Christmas Magic

For the past several years something has been missing for me during the holidays. It just hasn't really felt like Christmas. We have been very blessed and therfore able to participate in food drives, sub for Santa programs, and to assist people in our ward in need of help. All of these have produced warm fuzzy feelings in years past, but something still just wasn't the way it used to be. Christmas just came and went. What happened to the excitement, the anticipation, the simple joy the season used to bring? I was beginning to think these were lost forever.

But a funny thing happened this year around December 1st, I found my Christmas magic. There's just something about having little bitties around during the holidays. The awe on their faces when I turn on the Christmas tree lights, the excitement when I turn on my silly Christmas songs, the squeals and giggles of delight when mommy dances around the room with them- one on each hip (this is our favorite). I know they're still too young to really understand what's going on but they know there's something special happening, you can see it in their little faces. It's enough to make me randomly burst into song, which Thane has gamely started to accept despite the fact that he doesn't really appreciate most Christmas music. I've been trying to find that lost magic for years, I never expected that I would find it in my children's eyes.

We wish you all a very Happy Holiday. May it be filled with the love of our Savior, warmth, kindness, and a large dose of Christmas Magic.

1st Ever

Our good friend Justin was kind enough to take our first ever family Christmas photos. He did a great job for us. Hailee and Atticus actually ended up with pleasant expressions on their faces, yea!!! This was a major accomplishment as they had been dragged around Provo all day and were more than a little bit tired and not very happy about getting the fancy duds on. Check out the stylin' pinstripes on the Bub's suit. He's so handsome, just like his daddy!

The baby portraits didn't go quite so well. This was the best we got. This is a classic Sis expression, she's been sticking her tongue out at Brother since the day they were born.

Are we done yet?

Trunk or Treat

So pretty much basically I'm a little slow with the whole blog updating thing if it ever happens at all. These were taken at our ward trunk or treat. As you can see we went all out with the costumes this year. Getting that paint on their faces was hard work!
The "Incredible Bub". Those are his angry eyes.

Hailee Mouse. Could she be any cuter? Only with her finger up her nose which is why the makeup got rubbed off on that side.

10 months

Atticus chillin' in mom's shadow.
Hailee with a new treasure that she ate about 2 seconds after this was taken.
Hailee posing for the camera.

Hailee cheesin' it up.
Practicing their sharing skills.
Da Bub
Atticus being his cute self.

Is it drafty in here?

Notice the diaper and lovely pink cover in the foreground. We're not quite sure how she managed to do this as we were distracted/eating dinner at the time. I'm hoping it was just a fluke and she hasn't really figured out the velcro fasteners. Isn't 6 months a little bit early to be ditching their diapers? Maybe the breeze will discourage this behavior in the future, she really wasn't to happy with the way it turned out.

Cloth Diaper Madness

Ok so maybe I am just a little bit crazy. Maybe it was my 5 years working for housing that brought out the little environmentalist in me or maybe it was just the raging hormones making me kinda loony while I was pregnant, either way I'm still stuck with $600 worth of cloth diapers that will eventually save us money if I can just keep with it long enough. Did you know that the average baby produces 1 ton of dirty diapers a year? Times that by 2 babies for at least 2 years and thats 8000 lbs of poopy diapers that my family will not be contributing to the landfill. Somehow I don't think this bit of trivia has inspired the warm fuzzies in Hailee and Atticus. Maybe they're just upset because the diapers make their hips look fat.

Adventures in Realestate

Just to give you a little bit of an idea of what our house was like when we bought it. Th.e house had been forclosed on so naturally its previous occupants stripped out everything of value including appliances and apparently the drawer front of these lovely cabinets
This was our stairway banister which was conviently located in the kitchen. I briefly considered keeping it as an architectural element... VERY briefly.
We replaced the banister (it is now serving as a bike rack) with a half wall and countertop over the stairs along with some extra cabinets which gave us a lot more work space.
We replaced the nasty linoleum, cabinets, countertops, and paint and added a few necessities like a stove, dishwasher, fridge etc.
Unfortunately there wasn't much we could do about the amount of dining space without adding on to the house, but at least it looks nice.

This was our bathroom. It was actually in much better shape than the one in the basement. I still won't even look in that room. Notice the high quality leak repair around the base of the toilet. Apparently the previous owners thought tar would work better than replacing the wax ring inside the base.
This was the result of the tar, a whole bunch of moldy rotted subfloor that Thane, talented man that he is, had to replace.
We replaced all most everything in the bathroom.

Unfortunately we have not yet replaced the tub, but someday I will hopefully convince Thane that Re-Bath would be worth the cost.

A Blessed Event

Hailee Mae in her blessing day finery.

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty..."
Atticus posin' for the ladies.
We have decided that the trick to taking pictures of twins is to put daddy underneath the backdrop to hold them in place.

Oh, he's so handsome!

1st Christmas

This was taken at our ward Christmas party when the babies were about 3 weeks old. One of our little neighbor boys asked his mother if I was Mrs. Santa to which she immediately answered YES! I guess it only makes sense... I was sitting in Santa's chair and holding a baby santa at the time
This is a picture with their great great grandmother that was taken on Christmas Eve. Grandma Great will be 92 this march.
Atticus is his first Santa outfit. I think he pulls it off quite well.
Our pretty little Christmas dolly.
You have no idea how hard it is to get decent pictures with two newborn babies. This was pretty much the best we got. It was several days and photo shoots in the making.

Babies Birthday

The twins were born via c-section. I carried them 37 weeks and 5 days which is considered full term for twins. Both were healthy and neither had to spend more than a few hours in the NICU. Hailee is on the left and weighed in at a whopping 5 lbs 1oz and was 18 inches long. Atticus was slightly bigger at 5 lbs 15 oz and 18 1/4 inches. He was so excited to finally get to this world that he promptly peed all over the nurse and the operating room floor.

As you can imagine Thane was also pretty excited about these babies finally coming. Above he is holding his first born child (at least I think this is Atticus, its kinda hard to tell) while the doctors work on his sister.

This is me holding my babies for the first time. It was over two hours after they were born that I finally got to see them. Something about blood sugars being too low and doing more tests... all I know is I wasn't very happy with the medical staff. Yes, I am aware that I look terrible in this picture but it's an important part of the story. Besides, how would you look after carrying two babies for nearly 38 weeks, gaining 60 pounds, having surgery and then given about 5 different drugs? Needless to say I was a little out of it and very sleepy.
Here is Thane with both of his new babes. Don't worry, he eventually lost the deer in the headlights look and even the dark circles under his eyes after a few weeks.
I think this is one of my favorite pictures. I took this while we were still in the hospital. Apparently daddy was tired but didn't want to let go of the babies long enough to take a nap.

A blogger I'm not...

Just so there's no confusion, I'm really not a blogger and am only doing this after being prodded by multiple people. "You don't ever keep in touch with people...you need to show off your babies... blah, blah, blah...."After so many of these nudges I decided it would almost be easier to just give in and start a blog rather than try to explain why I don't. It would help if I actually had a reason. Besides, my babies are pretty darn cute, but then again I might be just a little bit biased. So... for all of you that I haven't seen or heard from in ages here's a brief run down of my life.

About 3 weeks after I graduated with my BS in sociology, Thane and I got married. I got my masters degree in rehab counseling in December of 2005 and got a job as a detention counselor where I worked for two years while Thane finished school. During that time we purchased a HUD home down in the island (and it really was a piece of hud) which we have slowly been remodeling, and had twins. Atticus and Hailee were born in November. About a month before they were born I retired from the detention center in order to take it easy and prepare to be a stay at home mom. I must admitt that there are moments when I really think working with the juvenile delinquents was preferable to spending all day with 2 screaming babies, but it's so worth it when you start getting those first little smiles. Thane finished his masters degree in mechanical engineering in December 2007 and got a job at ATK where he is working on a project called ARES which will replace the space shuttle and eventually take the U.S. to the moon again. In other words I married a rocket scientist (now how many people can say that?)

And thats basically the last 4 years of my life. Right now my life consists of feeding babies and changing diapers. I occasionally do find a few minutes to feed myself but sleep is still elusive. That being said, the majority of my blogs will likely be pictures of my sweet babies, but I might throw in some photos of our remodeling efforts too.