Valentine's Day 2015

Can I just say--I am still so shocked it is 2015??? Where does the time go? I guess that is one of the reasons I want to keep up with this blog so that I can pair the stories with the pictures and try to record the time that seems to be passing increasingly quickly. 

Valentine's Day was much anticipated this year. I believe we started getting Valentine's Day cards from our sweet Ellie back at the beginning of October. It is her favorite holiday because it is the "day that we celebrate love!" I think that the fact that her birthday is only a couple of days later might be a factor too. :)

We had delicious Indian food for dinner and sparkling cider floats. The kids loved using the fancy glasses and decor. We also exchanged gifts. John and I gave each other an electric citrus juicer. It is awesome! The best freshly squeezed OJ has been the result. The girls each got a present from Daddy. Glow sticks and new paints! Perfect for them! What a fun day!

The girls made these posters as a surprise for Daddy!

 I am so proud of Miriam's dedication to learning how to write. What a sweet girl!

The $1 set of water paints that John gave the girls was almost completely used in one afternoon in a painting marathon. They were so proud of their creations! They definitely got a full dollars worth of fun out of that! :)

The Curl

Oh this girl. I just love her. There is this little poem that goes:

I know a little girl, 
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad,
She was horrid.

My grandma likes to quote this to Miriam whenever she sees her because of the curl on her forehead. Weirdly enough, it is pretty accurate to Miriam's little personality as well. For years, I have joked with John about how I am little concerned that Miriam is bipolar. She has radical mood swings and has the lung capacity to make sure everyone knows when she is either thrilled or distraught. 

Well, I had to do a little photo shoot with her to document her curl. She seriously loves her curl. She talks about it a lot and always wants to show it off, if it is particularly curly that day.

We love little Miriam so much! At three and a half, she is so fun and so hard. I have heard the term a lot lately that we live with a threenager. Whew! In a lot of ways though we are going through a nice phase right now. We have made some progress in the sharing department, being kind, no hitting, etc. The main thing that gets Miriam upset right now is of course telling her 'no' to something, and also calling her out on her made up stories. She totally makes up things that she treats as real events and expects us all to go along with it. Which is completely fine, when it is something silly or we are just playing. But there have been a few times, when she insists that she has a playdate or a tea party at a friend's house, and gets so upset when I won't take her over there. Occasionally, when this goes above and beyond, I will talk to her about lying, and how it isn't okay to tell me things that aren't true. Then of course it is back-pedal to a "I was just making a joke, Mommy," or "I was just pretending, Mommy." Yeah, sure you were...

Really though, she is such a sweet girl. She is very affectionate. She gives the sweetest kisses and hugs. She calls them, "Kissy and huggy." She loves cuddling and being read to. She still loves her dairy products: cheese, milk, and butter. Really though we have reached a nice place when it comes to our kids eating. We get more compliments than complaints, and they will both really eat anything. Although, Miriam really, really prefers to be fed still. She will eat almost anything happily as long as one of us feeds it to her, but eating food that she likes can become an all evening affair if she has to feed herself (which we are trying to push her to do). 

Miriam is so, so excited to have a baby sister. This baby is super active so it is fun for the girls to be able to feel her so easily and often. They really do love on my tummy. I am already envisioning the war that is going to happen about not over stimulating/smothering the baby.

Miriam loves to do things with Mommy and Daddy. She is our little helper with dishes and cleaning up things. She doesn't always do the best job, but her enthusiasm makes up for it.

She also loves to do preschool with me. This sounds like it would be a lot more fun for her than it actually is. It is pretty much just reading, writing, and counting. Occasionally if they are lucky, I will think of a craft to do. I get these workbooks from Costco, and they go through them. If I ask Miriam what she wants to do, most often she will reply, "Let's do some preschool pages." I should just enjoy this phase while it lasts. In the meantime though we are going through a lot of pages. We got one that was three hundred pages plus. It said on the cover, "A whole year of learning and activities." Miriam had gone through the entire thing, in (no joke) three weeks. So in past couple of months, she has gone through three books each about 300 pages in length. Crazy girl. I am really impressed though that I really can see distinct improvement in her writing and counting because of these. I also do a reading lesson with her, which has been going really well too. (Knock on wood!) She keeps making progress and doesn't put up too much resistance to doing it. She still just reads the CVC words, but that is a lot considering three months ago there is no way that would have happened. Sometimes I wish I could have Miriam do Eliza's homework from Kindergarten. It is about the right level for her. :)

Poor Ellie doesn't enjoy "Preschool time" nearly as much, but I make her do a workbook too since I am sitting down with Miriam to do it. She is doing a second grade work book and is doing really well. It seems arduous sometimes with her but she is still learning a ton! She frequently during the day talks to me about numbers and equations. Yesterday at dinner she announced to me that I have 72 years left before I turn 100. (Thanks, kid!) Ellie loves, loves reading. She really does read for several hours a day, and often complains to me that I am "always interrupting her right in the middle of a book." I have to reply, "Honey, you are always in the middle of a book, so it is impossible to not interrupt you at that time." She likes to read small chapter books the best, but thankfully she is branching out from the Rainbow Magic books. One thing I think is pretty funny is that she doesn't like to be disturbed when she is "thinking about magic." I really do think that her fondest wish would be that some kind of magic was real. What a funny girl!

Miriam is so delightful! Really. I love the things she says. "Why in football games do some people dress up like zebras?" Another conversation started when she asked what the blue flier was we got at church. "It is a flier." "Oh it is a flyer to catch flies." What a sweetie!

This girl still prefers nap time to quiet time. She thinks that if she has quiet time that she will have to cry, which she doesn't want to do. Sweet girl! I fully take advantage of this though and take an afternoon nap almost every day. Gotta enjoy it while I can!

Here she is doing her trick!

Saying prayers!

She wanted me to take a picture of her doing her cool trick and also saying her prayer. She really does say the sweetest prayers. She prayers for other people and actually pretty appropriate things. Sometimes I think my prayers need to be more like Miriam. Ellie mainly prays right now that this or that will be fun. Sorry I shouldn't compare kids. Miriam really does do a wonderful job praying and would love to say every prayer that we say as a family. Sadly for her we do insist on taking turns. 

We sure love little Miriam and are so grateful she is a part of our family!!!

The Rattail

We finally cut little Miriam's tail. I always thought the little ringlet was cute when it was wet. But as you can see it is less cute dry, which was 99% of the time. This was her first ever hair cut. She was 3 1/2 years old! She asked me the other day, "Mommy, how come my hairs so short?" Poor little girl! I didn't take an 'after picture' but it was pretty apparent where I should cut it. Bye, bye little ringlet!

Oranges

After we got back from Utah in January, we decided to make it a priority to get some fresh yummy oranges. It seems like every where we look we see orange trees hanging over fences in people's yards, so we figure there has got to be some fresh oranges for sale somewhere, right?

Well it is true. We did find an orange stand that sells freshly picked oranges and other citrus. It isn't particularly close. We have to take four different freeways to get there, but that was really only a problem on the day that one of those freeways was closed. It took forever to get there that day.

As I am implying, we have returned several times. These oranges are amazing! They are so sweet and delicious! I wish I could record that taste and smell somehow. Oh my goodness. We have just devoured these oranges.

I told the girls to pose however they liked. This is what they came up with.

We knew our orange consumption was a little out of control after we bought our first 40 lb box of oranges and five days later well more than half the box was gone! That is about 30 pounds of oranges for two adults and two small children...yeah.

Since the beginning of January we have bought five 40 lb boxes of oranges! Clearly we have slowed down since that first week. So pretty good, right?  

For Valentine's Day John and I got each other an electric citrus juicer. Yeah, we like the citrus that much. Also, nobody gives away their fresh oranges from their trees, but it is pretty common to be offered lemons or grapefruit. We have loved using our new juicer for those too.

This fruit stand is so happily situated surrounded by groves of trees. We just had to bring our new camera and take pictures of our girls there. Hence all of these pictures. 

The last time we were here the girls were able to go around this grove and pick a few oranges. It was so fun for them! Not to mention there were a lot of orange blossoms, which smelled delightful!

Sadly though the fresh orange season is coming to an end. :( I am weirdly depressed about this. Actually not too weird, remember I am pregnancy crazy. We have loved gorging ourselves on these oranges! Hopefully our new baby doesn't come out sporting a third arm or something because of over ingestion of oranges!

The kids really wanted their picture underneath this water tank.

Christmas Part 2

So we actually flew back from Utah on our anniversary. This is actually worse than it sounds because of this pregnancy. Air sick+Prego sick=blah! Despite this we had a nice evening together just relaxing. Happy 8 years to us!

The next morning we did our little family's Christmas. This year we decided to get them a nice toy kitchen. It was really cute.

Between that and the nice camera for John and me, there weren't a great number of gifts to open, but we sure enjoyed it.

The girls were so excited to wrap up a few of their toys for their baby sister. They used scraps of wrapping paper and did it themselves. Such cuties! Because the baby is in my tummy, that meant I got to unwrap her presents. (This excuse also works when there is the last little bit of something yummy to divvy out. :) )

They love getting gifts for each other and us. I think this is one of the best parts of Christmas. Hopefully it teaches them that it isn't all about what you receive. We also did our countdown candle, which we love. We also did the 25 Days of Christ again for the second year. I was surprised how much Ellie girl remembered from last year. It was a wonderful Christmas season!