes.

~They are both so attached to their binks. I don't think we'll ever be able to get rid of them. I need them as much as they do ;)

~Morley is absolutely terrified of the vacuum. All I have to do is say that I'm going to vacuum and she completely freaks out.

~Wrigley thinks everything is pink or blue. So funny. I try to teach them colors but pink and blue are the only ones she has picked up. She can repeat the other ones after I say them but never says them on her own. Except pink and blue :)

~The girls both love to find the moon whenever we are outside. Day or night. They say, "Moon! Sky!" 
They also love to look for airplanes. They yell, "Pane!" whenever they hear one and look up until they see it. Or if we're inside when they hear it, they run to the window.

~Morley is a little confused about her identity. She chases Wrigley around saying, "Mo-wee, Mo-wee!" I don't blame her. It would be totally weird having someone else around who looks exactly like you! ;)

~They are both little sweethearts most of the time and get very worried if someone is hurt or crying. Today I told them my tummy was hurting and Wrigley came up and kissed my stomach. 

We sure love these two and can't imagine our life without them. It's so sad that they are growing up so fast but we are trying to enjoy every second of it. And we're sure having a blast watching them learn new things every day. 



Friday, September 21

State Fair

We went to the State Fair up in Salt Lake with Mike last week. It was a blast! I'm so glad we decided to go.  I love seeing the girls so happy and excited! 
I was going to say their favorite part was seeing all the animals, but they really loved going on the rides too. I think they just loved the whole night. 
We were all hungry when we first got there so we found some food before we did anything else. 
These girls love their corn on the cob.


We walked around looking at all the animals next. 
This white goat at the top of this picture was chewing on that lady's bag. It was kinda funny.


Morley wasn't scared at all of any of the animals, sticking her hands in all of the cages to pet them, while Wrigley was a little more nervous. Especially when we got to the sheep, who were making a lot of noise. There wasn't a chance she was going anywhere near those things. 








We took the girls on some rides after that. And Mike paid for them to go on a pony ride. I thought they would love that because they love the horse down the street so so much. Morley thought it was pretty great but Wrigley wanted to get off as soon as I put her on. I had to hold her on the pony the whole time. Morley sat on there all by herself (with Jeff walking next to her) the whole time and smiled and waved at everyone :) 

We didn't get many good pictures of the girls on any of the rides but they had so much fun. It's really the first time they have been on "rides" that they are old enough to enjoy and it was so fun to see how much they did enjoy it. It was hard to get them off some of the rides.


Jeff & I also took them down the big slide and as soon as we got to the bottom they wanted to go again. So we went down a few times.


 They also got to jump in the little kids jump house. Didn't think we were ever going to be able to get them out of that!
What a fun night!

Thursday, September 20

Family Pictures 2012

We had our family pictures taken yesterday at Thanksgiving Point. We had them done by Fotofly & I am very happy with how they turned out.
I am saving my favorites to use for our Christmas card this year so here are my second favorites ;)

(Wrigley is in the denim skirt & Morley has the fur vest on.)

















I really liked our photographer. She was so great with the girls. She took a few minutes before we started to talk to them & play with them to make them feel comfortable with her and it really helped. The girls did so much better than I expected. They have been so clingy to me lately so I was afraid it might be a disaster. But they did so well & I think we got some really great shots. 

Wednesday, September 19

Lake Powell

Oh Lake Powell.
My aunt & uncle have a timeshare on a houseboat at Lake Powell. They get 2 or 3 weeks a year & have invited my family to go quite a few times. For one reason or another, I have never been able to go the week they have had it. 
After years of hearing how incredibly fun Lake Powell is, we were finally able to go for a few days at the beginning of September. And I must say, it didn't live up to my expectations. Yes, it was still fun but also hard with two 1 year olds. There's not much for them to do on a houseboat/boat for 3 days. We had to keep them in our sight at all times so they didn't end up at the bottom of the lake. It was more work than it was a vacation. And the girls did not sleep well at all the entire time!! I felt awful for everyone else who had to listen to them cry all hours of the night. By the time we left to go home, we were all completely exhausted. 
But here is some proof that we really did have a lot of fun.

My favorite part of the trip was first thing in the morning. Everything was quiet and peaceful and there were ducks swimming all around the houseboats. That was probably the girls' favorite part too....feeding the ducks every morning. 





I just don't know if the girls could have gotten any dirtier while we were there. 
Just layers of dirty.


One day my dad was scraping off the grill to make hamburgers for dinner & didn't realize Morley was standing right next to him. She was covered. Ha. It was funny.


We discovered Wrigley's love for playing cards. This kept her entertained for quite a while. And surprisingly, she was very gentle & didn't bend any of them.


We thought the girls would enjoy going for a swim out behind the houseboat but they didn't. They can't hold themselves up in their life jackets yet so we had to hold them. They don't enjoy being held in one spot for more than like 3 seconds, so that didn't last long. 


Have I mentioned that Morley climbs. Everything. 


(And yes, they spent most of their time in just diapers. It was SO hot.)

I really enjoyed our boat ride through the canyons. Gorgeous. 
The girls slept almost the whole time. That was really the only time they slept...on boat rides. 







My siblings & cousins tube a little different than most people...
They start with 5 people on the 2 tubes and then jump back & forth between them & try to knock each other off until there is one winner. 
The two wave runners follow behind the boat & pick up the people who have fallen off. 
I didn't get a chance to be on a tube but I was on one of the wave runners picking people up. I was totally okay with that. I love wave runners. 





I love that my mom wakeboards. She's awesome!



This was probably 30 seconds into our drive home. 
See? Exhausted. 


Maybe next year the girls will enjoy it more. 
(If we're invited again.)