Our Christmas Card :)

Potter's Top 10 of 2010

(in no particular order)

1. Weddings – If we had to pick a theme for this past year, it would have to be weddings! Both of Lisa’s younger sisters got married within 3 weeks of each other this summer! Since Lisa’s parents are still on their mission in Germany, she got to help with the wedding planning which was a blast. Not only was it great to see Lisa’s sisters so happy, but it was also great to see Lisa’s mom and brother Mike who were able to fly out from Germany for both of the weddings.
2. Hawaii – Since Cari got married in Hawaii, we had no choice but to attend J We loved the beaches, snorkeling, hiking in the rainforest, going to the Polynesian Cultural Center and just being with family (grandparents were even able to come!).
3. Running a Bed and Breakfast – 2010 was the year of company! Over the course of the year we had family living with us for about 6 months. John’s sister Julia, and brother David, as well as Lisa’s sister Megan all lived with us for extended periods of time even overlapping at times. It was a blast!
4. Twain Harte & Yosemite – We had a wonderful vacation with John’s Mom, sister Kristina, and brother David. Loved playing at the lake and hiking around Yosemite.
5. Cousins came to play – We had cousins drive out from Utah to play for a week. We had Aunt Katie and Aunt Julie with their kids… Between us all we had 7 kids ages 4 and under running around. It was fantastic! We hit the beach, the zoo, and played lots while the moms got to catch up. It was great!
6. Mia starting preschool – Mia started preschool and loves it! Lisa loves that she gets to participate twice a month (it’s a co-op) and that she gets 2 hours, 3 days a week to run errands and clean house with only one child.
7. Norah walking and talking – Norah is nearly 15 months old and just started walking and talking. Every animal she sees she calls a dog and says, “woof woof.”
8. John’s 2 year anniversary at Orrick – October marked John’s 2 years of working at Orrick. We didn’t think we’d last this long with the crazy hours he keeps, but we have… Hooray!
9. Lisa expecting baby #3 – Lisa is in her second trimester and is feeling good. Baby Potter #3 will be making an appearance mid-May. We are super excited and find out the gender in January.
10. NYC trip – John was traveling to NYC for a deal quite frequently there for a while (5 trips in 6 weeks) so one of those trips Lisa dropped the kids off at her Aunt Brenda’s house and joined him for a few days. We hit up some of our favorite NYC spots, but unfortunately weren’t there long enough to do everything we wanted to do, like visit all of our friends.

Some Catch Up

I'm a bit slow in posting Halloween... I have a good excuse though (see previous post :)) Mia and I had fun making her Tinkerbell costume this year. Below she is at her preschool Halloween party.

Mia drew the face on the pumpkin and then helped me carve it out... Below is the end result that she was quite pleased with.

Norah had to have her turn in the chicken costume. I don't know why I love this costume so much... but I do. It's one all our kids will have to have a picture in...haha.

Mia turned 4 years old a couple weeks ago! Hard to believe! We decided to have a family birthday party this year and go bowling (the rain canceled our mini golf) and then go out for ice cream. I think we'll institute a family rule.... friend parties every other year because they are so much work! And family parties are just fun fun fun!

Grandpa Dave was in town and got to party with us with was fun!

Mia loved her birthday ice cream on a cone! That's always the dessert of choice!

Here we go again :)

Introducing the first picture of Potter baby #3 scheduled to make an appearance May 21.

I'm now 13 weeks pregnant and feeling much better. First tri was a bit rough with nausea and fatigue and John constantly traveling to NYC for business, sometimes being gone for as long as 11 days! But now I'm feeling pretty good, thank goodness! So Norah and baby #3 will be 20 months apart. Since I know the question will arise, I'll just go ahead and give the low down now. We'd wished Mia and Norah were closer in age... it took us a while to get pregnant with Norah, so we thought we'd start trying sooner for baby #3... and sure enough it took no time at all. Haha! We couldn't be more thrilled! Now John needs to look for a new job.... I can't do 3 kids ages 4 and under by myself!

A month filled with firsts!

Things have been crazy here! Norah had her first birthday! Hard to believe she's a year old now!

Mia had her first day of preschool and loves it. Its the perfect fit for her with only 11 kids and I get to go in and help out twice a month which is fun for me (except when I'm on swing duty... I get tired pushing all the kids on the swings!)

I left the kids for the first time ever for more than one night! John had a business trip to NYC so I took a redeye and flew out to join him. We got to stay in a nice midtown hotel courtesy of his firm where one day I slept in, watched movies, shopped and visited my favorite NYC bakeries while he worked. Then at night we played and we had two days to hit some museums we'd missed when we lived there. It was glorious! I was only there for 3 days, but wow... it was fantastic. I was gone long enough to miss the kids... which was a nice feeling because sometimes I wonder if I'd miss them...haha. And I think they might have even missed me... although not very much because they stayed with my aunt who they just loved making cookies with and watching movies with.

We went to a jazz set at Dizzy's which is one of our favorite NYC things to do. And then another night we saw West Side Story on Broadway which was great! Its one of those shows where every song I get excited because I'm thinking "Oooo I love this song!"

Then when we got back from NYC two of my sisters in law drove in from Utah with their kiddos and played with us for a week... so I got to meet one of my nieces for the first time. We had a blast. More pics to come, but here is one all the girlies in their matching PJ's... thanks aunt Katie! I don't know why the boys aren't in the pic! There were 7 kiddos between with the 3 of us with the oldest being 4. Mia had a ball playing with her cousin Ally that is her age. We love cousins and we miss you all!

More wedding...

My sister Cari put together a short video from Megan's wedding. It makes me wish I had video footage of my wedding :( oh well! What can you do??



Here we are at the reception. We covered the church gym with tons of huge tissue paper pompoms in Megan's colors (you can see one on the wall in the background).

Sisters!

We had an ice cream sundae bar at the reception. John and my cousin Richard took a turn as scoopers... then we had a whole table full of toppings and sauces. It was fun!

Here's part of our toppings table :)

The happy couple!

The happy flower girl!

Good times! Now the next thing to look forward to....... Mia starts preschool on Monday! Hooray!

Wedding #2!

I can't believe my youngest sister Megan is a married lady now! Crazy! Here's just a few pictures my aunt took. Since I was busy being the wedding planner I didn't take any pics. I'll have to post more later once we compile all the pics...

This is all of our side of the family


All the sisters and my mom... do you think we are related or something?? Don't worry, my brother even got me and Cari mixed up at the reception (since we were wearing the same dress). I'm the one on the far right...haha

Mia said to John "Can I whisper something in your ear? I feel like I"m the bride because I get to hold flowers!" She LOVED being the flower girl :)

Notice the hugging of the flowers?? haha

Hooray for Hawaii Weddings :)

Our hawaii trip started on Oahu near Waikiki with just us and my sister Megan who has been living with us this summer. We played in Waikiki a couple days before everyone else came into town. We loved the little lagoon outside our hotel in Waikiki... perfect for the kiddies


That's our hotel in the background where we stayed in Waikiki the first 2 nights before heading to North Shore

Love the floaties...they were a must

We went hiking in the rainforest to a waterfall on Oahu... it was fantastic... supposedly they filmed some of Jurassic Park there



Our hawaiian girl :)


So my mom and brother flew in from Germany and we all headed to North Shore and stayed in a beach house there altogether which was a blast. Below is me, my mom, and sisters and Mia outside BYU Hawaii where Cari has been going to school for the last 2 years and graduates in December. Wahoo!

The beaches on North Shore were the best... great boogie boarding, surfing and snorkeling. We also loved visiting the Polynesian Cultural Center.

After a couple days on North Shore we all flew to the Big Island (the temple on Oahu is closed for remodeling so we all had to go to the Big Island). Below is a national park we went to near Kona that showed all the lava rock from previous eruptions...


And then at the end of the week... the whole reason for going to Hawaii....Mr and Mrs. Desmond and Cari Enesa were married July 17 in the Kona Hawaii Temple!

They were just beaming and sooo cute

The whole crew there on the Big Island for the wedding. My Grandma and Grandpa Reed, Grandma Pimentel, Aunt MaryAnn, and Megan's fiance, Colin, were all able to come too. It was great!


All 4 of us kids :)

My kids with the beautiful bride




We had a fantastic trip even with our minor hiccups (beach house broken in to with laptop and camera stolen....which were actually later recovered just without the camera's memory card and that was the thing I was most upset about....**sigh** oh well). So one wedding down... 2 weeks and counting until the next one (YES... don't worry... BOTH my sisters are getting married this summer and I'm doing the open houses/receptions here in the bay area since my parents are on their mission in Germany. Megan's wedding will be here at the Oakland temple so no traveling required on our part just lots of fun planning :) I think I'm going to crash come September when all the weddings are over and our house guests have left (we've had someone living with us since February... John's sister Julia, then my sister Megan, and John's brother David... it'll be a big party when my mom and brother, and Cari and Dez come back out and stay with us for Megan's wedding too :)

Ward Talent Show Act

We had a ward talent show last weekend and this was our contribution with the help of John's brother David and a youtube video that we tweaked.



Lyrics:

Hey there Lisa, what’s it like at BYU?
I am just a quarter mile away, but feels so far away from you, but that’ll do…
‘Cause two years from now I’ll be with you, I know that’s true

Hey there Lisa, don’t you worry about the distance
Few more months and I can call you both on Mother’s day and Christmas close your eyes…and then just think of suits and ties…but not other guys

Chorus:
Because, you said you’d wait for me…oh…you said you’d wait for me.
Oh....I am at the MTC...oh… I am at the MTC…at the MTC…

Now have some patience and don’t think of dating Conner
Few more years you may be done with school, but I’ll return with honor
I can’t wait…just two more years till our next date…it will be great..

Hey there Lisa I’ve got a great new teacher at the MTC, he’s teaching me, the type of elder that I really want to be….hey, he even goes to BYU…maybe you’ll see him too....


Chorus:
Because, you said you’d wait for me…oh…you said you’d wait for me.
Oh…I am at the MTC…oh… I’m at the MTC…

I carry your picture around with me and talk about you constantly I am driving my new teacher insane.. ….There were RMs who made fun of me and said you’d never wait for me, To them I say, oh ye of little faith…For we’ve been dating for two months and I think that that’s long enough to know someone enough to feel this way… to feel this way….

Woke up this morning, checked the mail, right at dawn and just believe me girl how shocked I was to hear those words … Dear John I think were through… your teacher’s more more handsome than you…go ahead and cry if you need to…Sincerely Lisa missing you…p.s. we’re through.

Chorus:

Ohh…you didn’t wait for me…oh… you didn’t wait for me…oh…you didn’t wait for me…oh…you didn’t wait for me.,.,and I am just at the MTC…at the MTC…oh.. oh … oh….. oh…. Oh… oh.*sniff.

Twain Harte & Yosemite

My family has vacationed at the same cabin every summer in Twain Harte Cali (about 2 hours away from Bay Area) for the last 15+ years. So John and I decided to carry on the tradition even though my parents couldn't join us. So John's mom, brother David, sister Kristina, and Aunt Sharon joined us . It was a blast.

This is Twain Harte Lake... a lake with a sandy beach, diving boards, and not too freezing water:)

Mia loved it!

Grandma Kathy and Mia playing catch on the beach.

Norah loved hanging out on the sand

We had to mini golf at our favorite little mini golf course in Twain Harte.

We took a day trip to Yosemite. It was fantastic! This is below Lower Yosemite falls.

This shows upper and lower Yosemite falls.

This is bridalveil falls where we got soaked and saw rainbows all over the place... I saw a rainbow that was a full circle... no wonder you can never find the end of a rainbow, there isn't one! It's a circle! Hmmm... who knew?


Mia and Aunt Kristina wanted to see a bear while we were there....

Ummm... little did they know what they'd see on the way out of the park!!! We watched the bear break in the window, pull out a pillow and then hoist himself up and almost in until someone honked and he ran off. It was unbelievable!!