A Circus

The Circus came to town! Was it the big production, complete with Big Top, you expect to see like on the movie, Dumbo? No. Did it have clowns? No. Did we even have descent seats? Nope. BUT...it was SO MUCH FUN!! The girls absolutely loved it!
We arrived a bit later than we had hoped; it was supposed to start at 7 and that's when we showed up. Bonus #1- They were off to a late start, too. Bonus #2- We all got in free thanks to my man in the Air Force. Bonus #3 (and perhaps, most important)-Both girls were in great moods and very excited for whatever this circus had in store. The shows themselves weren't anything extravagant but they kept us entertained. Livi didn't have a particular favorite part; if anything, the highlight of being there was the music and spent much of the time just dancing. Eli's favorite part was when a pair of pants came running out of a tent with the owner of said pants chasing after them; her face says it all in this picture:

Eliana and Olivia both thoroughly enjoyed their pink cotton candy.


A very sweet lady sat in front of us and fell in love with Livi. She spent almost the entire time turned around watching her or talking to her.

At intermission, and after a bathroom run for Livi, we took their picture with the giant balloon guy. (There really was someone inside this thing)

Livi loved it when Sandy would whistle and had to try it out.

The looks say it all?


Dad surprised both of them with a balloon Dora!

All in all it was a fun night. Livi is especially pleased with her Dora doll and Eli is now convinced we need to become a circus family and along with, not in lieu of, a farm, she wants a circus!

I Can't Resist-

This story is just too good to not post:
Since our move (well, more like a few weeks before our move) Sandy has been needing to work a lot of nights to accommodate customers; last night was no exception. All went as it usually does, he leaves, girls play, eat, bath, then bedtime. Unfortunately, last night, Eli was having one of her "nights." Anybody who knows Eli knows that she has never been the greatest of sleepers. She'll have a few good, solid nights of sleep here and there, sprinkled with nights of simply not wanting to sleep. Sometimes all it takes is a simple, "Go back to sleep, Eli." Other times she winds herself up in to a fit, waking up the whole house, going through every excuse in the book just to avoid sleep. You just never know what to expect so you ready yourself for the worst and hope for the best. Last night sat right in the middle. Evidently, she woke up and crawled into bed with Livi which, of course, woke up Livi. After putting Eli back in her own bed and getting Livi back to sleep I decided to wait until Eli was asleep before returning to bed myself, just to make sure there wasn't a repeat. FINALLY, Eli was back asleep, so I went back to bed. That's when I got a text from Sandy telling me he was on his way home but forgot his house keys. I told him to text me when he got home and I'd let him in. No biggie. Unless, of course, you don't hear your phone and sleep through the text messages resulting in your husband being locked out of your home! And that's exactly what happened. Now, in my defense, besides being up so much with the girls last night I'm dealing with a stupid cold and ear infection, so not feeling well combined with dealing with the girls sent me in to a deep sleep really quick once I had the opportunity. When I woke up I realized I never got any messages, thought, "Uh-oh!", and rolled over to check my phone. Yup, 3 missed messages. Crap. I walked outside to find Sandy asleep in his truck! My immediate reaction was to laugh; I can find the worst situations humorous. So I did-it was really funny! Then I thought of the person asleep in the truck and wasn't sure how funny he'd think it was given the circumstances. I knocked on the window a few times but he didn't stir. A while later I tried again, got his attention (He was wearing noise canceling headphones! Once again, humorous!), got him to unlock his door and, with great trepidation, apologized. Then started to laugh. Good thing I have such a good husband cuz he was able to smile and tell me it was okay. Maybe when he really wakes up for the day he'll be able to laugh about it with me!

Busy! Part 2

In the midst of all packing and unpacking we were able to celebrate Olivia's second birthday! People always talk about the "Terrible Two's". Livi has had those down, pat, since she was one! Not to say she's terrible, she really isn't. This little girl simply has a LOT of personality. She is very determined and passionate. She is a chatter box! And if she doesn't like how things are going, you will hear about it. Olivia has a Blankey, and while she's not nearly as attached to her's as Eli was (is) to her Blankey, it is the "fix-it-all" when she isn't happy, the first thing, after "mommy" that she cries for. She is quite the exhibitionist; as far as she's concerned clothes are optional. But she also loves skirts and dresses. And she loves baby dolls!

Livi has been trying to potty train herself since she was around 16 months, maybe earlier, but I had been reluctant to follow through since we were living in Sandy's parent's house. I really didn't have much to worry about, though, since she's all but trained herself since moving into our new house and even does well at night. I look at her now and don't see my little baby anymore but a little girl. The years just go so fast!

We had a little family party on her actual birthday; she wanted chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.

Since we have a fun fenced back yard we thought it would be fun for the girls to have a play house and slide.

That Saturday we had a family party, too, but this time my parents, the girls Aunt Lacy and Uncle Jer Bear, and cousins Troy and Brock came to party with us!

Yummy BBQ kabobs and pork ribs!

2 of the cutest lil princesses eating their lunch

Presents!!

3 tutus! I made one and she got 2 from grandpa and grandma with butterfly wings and a flower headband.

The cake-Baked Alaska!

Yummm!

Uhh, we're either watching a balloon fly away or checking out the neighbors yard...

One of the highlights was when Livi decided she needed to pop all the balloons-something that scares most kids this little stinker finds fun, go figure! The resulting "POP!" would startle my dad more than her!

It was a fun party and we're glad we had family to share it with. Olivia's birthday is the kickoff of "Birthday Season" for my side of the family. We now have at least one a month, consecutively, through January! It sometimes feels like there's a party every weekend between those and holidays :)

Busy! Part 1

I've been trying to decide how I wanted to compose this entry and I finally decided I'm just gonna split it up in to two separate posts. We have been busy! The big move to Twin Falls finally took place-I think now it's appropriate for a little Lilya history lesson leading up to this move.

Back in 2000, when we were first married, no, just kidding! That would take all day. Fast forward to 2005. We just had our first daughter, Eli. Sandy had been deploying on a regular basis for the last few years and had finally decided he'd had enough and wanted to be around more to watch his little girl's "firsts". It was convenient that at that same time a job offer was extended to him with L-3 Communications...in Greenville, Texas. He accepted the offer, deployed one "last" time, I sold the house, packed up everything and moved to Idaho until he returned for the big move South. That move has been one of my favorite moves to date! We planned on being there 10+ years, if not permanently, so we bought a home we were mostly happy with and started remodeling to make it ours.

This home, in our humble opinion, was gorgeous outside and we loved having a little land, too. It sat on a little over 3 acres, small potatoes to some but quite adequate for us. The interior, however, lacked. Severely. Among other things, it had wallpaper. Lots of wallpaper. UGLY wallpaper! It had 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that needed some help, new paint, the carpet was disgusting since the previous owner had dogs, and they all needed updated fixtures and I won't even start on the kitchen! But we had big plans and spent the next 2 years doing home improvements. It was within the end of those 2 years we had our second little girl, Livi. It was also when Sandy received another job offer. Initially, he told them no, that is until they told him it would be back in Idaho, back where we both grew up, back near family. That got our attention; we found ourselves missing so much being so far from family and really wanted our girls to grow up closer to family. With that enticement coupled with my simply knowing Texas was not where our girls would be attending school (it just never felt right), we decided to accept the offer. So the remodeling was set into high gear since we had so many unfinished projects and while we didn't get to all we had planned for the home, the result we did end up with is one I find myself missing quite a bit. But there's that stupid saying that says, "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

-Lesson learned-Don't buy a home until you know with certainty you will be staying at that location a while.

We moved back to Idaho, living in Sandy's parent's basement while trying to sell our home in Texas and looking for land to build our "dream home" on once that sale took place. This process was daunting. We found nothing and still had a mortgage payment. The home we ended up purchasing in Texas was built in a small college town (home to a small branch of Texas A&M), and to make the matter worse, it's one of the nicer homes in the town (and I'm seriously being nothing but honest here!). That means the majority of the population has limited housing funds, won't be there long, and only wants to rent. We have hopes that someday a college professor, or a family like us, will move to the area and fall in love with the house we called home. We were set on trying to be patient, though, and persisted with our search for some acres we could see ourselves living on for what we hoped to be quite a while.

-Lesson learned-Everything has a season.

After a year and a half of living in the basement (dun dun dun-I imagine evil music here, haha!) we were informed the Idaho Falls/Blackfoot area was not to be our permanent place of residence. Had we sold our house we would have been in the process of building another home and would now be facing another move with an incomplete house on our hands. So things work out for the best, whether we like the process or not.

Last week, just a month shy of our 2 year mark moving from Texas, I packed up all our stuff and got it all loaded with the help of some awesome brother's in law, my dad, and father-in-law. Once Sandy got a little down time from work we hauled everything 2 hours west and now find ourselves living in a house in Twin Falls. Our house is still for sale in Texas. Talk about frustrating! But there are obviously lessons learned/to be learned. [I'm really getting tired of learning patience, however, so I seriously hope that isn't one to learn (yet again)!!]

Well, there's part one-we've been pretty busy packing, loading, unpacking, and sorting through all the stuff we haven't seen for a while. At least moving is a good way to clean out the junk!

Here's a small photo tour of 3 of our homes, the first is the cute little home we built in Utah:

Our home in Texas

This is the dining/music room. I did a Venetian plaster finish which I LOVED! Sandy tore out the carpet and put down hardwood.

Here's the kitchen and part of the dining nook. We wanted to do more in here; the walls were a horrible straw yellow with a disgusting texture and we planned to completely gut it, rip down one wall and square it off to make it larger. Due to the time constraint this is what we managed: new tile, new paint, we had to do a wallpaper border due to the nasty texture and wallpaper border the previous owner put up. We updated the fixtures as well (ignore the swiffers!).

This is looking into the family room. Sandy replaced the carpet with hardwood in here, too, as well as updated the light fixture and new paint. The fireplace was something else we had hopes of renovating, oh well.

The guest bathroom is the room that got most of the work. Initially, it was actually 2 rooms, with a door separating the shower from the toilet and vanity. We thought it felt too small and closed in so we took out the wall and door completely and added a smaller partial wall. We put in a marble surrounded tub/shower combo, laid new tile, painted, and updated the fixtures. We wanted to change out the vanity, too...no time.

And last (for now) is our current, but not permanent, place of residence. It's our first time in a two-story home and that's been kinda fun!