Some more cuteness...

We are having some sick days at our house right now. The girls both have pretty bad coughs/colds with occasional fevers. Last night was kind of rough (mostly on Joe--what a saint he is to help the kids in the middle of the night). Elizabeth just gets into these delirious coughing fits, when she's tired especially, and it can be near impossible to soothe her. They are both napping right now. All 3 are asleep actually. So far, Nate has been fine and I hope he doesn't catch it. Anyway, I thought it would be a good time catch up on some happenings.

Just today, Natalie called me over to come look at something:

"Look! It's Idaho!" she said.

She has done this before with different states but it doesn't always have much of a resemblance. This one really does look like Idaho! (For the record, that is a piece of cheese that she stuck to the fridge for some reason. She promptly popped it in her mouth afterward.) This incident reminded me of this post, the last picture. It's crazy that Natalie is now the 3 year old.

She and I were playing marbles the other day just the two of us and I had to take a picture.
She is just too beautiful.

The other night, Nate was doing this hilarious thing where he would look at me until I smiled at him and then he'd hide his face in the ground and stick his bum in the air. It was adorable.

Here's the best attempt at capturing it:

Joe went on a golfing trip last week with my two brothers in CA and my dad. I decided that we would try and be girly while he was gone and talked the girls into letting me tie their hair in curls. I did it the old-fashioned way (you know--Jane Austen style) and just tried tying these strips of fabrics in their hair. I had no idea what I was doing and it was way harder than I thought it would be. It didn't really work, either. It might have helped if their hair had been wet and if I had done more curls. Oh well... It was fun and Elizabeth for some reason decided to call the curls "brittanies," like "How many brittanies are you going to do, Mom?" etc.

Before:

After:
(The curls are the result of a curling iron :)

(You also might notice Natalie's new fake smile in those pictures)

One day Elizabeth told me she had a surprise for me:

She had cleaned up their room and made Natalie's bed all by herself without me saying anything. What a sweet girl.

I also wanted to record one more thing. On Valentine's day night, the girls and I sang a song to Joe (the "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home..." song). After we finished, Elizabeth started whispering to Natalie and they said they had a song for us. They sat on that bottom bunk pictured above and sang "A Child's Prayer" perfectly to us as we sat in front of them. They were even linking their legs together while they were singing. Of course I was crying like a baby. It was one of those times when I knew right in the moment that I would always remember it and would long for it when they are 23 and 25 instead of 3 and 5.