S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, NIGHT!

It had been WEEKS since my SILBFF (sis-in-law BFF) Whitney and I had hung out, and a night on the town was LONG overdue (thanks to Mr. Jones for always being so gracious in taking care of the kids so I can go out and be silly with his sister).
Bleep bleep.... text to Whit, " We are SO on for going out tonight (sent yesterday, Saturday) but I want to do something fun and different and origional and p.s. I have no money."
Leave it to Whitney to come up with a crazy fun plan that 1. was ORIGIONAL and 2. Worked with my super low "fun budget". Ok, so yes, I had to wait around for her to prepare for the evening for HOURS, but oh was it worth it!
You see whenever Whit and I get together it is guarenteed to be an interesting night. When we get together strange things happen! So, we thought, why not try to direct the craziness into a creative "magical" evening? Have wierd things happen more on our terms! (it normally just is crazy twighlight zone kind of randomness going on around us). Well this time instead of watching the show, we WERE the show! (I swear we don't do drugs)
So, we let fate take us where ever the wind blew. At the stop sign in Laguna and, "lets turn left and just go to hapi sushi!" Good choice..... the best sushi around here. We walked in like we owned the place and by the time we left we had everyone in the sushi bar waiving by to us.. yeah, we are kind of big deals there now, ha!
Whitney had her bag of trick in tow: 1 purple wig, 1 blonde mustache (never used), 1 mascarade mask from Becky's costume trunk, and in my purse, 1 pair of nerd glasses. I had my nikon D200 in tow and we were off walking!
We stopped at randome places and took random pictures with random props as random people walked by acting like it was TOTALLY normal what we were doing.... the beauty of Laguna.
No joke, it was MAGICAL! We had SO much fun being silly and creative and goofing around. The photo of me in front of the wall of ordering windows... yeah, we realized after we were done there was a guy in there laughing at us the whole time. He waved bye to us as we walked away. Whitney Jones + Mrs. Jones = pure random good times.... as usual.

March 23rd, THE BIG DAY!

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY GABE, AGAIN!! This time we celebrated by going to the zoo with one of Gabe's bestest friends, Barraget, and her Mommy Lisa. Again, everyone must have had the same idea as us that day because it was CROWDED! That did not phase us though. My hips still hurt from all of the hill walking we did that day.


Gabe was trying to hold Malia up so she could get a photo as a Giraffe too. You do have big muscles buddy, just not quite big enough to hold up that chubby pink monster.
Gabe and Barraget were walking around ALL day like this. Just enjoying each others company and holding hands. Lisa and I were, of course, melting and giggling the whole time.
A new favorite animal has emerged for Malia, the yellow boa constrictor. It is hard to see from this photo, but she was just in awe! She could not get enough and it seemed the snake really took a liking to her! Dinner time maybe? :)
The whole way back to the car, Gabe was on Malia's princess phone. He was on a VERY important business call, or so it seemed! He was so serious, and did not want ANYONE bugging him. He kept on saying, "yeah... yeah.... uhu uhu, yeah... I at the zoo." Again with the giggles for Lisa and I. Lisa kept saying, " make some money so you can take us all out to dinner tonight Gabe!"
Although it may look like we got a warm sunny day, it was quite chilli. The wind was blowing and the zoo is right by the ocean, so it was cold! On our way back to the car Lisa bundled Malia up in her poncho (for as long as she would let her anyway). It was so cute! Malia rarely let me use a baby bjorn with her. She has been indepedent from day one.
Thanks for celebrating Gabe's b-day with us guys! We are going to miss you SO much when you move back to Louisiana! I guess we just have to get in as much play time as possible until August!

My little pony

It is official, Malia, at 12 months old, can wear a full blown ponytail! Can I possibly be the happiest Mom in the world? I have waited my WHOLE LIFE and spent my whole life practicing for this moment. Isn't she just the sweetest little thing?! Well, I am excited... if you couldn't tell.

D-land, Take 5... with a little LA mixed in

Beep Beep... a new text message from my cousin Carol a few weeks ago... saying she and her daughter Sam are coming to visit from Missouri!! Yippee!! I immediately begin planning the fun.
The first outing... Disneyland of course! Can I just tell you how busy it was! We OF COURSE still had fun, but man! Who would have thought so many would have the same idea to go to D-land on St. Patty's day! This is the only photo I got of the day. I took my nieces, Hannah and Allie, such a treat!
Carol and Sam wanted to go to LA and go shopping on Friday, so we set the navigation in the car for the Grove, and off we went! My Aunt Martie joined us and we had such a fun day of shopping and silliness. We ate at this great little Greek restaurant, it was such a beautiful sunny LA day.
This is a shot of this cute little street we drove past in LA. Why did we stop there you ask? Because my Aunt Martha pointed out quite an interesting little sign that we just HAD to take a photo by.....

SPEED HUMPS!?!?!?! Who says that! Well, we quickly flipped a Uey to get this little beauty. I felt the need to show off a hump of my own to complete the photo.
Thanks girls for such a fun time! Hope we see you again this summer for a little surf sesh!

ZOOOOmars

AS you ALL know, I have a job. My job is EASY... Ok, not really... it is pretty hard, but easy in the way of getting to spend time with the cutest little 3 year old girl ever, Gracie Bell. Her lovely parents informed me that she loves this little petting zoo in San Juan that we just went to for the first time last week. It was awesome! You get to hold bunnies and guinea pigs, and ride a train, and hang out with goats, it was a blast!
Well... we had visited the bunnies, swung on the swings, ridden the train, and our final stop was to visit some goats. One of them took a liking to me and was rubbing his head on my leg the whole time we were in there. It was kind of cute and king of gross at the same time.
I was busy snapping photos, as usual, when I realized what I was looking at through my view finder. Gracie was bent over picking up pieces of goat poop and asking me, "what is this Auntie?" Agggg... ewwww! Needless to say we sanitized our hands like crazy. But, it made for this funny picture! Thanks for the laughs Gracie. Sorry if I startled you with my heeby geebies as you held a piece of goat poop in your hand! I love how my kids are also all smiley and like, "oohhh, what is that!"

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM: A POOPY DAY AT ZOOMARS

A tripple threat: Gabe's birthday, take 1

At first I felt badly that Gabe was not going to get a big birthday party with invites and cake, but little did I know! I said take one in the title of this post, because, in actuality, he had 3 birthday celebrations this year!
For our first shindig, Gabe shared the festivities with his Auntie Michelle and Grammy Laurie. Auntie's birthday is just before his, and Grammy's just after, so it seemed the perfect way for the Roberts clan to get all the celebrations done at once.

Here is Grammy licking the spoon from her scrumptious secret cupcake frosting!

My favorite shot. Look at Michelle's face, so classic...


P.S> that strawberry cake was A-MaZiNg!!




Gabe had a batman themed party at Grammy's. He was so excited to wear this new "batman outfit" as he called it. I love how he was sitting in full superhero pose here.















Daddy got Gabe a new big boy skateboard!! He was so excited. In fact, he is outside with Daddy as we speak skating his ramp.


Happy birthday my sweet little boy! I love you with all my heart.




CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PHOTOS

Everybody's working for the weekend

Proof that Mrs. Jones might be on the computer too much!
Malia has recently learned how to climb up on chairs and this is where Mr. Jones found her this evening. In Gabe's room, at his desk, on his computer... TYPING AWAY! He quietly shhhhed me over to see what she was up to. I had to get it on video. I was about to pee my pants. Yeah, she is 1 going on 20. She seemed so into it, like "don't bother me, I am working!" Here is some video of her in action. Love this girl, just like her Mommy!!

Dancing with Ellen

I wanted SOOO badly to go to the Ellen De Generes show, so I applied online, and was chosen to get tickets! Woo Hoo!! I knew my neighbor, Lilta, LOVED watching Ellen so I invited her to go, my sister Michelle, and friend Brittany.
To our surprise, Lilta HOOKED us up with some VIP passes! Her girlfriend's husband works on the show. Let me tell ya, we felt like some "made" women. ;) It was so fun, but surprisingly EXAHSTING! Laughing and dancing for an hour and a half straight was tiring man! Anyway, we were SOOO on TV yesterday. We had like 3 close ups during the show and Ellen danced right down our row! It was good fun and good company.
OH... and we got a free DVD (the movie Milk, which I was not too excited about but still, it was free!) and we got the most delicious cup cakes!!
My favorite pic of the day- Michelle shoving the cupcake in her mouth while they drove us to the studio store. So classic. Thanks for the fun day girls!!

Disney Days

Some random shots from a Disneyland day.

Here is Gabe and our little friend Owen.











Malia and Owen are boyfriend and girlfriend.... they have already been to first base...











Some cute baby booties.....















Mrs. Jones, Gabe and Malia saying cheese with lightening McQueen...












Mrs. Jones' buddy Lisa with her daughter Barraget, and the Jones fam. I love how smiley Malia is in the shot.

Our Pink Monster Party

My baby girl is ONE! I can't believe it... where did this last year go?! Grammy and I put together one cute pink monster party for this little misses. It was so fun to create my own decorations and make everything PINK! Thanks to all of our family and some of Malia's close little friends, for coming to celebrate with us. We had so much fun playing in Grammy's back yard and eating our "monster mouth" pita sandwiches. And Auntie Michelle brought the PERFECT cake, and it was soooo yummy!

Click here to see more photos!

My Butsy weekend

This past week was my best friend Betsy's 30th birthday. That is a big feat! So we thought we would celebrate together and show the world that we still know how to have fun! I flew into Vegas, took the shuttle to St.George, and Bet's Mom drove me up to Cedar City. We went out to sushi, and then back to her place for a fun night of "girl talk". It was SO nice to get in some quality Betsy time! There is nothing like a late night, talking to your best friend of a
bout 10 years. No one (except maybe my hubby) knows me like her or makes me feel more comfortable being goofy and 100% me.
The next day we woke up and headed for Brian Head. LET ME TELL YOU!! SERIOUSLY.... the BEST conditions I have ever been in. If you know me, I hate being cold, and get cold easily. Well, this was fresh powder, 6" of it from the previous night, and as we walked up to the lift (with NO line), the clouds parted and we had blue sunny skies all day long! I mean the snow was up to my mid calf as we floated down the mountain with each fresh powder run. It was like floating on clouds all day! ! We kept on screaming on the lift back up saying, "man, can you believe this! This is SO So sososososo fun!!"
And to top it all off, we had the most fun girly road trip, full of rocking out to Rhianna, 80's music, and getting truckers to honk at us (stop it, we were just moving our arms to motion them to honk... get your minds out of the gutter!), back to Las Vegas for a fun night staying at the PH hotel (planet Hollywood). As we arrived I was all ready to go, hopped up on licorise, funyuns, and code red.
We got all shnazied up and walked around Vegas for like 4 hours. It was so nice to go shopping and just take our time and enjoy the great company. What a blast. I really did not want it to end! But... I had to get back early Sunday morning to celebrate my little pink monster's first birthday so.. se la vie!! LOVE YOU BUTS!!!

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM OUR TRIP!!

The helmet heads

My skateboarding fools. Malia is following right in her big bro's foot steps. She has been REALLY into the skateboard and loves the Gabe gave her his old helmet to wear. It is so fun playing outside with these two helmet heads... gotta love it!

Soy beans and sleepy dreams

Gabe loves soybeans, and what my sister lovingly calls "phony bologna" (it is bologna flavored meatless lunch meat) . Anyway, regarding the soybeans, he thinks it is funny when the random slippery little sucker gets too much force between the thumb and pointer finger and goes flying across the room. AND he does eat some too so Mrs. Jones is happy....
Malia is a sleepy little girl. She KNOWS when she is tired and will let you know she is ready to sleep. Well, the other day she did not get around to telling me before she hit the wall... or I was too busy laughing with Gabe about the flying soybeans. Either way I was feeding her and she CRASHED. Here are some photos and video of our sleepy pink monster, and our soybean loving little Mr.

Big bang last Tuesday night....

Anyone hear it? I could not sleep last night and was watching the news and was freaking out! They had a news cast on a "mysterious earthquake type thing" that affected a big part of so-cal. They said they could not get any info from anyone as to what it was.
WELL.... Mike and I heard it! We were watching TV and it sounded like either something really big hit the side of our house or that someone slammed our garage door shut. But, the ground did not move at all. It was SO weird!
I wanted to know if anyone else heard this..... and we need some answers, this is tripping me out right now!!

D-land, Take 4

We had a very special day at Disneyland about a week ago. We got to go with DADDY, Grandma Melinda, Grandpa Mike, and cousins Katie and Brandon. It was extra special because it was Katie and Brandon's first time! I always love that because it makes it feel like your first time all over again. It was so fun watching them get nervous, amazed, and so stoked throughout the day.
They re-opened small world so Malia got to go on it for the first time. She LOVED it! Mr. Jones and I were talking about how different the Disneyland experience is with kids. It is so much fun to just go for them, and watch their excitement. It is one of life's pure enjoyments to see your kids get so excited. I am grateful to live so close to the happiest place on earth, and it was so fun to enjoy Katie and Brandon experience it for the first time.
Click the link below to see photos from the day. Also, watch this fun video of Katie just LOVING the little parade we watched at the end of the day.

CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS

HAVE SIPPI CUP... WILL TRAVEL

A self portrait... my life as a Mommy. It is busy, fun, tiring, rewarding, stressful at times, overwhelming at times, and has made my heart grow 3 times larger.... and did I say FUN! ?

Well, I was thinking like I normally do, about a million things at once. Here is how I got to the point I wanted to mention: Watching the last episode of the bachelor (if you don't watch this show you wont get the rest of this thought process until the end, sorry) and then the after the rose ceremony... What the! Are you kidding me!! Ok wait, maybe this is the right thing for this guy, Molly did seem like she was more ready to be a Mother, like Mr. Jones pointed out, Melissa seemed to act more like a babysitter to Ty and Molly more like a mother. Mother.... man I am soooo lucky to be a mother! Especially to two such wonderful little spirits... man my kids are smart! And I can say that because their genetic make up as nothing to do with me. How did I get so lucky?! Well, I can take credit for some of their characturistics... I am raising them. And dang it I work SO hard to be a good Mom, to be the best Mom I can be. It really takes a lot of sacrafice to be a good Mom, lots of dedication. Integrity... yeah Jason did have integrity in this situation I guess..... it takes integrity to be a good parent. It also takes physical work, tons of Christ like love, sticking to your guns and not giving in, lots of your time and patience. How do I know what to do? How do I make desisions on how to raise my kids? It's thanks to all of the amazing Mothers that I know, I think about what makes each of them an amazing Mom (I think every Mom's way is unique and special, especially the amazing Moms) and I try to find out why they are amazing in different aspects of Mother hood.
Like my Mom- She is amazing at teaching self reliance- how does she do it? She teaches "how to" insead of "I'll just do it because it is easier". She teaches me to teach my children. To give them responsibility and to not jump out of my chair at every little thing, but to let them see if they can help themselves first.
And my mother-in-law Melinda- she is amazing at showing children her love for them. How does she do it? She is an open book of feelings. She tells them and shares with them and is so open with them. She is not afraid to get emotional. She helps teach me to tell my kids often how greatful I am for them, how wonderful they are, and how much I love them.
And my sister Michelle- she is amazing at having patience with children. And getting them to calm down and guide them to the better decision. How does she do it? She's witty and fun and keeps her voice really soft and uses a more reasoning approach with them. She helps teach me to take a breath, calm down, and talk with my kids, help them get over their frustration, redirect their attention. She teaches me to not let them get away with things, but to discipline with love.
And my sis-in-law Chelsea- She is a great example of dedication and selflessness. How does she do it? She really has her world revolve around her children. It seems every decision she makes is for them first. She helps teach me to not get too wrapped up in myself.

So, I can say, if I end up being half the mother as all the amazing Mothers I use as examples, all the credit can go to them. Yes, I have natural instincts in many aspects of motherhood, but much of who I am as a mother comes from other mother's examples.
SO, I guess that is my approach to motherhood. Follow the examples of all the other wonderful women in my life. I think it is working pretty well for me so far, but being a good Mommy is always a work in progress in my mind. It is the dedication I am sure of, I am 100% dedicated to my children, my life is lived to raise them up and help them become the best selves they can be. I am luck to have so much to work with with these two. They really are amazing children and I am blessed to be their Mommy.