Ella's first haircut!

Well, it wasn't planned. It wasn't needed. It wasn't asked for. But she did it anyway. My dear, sweet Ella cut a chunk of her hair out!!

Here's the story. Steve and I were upstairs. Emily and Ella were crafting downstairs. As you may recall from previous posts, Ella LOVES cutting. I guess just cutting paper was getting too menial for her. Emily comes walking upstairs. She says, "Mom, I have to tell you something." (Don't you just love how they have to preface that they are going to tell you something?) "Ella's cutting her hair!" Well, by the time I received the message, I figured the damage had already been done. I quickly yelled down the stairs for her to stop. When I went to investigate, I didn't see any cut hairs anywhere and her hair looked normal (messy at the end of the day). So I pretty much figured the scissors hadn't been able to cut the hair and dismissed the whole episode.

The next morning, I was taking out her little ponytails. As I was doing so, a HUGE chunk of hair came out with it! It took me a minute to remember the scissor incident. Then I was just sick! I couldn't believe the handful of hair I was holding!! Then as I was brushing her hair, more and more kept falling out. My shirt was covered with hair when I was done. Apparently the ponytail had been holding all the cut hairs in place. It's right above her bangs. She has all these little spiky hairs sticking up. So sad, but I guess it's a normal part of childhood. I'm surprised it wasn't right before family pictures or something...

Easter 2008

Happy Easter!
Easter came so early this year! Hard to believe it's already come and gone. We had fun with all our traditions. Here's our Family Night before Easter. We had the lesson about the real story of Easter. I have a set of Easter eggs that has something for each part of the story in them. It's a good way for the little ones to visualize what really happened and stay involved. Then we got to decorate eggs! The kit mom sent was really cool this year. It had little roller brushes, dotters, and other brushes to decorate the eggs. It was more fun that just dipping and waiting. They also stuck stickers on when they were dry.

We didn't go all out with decorating this year. We just pulled out a few bunnies and put them around the living room.
We did go to the city egg hunt on Saturday. We decided to skip the parking troubles by riding our bikes there! It's not too far, but it was still quite a stretch since it was our first outing together! Steve pulled E&E behind in the bike trailer. It was still chilly and windy!
It was a typical city egg hunt. At least it didn't start 15 minutes late like it did last year. Here's Ella's "haul".
And here's Emily when she realized it was over (after about 2 minutes.)
But we explained that the Easter Bunny visits every house so everyone can have a fun hunt at home.

Easter morning the girls followed their strings to their baskets. They both thought it was a blast and had fun following the "maze!" Emily's was pretty tricky, but she still did a great job!
And they found their overflowing Easter baskets! (Easter bunny must have had some surplus gifts lying around!) They each got some puzzles, a toy, a bunny, a stuffed dog, some gum, and a few other fun things.
Here they are, all beautiful for Easter Sunday! Thanks Grandma!
We went to Lynn's house for dinner and another hunt. The kids had a blast looking for eggs all over the yard!
Dinner was great and it was fun to spend time with family! Till next Easter!

The Band-aid Kid

Emily's been such a sweetheart the last three days. It all started on Monday morning. I'd had a rough night with stomach problems and Steve had told her to be really good for me. She's been such a sweetheart since then! She's been playing so sweetly with Ella as well. I found them playing baby in their room earlier today. Ella was asking for her Christmas baby. I mentioned that one was Emily's Christmas baby. Emily was surprised that it was actually hers. Now she says she "loves" babies! They still fight over the WonderPets though. Apparently Linny is the best. I've gotten frustrated by Ella's endless whining lately and Emily always tries to calm the situation by saying, "I love you mom!" It's been warmer lately so they've gotten out on their bikes. Emily loves to go around the block now. She's not very strong yet, so she gets frustrated on inclines. She loves to be outdoors. Tonight we went on a family walk. We brought the double stroller just in case, but Emily ended up walking almost the whole way! My baby's getting big!! And to top it all off was what she said tonight. She asked Steve for a bandaid. He said (somewhat irritated), "Ok, Band-aid kid." When he came back, Emily said, "Daddy, I love you, but I didn't like it when you called me Band-aid kid." What a sophisticated way to talk! What a cutie!

Emily's favs

Emily's a big 5 year old now! She actually does surprise me with moments of maturity. Her make-believe world is amazing. She loves to recreate movies, shows and books. She's back into Wonderpets now. We had a Toys R Us gift card so we went and bought the 3 characters' plush toys. They love them a little too much. 3 toys and 2 kids is a little too much for a mom and dad to bear. Tonight's the first night they haven't screamed at bedtime because of fighting over which one they want. For now one has to sleep on the humidifier and "watch over" them. (That and threatening them that they will all go in the trash if we hear even one cry.) Emily's prayers are starting to vary up a little. However for the most part, she uses prayers as a manipulation tool. "Bless that we'll have a fun, fun, fun, fun, fun day." "Bless that Ella will stop talking during my prayer." "Bless that Ella will stop being annoying and share with me." You get the picture. She still asks the Holy Ghost to watch over her every night. And now she reminds us to pray to feel better if we are sick. Tonight I was complaining that my hands hurt - I have really bad eczema - she walked out of the bathroom, buck naked, and said, "You should pray for Heavenly Father to help your hands feel better." And then she did just that during her prayer! Emily loves to play with friends. And she still prefers boys to girls. Steve thinks it's because boys will let her boss them around. Tonight she saw our neighbor jumping on her trampoline and Ella and Emily went over to play. It's hard watching my kids grow up and play somewhere else. I watched them walk all the way over there and practically watched them play the whole time! Emily just jumped and jumped! Ella sat on it for awhile, then the little girl pushed her on the swing forever!
Emily is becoming quite the artist. She used to be the one-color kid, that bugs me so much, but now she uses all the correct colors and does a great job! Here's her latest picture. (You'll notice the paper is wrinkled - guess who did that to bug her sister?)
Here's Emily searching for Leprechaun gold at preschool. All the kids made Leprechaun traps at home. Guess who's kid had the most basic trap? No, not Mason. :) You should see some of these traps the families make. One was in a wooden box - made just for this purpose. It had a metal grate that could be lifted. When something touched the mousetrap inside (which had a gold coin for bait), the trap would trigger a flashing shamrock to go off. And then the decorating was another story. Sheesh! Is this what I have to compete with when Emily goes to school? Speaking of school, I just wrote a nice long letter to the principal concerning kindergarten next year. Yes, I'm one of those parents. Well you would too if you'd heard some of the horror stories I've heard about this year. 3 kids in my ward alone have pulled their children from kindergarten this year! She responded just to say that she would look into some of the issues and get back to me. Believe me, I'll be on top of things next year. (Of course, once Ella gets into school, things will be different!) Emily will do well, I think - academically at least. She can sound out simple words now. Socially, I hope kindergarten will be good for her! She's sure excited!

Ella's favs

Ella sure is getting bigger. She's speaking so much more now. I love when she says, "OH, MY GOSH!" and every word is drawn out. It's adorable. She says the same prayer for every occasion. "Dear Heav'nly Fader, Thank you food, Christ AMEN!" For some reason, though, she has a stubborn streak. She hates being told no. Here's a picture of her after being told no.
She also LOVES to push her sister's buttons. And she does it SO well. She also loves to do things she's not supposed to, she gets the most evil grin. It's sure hard to stay mad at her. She LOVES to dress up and always looks adorable. She's VERY excited to be a preschool kid. She's already a pro with scissors. She'll cut a paper into the tiniest pieces imaginable! She knows several letters and sounds already. The other day she was playing Mason's Leapster game. Her name wasn't on the list so I just told her to push "Guest." Hours later she said, "What's my name?" I said, "Ella." She said, "No, Guest!" She recognizes her name as well. She loves to color. Her tactic is to color has hard as she can. I love that she uses lots of colors. The one thing that bugs me about kids' coloring is when they use one color for a whole picture!! Unfortunately, most of her pictures get cut up into a thousand pieces, so I don't have much to save.

Asp -isms

I keep meaning to write down some of the cute things my kids do. Unfortunately, now that I'm attempting it, I'll forget half of them!
*Whenever I compliment Ella, she always responds with, "I know." Man that kid has quite the self esteem.
*Ella loves to sing. She has a very cute, very low singing voice. Her favorite songs lately have been: "ABCDEFG now I know my name" (that's the whole song), "Tuesday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday" (trying to sing the days of the week songs), "Jack and Jill went up the hill, Jack and Jill went up the hill" (same phrase over and over), "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" (again over and over), "Wonderpets, wonderpets, ..." (Even I can't remember the whole theme song), and "What's going to work? Teamwork!"
*Emily loves to look at the wedding pictures I have in my bedroom. They used to always thing that I was walking up some stairs on my bridge over the stream picture. Now she'll look at the pictures and tell me stories about them. Her last story was, "One day you were going to get married. So you walked across the bridge to get to the castle. Then you found your husband and got married." She always tells me how beautiful I looked when I got married - "before I was in your tummy." Sometimes when I pull some of my hair up to dry or curl the bottom, she says, "You look beautiful - just like in your married pictures!"
*One day Ella hit her head with her palm and declared, "Aye, yigh, yigh!!" I laughed so now the girls are constantly covering their eye and saying, "Eye, yigh, yigh!"
Well, that's it for my short-term, over the hill (according to Paige), almost 10:00 brain. I'm sure I'll remember some more later!

Happy Birthday Sweet Emily!

My sweet little Emily turned 5 on Wednesday! It was her golden birthday! Steve and I have the philosophy that you're only little once and you only get one birthday a year so go all out! I already blogged about the fun Ariel birthday party she had last week. She talks about her past birthday parties all year long, so we're glad to be making these memories with her. They're kind of like family vacations for us. They really bring our family together and we do everything we can to make everyone feel special and make it memorable. Well on her actual birthday we started out early opening her presents before Steve went to work. Her favorite gift was the stuffed Pegasus we gave her. She still loves Hercules and now she can imagine even more! Next we headed to the Children's Museum.







We've been slacking off lately and haven't been since January. We took Mason and had a blast! Their new exhibit is Sesame Street's The Body. It is SUPER cute. I was very impressed. Everything was very hands-on and very well done.

Here's some pictures from that exhibit.






















That night we met Lynn and Paige's family at Chucky E. Cheese for yet more fun. That place lives up to it's name - Where a Kid can be a Kid. Emily grabbed a cup of tokens and was off! She didn't need any help at all. Her favorites were Skeeball and shooting water at a target. She scored tons of tickets!! She loved it and has asked to return everyday since! She's just at the perfect age. I remember taking her there on her 1st birthday and she rode a few rides, but was pretty much scared of them. Steve helped Ella find some fun games, but she's not quite ready for most of it yet. They had fun picking a few prizes with the tickets they won.

Beyond that, we've been celebrating at preschool all week as well! We are learning about the letter U - so I thought the theme Unbirthday would be appropriate! I already had all the birthday stuff out! So it's been a crazy week for me. I also had a lot to do to prepare for our primary activity on Saturday. It was missionary themed and we had 7 stations/countries that the kids rotated to. The kids each received a mission call to one of the stations earlier in the week calling them to one of the countries. They came dressed like missionaries. When they got there we started at the MTC and then seperated to our different countries. I was in charge of a station for Germany. I showed them some castle pictures and told them some Christmas traditions. Then I had them build their own castles out of toothpicks and marshmallows. They all enjoyed it and really enjoyed the whole activity. We rotated every 10 minutes, then met again where we got our mission picture and got released. The missionaries in our area came and did a station and got a picture with all the kids. It was a very successful activity.

Today I've been filling out all of Emily's Kindergarten registration papers and calling all the teachers I supervise. Life never slows down, does it! Maybe tomorrow I'll actually get last week's laundry folded and Emily's presents put away. I eventually got all the streamers down on Thursday finally! I'm in for another busy week!