Eh, What's Up Doc?

Today when I asked Julie wanted for lunch she told me "carrots".  Just carrots.  I suggested a sandwich, which she said would be ok.  But after finishing her sandwich, Julie immediately got the 2 lb bag of baby carrots out of the fridge, plopped the bag on the chair between her legs (for easier access I guess) and enjoyed her lunch of carrots.  As for the sippy cup, yes it's Julie's.  Every other drink she drinks out of a regular cup, but milk she still insists must be drunk out of a sippy cup.  She tells us that when she's big she'll drink milk out of a regular cup.  

Love this girl!

From the weekend: 

Kallie enjoying some Kindle "piano-playing" with Grandma Glad

Temple Walk

I love being so close to a temple that we can take the girls there on a regular basis.  Although Kallie isn't old enough yet to appreciate where we are, walking around the temple grounds is one of Julie's favorite things to do.  Here is our latest outing there from the weekend.  Got to love warm-weather days, which makes our temple walks much more enjoyable

Kallie checking out the fountain

Exploring

Ready to walk around.  It was super bright - can you tell Arek is squinting?

Little Miss Kallie is fast becoming "Little Miss Independent" just like her older sister

Julie loves the little cubbies around this temple

On a totally different subject, lately Julie has been talking non-stop about seeing her Great-Grandpa Jenkins.  Here's a little background: 18 months ago Arek's mom and aunts threw Grandpa Jenkins a 90th birthday party, and ever since then the invite has stayed on our fridge -  it has a really cool old photo of Grandpa Jenkins from when he was a young man.  Recently Julie has loved looking at the photo, and when we told her it was her Great-Grandpa Jenkins she insisted that we visit him.  So one Monday evening while I went to a friend's bridal shower, Arek took the girls over to see his grandparents.  Julie was a little hestitant at first - Grandpa Jenkins looks a LITTLE different now than he did in the 60+ year old photo.  

But after some coaxing (and suckers) Julie had a great time visiting with her great grandparents. 

It's amazing to me how big Kallie looks when wearing jeans and a t-shirt - how did my baby girl get so big so fast? Also, I'm loving doing two water-spout ponies in her hair instead of just one

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I admit, St. Patrick's Day is probably the holiday I celebrate the least.  However, I'm always a fan of 1) seasonal craft projects to do with Julie and  2) making goodies.  

1) For St. Patrick's Day I forego-ed pinterest (shocking, I know!) and came up with my own craft for Julie to make today. 

This is the necklace I made for Kallie... Julie's is far less symmetrical and
 much cooler-looking, but she was wearing it when I wanted to take a close-up picture

 Ta da!  Shamrock and rainbow bead necklace.  Julie LOVED playing in my old bead container and picking which colors to string onto her necklace.  The only down side of this activity: having to keep the beads on the table because Kallie is at the age of "if it's on the ground and I find it, it's going into my mouth".  We probably should have done this craft while Kallie was napping.  Still, it was a success.  

I'm sure we'll be making more bead necklaces in the future.  

2) I see any holiday (and the time in-between holidays) as a good excuse to make cookies.  St. Patrick's in no exception, so I decided to try a new recipe, a lime-jello sugar cookie recipe.  

The girls LOVED the cookies, I thought they were ok, and Arek didn't even finish one.  Apparently my dear husband doesn't like lemon (which I knew) OR lime flavors.  Hmm... well, more for me and the girls, I guess.  Next time I make these I think I'll try using a different flavor jello; see if that wins over Arek.  Not that I don't like eating more cookies, but my waistline definitely doesn't, especially now that I'm no longer nursing  :)  

On a completely different note, we are SO excited to buy Frozen tomorrow.  We are going to have a pizza party to celebrate - where we eat our pizza dinner in the living room while watching a movie, in this case, Frozen.  I remember eating pizza in the living room while watching a movie from back when I was a kid, and I love carrying on this tradition.  Here's to watching the full "Frozen" movie instead of all the clips on the Disney website!  

When Daddy Comes Home

Daddy coming home from work is an event that is greatly celebrated in our house.  Both girls usually drop whatever they are doing, scream enthusiastically, and have endless smiles and hugs for him.  I have discussed this with many other moms, and we all agree that daddy's are much more exciting than mommy's, especially by the time 5:30 rolls around.  And who could blame my girls for thinking Arek is the greatest thing since yogurt raisins (their favorite treat at the moment)?  Especially when he does fun tricks like this:  

Note: I love how they are both pointing to him

Oh yeah, they eat up every idea he puts in their heads.  It's adorable.

Julie-isms

Julie never ceases to entertain us with what she says and does.  I'm sure anyone who has spent any time around any 3 year old know how funny they are.  I like to refer to things Julie says as "Julie-isms".  This morning I walked into the kitchen and Julie was loading up her backpack with food.  When I asked her why she said, "Mom, this is my lunch.  I'm going to school today".  After doing a "school" project of matching colors on a rainbow, she broke out her backpack and I got to see what her lunch consisted of:

• 3 or 4 vanilla and chocolate snack-pack puddings
• pretzels
• goldfish crackers
• tropical fruit cocktail

Nothing like a well-balanced diet. :)  

Julie loves to play dress-up.  In fact, it's almost all we play together.  She only has two dress-up dresses (Rapunzel and Cinderella) but she happily pretends they are the gorgeous gowns of all the Disney princesses, Elsa and Aurora being the favorites at the moment.  Kallie, Arek, and I get to alternate between being Anna, the mean guy (meaning Hans from Frozen), Prince Philip, the fairies, and Maleficent, and the step sisters and Prince Charming when Cinderella is her movie of choice.  It is super cute and she loves quoting actual dialogue from the movies.  Can't wait to buy Frozen next week so we can move onto watching it instead of Sleeping Beauty.  Not that I don't like Sleeping Beauty... but it's been 3 weeks of it once a day, almost every day, so we are ready to move onto a new film.  

Playing with Kallie's Merida baby doll, who, this day, Julie named Tiana

Playing Cinderella before the ball (hence the apron)

Kallie the Climber

Kallie is huge into climbing lately.  I know I posted about this a couple weeks ago, but it continues on, and she's so stinking cute I had to post more.  It doesn't matter if she climbs on things:

or into things:

or if she's backwards:  

She's so proud of herself!

Oh, and Kallie has now been officially weaned for going on 3 days.  Hurray!  It has definitely been harder to wean Kallie than it was with Julie.  Kallie shed a lot more tears than Julie, and Arek and I got a lot less sleep as Kallie full-on screamed for more than an hour straight multiple nights in a row.  But the past two nights she put herself to sleep with hardly any crying (less than 2 minutes), and last night she (finally!) slept through the night.  Let's hope we have fewer nighttime screaming episodes now that she's used to not nursing at night.  

Naptime Project - Skirt

A little bit ago I pinned this skirt idea

 

from this website: http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2012/11/the-double-layer-square-circle-skirt.html

and decided I wanted to make it for my girls.  So last weekend I finally bought some knit fabric and decided to see if it was as easy at it looked.  It was.  When the girls went down for their nap, I read my scriptures and then put on Enchanted for background noise and got to work.  From start to finish it took about an hour and a half, and it really shouldn't have taken that long, but I hem-ed and haw-ed before actually cutting, trying to make sure I didn't cut anything wrong.

 I haven't made one for Kallie yet, but with my two yards that I bought I definitely have enough for both girls plus extra.  It was not my favorite skirt to sew because I don't sew fabric onto elastic very neatly (if you see Julie wearing it don't look too closely at the stitching! - my machine was all over the place) but it was definitely the easiest skirt I've ever made.  And Julie says she loves it, which is the entire point of the project- and how could she not love it, since it's pink?  To Julie, pink makes anything awesome.

It even twirls great

A Little Bit of Me

I love being a mom.  I love staying home with my girls each and every day, getting to teach them, and also to learn from them.  It is what I have wanted to do my entire life, and now I get to live that dream. That being said, I still love to do "me" things, such as sing/perform, read, and sew. Singing/performing has definitely been put on the back-burner, except in church choirs, and that's ok.  I love singing songs with my girls, and even though I know my voice is not the quality it used to be, they don't judge me for it.  In fact, they think I'm the best singer in the world, and nothing tops that.  

As for reading, I have a new years resolution to read more non-fiction, to educate myself better.  My goal was to read one nonfiction book per month, but I've already had to tweek that goal.  Now, as long as I am reading some non-fiction book continuously, I'm succeeding.   A few months ago I began reading the biography of Thomas S. Monson.

 It took me a while to finish it, but... wow.  What an amazing man.  My testimony of him as a prophet, seer, and revelator has grown so much as I've learned about his life and ministry as an apostle, and now head of the church.  It is truly an inspiring read, if you haven't read it.  Since finishing it, I have set a new goal to read biographies of all the latter-day prophets.  I feel like as I learn about who they were as men, their adversities and triumphs, their testimonies, I can learn how to become a more faithful latter-day saint myself.  

My current read, however, is not another biography.  It's the Home-buying Kit for Dummies.  We are hoping to buy a home sometime this year, and I am trying to understand the ins-and-outs of what that entails.  Hopefully it will be a smooth and exciting experience for us.  

As for sewing, I try to be working on at least one project at a time.  I love learning new techniques, especially in making clothes for my girls.  My mom always made my Halloween costumes, and I am excited to do the same for my kids (hopefully).  I also have discovered that I love quilting.   However, quilting and sewing clothes both are fairly expensive for my small craft budget, especially since we are trying to save money for when we get a house.  So, my main sewing projects right now are cross-stitching.  Two Christmases ago I made a cross-stitched a stocking for Julie.  Last year I began one for Arek.  But with making Julie's Halloween costume, and moving right before Christmas, it didn't get finished.  So I set a goal for this year to have both his and Kallie's stockings done before Christmas this year.  For those of you who cross-stitch and know how long it takes, this is a pretty big goal for me, especially since I only get time for maybe an hour or two (max) a day, after the girls have gone to bed.  However, this weekend, I finished the cross-stitch part of Arek's stocking. Hurray!  I'm going to wait to finish putting it together until Kallie's is done, so I can do them at the same time.  Here is is.  Arek loves it, and I think it turned out very nicely, too.  (ignore the wrinkled look... I haven't washed or ironed it yet)

 

That's the little bit of me for the day.  Next time I'll be back to pictures and thoughts on my girls, because they are the reason I blog.