Dress Up Time

You can't tell, but she's wearing fairy wings. She let me know she's a fire fairy. Can you tell why? Then she continued to accessorize.

Going to School

Jr.: Can you carry me to school in your backpack?

Mommy: Luckily, this backpack also has wheels.

More Prizes

Remember how we won that photo contest earlier this month? Yeah, well we're still waiting for our prizes from that contest. In the meantime, my friend had a contest on one of her blogs about fitness for children. I left a comment talking about how we like to do dancing parties with our kids- turning on the music and having fun. Guess what? I was randomly selected as the winner. And... our prizes already came for that one. Yeah, they were really quick on that. So, we're still waiting for the photo contest prizes (3 weeks after I got an email saying they should be mailing the prizes out at the end of that week), but now we're enjoying our boxing punchstand set (perfect size for our kids- and it's adjustable as they get taller):

and pogo stick:

Whoo. Look at my braid go.

Currently, I'm the only one who fits the weight restrictions for the pogo stick, so it's a trip down memory lane for me. Except the old rusty pogo stick we used when I was a kid never bounced this high.

KAT's Meow

Mommy: Did you sleep well last night?
Jr.: Yeah.
Mommy: Did you have good dreams?
Jr.: Yeah.
Mommy: What did you dream about?
Jr.: Noodles.
Mommy: You dreamed about noodles? Oh, you had the noodle dream.

Embarrassing?- I Hope Not

I hope my husband isn't too embarrassed that I keep putting pictures of him sleeping on this blog. I just thought it was cute how this time my daughter brought him a doll to snuggle with.

Catch of the Day

Family Day- Picnic

The weather was actually good enough to go on a picnic today. At least it was. By the time we got to where we were going to have the picnic, it was quite windy and getting cold. We finished our picnic in the car. But not before getting a cute picture of Jr.

My Daughter, the Ham

One day on the way home from visiting friends, we stopped at the grocery store. We let Daddy run in to pick up a few items while I kept the kids entertained in the car with the camera. Nichole had no problem being photographed.

Busy Balloons

We've been busy lately. Last week Jeremy built several large sculptures for events, including a cowboy for a birthday party Nichole went to.

He had an event at the same time so we dropped him off early at his event with a rainbow that he built and quite a few premade balloons (they were expecting a lot of people).

Jr. and I dropped Nichole and the cowboy off at the party (they liked the sculpture), then went home for one on one Mommy-Son time. We watched most of a movie until it was time to pick Nichole up from her party then headed down to pick up Jeremy. He wasn't even close to finishing so I jumped in and was able to help with some of the balloon creations. Our kids were perfectly content to play with some balls they had around for children to play with. Apparently getting there early and already having some premade balloons wasn't enough (we were there about an hour extra). This is a yearly event for him, so next year he thinks he'll skip the large sculpture and spend all that time premaking balloons.

Family Day- Fish

The theme of our family day was fish. Jeremy made us lovely fish pancakes (not made of real fish) for breakfast.

Since I'm going to be teaching the Sunbeams about being grateful for fish on Sunday, I figured we could do a quick version for our Family Home Midday lesson. We talked about Jonah the prophet, and how the Lord provided a great fish to swallow him instead of him drowning. We played a fishing game to catch paper fish that the kids were able to color.

Jeremy decided it would be funny for one of the kids to catch a boot, which we promptly threw back to get a new paper fish.

We headed down to BYU to see the fish/aquariums on the bottom floor of the Widtsoe Building. On the way there, it started raining and hailing. It was just what we needed. Very relaxing. However, since the Widtsoe Building is at the opposite side of campus from the visitor's parking, we decided to go to the Museum of Art and see if the rain and hail let up.

I was reminded again that like most poetry, most "art" I just don't get. Oh well. There was a nice break in the weather where we were able to make it down to the Widtsoe Building. Before we went down to the aquariums, we stopped by the vending machines and used coins to get snacks. Nichole appropriately chose Swedish Fish.

The kids enjoyed seeing the fish (and the turtle) in the aquariums. We'd go to one window and see fish, the next window we'd see bigger fish, the next window we'd see even bigger fish.

On our way back to the car, passing the Museum of Art again, the kids told us they wanted to play on the slide. Unfortunately we had to let them know that it wasn't a slide, it was a sculpture, even though it may look like a slide. "It's not for playing. It's for contemplating."

When we got home, the kids and I watched Finding Nemo while Jeremy went grocery shopping. We were able to end our day with fish sticks and french fries.

It was a good family day.

Surprise for Daddy!

Yesterday, Nichole kept telling Jeremy she wanted him to make a balloon tree and she wanted to make paper leaves to put on it. Unfortunately, Jeremy had to go to work. So after he went to work, I built a balloon tree and the kids cut out pieces of construction paper as leaves and taped them on the tree.

Don't look too closely at the green of the tree. I'm out of practice weaving and knew the kids wouldn't care one way or the other so it's pretty sloppy. Good enough for our purposes.

Nichole insisted on surprising Daddy when he came home, so we hid the tree in the kids' room. She was still awake when Jeremy came home, so she and I were able to bring it out to surprise him.

Her Very Own Scriptures

Ever since one of Nichole's friends at church got her own set of scriptures for church, Nichole has been asking about getting her own. She can't read yet, so I hadn't really thought of it before. But she really wanted some. And... some Sundays in our Primary, those that bring their scriptures get to put coins in a jar. They can put coins in a jar for other reasons, too, like being reverent or helping out. Each class has a jar. All the coins are given to the Bishop at the end of the month to help someone in the ward or a family or humanitarian aid or something and whichever class has collected the most coins gets to help the Bishop help someone.

The point of this post though is that we finally took Nichole to the "scripture store" (that's Deseret Book) and got her her very own Book of Mormon. When we were buying it, they said that they could imprint her name on it for only a couple dollars more. We decided to go for it. It would be extra special. So Nichole now has her very own Book of Mormon with her name on it and is already learning how to mark special verses. When we do scripture reading as a family, she is very interested in having hers open and being involved. She loves her scriptures and I'm so happy that they are important to her.

Mommy-Daughter Outing

For months my daughter has been talking about the Princess and the Frog movie. I don't know what got her so interested in it, but she is. We told her we'd check it out from the library when it came out on DVD, but she was still anxious. She wanted to see it. My husband and I talked about it and how fun it would be to take her to the movie theater to see that movie. She's never been to a movie theater before but we figured she's at an age where she can handle it. So we arranged things and Nichole and I went on a mommy-daughter outing together.

I told her we were going on an outing, but I didn't tell her what we were going to do. It was a nice sunny day when we left our apartment so I was wearing a light jacket. Jeremy made Nichole a balloon frog before we left (I could have done it, but was feeling rushed and Jeremy could make it much faster). She carried that frog around with her the whole outing. We stopped off at the bank and changed coins to bills for easier spending. The teller gave Nichole two princess stickers. As we headed down to Provo, the wind started picking up. The weather was still warm. We passed several temperature signs that said 49 degrees F. It had calmed down a bit by the time we got to Movies 8. We got out of the car and I showed her where we were. At the movie theater and the last one listed on there was the Princess and the Frog. She got so excited. We were going to watch the movie together. She decided it was a girl's movie for Nichole, Mommy, and the frog (balloon frog- also a girl). We stood around for a while, but there was no one selling tickets. There were several other people waiting in cars, so I figured it might be a wait. We decided to go across the street to get some food then come back to get our tickets.

So, we went over to KFC and had some popcorn chicken.

I had sweet and sour sauce and Nichole had honey mustard. Boy did she like that honey mustard. After we finished the chicken, I had to convince her that I could make honey mustard at home sometime, so that she would let me throw away the rest of the sauce to make it to the movie on time.

When we got to the theater there was a line waiting for tickets. We were patient, waited our turn, and got our tickets for our 2:15 showing at 2:13.

There were several little kids watching the movie, but how they could see over the seats is beyond me. I'm short enough that I have a hard time seeing over those seats at that theater. But hey, I'm not complaining. $3 for my little girl and I to see a movie together. Basically, Nichole sat on my lap the whole movie, because there was no way she would be able to see if she sat in her own seat. That just made it more special, Mommy and daughter so close while watching the princess movie. When the actual movie started and Nichole could recognize it (based on previews and online games) as the actual Princess and the Frog movie, she got so excited that it was on a big big screen.

Long story short- it was fun watching that movie at the theater together. It really was special for me with my little girl.

When we got out of the movie, it was snowing. I mentioned before that I was wearing a light jacket. Luckily we put Nichole's winter coat on her before we left home. I had to bundle up Nichole's balloon frog in my light jacket so it wouldn't get wet and we ran to the car. Nichole really wanted more popcorn chicken and honey mustard, but I realized we didn't have any chicken at home. Long story short again- we stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up chicken breasts and potato wedges. Just getting those two items, when we got back to the car, I put Nichole in and had to brush snow off the car. That's how much it was coming down at that point.

When we got home we realized we didn't have enough honey to make honey mustard, so Jeremy and Jr. hopped in the car and picked up some from the store. Then because I wasn't feeling up to it, Jeremy made us popcorn chicken to dip in honey mustard. I did put the potato wedges in the oven, though.

I had a wonderful outing with my little girl and I'm so glad we took the opportunity to do that. I love my daughter.

Happy Birthday, Jeremy!

Jeremy recently had a birthday... Full of Surprises!
As you know, he already got his pizza stone present on Valentine's Day, which we've made good use of so far. He was planning on getting his website finished on that day, but got it done a few days later. Instead, he helped me out sooooo much when the kids were restless and I was trying to make his special birthday dinner. He knew I was making him a special birthday dinner, but the night before got called to do a show on his birthday. So, we were going to try to hurry and do his birthday dinner early enough. That morning the show was canceled so he was going to be home for his special birthday dinner. With everything that we were working on, we ended up eating later than we would have liked, but he still had a good birthday. Yay.

The kids helped set the table- they did the silverware, but were a little distracted.

But they did a really good job of helping me make Jeremy's birthday cake. We made him rainbow cupcakes. We got the idea again from FamilyFun Magazine. Thanks again, Mom T. I'm getting a lot of use out of that subscription you got me.
At first I wondered if we had enough food coloring for that many drops of each color (especially since Jeremy used red for our Valentine pancakes earlier in the month), but man, there are a whole lot of drops in each of those little containers.
The kids and I mixed up the colors and I spread them in the cupcake cups.

When they were baked, they looked cool. Here's the outside view after I peeled the cupcake cup off:

And here's the inside view:

We did put whipped topping on our cupcakes when we ate them. They kept fooling me however, when I was expecting fruity flavoring based on the colors but just got regular white cake flavoring.

We had fun, and I have to say, I think Jeremy did have an enjoyable birthday.

Kindergarten Registration

Last week, we registered Nichole for Kindergarten. Eek. My little girl. She's very excited about going to school. We had to keep telling her we didn't get to stay at the school. We were just going to find out what we needed to know to get her ready for school. There was only one thing that we didn't have that they needed (and that thing was not listed online where it said bring birth certificate and immunization records). Fortunately, we live a block away from the school (We walked past maybe 3 houses to get there), so Jeremy headed home to get what we needed while I filled out forms and the kids looked at the fish in the fish tank. Jeremy was also smart enough to pick up the camera before he came back so he got some good pictures of us coming out of the school and Nichole being upset because she didn't know why Daddy left before us.

Prize-Winning Kids

We entered an online photo contest and got picked as one of the winners (there are a lot of adorable kids on there).
Our caption must have been too long to put it on the site, but this is the caption to go along with the picture:
"Our two kids are always trying to help, sometimes the results are better than others. More laundry gets unfolded than folded, dust is swept in circles rather than into piles, and clean your room usually gets translated into "play with your toys." Often enough though, the sheer joy of watching them work and play together outweighs the extra time it takes to clean up after their "cleaning." If only they would learn not to drink from the dirty cups while washing them..."