Claire's Birthday!

My baby is two!!  Where does the time go??

Here is my little two year old sleeping beauty:

 I just had to get the side view too, because she was sleeping with her little bottom sticking right up in the air!  :)

 We woke her right up so she could open presents before her Dad had to leave for work.

She thought this personal pool was cool stuff...

 Our birthday banner:

 We had these mini oven pancakes which are a major favorite around here, but they just seemed perfect for little Claire's birthday breakfast!

 As soon as we were able, we popped that little pool into the yard and filled it right up!

This was awesome to her, because at this time her siblings were all in swimming lessons and she just had to sit and watch them every day.....so now it was her turn!

 But she was grateful to have some sisters to splash around with.  ;)

 For her birthday, I made the famed chocolate turtle cheesecake cupcakes.  They are not famed because of me, but because of my neighbor down the road.  She came up with this recipe, and oh man are they heaven! I'm not sure if mine were quite as good as hers, I think when you don't make something, it gives it that added bonus of deliciousness because you just get to enjoy it!  These were quite a bit of work, but the payoff was pretty darn good.  So they are filled with cheesecake filled chocolate cupcakes, with delicious chocolate frosting, homemade caramel, and candied walnuts on top.  Whew!   

This little sweetheart knew that it was her special day!  She was so so cute, gracious, and sharing.  It was so sweet. 

 This little girl is such a fun sweetie!  Love her so much!

 She kept wearing her gift bags like purses and took them everywhere she went!

 

She loved that birthday SO much, that it was hard to let Lily have one by the next week when it was Lily's turn!  She still asks to watch video clips of her birthday on my phone all the time.  :) 

That Claire is one special girl.

She loves her family so much.  "Dew"  "Shishee"  "Nanny"  "Yiyee" are her best friends and biggest fans!  They all love that Claire!!

She is such a sweet snuggler.  Drew and I still fight over those morning snuggles.  :)  She brings us so many laughs!  We love to hear how she says words like:  baby wohm, doosh (juice), now (milk), bee (blankie), yiyon (her favorite stuffed lion), behbeh (ClaireBear) her nickname and the name she calls herself, ubba (grandma/grandpa), suvvy (fuzzy, which is also the way Lily says it), ehmo (the name she gave Madelyn's gigantic stuffed giraffe, etc.

Love her SO much! 

Easter 2014

 This was so long ago, details are fading...but I will do my best!

During the Easter season this year, I was much more on the ball in certain areas.  I finally got around to doing our yearly activities more spread through the week, so I wasn't trying to cram a bunch of stuff in in one or two days......

 The kids love doing these chickie cupcakes every year.

And the Easter bunny came on Saturday morning.....as we have wanted him to do for a few years! 

And the kids got Easter clothes, just as I've been wishing for several years too!!

They were so excited! 

 Drew may have been slightly less excited about getting clothes as the girls...but it was necessary.

 Brotherly love.....

 We go to Swan Valley every year for the easter egg hunt, this time we just headed up for the day.  We had a little time to kill before the hunt started, so we played at the school's toys.  It was fun to be there all together enjoying a brisk spring morning.  It was definitely a plus to have their Dad at the park with us, usually its just the kids and I. He just makes things even more fun!

 Claire was being a daddy's girl that day, which melts her daddy's heart.

 It was a great hunt!  They got lots of treats as usual!

We squeezed in a little hike, we love hiking together.  We found a new little place and gave it a go.

 There were fun things to explore, and Hannah found a sign of spring!

 We made it to the top!!

 Beautiful views!!  Love this place....

 We came home and dyed eggs, which is always a whole mess of fun!  ;)

 We always have an ugly egg contest and make a dollar egg for the family egg hunt.

The day of Easter was a little stressful.  The wards in our stake got split and created a new ward which we are in.  So Easter Sunday was the very first meeting in the new ward.  And guess who got to speak???  Yep, me.  I was the very first speaker in the history of our new ward.  Jed got called into this new ward's bishopric as the 2nd counselor.  He had the same calling in our old ward, and the responsibilities got divided so that he is in charge of the same things that he was before.  So that is nice for him.  But Jed recommended that the Bishopric's wives get to speak that first day.  So he got off the hook......  :)  But not for long.  He spoke the next week.  So this was a crazy busy time for us, as Jed fulfilled his calling in the old ward, but also fulfilled the new calling in the new ward and meeting under cover, frantically trying to fill callings and responsibilities and organize everything......

We had known for a couple weeks before it was announced of all the changes, and so the week before Easter, we knew was our last week in our old ward. 
That Sunday (the week before Easter) was one to go down in the books.....Lily had thrown up in the night and Hannah had just thrown up before Sacrament meeting and was feeling a little lethargic.  But here it was our last Sunday in that ward, plus Jed was speaking, and Madelyn was to give a talk in primary....so unintelligently I decided to forge on and go anyway.  She did pretty good, until the meeting was over.  She threw up all over the pew!!  We took care of things, I took them all  home...only upon our arrival at home we noticed Claire had a nasty of nasty diaper blowout all over her and in the carseat! 
That evening was the stake meeting where they were announcing all of the changes to the wards, and afterwards Jed was being set apart.  Once again, I just had to be there.....I guess I have a hard time with missing important things.  :)  So, naturally, I went.  :)  Things went pretty well through the meeting, but once again there was excitement in store.  After the meeting, we were talking to some friends around us when one of them points out that Jed has a nasty mess (from Claire's diaper) down his suit jacket and white shirt!  He hands her to me, which gets it all over my shirt and scarf.....so we did our best to cleanup in the church bathrooms.  And we show up to have the stake presidency set Jed apart along with the new bishopric members, smelling poorly and slightly wet!  Awesome. 
Just one of those awesome motherly days!!  :)
But back to Easter, the rest of Easter Sunday was nice and pleasant and I felt like we could focus more on the Savior. 





We had our little family egg hunt upstairs, Claire loved finding the carefully placed low-to-the-ground eggs.  :)  It was a wonderful Easter!!

10

Drew turned 10 months ago.....I've been so out of this recording life thing.  But it is time to get back!  Drew had a great birthday, says its the best one every year.  :) 

 

But before we get to the birthday.....I just had to record that Drew received first place out of the fourth grade, in a patriotic essay contest. 

It was pretty awesome.  We worked together on it, he wrote it, I just helped him edit it.  It was a great learning experience and a nice mom/son project.  He did awesome and he was really hoping to win.  It took awhile for the results to come in, so long I had kind of forgotten about it.....but what a great surprise!

Now I'm going to have Drew come in here and write all about his 10th birthday:

 



 

On the night before my birthday, me and my dad went camping at the sand dunes it was really fun. While we were camping my mom and my sisters made a poster with candy!

 

After I read my note I started to open my presents!

My first present was some star wars legos.



The next present I got was a brand new motorcycle helmet !



     

I had a friend birthday party too! The theme was Olympics. We played dodge ball, foosball, and Ping-Pong! we ate pizza and for dessert we had root beer floats! We had Olympic rings on the pizza! My friends gave me legos!

 

My grandmas and grandpas came to our house! I got a long board and a book! They sang happy birthday and we had lemon cake with ice cream!

 

 

A Momentous Occasion

Something big took place around here.  I mean BIG.  

The other day  I asked Hannah about her thumb sucking situation.  I told her the dentist said that it wasn't likely she could stop sucking her thumb without giving up her comfort item:  her blankie.  

We wrote down several routes that she could take in preparation for the big event, and the one she chose???

Go cold turkey.

That's right.  

I could hardly believe it myself.

Let's just clarify.....she has been inseparable from that raggedy old thing, practically since birth...ok, maybe 3 months.....get the picture?

This was BIG.

So we planned a big shin-dig.

We came up with games, a menu, a tribute (yes, seriously), and it was all to be done that night!  

After I got her all excited and pumped.....

we sat and she cried.  We cried.  My little girl was doing something that seriously would rend her heart in two, and when your daughter goes through something like that, you do too.

So we cried some more.

And then we prepared a storage bin in the storage room especially for her blankie.

We did a photo shoot (I know it totally sounds corny, but this big of a choice totally merited all of it!)

And she did it, and it's been several weeks now without her beloved blankie.

I am proud of that girl, that is strength!!

We had a great party and we played games, wrote memories of the blankie, ate pizza, and sang a teary-eyed goodbye song, and put it away.  She has only gone to see it once.

I want to be strong like Hannah.

Love Day

We totally lucked out this year when the kids had Valentine's Day off from school.  We had been experiencing a bit of a warm spell, which left us with a pond in the front yard.  Then suddenly it froze again and left us with a personal ice skating rink in the front yard.  Sweet!  

So on Valentine's Day morning, we all went for a free ice skate.

I only got pictures of Hannah and Claire out there...

 The frozen leaves under the ice looked pretty cool.....

It was pretty great.

We also enjoyed our traditional Valentine's Day breakfast.  I love traditions.  

Heart shaped waffles, strawberries, whipped cream, and this time we added nutella.  Oh my goodness.....it was divine.  :)

A few simple decorations, pink milk, a little treat for everyone, and I'm still working on writing them each a Valentine........, I'll get to that pretty soon.  

Fun times.

 Madelyn's day-old heart hair-do from school.  It was a pretty cool one, but a little intricate for a crazy school morning! 

We made heart-shaped pizza (copying Papa Murphy's) and I made cheesecake filled red velvet cupcakes.  I was experimenting.....a lady down the road from me makes chocolate turtle cheesecake cupcakes that are seriously to die for...so I was giving it my best shot.  They turned out good, and I ate too many, but then Jed brought me one of our neighbors cupcakes home from church the following Sunday (she brings them for the bishopric in her ward and ours.  super nice.) and mind didn't even come close.  Hers are divine.  But I visited with her and she is going to give me her recipe.  I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.  :)

I love days like Valentine's to give us little things to look forward to in the dead of winter.  ;)