Stowellzone

Alright, alright, so he wasn’t missing, BUT it was of course, a bad time to have him gone!  Jeremy leaves once a year for work conferences and bad things seem to happen while he’s gone.  Last time he went on a big trip, a fire almost burned down our house.  So I was slightly terrified that that he was leaving us for Florida, in the winter and with a new baby!  So, of course, the day he leaves, we all get sick!  Mason got sick the day before, but the rest of were sick the entire time he was gone.  I got the worst of it, I think, my throat hurts something awful and I completely lost my voice.  We did survive without him though!  We talked almost every night on skype and the kids though that was pretty cool.  Jeremy is extremely helpful with the kids and I depend on him a lot, so I am so grateful that these trips are only once a year!  No pictures, just something I wanted to remember!

Wow, I can’t believe my baby girls is 3!  3 years old and the attitude of a 14 year old!  Honestly, this girl is so stubborn, but she is a shining light in our lives and we love her to pieces.  She has the ability to make you so mad and then have you smiling, laughing and hugging her in a second.  She is a great mixture of a girly girl and a tom boy.  She love everything princess, love the colors pink and purple, loves her babies, but also loves playing with cars and dinosaurs and fighting Mason with the light sabers.  She loves to have her fingernails painted, but loves it most when her Grandpa Johnson paints them.  She loves to learn and can’t wait until she gets to go to school.  She knows all of the alphabet and the sounds of most of the letters.  The best part is that she learned most of them from Mason!  She loves her brothers so much and wants to do everything Mason does.  He is so good with her and loves to play with her.  She loves to help me with everything and always wants to be apart of what is going on.  In public, she is actually quite shy and tends to cling to certain people, but once she warms up, she will talk your ear off!  She has some little accent that she talks in and especially when is talking intensely it comes out.  Really, it’s cause she can’t say some of the letter sounds, like her l’s and r’s, but it sounds like an accent!!  She loves to sing and dance around.  If she is off playing by herself somewhere, you can usually hear her singing away.  She also doesn’t think anything is a good idea unless she came up with it!  I’ve discovered that giving her choices seems to work most of the time, but even then, sometimes she’ll battle and refuse to do something until everyone is exhausted!  She is very loving and has the most infectious giggle!  We sure love our Kinley!!

We just had a little family party for her birthday.  We had it the Sunday before since Jeremy had to go out of town for work on her actual birthday.  I had an idea of a cake I wanted to make and in my mind it was a complete fail.  Everyone said they liked it and Kinley was thrilled, but I didn’t even want Jer taking pictures of it.  So with regret, I show you.

See, I didn’t even care that Kinley stuck her hand in it before the pictures!  I didn’t even really finish frosting it and then we couldn’t find the Rapunzel and Flin Ryder that go with the set.  Sigh…oh well.  She got lots of fun stuff!  Mason got her a laptop that she absolutely loves and takes everywhere with her.  She was so funny when she was unwrapping, she had to make sure every bit of paper was off before she would even look at!  She also got some dolls, clothes, and a bike.

Happy Birthday baby girl!!

This year we went down to Jeremy parents for Thanksgiving and we all ate over at Jodi and Doug’s.  The food was so delicious, I forgot to take a picture of it BEFORE we ate.  Seems like I always have that problem.

The kids went outside and played for a bit.

We went home that night, I still wasn’t ready for a overnight trip with little Austin!  Plus, I had this great idea to Black Friday shopping by myself.  My parents were in Phoenix for Thanksgiving and my mom, Grandma, and Aunt Denise went out also.  We were all going to the same place, so I pretended I was with them and talked to my mom on the phone while we all waited in a long line outside of Target.  The deal was whoever got in the store first would just grab everything then call the other person.  Well, I got in the store and was 2 feet from the stack of stuff I was after when my mom called and said she got everything.  So I just turned around and drove home to a hungry and crying baby.  In other words, my trip out was pointless, BUT I got to feel like I was in on the action!

Every year I want to take pictures of my kids in the leaves!  They always like playing in them and I always love the pictures we end up with.  This year was no exception.  I could have put a dozen more pictures up here.

An attempt with all three…fail!

And we’re done

We took some really cute pictures of Austin when he just a few weeks old.  I love how they turned it.  It was really nice that we could just leave everything up and just take pictures every day!  There’s a million, but here’s just a few of my favorite.

The kids decided early on what they wanted to be for Halloween this year.  Kinley, of course, wanted to be Rapunzel and Mason wanted to be a pirate (although near the end he waivered a bit).  We got a long Rapunzel wig for Kinley while we were at DisneyWorld and since Mason got a Captain Jack Sparrow sword and hook there also, he though being Captain Jack Sparrow would be pretty fun.  Austin, well, he was just a cute baby.  I made him a little pumpkin hat, but no real costume.  The Friday before Halloween, we started the day with Mason’s school party.   I went in at the first of the day and took a group picture.

Then later that day, we went to Jeremy’s work and did a little trick or treating to the cubicles.

Then on Monday, they got all dressed up to go out!  My parents were nice enough to come up and my mom stayed home with Austin so I could go out with the kids, Jer and my Dad.  They had a great time, got a little worn out, but ended up with lots of candy and maybe got a little spooked!

Her wig got pretty tangled even though we never let her wear it before Halloween…oh well, she still looked really cute!

Our little poser, what a handsome Jack Sparrow!!

Austin by the pumpkins

And an attempt of the 3 of them…didn’t work very well!!

This was one of the things that spooked them and this wasn’t even the scariest house!!  Our neighborhood really goes out on Halloween, it’s so fun!  After we got home, the kids loved eating some of their candy and answering the door.  Here’s one more picture of Austin in his Halloween jammies!  So cute!