Dancin Shmoo

 

This kid sure loves to dance...even while waiting in line at Kohl's.  I love her desire to dance, and that she doesn't care who's watching or where she is, and I love all the moves she makes up.  What a silly, sweet little girl I have!!

 

The Toothless Twins

Gwen and Grace, though being a year and a half apart in age, are so close in size (they wear the same size clothes and have for a couple years, and probably will for quite a few year more) that we are constantly asked if we have twins.  We get asked that every time we move, and every time we travel.  People are amazed that they aren't twins, because they look so similar too (I see an awful lot of differences, though that might be just because I am their mom).  In December, they gave everyone another reason to think they are twins.

 

About a week and a half before Thanksgiving, Gwen ran out of school, excitement oozing from her.  She finally had her first loose tooth!!  We were so excited for her, and told her to keep working on it so she could have a visit from the tooth fairy. 

 

She did work on it, but not as much as we thought she would.  So finally, on November 20th, I picked her up from school and she had lost her tooth!!  She had been wiggling it with her tongue during gym, and it had just fallen out into her lap.  When kids loose a tooth at school, they get a little tooth shaped necklace that opens up to hold the lost tooth.  Sadly, Gwen had been playing with the container through out school, and at one point the tooth had fallen out and she lost it.  Gwen was devastated because she thought the tooth fairy wouldn't visit her now.  We told her to write a note and tell the tooth fairy what happened, and the tooth fairy would understand and still leave her some money.

 

So Gwen wrote her a note, went to bed that night filled with hope, and woke up the next morning with a dollar!!  She was so excited she was just about dancing in place.  She has yet to loose another tooth, but we keep reassuring her it will happen.

About a week and a half after Gwen lost her first tooth, Gracie had a tooth become loose.  Gracie worked at her tooth a lot harder then Gwen did.  On December 8th, I took her grocery shopping with me, and when we got home she went to check on her tooth in the bathroom.  She came out with a bit of a bloody mouth, saying she had been working on it some more.  So I took a look, and it was just barely hanging on.  I was afraid that if I let her eat lunch with the tooth in her mouth, it would fall out while she ate and she would swallow it, and then we'd go through the same disappointment we did with Gwen with no tooth to put under her pillow.

 

So I told her to let me see.  I wiggled it slightly, got her a napkin, and went to wiggle it again, but had just touched it when it fell out into my hand.  Gracie could not contain her excitement, and kept declaring how me "pulling her tooth out" did not hurt at all.  She put the tooth under her pillow that night and received a dollar from the tooth fairy, just like Gwen had.  And just like Gwen, she has yet to loose another tooth as well.

The reason we call them the toothless twins is because they both lost the exact same tooth.  I have been wondering if it's common for kids to loose that tooth first, and that's why both of them lost that same bottom tooth, but it was still funny that within a few weeks, they had both lost the same tooth, and it had been both of their firsts.  We are excited for more lost teeth and more visits from the tooth fairy!!

Thanksgiving

 

So I realized this year that I am super bad at taking pictures of my kids on Thanksgiving.  I usually only get one photo of them, and that's at the end of the night when I realize I hadn't taken any photos yet.  So, these photos are pretty bad, but they are all I have of Thanksgiving.

 

We had Thanksgiving by ourselves, and really enjoyed just having some family time together.  Robbie deep fried our turkey this year and it came out soooo good, as did all the yummy food.

 

Genni had been crying right before I took this photo of her.

Georgia enjoying dinner.

Ready for some pie.

Chipmunk cheeks.

We did something new this year.  I had seen this idea online a couple years ago, but had never done it, and I guess my sister has done it before and did it again this year.  We did a thankful tree.  I free hand drew the tree on some brown packaging paper that you can get in the envelope and packing tape section of walmart and then I used my cricut to cut out a bunch of leaves in a variety of colors.  I hung the tree on a wall in our living room, and starting on November 1st, every night each one of us wrote something on a leaf that we were grateful for, and then watched over the month as our tree gained more and more leaves.  At the end of November this is what our tree looked like.

 

It was a great experience and it really helped us focus on our blessings and helped teach all of us how to recognize even the smallest blessings a bit more than we normally would have.  Some of the things we were thankful for-Heavenly Father, Christ, each member of our family, the tooth fairy, a new book, boogers (yes, one of the girls said she was thankful for boogers), the scriptures, snuggle time and a home.  There were many many more, too many to share.  I am very grateful that I was able to get this together so our family could do it this year.  We will definatly be doing it every year from now on.

3 Month Old Genesis

 

A few photos from when Genni turned 3 months old.

 

She loves sucking and gnawing on her fists.

Right after a bath...you can see why we call her Fluffy.

She loves to suck her thumb, but occasionally we catch her sucking on a finger.  She put herself to sleep sucking on a couple fingers that night.

 

She's such a cutie!!  We sure love her!!

Primary Program

 

The Primary Program was super cute this year, and the girls were super excited to participate.  I curled their hair, they got all dressed up in fancy dresses, and were jumping with excitement to go. 

 

Unfortunately, once we got there, Gwen got stage fright, and cried pretty much through the whole thing, and she was right up front, so everyone saw her bawl through 75% of the program.  Once she stopped crying though, she did really well.

 

Gracie did fantastic.  She seemed to remember all of the words to the songs, spoke really clearly when it was time for her part, and behaved so well.

 Georgia was still in nursery, so she didn't get to participate, but we got her all dressed up too and she had a lot of fun having one on one time at church with Rob and I as we switched the baby back and forth between us.

You could feel the Spirit so strongly during the program, and the testimonies of all the little kids were very touching.  Primary Program Sunday is one of my favorites, and this one was awesome!!

Happy Halloween!!

 

The kids were super excited for Halloween this year...but they are every year.  What kid doesn't get excited about trick or treating and candy?  They were also excited to wear their Halloween shirts once again (although they wore them a lot that month).

 

 Genesis wasn't too happy that afternoon, especially right after our walk home from school.

My silly Georgia...you can tell I took these pictures after school that day instead of first thing in the morning.

 Sweet Gracie

My happy Gwen

 

 All 3 excited for Halloween

 

After school the girls did their homework really fast, we ate an early dinner, then prepared to go trick or treating.  Yes, I did dress up the baby too.

 

Genni was a pirate.  When I was at Wal Mart about a month before Halloween, I found this cute little pirate onesie that had the words "I have a loaded booty" printed across the bum.  It was too cute to pass up, but at that point I hadn't planned on dressing Genni up.  As time went on though, I thought it would be fun to dress her up in a costume, because I had never done it with any of the girls before on their first Halloweens.  So I took some red tulle and made a tutu skirt to go with the onesie, and I took some hankerchief fabric I had from a different project and some elastic and I made a headband and bow.  While looking through a pattern book to find a pattern for a different project, I saw a pirate costume where they had sewn some gold trimming to a pirate hat for babies to make it look like earrings, and I thought that was an excellent idea.  So I got some gold trimming and sewed it onto the headband I made, and Genni's costume was complete!!

 

My pirate baby

 

Georgia's costume was easy this year...Robbie's mom bought it for her.  We had been out shopping at The Childrens Place, and once Georgia saw it she didn't want to give it up, and since I didn't have any supplies for a costume for her yet, and I hadn't dug an old one out yet, Rob's mom got her this costume. 

 

Fairy Georgia

 

Gracie really wanted to be a witch this year.  I found a witches hat at Target and the tights at Wal Mart.  I took a black skirt and sewed purple and black tulle onto the outside of the skirt and put some black and silver trimming around the top.  I shortened the sleeves on the shirt, added some green tulle and the same purple tulle as the skirt, and put the same trimming as the skirt around the edge.  Then I added a bit of both the green and purple tulles, and the rest of the trimming, to the hat, and she had her costume!!

 

Gracie the Good Witch

 

Gwen really wanted to be Princess Merida this year-it's her new favorite Disney Princess.  We didn't buy a wig, because they are kind of expensive, and we forgot to get the red hairspray they sell for Halloween, so we just curled her hair.  I had planned on making her dress out of a pair of womens blue capris that I found at Goodwill, but after I got them home and had pulled all the seams in the pants out, I discovered what I had feared-that they were too short.  So I bought some blue satin fabric, covered the entire top of the pants that I would use as the bodice with the fabric, then attached a long satin skirt to the bodice, with the rest of the capris cut loose underneath to add some fluff.  I used a pattern to make the sleeves from scratch, added them on, then took a beige with gold embossing fabric and put it around the bottom of the skirt, and the chest of the bodice.  Around the bodice I also added some gold ribbon, and then made the belt with a gold belt loop and the same beige with gold embossing fabric as the bottom and chest of the dress.  It was a little bit big in the shoulders, but it turned out super cute, and I hope that one of the other girls will wear it in the future.

 

Princess Merida Gwen

The girls ended up with soooo much candy (a Ziploc bag each, between Boo at the Zoo trick or treating, and Halloween night trick or treating), and were just super pleased with their costumes and happy with all the family time we had, and there's nothing better than seeing my girls so happy.  What a great Halloween!!

Carving Pumpkins And Halloween Cookies

 

The night before Halloween the girls were so excited to carve pumpkins, and Robbie made it even more fun for them by deciding to have them make Halloween shaped sugar cookies.  Before dinner he rolled out the dough on the table and the girls cut them out using Halloween cookie cutters (a bat, Frankenstein, the word boo, a ghost, and a skull).  The girls were so good about it...they hardly made a mess, and remembered to take turns with each other, and made sure everyone got their turn.  Then while we ate dinner, the cookies baked.

 

And while they cooled, after we finished dinner, Robbie helped the girls carve their pumpkins while I fed the baby.  He was such a trooper, helping all three of them de-goop their pumpkins, letting them draw their own faces on their pumpkins, then cutting those faces out.  What an awesome man I have!!

 

Georgia and her pumpkin

Gwen and her pumpkin

 

Grace and her pumpkin

After we cleaned up the pumpkin mess, we decorated the cookies.  Each of the girls had to have their own knife, because towards the end they started licking the icing off of the knives.

 

Georgia demonstrating the proper way to lick icing off of a knife hahahahaha.



Gracie had a lot of fun decorating the cookies.

Gwen got very creative with the icing and the sprinkles on her cookies.

The next day before we went trick or treating we put our pumpkins out front.  They looked so good, and the girls did an excellent job of coming up with faces for their pumpkins.

Halloween here we come!!