Happy Birthday to Arek

Yesterday was Arek's 29th Birthday.  One more year to go before he's out of the roaring 20's and into the... whatever the 30's are  :)  The girls and I tried to make it a great birthday for him (albeit simple) and I think we accomplished that.  Here are some of the highlights once he got home from work:

Dinner: Crepe Fete!
     Complete with bananas, nutella, powdered sugar and cool whip.  In hindsight, I wish I had gone ahead and bought strawberries as well.  To cut the sweetness, I made myself an egg to eat on the side... I think after eating the crepes and then the cake Arek was wishing he had had an egg as well

Mmm delicious!  Can you see the nutella around Kallie's lip? :)

Gift: 1962 Corvette model kit, level 3.   
How Arek does these, I don't know.  I for sure don't have the patience for them

Julie helped me make the banner during Kallie's naptime

Homemade chocolate cake, peanut butter frosting as the "glue" between layers, chocolate frosting and cut up reeses sprinkled on top.  Yes, it was very rich, but oh-so-good!

Blowing out the candles

Happy Birthday, Arek!  We sure do love you!

Early Easter

This weekend my good friend Brynn got married.  I was so glad to be able to attend her wedding and meet her new husband.  She looked absolutely radiant.  The ceremony and reception were held in a barn (a very nice barn) just a mile or two away from my in-laws, so we got to spend some time with them.  Then my family was having an early Easter dinner since my sister leaves this week for her next semester at BYU-Idaho, and will miss actual Easter, so we got together and had yummy ham, potatoes, rolls... all that good Easter food.  The girls were so happy to play with both sets of grandparents.  Since we were down, we did Easter egg hunts with both families.  Here are some of my favorite shots from the fun and busy weekend:

Higgs:

I love how much Julie loves to help Arek and, likewise, how much Arek loves having her help him

Kallie and Grandma Higgs building the stackable

Time for Easter Egg Hunt #1: Ready, set, go!

Kallie taking a break from finding eggs.  I love the barn in the background

It's hard to see, but Julie is so excited to find yet another egg.  Her expressions crack me up 

Despite Kallie's scowl, they were having a good time; it was just really bright outside

mmm... mmm, M&M's and jelly beans :)

 Glads: 

Grandma Glad and Julie dying eggs.  Arek is the only person in our house who will eat hard boiled eggs, so the most we ever dye is 2 or 3.  Julie was so excited to be able to dye lots of eggs with her grandma.

Don't you think they look like twinners?  I suppose that's because I look like my mom, and Julie looks like me :)

Easter Egg Hunt #2

Once Kallie discovered yogurt raisins in these eggs, she didn't want to put them into the basket

Finding the loot with Aunt Dani

I'm so looking forward to this week, sharing the Easter story with the girls.  Julie loves watching the New Testament videos on lds.org, so I think we will do that a lot while we discuss the importance of Easter.  My favorite thing to do on Easter Sunday is open the 12 eggs that go through the last few days of Christ's life with scriptures and items that symbolize each scripture, ending, of course, with the last egg being empty, and the scripture reading "He is not here, for He is risen."  LOVE that activity.  I'm thinking/hoping Julie is more interested in it this year.  Either way, though, I am excited to celebrate the Atonement of the Savior and his triumph over death.  

Happy (Early) Easter to you all!

Mourning Winter

I think my girls may be the only girls who are actually mourning winter.  They are loving being able to play outside and at parks, watching all the flowers bloom, and breaking out the shorts and sandals, but I often find them dressed like this:  

Then Julie asks why she can't wear these outside, and when we can have hot chocolate  :)

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