My Crazies

I finally uploaded all my pictures from my phone, and I love going through them all to find all of these silly pictures of my crazy girls. I love them both so much, and love the relationship they have with one another. 

Halloween 2014

Halloween this year was such a blast. It is such a fun day with children. Livy decided quite a few months ago that she was going to be Elsa, so lucky for us we found a cute costume at Costco. I also bought a little Snow White costume for Penny, but she grew so fast that she grew out of it within 6 weeks. So we decided to go with the whole Frozen crew. Penny was Olaf, Ryan was Kristoff and I was the reindeer Sven. It turned out awesome. I loved our costumes. 

We went to the Qualtrics party, stopped by Grandparents, and went to the Poulsen's for some soup and bread. Then we all ventured out to trick-or-treat in our very own neighborhood. I've been dreaming of this moment for so long, to have our own neighborhood, with all the homes with people that we know. Livy absolutely loved it, she ran as fast as her little legs could carry her. 

All of our favorite little neighborhood kids. (Poulsens, Roberts, Halls, Braithwaites, Allreds and Jacksons)

New York with Liv

In February when the BYU Football schedule came out, my brother and Ryan decided we should come out and visit for the UConn game, within driving distance of Manhattan. We left Penny, for the first time, with my parents. It was so hard leaving her, I just cried and cried when I dropped her off, and I missed her like crazy the entire time we were gone. We went over Labor Day weekend so Ryan only had to miss one day of work, and brother Ryan got Monday off to spend the day with us!

We got there super late Thursday night, then got stuck in traffic for two hours, so we got to their apartment even later and finally got to bed around 2:30 am. We went straight to bed, but the girls woke up so happy to see each other and got along right away. We all got dressed in our BYU gear and had an easy morning, and went down the street to the new Trade Center Memorial. It is the most remarkable memorial. In all the chaos of the city, with the running water it is so quiet and peaceful. Shanna showed us how they put a white rose on the names when it's their birthday, so the girls had a fun time running around to find all of the roses. Another cool thing about the monument is that they don't list the names in alphabetical order, they list them by association. So the people are next to the people they knew, they worked with, were related to or friends. Such an amazing place. 

We rented a car and headed on out to UConn, along with the other thousands of people traveling on the Friday afternoon of Labor Day Weekend. Ryan anticipated some traffic so he wasn't worried about arriving on time. But then all of the sudden we came to a stand still, and after 45 minutes we found out that Obama was in town and the roads were completely shut down so he could get to where he needed to go. So after parking and walking we got to the game just after kick off. It was a beautiful night for a football game. We all ate a lot of concession food, and had a great time, even the girls!

BYU pulled out the win, which made for a good trip home. This time, instead of 5 hours we were able to get back to the apartment in about 2 hours. It was such a fun night and so glad we were there to go with Ryan and Kenna. 

We tried our best to make the rest of the trip very kid-friendly. So we got up Saturday morning, the girls dressed the same and did their hair the same and we made our way up to FAO Schwartz. We had a blast walking around looking at all of the huge stuffed animals and an overwhelming amount of Hello Kitty paraphernalia.  

 

 

For lunch we went to this hole in the wall place called the "Burger Joint" that is located in an up-scale hotel. It was so good too! 

Then we went across the street and played for awhile at this awesome and huge playground in Central Park. The girls were in heaven. It was so fun to watch them run around and laugh and play. 

The kids then enjoyed some ice cream while the dads checked out Niketown. 

Needless to say they were a little tuckered out. We ordered in some Chinese and once the kids were asleep Ryan and I took an entertaining ride to the Magnolia Bakery to get some delicious banana pudding. 

We  were glad we got to spend Sunday with Ryan and Shanna and their family, to go to church with them, to entertain Kenna and Jace in Sacrament Meeting and attend a baptism of a girl in their ward afterward. It was such a nice relaxing day, with lots of Carson snuggle time too. 

On Monday, we had an extremely day, making the most of our last day there! We went to breakfast at Financier, waited an absurdly long time for our food, but it was sure tasty! Then we took a ferry over to Brooklyn and made our way to a fun little shaded park for the kids to play in. 

The kids got a ride on the Carousel and then we had a yummy lunch at the Shake Shack. 

 

We went back for a little rest, and then went back out to Times Square, visited the Disney store and M&M store, and had seen enough crazy people to last a lifetime we decided to go back and get ready to leave back home.

It was such an incredible weekend, and I'm so glad we took Livy so her and Kenna could play. When people ask her what her favorite thing was she says, "Coloring with Kenna", gosh I love her. We can't wait to do it again sometime. 

We missed Baby Pen so much, but I was so grateful for the picture updates while we were gone. So grateful for the best grandparents ever.