Happy Birthday Elise!

(catching up from July!)

Elise turned 5 this year, and she had so much fun on her birthday. In the morning, we had a house full of kids over to celebrate her birthday. They wore mermaid tails (the girls), played with glittery salt dough and seashells, had a message-in-a-bottle treasure hunt, played with balloon "bubbles" and passed a seashell like a hot potato (if it stops on you, you lose your voice). If you didn't already know, could you guess I like planning themed parties?



In the evening, we continued the mermaid fun with the extended family. We had an ocean themed dinner including a watermelon whale and a tuna casserole made with shell noodles. Our families are so great to come to these get-togethers.

Elise is great to have in our family. She is so helpful with her sister and brother, and pretty independent when she wants to be. Elise is always having bright ideas. It seems like several times a day I hear, "I know! We could..." I am so glad most of these ideas are positive and constructive instead of sneaky and destructive.
Elise loves playing outside, inviting friends over, making crafts, reading and writing (with help), dress ups, family night, making surprises, playing school/primary/dance class with Lydia, anything girly, and games of all kinds. She is so cute and we love her very much!

Happy Birthday Lydia

(still catching up from July!)


My tiny little Lydia is now a big 3 year old! We celebrated her birthday with a butterfly themed party for the family. My brother's kids came over earlier in the day to be tended, and we made butterflies out of paper towels for decorations. I also made a butterfly cake. Thanks to all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for coming and spoiling her with all the cute gifts!

We love our Lydia-bug so much. She is so much fun. I love to hear the things that come out of her mouth. She seems to say whatever she is thinking, and give play-by-plays of everything she is doing. She loves singing and dancing, tickles, silliness, Dora and Diego, playing with Elise and sometimes Tyler, books at bedtime, coloring, fruit snacks, her ducky, puzzles, and so many more things. She is still below the 1st percentile on the pediatrician's chart, for both height and weight, but she is healthy and happy, just tiny. We are so glad she is in our family!

St. George Trip

My plan is to catch up my blog, so if you are reading this, you have to endure things that are almost 3 months past!

We went to St. George over the 4th of July weekend with my parents and a couple of my brothers. My uncle Carlton has a condo there that he graciously lets us use. We usually go in February but this year it was July. It was really warm, but it was fun. This was definitely Elise's idea of a vacation because she got to go swimming 3 whole times! A better mom than I would have taken her swimming all summer long to her heart's content, but it's kinda stressful with 3 kids (one of them a baby) and only 1 mom.
Other highlights of the trip:

We stopped in Historic Cove Fort on the way down. It was the perfect stop to stretch our legs, and I was able to feed Tyler while we sat in the dark watching a video about the site.

My parents tended all the kids while we went to the St. George Temple.

We took a tour around town, with tour guides dressed as early residents of St. George.

We saw dinosaur tracks at the Dinosaur Discovery museum. Well, most of us did. Lydia fell asleep during the educational movie.

We drove the route of the St. George Marathon, so Marianne could see the big hill (she is in training).

My mom and I stopped on the side of the road and painted pictures of the landscape with my mom's watercolors. Hers was serious art, in my opinion, even though she says she's out of practice. Mine was just for fun (but I wish I could remember where I put it). Elise and Lydia also made masterpieces with markers.

We celebrated my dad's birthday. My dad is awesome.

We ate at a horrible restaurant (all my fault, I picked it). I wish I could remember what it was called, but it was a hotel restaurant and the menu was overpriced and had so few choices it was almost funny. Lydia fell asleep before her food came out. Apparently she was very tired on this trip!

We sat on the driveway of the condo and lit fireworks. We didn't keep the kids up to see the actual firework show.

Eric caught a frog and tricked Elise into kissing it (he moved the frog just as I took the picture so she was actually kissing it instead of just pretending). Brothers!