Cute, cute, cute

Love these girls...

Charlotte is two

On the 19th our little Lottie turned two. We celebrated with an "animal rescue" party since her favorite show is Diego--not Dora, but Diego. If she sees a picture of a frog, she tells you it's a "tree frog." So TV isn't all bad, right?

Get Hazel in front of a camera these days and she transforms into a little Shirley Temple...



We kept things simple this year since Ellie was barely one month old. I made a small cake for Lottie and some "life saver" cupcakes for our guests.

We invited Kevin and Vicki (of course!), our friends the Clark's (plus their two kiddos), and our neighbors, the Taylors.

I made a video of Charlotte's past year that had some highlights such as the first time she said her alphabet as well as the time she unlocked David's iphone and somehow played "Single Ladies."

And then we had a scavenger hunt! I hid clues all around the house that led the kids to a missing animal. They each had animal rescuer badges.

Charlotte's Elmo backpack served as her "rescue pack." It held a special key that unlocked my treasure chest which had one of the clues.

And then they found it...

A giraffe!
We scored this HUGE giraffe from David's brother when they moved. And now I think he'll have to go back down to the basement until we have room for him somewhere...but he sure was the star of this party.

And here's the birthday girl wearing all the new clothes she got on her birthday.
LOVE her.

Happy 2nd Birthday sweet Charlotte.

Snowman

January 15th

It was SO good to get outside and spend some time together in the fresh air. And we made a great snowman (that melted pretty quickly that next week).

Our snow fights were pretty "gentle" until our little neighbors came over and brought it to a new level.

January

The month of January was filled with a lot of inside activities,

including staring at this little cutie...

Lots of naps (well, more for Ellie than for me)

A few quick walks around the block just to get the crazies outside.

Charlotte has started dressing up more, just like her older sister.

We've had plenty of warm baths and funky hairdos; I love all that hair I have to play with (and that pouty face)

So I was having a rough morning and had a moment to sit down and feel sorry for myself. Charlotte had apparently jumped into the shower with her dad because when I turned around, there she was: totally naked, eating Wheat Thins and rocking Ellie in her swing.
How could I not be happy with this little girl in my life?

We finally ventured outside into the backyard to play in the snow. The girls found some icicles on the bottom of the slide that they ate like popsicles. What a fun day.

Dad with the girls. Poor Ellie looks like she's falling off the couch and Hazel...?


Ellie has been sleeping much better, but its been a long road. She still gets fussy in the evenings and squirms around until about 11pm. But after that she's out until 4am or sometimes 5am. Not too bad. However, there was this one night when Ellie was more fussy than usual. By time we finally fell asleep, Charlotte woke up crying--this was a first for her lately--so we brought her into bed in an attempt to keep Hazel asleep (because if she didn't get her sleep, all hell would break lose the next day). So there we were in our queen size bed with two little girls hogging the middle...and someone starts pounding on our door. We look at the clock and it's 5am. David opens the window and there's a man in military uniform standing on our front porch. He put two and two together and told him that "Taylor"--our neighbor who's with the Air Force--lived next door. Wrong house.
That next day was a tough one.


We're so blessed to have a healthy baby! I've still been keeping everyone inside as much as possible, but so far little Ellie is a hardy girl.
What a blessing.

Funny things

There's a couple of quotes from Hazel that I've been meaning to write down lately...

We called Lottie "Cindy Lou Who" and Hazel says, "Hey, that's sounds like...what's that movie?" and right as I said, "Horton Hears a Who" she says, "Winnie the Whore!"

There was a guy smoking outside of a gas station on our way down to Colorado. Hazel--a little groggy from just waking up--asks me what he's eating. I told her he was smoking a cigarette. She makes a sad face and says, starting to cry, "I wish I could have a cigarette!"

We're making bracelets with beads and she holds up a pretty blue square one. "This is an America bead!" I ask her why and she says, "Because it looks like an America bead." Then she said, "Actually, its an animal America bead." I ask her why and she says, "Because it looks like an animal America bead." duh.

After a tantrum about not getting asked to say the prayer at lunch, she comes back in the room, calmly, and asks me, "What was I crying about?"

I have so much to post about! Lottie turned two on the 19th and we had an animal rescue birthday party (she's slightly obsessed with Diego). We went down to my mom's on the 22nd for my little brother's birthday party and decided on Sunday night to drive another 8 hours to see our good friends, JR and Whitney, in Coronado! Our little impromptu family vacation turned out to be just what we needed. I'll post our pics soon.

Check out some Valentine's activities on my blog, Where are my Mary Jane's?

The best of times, the worst of times

Ode to Purell

So this Christmas vacation had its pros and cons... It was one of the best because I had a little Eloise to hold and kiss and love on Christmas day. We spent the holiday in Denver with Chris and Stacy and their four little ones and their dog, Hatch. Those were some of my favorite Christmas memories growing up: Christmas morning with a slew of cousins and a line of paper bags full of presents with each of our names on them. It was craziness and pure fun. Our girls were able to spend this Christmas playing and being rowdy with their four cousins. (Although Charlotte spent most of her time running from Henry who is a little terror. Hopefully next year will be better for those two).

On the other hand, it was a bit of a stressful and tiring Christmas because despite our best efforts to ALL be healthy (which we managed for the first couple of days), we got hit by a nasty virus that whipped through the family, knocking out 8 out of 13 of us. This was especially frightening because of a little thing called "strep B" which I had running through my blood (some women have it, some don't; you can have it with some pregnancies and not with others. It doesn't manifest itself at all to the mother but can harm the baby). Even though I was given an antibiotic during labor, there's a small chance (2 or 3% chance) that I can pass it onto the baby during the first three months, which could be very serious for her. SO our doctor kindly warned us that if she gets a fever above 100.4, she has to be checked into the hospital and have a bunch of nasty tests (including a spinal tap. ugh) done just to be sure it isn't a strep B infection. *sigh. With that said, we had thought and prayed a lot about going or not going to Denver and decided that we felt good about it--we would either sit around inside at our house or at their house, and their's would be way more fun. So we went.

And I'm so glad we did, only I wish we could have been spared the virus. It hit Vicki first on Christmas Eve. She stayed in her room for two days to keep it contained, but it still spread like wildfire the following week. Every time another kiddo would start coughing, someone would mumble "another one bites the dust." Thanks to prayer, a priesthood blessing, breast milk, and lots of hand sanitizer, Ellie stayed healthy and IS still healthy, now that we're all here at home with the remnants of our sicknesses. And that's what made the rest of our vacation a little difficult...I got the virus on Monday and stayed quarantined with the baby in our room for the rest of the week, wearing a face mask so that my germs would stay as contained as possible. It was a flashback to baby Charlotte--washing my hands until they were chapped, changing my clothes constantly, and wearing a face mask so that I wouldn't breathe into her face every time I nursed. The toiletries in the bathroom were replaced with Mucinex, tissues, Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer (love you, Purell).

On Tuesday, once the two oldest kids had a fever, we talked about our options to get Ellie home and away from all the sickies (except for me of course). We decided flying was out since she'd be exposed to a ton of germs in the airport and the airplane anyway. We talked about packing up and driving home the next day (which meant we would miss our niece Kate's baptism on Thursday), but a huge storm was blowing in on Wednesday and would last through Thursday night. So Friday morning it was!

The real low point was around Wednesday, day 3 of being quarantined, when I was so lonely that I called my mom (who was far far away on a Caribbean cruise) and left her a rambling message with tears falling into my face mask, my nose running. So silly. The next day got much better. When the kids were all napping, I'd come out and make some lunch and visit with the adults. Some nights, if I felt up to it, I'd join in the games. Another blessing was that Ellie's fussiness has moved to early evening, so she's been sleeping much better at night. Such a bonus for us.

Thursday was Kate's baptism, which I'm very glad we didn't miss. She is such a mature little eight year old and I know she took everything very seriously. I hope our little girlies turn out to be like Ms. Kate. What a good example she is! *Funny side note: after the actual baptism, while Kate was changing, I was asked to lead the room in singing some hymns. David let both our girls wander a bit to get out some energy. Charlotte was roaming the little "stage" that was behind me and when she discovered that she had on her "squeaker shoes." (Unfortunately, they are the only black church shoes we have in her size at the moment). Every time her foot hits the floor just right, they squeak. Suddenly she is running in place, trying to evoke the strongest and loudest squeaks her shoes can produce, smiling up at all of us as if to say, "Isn't this AWESOME?" Luckily David jumped up and grabbed her before she got too carried away.

Friday morning, we packed up and took off. I had prayed and prayed that our girls would stay healthy until we got home so that we wouldn't have them coughing like crazy in the car (since Vicki, Kevin and I were already coughing, but we could at least cover it up). Again, prayers were answered. They both got runny noses and Hazel started to cough a tiny bit, but it was not too bad of a trip home. We ended up taking so long due to the weather that we celebrated New Year's at a gas station while I nursed Ellie, watching fireworks light up the sky at a nearby park.

Happy New Year. Happy to have my body back and a sweet healthy baby in my arms. Happy for the adventures ahead with our little family of three beautiful girls.

Happy to be home.

p.s. a HUGE thanks to Chris and Stacy for sharing their home and food and good company.

Sorry we shared our germs! Love you.

Christmas morning

I remember last year, David and I were awake in our beds at 6:30 just WAITING for our girls to wake up. They are almost always both awake by 7:30 but that's way late on Christmas morning! Now I'm surprised that David and I were even awake before then because I know this year we would have relished the opportunity to sleep that extra hour. Unfortunately, there were a few more excited kids and adults in the mix this year and we were all up and ready by 6am, which unfortunately was a little TOO early for Ms. Hazel. Just so you know, if you ever wake her up prematurely, it does NOT go over well (that goes for both girls actually). Even on Christmas morning. Luckily, my camera card filled up right as Hazel walked into the front room so I missed her saying "But I wanted a PONY!!" There's a great Christmas memory.

David and Chris had the kiddos line up by age before they came upstairs. Do you see the Christmas cheer in Hazel's eyes?

A little bit of Hello Kitty nail polish in the stalking helped brighten the mood...

This picture was taken as Charlotte was trying to see one of Hazel's toys. She is daring me to take it away from her.



Hazel has been doing these "poses" for the camera lately. David caught her workin' it with her chapstick/necklace thing.

David got a new ski jacket (he still hasn't figured out what it is in this picture, thus the weird look on his face?). Either that or he really hates it.

My best Christmas present was a fuzzy little package named Eloise
(and Adobe Photoshop CS5. woo hoo!!)

Merry merry Christmas!