Valentine's Day 2011

We celebrated Valentine's Day with the kids a couple of days early, since Don was flying the actual Valentine's Day.  They made cards for each other and us and we all exchanged them.  We gave the girls little cards, some chocolates, and each received a little gift. Alexis got an Ariel playset, Emily got a Sleeping Beauty playset, and Ashley got a little baby Cinderella doll.  They were so sweet, excitedly opening their gifts and even more excitedly giving us and each other their cards. 

Alexis' 9th Birthday

We had a Little House on the Prairie party for Alexis' 9th Birthday.  We had just finished reading all the books in the series for our bedtime stories so both girls were really excited about the party.  We invited grandparents and a couple of families we do a homeschool bookclub with.  The Herchi's weren't able to make it, but we enjoyed having the Rowlee family over.  We also had Aunt Becca and Uncle Jason over. The night before the party Uncle Jason surprised Alexis by showing up when he said he couldn't make it.  You should have heard the squeals of delight coming from the girls when he arrived.  We let her open one gift that night - Apples to Apples Jr., and we all played together with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Becca, and Uncle Jason.  We also exchanged Valentines with them that night.  The next morning after everyone arrived and the children had played for a little bit, we started the party games.  The first game we did was a butter making contest.  We gave the children and a few adults little baby food jars filled with cream and let them shake them until it turned into butter.  They worked on it through the next several games.  I think Uncle Jason ended up being the first to make butter.  While they were all shaking, we took turns playing pin the tail on Jack.  Then we played musical circles, using pictures of each of the Little House books.  After that we played drop the clothespin into the glass jar.  Then we all went on a hunt for Almanzo's horse, Lady, who ran away. We found her - which was a pinata - and all the kids pulled on the ribbons and enjoyed the chocolate kisses and little sets of jacks that came out.  Then Alexis opened her gifts.  She received so many wonderful gifts.  She got a fairy doll that winds up and plays music, a Bindi the Jungle Girl doll, a fabric basket I made for her with lots of scraps of material, a fairy garden, a build your own fairy house kit, and many more wonderful gifts.  After that we enjoyed cake and ice cream and more visiting with our friends and family.  Alexis is such a sweet little girl.  She always tries and worries so much about choosing the right. She learning how to knit and loves helping me cook and is learning to cook some things on her own.  She's a wonderful big sister and loves her little sisters so much.  Her favorite things to study are history, literature, art, and science.  She loves making crafts and singing and enjoys being one of the youngest members of our church choir.  She loves learning new homemaking type tasks and loves helping me do chores like laundry or mopping.  She’s very interested in pioneers and fairies and has been working on building a fairy house.  She started taking piano lessons this year from a wonderful lady in our ward and she’s doing really well.  She loves to practice and does so multiple times a day. One of her favorite things to do is to curl up with a good book and she loves making up games, stories, and plays.  She's such a blessing in our home and we love her so much.

Valentine's Day Party

For one of our bimonthly homeschool bookclub meetings in February we had a Valentine's Day party for the kids.  They all made Valentine's at home and then we got together and decorated bags to put them in.  Then they all deposited their Valentine's into their friend's bags. They had so much fun looking into bags and exclaiming with little "oohs!" and "awws!" over their cards.  We also read them a couple of Valentine's Day picture books and we had some yummy Valentine's Day snacks and treats and of course the kids had a blast playing and playing.  I forgot to bring my camera, but I was able to 'borrow' this picture from another mom's blog.  :)

Florida Vacation at the Beach

After our fun week at Disneyworld we headed over to Daytona Beach for another week.  We started out by showing the girls our first 2 apartments we lived in and then our house.  It's funny how when I thought we would visit our old house it would feel like visiting home, but it didn't at all.  It's like that particular home is in another place and time and now our home is where we are.  The girls enjoyed seeing them, though.  Then we checked into our hotel.  We got a hotel on the beach so we went down almost immediately to play in the sand and wade in the cold water.  The next day we went to church in our old ward and got to see a few old friends.  Alexis enjoyed seeing Audrey.  She didn't remember her but I told her they were in the same nursery and sunbeam class together.  I pointed her out and Alexis thought it was hysterical to run up to her and say, "Hi, Audrey!" as if they knew each other.  Audrey was a bit confused but Alexis explained who we were and I guess they had fun visiting the rest of church.  ;)  We also met up at the park with Noah, who used to play with Alexis.  They didn't really remember each other either and when Sharon and I introduced them Noah just said, "Oh." and then ran off.  :)  But after a little while we found them playing tag together.  It was rather cute.  We also got to visit with our dear friends, the Blick family.  They came over one day and we played on the beach together and swam at our hotel pool.  We them went out for pizza for dinner.  The rest of the time we spent relaxing on the beach, swimming in our heated pool, and relaxing in our hotel room.  The only problem we had was that we all became sick with some sort of virus.  We all got it to varying degrees, with Emily hit the lightest (she was only under the weather for maybe half a day) and Don was probably hit the hardest (it took him several days to recover).  It was basically fever, sore throat, cough, and all over ickiness.  Normally I'm a stickler for staying in and resting in bed when you are sick, but I wanted the girls to be able to enjoy the beach so with some ibuprofen and making sure we stayed away from others we were all still able to enjoy the beach and the heated pool.  In fact when Alexis was sick she said it made her feel great to be in the pool.  We also were able to got a couple of friends from our old ward to administer some blessing to us, which helped greatly.  Overall, it was a wonderful trip with a lot of great memories and we can't wait to go back someday. 

Disney World! Magic Kingdom

We spent two different days in Magic Kingdom.  It was one of our favorite parks.  We enjoyed all the magical Disney rides there like Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, It's a Small World, Carousel of Progress, People Mover, Snow White, Haunted Mansion, and Buzz Lightyear.  The girls were so excited on each ride.  They would yell out things like, "Look!  There's Peter Pan!" and were so precious as they would giggle and grin from ear to ear to ear on each ride.  They were excited they got to ride in a flying boat in the Peter Pan ride by themselves.  They loved all the sweet dolls in "It's a Small World".  Ashley got the hang of the ride thing and would get so excited everytime we climbed on.  As soon as we entered it she would say, "OOOOH!   It's dark!"  (It usually was at first.)  The Snow White ride was slightly spooky and we wondered how Ashley would do, but she just looked at the scary witch and went, "He he he!" in a little witch cackle of her own.  :)  The girls were worried they would be afraid on the Haunted Mansion ride, but they soon realized it wasn't too bad, although Alexis didn't like the graveyard part when a couple of things pooped up unexpectedly behind the graves.  ;)  We also saw the shows there and we especially enjoyed Mickey's Philharmonic Orchestra 3D show.  We also really like the Monsters Inc laugh Floor.  We saw the Country Bears show, but Alexis was the only child to stay awake the whole time. The other two were really tired at that point and they both fell asleep on me.  :)  The two older girls and Don went on Space Mountain but were less than thrilled.  They all three agreed it was too dark and too fast.  Don said they changed it since we were last at Disney and now it was much faster and darker.  We saw the dreams come true parade and the main street electrical parade.  Ashley seemed to click with Cinderella so she always waved excitedly at her.  There was another little parade where all the characters danced in the street around the castle and invited all the people to join in, which we did.  We also ended up meeting different princesses while we were there.  Emily's favorite princess in Sleeping Beauty and all she talked about since the day we told them we were going to Disneyworld was how she wanted to meet Sleeping Beauty.  We told her not to get her hopes up, of course.  So we saw the tent where you can meet princesses and we knew there would be 3 random princesses there.  So we waited in line and told her not to expect Sleeping Beauty.  We got there and there was Sleeping Beauty.  She squealed and jumped up and down and said, "I knew if I wished on a star it could come true!"  She was so cute meeting her.  After that we traveled through a tunnel that made us very tiny and we got to meet 3 fairies, including Tinkerbell.  The girls love fairies and so they were soooo excited to meet them.  Alexis' favorite Princess in Ariel, and we could tell she was slightly disappointed she didn't get to meet her.  Luckily, we found her later and she got to meet her.  She simply giggled with excitement and was so cute.  It made for a perfect day.  We explored Toon Town and Ashley got to ride her first roller coaster.  She loved it.  I rode with her and she was the smallest height they would let on, but I thought it was way too fast for a Kiddie roller coaster.  We also met Mickey, Minnie, Pooh, and Tigger.  Ashley was always so funny when she met someone.  She would go up and give them a hug and then stand in front of them for the picture with head down, shyly.  We also got to see the spectacular nightime show.  It was amazing!  It's hard to imagine how they can choreograph the lights and pictures on the castle the way they do.  At one point they use actual photos from the tourist that day and we're pretty sure saw Emily and Sleeping Beauty.