Isak has been asking us for the past few weeks when we could have a "slumber party" in our living room. This past weekend he had Monday off from school so we let him and Lucy sleep there on Sunday night.

 He had a whole list of things he wanted us to do. Included were staying up late, gummy worms, fruit rollups, wrestling, hot chocolate and watching a new movie. We watched a new movie and the kids had a lot of fun jumping onto their mattresses  from the coffee table.

 I found this awesome marble drop at Goodwill and we combined it with one that we are borrowing from Kevin's mom. It was huge! The kids had a ton of fun building it with me and racing their marbles down the track. Suprisingly they both slept through the night and other than the giant mess it left in my front room, it went pretty well!

 I started chore charts for Isak and Lucy this week. We do ask them to do things around the house like vacuumn, pick up their toys and mop and dust and stuff but its never been an organized thing. I got these little starter chore charts from our Ready for Kindergarten program we have here and set them up for Isak and Lucy. Isak's chores are pretty simple, brush teeth and get dressed, keep room picked up, and empty the dishwasher. Lucy's are similar, I think I added to help mom get dinner ready. Anyway, they are on our fridge, we'll see how it goes. Isak was pretty upset with me yesterday after school, he was tired and just plain cranky. So I told him he was in trouble for something and he told me he was writing my name on this chart. Then in his anger he put a big "X" through it. Guess he told me! That kid is too funny. He was drawing a picture of his Nana's cats the other day and was freaking out because he couldn't get them "perfect". Wow. He did a  great job spelling their names, he spelled Tiger..'tigre' and sounded out Sam right and spelled the "keke" keke.  Its fun seeing him make progress. He's been reading to me quite a bit and I'm always impressed with the words he knows and can sound out on his own. I know he has things he can improve on, obviously,(every mother thinks their child is a genius), but he's doing so well with his reading and improving with his writing. The other morning I told him I was taking him to school a few minutes early and he just looked at me and said, "So, you mean I'm going to be on time?". Lol, apparently we need to work on getting him to school early more often. I read him a story last night from the doctrine and covenants and we were talking about the second coming. Isak told me, "Mom, I'm never going to be wicked. I'm going to stand up. It probably won't be till I'm like 71 or maybe 73. It will probably be like on a Saturday". Then about 10 minutes later he comes up to me and says, "well, Lucy might turn wicked mom...". Then I told him that his sister would not turn wicked and to go to bed. Always thinking that one.

 I made french toast sticks this week to freeze. I found this great recipe on Pinterest, it used a loaf of bread ( I used some french toast bread I had in my freezer), eggs, milk, pureed squash, cinnamon, and a little butter. You just cut each piece of bread in thirds and dip it then bake on each side for 15 minutes. They were so yummy! Isak ate 4 of them right after I made them. I'm hoping to use them in the morning for breakfasts and for Edyn when I've already fed her everything I can think of.

Edyn loves to sit in chairs. Kevin always plops her down to Isak in the morning in our recliner and she gets the biggest grin on her face. She climbs into this one all the time and just sits there. Its pretty funny.

 We downloaded the Just Dance 4 demo for our kinnect on our xbox the other night and our kids thought it was awesome! We have the Dance Central but this game is more kid friendly and so are the songs. It even has you on the floor doing flips over each other. Would be so much fun at a big family gathering.

 Isak got out early on Wednesday so we made some sugar cookies. These were weight watcher's ones and they weren't too bad. Definitely not as good as full delicious sugar cookies but edible and my kids liked them. They used ginger in the so they had a bit of a different flavor. The loved decorating them and we made some gingerbread men as well. Isak read a book about the gingerbread girl in school at Christmastime and wanted to decorate one.

 Lucy mostly wanted to take one bite out of each of the cookies and dump pink sprinkles all over them. Lucy still thinks everyday is her birthday and continues to tell people "happy holidays!" instead of goodbye where ever we go. She's pretty entertaining  Kevin got me a speaker blue tooth thing for my iphone for christmas so we can listen to music from my phone anywhere in the house. The kids love to have dance parties to Pandora while I'm making dinner in the kitchen. Isak gets very into it, its pretty awesome, Lucy mostly twirls and spins on the floor. Even Edyn while bop up and down in her high chair. Its kind of a lifesaver during that time when Kevin isn't home yet and the kids are cranky and hungry.

Edyn

I took some pictures of Edyn this week in honor of her first birthday. And I'm too cheap to go have anyone take some. This one above of her, she looks exactly like me as a baby. I did a double take after I took it of her because she looks just like me. I should post a baby picture of myself at this age, the resemblance is crazy. 

 Everytime I tried to upload this it turned it sideways for some dumb reason. I love how blue her eyes are in this picture.

 Edyn is our climber. Isak was, Lucy wasn't, and apparently Edyn loves to climb and get into Everything. She loves to unload my dishwasher all over the floor as well as open and empty all my cabinets. She also loves to climb onto our couch, then onto our end tables as well as onto the piano bench. She is already getting a few bumps on her poor head. She is toddling pretty well this week, I think before too much longer she'll be a full time walker. I love her cheesy grin, she really has a great one!

First Birthday Flashback

Isak on his first birthday with his frog cake.

Lucy on her first birthday.

                                                              Edyn on her first birthday.

                                     They all look pretty similar but I think Edyn looks the most like Isak.

Bowling

 Lucy went to out local bowling alley on a little field trip for preschool on Thursday. We've actually never been inside the bowling alley here and it was a lot nice than I thought it would be. The kids got to go back behind the pins and see how the machine resets them and picks up the balls. Then they each got to bowl a few frames.

 Lucy thought it was really fun. She even knocked down a few pins! Above is her and her little friend Eliza, who is Lucy's twin that she never had. They are very cute.

Happy Birthday Edyn!

 Happy Birthday Edyn Girl! It doesn't seem like its been a year since this sweet little girl joined our family. I'm so glad that this year on her birthday I wasn't in a labor room waiting for her to make her arrival! It was much more fun getting ready for her party and certainly a lot less painful.

We had a small family get together for her first birthday and it was a lot of fun. I would say the year has flown by but truth be told, I'm kind of glad she is bigger now. She was a pretty difficult baby and is SO much easier now that she is older, takes a bottle, isn't teething, and will let other people take care of her and hold her. This easy going little girl is almost nothing like the sweet terror we had in our house 4 months ago! As Kevin mentioned last week when we were thinking of something we could get her, "We should be giving ourselves presents for surviving her first year!" This is true, it didn't help we also remodeled our kitchen about the time she was teething and living in our room with the fridge and no running water. But I'll save the gory details of that for another post.

Isak and Lucy were very excited for Edyn's birthday. Especially Lucy who has a birthday coming up in a few weeks and everytime I would mention  Edyn's birthday would respond with, "and Lucy's birthday?" They helped me decorate, make her cake, and wrap her present. 

 Edyn loved all her presents and Isak and Lucy were very helpful in "helping" her open them all and them playing with them with/for her.  Especially this cute little barn that you put balls in the top and they come out the bottom and it lights up and plays songs. Lucy loves it so much that she has carried it with her everywhere and has been sleeping with it. Edyn really loves it as well but so far gets to play with it when Lucy is in timeout for not sharing or when Lucy decides to share and not go to timeout.  Lucy's birthday is next month, I have a feeling she's going to be VERY excited about the whole thing :).

 We had a little breakfast first and then let Edyn open her presents and then did cake. Edyn also enjoyed the cash she got from Grandma Grimmett.

 Edyn really loved her cake and dove right in. I made her a little smash cake and the kids decorated it for her. I think they used to bottles of sprinkles. They were quite proud of it and Edyn thought it was delicious.

I attempted to make Edyn a polka dot cake with colored cake balls on the inside. It kind of turned out, probably would've worked better if I had used white cake mix instead of one from scratch. I elected to use what we had instead of making a trip to the store so it was a smorgasboard of random ingredients. In the end, Edyn didn't care and I didn't want any leftovers so it worked out perfectly!

 Edyn was exhausted after her party and wore her birthday suit after drenching her clothes in frosting. She is such a light in our family and a cuddly, sweet girl. At one year old she is:
*taking 5-6 steps at a time but still prefers to crawl everywhere
*LOVES Isak and can say/scream his name really well. He pays the most attention to her and plays with her a lot so I'm guessing this why she loves him so much versus Lucy who just takes her toys away all day. They will have their moments as well I am sure.
*Really likes music and will start to dance and shake whenever she hears a beat.
*Can say mama, dada, Isak, no, yea, bottle, hi, and probably more that we can't understand.
*Naps twice a day and sleeps all night. (YEA!)
*Takes a bottle of whole milk (hallejuia, this girl didn't take bottles til November. I almost cried I was so happy). Eats everything, really likes pears, peaches, bananas, applesauce, toast, eggs, chicken, taco meat, cooked peppers, macaroni, spaghetti, yogurt melts. I think she didn't like my potato soup.
*Still has her umbilical hernia that hopefully will go away once her abdominal muscles strengthen.
*Loves her mom and dad more than anyone. Such a sweet natured and happy little girl and we love having her in out family!