Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Here's a quick review of the Robbins happenings of our favorite holiday of the year!

This is Christmas morning and Jace is trying out his new bike. He was actually the first one awake and as he was coming into our bedroom he sighted the back wheel of his bike. All he could do was ask over and over "Mama, what is that? What is that?" I kept telling him to come on in but he was frozen. So we went to wake up the girls and let them have at it - Santa presents that is. Since we had church at 9:30 we didn't open up any other presents until we got home.

Thanks to a new Karaoke Machine and Walt Disney, we are having a lovely time as Belle, Ariel, Pocahontas, and Rapunzel. Such beautiful, loud music. Thank goodness for a basement!

This is after church. Darren got a new knife and tons of other hunting supplies courtesy of our brother-in-law.

My sister, Breanna and her husband Skip made it out for Christmas.

The "after Christmas present opening" festivities of card playing. My grandparents are there, with my brothers, Travis and Daniel, Uncle Sim Arthur, and of course, the girls who headed up the game, Abby and Brooklyn.

Jace playing horsey with Uncle Travis and having a splendid time.

Phil and Travis both got "real" cowboy bandanas (I don't know what they're called..) and had a good game of "stick 'em up cowboy". Abby's not sure what to do in this game.

And just in case you're wondering what exactly I'm looking like at 9 months pregnant, here you go.



A giant, red, shiny Christmas ball. Just in time for the Holidays! Merry Christmas!

Abby turns 7!

Happy Birthday Abby! Abby turned 7 years old on Dec. 14 and was lucky enough to have lots of family here to help her celebrate.

One of her favorite gifts - a new coat. Thanks Grandma Suzette! She also got Connect 4 ( I couldn't help it - I loved that game when I was her age!), some new shirts, and money.

Here's the birthday cake. I had strict instructions. A chocolate cake with white frosting and a Christmas Tree. I think this fits the bill!

Grandpa Ed, Grandma Dena, and Uncle Steve were all in town (for a hunting trip) and were happy to help celebrate. I finally made it into a picture and if you can't tell I don't have long to go before this baby comes!

Abby is loving 1st grade and has become a stupendous reader. She has been doing really well with piano and just finished her Christmas recital. She loves playing games and is a big help with her little brother and sister (most of the time that is ...). Happy 7th Birthday Abby!

Brooklyn turns 5!!

Happy Birthday Brooklyn! It was Brooklyn's birthday on November 26 and we had lots of people visiting to help celebrate! Here's my big 5 year old opening presents. (That's uncle Philip in the background). I should mention that her favorite present came from Grandma Lu. An 18" doll with a bunch of different outfits. Abby also got one for her early bday present. And since everyone was getting presents from Grandma Lu, she made sure Jace got one too. He got Woody from Toy Story. Spoiled is what I say!


Grandma Dena carried on the tradition of getting both my girls church dresses. This another of Abby's early bday presents.

YAY! Brooklyn is 5!!

Brooklyn was actually quite nervous to be turning 5. And those are the words she used. "Mom, I'm a little nervous to turn 5." She thought she would feel different. And she had a lot of fun as a 4 year old - she wasn't sure she wanted to leave those years behind! In fact, when she found out that she didn't "officially" turn 5 until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, she was sure to let people who called to wish her a happy birthday know that she wasn't quite 5 yet.
Luckily, once 3:01 hit she realized going from 4 to 5 wasn't such a huge transformation and she was good with!

I know that the birthday cake is nothing spectacular but I tried to find a cake I thought Brooklyn would like - cake is not her favorite thing. So this is the recipe she chose (what my college room-mates and I dubbed "Better than Peck on a Cheek" cake ) and it has whipped cream on top. Hard to decorate. So she got sugar letters! At any rate, Brooklyn did eat her cake and loved it. Or so she said. She only had the one piece and didn't want any of the leftovers but the fact that she actually finished her piece of cake says a lot for her!




Here's everyone at the party - my brother Philip, Jace, Brooklyn, Abby, my dad, Darren, Grampa Sim, Uncle Sim Arthur (my dad's brother), my mom, and Grandma Lu. There are no pictures of me at the party. With just over 4 weeks left in this pregnancy I'm ok with that!

Happy Birthday Brookie! We love you!

Halloween

Happy Halloween! Here are a few pictures - this first one is solely to document the fact that I "dressed up" for the ward party:) Jace thought it was awesome......

Here's our lil' soldier. Isn't he cute!

Brooklyn said she was going to be Bat Girl - until Abby wouldn't be Wonder Girl. That ruined it. So we went to old reliable - make-up, dresses and wings. Same as usual!

Here's my other little angel. Abby carved her pumpkin all by herself this year - it's a cat.

And here are my little monsters! Happy Halloween!

Monster Hunting

I love fall. Everything about it really. I love the cooler weather, the lack of mosquitoes, the leaves changing color, the excitement of soooo many holidays around the corner (including my birthday!). I love my change in wardrobe (when I'm not pregnant that is...). I love pulling out my beautiful boots. I love not getting an air conditioning bill. The list could go on, really, but I'll get to my point.

Which is this. Halloween. And Jace. I never knew it was possible to love a holiday so much at such a young age. I should have known before Halloween even got here. I had inklings of my 2 year olds passion before it became a full blown obsession. I just ignored it. The love bordering on unhealthy obsession of Scooby Doo. (Scooby Doo was one of his first words by the way but it sounded more like ooby dooby dooo.) The fact that if Jace was around and the TV was on it could only be Scooby.

The first time I took him down the Halloween aisle I tried to shield his eyes from the scary masks. He threw my hands aside and wanted to try the masks on. I was shocked. You should have seen the look of delight on his face when I showed up dressed like a witch -wig and all. He loves it. The spookier the better.

Which brings me to my next point. Pa (my dad) also likes Halloween. Or, I should say, likes to pretend to be a monster even if it's not Halloween and enjoys scaring my children and then sending them back home so mom (me) can deal with the aftereffects. Let's put it this way - Jace is convinced that a monster lives in my parents overly large window well.

Why?

Because one day while Jace was checking it out, Pa ran back inside, downstairs, opened the window and let out creepy monster growls.

Then he ran back upstairs and asked Jace if the monster that lived in the window well was awake.

Yes, Pa. The monster is awake. And now so will my son be. All night. Because he's having monster nightmares.

How do I know he's having nightmares? Because he wakes up crying and the only comprehensive thing he gets out is "Monster (sob) scaaawy." Luckily, he just needs his mommy and he's able to go right back to sleep.

The thing about it is Jace can't get it out of his mind (hence the nightmares). He has a weird kind of infatuation with it. When we go to Pa's house that's all he can talk about. Finding the monster. He goes looking for it. He thinks it's fun. He laughs and giggles about it. It's like a hobby of sorts.

Unfortunately it's beginning to take over his life. He now has a monster "living" in his bedroom. He can't go in there by himself anymore - during the day and especially not at night. At least once a day he pretends he's hunting for monsters. I can't distract him. It's enjoyable for him. For the last 2 weeks before Halloween we had to drive out of our way to see the "spookies" at two different houses in our neighborhoood twice a day just so Jace could ooooh and ahhhh over it. He could point out the route from his car seat....."turn mom, turn." Like I said - obsessed.

It's been a week now and Jace still asks to go see the spookies. I tell him Halloween is over and the spookies are gone.

He's still talking about monsters too- I let him know Pa is just pretending to be the monster. He says " I know mom. I know." And then he goes to find Pa so they can go find the monster together. All I can say is at least he slept all night without nightmares!

Oh Chicago!

So a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to find myself traveling.......alone. Well, not really alone alone - I had my mom and dad with me. But alone as in no little chubby fingers pulling at my shirt. No children whining about needing snacks. No fighting in the back of my car about who is copying who.

I was alone.

Headed to Chicago! To meet up with my sisters! Wahooo! Girls only trip (plus sugar daddy:) He was invaluable to us by watching Heather's 3 month old baby while we girls took off to see a Broadway Musical.

That's right. "Wicked" was playing in Bre's neighborhood so we planned an entire trip around this one event. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so we didn't even get a picture with the billboard. I have a couple of shots on my phone but I don't know how transfer them to my computer....Actually I don't think I have the proper equipment. Oh well.

Here we all are after the show - this is taken by a professional photographer from Skips (Bre's husband) office. Hence the office in the background. We were visiting Skip. Don't we look cute?

Everyone thought this was my first baby....that's what happens when you travel alone :)

Here we are in our hotel room in Chicago. We left Bre's house in Peoria to stay a couple of nights in Chicago. We wanted the city experience! We stayed right on Michigan Ave. (aka the "Magnificent Mile") and magnificent it was! And busy. Extremely people/traffic busy. But talk about shopping!!!! An entire mile of shopping. Too bad I am very pregnant.......

Here we are at Navy Pier. Me, Bre, Heather, Shayli and my mom. This was right after I got the phone call from Darren saying he was taking my little Jace to the emergency room.

Huh?

Talk about things falling apart when mom's not home! Apparently Jace got very sick (throwing up and dry heaving on top of a cold) and despondant. Anyways, he couldn't breathe well and needed to get some antibiotics. At any rate, I was a worried mother for part of the day while things got figured out.

Since my dad was taking the girls picture I got one of him by himself! Looking good!

Here I am at the top of our hotel. We stayed on the 33rd floor - YIKES! But what a view!

I'm also wearing my "twin jacket" in this picture. Heather has a matching one. We bought them together on the Magnificent Mile at a magnificent price! They are our Chicago twin jackets. We also have matching jackets from our Seattle trip earlier this year. You could say it's become tradition:)

Here is the Silver Man, as I call him. He had some mooooves. We didn't want to stay too long though - he had a way of picking out the ladies and asking for tips. We were too broke at the point to help a brotha out.


The famous popcorn store. At least I'm told it's famous. I hadn't ever heard of it but they did have good popcorn. And a line that never left. I told Heather and Bre to smile but they obviously didn't hear me...

One of my favorite shots of the trip. He was stopped at a stoplight. It took some quick acting to get this shot! And we managed to get one of Heather too. Everyone else kept going without us.

That was when we got lost. I should say the first time we got lost. It was hard to navigate in the city with all those skyscrapers around us.......

And then we headed home. And our girls weekend +dad was over.

I have not been alone since:)

Pumpkins!

It's PUMPKIN PATCH TIME!!

Every year we look forward to heading out to Granada with Grandpa Sim and Grandma Lu to pick out the best pumpkins. This year was no exception....luckily we had a very nice day to search the patch. The only problem (for me) was finding a way to take pictures without the sun in people's eyes (got lots of those), or my shadow in the picture (got some of those too), or grimaces on kids face! Other than that, it was a success!

Jace, Brooklyn, and Abby - happy to be here!

Grandma Lu even joined in the searching.


Grandma Lu was also responsible for handing over the super sharp pruners to my 6 and 4 year olds (I was told I was ruining everyone's fun when I tried to protest.....).

Luckily all fingers (and toes) remain intact - and nobody's fun was ruined:)

Jace was Grandpa's little helper.



Grandpa Sim found the most unique pumpkin - there's no one else that has a pumpkin like that around!

Brooklyn came away with the biggest pumpkin.

And the biggest smile! Did Imention we love the pumpkin patch?

Happy Carving!

Mesa Verde

On our way to Lake Powell we decided to take a little detour through Mesa Verde. We've never been before and didn't know when we'd get back down that way so we decided to fit it in. We didn't have a lot of time so we weren't able to see everything but we did manage to get one tour in of what they call Spruce Tree. Amazing!

Here we are in some pit. I'm sure I would know more details about its actual function had we participated in the educational part of the tour! But since we didn't have enough time for that we just made up our own ideas about what it was used for:)



This picture is taken from the trail that we hiked down. We were literally the only family there. We were swarmed by tons of old people. I was actually quite impressed that they all made it down the steep trail without assistance! I'm not sure, but I think my rambunctious kids made them all a little nervous.....




Here's Abby headed down into the pit. We didn't know what the kids would think of Mesa Verde but they ended up really loving it. Brooklyn especially was into reading all the pamphlets we got and asking questions about it. They thought it was pretty cool that these were real Indian dwellings that real Indians used to live in!

Here we all are. The baby bump is there- it's just hiding really well! And then we were off to Lake Powell!

Lake Powell

Have you ever been to Lake Powell? I haven't...until last week! We made our first trip ever and joined most of Darren's family. Our brother-in-law works out there and was able to secure a houseboat for us all to stay on - for free! It was so nice to have a kitchen and a bathroom to use while "roughing it"!!!

We had all kinds of things to play on for our stay. A water trampoline being one of them. We also had a jet ski, two boats (wakeboarding, kneeboarding, tubing, and surfing), a beach (hours of fun), and a hike to a natural arch just a mile or two away from campsite.

Luckily I got a few pictures of Jace early on. He ended up with a really bad diaper rash (courtesy of being wet all day long) and had to go commando for a day and a half! I couldn't even put his swim trunks on because his rash continued half -way down his inner thighs. Poor little guy. I think he quite enjoyed his newfound freedom and was very amazed at being able to watch himself use the restroom.....


The beach proved to be a great spot for the kids to gather seashells, dig pits, create rivers and make mudbaths.

Here they are enjoying the fruits of their labors!

Abby decided to try her hand at wakeboarding. She gave it a good shot but wasn't able to stay up.



Brooklyn on the boat - Ty snacking. One of our favorite activities while boating!

I unfortunately did not take a picture of our houseboat - I don't know why not. But we did have top deck with a hot tub, and a slide that dropped you off into the lake. The drop off was actually quite high, I thought, (probably 4 feet) for little kids but Abby loved it. Brooklyn braved it one time and it wasn't a great experience so she was done with it. Jace thought he wanted to go down the slide but I wouldn't let him. There were also four rooms with queen sized beds, couches and tables that changed into beds, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen. The men all slept on the top deck under the stars.

All in all we had a great time and I was thankful that we didn't go in the middle of summer because it was still plenty hot in September!

First Day of School Pictures

The first day of school has finally arrived! Here's my little Brookie all ready for Pre-school! She goes to the afternoon class which is good news for the little man! I don't know what Jace would do without his playmate for the morning!

Brooklyn picked out her school shoes all on her own (as did Abby). I actually tried to persuade her to get more practical shoes. You know, ones that didn't call quite so much attention to themselves. What you may not know about these shoes is that they also light up when you walk. Yes, they are by far the flashiest shoes we saw in all of the bazillion stores we went to. Brooklyn loves them.

I can't believe Abby has started 1st grade! She's already a super reader and loves going to school. She's done great at getting up and getting ready (with some prodding - she's easily distracted) and is doing better about not coming home quite as tired as she was last year.

Here are Abby's Twinkle Toes. She had to have some. And they had to be ones with laces. Now that we're a few weeks into school Abby's not so sure that laces are a good thing. They take a whole lot longer to put on! But they sure are cute!

Happy School Year!