BIG Birthday Suprise

The night of the 14th... I think it was Friday, I was up reading the boys a book getting ready to put them to bed, and my phone rang. It was Nate. He usually calls around this time to say "good night" to the boys, and have family prayers together. After a little bit of talking I heard someone knocking at the door. I told Nate "Okay... You are coming with me to the door because I have no idea who this could be.

When I got to the door I saw a Birthday balloon through the window, and I thought that maybe it was Susan or Carie, or someone who knew it was Alyssa's birthday. I opened the door and just stared for a minute. Nate was there, in his suit, with a balloon and a chocolate birthday cake! I was completely shocked. I scram "Oh my Gosh!" and jumped on him, and gave him the biggest hug! I was so shocked I started crying... I was so happy to see him.

After a minute or so my phone rang and it was my neighbor. She said, "I just had to call and say that I saw Nate come home and surprise you, and I heard you scream and jump on him, and I just started crying, it was the sweetest thing I ever saw! I just had to tell you that... now go be with your husband." I LOVE the south!!!

Nate said that he just couldn't stand the thought of missing his little girls first birthday, so after his interview he jumped in his car and drove the 6 hours to get here to give Alyssa her birthday balloon, cake and kiss. Could there be a sweeter man on earth? I'm so blessed!

Phone call from Daddy

After our party at Carie's house, which was on the 13th. I decided to go ahead and celebrate her Birthday with the kids later that night, so I wouldn't have to mess with it the next day.

Nate just got off work, so we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Alyssa.

Playing Catch Up!

Okay... so I've really been slacking in updating my blog, and I've been reprimanded for it. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to write everything that's happened in the last couple of months... I hope I can, as it's been... interesting! I'm sorry that I haven't kept in touch with many... it's just been crazy over here. But we are all fine, we've been hit with darn near every sick bug around, and we've had lots of other fun "trials" to go with it, but we've gotten through, and we've seen the "tender mercies of the Lord" through them all.

I've decided to dedicate Alyssa's nap time to posting as much as I can in that amount of time. Let's see how much I can do!

Alyssa's Birthday!!!

Wow, Alyssa had a busy and FUN Birthday.

Nate was out of town for the month doing a rotation in Wilmington NC, and wasn't going to be able to come home for her birthday, so when Carie asked me what I was doing for Lissa's birthday and I said... nothing, she promptly informed me that that was not acceptable and organized a little birthday party/lunch date at her home! I have the greatest friends!

I'm so sorry Holly... but I had to post a picture of you. :-)


This is Crystal and her little Isaac... SO CUTE!

This is Susan and her little Adelaide... she's under the blanket. :-)This is Carie and her sweet little Grace. THANKS FOR THE PARTY CARIE!!!

Alyssa's little princess birthday cake! I LOVE HAVING A GIRL IN THE FAMILY!!!

See the next post for the next part of her birthday story.

Lollypop Lollypop, ummmm lolly lolly lolly!!!

Alyssa got into the boys Halloween candy.

She unwrapped 2 Lollypops!

Do you think she liked them?

Oh, Yeah she did!

Lollypops = Happy Baby!

Have you ever lost your skirt... in church!

Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you are standing in front of a crowd of people, talking about something important, thinking you were doing a pretty good job, but then everyone starts laughing at you... and you just can't figure out why on earth they are laughing.

Then you get this ominous feeling and look down at yourself...

And you find you are standing there in nothing but your "skippys"!

It's a terrible, embarrassed, humiliating feeling.

Ever had that feeling in real life?

I have.

Today was pretty much a typical Sunday for us, except that we were running a little late, so we snuck in and sat in the very back of the overflow area. The boys entertained themselves by coloring and drawing, and Alyssa was crawling around exploring. About half way threw the meeting Austin came up and told me that he wanted a drink of water and I told him that he needed to wait a few minutes. Alyssa at that time had started getting a little noisy, so I picked her up and stood in the very back behind our chairs to hold her, so I could still listen to the young women who were singing "I Walk by Faith". They sounded wonderful, and I was rocking Alyssa to the music.

Halfway through the song Austin came up to me again and said, "I want a drink of water", and I said, "Wait until after this song." He then reached up to give me an imploring, begging jester, and grabbed onto the waist of my skirt, and hung on me saying, "I want a drink of water." As soon as he put any of his weight on me I could feel what was happening. I had on a loose burgundy skirt, that had silk lining on the inside, as soon as he hung down on me... down came the skirt!!!

I immediately dropped to my knees trying to keep the skirt up as much as possible, but It was too late... the skirt had dropped past my bootie area, and I could feel that my "skippys" were there for all to see... should they turn and look.

I grabbed the back of my skirt and tried to pull it up as discreetly as I could with a baby on my hip! Once I got it back up covering my butt, I grabbed Austin and high tailed it out of there. I didn't want to look around and see who might have seen... I'm pretty sure that some of the Lambert kids sitting next to us might have caught a glimpse... let alone the young women who were just moments ago singing... several of which were looking right at me... what can I say, I was their favorite leader... plus I was making faces at them! ... serves me right I know! Plus there was the Bishopric that had a great view should they have been looking in my direction.

Anyway... I took Austin out... tried my best not to yell at him... but told him very sternly that if he ever hung on me again I would .... ... ... I'll just leave that part out.

I went back in, and told Nate what happened... and he started laughing so hard a few people looked at him!

I took Alyssa to the nursery to play for the rest of sacrament meeting.

I think I just had my most embarrassing moment!

Alyssa in her costume!

Here is my angel in her Halloween costume.

Everyone thinks she looks so cute in her costume, but to me she looks so adorable in anything she wears... this is how she looks through my eyes every day.

She's my little doll baby.

Boys in their Halloween Costumes!

The kids are so excited for Halloween, and they have already gotten to use their costumes a couple of times! About a week ago the PTA had a big Halloween party and the kids got to dress up for it, and yesterday was the Ward Halloween party. Austin is a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle", "Rafael" to be exact, and Andrew is your normal Ninja.

I don't think you can see it very well, but Austin actually does have a shell on his back! I'm going to have to take a better picture so you can see it.

They take their role as Ninja very seriously! We've had some amazing ninja battles take place in our home over the last couple of weeks. There has been bitter tears of defeat, and the sweet taste of victory... and the ultimate fear... of Mom catching them with sticks in the house!

Austin's Birthday Party!

Austin turned 5 years old on Oct. 21st! I can't believe how big he is getting!

We decided to throw him a big birthday party and we invited all his church friends and all the kids from his pre-school. 15 kids came! We had so much fun!Austin received some sweet gifts! I didn't want to post pictures of all of them, but here are a couple pictures that I liked.

Thank you Mom and Dad Petersen for the Operation game! Austin and Andrew both love it! And thank you Mom and Dad Evans' for the card and $$, Austin was SO EXCITED about it, and is excited to pay his tithing this Sunday!

I missed the shot of Austin puckering up to blow out the candles!

A party wouldn't be complete without the pinata! This one was different because instead of beating the thing to bits the kids took turns grabbing one of the ribbons hanging from the bottom of the pinata and the pulled, only one ribbon would open a trap door in the bottom and all the candy spilled out! It was so much fun... and a lot less dangerous!

We played lots of games including "Pin the tail on the donkey", "Duck, duck, goose" and this one... can you see the balloons tied to the kids ankles? What they had to do was run around and try to pop each others balloons while trying to keep their own safe. The last kids with a surviving balloon got a prize.

It was a great birthday party!

Happy Birthday Austin!!!

Fall in Virginia

I Love Fall in Virginia! Here are some reasons why!

Need I say more?

Tyanna and Rob came to visit!!!

The other weekend Tyanna and Rob and their ADORABLE children came and visited! It was so awesome getting to see them again! I haven't seen Tyanna and Rob for over 3 years, before they had any kids, and now here they are with 3!

From left to right is Jordan, Tyanna, Riley (the baby) Rob, and Kirstin.
This is Jordan... I hope... Tyanna is totally going to kill me if I get them wrong. Hey, telling apart identical twins is hard!
This is definitely Riley! He is the most photogenic baby I've EVER seen! He smiles on command, and hams it up perfectly!!!
This is Kirstin and my million dollar shot!!! Of course this is Tyanna and Rob. Tyanna is my sister, just in case you didn't know that! :-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
October 10th was the twins birthday, but because they didn't get to my house until later that night we celebrated a day late on Saturday. They both got their own cake, one was a white cake and the other was chocolate!
Riley LOVED his cake!!!
Here are the girls Halloween/dress up dresses. I totally helped Tyanna pick them out!!! I'm all about the fairy princess dresses... as evidenced by the dress I made for Alyssa.
Okay, I thought that this was a hoot! The girls LOVE "The Backyardigans" T.V. show, so that's what I got them for their birthday. Now, Kirstin got a hold of the DVD first, and Jordan wanted to see it too, but Kirstin wouldn't let Jordan get near it, so Jordan sat on the floor and looked at the back side while Kirstin looked at the front... smart little girl!!!

I LOVED having them over and I'm super excited to go up to Dayton OH (where Ty and Rob live now) for Halloween! Nate is interviewing for their residency program on the 31st, so the kids and I are going to go up and hang with them too! Can't wait!

Alyssa's Halloween Costume

I've just finished Alyssa's Halloween costume, and I'm extremely happy with how it turned out! The first picture is of the headband that I made for it.

My sewing machine broke just before I started on it, so I ended up sewing the entire thing by hand! There are about 50 individual pieces of Tulle that makes up the skirt and I hand sewed all of them, with matching embroidery floss (the green was sewn with green the yellow with yellow etc... I was a little obsessed with it!
Here is a close up of the details around the waist. There are roses, some green leaves and some pink bows made of ribbons that I added to make it as ridiculously "girly" as I could. :-)
This is the view from the back.
Here are the wings. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to sew on all those tiny pieces of tulle! I had a BLAST making this dress!!!