Easter Pictures!

I know they are a little late, but here are some pictures from Easter.

Holley and Brinley with the Easter Bunny!

Tara and the Girls in our matching Easter outfits! Holley has been wanting to have "matching clothes" with Brinley ever since she was born, but the age difference has made it hard to find anything, so I made the girls their Easter Dresses, and my skirt so I could match too!

Here's our Easter Bunny Cake! Yummy!

Easter Eggs !

Derek and Brinley!

Brinley likes to help her Daddy work on the computer!

Sometimes it gets pretty boring though!

Here's some long overdue pics from our trip to Utah!

Holley with Chico! (Great-Grandma and Grandpa Larsens little Bird) Holley sure got a kick out of Chico's singing and flying around the room and climbing up his ladder!
Grandma and Grandpa Larsen's swing.
Brinley and Aunt Lu!

Grandma Mayhue's slide! My parents recently built a new house. The greatest feature as far as the grandkids are concerned, is the slippery slide that comes off the back deck! It was our first chance to see their new house and EVERYONE has to try the slide at least once!

Brinley's First Trip to Utah

We went up to Utah for our Spring Break and Brinley Did amazingly well on the trip up! If she ever did get a little restless I took off her socks and let her look at her cute little toes! (you'd be amazed how long that entertained her.) Holley wasn't with us for the trip up there because we let Grandma and Grandpa Mayhue take her up there with them after they came here for presidents day a week and a half earlier. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to let her go. We missed her and were sure excited to get up there to see her.

I went to Wal-mart to print off those pictures I took of the girls on the 16th, and the lady asked to see my originals to check for a copyright! I told her that was a compliment since I took those pictures, and she said, "Wow their really cute!" Anyway, it made my day and I wanted to post it!

Holley & Brinley Su Feb 16th 2007

Here are some pictures I took of my girls! I wanted to try to get a cute "sister" picture of the two of them to hang in their room. I also want to take pictures of Brinley often because she is of course growing so fast(she's 5 months old tomorrow!), and wanted something more of a portrait for Holley, because it's been awhile since she's had one. Ergo, the whole thing turned into a Photo shoot of sorts! Holley loved it and was totally hamming it up for the camera so we got a ton of cute ones of her! Brinley was pretty tired though, so she gave us a couple and then was ready to nap! Hope you think they're as cute as we do!

One of My Favorite Things!

We've come to discover that as bedtime approaches and Brinley starts to get tired, and maybe a little fussy, we can take off her socks, and let her lay in her onesie, and her little toes keep her entertained for another 20 minutes or so! I love it! It's nice to let her entertain herself while we try to help Holley get ready for bed and tie up any loose ends from the day, but I usually find myself wanting to just sit and watch her, and love how happy and entertained she is by her very own marvelous and amazing feet.

Here are some January Pics!

Brinley trying to suck on the tray of her swing! They do say babies will put everything in their mouths! Silly Girl.

Sweet sisters! Holley LOVES her baby sister, and something about the way that Brinley looks at Holley tells me she loves her sister too! I LOVE these girls! Am I a lucky momma or what?
Bedhead Brinley! All Smiles!

Brinley is the sweetest baby ever, but not much of a cuddler! So we take it every chance we get! I love that she fell asleep like this.
Both Girls cuddling Daddy during scripture study!

Arizona Snow Day!

On Sunday evening(Jan 21), about 5 pm Derek noticed that there were some teeny tiny snow flurries coming down outside! You had to look really carefully to verify that it was actually snow. At about 7:30 Derek's first counselor in the Elder's quorum called and excitedly said, "Come over we're having a snowball fight." We looked outside to see that there were now very large flakes dancing out of the sky and actually starting to stick where they landed, and dust the desert landscape with snow. We went for a drive so Holley could watch the snow. Almost every house we passed there were either people playing out in the snow, or at least sitting at their front window watching. We went to bed thinking that it would probably stop snowing soon and maybe even melt by morning. In the morning Derek got up and got ready for work like usual, then one of the other seminary teachers called and said, "Have you looked outside?" Derek went to the window to see a nice thick blanket of white! It was so beautiful. They started checking the internet and the radio to try to find out if school would be cancelled or not. They were as thrilled as any student when they found out it was. Even though Derek has grown up with snow, Holley hasn't, and Daddy was excited to play with her! Holley woke up and looked out her window, and came running out of her room so excitedly, "Mom! Dad! Come look in my room, there's so much snow outside!" Holley was thrilled! Above is a picture we took of her in her pj's when we opened the back door for her to get a better look.
This was also Brinley's first chance to see snow so we had to bundle her up so she could go outside too. Good thing Holley was a winter baby in Utah, so we had some cute cuddly stuff for her to wear. (Don't you just love the hat, notice it has little pig tails on the back! Justin and Katrina McPheter's gave Holley that hat when she was a baby.)

Here is Holley and Mr. Snow! Notice the huge Smile Holley is wearing. The pants weren't 100% waterproof, they were more of a warmup pant than a snow pant, and we did have a good waterproof rainjacket but it was a 2t so the sleeves are a little short. We didn't have waterproof gloves either so we put a grocery bag on each hand between two pair of magic gloves, and used the extra length on the grocery bags to make up for where the sleeves fell short! We did have good boots for her that we bought at the DI last year so she could play in the snow in Utah, when we went up for Christmas. She seemed as content as could be despite the impromptu snow clothes.


Daddy with the Girls!
Mommy with the girls!
Tara & Brinley! Brinley isn't squinting cause of the brightness of the snow, she's asleep! Tara was watching Derek and Holley work on the snowman, while she was holding Brinley, then she noticed Brinley became very limp and relaxed, and had actually fallen asleep! Leave it to a good baby like Brinley to fall asleep out in the snow!
Derek and Brinley, still asleep.

Daddy with the girls, and Mr. Snow!


We wondered what they would do about all the snow on the streets! Here is a picture of an Arizona Snow Plow! Derek had taken Holley out to see if they could find and snow sleds at any of the stores here. The lady at one store said, "This is Arizona, it doesn't snow in Arizona!" To which Holley replied, "Daddy, tell her it's snowing in Arizona!" We heard Gila Outdoor did sell sleds, but when Derek got there, they had a sign on their door that said, "Are you kidding? we're out playing in the snow!" Holley has kept insisting that it isn't winter cause she hasn't seen any snow, and anytime she's seen a movie or TV show about winter, they say in winter it snows, we expained to her that it doesn't usually snow in Arizona. While they were working on the Snowman she even said "It doesn't usually snow in Arizona, but this is Arizona!"

Below are some pictures to try to show just how much snow we got. According to people we talked to that are native to this area, the last time they had this much snow was in the 60's.




snow on our roof.
snow on top of the garbage can, Derek stuck a ruler down on top of the lid and said that at least here, it was 8 inches.
Down our street and the desert landscape.
We've never seen this view of our house before.
This is a cactus plant at our neighbors, covered in snow.