Friday Five

1. Can we talk about 3-year-old tantrums?  Everyone warned me 3 was worse than 2 but I thought there was no way.  I stand corrected.  It's like the moment she turned 3 Jilly's tantrums escalated into full-out screaming, kicking, crying, total meltdowns.  Too many treats, not enough sleep, and a lingering cold are definitely part of the problem, but if this lasts all year we may not make it.  My wise mother who survived 6 three-year-olds suggested making a happy chart so we're trying it out.  Here's hoping.

2. While making Jell-o Jigglers this week for preschool (betcha can't guess what letter we did) I burned my hand.  I was stirring my first batch and left the burner on to heat up the water for the second batch. I moved the pan to a different burner but the handle was over the hot burner and when I grabbed that handle yowza!!!  I had to sleep with an ice pack in my hand and have little blisters on some of my fingers and palm.

3. My friend gave us an exersaucer that her kids had grown out of (there are few things more exciting to me than hand-me-downs.)  We never had one with Jilly and I'm wondering how we ever survived.  Mattie loves her new toy, and of course I do too.

4.  Some things we've been loving lately: Target cartwheel app, playing game after game after game of Uno, these banana pumpkin muffins, Christmas music, Duck Dynasty, playing with leftover birthday balloons, Insurgent (equally as good as Divergent), Mattie sitting up, tissues (there has been at least one runny nose in our house at all times for the past 3 weeks), and glitter (working on Christmas projects!)

5. Even though Thanksgiving is super late this year, it totally snuck up on me.  We are heading down to AZ and are so lucky to get to see both sides of our family.  We'll get to meet our sweet new nephew Knox and see his family, and spend time with all of my family (hooray!)

thankful

Last year we made a thankful tree with real branches we found outside but this year I decided to make it a little more kid-friendly.  I rolled up brown craft paper for branches/trunk and hot glued them to a poster board.  We have enjoyed filling our tree up with construction paper leaves.

Jilly loves to pick out leaves and write on them and glue them up herself.  One day she grabbed a leaf and said "I thankful for home!"  Melt my heart.

(Did you notice that Bryan had to clarify that I am the one grateful for a cell phone- yet I'm pretty sure he couldn't live without his either.)

Between our Thankful Tree and this month's Friend magazine, we've been talking a lot about being grateful, and it's fun to see Jilly really excited about saying thank you.

Birthday-ing

It's a little much to have one daughter turn 3 then the other daughter turn 6 months 2 days later.  It was a week of celebrating and a lot of sweet-eating.

On Monday night we went to Chuck E Cheese with Jilly's friend Kylie who also has a birthday in November.  The girls had fun playing games- and so did the dads.  Bryan hit the jackpot on one of the games and got 200 tickets.  Jilly was so excited as they kept coming and coming and coming.

On her birthday morning Jilly opened a few gifts and we had pancakes.  We gave her these chairs (from Ikea) to go with her little table.  I must admit these were kind of a gift for me since she loves to sit there and play by herself.

The thing Jilly wanted most for her birthday was to go to the park with her friends and have them sing to her and eat cupcakes.  Done and done.  We made these rainbow cupcakes and had so much fun with our friends.

 In the afternoon Jilly got to skype with her Gigi and Grandpa and open their presents.  She also got to facetime with her aunts and her Nana and got lots of texts from other family members.  When Bryan got home we went to "Chick-A-Way" and then sang once again and ate cake.  My friend had an Aurora cake topper she let me borrow, but cake decorating is absolutely not one of my talents.  I got frustrated and gave up and Bryan fixed it up a bit when he got home.  Jilly was happy and that's all that matters.

 Friday was Mattie's half birthday, and conveniently we still had half of the Aurora cake left.  We put a little candle in it, sang, and helped her blow it out.  Then we all ate cake and Mattie ate squash- yum.

We love these girlies of ours.

Mattie: six months

Oh this girl.
She's an expert army crawler
And an amateur sitter
Her favorite food is paper
But she also likes oatmeal, sweet potatoes, applesauce, and squash
She's smiley and giggly
And loves toys toys toys
Her one little tooth is sharp as can be
And she's the best thing to happen to the three of us.

Happy Half Birthday Mattie Claire, we love you!

birthday girl

Today she is three

Things to love about Jilly:

- she says "purty" instead of pretty

- she's always quick to say thank you

- her favorite foods are chicken nuggets, rice, graham crackers, and chocolate milk

- she's way into directions and knows how to get to the library from our house

- she looooves her baby sister (until Mattie grabs her hair)

- she's thoughtful and always looking out for others (occasionally crossing the border over to bossiness)

- she's always singing- both real and songs of her own creation

- she's constantly asking to help with whatever I'm doing

- she's 100% girl, loves dresses, princesses, nail polish, and anything sparkly

zero- 

one-

 two-

three-

F is fun

F was a very fun letter for preschool.  I got some feathers to use to practice the "f" sound.  Then we talked about frogs and foxes and flamingos.  This frog puppet was a huge hit- the kids enjoyed feeding it feet and feathers.

We made F's with our bodies and practiced writing F's on whiteboards.

 I let them watch a clip of the Monster Mash so they could see who Frankenstein was (this was back before Halloween.)

Then we made Frankensteins

 Next was fruit faces; I made pancakes before preschool, then spread peanut butter on them and gave the kids cut up apples and bananas to make faces- they turned out darling and delicious.

We practiced funny faces, colored an F page, and read Rainbow Fish then it was time to go.  Love these kids!

five

1. This happened this week and I was most definitely the most excited about it.  Better luck with tandem swinging next time.

2. Against my better judgment I bought Jilly a box of princess band-aids.  By now there are only a handful left as the invisible mortal wound on her foot has required bandage changing at least four times a day.

3. A funny light came on in my dashboard so I sent Bryan a picture.  He clearly is very concerned.

4. Annnnnd we have a tooth coming in.  Not quite sure how I feel about this new development in my baby's life.

5. Bryan is taking his birthday day off today so technically our weekend started last night with ice cream and a family trip to the mall.  We're thrilled to have an extra day with Daddy this week.

Happy Weekend Y'all!

birthday celebrations

We had a fun weekend celebrating Bryan's thirtieth.  His parents came on Saturday and we went to Apple Hill for pony rides-

running through a hay maze-

and the main attraction- buttermilk apple berry pie

Bryan and his dad fit in a bike ride as well.  Once back at home, we had Bryan's birthday dinner- we ordered a few sushi rolls, and had edamame and chicken cilantro wontons.  It was delish.  We also did cake and presents

 

 She was a little too quiet, and we looked over to find this!

On Monday (his actual birthday) we took Bryan donuts at work, opened more presents, and went out to eat.  He's definitely our favorite 30 year old!

thirty

Today is Bryan's 30th birthday.  In his honor, I have compiled 30 Things to Know and Love about Bryan.

1. He went on a mission for our church to Fortaleza, Brazil

2. While there he lost 30 pounds and grew 2 inches

3. He's terrible at folding clothes; I re-fold nearly every shirt he folds

4. But he always offers to help fold laundry

5. He does the very best voices when reading to Jilly

6. He plays guitar and sings quite well

7. He hates an audience and will stop if he feels like I'm paying too much attention to him play

8. In college he bought a Pathfinder that was technically midnight blue but was often mistaken for purple

9. He prefers vanilla ice cream over chocolate

10. He hates green onions, they're the one thing he won't eat

11. If there was a fire, he would make sure the girls and I were out then go back for his bike

12. He loves scary movies

13. He played freshman football but didn't have a very successful career because he was such a shrimp

14. Until one year ago he knew maybe 3 princesses; now he can name them all and tell their stories in detail

15. This is his current driver's license picture

16. I don't know approximately 50% of the words in his resume.  Geomorphology?

17. He puts hot sauce on nearly everything

18. In high school he played trumpet in the marching band and jazz band

19. He is extremely patient- good thing to be in a house full of girls

20. He'll hate me for this, but he says "woof" instead of "wolf"  Kills me every time (Bryan, see #19)

21. In college he had a roommate named Bryan so he was always Bmar.  Everyone knew we were getting serious when I started calling him Bryan instead of Bmar.

22. If I'd make it, he'd eat Mexican food every.single.night.

23. He hates dancing.  We have danced together exactly twice in the eight years we've known each other.  But, he's a sucker for dancing with Jilly

24. He has an excellent sense of direction. He can get around better in my hometown than I can.

25. He's a great handy man- in the 2 years we've lived here he's painted the whole house, installed crown molding, tiled a floor and bathroom, taken out our old vanity and installed a new one, built a bookshelf, fixed doors, windows, sinks, garbage disposal, door bell, toilets, etc. I'm sure I'm missing a lot

26. He has run one half marathon and one full marathon.  

27. Before his marathon he said it would be his one and only but now he says he would like to do one again sometime (whenever his grouchy wife is willing to let him spend that much time training again)

28. When he was little Bryan broke his thumb and his brother (whose fault it was) convinced Bryan not to tell their parents because they'd both get in trouble.  (They eventually found out.)

29.  He's worked at a grocery store, as a pool cleaner (wish I had known him then :) ), an IT guy at BYU, a research assistant, as call-in IT support, internships in mechanical engineering and civil engineering in Pleasanton, CA, West Valley, UT, and South Jordan, UT, and his current job at WEST.

30. He's the best man I know

Happy Birthday Bry, I love you!

five on friday

one

Mattie's had a big week.  She can now sit up for a few seconds, but pillows are needed to cushion her inevitable fall.  She also can say "da da da"which is not an unexpected first word.  I'm sure she'll learn "mama" about six months from now just like her sister (stinkers.)  She also has decided she loves rice cereal; I cannot get the spoon to her mouth fast enough.

two

Sunday mornings are not my fave.  Bryan is in meetings most of the morning, and Jilly begs every 1.2 seconds to go to church (which starts at 1pm.)  Also, she insists on putting her dress on very first thing just because she enjoys watching me stress all morning about her staying clean.  This Sunday I finally convinced her to paint in the bath which provided a lovely distraction for our looong morning.

three

After our fun weekend we all came down with colds.  Jilly and I were lucky and got better quickly, but poor Bryan and Mattie have been suffering.  We're ready to say adios to the coughs, runny noses, and lack of sleep.

four

We had an unexpectedly awesome Halloween.  I hadn't really planned anything since we were recovering from colds and we'd already had a great weekend celebrating Halloween.  But first my friend invited us to go to the park, which was so fun.  After the park I had to run in the library to get a book that was on hold.  While there we found out they were about to start Afternoon Story Time (who knew??)  Jilly begged to stay and I couldn't say no.  It was Halloween themed and there were only three other little girls there so it was perfect.  We went to Jamba for free kids smoothies and came away with two- one for Jilly and one for Mattie/me.  Then we decided to go trick-or-treating with some friends who knew the ultimate place to go.  This neighborhood was filled with trick-or-treaters and there were lots of houses that were all decked out.  We had a blast.

five

And now it's November, which is quite possibly my very favorite month.  We get to celebrate birthdays of three of my very favorite people- my mom, Bryan, and Jilly.  We'll get a new nephew, take a road trip, celebrate half a year with sweet Mattie, and enjoy Thanksgiving with family.  Doesn't get much better than that.