Yum, Yum

We gave Nate his first solid food the other day. He actually did pretty good with it and got a good amount of it down. Here are the pictures:

I love this messy face:

Elizabeth took this picture. See how happy he was afterward:

Of course he hasn't always done so well since then. It's hard to find a time when he's hungry enough to eat but not so hungry that he gets frustrated by the whole thing.

On an unrelated note, I found a shirt in his dresser the other day and thought it might fit him. When I looked at what size it was, I saw 2T! It fit, too, and was even a little snug. Granted, almost all of our clothes are hand-me-downs and have been washed a lot, but still...2T!

Here he is sporting the shirt
(of course he spit up all over it as soon as I put it on):

Come on... you have to admit that is one cute kid. :)

Party Time

Elizabeth had her first official friend party on Saturday. I encouraged her in wanting a Fancy Nancy party, if only so we wouldn't have to have a princess party, although it ended up being essentially the same thing. The girls all dressed up and we had fun doing typical birthday party things. We played some games, read a Fancy Nancy book, ate cupcakes and opened presents. They seemed to enjoy it, so I suppose it was worth all the effort on my part.

Here are some pictures:

We had a dress-up relay race which was actually too hard because of the fact that they were already dressed up:

Here's the table I set for cupcakes and pink lemonade:

I got all of that material from my grandma and it's been stuffed in our dress-up box. Joe has been trying to convince me to throw it away but I wouldn't. It finally came in handy for something! Ha! I found those little plastic goblets at the dollar store.

We had these yummy rainbow cupcakes:

I found the recipe here. Theirs are much prettier. They were so cool! The girls and I had fun making them and the kids all thought they were cool to eat. Now Joe wants them on his birthday :).

Here's the birthday girl blowing out the candle:

I only have a few more days until my oldest turns 5. Weird. More to come....

More Winter Fun

We packed a suitcase once again for a quick trip up to the mountains last weekend to visit my mom at their cabin. It was a lot of fun. While there, we had our family's first sledding experience. The girls loved it. As is common, the camera died after only a few pictures (I never remember to charge it). So, here's what I have:

Natalie ready to go

Picking up speed

She would usually end her runs by sliding right off the saucer at the bottom

The battery died right as Joe was taking Nate down for his first run.

Doesn't he look thrilled?
Joe's expression cracks me up:

I didn't get any of Elizabeth but she LOVED it. Joe even built a little jump for her. She would fly off the saucer and get up laughing.

Other than that trip, we haven't done much lately. The girls wore their ballet outfits one day and enjoyed dancing to music from the Nutcracker. They liked to pretend that I was their slave-driving ballet instructor making them "Leap! Twirl! Leap! Twirl!" I didn't even have to do anything, they just came up with the orders and then laid down talking about how tired they were:

Hopefully actual ballet lessons will be as fun as pretend lessons.

I wanted to give an update on our "little Nathaniel", as the girls call him. I think that the last time I really wrote much about him I was complaining about how fussy he was. Well, he has done a complete 180. He is such an easy baby now. We stopped his medication quite awhile ago and he has even been sleeping on flat surfaces again. He really grew out of his tummy problems.

I've decided that right now is a really easy age. He is sleeping through the night yet he's still young enough that he'll just hang out in his bouncer for extended amounts of time. He's not mobile. He's not on solids so I don't have to take the time for that yet. He mostly just smiles whenever anyone pays any attention to him and generally just spreads sunshine. Of course I'm excited to give him cereal and to see him start moving around, but I'm also just enjoying this stage right now and taking advantage of the extra time I have. I'm especially enjoying snuggling with my little guy while he's still little.

One night, his tummy did seem to be bothering him. The cure? Laying on his tummy with Daddy patting his back, his thumb in his mouth, and the TCU/Boise State bowl game to watch.

Yep. I think we have another full-fledged thumb-sucker on our hands. I'm fine with that at this point.

Look how cute...

I just think it's impossible to be unhappy with this face smiling up at you all of the time:

Christmas Recap

Wow, I have really not been motivated to blog. I guess because I feel so behind. So, this post may be mostly pictures. Or who knows, maybe I'll get in a groove and jabber on like usual. We'll see...

We definitely had a great Christmas and holiday break. The best part about it was seeing family.

I am going to start out in the middle of December. Here's a picture of the girls getting in the Christmas spirit watching some Christmas movies. We rented pretty much every movie out there from the library and had a lot of fun. One of the favorites: Mickey's Christmas Carol. I loved that one as a kid.

In the middle of December we had our annual family gathering at my parents' house with a visit from Santa. On the way there we saw this amazing rainbow so we had to take a picture.
Just for fun, here's a picture of our little family's first visit from Santa in 2004 when I was pregnant with Elizabeth (Mom & Dad--I must admit that seeing our old ornaments makes me nostalgic :).

And here's us today:

What a difference 5 years makes, eh?

Here's all the kids with Santa.

Here's the cousins there singing some Primary Christmas songs, if a bit reluctantly
(Natalie sure wasn't! Elizabeth was throwing a tantrum and refused so she is not pictured)

I should put in the letter Elizabeth wrote to Santa this year.

She actually changed her mind later and decided she wanted a cash register, too, so the dolly got bumped.

Natalie wanted a walkie-talkie too along with a yo-yo.

Right after school got out for Joe, we left for Idaho to visit his mom. We left at 4am and it worked out really well. Joe and I were fully awake and the kids slept a lot. We were really lucky with Nate on this trip. He was so easy. I don't think he screamed once in the car and he didn't even cry all that much with Elizabeth right next to him entertaining him and keeping his binky in.

We had a fun-filled busy few days there. It wasn't enough time but we sure loved the time we had. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures although we did get some video of Nathaniel's first time laughing. Hopefully I can post that soon.

We left a couple days before Christmas for Utah to visit Joe's dad. I think it had been 4 years since we had been there for Christmas and it was a lot of fun. Thank you for being such great hosts, Tom and Lorna!

The kids sure enjoyed having a White Christmas. Here's some pictures of them playing in the snow with their cousins. I was actually impressed with how long they stayed out in the cold. Joe was a good sport and helped the kids build a snow cave and a snow table and chairs (pictured below).

All the kids

Snow cave

All bundled up

Finally, the big day came. We all slept in the same room so we could hear Elizabeth wake up on Christmas morning and say to Natalie, "Guess who came last night?" Natalie was still half-asleep and said, "I dunno..." Then she suddenly perked up and said "Santa came!" It was funny to listen to.

Here's our few pictures of Christmas morning. Santa came through although I don't have any good pictures of them with the things they asked for. Here's what I have:

Natalie loving an outfit she got

What cute girls

A toothbrush!!
It lights up and she seriously brushed her teeth 6 times that day just so she could use it.

The girls also received ballet outfits and lessons (as soon as I can find a place) from grandparents this year. They had to change into them of course.

This next picture is precisely why I worry about putting them in dance. Joe's not going to like it either :). Seriously, where does Elizabeth get these poses??

After a pretty bad bout of the flu that went through our family (minus Nate, thankfully), we managed to make it home. It is good to be home although it was so much fun seeing everyone.

And, since this post is suffering from a serious shortage of Nathaniel pictures, here are some:

Taking a quick nap while the girls were getting ready for bed

A happy dream....
Look at that chubby face!
Grabbing on to the toys on his bouncer
So proud of himself

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Happy Birthday to Natalie

We have the internet again after 2 weeks without it. It was kind of nice to have an internet cleanse, of sorts, but I'm so glad to have it back. Maybe I can at least scale back the amount of time I spend on the computer now that I know I can live without it.

Now, on to the task of trying to catch up on here. We have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. The most important event was Natalie's birthday. Unfortunately, the camera died right as the celebration began. We got some video of it at least.

Here are the only pictures from the day.

Natalie decided on a Don cake.
Don is a character from her new favorite show Dinosaur Train.

For some reason, the kids and I all ended up wearing red that day. It really wasn't intentional. We had to take some pictures, though:

I can't believe my Natalie is 3 now. At the same time, it seems like she has been 3 for awhile. I guess it's because she is always wanting to be older than she is. She definitely wants to be known as a "big girl". She tries so hard to act like one, too.

She has been SO excited to go to Primary (at church) and the nursery kids got to come in for part of it last Sunday. I had been helping Elizabeth write a talk she was giving (which she gave all by herself! We were so proud.) and Natalie insisted on writing one, too. I said that was fine and helped her write something out. As soon as Primary ended, she suddenly burst into tears because she didn't get a chance to give her talk. I didn't realize that she thought she was going to be able to say it in Primary. If she had been given a chance, I have no doubt she would have marched up there and done it perfectly and not been scared at all. She is so funny that way.

Natalie has always been musically minded. I remember when she was a baby, if someone was singing, she would just stop and stare at them. Just kind of taking it in. She still loves music. She is always singing whatever song is in her head at the time (I wonder where she gets that from? :). It is so cute. But, if she doesn't know the words to a song she gets VERY frustrated. It's kind of funny to watch, actually. So, Joe or I usually have to stop between lines and tell her the line ahead of time to she can sing it. She knows the words to lots of songs because of this.

We love our Natalie and are so proud of all that she is learning and who she is becoming. We can't imagine life without her.

Sayings to Remember

(I've been compiling this for awhile)

-As we were getting ready for lunch one day, I was holding Nate and Natalie all of the sudden asks, "Why didn't we buy a girl baby?"

-I was making a dessert one night for a Relief Society activity and Elizabeth asked me,"Are those for the young women or the big giant women?"

-"Foof": Definition: The certain quality of a dress or skirt that allows it to stick out while twirling or stationary. Used as a verb or adjective and commonly combined with "out". I.e. "I can't wear that dress. It doesn't foof out!" or, when asked why she is standing over the air vent, "It makes my dress foofier!"

-Joe was undoing his tie in the hallway when Elizabeth said: "You'd better get dressed in your room, Daddy, because no one wants to see that."

-Whenever the girls want to make a pile of blankets they always refer to it as the "Biggest Jumping Pile Ever" and nothing less, i.e. "Mom, can we make the Biggest Jumping Pile Ever?"

Photo Shoot

We had a fun photo shoot the other day. Nate was being so smiley. I loved it. I can't believe these three are mine. How amazing is that?






And here is Elizabeth's soccer picture. I thought her smile was so great. Is it possible to show more teeth in a single picture?