Curls!!

I tried this ridiculously simple thing I found on pinterest - it's changed my life. :-) Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration - but WOW! I have never mastered the hair curling thing, I'm not good at it, it takes me FOREVER!! and the curls fall out super fast. This is amazing!! It takes 3, count them, 3 minutes to do, sleep on it and presto!!! Super curly!
This is Clare and I last night, my hair was dry, hers wet:
(disclaimer - this is not sexy! At all. Chris says I look like the mom from that 70s show.)




And this morning: TA DAH!

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas! This year we...

Got a new Christmas card. (Thanks Heidi!):
We tried on Santa hats:
We made gingerbread men:
(Ok, we bought a kit and we decorated gingerbread men!)


We wrote and mailed our letters to Santa:

We got an adorable Christmas card from Shea:
("Dear Mom and Dad. I love you vary much. Love Shea." The picture is of me at the "hose" on the couch with my laptop (hmmm? Do I spend too much time on the computer??) And dad at BYU in his office.) First grade art (and spelling) rules!
We got surprised on Christmas Eve by Kim and Reilley! Yay!:
We got EVERYTHING we wanted!:

Look how happy we are:
We sewed, and sewed and sewed:
(Until the wee hours of Christmas Eve to get the Belle dress done. She loves it, but loves the $3 one her brother gave her more! Urgg! :-)

We got a family picture!!
(All the Floods minus Michael's family.)
Merry Christmas!!

First Ballet Recital

Her first ballet recital! She loved it. Loved. It.

Waiting in the green room for her class' turn:

Backstage:
I thought she might get nervous and just stand there. But nope! She did every move.


Love you little ballerina.

Joy

Doing laundry with a one year old is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. Who remembers that pulling clothes out of the dryer is that much fun?? He is thrilled by it!! And who knew that putting clothes in baskets was so exciting? He laughs and laughs and is tickled pink by himself. And then pulls them out again and laughs some more.

And who remembers that climbing stairs was so exhilarating? It's like he has gate radar that tells him the second the gate's been taken down and he makes a beeline for the stairs where he laughs and smiles and giggles the whole way up.

Let's not even mention the excitement and danger of the dishwasher! Oh the thrill! The things he pulls out and dumps on the floor clang and bang and make such fun noises. He's beside himself with joy.

And walking! Walking! So exciting, so much fun! Liberating! Exhilarating!

I adore this child, I wish I were as thrilled as he is by everything around him. Oh, the joy!

Imaginative Play

I LOVE when they reach the stage where they can use their imagination with their toys. Clare is there now and will go for hours off on her own with toys. I overhear the MOST adorable things. This day all the princesses and Strawberry Shortcake were taking a vacation. She lined them all up to see how they looked before they were allowed to get on the plane.




(Oh, and don't you love her outfit? I don't love when they to the stage where they have to pick out their own clothes. :-)

One of my favorite Pinterest finds yet

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this! We've had it a week now and it is totally, completely empty tonight. It's a healthy snack bin. Shea and Clare helped me pick, shop for, wash, cut up and bag all the veggies and fruit. Then we filled the bin. It has a little light ranch cup for each of them and celery sticks, mini cucumbers, baby carrots, fresh broccoli, clementine segments, grapes and some cheese sticks. The idea is any time they're hungry anything in the bin is fair game. No more snacks of goldfish, doritos or cookies!!! They have LOVED it and have eaten more vegetables this week than ever. They are such good eaters and love good food - I wish I'd done this sooner for them. We're off to the grocery store tomorrow to refill our bin - this week, we're adding pickles!!! :-)

Winter fun

One thing we really like about Utah is playing in the snow. It's only really snowed twice this winter and both times we were out there at 7:30 in the morning because the kids couldn't wait!


These three's first snowman EVER!!
Snowman #2 was much more impressive.

We were going to make a GIANT snowman but only got this far:

When we realized we'd never be able to lift ball #2 onto it, so we turned it into an EGGloo instead. :-)


Fionn loved playing in the snow at first...


But got tired of it pretty quick:

They can't wait for it to snow again. I think a bigger, better, igloo is on the way...

Just reading her scriptures

I love this girl. :-) I walked in the room and she was in this sweet little spot, in a princess dress, turning pages and telling herself Book of Mormon stories.

Shark Teeth

Shea had two permanent teeth come in before his baby teeth fell out, so he had two rows just like a shark. It was cool and all, but the dentist thought the baby teeth should come out so the permanent teeth had more room. So first things first, he hadn't lost any teeth yet, so we had to make the tooth pillow. The patch is the pocket, how cute is he??:

Originally found here

Then he got the teeth pulled and got to stay home from school and eat milkshakes, applesauce and Yogurtland (there is one in UTAH now!) all day.
There were two huge holes at first, but now you can't even tell there were any teeth or holes there at all and his permanent teeth have moved right to the front.

His offering for the tooth fairy:
Since these were his first teeth, he was very interested in what we thought the Tooth Fairy would bring him. I told him that she used to bring me a quarter. He looked at me and said, "The price has gone up since then, right?!!" :-) Little did he know, the tooth fairy would bring him $5/per tooth!!!! (It's a long story and was an ACCIDENT!) We assured him it was probably only because it was a special situation that they were shark teeth and the dentist had to pull them, but not to expect that next time. We'll see if we have tears or not when he really looses his first tooth!