After a big family reunion for my dad's family, there was one for my mom's. We made it for the last day and it was great!! I loved having my cousins, who I used to watch, take care of my little girls for me! It was wonderful to have adult conversation for a whole afternoon :) We put our feet in the river that ran through the camp- it was COLD!! Gracie only took a few seconds to decide it was too cold for her.

Here is my beautiful cousin taking care of Anna for me, they had fun together

And a 4 generation picture with grandma, mom, me, and my girls. Gracie had better plans for her time than posing for a picture. The Luau theme was fun and the food was yummy and the company at the reunion was the best around.

There was a lot to do during our day there- visiting, eating, going on walks, playground for the kids, archery, tether ball, and yep- teeter totter! Heidi and I had too much fun being kids again :)

Family is so great! I loved being surrounded by family for my 2 1/2 weeks in Utah. The one thing we miss here in Billings is being near family. We were lucky to get in on all the fun this year- thanks mom and dad!

July started out with my first trip alone with the girls. We went to Butte to meet my parents and journey on down to Utah for some good family time. My parents had a car full with me and the girls in the backseat, mom and dad up front, and more stuff than I ever would have imagined could fit in the back. I offered to drive, but neither of my parents took me up on the offer. I'm still deciding if they don't trust my driving or they didn't want to sit between 2 carseats...so I sat with two wonderful travelers for the duration of our travels. We started with a grocery stop to my hometown grocery store (used to be acres and is now something else) and after putting 2 carts of groceries in an already bursting car, we were on our way to the cabin.

The cabin is one of my favorite places to go. It's relaxing, refreshing, no phone, no internet, lots of outdoors, fresh air, and mom's cooking! We had just enough time to settle in before my dad's siblings and some of my cousins came up for a family reunion. We had quite a crew there, and it was a lot of fun to visit with relatives I haven't seen in a long time.

Here's the group

It was mostly a day thing but there were 22 of us who stayed the night- people in every room, on the floors, outside in tents, sleeping in cars, and on the deck! The next day was the 4th of July and my sister and her family, Aunt Chris, mom, and me and the girls went to North Ogden to watch the parade, so many fun memories with that parade!!

Somehow, Aunt Chris got Gracie to sit on her lap for the whole parade, that's amazing!

Jake was a great help, he loved holding Anna

Heidi and her family were able to spend some time with us there for a few days and we loved it!

Here's Gracie and Isaac playing with the upside down raft (aka pool, my dad had a list of reasons why a raft was better than a pool so...we got a raft instead of a wading pool)

Mom and Dad are storing their washer and drier at the cabin, which was great for the convenience of washing our clothes. Here is our laundry hanging to dry. We couldn't use the outdoor clothes line due to terrible allergies of Gracie, Anna, and myself.

Luke and Anna- Anna's eyes are asking "please Luke, just a little bite"

Dad and Anna- the laundry basket was the easiest way to keep her safe and out of harms way and she was very transportable. Here she's getting a tutorial about building packing crates!

We had so much fun playing at the cabin!! Hopefully we can make it down as a family during the winter so Tim can go snowmobiling for the first time :)

It has been too long since my last post and I can't leave a post about a vacuum and mop up for very long without realizing...there are better things in life! So, here are some great pictures of cute sisters! Yes, they are my girls :) With the summer technically over, and school started, I realized that I have some catching up to do on this blog...with so many things to post about, I wanted to start with my favorite. Gracie and Anna. They are the best sisters! Anna can watch Gracie all day and be completely content (with a few meals here and there). Gracie makes Anna laugh more than anyone in our family and when Anna laughs, Gracie does too! That is music to my ears, the tinkling laughter of my girls.

Here is Anna with daddy, she's in my favorite seersucker, bright colored dress! Thank you seasonal clearance :) I can't believe she has enough hair to clip a bow into. No need to fight with headbands this way.

Gracie showing her love of stilettos! After church, I take them off first thing and put my feet up for a few minutes. Well, while I was recovering from wearing them, here comes Gracie cute as can be. Luckily the camera was close.

Summer wouldn't be complete without pool days at our house! Here is how Anna enjoys pool days, lounging on a blanket in the shade. Sometimes she is lucky enough to get in her swimming suit and play with Gracie, she loves that even more.

Here is our delux pool. There isn't an outdoor faucet near by so this is a labor of love- 13 buckets hauled from the kitchen sink and tadaaa we have a nice full pool! Gracie loves it and loves swimming.

Gracie still loves to play in the crib with her little sister, and obviously everyone is happy with the situation

Last of all, Gracie occasionally will request to hold Anna and the result speaks for itself...

These are the crown jewels of my cleaning supplies

I got the Dyson about a year ago, which is when my love of vacuuming began. And now, a year later, that love hasn't died! But, after having my vacuum dream fulfilled, my eyes strayed to the next cleaning must have...the Shark.

It is amazing to me how a person can live happily without 'things' until infomercials let them know that this one item can change your life! That's how it happened to me. I was happy with my old mop, it had served me well though many moves and lots of laminate flooring that needed to be mopped. Then, one day, the Shark infomercial popped onto my screen. I was riveted. At the end, all I knew was that I needed one. Then came the price...reality check...I didn't need one that bad :( Every Shark infomercial after that I would watch longingly, knowing we would have to strike oil to get one of those.

Long story short, we struck oil last week- in the form of a garage sale!! Oh yeah baby. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the Shark with a $20 tag on it...yea!!! Tim being wise as he is told me to offer $20 for everything I wanted- some fabric, a glue gun, a rotary cutter...and they took the $20 and my dreams came true!!!

Here is everything we got that day of garage saleing- for $33!!

That's the end of this tale, and the moral is that when you have good cleaning tools, cleaning can be fun :) That is why my floors are mopped and my carpets vacuumed, I LIKE to do it!!! (That doesn't mean that they are always clean...after all I am still human)

Love these

As we are still in the 'moving in' stage of life, I have found that there are a lot of boxes all over my house. No room is void of them. I am a stay at home mom, so, I should have them all unpacked right?! I mean, I'm home all day- no job. On top of that, I stare at these very boxes since there is no escaping them...as I said, they are in every room!!

Well, it turns out I'm really good at finding things to keep me too busy to get to the boxes! Here are some of the things I have found to take my mind off of the brown cardboard that is crowding me and my house...

Tim found these box things at Goodwill and I decided they would be a fun project to take on and put in the girls' room. I found some cheap things at JoAnn's to put inside and viola- many hours that couldn't possibly be shared with any old boxes! I should mention that Gracie loved watching me paint and requested that I keep painting even after they were done- she's so fun!

I have been making bows for 2 years now, and have a few of them for the girls' hair, digging through the bow basket wasn't cutting it anymore...so I took a trip to Michaels and found this wooden star that begged to be painted and hung as a bow holder. Gracie was thrilled to see the paints come out again- a few buttons, a little ribbon, and some glue and here we have a fun bow holder :)

The latest was making curtains for the girls' room. We were desperate after a night or two living here to block out some light in Gracie's room to encourage her not to get up with the sun. Here is the before shot of the window-

Then I found fabric, blackout fabric, and some ribbon. I had everything lined up on the floor, cut to the right dimensions, and turned my back for 2 seconds. When I turned back around I saw this...

So with some more straightening, ironing, pinning, sewing and hanging, here is the finished project!

MUCH BETTER!!!

Well, the most important things that keep me from unpacking those blasted boxes are...my darling daughters! We love to play, shop, read, laugh, play games, take walks, visit dad at work, have play dates, sing songs, run around outside rain or shine, and sleep occasionally :)

Here is Gracie in her favorite pj's and leg warmers, snuggling under her new 'kind-of blanket' (aka:rug) from Grandma Robison

Anna with a sweet smile and her favorite dolly

(Gracie holding Anna for the first time)

I am blessed to have two darling girls in my life- Gracie and Anna. We get to spend all day together and we have a lot of fun :) Gracie is a wonderful big sister and loves Anna. From day one she was excited to have Anna as part of our family. Sometimes I would go somewhere only taking Anna and when I came back home Gracie would race to the door and say "Anna? Anna?" She wanted to make sure I didn't leave here anywhere :)

Now that Anna is getting bigger, Gracie is starting to want to play with her. At the hotel Anna would be lying on the bed and Gracie would climb up there to be next to her. Sometimes it was enough to be near her, other times she wanted to share her toys with Anna. She has a wooden magnetic doll (like new age paper dolls) and she loved to play with it with Anna. She put all the clothes on top of Anna then wanted her to put some on the doll! Anna didn't necessarily love being covered with the clothes, but it was adorable to see my little girls starting to play together!

Gracie is learning how to be more and more of a helper with Anna. She is first on the scene if Anna is crying and frantically looks for her binky, then tries to put it in! Sometimes I put Anna on the floor to have tummy time and frequently I will look over to see Gracie laying on the blanket with her simply talking to her. Other times when Anna is upset I hear Gracie parroting what she has heard me say time and time again "it's ok Anna" "calm down Anna". Or if we're in the car "oh Anna" "almost there". She's a great big sister!

Here they are ready for a walk! I can't believe Anna can sit up in the bumbo already, time is flying by. Another thing I love about Billings is the abundance of walking trails through neighborhoods. I guess the city opted for sidewalks trailing through neighborhoods instead of the typical sidewalk on the side of the roads. Well we love exploring them- usually I have no idea where I'm going or how to get back, but it works out!

Random photo...I have a confession to make...Occasionally, when there is only a little bit left in the milk carton, I will drink straight from the carton. Unbeknownst to me, Gracie had been watching when these rare occasions and got some ideas of her own...She wanted a drink of milk and got Tim to open the fridge (he was distracted with something else in the kitchen and not paying a whole lot of attention to her). That's when I came by and saw this. Quickly I got the camera and tried not to laugh too hard as I took the picture!

Since moving to Montana, we have really enjoyed how pretty it is here! We miss people from Rock Springs, but I can't say we miss the scenery. When we got here in April it was spring, my favorite season!! There has been a lot of rain and with the rain comes lots of GREEN. I love it!

For the first few days when we would drive around, Gracie would look out her window and shout "TREES!!!". Tim and I looked at each other and laughed that the thing she could be so excited about were trees. Apparently there weren't enough of these in Rock Springs :)

As we don't know many people here yet, we have been enjoying a lot of family time and family outings. We love finding new places to explore.

One of my favorite features of Billings is 'the rims'.

It's a natural rock formation that goes all along one side of the town and it's so pretty. You can go to the top and walk all along the edge and it's a lot of fun. We took an afternoon picnic up there and did some exploring! You can see the top of Anna's head there under my wrap, she loves to sleep through our adventures :) It only takes a few minutes in this wrap and she's out.

While we were there we took some time for one of our new favorite hobbies- geocaching! Tim discovered this when he went to manager meetings for his work and found that using his phone, we can do it :) Here's Tim looking up a cache for us to find.

Found it! It was cleverly hidden

And inside is was Buddha themed with lots of things to look at

When I was in the hospital after having Anna, I got a text message from an unknown number with a picture of an engagement ring on a hand...I had suspicions at the time, but just to make sure, I texted this person back. Sure enough, it was my little sister!!! She got engaged and set the date for April 30 :)

At the time we thought we would be fairly close to the whole thing, but then we moved. Going down for the wedding gave us a chance to take a trip (since we hadn't had our fill of long tedious trips yet)! We planned to go down through Yellowstone, why not enjoy a national park on the way?! One thing we didn't count on was snow. We got to the entrance to the park at which point we would travel through the park and end up in Idaho and the rangers informed us that all but one road was closed and that one road wasn't the one we needed to take...

Well, after a LOT of backtracking, some snow, and cranky children we ended up at my brother's house, phew!

Gracie loved playing with her cousins! Here they are reading books before bed with Aunt Mary.

Uncle Marc holding Anna, he's a silly uncle :)

Playing in the luxurious bathtub, don't they look cozy?!

The main event was the next day when Laurie got married in Utah, look at this happy couple!

The trip was fun, quick, lots of driving, but so wonderful to see family! On the way home we cut through a small corner of Yellowstone. Just the part that our highway ran through and chuckled when we saw a sign for buffalo crossing. Low and behold, the sign was very accurately placed as around the next bend we quickly slowed down to a stop due to the fact that there was a herd taking over the road. Cars were trying to wind their way though, but the buffalo were content to block every path.

This particular buffalo stared us down and held his ground for a little while. He looked much more intimidating in person!!

From the time we moved to Billings, we told Gracie that we were going to get a new house, almost every day she would ask about her 'new house'. When we finally had some time to look around she was thrilled to explore all the places we looked at. We found this town home and couldn't wait to get out of the hotel...the walls were starting to close in on us there!

It's a cute little place with plenty of room for us right now. The best part, we got out of the hotel!! Can you tell I was ready to get out of that place?!

Here is what it looks like without all the boxes filling every last inch, I'm finding that they don't unpack themselves and I don't do it very quickly with the two little ones and a lack of motivation!

kitchen, there is very little cupboard space- which encourages me to be creative in my storage methods

living room/dining room

upstairs bathroom which we share with the girls...still getting used to not having my own...

"the loft" it's a second family room area that is being used as toy room/ office/ spare bedroom even though there isn't a door for privacy (we still needed a place to put the spare bed)

the girls' room

master bedroom

half bath/ laundry room

Well, we graduated out of the hotel, but here is a little look of where we lived for just over a month. I say 'little look' because that's all you need to assess the living area we had...

The room: kitchenette, Gracie at the table that came with one chair luckily the desk also had a chair, even so we couldn't all eat at the same time, our bed, the recliner (Gracie took it over and was the only one allowed in it), her pack and play, and the TV...very grand!!

Here is a close-up of Gracie's room. We used some of Tim's photography equipment to hold up a sheet so the room could be divided for sleeping time. This made it so Gracie could fall asleep before 10 PM!