Happy 1st Birthday Crewser!!!

Happy Birthday, Crewser! I can hardly believe that my Christmas baby is one year old today. Where has this year gone? We love you so much, Crew, and can't imagine life without you. What a sweet, handsome little man you are.

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Freaky Story

Last night about 1:45 in the morning Caysja comes in our room and wakes me up saying, "Mommy, there's a grasshopper (that's what she calls a cricket) in the bathroom". I'm half asleep and kind of annoyed that she woke me up, but I get up with her and head off to the bathroom and what do I find...not a grasshopper at all but a SCORPION!! And it was the little kind too--the extra poisonous ones!!!! Aaaaagh! It was all I could to keep from screaming! All this time we've lived in AZ (over 2 years now) and I've always considered myself soooo lucky because I had never seen one, not once, not in my apartment, not outside, never ever. Well, that came to an end last night. I went and woke Caleb up (he thought I was making it up) until he saw it and then he was a little nervous too, considering that he's never killed one before. He swatted it with our fly swatter and flushed it down the toilet and we all went back to bed. Well, there was no way I was going back to sleep after that--in fact, I think it took me about 2 hours and by that time it was time to get up and go running! Needless to say, I'm really tired today. Every little movement I felt I thought, "was that a scorpion crawling on ME?" I kept re-playing in my mind last night all the things I've ever heard about scorpions...like if you see one, you probably have more somewhere, or they are impossible to get rid of....etc. Can someone help me out here? What is fact and what is fiction? My family is coming for Thanksgiving this week and some of them will be sleeping on the FLOOR!! Scary! Besides that I have an 11 month old that crawls all over the floor every day (putting everything in his mouth along the way) and none of us wear shoes inside! Anyway, I am sooo thankful that Caysja is okay and that she came and got me instead of going potty and getting stung!

AZ State Fair

About a week ago we went to the AZ State Fair in downtown Phoenix. We had a lot of fun and the best part about it--it was FREE!! Every Tues. and Thurs. if you went between the hours of noon and 1pm you could get in free. Caleb didn't have any rotations that day so it worked out perfectly. It was actually a little cold too, so we weren't sweating in the sun. There was a lot to see! They had art exhibits, cooking displays, floral designs, animals, TONS of food vendors, a rodeo, lots of rides...and I'm sure I'm forgetting something...

We let Caysja pick one ride to go on. Of course it had to be the pinkest thing she could find!

There was this cool "kid's zone" with huge legos and Caleb and Caysja made a house!

My little "cowgirl"

Caleb showed us how to "rope a cow"

"This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed home..." (There were some HUGE pigs there!)

Just chillin'

"Caysja had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb..."

"golfing" with daddy in the Kid's Zone--Kiki got a hole in one her first try!

I love these beautiful Clydesdales

Halloween FUN 2009

(Sorry--all these pictures are slightly blurry, due to some dust being on our camera lens which we didn't know about!) We had a wonderful Halloween! It was hard for me to decide which pictures to post. (I know, I take too many!) This was the first year that Caysja really "got it". She was so excited to carve her pumpkin for FHE...but then she didn't want to touch the "yucky" seeds inside at all and made her dad do all the work. It was pretty funny.

Finished product--good job, Honey (Caysja wanted a "happy face")

On Wed. we went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat. The only problem was that it got COLD that day (well, cold for AZ, that is)...hence the long sleeved shirts that Caysja and Crew are wearing. I actually ran to Wal-Mart to get Caysja some black tights--and they were all out...so she ended up wearing tights from last year. Good thing I have such a tiny girl!

A couple of my friends and I thought it would be fun to make our girl's costumes this year. Tutus are really easy to make and they looked so cute on them. (Thanks for the pattern, Natalie!) The girls--Caysja, Halle, Kate

The boys--Charlie, Crew and Camden

Our family

On Friday we went to Music Makers and had a little Halloween party there as well. Thanks for putting it together, Alissa! We had so much fun.

Crew found a skeleton to help push him around!

Doing the cake walk

That night we went to Midwestern for more Halloween festivities. They always do such fun things for the kids around holidays.

Hangin' out with dad

Pinning the "grin" on the pumpkin

Hitting the pinata (she really got into this one)

Face painting (which got rubbed off immediately after...)

On Halloween night our friend Britni had us over for a Pizza party and trick-or-treating around her block. Thanks, Britni--we had a blast and Travis missed out! (I decided to dress up just for fun as did Britni but she doesn't have her costume on yet in the picture.)

Britni's brother and his wife joined us and we thought his costume was pretty cool...the girls weren't so sure...

TRICK-OR-TREAT!!

Until next year...

FINALLY rotations are here!

I took this picture a few weeks ago when Caleb started his first day of rotations and then I got sick and I forgot to post it. Say goodbye to book work and classes--finally! He was very ready to be done with all that and move on to clinical rotations. Podiatry students start their rotations much later than all the DO's (they started this summer while the Pods still had to go to class) so needless to say, Caleb's been really jealous of all his DO friends who have started to "progress" with their education. So far he has really enjoyed them and learned a lot. I don't like it as well because he's no longer on campus to be able to walk home for lunch every day like he used to. ( We were getting spoiled I know!)

Kiki wanted a picture with her dad. (You have to excuse her hair--it was early morning and we hadn't gotten ready yet!)

Here's a picture from when I was so sick. While I was lying on the couch all day, Caysja and Caleb built a very cool fort under our kitchen table. Caysja was in heaven! What a good dad.

We had a GREAT Halloween and hope you all did too! I can't believe how many fun parties we went to. I'll post pictures soon...

Crewser's startin' to cruise!

Our little Crewser man is starting to cruise around on everything! He thinks it is the best thing ever. He crawled so late, but practically the next day he wanted to pull himself up on everything.

I'm still Alive...

I'm so very sorry that I haven't posted in such a long time! My two big excuses are 1) Super Saturday that I was in charge of for my ward last week and 2) Following Super Saturday I got VERY sick with the Flu and was literally flat on my back with a fever of 102 for 5 days straight. Thank you a MILLION times over to my dear sweet friends who took care of my kids and brought me dinner every night. You are my personal life savers! I hope I can return the favor somehow, someway. Pictures are coming soon...

Take me out to the ball game...and other fun pics

Over the summer we participated in our local library's Summer Reading Program and at the end you get a free ticket to the AZ Diamondbacks. We realized that the last day to use it was coming up so we went a couple weeks ago. I had never been to a pro baseball game before and it was pretty fun! We actually got to see a lot of hits in the first few innings. Caysja didn't love it too well though as you can see...

But...she perked right up once we took her over to the playplace! I couldn't believe they had a playplace for all the little kids right there in the stadium!

Needless to say, we left after the 7th inning. They were winning though!

We've started a little "preschool" with some of our friends. Caysja LOVES it! We each take a turn hosting it at our homes and teaching a letter of the alphabet, counting, colors, shapes, etc. A couple weeks ago it was my turn. The girls all loved playing with the umbrella and I had to take a picture...while no one was fighting...

Caysja and Crew love to play together BUT... I have to say that lately Caysja has started to get really jealous of Crew or something. I think it's because he's learning how to crawl and he touches her toys, etc. Then she'll hurt him like push him over or something. It seems like she spends most of her days in time out. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

We found Crew like this after getting up from his morning nap last week. I can't believe he can stand up now!

My friend Kristi invited a bunch of us over to her house last week to make this fun craft for Halloween. Thanks so much, Kristi!! I love it! And it was so fun to make.

Did you enjoy General Conference this weekend? I sure did. I am so grateful to be able to listen to a prophet of God speak in the latter-days. There were so many wonderful talks and I took lots of notes. I can't wait to go back and read them all.