Preschool Thanksgiving Celebration

I really love the preschool Sarah goes to. 

I had the hardest time make the decision which school to send her to, and I'm so glad I chose Arsenal.

The classroom is "closed" to parents and siblings (as most classrooms are). They do have an observation loft, so I can go and spy on the kids whenever, but I don't get to spend time in the classroom with Sarah.

So when the Fall & Thanksgiving Celebration came up today, I knew that Ryan, Abby and I all needed to go so that we could play with Sarah in her wonderful classroom. 

Here are Sarah and Abby enjoying some Banana Muffins that Sarah's preschool made for our breakfast. They were yummy, great job Sarah!

Abby of course went crazy in the dress up area.

Sarah had fun helping her sister in and out of various princess dresses.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of her classroom. It is set up so cute. There is a secret loft the kids can climb up into and read stories, or just lay down on the pillows. All of the toys are labeled and organized so the kids can learn how to read the words and how to clean up properly.

There are also oodles and oodles of art supplies. Sarah really wanted me to paint a picture with her, but they didn't have the paints out because of the younger siblings that were there (thank goodness!). So we used some markers and had fun making a fairy tale scene with a castle, dragon, princess and horse. 

Sarah had so much fun with us there. It was great to spend time together as a family and get to play in this wonderful classroom. 

Thanks Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Nesbitt for having us for breakfast!

Lil' Seamstress

As many of you know, I'm working on some felt ornaments for an advent calendar in our home. It is based off of an advent calendar that my mother made when I was young and holds a great deal of sentimental value. What I didn't realize it held, was a lot of hard work and time. Those lil' ornaments take so much time to make! So every day and night I've been working on them trying to get them done so I can move onto something new. 

The only reason I'm getting caught up on the blog is because I am burnt out and needed some sort of distraction (other than facebook, pinterest and email...ha!)

Well, this lil' miss loves to sit by my side and "watch" me sew. I'm terrible, I get grouchy and tell her to go away and put on a show to distract her. But that doesn't always work. She was really interested in what I was doing. So I took the advice of my mother and friend and gave her some fabric and a needle.

She wanted to make an owl (the ornament I was working on at the time) but I knew that would be too difficult. So I drew and "S" in pencil on her fabric and let her go to town.

I never expected her to do so well. 

The only thing I did was tie a knot at the beginning of each letter, do one stitch and then when she was done I would tie off the letter. 

It is not perfect, but I am so impressed with how well she did on her first sewing attempt ever.

The back had knots and thread that wasn't pulled all the way up, but the front looks so good. 

Now she keeps bugging me to sew Abby's name on some fabric. I think I'm going to have to make a little sewing kit for this lil' miss for Christmas. She loves it!

Great Job Sarah!

No its not you...

Its the pictures. Almost all of these are blurry.

I love them anyway... and figured the G'mas won't mind them one bit.

(one day I'll have a camera that will do auto-focus with my 50mm lens...*sigh*)

Yes, the girls are in their jammies, I have no clue what time of day it is.

So maybe the blurriness is just an artistic portrayal of how I was feeling this day. Ha!

The little animals that the girls are playing with are from the most recent conference Ryan went to (we didn't go this time). They are a squishy foam (like a stress ball). The girls love them, especially Sarah. Unfortunately, the material isn't child-durable. The limbs and ears have all but torn off, super glue works awesome, but I don't know how many times I can super glue it before it is a solid mass of crusty, super glued foam. We'll find out I guess. 

Thanks for bringing back the perfect surprise from your trip Daddy!

Princess Duties

I'm really starting to wonder how we ended up with such a girlie lil girl. 

Abby is quite the princess. If I don't close her closet in the morning then she rummages through it and puts on whatever dress she can reach. The frillier the better. 

This has resulted in going to the doctor's in princess costumes, tutus, petticoats and even nice sunday dresses. Usually she still will have "normal" clothes underneath, but the constant ooo's and ahh's from older adults only encourage her obsession with looking the part.

Here are some of Princess Abby's daily activities.

Caring for orphans.

Responding to royal fan {e}mail.

Unexpected surprises.

And {of course} lots and lots of twirling and dancing.

It is a tough job raising a princess.

At least I have lots of support from Disney and Barbie movies to make sure I get it right. 

I love you my lil' Abby. You'll always be my princess.

Halloween Festivities (finally)

I know... November is already half way over... and I am just barely getting to Halloween. 

*sigh*

Sorry Grandmas (and whoever else happens to stop by)

Anyway. We had a little bit of craziness surrounding our Halloween. 

The Saturday before Ryan was invited by some of the Dorris Duke Fellows to go pick pumpkins at a pumpkin patch. Ryan always feels guilty because they are constantly inviting him to things, and he always declining the invitation (granted, most of them are to dinner at bars or happy hour... but still, he feels bad).

So this was something he could say yes to the family coming to. The only set back was that the farm was 45 minutes away, and they wanted to meet up at 2-3pm to pick pumpkins, and we had our ward trunk or treat that night at 5pm (which we had signed up to bring Chili to). 

So... we still decided to go, promising ourselves we'd only stay for half and hour and leave with plenty of time to get to the ward party. 

It was cold and rainy... so the only pictures I got were in the barn with the baby animals.

Sarah saying "hi" to Tic Tack the calf.

Abby said "hi" too.

Sarah petting the donkey.

Well as you can guess we didn't leave in time. We didn't even get a pumpkin. 

The girls did however get covered in mud and their boots and pants were soaked up to their thighs. 

Oh, and Abby was completely soaked because she fell over into a huge mud puddle. 

But, it was still fun getting to meet some of the other fellows and feeling somewhat social. 

So, we rushed home and threw our costumes on and got ready to go to the ward Trunk or Treating party.

Here are Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

The Snow White costume (all but the cape) is courtesy of my mother and her amazing sewing skills.

I did the sleeping beauty one, and it definitely has its faults. haha 

Prince Phillip and Sleeping Beauty.

Oh Ryan, you are such a good sport. 

Thanks for taking on the roll of the sexiest Disney prince out there.  

The whole family.

 Yes, I don't match, but I thought it was a clever costume. 

I should have gotten a picture of my backside, but I was a magic 8 ball. 

On the back I had the blue triangle, and my answer was, "It's a Boy"

If you notice, Ryan and I have hurried looks on our faces. That is because we are about half an hour late and my friend (who didn't want to go in by herself) was waiting in the car for us to get there. 

We showed up just in time to catch all of the ward heading up for dinner, missed the trunk or treating by seconds. It really was sad. I felt so bad that I made my friend and her daughter miss it. 

But we enjoyed some chili and pie and then walked around and did cute Halloween games with the kiddos.

Sarah eating a cookie off of a string.

Yup... that is the end of the pictures. 

Halloween night was kind of crazy. 

It was cold and started raining about an hour before trick or treating began. 

This unfortunately made it miserable for the girls, Abby's cough kicked up and we had to banish her to the car, and Sarah's skirt was so long and got wet and heavy she didn't want to trick or treat anymore. So I walked around for a bit with my friend and her daughter and finally let Sarah just kick the skirt and then she had lots of fun hitting up the few houses by ours for candy. 

We ended up with far too many treats (of which the adults at home happily inspected) and lots of cute memories of our two princesses trick or treating. 

One cute thing about Abby's first real trick or treating experience is that every time she would get candy she would say, "Thank you much" first time we've heard her say this, and it was darling.

Till next year halloween!

Sweet Sister

All I have to say is darn these pregnancy hormones.

I'm constantly being turned into an emotional blob, that melts into a puddle.

Like when reading about my sweet neice's baby blessing, and the loving and tender emotions surrounding her mother's love.

Or feeling so proud of another niece for performing so well in a piano recital...

Or from a call from a thoughtful sister or sister in law just to see how I'm feeling and keeping me company (on the phone) from a long day filled with just kids.

But lately, the most common recipe for an emotional Liz blob is my sweet, sweet Sarah.
She is becoming such a wonderful big sister and I love her so much, and am so proud of her. I tell her this often, but my heart aches for her to know how much I really mean the words I'm saying.

The other day we were eating some left over mac n' cheese and apples, and there was really only enough mac n' cheese for one good serving. I still split it into two bowls and hoped apples and whatever else I could rummage up would make up the difference. Both girls immediately scarfed down their bowls. Abby finished first and politely asked, "More mac n' cheese, please?" I told her how it was all gone, she looked to her sister who still had two or three bites left. Then Sarah, very slowly, snuck two fork fulls from her bowl into Abby's, "Look Abby! You have some more mac n' cheese."

 And that is where the tears come in. So sweet and loving. She was starving (probably more so than Abby, based on what she'd eaten earlier, or hadn't rather) but saw how sad Abby was feeling and did her best to help. Thank you Sarah for being so sweet and loving (don't know where it comes from), it makes me want to be a better mommy.

So... I stick to bogging myself down with ridiculous craft ideas and trying to maintain my ever cluttered home. Its the only way I'm going to survive the remainder of these crazy hormones.

A Nose by any other name would still...smell?

I don't know what has gotten into my girls. 

Last week Sarah brought home three beaded bracelets (made with pipe cleaner and plastic beads). Of course one of them had to break and spill beads all over. I wasn't too concerned because both Sarah and Abby have out grown the putting-things-in-their-mouth stage, so I had them find all they could see, and figured the rest would show up or get vacuumed up later. 

Well, I should have been worried about Abby and her obsession with putting things in her nose. She loves to pull fuzzies off of her blanket and sniff them up (weird, I know). Well, she was mindlessly watching a show and had a bead and *pop* up the nose she pushed it. She immediately started crying (and I quickly hung up on my mom) and went over to assess. The last thing I needed was to run her to the ER. Luckily Abby had a slight cold and her nose was... well, really lubricated. So I gently squeezed the bridge of her nose in a downward motion and we eventually got it out. *sigh* What a relief.

I really didn't think that story in of itself was enough to blog about (well maybe it would have been from the perspective of my mom who was on the phone while it happened)...
but in combination of what just happened... I had to.

So I was working on a project when all of the sudden I heard Sarah "blowing" her nose, and abruptly stopping and bursting into tears. Now Sarah is a drama queen, so I thought maybe whatever she blew out of her nose disturbed her. So I made my way upstairs to investigate. I found Sarah holding an apple with one hand and covering her nose with the other, bawling.
Huh?

Me: "What's wrong Sarah?"

Sarah: "My nose hurts"
Me: "Why... wait, did you put something in your nose?"

Sarah: "A-huh" (yes)

Me: "What?!! What did you put in your nose? *looks at apple* Did you put apple in your nose?"

Sarah: *nods*

Me: "Sweetie, why on Earth did you put apple in your nose!!"

Sarah: "I was trying to taste it different"

I have no clue how or why she thought to try and eat some apple with her nose, but sure enough, there was a slightly larger than her nostril hole sized chunk of apple shoved up her nose. Luckily a pair of tweezers were able to pull it out (with a little help of Sarah blowing it out at the end).

So... we are on high alert at our house for objects of a nostril-stuffing size.
Heaven help me if I find Ryan with something stuck in his nose! I may lose it.