Curly Hair

Sammy slept in sponge rollers for the first time.  Her first reaction after I brushed her hair this morning, "I look retarded!"  After I pulled up the front she thought it was cool and she has been very proud of her curly hair! 

New Pictures

It has been a year since we had professional pictures taken of the kids!!  We finally made it to JCPenney Portraits a week ago to have pictures taken.  I think I jinxed myself because I took Sammy every month during the first year...I took Andrea every 3-6 months...Josh has 3--TOTAL!!  OOPS! :)

One Step Down...

We found out last week that the bank accepted the offer on our house!!  This means our house is almost sold!!!  We are so excited to finally be done with the process.  I am ready to sign on the dotted line and no longer be a homeowner in Las Vegas.  Now, we just have to figure out where to live next (we are still going to be in Las Vegas...we are just going to be renting)!

"The Best Birthday Party Ever"

Family Presents

Andrea has wanted the Eva doll at Target since right after Christmas.  We would have to go say hi to Eva every time we went to Target.  Right before Easter, Eva disappeared at Target and Andrea was crushed.  She cried because Eva was gone and she wouldn't be able to get her (little did she know that I was the one who bought her and Eva was on a shelf in the garage)!!  A month ago, Eva reappeared on the shelf at Target.  Andrea was in heaven.  She was so excited to open Eva and play with her.  Eva has gone everywhere with Andrea today!

Andrea LOVES Jessie from Toy Story.  She has wanted a Jessie hat for awhile and was happy to finally have one!

I think most people know that Andrea's favorite princess is Snow White.  When I saw this Snow White dress for dolls on the Disney Store website I knew I had to have it!  Andrea loved it!!

All dressed up waiting for the party to start!

The Cake

I think I might have gone a little overboard on Andrea's cake this year.  I have never made her an elaborate cake so I thought it was time to make her the perfect cake (as perfect as I can make it!).  I was introduced to these amazing things called cake pops and decided that little apples would look very cute around the cake.  Let me just say that they are not easy to make and have them look like perfect little apples.  After my first one failed, I was able to send an SOS out to my amazing friend Brooks and she was able to make these cute little "poison apples" as Sammy calls them.

Apple Cake Balls

We had poison apple cupcakes at the party.

I just don't understand

I saw another news truck in front of my house this afternoon so I turned the news on to see the latest about my neighbors.  Apparently, the man involved in the shooting had been arrested at least 19 times for domestic disturbance, had been convicted 4 times, was in and out of prison for a year, and was one of the first to be charged with a felony domestic strangulation under a new law in Nevada.  His victim refused to testify so the felony charges were dropped.  Seriously.  Why??  I don't understand why you would live like that.  I feel really sorry for the multiple children that lived in that home and shudder to think what they witnessed.

It also makes me mad.  Because of her being unwilling to testify, I have had to try to explain things to my 5-year-old and 3-year-old that they don't need to know about.  I have done my best to tell the truth while down playing it all.  You know it is really sad to hear your 5-year-olds prayers "thank you that the yellow tape could come down so we could go home, thank you that we could close the garage door before the police came, please bless that the red and blue lights will go off before my dad gets home."  Very Sad...Jeff wasn't with us when we drove up to our house at 8:00 on Monday night only to have more police show up for crowd control next door.  I think Sammy was worried that the police would not let us go into our house again if we didn't get the garage closed.  I also think she was worried that her dad wouldn't be able to get to our house if their lights were still on.  My 5-year-old has enough to worry about without all of this.  I hope we are able to move soon so we can get away from the constant reminder of the day when the police wouldn't let my kids go home.  They kept asking all afternoon why we couldn't go home...it was sad.

I must also say that I am VERY grateful that we ended up spending 2 hours at McDonalds so that we were not home when the shooting happened.  I am also VERY grateful that preschool was NOT at my house on Monday so we didn't have to listen to the fighting.  It is amazing to me how things like this work out and we stay protected.  There were many prayers of thanks that went out on Monday that we were kept out of harms way.