Happy Anniversary

Today Justin and I are celebrating our 5 year anniversary. We are currently in Portland, Oregon on a trip that I feel like we have been planning/waiting for since we got back from our honeymoon, haha. I am sure I will have lots to post about next week. I absolutely loved our wedding day and love our wedding photos. I love going back and looking through them each year. 5 years and 2 kids later and I think we are doing pretty awesome. The fact that we committed to taking this trip and making it happen is a big deal in itself. Thankfully my mom is helping and staying at our house and shuttling our kids around. We have some pretty awesome family that has been willing to help out so we could take this trip. To be honest with you, looking back I didn't how good of a choice I was making 5 years ago. As each year passed and our family grew I have gotten to know Justin more and more. I am pretty lucky to have found such a great husband and father. We have now been together for over 8 years and it seriously feels like it has flown by. Crazy! So glad to be sharing my life with my best friend.

Zoolights 2015

We love going to Zoolights every year (see my previous posts here) especially being members. The Phoenix Zoo opens Zoolights early every year for its members so we always take advantage of that and this was the best year yet. Seriously it was so empty. Zoolights in AZ gets crazy packed to the point where they have to use overflow parking. Probably because we have relatively mild winters. We went on Monday and it was awesome. It is so much nicer to let your kids run and not be chasing them in between massive crowds. They also have free carousel rides and free visits to the stingray bay for the member nights. We were the only ones on the carousel when we went so even Doug and I rode on animals. I am so glad that the zoo does these early nights for the members and I am so glad that the holiday season is here!

very cool new lit entry way

 

Remi was with us and this little guy was cool to see.

new talking turtle this year.

 

Jango the Giraffe

 

ouuuuttttt!

Happy Birthday Justin!

Today Justin turns 32! We are leaving today for our 5th Anniversary trip to Portland so it should be a fun birthday for him too. Justin never makes a big fuss over his birthday or really anything to do with himself. He always puts all of our needs/wants before his own and we appreciate all that he does. He is out numbered in our house by some crazy ladies and we are so grateful that he puts up with us. I think we are worth it, but we are definitely very lucky to have him. We will celebrate with family next weekend and to be honest, all he really wants for his birthday is the Cardinals to win, but we will for sure be enjoying some kid-free food and beer tonight and sleeping in tomorrow!

Happy Birthday Justin!

Halloween Video

I finally got around to compiling the footage from Halloween. Obviously most of the events were at night in the dark and the go pro does not capture that well, but I think we still got some moments. I combined Friday and Saturday into one cute little video:

The Sickness

So yesterday I had the day off and was so excited because who doesn't love a day off. Everly has been on and off sick since Saturday but she seemed to be better and no fever so I tried to send her to school. I could have kept her home but I don't want her to get out of the habit of going to school. I had barely gotten home and put Aspen down when they called that I needed to come get her. Soooo annoying. I know that it's rude to say my daughter being sick is annoying but I am just mad that I didn't just keep her home in the first place. After all of that morning driving and Everly coughing, I cancelled my plans to go to the Children's museum with my sister. Super bummed about that because Aspen would have had a blast. To top it off, Aspen was dealing with some constipation and her two top teeth coming in so yesterday was a pretty joyful day all around. I already had a hair appointment for 5:00 and when Justin got home I was so happy to get out of there. Once again, I know that is horrible, but I was just so bummed that my day off was ruined. I was supposed to have fun with Aspen and then we were going to watch Ev's soccer practice, but nope. Life had other plans. Thankfully my sisters helped out this week but I am really hoping Ev gets back to her normal self soon. She has basically missed a whole week of school and it stresses me out. I know its just preschool but I don't want her to get behind! Thank god I got my hair done yesterday because these girls are for sure giving me more gray hairs than I already had. Also, thank you so much to all of the Veteran's who have served and to those that are still serving our country. The girls are still a little young to understand Veteran's Day but I still try explaining it to them anyways.

 

too cool for school. literally.

nebulizing and humidifying

I do love the cuddles

Aspen's 1 Year Photobook

I am pretty proud of myself that I have finished Aspen's one year photobook and she is not even 14 months old yet! Having this blog really helps me be able to document all of these things so that I can make these books. I only make an annual book for the 1st year and then after that I do it for trips/vacations/photo shoots, etc. I love having these but more than anything I hope that they appreciate them when they are older.

Weekend in Review

We had a great weekend. Justin left Thursday night to camp and run at Ragnar Trail AZ so we didn't see him until Saturday afternoon. Friday night we met my mom and the boys at Freddie's. Teddy and Ev were being so cute and playing and Aspen and Cameron were much too busy eating EVERYTHING. Those two were shoveling food in. Saturday morning Everly woke up with a hive-like rash all over her legs and on her arms and so I gave her Benadryl and a shower and she seemed fine. I packed the girls up in the jogging stroller for my first time actually running with it. I usually run before they are awake so I never use it for that but with Justin gone this was my only option. I ran 2.5 miles to Home Depot where I met my sister for the kids workshop. My brother-in-law was nice enough to come and help because it is hard to do that without your husband. Basically the adults to the building and the kids do "some" painting. They love it though and its free so we keep going. After the kids built their planes I ran the 2.5 miles back with the girls and they both fell asleep. I was surprised at how well I ran (about a 9:20 pace). My arms did get a little tired but the stroller really is pretty easy to push. We have THIS double jogging stroller. Saturday afternoon after Justin got home, we went to open swim at Hubbard. It was free if you brought in some canned food so we took advantage of that. My girls don't take year round swim lessons so it was fun to get back in the pool. Saturday night we went to Justin's sister's to watch the Nebraska football game and Everly started to spike a fever. We only lasted half the game before we had to call it a night but my sister in law made some yummy chili! Everly's fever was off an on all day Sunday but she wanted to come to my soccer game so we all went as a family. Sunday night she worked on her homework project of decorating her Turkey with Aunty Kim (who has all the teacher-y crafty things). Aspen and Mae also got some play time in Sunday night now that Mae can sit up. At one point Aspen sat on Mae's head and she didn't like it so much but other that that they played great. Everly turned in her homework Monday but is still fighting her fever/cough so hopefully she can kick that soon!

 

Thanks Uncle Mark!

 

zzzz

 

Having fun at Mama's soccer game.

A photo posted by Justin Larkins (@justinlarkins) on Nov 8, 2015 at 10:53am PST

Principal's Award

Every Friday the students at Everly's school go to Mass but today was a special day because after Mass they were handing out awards for the first quarter. I had gotten a letter a little over a week ago letting us know that Everly would be receiving the Principal's Award for her preschool class for the 1st Quarter. They only pick one kid from the class so we were so proud of her when we found out. At the parent-teacher conference last week her teacher's had nothing but great things to say about her progress and behavior in class. That is nice to here because it is definitely no easy job parenting Everly and she can be a handful at home sometimes. We are very proud of how good she is doing at school. I attended Mass with her this morning and my brother-in-law and niece came as well. They brought her flowers which was so sweet. It was so cute to see her participate in church. They also had alumni at the mass who graduated from the school in 1960 which was really neat too. They all had wonderful things to say about the education they received as well. That was pretty neat to see. Everly did so good when they called her name to receive her award. She wasn't shy at all. She is one cute little preschooler and we love her!

 

Little Princess

 

                    

 

She also had perfect attendance!