Arizona Summer 2010...

Welcome to our Arizona Summer! Last year, my dad took at job at ASU in Tempe! So, this summer, and for pretty much every summer to come, we are prepared to have an awesome time visiting the GrandDude and Grandma Carol in Phoenix!  WE all flew down the day before Olivia and Sydney's 2nd birthday (free tickets still!), and returned together on July 25th. It was an amazing vacation, we had so much fun! It was so good for the girls to get to see their grandparents for such a long time. Bonus, for the last weekend of the trip the girls got to see all their uncles! WE had so much fun!

Here are some of our pictures...they are of course in a pretty much random order b/c we took over 2000 pictures while we were there, which made it pretty impossible to keep track of what days each of the pictures was taken! :)

Enjoy....

Happy 2nd Birthday to my babies...I can't believe it's been 2 years.....

Sydney in her Princess hat, eating her birthday cake!

Sydne talking to Aunt KElsey on the phone, telling her how pretty she thinks she is! ;)

Olivia eating her Happy Birthday as she calls it. SO cute, she now always asks for Happy Birthday when she wants some dessert!

THe girls and their Daddy on their Birthday!

Miss Olivia, living it up in Phoenix...

The girls playing around in Arizona.....

Miss Sydney Enjoying Arizona........

MIss Olivia enjoying the water park....

Apparently drains are fascinating! :)

Miss Sydney Playing at the Water Park...she loved it here! I can't wait to take them back next year! :)

Uncle Todd and Sydney....

Uncle Sean and Olivia....so so cute!

Uncle Kent walking Sydney and Olivia to hang with the family..I just love pics of the girls walking with people...so precious and it shows how tiny they are!

Uncle Mike and Sydney....

Here we all are...minus Aunt Nozomi and soon to be Aunt Kelsey! We sure are a handsome bunch! :)

Hope All is well....

J

4th of July Fun...

The 4th of July...one of my favorite holidays...that was until I had kids! :) Fireworks (Which I LOVE) are loud, and scary, so the 4th is not as much fun, that is until the girls learn to like fireworks! :) THis year, we decided NOT to chance the whole firework thing, so we decided to keep it a little more low key, especially since we had the girls' 2nd Birthday party the day before.

Usually we'd have some friends over and do small potluck, but this year we just hung out as a family, and it was nice. Especially since we knew we'd be heading over to Phoenix the next THursday and have a TON to do!

After naptime, we got the girls' dressed and decided that after we all played outside for awhile, we'd go run some errands and out to dinner! FUn! :)

Once we got outside, the girls were quickly swallowed up by our neighbor's to play with. THe girls LOVE Angie, Andy, and Mr. Bob...so they were quite thrilled to go over to their backyard and play. Andy is an awesome baseball player, he plays select...he's so dedicated! This afternoon, they decided, since the girls were playing with the wiffle ball and bat that it was high time they learned to play ball....so they did...well, kind of!

Miss Olivia and the wiffle ball..she always steals these from their backyard! :P It's even more of a bonus if we get one in our back yard from the kids playing over at their house! :)

Miss Sydney...since her sister picked up the ball, she went for the bat! :)

Playing around....before we discovered the bat! :)

Olivia learning to 'play'...now all she wants to do when she sees that bat is play baseball!

Swing batta bata swing!

Why is Sydney over there? Running the bases was a hard concept for Olivia to grasp!

Now Sydney was TOTALLY into baseball...so fun to her!

Sydney running to first base!

Running to second, after Olivia hit the ball!

Hanging out on Mr. Bob's rock decorations in his back yard...it's a favorite spot of the girls'! :)

Sydney....

Mommy attempting to get us BOTH to look at the camera....learning to look and smile when Mommy says cheese is not going so well....it's hard to catch BOTH of their attentions sometimes! Hats off to professional photographers who have figured this out! ;)

Miss Olivia...gotta love those pig tails!

After our backyard fun, we went to Best Buy....we bought super fun things for our trips to Phoenix and Seattle....a new portable DVD player with a 5 hour battery, a PSP for Daddy and Nook for Mommy..happy birthday's and anniversary to us! :) After that we ran to our favorite place in STL...Target, the girls love it there! :) As do I and then off to dinner at O'Charley's, we had a great time and the girls were so so good...they are doing so well at eating out these days! :)

Sydney....

Olivia...

Mommy and Olivia....

Daddy and Sydney...

O'Charley's has AMAZING rolls....which the girls LOVED, but apparently the butter dish is even more exciting....they are so taking after Grandma Carol in their love for butter...I figured, it made them happy and they were eating as long as they were dipping their bread into the butter containers, so it was all good. :)

Olivia...

Olivia offering to SHARE her butter with me....doesn't she look....well, greasy! :) Miss Sydney...

What a little poser! :)

Hope all is well, and that you too had a fabulous 4th of July!

God Bless America,

J