The Best, Worst Day Ever.

The 24th of July was the best, worst day ever. We spent the night up at my parents' house, and M woke us up bright and early, around 5:50. Too early!!! We went to the Ogden Pioneer Day parade and really had a fun time there. We went with Aunt Miriam and her kids and my mom. It was a fun parade and all the kids really seemed to enjoy it. The worst part of the day was when we were getting ready to leave we looked around and Miriam was gone. It was horrible! We ran up and down streets yelling for what seemed like forever. It was probably more like five minutes, but it was my worst nightmare. I kept thinking that the only way she could have gotten that far away from us was if someone had been carrying her. Someone kidnapped my baby!!! Thankfully, someone came walking our way carrying her. I have no idea how far she went or anything, but some good person noticed that she didn't seem to be with any adults and brought her back the way she came. That experience was so much more horrible than I can describe, but I am so grateful to have her back.

After the parade we went to my mom's house where we had a really fun pioneer day, making dolls, playing games, and eating a ton of yummy food. Well, I must have eaten something that disagreed with me because right as we were getting ready to go I got hit hard with nausea. I threw up for a while then rested. I didn't quite make it all the way home before I threw up again. And then I threw up some more that night. Pretty great huh? It was such a fun-filled, horrible day. Despite waking up before dawn, temporally losing my child, and ending the day with a stomach bug, I have happy feelings associated with that day. Weird. :) One thing that was funny was that Ellie asked me, "Did pioneers paint their toenails? Why?" :) I took Miriam in for her 2 year check up and she has gained a little bit on the percentile scale. She is still pretty skinny, but good.

Family Reunion 2013

At the beginning of July John's side of the family held their annual family reunion. (Yeah, I need to catch up on blogging. :) ) We had so much fun with these guys over the course of three days. The first day everyone visited temple square and had a lunch at Grandpa and Grandma's house. At Temple Square we had a tour of the conference center and then a tour of the church history museum. I really enjoyed the tour of the museum. It is always more interesting to learn about history from a teacher than just by reading the signs.

That evening we went to Ryan and Millie's house for a delicious dinner and fireworks! Ellie was pretty excited and Miriam was mesmerized. They just moved into a new gorgeous house, and it was fun to take the tour.

It was so fun to see everyone! Check out how cute our little nephew is! Baby hungry anyone? :) 

Day 2 we went up to Rockport Reservoir, which was so fun. Norma was the trooper taking all the kids on rides in the raft. Miriam was mainly interested in the sand. It was sad to hear that since then there was a big fire up there.

The last day we had a luncheon at the stake center.

A talent show, games, motor toys, and family updates rounded out the day. We did a country dance for the talent show that we had practiced over the course of a week and really did a pretty good job. Go us! :) We are sad that there isn't an apparent place to go country dancing down in Phoenix.

We love our family!!!

I Can't Believe My Baby is Already Two!

We celebrated my sweet baby's two year old birthday a few days early this year. On the day of her party John picked up a big bunch of balloons to give out as party favors. Miriam LOVED that huge bunch of 25 balloons. While we were waiting for her daddy to come home, I was finishing up party preparations and came into the kitchen to find my almost two year old had gotten into the fridge and got two cold hamburger patties out and was eating them. You would never know that we are trying to go mostly vegetarian. :)

The time of the party finally arrived and there was games and treats for everyone. My girls' favorite part was the juice boxes. I don't know if there is anything more exciting than juice in a box with a straw. 

We also played some of Miriam's favorite games: ring-around-the-rosy, once there was a snowman, etc. We also read her favorite book. Sad that it was a library one.

For her birthday treat, I made these layered Independence Day cupcakes. They are my favorite cupcakes by far. I hope she doesn't get sick of them because I will probably want to make them every year for her birthday. That is what you get for having a birthday near the Fourth of July. :)

Miriam is such a delight! She has recently started talking a lot more. She strings together three or four word sentences regularly now. We love the sound of her little voice and our whole family likes to ask her to say different things.

Miriam has really discovered stories. She takes after her sister that way. She loves being read to as long as you are willing to do so. She really loves "Goodnight Moon"  and "Dr. Seuss's ABCs." She also loves to sing. The ABCs is a favorite as is "I am a Child of God." Last night she kept sing "QRS,TUV..." Again, and again. At church Miriam loves to look at the Hymn book and wave her arm like she is leading the music. So cute!

She also loves to count and identify colors. She counts by herself to twelve, and after that she counts "...teen, ...teen, ...teen" until "nineteen, twenty!" She has got those last two down. :)

As far as food goes, I never know what she is going to like or not like. Seriously. some days all she wants to eat is tomatoes. Other days, bread. Some days she hates her oatmeal. Some days she is crying because she wants me to fix it for her faster. The only thing she likes every single day is candy. Shocker. :)

She loves to play outside and stand over her tricycle and walk with it. She also LOVES swings. She loves to color and paint pictures. She loves animals and always wants to stop and say hi if we see one. One sign Miriam is having a good time is that she lets her tongue hang out.

Generally she likes have her teeth brushed and flossed and her hair done. She loves to dress up like her sister. One thing she does not like is sleeping. "Ah-nah nigh-nigh!" (All done, night, night) is heard loud and often at our house.

Miriam is such a blessing to us. She gives the tightest hugs and the sweetest kisses. She has the most expressive face. She is definitely still a Mommy's girl, but she loves her big sister and daddy so much too. We love you, baby girl!

Dressing Up

As I was looking through our pictures, deciding what to post about, I was astounded at how many pictures I have of Ellie dressing up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering it is one of her favorite activities. Miriam got in on the action with the matching sunglasses.

This was on Father's Day. John is such a great dad! I admit I like playing dress up with them too. It is fun to see how they both just want their dancing skirts on if they feel like dancing.

Ellie likes to pick out my clothes while I am in the shower. One day, instead of trying to shove my shorts under the bathroom door like normal, I got out of the shower to see my girls trying them on. You know you have arrived as a mom when your kids play dress ups with your clothes. :)

I was trying to pull the same move as Ellie in her picture. Pretty fun. Also, I discovered that M now has enough hair to support TWO pony tails. She loves them (most of the time) and yells 'two' at me if I try to do her hair.

Ellie actually earned a real dress up dress as part of a reading goal. This girl loves to pose. The picture on the left is of her doing a curtsy. Oh the girlishness!

From my journal: A couple of funny things that the girls have been saying: Miriam has picked up on the grunts that mean yes or no. "uh-huh" and "uh-uh" It is really cute. She also says the word "okay" with emphasis on the 'kay.' We really love it. Ellie has started to use the word 'rather' a lot. Which is pretty cute. She also is constantly surprising us with her reasoning skills. A couple of the funny phrases she has surprised us with is "Daddy, you are such a smoothie, I could just drink you up!" "Mommy's head is bigger than all of ours." Punk kid. :)

I prepared a lesson for a parenting group, but no one came. I was actually kind of happy about it because the kids were in bed early. The house was cleaned up, and John and I were able to work on a de-junking project that evening. Five garbage bags of clothes and a box were taken to DI. Wow, we have accumulated a lot of stuff! That was just our two closets. We have a lot left to do!

Norma and Hema came for dinner. I served Indian food that turned out really well! Good job, me! :) I made saag paneer, spicy yellow lentils, and a veggie chicken tikka masala. Norma gave us haircuts, and we played our new game with them (7 Wonders).

John planned the date for last weekend, which included a "Would you rather..." game. Example: "Would you rather be 4 feet tall or 7 feet tall?" It was really fun. We also made some cookies with beans instead of butter. They were really good.

I Am Thinking of an Animal

The last day that John was gone we went to the zoo with my family. It was fun to go there with so many of them, including my grandparents. They are so sweet. Both kids really liked the monkeys.

The kids really liked playing with their cousins. One of the best parts--having three older boys who wanted to push the stroller for me. 

My favorite part was the bird show. They invited kids to come down and dance. To my surprise my timid little Ellie wanted to go down there by herself and dance. She is in this picture towards the middle left getting some pretty good air on a jump. She is so funny. At first she started doing her graceful princess twirls, but after watching some other kids do more hip hop she was all about jumping and wiggling. So fun. 

Miriam LOVED the bird show. She was fascinated by all of the birds flying every which way. Birds are her favorite. She calls them "toot, toots." Maybe related to 'tweet, tweet'? Anyway, she was enthralled by all of the big and little birds. 

Ellie has recently learned the game, "I am thinking of an animal..." It is always so fun to hear her clues for you to guess her animals. For example, she said, "I am thinking of an animal with short legs." After several yes and no questions, where I learned it didn't live on a farm or in the jungle, I finally figured out that she was thinking of a bear. I guess short legs are relative, right? :) 

The green wagon is the coolest!

Miriam went through three pieces of cake. She kept dropping it or going after someone else's and dropping it. 

Ellie decided to live life on edge and get a drink out of a lion's mouth. Pretty cool, huh?

We liked seeing the giraffes sticking their long tongues in the holes in the sides of the bucket to eat.

My sweet grandpa has been all over the world and seen who knows how many different kind of animals in the wild. He says that giraffes are his favorite.  

One fun thing that I don't have any pictures of is that when we were leaving there were a group of handicapped kids that came to the zoo. (We were late leaving.) There were a whole bunch of people who dressed up in character costumes for the kids. We saw batman, a ton of star war's characters, and the best...princesses!!!! We saw Jasmine, Belle, and Rapunzel. (I think.) Ellie was terrified at seeing Chewbacca and the Snow Monster. But Jasmine made her feel better because, "Jasmine is so fancy with all of her jewels." :)