May

May was surgery month for my Ragie. I would never wish having to put your little girl through surgery, no matter how minor, on any mother. The thing that makes it so sad is that they don't understand what's going on and why you let someone hurt them. Poor girl was terrified but she's tough and pulled through great.

First attempt at a bath with a cast: Failed. This picture cracks me up. That might be a whole role of saran wrap right there. Ha ha.

Ragan was so proud of her cast. She liked to show everyone. These are also some of the last pictures with her long hair.

Next up. Elly's 2nd year of preschool graduation.

I just wanted to snap a picture of Elly's long hair because I don't know how much longer I can hold out before I chop it off.

Her and cousin Jake at graduation.

Here's Mally between 8 and 9 months somewhere with her super cute smiles of course. She has been the easiest, happiest baby from day one. Always full of laughter and smiles and supa cute. Love her.

Elly learns to ride a bike....without training wheels! She was obvisously ready because she didn't need any help at all. Nathan held her bike up for her, gave her a little push, and she was off! Just like that, and never looked back.

Oops, watch out Ragan!

May in a nutshell.

Worst.Day.EVER

I woke up early this morning to get ready for Ragan's appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. We were going to see what our next plan of action is to get her hand fixed. I ended up having to take Mallory with me also because I couldn't find a babysitter. Traveling with a 2 year old and a 10 month old isn't always the easiest when you go it alone. Luckily I did not have Elly.

I arrived about 10 minutes late to my appointment because I got off track from the way I usually go and got a little lost. Luckily I found my way in a round about way. Tucson is weird. I guess I was a little later than I thought. More like 24 hours and 10 minutes late. Are you freaking kidding me!! Grrrr, I was so frustrated. The Dr. wasn't even in the office, so I couldn't wait around for them to get me in. I can't believe I drove all that way on the wrong day! The desk person was mean too. Boo to mean people. I guess he doesn't like stupid people. But a little sympathy would've been nice! He was annoyed at me and kept grumbling at the computer trying to find a new date.

That was just the beginning of my bad day. Next stop....Costco. For one, Mallory cried the whole time we were in Costco. She never cries. Usually when we go to the store she just smiles at everyone around her. Well, I guess she still did that.....but cried in between. Anyway, I rushed to leave. As I'm walking up to my car I started it from the clicker so it would cool off while I load up. Super nice feature, by the way, I love it. Especially in AZ when you have kids and hot car seats. Ragan climbed in through the back and got in her seat while I loaded. I closed the hatch only to find I couldn't find my keys anywhere! CRAP! Only logical answer. I just locked them AND my kid inside. Double CRAP! In the meantime Mallory is outside with me, hot, hungry, tired, and SCREAMING. I go over to Ragan and start trying to get her to unlock the door, role down the window, anything! She just got a blank look on her face with a snotty smile and shook her head no. She was lucky she was behind a locked door because I was SO frustrated. I probably stood there for 15 minutes yelling "Ragan, can you push a button!" "Ragan I need you to start pushing buttons, Mommy can't get in." and so on and so on. Meanwhile the car shuts off. If you don't put the keys in the ignition it shuts off after awhile. I am just glad it was on for a little while and she climbed into a cool car rather than a hot car. It made a world of difference. After no results from Ragan, I called Nate and asked "What the crap am I supposed to do?" He told me I had to call for help. "Who do I call? I don't have any phone numbers." "You have to call 911! You can't leave her in there for very long." Dang, I felt so dumb having to do that. But I did of course. I had 3 or 4 people standing around trying to help. There was a pediatrition that kept telling me we need to get her out now. It doesn't take long to get to a dangerous temperature in 105 degree weather. He said he couldn't pick locks, but he could break a window.

After I called 911 Ragan finally started pushing buttons. I think she finally started to realize it wasn't funny and she was getting hot. She pushed every button except for the right button. Since the car shut off, the window buttons wouldn't work anymore. I don't know if it was sweat, or my sensative watery eyes, or if I was crying. Probably all of the above but there were definately tears runnig down my face. It only took the firetruck about 3-5 minutes to show up. Wow, that was quick. It's something they take seriously. The firefighters must have needed something to do because there were 5 of them. All working on each door to try and get in. Apparently my car is hard to break in to. But of course they succeeded. Thanks you Tucson firefighters! You saved the day! Once they got the door opened we couldn't unlock the back without the keys because the alarm was going off so one of them crawled in back and started digging through everything to find my keys. Funny. They were SO nice and sweet to Ragan. One of them even came around and buckled her in for me while I got Mallory in. Dang, I'm an idiot.

Wow that was a long story to tell how I locked my kid in the car and that the firemen had to come get her out. I just did it one sentence! I guess I can get a little winded.

When I got in my car I tried to decide whether I should just call it a day and go home or do a little shopping to make my Tucson trip worthwhile. I decided to stop at my favorite store, HomeGoods. When I go out to my car and open my hatch, my Costco stuff splattered all over the ground. Strawberries roled everywhere and my apple pie upside down. Bah! Anyone who has ever had a Costco apple knows how tragic that is, ha ha. Soooo yummy. Time to go home!

One more stop. Lunch. We are all starving. I decided I needed a frosty to make it all better so we went to Wendy's. I got the food and headed on my way. I didn't discover they didn't give me any straws or spoons until I got on the freeway. How annoying. No frosty for me.

Time to get the heck outta here and go home! I just needed to make one stop in Benson to pick up some fabric for my mom from a store there. Easy, right? Not for me! Who'da thunk it would be so hard to get to Benson? I don't think it is supposed be that hard, but it was. Did you know there are like 3 exits that say Benson? First I thought I went too far so I turned around only to discover I didn't go far enough so I turned back around. So I got off on another exit and thought it was wrong again so turned around again, only to find out later it was the right one, I just went the wrong way. Finally I got the right one. Third times a charm! Ha. Or maybe it was more like 4 or 5, I don't know. It sure is frustrating to do circles on the freeway and not know where the heck you are.

But alas, we made it home, safe and sound. Only problem is....now my car won't start. At least we made it home first. I probably would have had a breakdown if I broke down in Tucson.

April

Ok, here's my desperate attempt to start blogging again and get caught up. So I'm going to do a super condensed version picking up from the last time I blogged. That would take me back to April. Yep, that's right, April. I am just going to highlight on the bigger things, which means I'm skipping ALOT of the fun, cute little details of our life in the past year. Bummer, I AM going to do better so I will be able to cherish the small and simple things forever.

Elly turned 5 in April! As usual we didn't do much for her birthday. Just family and cake and presents. But she is pretty darn cute

I thought this was a pretty noteworthy picture of Ragan, SMILING!

Also, thanks to the rescue of Nana, the kids had cute Easter dresses. Only a week after Easter. Ha. This is the best picture I could find. Absolutely no justice.

That about sums up April.

6 months

Here is Mallory at 6 months. However, I don't remember much of anything at 6 months. All I have is a picture, at least I have that, ha ha. Shame on me for getting so far behind. All I remember is that she was SUPER cute, and SUPER sweet, and SUPER happy. Mally is seriously the happiest most perfect baby that ever existed. No really, it's true. Oh, and she's super chubby, I love it.

Sea World and such

Back in March (yes, I'm that far behind) we went to Oceanside for Spring Break with Nathan's family. We usually go to St. George but they decided to change it up a bit this year and get some condos by the beach. It was lots fun. It's always fun getting together with his family.

Half of us went to Sea World. The other half to Disneyland. We decided our kids are still a little young for Disneyland so we opted for Sea World. The kids enjoyed it. Well, except Ragan. She got sick and didn't enjoy much of anything this trip. Poor girl.

Mally, of course, was just happy to hang out in the stroller all day. Love her!

Some of the group.

Lovely


Ragan didn't want anything to do with the beach. She screamed anytime we tried to take her near the water.

She did have fun digging in the sand though.

There you have it! Our Cali trip in a nutshell. My posts are gonna be pretty vague until I get caught up. But I do planning on being a faithful blogger again!

True Story

I really should be blogging other things before this because I still have so much to catch up on but I can do this real quick without having to upload pictures from my camera.

I have to share this story just because I think it's so ironic. Elly can see the future.

Most everyone has heard about the bear in our neighborhood by now. Gotta love small towns and facebook, ha ha. If you haven't.....we had a bear in our neighborhood. There, now you have. Anyway. Last night me and Elly were sitting on the front porch and she randomly starts asking me about bears.

Elly: "Mom, are bears real?"

Mom: "Yes, bears are real."

Elly: "What if we saw a bear in our yard?" (no joke)

(She is always asking "what if's" lately)

Mom: "Well, that would be crazy, but we don't have to worry about that because we don't have bears here."

Elly: "Ya, that would be crazy."

Little did I know that there would be a bear in our yard the next morning! I know, crazy. Now that I know the whole story from my husband, I'm a little annoyed that he didn't wake me up. I didn't even get to see it. I mean, come on, did he really think I wouldn't appreciate a wake up call to join in on all the excitement? Selfish I say. He didn't even tell me his version of the story until he got home from work. I didn't know he was so involved. I thought he just joined in on the excitement, not started it!

When Nathan was getting ready to go to work this morning they saw a bear in the lot next to our house. It went through our neighbors yard, jumped the fence to the next neighbors yard and over to the stake center. And then randomly through the neighborhood. Nathan called the cops and they came and eventually tranquilized it. I don't know what happened to it from there.

The only reason I share this story is because I think it's crazy that me and Elly had a conversation about it the night before. Weird.

I stole these pictures from someone that stole them from someone that stole them from someone on facebook. I think they originally came from the Wright's. Thanks Wright's! Just in case you happen to see your stolen pictures on my blog.

Yum Yum!

Mally's first bites! Carrots at 6 months. She loved it. Obviously, she's a chunk! And I love it!

Fashion Diva

Elly is so into fashion lately. She loves to dress up and wear jewelry. She is always asking, "Does this look good together mom?" or "Does this match?" or "How do you like my outfit?" She's funny. Here's just a couple of blackmail pictures of my fashion queen.
Love her!

Hand Update

Going back to these pictures makes me sick. I did a post back in January about Ragan's treadmill accident. I never posted again after that, so here are some more pictures.

The first two pictures are two weeks after the accident and the one below is four weeks after the accident. It took a long time to heal.

Looking at these picture makes me so sad. Poor baby. I feel so bad that it even happened and try not to blame myself. But really, it's hard not to.

Sadly, Ragan's hand didn't heal very well and we are going to have to do surgery. She is scheduled for Surgery on May 12th, so it's not over yet. I am getting anxious to get it fixed. It botheres her and causes her pain. Everytime she falls or hits it against something she cries. It's hard to explain how it healed without seeing it, but I'll try. They call it a scar contracture. She can't open her hand because of the way it healed. Her fingers are bent, kind of like it's webbed. So everytime she does something that causes it to stretch, it hurts her. Sometimes, if she falls on it hard enougn, it breaks open and bleeds. So yes, even though it's going to be hard putting her through surgery, I can't wait to have it over with and fixed. The Dr. said it may take two surgery's. Let's hope not. I'll update after the surgery. Hopefully everything goes great and she has a quick recovery!

Christmas Morning

The girls are still young enough that we have to wake them up on Christmas morning. They weren't too happy about it. That changed real quick when we told them Santa came.

Santa made a mistake this year. He only brought one scooter, for Elly. What was he thinking? Ragan ran to it, got right on, and wouldn't get off. She knew what she was doing, she's no dummy. She knew as soon as she got off, Elly would take over. Ha ha. Luckily Elly was a good sport about it and let Ragan play on it for a bit. (I backed over the scooter within a couple of weeks, by the way.) No more scooter.

Mallory was just being herself. Happy to be alive.

Oh the excitement! Isn't it funny how the favorite gifts are the cheapest ones? Seriously, the things I bought at the dollar store were a hit. I'm shopping at the dollar store from now on for Christmas.

Santa brought us a fish! He really wasn't very smart this year. Ok, it hasn't been that bad. And guess what! It's almost May and it's still alive! It looks a little sick and it seems to be falling apart, but it's still hanging in there.

We had a great Christmas. I LOVE Christmas. Especially with little kids. And now that I've finally posted about it, we're half way to the next Christmas!

Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa

Oh yes, you read that right. SANTA! I am going clear back to Christmas. Obviously my blog has been very neglected. Life happened and I haven't had time to blog. Lame excuse, but true. I don't even know if I remember how to blog. Hopefully it comes back to me.

Here is the beginning of trying to get caught up. So I will briefly go through the main events in our lives since Christmas. I did jump ahead a little in some posts, so there are some things that are already blogged after Christmas. It will have to brief, mostly because I forgot the details! Shame on me. I will do better since this if our life story and my only journal.

The girls got to visit with Santa four times this past Christmas. Elly loved it. Ragan hated it. And Mally didn't care either way. I think she was just weirded out.

Our ward Christmas Party

Nana and Papa's ward Christmas Party

Elly's preschool Program. This was the best Santa ever. Elly told me this must have been Santa's helper because he was brown. She had never seen a brown Santa before so he must not have been the "real" Santa.

And the last time we saw Santa was the night before Christmas. He made his annual visit to GG and Grumpy's house at our Christmas Eve party.