Its fun to have to little girls to dress up and fix there hair, as long as they will hold still that is. Its fun to put Phoebe's hair in two little pig tails because they make two perfect ringlets. Can't wait till our third gets here and then we will have three little girls to dress up and make pretty, how fun will that be. Better then barbie dolls.

On Sunday morning we had a wonderful visit from an old friend of mine from my home town Terrace, BC, Canada. Ms. Marilyn Earl and her husband came to visit us since they were traveling through the states for a few weeks with their RV and happened to be in Provo for a few days. Ms. Earl was my third and fourth grade teacher, and also my cross country coach from third to seventh grade. She is an old friend of the family and it was so wonderful to have a visit from them as I had not seen her for almost ten years. It felt like home again to hear their Canadian accents and catch up on all the news from Terrace. They were so great and brought teddy bears for our girls and a beautiful native carved bracelet as a gift for me.

Chloe had so much fun helping mommy and daddy harvest vegetables from the garden this evening. Poor Phoebe missed out on account of being too grumpy and being put to bed early. Chloe was so excited about each thing we took out of the dirt, and the smaller carrots she called little baby carrots and she held them gently cradled in her hands, before depositing them in the basket. Jared got down and dirty with a shovel and dug us up some potatoes. We had an onion and some zucchini too. Everything we need for making some potato soup for dinner tomorrow. This is our first year having a garden and it feels quite satisfactory to grow something all summer then finally reap the very yummy benefits of it.

July is a scorching hot month, so we have just the cure for that.  Chloe is enrolled in a swim class at the Veterans memorial outdoor pool.  She gets to splash around with the other kids and have a great time cooling off.  Her class only last for two weeks, but we go every morning and it really wakes her up.  Phoebe gets to go swimming too, we are in the Mommy and Me class, so she gets to bop around with all the other babies in swimmy diapers.  

Poor Chloe had a rough few days this week with her little left hand swelling up like a balloon.  We took her to the doctor and they figured she was having an allergic reaction to having been bitten/or stung by something.  They gave her some medication and when we gave it to her it started to work almost right away and the swelling started to come down.  Her hand is doing much better now and she can use it again normally, thank goodness.  

I signed Chloe up for a ballet class with Academy of Ballet in Orem. She is in a group of about 8 other girls ages 3 and 4. She has gone twice now and loves her class so much. She was not shy at all, the first day she just jumped right in and tried her best to keep up with the other kids. She has a long way to go on the technical end to become a real ballerina, but in her mind she is the most beautiful dancer ever, and that's exactly what we want her to think.

We had so much fun last night celebrating mine and Phoebe's birthdays. Thanks to everyone that came and had cake with us. It is so surreal to be 28, I'm getting to close to 30, its scary.
But it is very nice to have Phoebe be 1 now, she is just a delightful girl. I will have to admit this birthday was much more fun then last years, where I spent my day in a hospital bed trying to recover childbirth. Time goes by so fast it seems, so I'm sure next years birthday will be here before we know it.

So when we talk about holiday weight gain your mind instantly thinks, Christmas and Thanksgiving, ooooh yummy turkey. But what about Easter. Seriously, just look at the photo documentation of this chocolate mother load. I'm not going to even tally up the chocolate that did not make it home with us to get in the picture. The sad part is Jared and I totally said we were going to cut back this Easter on all the sweets, so much for that plan.

On Saturday night all my friends got together at my house for our annual "priesthood session" reunion.  It was so great to see everyone, Steph, Erin, Nicole, Janarae, and myself of course.  We decided to stay in and order delivery instead of trying to drag our group of babies and children to our usual spot Brick Oven.  Thank goodness Brick Oven does take out, so we had our favorite things delivered and it was so nice.  It was great to catch up with all my friends and hear their latest news.  The evening turned out to be the ultimate playdate, with seven children in total.  It was loud, crazy, toys everywhere, but so much fun.  When Jared finally showed up he told me that the house smelled like several flavors of baby poop.  Well, there was quite a bit of that going on, so we cracked a few windows and all was well.  At the end of the night our babies were cranky and ready for bed, and we all vowed to get together more often.

Here she is, our little baby girl is now three years old.  It really seems crazy how fast time can go by and how fast your babies can grow up.  Now that the "terrible twos" are over I'm wondering what being three will be all about.  One thing is for sure, she certainly has a mind of her own and wants to do everything her own way.  I feel like she is not a baby anymore, she is all little girl now.  We had a fun party last night for Chloe and it was fun having the family come over to help celebrate with us.  

Yeah, we got our tax return finally. So on Saturday we decided to help stimulate the economy in our own small way. We had a list of things we have been waiting to get and here they are. Our Exciting new Fireproof safe. Jared has been wanting this from Sam's club for well over a year now. He needs a safe place to keep his hand guns locked up away from the kids. So I felt it was a worthy investment, plus we can keep important documents in here and all our photos on backup.

Chloe has grown out of her car seat so here is her new big girl high back booster. She is excited about sitting in her new chair and Phoebe gets Chloe's old one. The steam mop was my idea, I have been wanting one for a while, I just like the idea of being able to really sanitize the floors well since phoebe crawls all over them. Jared got a new case for his PC laptop and I got some new stuff for scrapbooking that is incredibly amazingly cute. It was great to get our tax return and have a little fun, and also get a few things we really needed.

I have been looking at this particular playhouse for a while now, long before Christmas last year.  I have really wanted to get one for Chloe, for lots of different reasons really.  So today when I saw it on clearance at Toysrus for 50% off I could not resist any longer, plus I had a fabulous coupon for $5 off.  Don't I just love a bargain, like a true Utahan.  

Wow, Phoebe is only ten months and she is all ready to jump in the ring with Chloe.  This scene seems awfully familiar.  It does not seem so long ago that I was having a go at it with Shelden or Kathie for some trivial trinket or toy.  I guess it is like they say, history repeats itself.  Can any of you guess who may have won this particular tug-o-war?

My brother Nathan came out for a brief visit over Valentine's weekend.  We had a good time hanging out with him.  He spent the night over at our house on Thursday night after Jared picked him up from the airport.  Him and Jared got into the computer "geek" talk way too soon after he arrived.  On Friday Nathan had fun going to the dentist for his deep cleaning then he came back here and hung out with me and the kids for a bit.  He picked up Phoebe off the floor to hold her and she was happy to sit on his knee.  She usually screams bloody murder when she comes into contact with a stranger that is male.  Then we gave  Nat a ride down to his lovely storage unit, where he proceeded to work for hours by himself in the cold to unload the filthy place.  Everything unfortunately was covered in a thick layer of grime and mouse droppings.  He got the job done by himself in record time and proceeded to Mom's house for the rest of his stay here.  

Today I baked a cake.  I saw this recipe in a magazine and just had to try it because it looked so tempting.  It did turn out well for my first try, so I was proud of my self.  The cake has a lot of visual appeal, but its not the most amazing thing I have ever tasted.  Don't get me wrong, it was good but if I made it again I might make some changes.  

I don't know much about blogging, but Jared tells me that I will like it.  So I'm going to give it a try, talk about keeping up with the Jones's.  ( Or the Knowltons.... whoever).   I'm not totally sure what I'm going to blog about yet, but I'm thinking it will just come to me.  Like creating art, a true artist does not know the destination until they arrive.