Belle's Birthday

Okay, so nearly a month after it happened, here is the pictures from Anabelle's birthday. We spent the day at my parent's house. That evening, my mom, sister, and Belle and I went to my cousin Carrie's baby shower. Belle loved it. She spent the hole time being a "big girl" playing with my brother's girls that are 11 and 9. She had a ball. Then, the girls rode home with us and we all sang loudly in the car, the whole way home. My poor mom probably got a huge headache. After we got home, we ate Taco soup, one Anabelle's favorite meals. Then we had cupcakes.

The first present Belle opened was from my brother's family. It was a beautiful Easter dress. As soon as Belle saw it, she literally grabbed it and started squealing and dancing around. She ran around the kitchen hugging it. I have never seen her act like that. It was so cute.

Next she opened a little baby that is perfect to take to church. She loved that she could take the dress off. She just needed help putting it back on. Here is her cousin, Brooke, helping her get the doll out of the box.

The last present she opened was a big baby doll (that is not shown in the picture) that cries, says mamma, giggles, babbles, drinks from a bottle, then burbs, and finally snores. The eyes move and it is a little creepy, but Anabelle loves it. She carried that baby around everywhere she went all that night and for several weeks afterwords. It was really cute. She is going to be such a sweet mom someday.

My gift to Anabelle is some blankets that I am making for her babies, and a bed as well. I will post pictures of them when I finish them. I am super excited to see the blankets all finished. As soon as I get my house all cleaned up, I will finish the blankets. I just need to put the backs on and sew a few more things on them. Unfortunately, the bed is far from being done.

Belle personally celebrated all week long by not taking any of her naps. I was very concerned that she had already outgrown her naps, which I was not ready to let go of. Thankfully, the next week she got right back to her old schedule and I was able to keep my sanity, sort of.

Banister, as in sliding down the

Who knew there was such a fun little playground at the mall. I totally forgot it was there. I could have been going here all winter. Thank you Analisa for reminding me about this fun little play area at the mall. The kids had so much fun. We went a few times in March. Here are pictures of the kids sliding down the slide.

P.S. there were no banisters involved in the making of this blog. I just stole the quote from one of my favorite movies, What's up Doc.

Trains, trains, trains

Okay, I am going to play catch-up on here over the next few days. A few things happened in March and rather than do one huge update, I'm going to drag it out over a few days. Here is first event that happened in March. We went to the model train show at the Union Station with my dad and nephew. Beckett had a ball. It was pretty cool. I can totally see how this can be a hobby for some people. There are so many little pieces and parts and you can create all kinds of scenes and have the train do all kinds of things. It was amazing.

Anabelle had a wonderful time too. She got to be with her favorite person, Grandpa.

They have big trains that you can climb up into outside of the Union Station too, so Matt and Beckett climbed in and Beckett got to be a conductor for a little bit. He loved it!

Looking at trains from a safe distance, you don't realize how massive they really are. Look how huge just the wheeles are!

Confession

So, yesterday I was watching one of the only 3 TV shows I watch, Chuck, and at the end of the episode, Chuck and his love interest kiss. It was a very intimate moment and I found myself embarrassed to watch them kissing. Not because that is gross (Oooo, their kissing), but because I wanted to give them privacy in "their moment". Isn't that weird that even fictional PDA makes me feel awkward?

What would you do with the last few moments of being 1?

Wear your Snow White underwear on top of your pants, of course. Oh, and you need your purse and baby too.

Beckett's in love

Yesterday, I was doing some errands. As we were driving along, there was an electronic sign that was showing scenes from the movie Cars. Beckett said, "I love Lightning McQueen." Then about a minute later he said, "Lightning McQueen is really cool." Those are probably the biggest sentences he has ever said, not to mention that I could understand them perfectly and that the grammer was correct. And today he said that he loved something else. There is hope that his speech might not be that bad.

February is FREE month

Well, another month has gone, so it is time for an update. At the beginning of the month, I got sick with a cold, which is totally backwards. Moms are the last one to get sick, not the first. Of course, everyone else got sick too. The men of the family fared better than the women. Belle got an ear infection and I got a sinus infection (and a small lingering cough too, grrr).

I would like to take this time to show all you new mothers and soon-to-be-mothers, what happens to your house when you are sick in bed for just 24 hours, like I was.




I will admit to the laundry basket and the stepper and one or two other things already being out, but the rest was all the kids. Consider yourselves warned.

After we were feeling better, we visited my Aunt Karen, up in Idaho over Valentines. It was way fun. My mom and sisters were up there as well. We had a great time watching the Olympics and movies with Karen. Also, Belle slept the best she has ever slept. She sleeps in the basement at there house, in a room with no windows and she can't hear people walking around upstairs. She slept from 9:30pm until 10:30am, after taking a 3+hour nap the day before. I have thought about asking if we can move in, just so Belle can get her beauty sleep.

Matt and I also got a nice tax return this year and so we bought a new computer. It is awesome and so fast. We love it.

Something the kids did this month was build a fort in the living room a couple of times. They had a great time watching movies from it.


The last week of February was freebie week. I found out it was National Pancake day on the 23rd, and so we headed on over to IHOP and got us each a stack of free pancakes. They were delicious.

Then, the next day was the last day to go to the Hogle Zoo for free. I guess they do this every year, from November to February, on the last Wednesday of the month. It was really fun, despite the fact that it was the only cold, wet, rainy, snowy day all week. The kids saw the giraffes, tigers, cougars, and a humongous alligator. That thing was probably 7ft long. Beckett could look away from it. That was one of the animals that he was pretty excited to see and then when he realized that they are kind of scary to look at, he got nervous. So nervous that he didn't want to look away. Maybe he was afraid that if he didn't look at it, it would come after him. I was able to distract him from the alligator by watching this hilarious squirrel that was right next door. It was so funny. It would climb up its fake rock wall on one side of the cage, and jump clear across the cage onto a vine that was hanging on the other side. Then it would crawl upside down on the vine to the floor to go climb his wall and do it again. There was quite a crowd gathered to watch it. I even recorded it, but then when Beckett was watching it after we got home, he erased it. Bummer! It was super cute and funny.




Many of the animals that have outdoor cages opted to stay inside, to get out of the cold (I do not blame them one bit). Thankfully, it warmed up a little bit just before we left and a mama elephant and her baby decided to venture out into the cold. The baby put on a little show and ran around and was just super cute.

After we got home from the zoo, Belle discovered a new trick. She can put coins between her toes. I hope you can see the penny she is put in between her toes. I think she had 2 or 3 of them in there. What a silly girl.

The kids have been super nurturing this month. Belle has been carrying her babies and this giant gorilla around everywhere. She will lay them down and put blankies on them and give them kisses. It makes your heart melt to watch her.

Beckett has also started to show his fatherly instincts. One day I was in the kitchen, and heard Beckett talking to something, playing pretend. I decided to take a peek and this is what I found:

I think he was pretending that Belle's doll stroller was sick and they had to put it to bed. I think I even heard him give it a kiss. Belle was helping him. He used my shirt for a pillow and a hand towel for the blanket. Then they decided it needed some real blankets.

And then they decided it needed a good cuddle, cause that makes everyone feel better.

So, new mommies, there are cute things to look forward to as well.

P.S. In case anyone actually reads these updates, no I have not potty trained Belle yet. I think I chickened out. Hopefully this next month. And the Mazada has now been running great since we bought it, almost 2 months now, so that is a very good sign. And we are probably putting our house up for sale at the end of the month.