Ayva's 2nd Birthday

I can't believe that 2 years ago I had my second little baby girl. Ayva Vittoria Allred was born on January 8, 2010. A day before my brother's wedding.

Ayva has fallen in love with Elmo. The cute little red monster on Sesame Street. She calls him "Memo." She loves watching him on youtube while sitting on the couch. So I decided to make a whole bunch of little Elmo's for her birthday. I made some red velvet cake balls covered in red chocolate. I made his eyes and nose using fondant and then my brother colored in the black eyes and mouth with some more chocolate. Here they are:

This was my first attempt at making cake balls. Not bad, right?

Ayva had fun eating the cake balls. Here she is taking a bite out of Elmo.

We didn't have a huge birthday party, we had my 2nd cousin come over with her beautiful family. This is Brisa and her distant 3rd cousin, I think, Arianna. I'm not sure what the correct term would be. I'll have to look it up some day. The girls loved it.

They decided to take a break from playing the wii. These two girls love playing together whenever they get the chance.

We had fun celebrating Ayva's birthday. I hope you enjoy this nice idea, if you don't mind not have a big birthday cake with the candle.

Raking Leaves in January?

Well, I heard on the news that La Nina is wreaking havoc and here is what she's done to Houston. We are experiencing warm and lovely weather conditions. Our trees are just barely losing their leaves. So, we are experiencing early fall weather instead of cold, frigid winter weather.

This is Brisa and Ayva's first experience raking up leaves. We have always lived in apartments and have never had to deal mowing our lawns, raking up the leaves, or laying down mulch, and so on. So the girls had fun outside raking up the leaves...

Well, Brisa was raking the leaves while Ayva was walking through the piles of leaves and kicking them up as she walked through.

Can you tell that she is having fun?

Once we gathered all the leaves around our beautiful Oak tree, Brisa decided that she wanted to get buried by all of the leaves. Ayva just wanted to sit in the pile, she didn't think it was much fun when daddy started shoving leaves on top of her.

These are our beautiful girls in January 2012 cleaning up the yard. Naiya wasn't allowed to participate much, she kept wanting to eat the leaves instead.

What's better? The toy or the box?

I just had to upload these pictures. Ayva is inside of her LEGO box. This is just another one of those toys that you buy because you think your kid is going to enjoy and then you find out that they like the box better than the toy. Every morning she gets up and dumps all of the LEGO's out of her box. Picture a sea of LEGO's on the floor that you have to maneuver through to get into her bedroom.

So here is our wonderful little girl watching Qubo while sitting in her awesome box.

Halloween Trunk or Treat

Last night we went to our wards annual Trunk or Treat. What is a trunk or treat? Well, that is when a group of people get together in a parking lot with their trunks open and hand out candy while sitting on their trunks or displaying something fun in their trunks. Kids go from one car to the next asking for candy.

A cold front had arrived that same morning so we had to bundle up our girls. For Naiya's first Halloween she wore a candy corn outfit. It kept her nice in warm. Can you tell?

Brisa dressed up as Rapunzel and Ayva dressed up as a lady bug.

Can you tell that Brisa is excited to get candy?

Here is Ayva with Naiya in our awesome double stroller. It was too dark and too crowded to let her run around so she had to be in the stroller or with daddy.

Can you see Naiya?

We were all really cold after we were done. We rushed to the car and turned on the heater for the first time. I love Brisa's expression here, can you tell she is excited. Ayva is looking at her candy. She's probably saying "Hmmm..what is this? How can I get it open?" Turns out that is a sour patch candy bag she is holding. Her face puckered up when she finally had some, it was hilarious.

Our girls are very lucky, they get to go trick or treating twice every year, one at church and again on Halloween. We are going to have so much candy.

Homeless

Alright, so our lease on our apartment ended on June 30 and we had no place to live after that. We were homeless for the whole month on July. We were finally able to sign on our house on August 5. Here are the pictures from the listing. I will later post pictures of what our home looks like with our furniture. This might take a while with the new baby and me still recuperating from my surgery. We are slowly unpacking our things.

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Ayva's Bedroom - The blue will later be painted some shade of pink.

Brisa's Bedroom - This room will also be painted pink as requested by Brisa.

Hallway bathroom

Half bath in the master bedroom

Backyard - We fell in love with this yard and nice shed in the corner.

Kody is so excited to finally mow the lawn at his own house. The girls love being able to play outside on the deck. We will be getting them a playground set in the fall when it is not so hot down here in Houston.

While we were homeless in July, we spent time both in Dallas and Utah.

In Utah we went to visit the Church History Museum. They had an exhibit for children about the Book of Mormon. We took the girls to go see it and they had a lot of fun.

This is a boat that explained about the trip that Nephi's family took when they left Jerusalem. Ayva was playing with the fish.

Here the girls are playing with a truck filled with animals.

Ayva had fun driving the truck.

This was a fun exhibit that you should visit if you go to Salt Lake City.

While in Utah we went to Desert Star Theatre. If you have never been to Desert Star, YOU SHOULD GO! It is a theatre that creates plays that involve Utah and Mormon culture. It is hilarious and these plays will keep you laughing the whole time. We took these pictures while waiting to be seated.

My In-laws

Our niece, Karli, was also baptized while we were in Utah. Here she is with her dad. (This is Kody's oldest brother.)

The Allred Family (Their oldest son is missing in this picture)

Here Brisa and Karli are standing next to the cake that their grandma made.

Brisa is so excited to be baptized next year after seeing Karli's baptism.

We were able to go to the Draper temple to seal my father-in-law to his parents. Let me give you a head up if you plan on visiting the Draper temple. They do not rent clothing so bring your own if you plan on visiting. We had not brought our clothes. We had packed them up in the move. Luckily they do have some clothes for emergencies like ours. We got to walk into their laundry room to find some temple clothing that fit us.

This is a gorgeous view from the temple. It is up on the mountain side and you can see the whole Salt Lake valley.

In the same month, we went to Hogle Zoo where they were having a Dinosaur exhibit. They had different dinosaurs through out the park. Some of which sprayed water, moved and made sounds.

This is the Triceratops.

This lovely Veloceraptor would spit out water. Brisa was not very happy when this happened.

I am not quite sure what dinosaur this was, I think it is the Alosaurus.

T-Rex

We went to the bird show, it was amazing. Brisa and Ayva loved it. They were entertained the whole time.

Ayva is following the bird that is flying around the auditorium. They were flying really low and close to all the people.

The lovely carousel ride.

Under the elephant.

This one is the Bracheasaurus. It was in the duck pond. The ducks had fun swimming around this big guy.

I have no idea what this dinosaur is. Sorry.

You can't leave Hogle Zoo without riding their train.

If you visit Utah and drive up Provo Canyon you will run into Bridal Veil Falls. This is a beautiful waterfall that has a beautiful trail. You can also play in the water at the base of the falls but let me warn you, the water is COLD! Even in July.

You can tell that a lot of people play in the water. I am not strong enough to withstand the cold water on my feet.

Ayva did like the water at first but...

then decided that she no longer wanted to walk in the water.

Picture of my mother-in-law with my girls in the trees that lead up to the falls.

Here we are walking away from the falls. Look at all those trees. It is a gorgeous walk.

It was an interesting experience being homeless. Luckily, we were able to live with our parents during this process and we were lucky enough to have been in our house before Naiya was born. We had only been in our home for 3 days before Naiya was born.