Amity! How we LOVE thee! Let us count the ways!

So this is my beautiful little baby girl two years ago...


Isn't she so sweet?

And this is her now:

She turned 2 the other day, and we couldn't possibly love this girl more. She makes us so happy every day.

Mommy did a little decorating. Nothing too fancy.

And I just had to hang up all kinds of cute pictures of her, which she loved.

Her loving brother, Russell, drew her this picture for her birthday, and wrote the words himself without help. It says, "Happy birthday. To Amity From Russell." I just love the way preschoolers think about phonetics. H-a-"p" = Happy A-m-u-"d" = Amity. Forgot the "r" in "from" and used a "u". Completely makes sense, doesn't it? So sweet. I think I will save this one.

I just had to make a collage of her cheesy grins for the day. They make me laugh so hard.

A list of things that we love about Amity:

- She is such a wonderful combo of sweet, bubbly and feisty.

- When I (mom) say good night to her after tucking her in, I tell her that I love her, and she whispers, "I luv you," back to me in the sweetest little voice.

- How she greets her daddy every day when he gets home by running to him and yelling his name. She watches out the window for him.

- She loves her brother so much. I love it when she wakes up in the morning and starts to yell, "BROTHER!!!" from her crib. (She calls him brother a lot.)

- This girl toots all the time, and she thinks it is sooooo hilarious. We did NOT teach her that. We try really hard not to laugh about tooting in front of the kids...

- She is such a fast little runner. She and Russ race all the time. It is one of their favorite games to play together. (She has gotten checked into a wall or corner many times. It's kinda dangerous.) She escapes from us in church all the time, and before we can actually catch her she is out of the chapel, all the way down the hall, out one of the main doors, and on the sidewalk.

- I love her voice when she yells, "Hooray!" or "Wee-hoo!"

-Food is one of her greatest passions. Her grandpa teases that she is a hobbit because she needs a "second breakfast." She particularly loves sweets.
- How she jabbers and jabbers away on the phone with her grandparents.

- Her hair is always such a mess because she will never leave her ponytails or hairbows in for a whole day.

And so many more. We just cannot say them all.

We Love you, Amity!

Big life changes in 2012:

Well, 2012 is finally here. I can hardly believe it. Our little family is going to go through some drastic changes this year. It will be exciting and maybe challenging too.

-January: tons and tons of traveling, interviewing and shmoozing with lots of people we don't know to try to impress them.
-Feb. or March we find out where we will be going for Residency.
-April: baby number 3. A girl. No name yet.
-May: Travis officially graduates from medical school and can be referred to as "Dr. Moulton" by all his friends and family...and patients. Find a new place to live and start packing.
-June: Move away.
-July: Start residency. (Yay! A real pay check!) Ashley's 10 year class reunion. Hopefully she can make it. Can you believe it? 10 years?
-August/September: Russell starts Kindergarten, finally. I swear the kid has been 5 for three years.

Hopefully life will slow down after that...oh wait...then the holidays come again. This will be a busy year!



So Russell lost his first tooth a week or so ago. Yes, he is only 4. But he got his teeth really early, so I guess he is losing them early too. This is his natural concentrating posture, tongue hanging out and all. He is drawing a picture of his lost tooth. He hasn't added all the blood yet. Don't worry. He does later.


There it is. Daddy pulled it out because Mommy told Russ that if he didn't get it out soon he would probably accidentally swallow it in the middle of the night. (Russell didn't like that!)

And the gaping hole.

I know that these pictures are all backwards, but it takes too much time and energy to switch them around. We had our annual Ward New Year's party at Aunt Wendy's house.

Logan and Travis breaking it down.

Isn't my husband so cute?

I actually danced too, and afterward I started to yell, "My baby! I'm having my baby!" But no one believed me. I'll will say that booty shaking is a lot more difficult with a big old prego belly.

My neice, Ellie, reminds me of me when I was a kid. Love her.

My dear brother, Logan, with his amazing wife, Lexy.

This could have been a really poignant picture...sigh...

The funniest thing ever at our big New Year's bash: watching Darin beat Amy at the dance game.

My neice Alleyah. Amity's best friend/arch nemesis.

We love to play games at all of our family gatherings.

Christmas was spent half at the Moulton's and half at the Ward's. Those are the benefits of being a forever student. We still get really long Christmas breaks. Probably never again.

I love Amity's face in this one.

Amity and Russell exchange the gifts they got for each other

Gramma B. doesn't always let us take pictures of her. This is a keeper.

Amity reading her new "Potty" book and hopefully soaking in every wise word.

Amity wearing her beloved BYU jersey. (She asks to wear this a lot!) And this is a normal hair day for her after pulling out the pigtails that I so painstakingly put in her hair.

One of Travis's conehead mornings.

Amity watching a show with "Chedder.

Salt dough ornaments we made this year. Look at the concentration in her eyes.

And my sweet guy painting his ornament.

Well, that was our last month. (or at least what I took pictures of, since I'm not the best picture taker)

Bring it on, 2012! We are ready for you!

I've been having a hard time lately...

Well, after lots and lots of nagging from others (Alexy!!), I have decided to resume blogging. I've been feeling like a hamster running on a wheel lately. I run and run but seem to get no where lately. I plan and plan and plan but never seem to actually get to the following through part. I'm highly distractible. (Thanks to my new-found friend, Pinterest, seriously guys, check it out. It's great.) I still wander aimlessly through the house forgetting what chore I was currently working on. It's not good. I'm working on it, but I have a long way to go.

In the mean time, my children have grown and changed a ton since I posted last, in particular, Amity. Her hair has gotten so long, and it is not super curly like Travis's, but it has some curl in the back and often flips out like a little fifties hair-do. I think it is cute. I try to do it all cute, but the girl rips it out during naps anyway and it is always completely messed up by the end of the day. Here are the latest pics:

Amity loves to eat sweets and to climb on the bar looking for sweets to eat. She fell off once, backwards, so I have to keep a close eye on her.



Russell's Halloween costume. We had the WORST HALLOWEEN EVER IN HISTORY OF MY LIFE! (And you know how I love Halloween.) Travis was out of town. (He has been out of town a lot lately for school stuff.) Well anyway, it's a long story that I am not going to get into, but I will just say that I did not even dress up and that Amity was supposed to be a chicken, but refused to wear any costume, and my house had feathers all throughout! That's just part of it.



A backup costume which she also refused after I tried to get her to wear the chicken costume that she refused.



Amity putting it on by herself.



So travis had a big test in Philadelphia, and I got to go with him. First time ever back East for both of us! It was a lot of fun. We went to all the constitution stuff, Edgar Allen Poe's house, Valley Forge, and the Pennsylvania State Penitentary. This is the room where the constitution was debated and written. That main table at the front is George Washington's famous chair that he sat in with the rising sun.



I loved the creepy, old graveyards.

The Delaware River behind us looking out to New Jersey.

A normal person's prison room.

Al Capone's prison room. Seems unfair, huh?

They love each other so much! Every morning their very first thought is to find the other. A lot of the time, Amity wakes up and starts yelling, "BROTHER!!! BROTHER!!!" from her crib so that he will wake up and come to see her. Every time she asks me for a snack and I hand one to her she says, "Brother?" to get a peice for Russell too. It is the sweetest thing. I love it so much.

Us.

Amity pretending to talk on my phone.

Travis just loves (and by loves I really mean hates) these pajamas because they are so form-fitting and really flatter her svelte figure. So I dress her in them as much as possible. (I think it's cute and funny.)

My little man with "Bear Bear." I know...if the other kids on the wrestling team find out about Bear Bear...it could be bad.

Light eyes, dark eyes. Amity has a modge podge of colors in her eyes resulting in a pretty dark tone.

Amity "hiding". One day I ran all over the house looking for her and yelling her name and she peaked her face out of the closet and yelled, "I HIDING!"

Taking care of her baby.

Our first outing in the snow.

Love these kids.

An elf showed up on our doorstep the other day with these new PJs.

I don't know for sure what Amity is doing in this picture, but I thought she looked funny, and it reminded me of me when I was a kid.

Well, that's a recap of the last little while. I missed a huge chunk of the summer, but oh well. Maybe I'll post some of those later.

What did I tell you about this kid?

Can't leave him alone for 5 minutes! Isn't this more of a toddler thing? Not in our family. He didn't get into this much trouble when he was a toddler!

Scroll down for more posts below. After a LOOOOOOONNNNG blog break, I have a lot to say, and there is more to come too.

Oh, YAKIMA, How I miss thee!

I missed some things about Idaho while I was in Yakima, but now it's my turn to miss Yakima.

A few things that I really miss:

-The delicious and abundant fruit, orchards, vineyards, berry picking, farmer's markets...on and on. Yakima is the fruit capital of the west.
-The early coming springs and long lasting falls. (Idaho has had much longer winters and crumbier springs than normal.)
-My old ward. Love my new ward too, but do miss our friends that took us in and made us feel important in Yakima.
-But most of all....



That little guy on the right. (Grant)



That little girl on the right. (Abbey)



And my medical school bestie, Kathryn. (I am NOOOOT photogenic. Especially when my hair is all greasy.) Anyway, the kids and I took a little trip to Yakima and got to visit our special friends, and we had so much fun. And while I was there, I noticed that Kathy's pins were stuck here and there all willy nilly all over her cute little craft room, so I made her this:



She kinda had a bird theme going on. A little birdie pin cushion. Free tutorial here.

But on the bright side, I have a beautiful yard here in Idaho. I mean beautiful.



And a sweet little girl to match.



Lots of these.



These.

And these.

These were all over the prettiest little tree in the front.

A view from afar.

There is something so magical about perennials. You don't even do anything, and then suddenly flowers pop up everywhere, and it is spring.

Love it.