My poor little Keely Weely :-(

Keely had her ear re-check today and she STILL has an ear infection. It has been 4+ straight weeks now and she is on her 3rd anti-biotic. I took her to a chiropractor today so hopefully that will help. I took Jacey to the chiropractor all the time when she was a baby and it totally got rid of her ear infections. When they weighed her today she was a whopping 17lbs 2oz. Granted that was with clothes on but holy cow she's gained some weight just in the last two weeks. She's still so stinking cute though; even with her 3 chins :-) The Dr.'s words, not mine :-) Despite all her illnesses she is still the best baby. She never cries at the Dr.'s office and she didn't even cry when she got adjusted to day. She just keeps on smiling!!!!

Here are some random pictures of her from my cell phone.

Photo Shoots, Christmas, Updates and more.....

This was a picture of My mom, Charisse, Gina & I last Christmas (Scary).

This is a picture of Gina, my Mom, Delaina and I this year. Holy cow what a difference one year makes :-)



Keely all tired out after opening her Christmas presents

Jacey, Mara, Keely and I opening our presents

Jacey loved/loves her new Barbie Jeep. Now if she could only figure out how to drive it :-)

We were very lucky this year. Not only did Santa show up to our family Christmas eve party, he drove by our house on his motorcycle :-)

Every year on Christmas eve the Skousen's get together for a big party. For as long as I can remember we have had this Christmas eve party (at least 30 plus years). It used to be at Grandma Skousen's then as the Skousen clan grew bigger it moved to Marilyn & Max's and the past year or two we've had it at Gina and Jackson's. I was in charge of this years program and festivities. We enjoyed musical numbers from Jamie & Tyler and Kenneth and Garrett, watched the nativity story put out by the church and had a special guest visitor. Needless to say, the young and the old enjoyed their visit from Santa :-)


Grandma Skousen and Santa

Keely & Santa. Keely turned 4 months old recently. At her 4 month check up she weighed in at a whopping 15lbs 13oz and was 25.75 inches long. She also had/has a double ear infection :0 I had no idea because she is such a good baby and still continues to sleep in until 9am every morning. Keely's first tooth broke through on Christmas eve. I've known she was teething and have been waiting anxiously for the dang tooth to just come in already. I noticed it when she started screaming uncontrollably during the party. Poor baby :-( She is such a joy to have around and Jacey just adores her little sister. As you can see, so does Santa :-)

Mrs. Claus and Santa :-)

Jacey loved seeing Santa even though this picture shows otherwise. She just kept staring and staring at him.

As stated in a previous post, we decided to have family pictures taken this year while everyone was in town. We had them taken by Kacey.

She did such a great job and was so good with the kids. It takes a lot of patience to deal with a group so big and so many crazy kiddos. The picture below is the only one out of 100+ pictures where Jacey was smiling. As you'll see below, she was a holy terror :-(

Grandma and Grandpa Skousen and all the grand kids.

Top Row: Kaden, Jacey (notice how happy she is), Kayleigh, Blaine & Keely.

Bottom Row: Brant, Carson, McKenzie, Garrett, Skyler & Kade.

The Mason clan :-)

The Skousen siblings:

Delaina, Gina, Darrel, Amber & Charisse

The Skousen clan:

Darrel & Missy Skousen, Jackson & Gina Wright, Amber & Thad Mason,

Kenneth & Delaina Whimpey, Jeff & Charisse Brownlow & Kay & Charlyn Skousen.

What a wonderful week this has been :-)

Randomness

I really don't have anything important to add but I felt like posting a mixture of random pictures and events.
For those of you who don't/didn't know, I am the oldest of 5 children. I have 3 sisters (Gina, Delaina & Charisse) and one brother (Darrel). Delaina and Charisse both live in Utah and Darrel lives in Coolidge, so it's rare for us all to be in the same place at the same time. Everyone came down for Christmas so I thought now would be the perfect opportunity to have a family picture taken with everyone. The last time we had one taken was at least 6 years ago, if not longer, so we were way overdue. It was quite the event trying to get all the kiddo's to behave and smile at the same time. Good luck with that, right? I decided that I wanted to straighten Jacey's hair just to give her a different look in the pictures. Her hair is sooo curly that it took me forever to straighten it. It was quite the ordeal. She was such a trooper though and all turned out well in the end. If you recall, I attempted to straighten her hair at Halloween. Let's just say that I had much better luck this time around. We haven't gotten the pictures back yet but I will be sure to post some of the family once I get them :-) Jacey looks so completely different with straight hair. My siblings didn't recognize her at first. It is absolutely amazing how long her hair is when it's straight. If it didn't take so dang long I'd straighten it more often because she looks so dang cute. So, the pictures below are of her with her cute new hair do and some random pictures with her in her new handmade (not by me) beanie.

Bye Bye Dear Bunny (warning, long story!!!!)

The time has come to say goodbye to a dear friend. Okay, okay, so the time should have come a long time ago we just couldn’t do it :-( We actually said goodbye to the bunny a month ago but since I’m turning this into a book soon I just couldn’t do it without adding this tiny tribute :-)

Jacey was born the day after Easter. So, she of course received many stuffed animal bunny rabbits as gifts. When she was about 3 months old I started putting one of the bunnies in her bed with her whenever she would go to sleep. I thought it would help her forget about her binky that kept falling out. If I had only known then how attached she would become to the bunny I would have NEVER done that. That poor bunny was attached to her side from then on for the next 2+ years. I can’t tell you how many countless hours where spent searching for the dang thing when it was lost just so that she would/could sleep through the night. Some nights Jacey would wake up balling because her bunny got lost under the covers and she couldn’t find it. We tried many times to replace it with new bunnies and even bought the exact same one when Easter came around again. She would have nothing to do with them. We had to take that darned thing with us everywhere she went; church, nursery, vacations, etc.....
I remember one night we searched high and low and couldn’t find it only to find out she had left it in my friend’s car. What a miserable night that was. She cried herself to sleep and then came and slept with us during the middle of the night.

Now, the bunny wasn’t all that bad. It definitely came in handy when I needed to bribe Jacey to behave or when she got hurt and needed comfort only the bunny could give her. Sooo many people told me to just get rid of the darn thing and let her get used to not having it. I just couldn’t do it. I have to admit that I was just a tad bit attached to it as well. The poor thing made it through countless travels, chewing from the dog, nights out in the gutter and 100’s of washings. What it eventually couldn’t withstand was Thad’s quad and the dog :-) Last month Thad was at his parent’s house and he took Jacey with him for a ride on his quad. Somehow Jacey touched the exhaust pipe with the bunny and burned it quite badly. Even so we still didn’t get rid of it. I actually bought batting, attempted to cut the burnt parts off, re-stuffed it and sewed it back together. It looked better than it did but was still pretty dang ugly. Then a few days later Jacey took it with her outside where Sassy (our big fat Bull Dog) sank her teeth into it and bit the butt off. At that point I just threw in the towel. I was not about to attempt to sew it back together again. So, Thad took Jacey outside and they proceeded to “shoot” the bunny with a bb gun. She thought it was funny (at the time) and at that point we said the bunny was going to heaven and she wouldn’t see it again. Surprisingly enough she has been fine every since. She has asked about it a few times but there were no tears or sleepless nights. Hallelujah!!!!! She has replaced the bunny with countless other stuffed animals (right now it’s a monkey) but none of them can take its place and cause quite the same amount of drama. I’ve included some pictures of the bunny during different phases of its life.
Bye, Bye dear Bunny. Thanks for the memories :-)

If you look closely you can see it in the bottom of the shopping cart

At Sea World in 20007

On the way to Schnepf farms

In the photo shoot (Of course)

Pictures of the bunny as it is now (We still have it, it's just hidden away)

What do trains and Christmas trees have in common???

They are both driving me bonkers!!!! We decided to purchase a real tree this year. I used my mom's old one last year but I had to put each limb in piece by piece. I told myself I'd NEVER do that again. We want to wait until after Christmas to try and get a good deal on a pre-lit artificial one, hence the real tree this year. The tree is/was gorgeous and smells great. At least it did until it pretty much shriveled up and died. Thank goodness it wasn't our fault (I watered it every single day) so the lot we bought it from gave us a brand new one (taller & better) for free. I just Loved putting all of the lights on again. Sheesh that is tedious. Thank goodness my decorations where/are still pretty sparse.
We had never seen the Polar Express until this year when it came on TV. We recorded it and now Jacey insists on watching it EVERY day, several times a day. She is absolutely obsessed with trains lately. Then, Thad got the bright idea to go buy a Polar Express train to put up under the tree. Did he buy the inexpensive one at Target?? Nooooo, not Thad. He had to go buy the expensive one at the train store. It lights up, makes noises, has a conductor that talks and has steam that comes out of it. All that is fine except for when he gets the bright idea to turn it on at 3am and wake everyone in the house up. Not my idea of fun.

Some neighbors down the street from us have their entire back yard turned into a train yard and at Christmas time they give free tours. Thad took Jacey down today to see them and she of course loved it.

The first tree


The 2nd tree

The Polar Express

The backyard train park

My goofy child :-)

Christmas Lights

Holy Cow. I can't believe it's the middle of December already. Time has flown by so fast this year. My tiny little baby is now a 15lb tub of love and Jacey looks like she's 4 :-) We took the kids to see the temple lights a couple of weeks ago. Jacey loved the lights but wanted to touch them soooo bad. She kept asking if she could touch them, all night. Two days later Amy and I took our Beehives to see the lights. That was quite the adventure. I'm not sure what's worse. One 2 year old or 5 twelve year olds. Okay, so it wasn't that bad, they were a lot of fun they just had way too much sugar in their system :-)

Daddy's saying "No Jacey, look at me not at Mommy"

There we go :-)

We were missing one Bee in our hive but still had fun with: Crystal, Julia, Kylee, Shana & Brenna. Amy and I are on each end :-)

The missionaries were nice enough to take our picture a few times. We then got to listen to them read us a scripture and teach us Merry Christmas in sign language.

Hanging out by the camels!!!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!! (Warning-Long post)

Today is my mom's birthday so I thought I'd do a little tribute to her. Thankfully I'm writing this so no one can see me if I start crying. Yes, I'm a ball baby and I get it from my mother :-)

Seriously, I don't even know where to begin. I swear to you that I have the world's greatest mom. I honestly don't know what I would do if anything ever happened to her. I can't count the number of times she has dropped everything to help me with something. When I was pregnant with Jacey and was really sick, she came over once a week and cleaned my house. After I had Jacey she would come over and stay the night and stay up all night with the baby so I could catch up on sleep.

She gets up at 3:00 in the morning to go to work and then still manages to come home, cook, clean, run errands and babysit for me and/or my sister. She is a tiny bit of a clean freak (definitely not in bad/crazy way) and always has such a beautiful clean house. Thad hates that about her because he swears I take after her. You'd never be able to tell by looking at my house which currently looks like a tornado (a 2 year old one) hit. I swear she is wonder women and I will never be able to live up to her image.

She is an awesome cook!!!! She makes the best pies you'll ever have (hint, hint) and any cooking skills that I have came from her. I feel bad for my in-laws because no matter what, I always HAVE to go to my mom's house for every holiday or occasion just so I can have some of her home cooked food.

She is my best friend. I talk to her at least once a day and if I ever just need someone to listen to me rant and rave she's the first one I call. She can calm me down like no one else and always manages to talk some sense into me :-) She is so fun to hang out with. She loves to go shopping, listen to MY music, play games, stay up all night watching movies, etc.... You'd think she was my sister and not my mom :-)

She is serioulsy the worlds best grandmother. My kids absolutely LOVE her as do all of her other grandkids. She is always willing to babysit and loves spending time with the kids. She's even had my sisters kids spend the night just so she could spend quality time with them. She even went out and bought a trampoline for her house so that the grandkids would have something fun to do when they come over.

Last but not least, she is one of the most humble and spiritual people I know. Not once in my entire 33 years have I ever seen her lose Faith. Her answer to any problems is always "Pray about it" or "Are you doing the things you are supposed to be doing?". She never judges, just leads by example. She is a huge example to me and I really hope that I can be as great a mother to my children as she has been and is to me.

Here are some fun pictures of my mom from the past year.

Worlds best Grandmother

Loving Sister

Loving Wife

I love you Mom, Happy Birthday!!!

Thanksgiving Madness

Happy Thanksgiving (okay so I'm a little late)!!!!

Yesterday was crammed full of activities. I'm still recuperating. We started off at The Masons for our first Thanksgiving feast and then we headed over to the Skousens for another feast (About an hour apart). This year my Aunt Diane and her kids (and their kids) came down to join in the fun. It was awesome to see my cousins that I never get to see. It was a ton of fun and the kids loved it. Thanks Mom & Dad for having us all at your house and for making such an excellent meal (and for the the trampoline-the hit of the party) :-) My Mom, Gina & I ended the day by going to see the movie "Australia". It was a little slow and a little long (3 hours) but it was really good. I LOVED it.

My parents recently finished their back yard (doesn't it look awesome!!) and they bought a trampoline for all of the grandkids to play on. Jacey had so much fun jumping and then later playing Duck, Duck, Goose with all the "Big" kids.

Keely just loves my Grandpa Huffaker!!! My dad took a family photo with his handy dandy remote and then my sister Gina and I posed for pictures with my cousins. My cousin Sherri (in the Green) is single... for any of you single males out there :-)

What would Thanksgiving be without an early morning shopping spree the day after???? Am I crazy for getting up at the crack of dawn to fight the crowds so that I could grab this cute little jeep for Jacey? Here's a shout out to Alana Parker who saved the day today and helped me snag the last one!!!!! P.S-I still hate Walmart!!!!

Family Fun

We had family pictures taken a few weeks ago. It's been about a year and a half since we had ones of all of us taken so it was way over due. Miracles never cease, Jacey was sooo good for these pictures. That NEVER happens. Here are just a few of the cute pictures we got :-)

Me and my hubby

My cranky two year old being such a sweet heart :-)

Do they come any cuter than this????

Typical Thad. Getting him off the phone is like pulling teeth!!!

Update and video of Keely:

Keely is at such a fun age right now. I love it. She can sit and just talk to herself for a good hour. Her little smile just brightens my day. She is getting so chunky but she's still so stinking cute.

She is 3 1/2 months old right now, holy cow how the time flies by. I think she's teething as well because she drools like crazy and is cranky, which is not normal for her. This video is of her talking to herself while playing on her baby Einstein mat. The star hanging from the top has a light that blinks and it plays music. She LOVES it!!!!