Fun Times!!

I have been wanting to post these pictures in a while, but never have. For Christmas Claire got a camera. She absolutely loves it (even Mia enjoys it). Here are some of the pictures she has taken with her camera. The camera lens rotates so she can take pictures of herself. She can also add fun things to the pictures; which is one of her favorite things to do. She had added piggie tails to her hair.
In this pictures she added a binkie to Mia. Which is so funny cause I think Mia had a binkie in her mouth when Claire took the picture.
Here is our big lipped big smiles girl. This is one of her favorites to add on to the photos. We do get a lot of blurry and and random photos too. She loves taking pictures of her feet for some reason.
I can't believe this is happening already!! Mia has started to try and climb out of her crib. Luckily this is as far as she has gotten. I hope and pray she doesn't learn how to climb all the way out of it. I am not sure I am ready for her to be in a big girl bed.
We were able to go support Bryan's sister Terin in her role as Joy (a stepsister) in Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. The girls both had so much fun. We were able to get a picture taken with both stepsisters, Cinderella and the Prince. Claire of course was her silly self as always!
Our last big news is...Claire can now ride a two wheeler. She is no longer in need of training wheels. She is so proud of herself. Now to get her a bike she fits. This one is a bit too small for her.

Our Past Month

This post will not be in order of what happened in February, but at least it is an idea. This picture is one I love because it just shows what a great big sister Claire is.
One of Bryan's mission companions and his family came to visit us. They have a daughter a month younger than Mia. It was great. Mia and Liberty had so much fun together.
They also have a son a few months older than Claire. Hunter and Claire were quite the pair. They played so hard they were just exhausted by the end of the night. It was a great few nights of sleep at our house!
We let Claire try Pop Rocks for the first time. She wasn't so sure at first, but by the end she loved them!
The girls had so much fun taking Buddy to the groomer with me. It isn't the best picture since I was in the front seat driving and it was taken (quickly) at a stop sign.
Mia had a medical set back this past month. She was diagnosed with RSV. We lucked out with her and she never had to go to the hospital. We were able to treat her at home. She loves her fishy mask!
Claire discovered the Rock Band instruments. As a family we have had so much fun playing the game together. Bryan and I are grateful to Claire for always wanting us to play Rock Band as a family. What a great way to spend time together.
Mia even joined in on the vocals for our "family band". It was so cute to hear her try and sing.
Bryan was assigned to get the girls their Valentine's Day gifts. I think he did a great job (since we didn't really want too much candy in the house and they have plenty of toys), he got the girls pajamas and they love them!! Here is Mia in her cupcakes.
Claire was so excited for her Hello Kitty pajamas. She is even more excited that she has figured out how to make a heart with her hands. She loves to show you that she can do it.

Career Choice?

First off, Claire is really proud of herself that she let Aunt Janelle wash her hair at the salon... usually Claire makes her just wet her hair with a spray bottle. I can't believe she is growing up so fast!!
For her birthday Aunt LeeAnn, Uncle John and Katelynn gave her a bag with hair necessities in it (it had a blow dryer, straightener, curling iron, a curler, a brush and a bottle to use as pretend hair spray...later Claire added her fake scissors from her doctors kit to her hair bag). Claire then created her own salon in our basement. She had taken a chair and put it in front of her kitchen sink. She had Katelynn sit in that chair and lean back; she even put a"towel" (apron) under Katelynn's neck to make her more comfortable. Next, she put the doctors lab coat on Katelynn as if it was the smock Janelle uses at the salon. Finally she began to "wash" Katelynn's hair.
Of course after your hair is washed, the next step is to get your hair cut...which is exactly what Claire proceeded to do for Katelynn.
After the hair cut, Claire then used the blow dryer and dried Katelynn's hair and styled it.
Not sure if this is Claire's way of saying this is what she wants as a career or if it says she has spent too much time in a salon....not matter what it means, it was so cute to watch!!

Five Already!!!

Well this ice cream cake says it all!!! We are now the parents of a five-year-old. Claire informed us that she didn't want a cake for her birthday...just ice cream. We thought we were crazy when we asked her if she wanted an ice cream cake. She didn't believe us that there was such a thing.
She loved this ice cream cake. If you look closely she is trying to blow out the candles in the cake.
Since her party was at Chuck E. Cheese's (thanks Grandma Lois)...everyone got to enjoy the tokens and play some games. Thanks Aunt Terin for helping Mia enjoy the games as well!
Mia also wanted her turn with the birthday crown! This picture is one I just couldn't resist posting!
With Claire's birthday party she was able to go into the ticket blaster. Since she was so young they allowed me to get in with her and help her get tickets...this seemed like it would be easier than it was. You can't see anything with the glasses up what is in front of your face. It was a great time though and we had a lot of laughs.
Here we are after the ticket blaster showing off the tickets we got. Claire scored a 1050+ tickets in the ticket blaster (it helped that one of the tickets we got was worth 1000 tickets). She was so proud!
This isn't all the party kids, but most of them...some were a bit shy of posing with Chuck E Cheese. Claire had a great birthday party and we still can't believe she is FIVE!!! Where did the time go?

Happy Birthday to our oldest princess!!!

Snow Days

Since it snowed the other day, I decided to take the girls out to play. Mia had a great time. If you look closely you can see her tongue out trying to catch the snowflakes.

Claire loves being in the snow...doesn't that smile just say it all?

The first snow fall we had was really powdery so it wasn't the greatest to make a snowman out of, but Claire wanted one. We decided to have the snowman do snow angels with the girls.

After the powder snow hit we got freezing rain...yuck! However, it does make the sledding hill a lot of fun...Bryan took a longer lunch to help me take the girls sledding. Mia only went a few times down the hill and then she just wanted to watch.

This was really the first year Claire just would grab the sled and go for it all on her own (well except for climbing back up the hill and then she wanted help). She had so much fun!!!

Mia had a great time just sitting on a sled and watching Claire and Bryan go down the hill. She would clap and cheer for them.

Bryan had a blast too. Here he showing off his amazing sledding skills!!

Christmas

This post will be full of pictures. We had a great Christmas and New Years. It has been six years since I spent the holidays with my family in Utah. We decided it was about time we did it. I am so grateful to Bryan for being willing to do this. Here we all are on Christmas Eve in our new PJs.
Both of my girls love seeing Christmas lights so we decided what a better place to show them lights than to go to Temple Square...it was cold, but a lot of fun!
Christmas morning was so much fun. Both girls loved seeing what they got and it was fun to see them love each and every thing. Mia's favorite part was ripping open the presents. She just wanted to rip the paper off...she didn't care what she got at all as long as she had paper to rip!!
Claire asked Santa for Scooby Doo characters. She was thrilled to see she had been a good enough girl to get what she asked for!!!
Also in Claire's letter to Santa she asked for a baby doll for her little sister...Mia loves her new baby doll.
I think Claire's favorite gift of all though was the camera Grandma Lois and Papa Don gave her. She has had so much fun taking pictures of just about everything in sight...including turning the lens to get pictures of herself. What a fun gift for Claire!!!
This is the first or second time in our marriage that I was able to surprise Bryan with a gift (thanks to our friend Ben's help)...Bryan loves riding his bike with Ben for exercise, but he doesn't have a road bike just a mountain bike. I want to encourage him to do the things he loves (especially when it is exercise) so I decided to spoil him. Here he is after he realized what his surprise was!! (I think he was still in shock when I took the picture)
This is the best picture I got of the girls in their Christmas dresses. I made the skirts out of t-shirts. I think they turned out great. The girls looked so cute in them.
Santa gave Claire, Mia, Grandma Nancy and Papa Chuck, Rudolph noses in their stockings...who could resist this Kodak moment?
We were able to spend time with Uncle Brett and Aunt BethAnn. Uncle Brett showed our girls how to use Nerf Guns. They had a great time shooting them and trying to get the darts to stick on the window. I love the look of concentration on Mia's face as she even tries to aim the gun.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. My mom as a picture of my niece Summer trying to open the door of the Salt Lake Temple. I have always loved it so I decided it was time to get my girls doing the same (thanks for the idea Ginet). I have tried a few times to do this, but the temple was always closed off, but this time it wasn't. I love how Claire can easily get the handle and is ready to go in, but I love even more seeing Mia on her tip toes trying to hard to reach the handle! Our wish is some day our girls will be worthy to enter and will enter the doors of the temple!!
One of our other adventures was to see the UP house. This is a house built in Utah for the parade of homes this year. It looks exactly like the house in the movie UP. The inside is also decorated similar to the inside of the house on the movie too. It was so much fun to see. Thanks for Kenley (one of my nieces) for showing it to us.
We finished off our trip by celebrating the New Years with my parents. We let Claire stay up late to bang pots and pans to welcome the new year...we had a great time celebrating with the Owen family too; well sort off...we celebrated the the New Years on Eastern Standard time (my sister and her family live in Virginia)...so we say we celebrated with them.
This is what we saw as we headed home to Washington. I think that our girls had a lot of fun, because they sure slept good on the long drive home!
We wanted to thank everyone who helped us have a great holiday. We loved having friends and family come and see us. We enjoyed playing board games, playing just dance, laughing with each other, eating good food and of course making great memories with people we love.

We Did It

Well we did swim lessons this Fall, and once again Claire did wonderful. Here she is doing Big X, Little Y (that is what she is doing in the picture) and Super I. She does so great!!
The last day of lessons is a water safety day. Claire really loved helping rescue Teacher Terry!
Claire is so proud of herself and loved having swim lessons with her new friend Annie, not to mention she absolutely loves Teacher Terry!
This time we did something different with swim lessons...we signed up for a Parent and Tot class. Bryan even came and participated with Mia once. Mia loved that. Here Mia is showing off what a great floater she is.
Besides playing Humpty Dumpty, Mia's favorite part of swim lessons is sliding down into the water. The only thing is she always wants to walk up all the steps of the ladder in one step instead of taking them one at a time.
There were more people than this in the Parent tot class, but this was all that were there today. Mia loved Teacher Terry too (see she can't stop looking at her).
I just love this picture (besides the fact I am in a swim suit)...I love these two girls so much. They make my life so much greater than I ever imagined possible!!!