Last of the School Year

I can't believe another school year has ended. Mia had such a great time with her friends in our little preschool. Here she is on graduation night. We are so proud of her and how much she has learned this year.

 

Mia and Claire are loving the warmer weather. They have started swim lessons and have been loving it. They have also loved being the purple plastic pool in our backyard. These smiles just melt my heart. What amazing little girls they are.

While Claire was at school and Mia was done with school. Mia helped me and Grandma Lois plant Grandma's garden. Here she is all geared up ready to plant.

The day before the last day of school it was a special reading day at Claire's school. It was a decade day. The kids got to dress up in their favorite decade. Claire chose the roaring 20's. I was stumped how to dress her because I didn't have anything that would work. Thanks to Grandma Lois... Claire was able to go to school dressed as a flapper girl. Here she is with her teacher (dressed in her 80's gear)!

Then it was the last day of school. She was so eager to show off the book her classroom had made. I am so proud of this girl. I can't believe how quickly she is growing up....it almost makes me a little sad! I am truly trying to enjoy every minute with my girls, because time just goes by so quickly.

Easter

We had a great Easter Holiday. We were able to dye Easter Eggs with aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a lot of fun!! The girls were able to do three Easter Egg Hunts. They loved every minute of it. Here are a few pictures from some of the hunts.

 

 

 

I think one of my favorite things about Easter holiday when it comes to the fun stuff is....Easter dresses. I love seeing all the kids come to church in their new Easter dresses. They all look so cute. Here are the girls in their Easter dresses....and I love how much they love each other.

This picture was a fun picture we texted to grandma...we had to because she sent us a text that said "HOPPY EASTER!!" so we decided to send her a Hoppy Easter too!!

Spring Break

I asked Claire what she wanted to do for her Spring Break. She wanted to go to Utah and see Grandma and Grandpa and Bugaboo (a nickname for one of her cousins). Here are some of the fun pictures I took from our trip. It was so fun to have a girls trip...I love being with my two girls!! 

These first pictures are from our April Fool's Day dinner. It was so much fun. They loved their jello drinks, worm covered apples, meatloaf cake and taco salad dessert.  I am so glad that my mom was willing to do this fun dinner with me and the girls.

 I was able to attend the temple a few times while there. I loved being able to go to temples I haven't been to before. It was so wonderful. One of the days I took the girls and we walked around temple square. It was so much fun. I also got some really good pictures. This one is of my beautiful mom and the girls outside the visitor center. It is one of my favorite pictures from our trip.

 This one is just cute because it shows how much these two girls love each other. It is just such a special picture; one that I will treasure for a long time!

The morning we drove home we took the girls to Scheels. We had never been to that store before so it was fun to look around. There is a Ferris Wheel inside and the girls loved going for a ride. It was a lot of fun. There were also some really fun places to take fun pictures of the girls. Here are some of our adventures. 

These animals are really stinky!!!

"Look out Claire!!"

 Mia is a bear cub!

 "This one time I caught a fish and it was THIS big!"

Creating Memories

We have spent a lot of time creating some fun memories the last week or two. First it started with Claire coming home from school telling me that she was able to do something she never thought she would do, but she always wanted to. I asked her what it was...she let me know that it was to stand in front of a weatherman in a picture....the bonus...is that picture was even shown on the news. Here she is showing off just how proud she is that she reached this goal of hers. 

Then we were able to attend the home and garden show. Lowe's had a little kid corner that they sponsored and our girls loved it.  They first started out decorating hard hats and then they got to pick something to build. They were so excited to build something with their dad.

Here the girls are with their final product. They were also lucky enough to bring another project home. They are excited to build something else with their daddy...one of these days they will get around to it.

 We got to go to a hockey game with the girls. It was their first time ever going to the game. I loved taking them and explaining to Claire a little bit about hockey. I learned to love this sport in high school.

Claire had a lot of fun with the mascot and was thrilled to get her picture taken with it.

Mia only liked seeing the mascot from a distance. She didn't want to get too close to it. I think this picture just let us know that Claire had a great time at the hockey game.

Week of Fun and Love

The week of Valentine's Day was busy. I am teaching preschool in my home in the month of February. Mia is loving this co-op preschool. It is so much fun. I am loving getting to know these amazing kids more.  With preschool this month we talked about how we need to care for one another. They made lots of fun valentines for many family members. They painted their hands and made hearts out of them. Then we played a game where we rolled a dice and that told them what to draw on their little love bugs. Here is Mia with her love bug!

To start of Valentine's Day right, we had pink heart pancakes and small valentine treats for the girls. For lunch the girls got heart shaped sandwiches too. After school, Claire decided that Bryan and I needed a Valentine too. (Before I go on...yes Bryan gave me some beautiful flowers and an amazing card...we also had dinner at the same place we ate at for our first Valentine's Day. It was even Bryan's idea to do this...I am a lucky woman!!) Anyway, Claire took it upon herself to make Bryan and I a Valentine. I think she did a great job.

The same week of Valentine's Day, was the 100th day of school for Claire. She made her class treats to celebrate the 100 days of school. Her grade decided to celebrate this special day by dressing up as if they were 100 years old. Here are a few pictures of Claire all ready for her special day...with curlers, pearls, hair net, lipstick and wrinkles.

Then to finish off this post is something that I love. For those of you who don't know Mia loves to sing. My girls are in love with the movie Frozen, especially the songs. It amazes me how much my girls catch on to the songs. Here is Mia singing one of the songs from Frozen. I just love it.

She is too big!!

Claire just had another birthday. I can't believe she is getting so old. What happened to my little girl? She was so excited to because her primary teachers made her a treat for her birthday. I am so lucky that my kids have some amazing teachers in primary. 

Claire didn't really have a birthday party this year, but she was able to invite 4 friends over to watch a movie. She decided she wanted to have her friends come over in their pjs and have some pizza. They had a great time. Again...we are so lucky that our girls have such amazing friends. She wanted to make cake cones for her friends. I think they turned out really cute!

Mia was so excited to give Claire the gift she picked out for her. They even paused for a picture.

Since we had Echo's first birthday to celebrate on Claire's big day, we did some celebrating the next day too. Claire was thrilled to celebrate her bday at school. She decided she wanted to make these really cute butterflies for her class. They turned out a lot cuter than I expected.

For her birthday dinner she chose corn dogs and french fries. This made me laugh (and it made my family laugh too). When we were little we got to pick anything we wanted for dinner on our birthday...I picked corn dogs once as a kid and my siblings have never let me live it down. Guess Claire is a lot more like her momma than I thought. Here is her cake we made!

Claire was so awesome to blow out all of her candles, but what made me proud is she let her little sister help blow the candles out too. Even on her birthday, Claire amazes me with her loving heart.

Christmas

This is a picture of the girls in their Christmas dresses. They looked so beautiful. Thank you Grandma Lois for such amazing dresses. These girls love them so much!!

 The girls loved their Rudolph noses. They got them a year or so ago from Santa, but had forgotten about them until we opened the Christmas boxes and they had fun with them.

Instead of making and exchanging ugly sweaters this year we decided to decorate ugly sweater cookies. Here are some of the ugly sweaters along with a few other fun cookies.

 Thanks Ginet for showing us the melted snowman cookies. The girls loved these! Although I should have made them all girls because Claire and Mia thought they could only eat the girl ones because they are girls.

Claire's school teacher gave her magic reindeer food with the instructions that we needed to sprinkle the food on our lawn on Christmas Eve. They girls had so much fun doing this. Claire was such a great sister to share with Mia and let her sprinkle some magic food too.

Christmas morning is always so magical...especially with younger kids. We all had so much fun opening our presents.

 

 

Bryan gave the girls Just Dance 2014 for the Xbox One...guess that means he has to keep one of the Xbox Ones he was going to sell. I am not so sure I like this idea, but too late now....the girls and Bryan are so excited by this, as you can tell!!

Thanks to the amazing gifts from Grandma...we are able to have a concert in our home every day.

These are the nightgowns I made for the girls; along with the matching nightgowns Grandma Nancy made for their dolls. The girls love that they not only match each other, but they match their dolls.

After opening presents at our house and then opening some at Grandma Lois and Papa Don's house, the girls were ready for some Christmas movie time....as you can tell Christmas really wiped Mia out!