Three Little Monkeys

First I guess I should throw in a few highlights from our trip home. We were going to drive home (to Provo) on December 30th, but a fairly intense storm all through northern AZ and UT caused us to change our minds. We drove down to Mesa the afternoon of New Year's Eve, and spent the night at Phil & Sophie's. We actually stayed up until midnight, which I don't think I've done in at least 2 years... it was pretty fun, and the kids all enjoyed getting to spend some time with Uncle Phil, Aunt Sophie, and Cousin Kinz. Phil works hard to make sure he's a fun uncle, even though we don't see him much. Here is Katy, about to be airplaned all over the living room:

This is one of many very exciting pictures I took of Phil and Sophie. We'll just leave it at that. :)

Probably the weirdest part of New Year's was all the fireworks people were setting off in the streets at midnight. Though still technically illegal in some aspects, the recent law change made a big difference in the number of "celebrations." Pretty cool.

The next morning we drove to St. George, (fairly uneventful) stopping briefly to visit 2/3 of our belongings in our storage unit in Henderson. We got a pretty nice little suite, and everyone slept well. Jeremy and I even went to bed at 9:30 with Katy. We were pretty tired from the festivities the night before and all the driving. :) 

I randomly called my friend Naomi while driving through the endless desert somewhere around Kingman, and found that she and her family were ALSO going to be in St. George that night. Score! We hadn't seen each other in about a year, since our friend Karen's wedding, so that was really cool. It was also fun because I hadn't met her sweet little one and she hadn't met either of my girls. (She saw Reilly shortly before Jaina was born). Of course my kids were being punks, but they weren't very excited about leaving all their grandmas and grandpas again, and all the traveling was already getting to them. That's my excuse, anyway...

I don't know if you'd call it a highlight, but when we were 40 miles outside of Provo, Jeremy called me and said he had a flat tire. We were driving two cars up, and he and Katy were in the Cavalier. We went back to the exit he had stopped at, and while he was changing the tire, I noticed it looked like it had no tread. I looked at the other front tire, and it was also completely bald. The tires were only 18 months old! Apparently (we figured out later) we should have had it aligned after his dad replaced the struts. He carefully took some back roads about 15 miles until he could get to somewhere that was open (it was Sunday) and bought new tires, then finally made it the rest of the way home about 3 hours after us. It was cold and snowy, but we were so grateful it happened with plenty of daylight, and not in a storm, and that the tire only went flat instead of blowing out on the freeway (where the speed limit was actually 80 mph much of the way). We were definitely being watched over!

We're doing well here in Provo, and it's been really nice having a car. We have shared a car for about 4 years now, and it's great to not have to worry about giving rides, or who needs to do what, etc. The kids and I have ventured to the library twice (I really like the Provo library!), the mall, Wal-mart, Target, etc. all during the middle of the day. :)  Attitudes and sleeping seem to have finally settled down after being "home" almost 2 weeks now, and everyone's doing fairly well. We have no idea what's going to be happening 6 weeks from now, but I'm just trying to enjoy the "normalness" while we have it.

All bundled up and ready to go out!

She sits well, but the boppy is still nice to prevent some head bonks...

Poor thing woke up with a swollen eye this morning.
Already looking better though!



These three keep me so busy. Reilly and Jaina just play and play and play all day. We are constantly telling them to stop playing during mealtime too and PLEASE JUST EAT. They fight a little, but mostly they entertain each other right now. And Katy. Sometimes I get lucky and I can sit her in their room with them and she'll watch them for 20 or 30 minutes while I get something done. Much of the time she's her happy little self, but she's also teething (her first one popped through last week - yay!) off and on, and has had a bit of a cold. She is SUCH a mama's girl. Neither of my other kids were ever this bad (that I remember). It doesn't matter who's holding her - if she can see me, she starts whining to get to me. Sweet, but a little difficult at times!

Reilly and Jaina are growing so much. The other day I told Jaina to go do something and she rolled her eyes and said "whatever, mom!" She was smiling, and actually went to do it (which doesn't always happen) but isn't just barely 3 a little early for this sort of thing??

Tonight Jeremy went to the temple, so I did baths (pretty much a weekly occurance right now - trying to get them all clean at once wears me out!!) and put everyone to bed. Here are some pictures we took before Reilly and Jaina (finally, after like 30 minutes of "bedtime" stuff) went to bed. (On Reilly's mattress - what passes for beds around our crazy household right now)



They are silly, and they drive us crazy sometimes most of the time,  but they love each other, and we sure love them!