five things

1. On Monday I noticed Baby Jesus was missing from our nativity.  When I asked her about it Jilly said she hid him from the "scary guys" (wisemen.)  I thought perhaps this was a good time to remind her of the true Nativity story.  I delegated to Bryan and he pulled out all the stops.  I'm sure Mary and Joseph were quite grateful when Snow White offered them the stable behind her pink palace.

2.  The Sound of Music is my favoritefavoritefavorite movie ever so I was excited for last night's live version.  Bryan, no doubt, appreciated me singing along and noting every single discrepancy from the original.  (At one point he asked, "did you do anything else as a child besides watch this movie?")  I enjoyed it, but even though Carrie Underwood has an amazing voice, she's no Julie Andrews. 

3. Jilly was bald until she turned one so I'm at a loss with Mattie's baby hair.  It keeps growing long in random places and I don't have the heart to cut it.  For example: see long wispy above her left ear.  Someone please stage an intervention.

4. Speaking of Mattie, on a scale of 1-10 how lame is it for us to just give her batteries for Christmas so she can make full use of Jilly's old toys?

5. It is suddenly freezing cold here.  We may even get some snow on Saturday (slight slight slight chance but we'll take it.)  And, of course my California girl wouldn't dream of covering her outfits with a coat; she'd rather get frostbite.

Happy Weekend!

Road Trip

Driving to Arizona was our fourth big road trip of the year.  12+ hours in a car (one way) with a toddler and a baby is not my most favorite activity ever, but visiting family is, so I suppose it's worth it.  This time we decided to break up the drive.  On Saturday morning we drove about 6 hours down to Santa Monica.  We played on the beach and had a picnic, then walked on the pier and got dinner.  Jilly's draw dropped approximately 6 inches when she saw the ferris wheel so we had to go for a ride, which was so fun.  After dinner we put our sleepy girls in the car and drove a couple more hours to Palm Springs where we stayed in a hotel.  On Sunday we drove the last 4 hours to Mesa and were so relieved and happy to finally be out of the car and with family.  (More on the rest of our trip to come!)

 Jilly's first jumping picture- a special moment in any girl's life

 Jilly's "little bed" in the hotel- she thought it was the greatest thing ever

Christmas Book Countdown

Last year I had great intentions of wrapping Christmas books for Jilly to open and read one each night.  I did wrap a few, but I started too late to get any from the library, and we left Dec 15th for Virginia so there just wasn't enough time for me to get my act together.  This year I was determined to make it happen.

Early in November I started to check out the holiday bookshelves and request books.  This means that many of my books are due back in early December which will be kind of tricky.  I wrote the name of each book on the back of the wrapping paper just in case I can't renew (an excellent tip from Janssen.)

And, speaking of Janssen, this year she spent a great deal of time compiling a wonderful list of holiday books.  So if you want a thoughtful and well-researched list go here.  But, if you want my much less researched and less thorough list you're in the right place.

We started last night and Jilly was thrilled to have a present to open (especially since we came home from our trip with lots of presents she's not allowed to open for 24 more days.)  It was fun to have a new Christmas book to read in addition to our usual lineup of princess stories.

Also, as a disclaimer, we don't quite have 24 books so there won't be one every day.  The chances of us unwrapping a book and reading it every single night in December are slim to none so I'm not concerned.

Books we own-
1. Great Joy - The story will be a little over Jilly's head but the illustrations are beautiful.
2. Twas the Night Before Christmas - a classic, and I memorized all the words with my fourth graders and I always love a chance to show off (Jilly is sure to be impressed.)
3. All About Jesus - a funny little book that came from the Target Dollar Spot
4. Queen of Christmas I love Mary Engelbreit, and this story about a girl obsessed with having the perfect Christmas is right up my alley
5. The Teacher's Night Before Christmas - a fellow teacher gave this to me and it brings back so many memories of fun and crazy Decembers in a classroom
6. This is the Stable - a sweet book telling about Christ's birth
7. The Polar Express- pure magic, I believe it's impossible to not love this book
8. Gingerbread Baby - kind of long for a three-year-old but fabulous illustrations
9. I Spy Little Christmas - "I Spy" books are always a hit, this one is a nice small size to keep in my diaper bag after we've opened it

Books from the library- (In all honesty, I haven't read a lot of these, I've either heard good things about them or thought they looked cute)
10. The Christmas Quiet Book  - I love all of Deborah Underwood's books
11. Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree
12. One Starry Night  - These illustrations are so pretty
13. A Song in Bethlehem
14. Christmas is Here
15. Room for a Little One: A Christmas Tale
16. Snowmen at Christmas - another book that brings back great teaching memories
17. Llama Llama Holiday Drama - we love the Llama Llama books
18. Millie in the Snow
19. Santa Mouse
20. Christmas in the Country
21.  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - I love this book, and am delighted by a children's version

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!