One Year. . .

So, on my birthday at the end of July I was thinking about what a difference a year makes . . . how last summer I was big ol' pregnant, living in Monterey, California, while my kids were vacationing in Utah with Grandma and Grandpa . . . and how I'm so grateful for what this year has brought me - a new adventure in a beautiful place, new friends, and most importantly, a beautiful baby girl.



Kylie turned one at the beginning of August and we had a little family party for her. Notice how she has enough hair to put up in a spiky ponytail that looks like a candle on a cupcake. How apropos.

She loved her presents (and playing with the tissue paper), along with the brownie we gave to her. And oh, how far she has come in a year. Below are a couple of videos of what Kylie's been up to lately. She is a pro at walking, and very fast, I might add. I set her down in Primary and try to take roll for a second, and she's out the door and halfway down the hall. People are always bringing her back to me! She also has figured out how to go down stairs, but not backwards - ho, no! - she wants to go down like the big kids, and has figured out a way to do it. She wants to do everything she sees the rest of the family doing - sit up for dinner and eat big people food, have her own Book of Mormon during scripture time, and be wherever her sisters are. She also likes to dance and has a ton to say (as you can see in the video, she will hold conversations with people - can't wait till we can understand what's going on in that little head of hers).

I can't wait to see what the next year will bring . . .

Pure Paine, Pure Awesomeness

So, we started out the month of August with an awesome surprise - Chris' sister and her family, the Paine's, were coming down to visit for a few days, so we would get to staycation again!


So, of course you can't come to the Gulf Coast without hitting the beach. There was body surfing, boogie board trains, schools of baby fish, and an awesome(?) algae ball collection.

The big event for this vacation was the parasailing. They went to "Chute Me" parasailing and had a blast! Apparently they can maneuver the boat to where you get dipped in the water while you're out there. Fun stuff. Unfortunately Kylie wasn't allowed on the boat, so I stayed off with her and Benj, who gets seasick, and we went to get frozen yogurt and hang out at a bookstore.

Afterwards there was also good times to be had at the go-cart park and riding the kiddie rides. . .

The next day, while the boys went golfing, the girls went tubing down Turkey Creek. (I gotta lot of good pictures for this one, so bear with me.) It was a hoot stuffing everybody and the tubes into the car . . .

This is everyone totally stoked to get in the river. Notice the different levels of enthusiasm on Lise's face in the above and below pictures. Lise had a little scary moment where she slid off her tube and had to swim to grab onto somebody else's tube, but her swimming lessons totally paid off, she swam AWESOMELY, and got back on. After that she wasn't as excited to go down for another run, but I made her "get right back on the horse", so to say, and she was better by the end of the second run.

The first time I went down with Kylie, and the second time I went down on the two person tube with Katerbug. Lots of wiggling and jiggling going on, and lots of fun too.

For their last night here, we went and did hot dogs and Brats at a park and then drove to see the fireworks. Lotsa fun!

Here we all are just before the fireworks start. Notice the Paine's are all posing beautifully and somehow the O'Gwin's seem totally oblivious. Not sure what happened there . . .

We had so much fun hanging out with their family - playing with cousins, playing games, watching movies, playing wii, and just sitting around talking. There were more than a few tears from our girls when they woke up Friday morning and their cousins were gone. We will have to do it again!

And finally, here is a little snippet of the parasailing (and Kate's commentary in the background right before she fell asleep). This is Aunt Carolyn, Analise and Rebekah going up . . .

Getting creative

So . . . having a few extra weeks of summer sounded great in the beginning. And it has been good in that I am totally not ready for school to start yet, but we are running out of things to do in this heat! Yes, there are some days that I wish we just had our own pool so we could just walk out the back door and jump in, but I know it would never be as simple as all of that and I don't think it would be worth the stress level I would have to keep an eye on the younger two constantly. However, despite the lack of pool, we have found a few things to keep us entertained, such as . . .

Aly and Lise turning the garage into a skating rink, swimming at a friends, meeting friends at McDonald's on a rainy day . . .

playing broom hockey at the church with a family in our ward (super fun!!), the girls making plaques for their rooms during their art lesson, meeting friends at the splash pad (and getting snowcones - yum!) . . .


and a 24th of July Pioneer Celebration at Lincoln Park. Besides eating and swimming, someone in our ward brought a jetski and let us have a turn. When it was Chris, Kate, and I on there it felt great to be out on the water. I could almost pretend that I was at Lake Powell for a moment, and then . . . I saw three dolphins about 10 feet away from us. It was so cool! We sat and watched them for a few minutes (until Kate got bored) - talk about neat-o skeet-o!

Other stuff we've been up to is as follows:

*Took Kate to Pensacola to figure out if she has Kidney Reflux. She has had bladder infection after bladder infection for the past 4 months, so we're trying to figure out what's going on. The results came back negative, which is good and she hasn't had one since, so hopefully it won't come back. Kate was a super trooper during the procedure, so we went to a Wendy's that they had in the hospital for lunch afterwards. This brought about Aly's quote of the week, "Ooh, Wendy's has my favorite kind of hamburgers. You know the one's that are brown, not burnt, that have been sitting around for awhile and heated back up." Yum-may.

*Aly got braces back on. She is now in (the final) Phase II of her braces. Man, she was only without braces for 7 months! Poor kid. They said this phase should only last a year though, so then she'll be done forever! Also, Aly has decided to grow out her bangs. Please notice the beautiful shwooping of the hair in the pictures.

* I've been doing back to school prep by rotating the girls clothes and looking at the school supplies list. Can you believe Aly and I now wear the same size shoe? (Have I already mentioned this?)

* Lise had me turn empty milk jugs into mega phones for the girls to play with. Cheap fun that lasted for days . . .

* Kate made an "ant swimming pool" out of the sand bucket in the backyard. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was really drowning the ants (or maybe it's just because I don't really care if the ants drown or not - I'm sick of them on my back porch!)

Here's Kylie demonstrating her awesome sipping a sippy skills (try to say that five times fast!) Now that she's walking around everywhere she is in that phase of having a constant bruise on her forehead (you can't really see it in this picture, but it's usually in the top right). She's still a cutie anyway though.

And here's a great picture of Kylie reading with her dad on the bed. Kylie always wants to be a part (in the middle) of whatever's going on. Such a social little bug.

And finally, here's a picture of me on my birthday with three of my favorite people. (Love how Kate knows how to wink.) I turned 33 this year, which is probably a good thing because with Aly so tall, people think she's 11 or 12 already- instead of 9, so I don't want to look too young, ya know. ;) One thing that made me chuckle on this birthday is how many people remembered my birthday since they have facebook to remind them. Hee, hee. Anyhoo, it was a great birthday and I got exactly what I wanted - a date with my hubby that night - yummy mexican and Captain America. And there you have it.