The sweetest little girls around....

I am finally getting these pictures up of the girls we took over a month ago... I spaced it actually.... Anyhoo aren't these darling girls?!! I just love them so much and was glad I found outfits I wanted them to wear without going out to buy a new outfits for the pictures. We aren't exactly rich and have been on "college student" status earnings.  I was also able to get baby pictures with Taylor for FREE!  My friend's friend is starting a website for babies and I was asked to be a model for the site! How exciting! Its nothing big really but I had fun! They will go on The Mommy Brand site (not yet running but soon). My mom will be selling car seat canopies, ties for boys and cute dresses for girls. I will post the link once the site is up and running.

This last week we took an afternoon trip to Canandaigua and did window shopping without actually buying anything. We had fun walking around enjoying the nice sunny weather. It was also Brooklyn's last week of preschool for her 3's class. The parents got to go for the last day and be presented with memory books. The memory books are amazing! I was not expecting that at all and now I have pictures of Brooklyn during her whole school year in preschool! She has learned a lot and has had lots of fun. Earlier in the week the class had a swimming day and Brooklyn had so much fun with the big bubbles they had there. I can't believe she will be in the 4's class in the fall! 

Sixteen years ago I totally biffed while rollerblading down the Alpine Cemetery near my home (on the sabbath and never again rollerbladed on the sabbath, hahaha). It was actually pretty hilarious and my friends couldn't stop laughing. Well.... I had never fallen again until Saturday morning! Matt and I were both pushing a stroller (each) while rollerblading. Because the stroller kept veering to the right I went with it and rolled the stroller into the bushes on the Erie Canal! I rolled with the stroller and got stuck underneath it...laughing! Brooklyn wasn't hurt thankfully but she cried because it scared her. I got some scratches but nothing like the cemetery hill incident! Hahahaha It was actually so funny and Matt couldn't stop laughing!  I wish we had brought the camera but you'll have to envision for yourself how we must have looked after the fall. Of course I was embarrassed as people stopped to help and I pretty much send them on their way... nicely of course! It was a good time nevertheless! 

Matt is now in California with a couple of his friends (coaches at the U of R). He got a free trip (thanks to Greg!) to California and so they decided to go see the Angels and Airwaves band. They have been visiting all the different beaches and just hanging out having fun!  I miss him lots but I am glad he was able to go!

Enjoy the pictures!

As I was posting this blog, Brooklyn who was supposed to be in bed came downstairs and said, "Mom, I have a gift for you...." I replied, "What gift?" She sweetly said, "Its LOVE". My heart just melted and she came to me and gave me a great big hug... I sure love this sweet angel. She has been telling me the past few days, "Mom, you're the best mommy in the whole wide world!"  aaahhhssss... need I say more...

I love this.... I have several pictures of Brooklyn giving baby Taylor a kiss on the top of her head... 

My little ballerinas!

Priceless...

Sweet Angel

She is so full of life and energy!

What a model!

Sisters  make the best friends!

We are headed to Utah on June 16th! Brooklyn wanted to create another count down chain. She decided she wanted to do a caterpillar!

Last day of 3's preschool. I love the memory book! She did so well and I just love her!

Brooklyn has been playing in her swimsuit, longing for the day for the pool to open! It finally opened over the weekend! We went today and she had a blast! I will post pictures soon. 

Brooklyn loves it when we babysit her friends! This is Bella and she comes from such a cute family! She has an older sister Avery who was on a date with her cool mom, rock climbing! I need to be more like Janette! The girls were having so much fun chilling with Matt as he was making them laugh!

Searching for bugs!

Both giving me the evil eye...

A small music shop in Canandaigua (Canandaigua is one of the five finger lakes and is such a beautiful town) of course we had to stop in a look around! Matt is doing well with practicing his bass. He just loves it and practices when he can. He feels lucky that I am deaf and don't tell him to turn it down all the time! haha I love that he is learning something new. 

Balancing on the railroad tracks. Brooklyn is pretty good at it!

On our way home we stopped for a vanilla cone at McDonalds. Brooklyn has been having so much fun and in return she gets so tired! She fell asleep with the cone in her hand!

Sweet girl, she has been having so much fun!

LOTS OF OUTDOOR TIME!!!

This week has been all about being outside since the weather has been so nice and warm, so warm that Brooklyn has been going to bed in just her underwear and Taylor in her onesie! We have enjoyed being outside doing different activities and being together as a family. Matt and I have been doing a lot of our exercises outside running, biking and even doing suicides on the football field! He pretty much kicked my butt on the sprints but I can outlast him on distant running! :)  We have also been enjoying some good food as well! We made fish tacos last night and they were yummy! We invited our friends over, the Howells, and had a good time! Matt just loves to cook but he has to cook when he is under stress haha. He likes to have a few things going on at the same time work fast! I told him he should enter the Iron Chef show since they are working under a limited time. He makes great food and its been fun to try knew things. On Thursday we also had a yummy italian dinner at our friends house, the Bourne's.  The are out here for medical school and have a 3 month old daughter, Haven. They made a dish very similar to the "Penne Rosa" dish at Noodles and Company. We all miss that place! They also made this YUMMY Oreo crust banana creme pie!  If Matt and I don't stop having these fun dinners we are going to balloon up! But its sooo fun and sooo good!

I have wanted to mention that my brother Adam has been called to serve a mission in the Charleston, West VA mission and enters the MTC on July 7th. We are so happy and excited for him. Rochester is only 6 hours away! So we may have to make a trip down there and take him and his companion to lunch! We are very fortunate to be able to fly out to Utah before he goes on his mission and we are thrilled about that as well. We sure can't wait and Brooklyn has been asking me to make a countdown chain so she knows how close we are to leaving. I will stay for three weeks with the girls, but Matt can only stay one week since he has swim camps he has to help run. I WILL MISS HAVING HIM WITH US THE WHOLE TIME!

Enjoy the pictures below of things we have done this week!

A girl in our ward plays soccer and she offered to teach a bunch of kids in the ward how to play. We go weekly and Monday was her first time. Brooklyn seemed to really like it but I am not so sure I like it hahaha.... This sport is on the opposite end of basketball playing where you dribble the ball with your feet instead of your hands! 

Avery, Wyatt, Lena and Brooklyn. Its fun to have kids Brooklyn's age to hang out with.

Enjoying otter pops and a break from the warm heat!

We have several families of Geese that are in our backyard often and we decided to go out and feed them bread. In this picture, Matt is imitating what the Geese are doing, HISSING at him! hahaha He was freaked out about it and being deaf as I am I was so oblivious to it and not scared at all haha. They wanted bread and would run up and hiss at Matt. Brooklyn got spooked!

Brooklyn hiding behind daddy!

Our friend Greg! He has been on a dessert frenzy and we are the guinea pigs! Last week he made carrot cake from scratch.... can I say MMMMM! This week he made cheese cake from scratch as well. YUMMY again!  We sure are lucky to get all these sweets! Thanks Greg!

For Family Home Evening we bought pizza from Papa John's and ate it at Genesse Park. This park is huge with lots of trails (that we like to run on).  The weather was perfect, almost dusk. Brooklyn wanted to swing and we thought Taylor would love it too. Of course we didn't push her high at all, in fact if we gently pushed it she had this fear on her face. She was content just sitting there watching the rest of us!

All smiles!

I think this was Brooklyn's first time swinging on the swing like this. Normally she wants to swing in the one Taylor was in. She really enjoyed it!  Later that evening Daddy taught her how to ride a long board(standing up) and dang it I didn't get any pictures of her doing that. But she had fun! We have a slight hill in the parking lot in front of our house and both Matt and Brooklyn took turns going down it. 

I love this picture...

We have a thumb sucker in our home! Taylor has diligently been working hard on mastering thumb sucking and she finally achieved her goal!  I think its so cute!  She won't take a pacifier, her thumb tastes better!

I love this girl! The picture behind her is of her when she was a baby... I can't believe how big she has gotten since then... please slow down princess!

This green hill, full of pretty white flowers, is at Niagra Falls. We were on our way to meet up with our friends who were in town from TX, Steve and Amy Norton and their one year old darling daughter, Claire.  Brooklyn was all over the place and just loving the outside weather. 

Close up of the pretty flowers

Matt, being a dangerous father and after I protested.... took Brooklyn out in the river before the falls. I was nervous and had some comfort knowing Matt is an excellent swimmer. Brooklyn was all smiles and loving it!

You can't really see but she is holding a small purple flower and told me, "Mom this purple flower is for you because I LOVE YOU!" I have such a sweet daughter!

Our cool friends, the Norton's. We ate at Olive Garden and got stuffed!

Along with the nice warm weather came SNOW! Well not real snow per se. Literally though cotton has been falling down making blankets of snow. I am surprised there is not more sneezing going on! I shouldn't have said that because watch tomorrow I will be sneezing all day.... :)

Brooklyn with our next door neighbor's guide dog. The dog belongs to this man's daughter who is blind, Yasmina. The family is from Europe and very nice people. 

Lilac Festival, Mother's Day and beautiful walks!

This weekend Matt and I went to the Lilac Festival which is really big here in Rochester. We went with some of our friends and had a good time! There was all kinds of food to eat, some rides for the little children, a walk through all the lilacs (smells so good!), and music to listen to.  Brooklyn keeps asking Daddy to take her to a concert and Matt has gone to several since we have moved here (mostly to stand at the front of the stage and gawk at the bass player, he has been taking bass lessons and is in love with it). Anyways, since Brooklyn is too young to go to concerts Matt took the advantage of taking her right up to the stage and together they both gawked at the bass player hahaha. I didn't get a picture but I am sure they both had fun together! I had Taylor with me and had lots of fun people watching and "eyes dropping" (reading lips) while I waited for them to come back. I could do that for a job!

A couple weeks ago for Mother's Day, Brooklyn's preschool class had a party for all the mothers. The children were all so sweet and Brooklyn guided me to my table holding my hand. My hand had slipped out and Brooklyn said Mom! I am supposed to take your hand and guide you to our table!  It was so cute!  The children sang songs for us and of course I don't what songs they sang but Brooklyn did such a good job! Mothers Day was so fun for me. Matt, Brooklyn and Taylor made me a delicious breakfast of omelets and toast. Matt makes the most delicious omelets ever and they are to die for! For dinner he made swiss chicken and rice which melted in my mouth... mmmmm! They also showered me with gifts of jewelry and clothes. Matt does so well picking stuff out for me I am so lucky to have a husband who knows how to shop for me! I truly have such a wonderful family and I am so grateful for their love and patience with me. I am always striving to be a better wife and mother and know I have room for improvement but I want them to know how much I love them and how much they mean to me. I am so lucky.... very lucky....

Here are pictures of the past two weeks along with other pictures. I had some bad luck with the camera a few times so some of the pictures are not in focus but its all I had. Better to have something than nothing!

A Sunday walk earlier this month. All the lilacs and blossoms had just bloomed.

Daddy and Me....

Brooklyn had so much fun smelling all the blossoms we couldn't keep up with her!

Towards the end of the Sunday walk...

Mommy and Me...

I love these pretty white flowers!

At the Lilac Festival (had to get a picture in front of the lilacs!)

Several of my friends were so excited to eat at this place....I ordered "The Freda" which was battered dipped artichokes fried in oil placed on some sort of pita bread topped with cheese... the verdict....

It was okay..... I love artichokes and I thought this looked so good but looks can be deceiving! It was still good but not as good as I had imagined. But either way I was excited to try something new. 

Rachel, Jenelle and Dani are some of my coolest friends here!

I thought my husband looked hot in this picture so I had to post it! He was watching/listening to the concert (mainly gawking at the bass player)

Taylor was enjoying every minute being outside and did so well! She is such a smiler, she gets it from her big sister! Can you tell? (below)

Brooklyn was so excited to ride on the train! She just had to!

She also got to ride this horse!

Enjoying a creamsicle chocolate on cone!

Ya think they would give me a bigger scoop!

Brooklyn's gift to me for Mother's Day! I love it and have it on my curio shelf in the living room.

Brooklyn's preschool class getting ready to sing some songs for all the mothers.

Isn't she such a sweetie! 

Brooklyn lead me to this table with lots of fun spring stuff on it. The little pots were filled with rocks which were chocolate rocks.  We had a great feast of grapes, muffins, sunflower seeds, edible grass and flowers as well! Brooklyn also made a cute green caterpillar!

I love my girls! Thank you Brooklyn for such a wonderful Mother's Day!

About a month ago Matt and I were craving some good sushi but we didn't want to spend a fortune at a restaurant that we decided to make some, well HE made them but I helped eat them!  They were so delicious and we probably had about 40 pieces of sushi! They were even double in size so we stuffed ourselves pretty good! Matt loves to dip them in soy sauce and wasabi (yelch... spitting and gasping for air), and I love to dip them in soy sauce topped with ginger slices. Oh how I love ginger! I can just eat the whole jar alone! We love sushi and we have had a few sushi nights since then!  

Mouth watering sushi!