Margie's Blog

Yeah! Santa came!!


Thanks for the help Aunt Charlynn! We had a blast with you.

Because they help make Christmas an AMAZING day!

We start early in our house because it's all about the whole month of December right? Nightly we unwrap a Christmas book to read before bedtime. We put another ornament on our advent tree everyday and on the last 12 days of Christmas we had a neighbor dropping off a different treat and part of a nativity scene on our doorstep each night. Paige was loving seeing the Nativity scene grow each day and trying to figure out what pieces we need next.

Christmas Eve I was lucky to have Shawn home all day so we spent some time making sugar cookies for Santa and letting the girls help us decorate them.
Then before bedtime we read through the Christmas story with Paige dressed up and acting the part of Mary. Next they got to open up their new Christmas jammies and they looked extra cute as usual! :)
They even went to bed nicely and stayed asleep until after 7am!! They haven't figured out how to wake up before then to open presents yet, it's coming next year I'm sure. Next post . . . Christmas day.

Months ago (meaning about 9) a fabulous friend of mine offered to try and take some newborn pictures of Morgan for me. She was a brave one seeing how she herself was close to 9 months pregnant. She came over and tried her best but I failed at getting Morgan full of food and sleepy and the two other princesses dancing around I'm sure didn't help. Fast forward 9 months or so and she has an adorable new baby that has been keeping her busy and I've been completely consumed with this moving process and settling in. She contacted me again and wanted to try again. I hope she could tell from observations that we would be a tough group. She agreed to take some family pictures and we went out on a cloudy day for some pictures. But we like the sun so much that our family made those clouds disappear so most of our pictures we're squinting or the girls are doing something odd or I'm blinking (ya, I blinked way too much).

She looked over the batch and said it wasn't too great so we again squeezed in some time last Saturday and braved the snow and cold. She needs to get a gold medal for putting up with us so many times. We really are not very photogenic (well Shawn and I the girls are adorable) but she did great getting the girls to look at the magical butterfly or ladybug on her camera. Thank you for all your hard work Mari-Catherine!! Here's some of my favorites.p.s. there are probably a few more on my facebook page if you are interested.

Paige got to ride on the famous Jingles horse. They love the carousel.

I'm sure Mickey was thinking I was insane. Three girls under 5 by myself? We had a blast all day.


Brooke was the only brave girl to visit Santa. She gave him a ballet twirl and he knew she wanted a ballerina doll for Christmas.

So for those of my friends that don't know my history in swing dancing here's a quick recap. If you do know, skip ahead a little. I began dancing at age 16 on Saturday nights at Disneyland. Danced mainly with my dad and occasionally with others if they had patience. My sister dated a swing dancer that summer and he broke down the basic lindy hop for me so I could slowly start to improve on my following. College came and I hung out with a group of friends where we swing danced 6 nights a week. If there wasn't a dance to go to, we got together to practice our moves or teach classes for that first year. By 2001 everyone had pretty much moved away from my group of dancing friends so from that point on I've only danced once a year if even that. I still enjoy listening to the music and getting out for a dance if convenient but I don't go out of my way to get to a dance because being a mom of 3 that isn't a priority at all.

Then a couple starts to show off some fancy moves and people make a circle around them to see. Bernard asks me if I wanted to jump in the circle as well. Now I know he is just crazy. I told him he was crazy but he insisted that I was good enough to show off. So I let him twirl me around the jam session quickly and I figured, okay, now he'll leave me alone now that I've thoroughly embarrassed him in the jam circle. Nope, he continues to dance with me throughout the night. I finally slip away so that I could save my legs from turning into complete jello but it was fun. Flattering that people still think that I'm a good follow after 8+ years of not actively dancing regularly.

Right back where I started from . . .

This week we have ventured to my hometown in Southern California. We are having a blast. We went to Disneyland Wednesday with my mom but unfortunately she had to work on Thursday so I took all THREE girls there by myself!! It took a big pill of patience and knowing that I had to take things slow but we had a blast. No one got lost or had a meltdown so I'm counting the day as successful. I must have been a fun person to people watch though. No worries, I did bring a double stroller so they were contained for the most part. Thursday night Paige decided she wanted to try and go on some of the big rides with just me so after returning the young ones home I returned to the park with just Paige. She took me on Space Mountain, Matterhorn, Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain and we both had a blast. I hardly ever get to go on those rides so I enjoyed it and she was brave on everyone of them. The hill on Splash was the scariest for me. I always get some air just on my own so I held on tight to Paige and tried to stay anchored to the boat so she didn't go flying out. She loved it, crazy kid.

Today I got to browse through my favorite mall all by myself. I sooo miss a nice mall in Northern Utah. It makes me want to come down here more often just to get my shopping done. :)

That's all for now and I haven't downloaded any pictures yet so you'll have to wait on those.

I want to vent, really want to and trying to avoid it :) washing machine is still broken and won't be fixed for another week. Another week at the laundry mat with 3 little girls and another chunk of money gone before Christmas. There are worse things in life. On the upside, the girls decorated the Christmas tree today! I don't have very many decorations for some reason and they have all ended up on the bottom third of the tree but the girls had a blast. I might go and get some decorations for the top 2/3 of the tree later this week so it doesn't look so bare.

I managed to get through Thanksgiving with all of Shawn's family here. It actually was kind of nice to not have to pack up our family of 5 and sleep in a hotel or cramp into his parent's house but let my kids sleep in their own rooms and have my own bed to crash on at night. I sleep sooo much better in my own bed. Everyone helped out with the food and so I think it turned out okay. I need to make some notes on things to improve upon if I ever do it again though because there can always be something to be learned, right?

That's all that I'll bore you with for now. More to come I'm sure. Maybe I'll actually take my camera to the laundry mat tomorrow so you can see how much fun it is to entertain three kids while doing laundry. :) Don't be too jealous!

(just for reading this long post I'll stick random pictures throughout)

This weekend was great. Let's rewind first. Friday started off rough. I found out that my washing machine has a broken part and it will take 4-6 days to get here. With the added stress of having a dozen plus people in my house for Thanksgiving it wasn't the best news I've ever heard. Not much I can do about it though other then order the part and wait. I told myself I was grateful for Brooke's accident the day before forcing me to do an extra load of laundry when I wasn't anticipating to have to do one allowing me to make it until Monday before I had to venture out to the laundry mat.

Saturday was great. I felt spoiled all day. I helped Shawn put his talk together as much as I could. My extra patient friend came over and tried to take some pictures of us as a family. How any photographers take pictures of 2/3 year olds is beyond me. Brooke had no concept of stop and look at me. Luckily the back of her head is full of cute curls, right?

Shawn mixed up some cupcakes for the girls to help celebrate my birthday. We blew out a few candles and opened the presents and called it a party. I snagged a babysitter for the night and got to be spoiled by going out to eat with Shawn. He even let me go back to Elements for dinner even though we were just there a few months ago :)

Sunday the fun seemed to continue. Shawn and I were both asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting on Gratitude. I actually felt like I did a decent job thanks to copying quite a bit of a talk given by President Monson previously. Here's my talk and here's President Monson's where I got 90% of my quotes and information from. I give him full credit for it all. Many people enjoyed our talks which I appreciated since I normally do pretty horrible at them.

After church we enjoyed dinner with some friends and then I zoomed over to the Young Women in Excellence program at church and was more on refreshment assistance more then anything else which is just fine. It was nice to finally get to put some of the girls faces with their parents faces and start to connect families together.

Today I get about 10 gold stars. I loaded my car full of dirty laundry and took all the girls down into town for a few hours to get it all cleaned. I haven't used a laundry mat in a long time. One of the requirements I had before we could start having kids was that we had to have our own washer & dryer. I wasn't going to do baby laundry at a laundry mat because there's just too much of it. But I'm still alive and am much more grateful for the convenience of my own washer and dryer now.

Can anyone else out there believe I'm 30 already!! Let's see what crazy adventures the next 30 years will bring and here's a quick recap on the past 30 years of joy.

I have to write down how crazy life can be sometimes. The past two nights Brooke has been waking up several times acting like she's having a bad dream. I finally figured out her ear hurts as well. This morning I got the first appointment at the doctor's for 10am. Had the girls up and ready and out the door. We even managed to get there 5 minutes early! Amazing since we live on the far opposite side of town. The doctor confirmed that she had a bad ear infection and even took a second to check Morgan for me (she's had a cough recently as well but I didn't think it was an earache but wanted to look instead of coming back tomorrow if things changed). Morgan looked fine, whew. So doctor calls Rx into Walmart pharmacy #1. We run along and are actually out of the doctor's office by 10:30ish. Not too bad!

We swing by Sam's Club and grab some more Motrin for the sick child and a few other items, treat the girls to a fancy $1 cup of ice cream that we all shared (yes even with our germs) and head out to the car. Get everyone in the car and Brooke says, "I need to go potty!" Of course. We scurry back into the store and no success with going potty but at least we tried.

Next we travel south to Walmart #1. Grab the flouride from the pharmacy for the girls but they are out of Brooke's Rx. I have them transfer it over to Walmart #2 because I'll be back on the North side of town later today.

We scurry home, feed the girls lunch and take Paige over to preschool. Return home to "relax" for a few minutes. Feed Morgan and then take Brooke & Morgan over to my girlfriend's house so I can go and get a massage. My back has been aching, killing, (pick your adjective) for a while but really bad the past couple of days. I tried to tend to it last night but a long soak in the tub didn't ease it much. So off I hurried to get a quick massage (it was quick too). I was back by Walmart #2 so I stopped by hoping to be able to quickly pick up the Rx but a snag had happened and the insurance wasn't accepting it. I was already short on time so I told them I'd be back later.

I zoomed as fast and safely as I could to pick up Brooke & Morgan and then on to snag Paige from preschool. (3:05 now) I came about 5 minutes late to pick up Paige and she was the last kid to be picked up. She was tired and once I got her in the car her little eyes started to water up. She was not pleased to be picked up late. I told her I'd make her her favorite dinner tonight, Shrimp & Noodles (luckily it was already on the list) and that helped a little.

Now I have all three girls back and still no Rx, ugh. My gas light had been on all day so I finally stop at the gas station, fill up and head back to Walmart #2 for my 3rd walmart visit of the day. They had the Rx all ready and luckily it didn't take too long to get it and get my three tired girls back in the car. By 4pm we got home and are unwinding and now need to start picking up and making dinner. At least I know what I'm making, right? Anyone else ever have days like this where you feel like you are in your car all day!!!

We've been trying to stay busy as usual recently. This morning the girls helped Shawn and I clean our church. Luckily about 3 other families showed up so we had plenty of help (we have cleaned an entire church by ourselves before). I cleaned the glass doors, Shawn vacuumed the classrooms and the girls helped the carpet sweep everywhere they went.

I was good yesterday and got everything off of my to-do list for the day miraculously. I even found a minute to check out the JJ Cole warehouse sale. Morgan is using the same BundleMe that I received for Paige and it's held up well for our three girls and luckily we did have three girls because it was pink. But the zipper busted a week ago and the other side of the zipper has always easily gotten snagged so I figured I'd go grab a new one for half price. I even upgraded to the Urban BundleMe. I probably jinxed ourselves though because I bought a neutral grey color instead of pink and now we are bound to have all girls and no boys :)

Earlier this week I finally got my piano tuned after owning it for only 6 years (we bought it used) and I've never had it tuned! Horrible. It even had the middle F key stuck to the F# key so it was obnoxious to play anything. The key is fixed for now and it all sounds sooo much better. I've been warming up my Christmas tunes again and loving it.

That's all for now. We are finally getting some decent snow today. If it continues to come down maybe I'll let the girls slide down the hill in our backyard and see how the sleds test out. :)

I haven't blogged in a week? really, I've been busy but with nothing worth blogging about obviously. My days seem to whiz past me full of tending to the girls, preparing food, attempting to pick up the house (even though it's hard to detect) and trying to accomplish something everyday.

I participate in an orchestra on Sunday evening that was put together for a fireside. We've practiced weekly for over a month and when it came down to the day of performance they had us play 2 prelude songs (before my husband and kids were even there) and accompany the choir in two songs. I enjoyed getting to know some other string players in the stake but felt a month full of weekly rehearsals was a bit much for me. It's hard for me to not feel a little guilty as I ask Shawn to take over for a few hours to do something for myself that isn't necessary. He's a busy hard worker and has been swamped this month with work so I try to be careful with the free time I'm given to use it wisely. Anyways, it's done, the concert was nice to attend and I really enjoyed being able to participate in a Stake activity again. It's been years (like Young Women days) since I've been in any Stake musical production.

Speaking of Young Women, I am enjoying working with them in our new ward. They are amazing girls and fun to get to know and serve.

I should get one gold star for my attempt this morning. Shawn switched the car seats for me last night so I could take care of his car. I got the tires rotated and oil changed today. How do you moms out there do it in your families? Does your husband have time in the week to service his own car or do you help out? Saturdays those places are so packed we don't want to spend half our day off together waiting for the oil to get changed. Anyways, it's done and I'm glad. I got out of the door at 8am (pretty amazing seeing how I usually don't even shower until at least 8:30) and was done by 9:30 with the errands so I rewarded ourselves with a loaf of pumpkin chocolate chip bread.

Okay, now this post is long enough. Paige and I are making cookies for preschool today and she decided on pink heart cookies.

oh, and I only have 11 days left . . . not sure if I'm really ready for this but it'll come and go whether I want it to or not.

Look how adorable this little doll is! Shawn's cousin is pretty crafty and getting into making adorable toys. Brooke has been asking me quite frequently for a ballerina doll for Christmas. I think she'd love it! Check out her blog and get inspired by her creativity.

http://www.madebybedtimetales.blogspot.com/

Yesterday we had great weather. It was a beautiful fall day. After church Shawn suggested we go for a walk and let Paige ride her bike. I haven't ventured to let Paige ride anywhere other then our driveway so far because have you ever tried to push a double stroller and control and toddler ride her bike down the street for her first time? Me either, I wasn't about to try it on my own either. So we all jumped on the suggestion for a family walk/ride. Paige was pretty scared on the way down the road and was riding slower then we could walk but after successfully making the tricky corner her confidence started to rise. A few blocks later we arrived at the park and ran the girls around until the Halloween candy sugar rush had worn off a little bit. I was a big scared of the walk home. How far would Paige make it on her bike before stopping from exhaustion? Would she be able to climb up the slight incline of our street? Luckily she had gained super confidence from jumping around the playground and zoomed a little ahead and barely beat us home. It was a great outing for all including fun rides on old swings that creeked and everyone enjoying a ride or two down a tall metal slide that reminded me of being little again and grateful it wasn't a hot slide in the middle of the summer. Sorry no pictures to commemorate our fun outing but here's a cute video of how it felt.

This is a quick picture I snagged of Paige at the end of dance class today sharing candy with her friends. She thinks this week is so fun because today she got to dress up as Snow White, tomorrow she wants to be Sleeping Beauty for Preschool and Saturday she wants to wear Cinderella for Trick-or-Treating. (Can you tell someone likes Disney princesses around here?)



And for your viewing pleasure here's the girls singing their favorite Halloween song this year.

Just for your amusement look what the girls got me to create tonight. One said they wanted rainbow cookies (which haven't ever been created in our house) and the other said they wanted me to make sugar cookies. So to appease them I decided I could probably combine the two and create something that would entertain them as well. It was a hit!


Last week the girls went to a birthday party dressed up at Snow White and Cinderella. And yes, I really was so busy/lazy (pick the adjective you wish to describe me) that I just threw their costumes on over their play clothes and got them there. I'll try to coordinate things better for Halloween.

Here's a couple more pictures from the week to entertain you. Thank you also for your nice comments last time about my negative post. I apologize for using my blog as a venting tool and will continue to try and not to do that too often in the future. Here's a picture of the big girls excited that Morgan woke up from her nap so they dragged the stools in and sat down to talk to Morgan. I thought it was a pretty cute memory of them all hanging out at the crib together.


And because she's just so cute here's one of Morgan after she destroyed a piece of bread for dinner.


And lastly tonight a nice man knocked on my door to confess that he knocked over our mailbox with his RV when he was trying to turn around. It really didn't surprise me too much, we have two pillars on either side of the driveway and I always have to keep an eye out when I'm backing up that I don't hit them either. He said he'd pay for it and get it fixed next week.