What? You never strike a pose with your calculator??
Makeshift beauty salon in the kitchen
Some words of encouragement scattered around the house for Andrew has he
prepared to take the bar exam. He took it February 26-27 and should
get his results back in a couple of weeks. I'm sure he did great. He
worked so hard to get ready for it. Needless to say, February 28th was a
great day!!
What's wrong with this picture? Oh yeah, Penelope is 2 1/2 and sitting in the high chair while Eleanor feeds her :)
Introducing, Queen Molly. This sweet baby is such a good sport and she loves hanging out with her big sisters!
Heart shaped pancakes for dinner
This is how we feel about being at ChickfilA :)
Reading mom's magazines
For Penelope anything works as a microphone. This girl is our little performer, she loves music!
Eleanor helping feed Molly, while wearing a baby beanie on her head of
course. And who's that in the background on the coffee table without a
shirt on singing into an empty water bottle? Oh, that's Penelope :)
Matching jammies!
Wearing mom's boots again
Deja Vu? Yeah we are frequent customers at the Sam's Club Cafe
Your kids aren't the only ones who get upset and throw fits in public places :)
Happy Valentine's Day!
Riding in the racecar buggy at Harris Teeter
Can't believe we got so much snow here!
Strolling through the mall, double decker style
Mischief alert: Penelope did some artwork with a brown marker on about 13 of our stairs.
Rolling through Lowe's...wish they had these kinds of buggies everywhere!
Somehow in the 15 minutes I'm taking a shower or putting Molly down to sleep, Eleanor and Penelope find a way to get into some serious mischief. This particular time they painted Penelope. (Another time, which I didn't take a picture of because I was so mad, they had a yogurt fight and wasted about 10-12 tubes of gogurt and made a HUGE mess in the kitchen)
Impromptu concert on the coffee table before bed.
This is how we roll at Sam's Club...Pizza and Icees, lunch of champions ;)
Molly was wearing these jammies and I couldn't help recreate a picture we have of Eleanor when she was about the same age...
Eleanor (five months)
We never pass up a photo-op with Barbie at the entrance to Walmart...
or with Bob the builder at Toy's R Us
Tummy time!
Nothing like some video chatting and adding google effects. The girls love having facial hair :)
Looking good, Eleanor!
Hi Miss Molly girl!
Cozying up with some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while I clean the kitchen
Mischief alert: They made a "tent", put the computer on the floor to watch something, and cut open their own freezie pops. Pretty sure I need to find a new time to take a shower!
Our house is going up fast!
We set up a real tent in the living room and had a pretend campout
4 year checkup (she actually turned 4 in October...better late than never, right?)
4 month checkup...we love this roly poly little cutie pie!
Highlight of January: This girl is potty trained! Woooo!
A few other things that happened in January that I don't have pictures of:
-my back went out on me and I was in some serious pain for almost 2 weeks. After a couple trips to the chiropractor I felt much better!
-Andrew started an 8-week prep course for taking the bar exam. He'd go into work a couple hours early to study and then stay a couple of hours late. It was like he was back in school all over again. We went a little crazy, and I'm not sure how I ever survived all the years he was in school. Actually, yes I do know how I survived...I didn't do it all by myself, I KNOW I was not alone. That is exactly what the atonement is for. I was reminded of this in the March Ensign in an article about the enabling power of the Atonement. It mentions a verse from the hymn "How Firm a Foundation":
Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,…
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
That's exactly how I feel, I know He gave me strength to do things I couldn't have done alone.
Elder Bednar said, “The enabling power of the Atonement strengthens us to do and be good
and to serve beyond our own individual desire and natural capacity.” I love that and I know it is true!
So I decided once a month I need to post pictures from my phone that capture the everyday things we do. Those pictures probably bring back the most memories and it's fun to remember the every day little things that happen. So without further ado, here's a look back at December :)
Swinging at the park...Molly's first time in the swing, she looks so little!
Swinging is tough work, time to just chill out.
Eleanor really got into the Little People's Nativity set. She insisted that Mary needed a bed to sleep on.
Rainy days
They asked if they could go out and stomp in puddles...sure, why not?
They love to dress up in my boots. Here they are singing along with Barbie Princess and the Popstar.
Penelope loves to go up to her room with a big stack of books. It also makes the books more interesting if you wear plenty of headbands!
Trying to burp this sleepy, cutie pie girl.
This is how we color. These girls could color all day long. I like it too, check out my picture of Strawberry Shortcake :)
We had some pretty warm days in December.
Ever since my sister Laura aka Muffy visited, Penelope loves to go sit on the bed and use her laptop just like Muffy did when she had work to do :) And it never hurts to have your sparkly chapstick nearby!
Penelope and I had a little date to the mall one Saturday and she got to ride the carousel, she was in 2 year old heaven!
Again, dressing up never gets old around here. Apparently Penelope was pretending to be Andrew and Eleanor was me.
Molly gets to hang out with Andrew during church while I play the piano in Primary. There is a Spanish ward that meets after us and apparently Molly loves listening to their meetings!
And probably the most exciting thing we did in December...we bought some dirt! We are building a house and it will be finished in April. We are VERY excited!
December started with a trip to Hunter Farm to look at some christmas trees, ride on a sleigh, and have a visit with Santa. As exciting as it is to pick out your very own over-priced christmas tree, we decided to go with our cheapy fake one for another year. So we just admired all of the beautiful real ones and Eleanor and Penelope ran through the rows and rows of trees. I tried to snap a picture but they were just having too much fun.
After all the frolicking through the trees we got in line for our sleigh ride.
We rode over to see the animals and give them something to eat. Santa was also in the barn with the animals, but the girls were more interested in hanging out with the goats, sheep, pigs, cows and chickens.
Penelope started to get a little bit nervous when the animals were getting loud so she found some reindeer to love right outside the barn.
Then it was time for our hayride back to the fire-pit for s'mores and hot chocolate.
And this is how Penelope felt about having hot chocolate when it's 71 degrees outside.
So from the first weekend in December until Christmas morning I didn't take any pictures on my camera. Oopsies. I did get some on my phone so I'll have to fill in the rest of December in another post with camera phone pictures. I think my point and shoot camera is on its last leg. Most of the pictures I took Christmas morning didn't really turn out so I mainly have video clips. So I thew them together and made a little movie. I figured it's probably a good way to organize all the videos I take, especially since it really does capture more than just a picture and the girls love to watch them. I just used Windows Movie Maker to do it, which turns out isn't very user friendly and you can't do a lot of cool stuff. (In college I used imovie a lot so that's what I'm used to. Anybody know if you can get imovie for a PC? Or is there a better movie making program for a PC?)
Anyway, here is a glimpse of our Christmas. We stayed home and enjoyed a nice Christmas together with just our family.
Since we didn't go anywhere for Christmas we decided to go on a fun outing to Discovery Place Kids. It was the best children's museum! We went the day after Christmas so it got a little crowded, otherwise we could have stayed all day. The girls loved it! Here's a video of some of the things we did there.
For New Year's we headed over to Wilmington to visit Andrew's parents. His sister was there with her husband and his grandparents were also visiting all the way from Washington. We had a barbque on New Year's day and enjoyed playing outside in the beautiful North Carolina weather!
