Late Spring / Summer 2011...

Hi, There!

We hope that everyone is doing well! We sure are. We're making it through the hot summer...staying busy with the two girls. Stella is doing great. She's growing all the time and has really matured over the last few months. She's such a beautiful and smart little girl.

She is loving swimming this summer and is getting more and more brave in the water. We're working on learning to swim. Stella had a great third birthday and this year she actually understood what was happening! She was very excited for her 'Alice in Wonderland' party. Grandma made her an Alice dress to wear and she had a great time helping me decorate for it. She got a big girl bike this year!

We're taking it easy this summer but she will be starting preschool in August as well as back into dance and tumbling class. She's excited to get back into her classes. She's still loving nursery and her teachers told me that she's the only one in the class who can remember and sing all the songs in there.

Here are a few pictures from the past couple months.

Love,

Cam, Jenny, Stella and Scarlett
Playing in the rain.




Walking with Grandma at the lake.




She loves dandilions and calls them 'wishers'.



Thank you to the Rodebacks for the cute birthday presents! So cute. Here she is wearing her Tiana dress. She loves it.


4th of July.



All ready for her dance recital. She did so great! She remembered the dance and did the whole thing. She also waved to the audience from the stage! I think her favorite part, though, was that she got to wear make-up.





Her little dance class with their teacher.



At the Grand Canyon. She really wanted her little doll to be in the picture. That's why she's holding it up like that! :)



Tired girl in the car on the way home from the Grand Canyon.


Bounce house at her bday party.




She really gave that pinata a good beating!






Showing her guests her new bike!

Spring 2011

Hi, Everyone! How are you all? We're doing great. Just adjusting to having the two little girls instead of just one...it's amazing how much busier you get each time you 'add' a child! :) But, we're having a great time with them both and love them so much. More than words can express.

Stella is doing very well. She is growing up way too fast and is way too smart! Her preschool teacher told me last week that Stella is definitely the most advanced one in her class - although I already knew that for myself! Ha, ha. She can spell her name and count to almost twenty. (Sometimes the 'teens' throw her off...!) She knows her birthday and her age as well as the birthdays of Cameron and I. She knows that we live in Gilbert, Arizona and that the president is Obama! She has the most amazing memory - I don't spend all day drilling these things into her head. I just have to tell her things a couple times and she never forgets. That can also work against us too, though. We have to be very careful not to use any swear words around her or say anything that we don't want her to repeat. Even if she hears it once, she will start using it in context! Ha, ha. She's just an amazing little girl. (I know you all probably don't mind if I brag about her! So, I always take my opportunity here - hope that's okay!).

She is now 37 inches tall and 26 pounds. She had a root canal done on her front tooth (the one that she fell on and it went dead. She did great. The meds they gave her to relax her completely knocked her out. So, she never even knew we went to the dentist. Now her tooth is bright white again and will hopefully be around for a while now! The other option was just to pull it. But, I couldn't bear the thought of her being without a front tooth for the next five years or so. So, we went ahead with the root canal and it worked out fine.

She is obsessed with the new Tangled show - Rapunzel. So, we took her back to Disneyland last month (in March) and she got to meet her. (There's a picture of it below). She thought it was the best thing ever! :) She was sick on the first day of our trip. So, she wasn't up for a whole lot other than riding in the stroller. But, the second day, she had a great time.

She has a dance recital coming up in May. That should be interesting to say the least! The dance itself is adorable - but we'll see if they can get eight two-year-olds to actually perform in front of an audience! I'll be sure to take pictures and post them. The costumes are adorable.

As you know, her birthday is coming up in June. She's having an Alice in Wonderland Tea Party for it. It should be cute!

Anyway, I just also wanted to say thank you to you all for being so great to us. I think you know this, but my mom is an attorney here in AZ. She recently helped out with an adoption representing some adoptive parents. As she told me about the sad situation with all the people involved (the baby was born addicted to meth, the families were all fighting and unsupportive of the adoption, the birth mom had had several abortions previous to this adoption, etc, etc), I couldn't help but just feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all of you. We feel so lucky and blessed to have you in our lives. We always say that you feel like an extension of our own family and that we love you all very much. Words can never express the magnitude of love that we have for our little Stella and never a day goes by that we don't remember what a miracle it is that we have her.

Love, Jenny and Cameron
Dancing in the back yard, with Mom and Dad.

She loves to twirl and watch her skirts fly!



Making cookies with dad one Saturday morning.

"Working" in the back yard!


On It's a Small World in Disney.



It was very sunny in Disneyland! That is her kitty that she calls 'Dyler'. She names all her dolls and stuffed animals the funniest names!

Stella meeting Rapunzel with her cousins.

Running to California Adventure!


Look at that face! How cute is that?!

Disneyland, Christmas and a new sister...

Hi, Everyone! Happy New Year to each of you. We also hope you had a nice Christmas. We wanted to thank you all (both the Simons and the Rodebacks) so much for the gifts for Stella. They were all just perfect! She is such a girly-girl and loves princesses, dress-up, dolls, Barbies, stuffed animals, etc. It's so fun. So, thank you again. We truly appreciate your thoughtfulness.

As you now know, we have had a new addition to our family - baby Scarlett. We picked her up over Christmas there in Utah - Brigham City is where she was born. It was quite the experience...different than our experience with all of you, and yet also very special. She's a good little baby and we are so grateful to have gotten her. Stella has been having a lot of fun with her. We feared she may be a little jealous - but so far she has been a little angel about everything, even sharing her toys and blankets with Scarlett! :) She tries to be a lot of help and wants to fetch diapers, wipes, blankets, etc, for me when I need them. It's so cute. I can't wait for them to be best little friends and hope that they will be (since they are only 2.5 years apart!).

Stella decided last week that she was ready to be potty-trained. She had resisted it for a couple months and I had decided to put it on the back-burner while we adjusted to having the new baby home. So, I hadn't even mentioned it to Stella in a week or two when all the sudden she said "Mommy, I'm going to go to the potty." I said okay, not really thinking she would go, but taking her anyway. She went and has not had an accident since. Ha, ha! She really is growing up now.

In December we took her to Disneyland and while we were there she was playing around with her cousins in the bathroom at the hotel and fell on the tile, right on her front tooth. It didn't bleed, but she cried pretty hard and I could tell right away that the tooth looked like it had been 'moved' a little bit. We called our brother-in-law who is a dentist and he said just to watch it, that there was basically nothing to be done right then. So, we watched it for the next couple weeks as it darkened and eventually proved to be dead. So, you'll notice in some of her pictures that she has one dark front tooth. It's so sad - it breaks my heart. We are, however, going in to have a root-canal done and a cap put on here in about a month. So, while that may not be a very fun dentist's visit, her tooth should look back to normal afterword.

Overall, Stella is doing so well. She is smart as a whip and such a clever, funny little kid. We just adore her every minute of every day. She is still going to play-school (preschool) and loving it. Last week they learned about Polar Bears which she loves. So, that was fun. She loves nursery and her play-group. She's so social and says the cutest things to people - always introducing herself and her parents by name to everyone we every talk to, including strangers in the store, mall, etc. She knows her birthday and both mine and Cameron's birthdays as well. She's still going to tumbling and a tap/ballet class, which she also loves. We keep her busy - and she needs it! She's extremely active and bores easily! :)

Anyway, again, we hope you're all doing well. Talk to you soon!

Fall Fun...

Sorry - weird picture to put as the top one - but once again, I can't get this blog to cooperate and so I can't get the pictures in the order I want them! Ha, ha. This is a picture of Stella and one of her 2nd cousins who is in our ward, at our trunk-or-treat party tonight.

This year, as you can see - Stella wanted to be Strawberry Shortcake...or 'Straw-shortcake' as she calls her. She has loved the new Strawberry Shortcake videos for about the past year and so we thought it would be fun to be her for Halloween. Strangely - it was apparently a very popular pick because we had to go to four different Halloween stores to find the outfit! They were sold-out of it everywhere we went. But, we finally found it and she looks adorable in it. We sprayed her hair pink, which she loved!...and we painted freckles on her cheeks and nose, which she also loved because she thought she was wearing make-up. :) So, it turned out to be a fun Halloween.

Other than that, she's just doing great, growing up so fast and is so smart and cute. She continues to love her preschool class and her dancing class. She, however, is resisting the potty-training idea. But, we are starting to work on it. Since she's our first - the potty training idea is new to us too - so we're all learning together! :) She is still a good sleeper...she sleeps three hours in the afternoon as well as from about 8 pm to 8 am every night. So, we consider ourselves very lucky for that! She is SO active in the day that we figure she just needs that much sleep! She says the funniest things and talks so well, people are always surprised.

We hope you are all doing well. Stella is one special little girl. We love her with all our hearts.

Stella (strawberry) lounging at the trunk-or-treat.

More lounging at the trunk-or-treat.

There was a fun Halloween party at grandma's house this year. Here is Stella with some of her cousins, getting ready to paint a pumpkin.

Again at grandma's house before the Halloween Party.

My mom gave her some candy and this is how excited she was. She's a candy nut!

We went to a pumpkin festival near our house and she got her face painted. She was very sad when it washed off that night!

Again at Schnepf Farms, pumpkin festival.

There was a petting zoo at the farm. She thought it was awesome!

Stella checking out the chickens.

She got to ride a pony. She was so excited and picked out the tiniest pony there.

Getting ready to ride an alpine slide up north.

She's kind of a scaredy-cat. She doesn't like slides or swings, etc, really. So, she was a little nervous for the Alpine Slide. But, she went with Daddy, so she had a good time.