Elf Dance

Here is a link to see our elf dance video.  It's on Office Max's website until Jan 15th.  I love Karmen's facial expression.  Her head is a bit crooked but it's pure Karmen.  Dimitri and Katina helped me pick their pictures and which dance they wanted.  The video is about a minute long.  I hope you enjoy.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/XpAoaMw9Q2mXKnNj

Halloween 2010--Vampires

We had a really fun Halloween.  We were a family of Vampires.  I made capes for each of us.  The kids wore shiny Dracula style capes and Byron and I wore hooded capes.  On the Saturday before Halloween we went to the Ward Halloween Party.  The kids knocked on classroom doors and couples in the ward handed out candy.  Later, they had Halloween carnival style games in the rooms for the kids.  The kiddos won 1st place in the kids costume competition.  I would love to say that it was because of my Awesome sewing abilities but really it was probably their stage presence.  Dimitri and Katina jumped around doing their best vampire impressions, spinning their capes, growl/hissing.  Katina wowed the crowd with a hip shake dance.  They had the room laughing.  Karmen stood by calmly watching Dimitri and Katina perform.

Karmen Turns One!!!

Happy Birthday to the most Amazing 1 year old!!!  What makes her so amazing you ask?  Well … because she is mine. Also, Karmen dances (even without music--it’s amazing), tries to scare you (Boo!), gives hugs and kisses, wrestles, runs, has dimples, and much more.  She is one really fun kid.  Sometimes she can be overly dramatic, probably hereditary.  If Karmen were a super hero, her super power would be a sonic-boom voice to blow away her enemies with the strength of her lungs.  She is the loudest kid I know… luckily she does not unleash her voice on just anyone; she reserves it for her family.  We are so lucky!

 

 

Karmen enjoying her cake.  We couldn’t find our birthday candle so Byron improvised – toothpicks on fire.

 

Karmen holding her cake in one hand and her scoop of strawberry ice cream in the other hand.  She soon found out that holding ice cream in your hands in uncomfortable.  Karmen began to fuss but wouldn’t let go of her ice cream without parental assistance. 

After cake and ice cream it was time to clean up and open her present.  Karmen’s birthday present was her very own Baby Doll.  She loves dolls.  Karmen use to carry around Katina’s dolls and give them hugs and kisses like in the 3rd photo.

Karmen is AWESOME! 

Now let’s reminisce…  ONE YEAR AGO!!!!

 

Summer Trip to TX

Back in May it was still rather cold in Provo and we were feeling home sick so we packed up and headed to Texas.  We stayed at my mom’s house while we were in Austin.  Thanks Mom!  It was nice and warm.  People thought it was weird that we left Utah right when it was suppose to get pretty.  And then it snowed in Provo the week after we left so I think it was a good choice.  We did catch the second half of summer in Provo and thought it was great!

In Texas we went to Corpus Christi, the San Antonio Zoo, Giagia’s, Granger Lake, Billy Bob’s, San Antonio Temple, Salt Lick, Zilker Park, and H-E-B!  Also this summer Dimitri and Katina overcame their fear of dogs.  Katina’s favorite dog was Max a large Rhodesian ridgeback.  It was funny to see because Max is much bigger than Katina.  We were also able to visit Byron’s family and it was nice to see the cousins play together. 

Dimitri, Katina, and Karmen were wonderful in the car during the road trip to and from Austin. 

Byron managed to injure himself for half of the trip.  First he badly sprained his ankle and couldn't walk on it for over a week and then he came in contact with a large amount of poison ivy.  Byron has told me that he is highly allergic to poison ivy and now I understand what that means.  Calling what he had a rash would not do it justice.  He had large blisters up and down both arms to where he couldn’t bend his arms.  It was rough.  He still has faint scars on his arms.  Poor guy!  Even with medicine from the doctor it took 2 weeks for his arms to start to look slightly normal.  I got poison ivy too.  A centimeter wide tiny rash. =P  


Katina turned 2 in June!  We had three small celebrations for her. My brothers' work schedules didn’t match up so we celebrated with each of them separately the day before her birthday.  On Katina’s birthday Byron and I took her out to breakfast.  She received a lot of fun dress up clothes for her birthday.  Katina loved her presents.  She’s so girlie!

On this trip Karmen also started to crawl and pull herself up all on the same day.  While visiting Byron’s sister, Karmen, baby Karmen started doing all these amazing things.  That very same day Baby Karmen bit me!  Which was how I found out that she had teeth coming in.  It was a really fun day!

A couple days before we left we got to see Giagia again and Aunt Kathy.  It was neat because Aunt Kathy was visiting from New York. 

Well, I think that should update my blog about our trip to TX.  It took a really long time to get around to this post.  Here are some photos to go with the story. Enjoy!
 

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Wymount Opening Social

I took the kids to the Wymount Carnival while Byron had to study.  It was a BLAST!!!  Everything but the root beer was free!

The kids bounced on one of those inflatable bouncing things, rode the tractor train with a fabulous neighbor, ate snow cones, decorated sugar cookies, drank root beer floats, played games, picked out prizes, danced, and waited in a long line for balloon animals.

We waited in the balloon line for over an hour and the kids did great!  Dimitri wanted a sword and Katina wanted a butterfly.  The butterfly took a while for the guy to make, by the time he finished Dimitri had popped his sword.  So I made Dimitri a twisty hat and took pictures in case they popped really soon.

Balloons are evil.  They pop or float away!  The kids were given helium balloons while they were waiting in line.  Dimitri’s flew away and Katina’s popped.  Their little faces were so sad! How could I not wait in line for the balloon animals and then make a replacement balloon creation?

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If you click on the pictures you should be able to see more pictures.

Katina’s Easter Dress

I did finish Katina’s dress in time for Easter but since Easter and General Conference were on the same day Katina did not wear her dress on Easter.  She wore it to my cousin’s wedding the following weekend.  I forgot to take pictures at the wedding.  =(

Much Better

I can see my background now on Live Writer.  I removed the free background I found online and then added one of the templates from Blogger.  It works great!  All I have to do now is to start posting new stuff. =D

Windows Live Writer

I am trying to see if using Windows live writer will make blogging easier. The problem so far is that I can't see my blog's background. And my text is in white on white on the preview stuff so I can't see what I type unless I go to the source. So I am trying to work around it.

Trigger Happy

I was a little bored one day and took a lot of pictures of the kiddos.  Also because Dimitri and Katina were also dressed alike.  So I decided to snap some pictures of them while Karmen played with her toys on her bouncer.  Katina's poses consisted of squinty eyes, cheesy smiles and looking over her shoulder... I am not sure where she learned that.  Here are a few of them:

St. Patrick's Day!

The Kids Dressed in Green:

Karmen's First "Solids"

March 14th: One day after Karmen turned 5 months old I decided to give her rice cereal for the first time. How did it go?

Yeah, not well.  Since this time she has done much better. 

Princess Karmen

Katina crowned Karmen when she was sitting on the ground playing with a Minnie Mouse baby rattle.  It looks a bit like Karmen is holding her royal scepter. 

Check Ups

About a week and a half ago I took Dimitri and Karmen to the doctor for their check ups.  Dimitri: 3 years, Karmen: 4 months.  Here are their measurements:
Dimitri: 38lbs (94th percentile) and 38.75 inches (72nd percentile)
Baby Karmen: 17.1lbs (95th percentile), 26 inches long (91st percentile),  and 17.1 inches in head diameter (93rd percentile)

The doctor said they both appear to be healthy and developing properly.  He did hear a slight heart murmur on Dimitri but he doesn't think it is serious but just to be sure he referred us to a pediatric cardiologist.  Dimitri has an appointment with the cardiologist on the first of April.

Good Cold Fun!

There hadn't been snow on the ground for some time now.  I thought that we might have missed out chance to make a snowman the season.  On Thursday the snow came and there was plenty for us to work with on Friday.  When the girls went down for their naps Dimitri and I ran outside in our snow pants and got to work.  We made our first snowman ever.  It was a ton of fun.  We took some pictures with the snowman.  A friendly neighbor, who had seen the difficulty I was having trying to get Dimitri and I in the same picture, took one for us.  When we came inside Katina had just woken up and Baby Karmen was still sleeping so you got Katina dressed and took her outside.  Byron came home when I was getting Kat ready in her snow pants.  So we all went out to enjoy the snowman.  

Mr. Snowman was rather popular.  From our living room window we could see neighbors take their kids outside and take pictures and play with him.  I never knew how heavy packed snow could be until I had to lift his body parts of the ground. =)