Visitors

We've had a couple of short visits from family lately.  Last weekend my mom and Kevin visited us for half of a day.  It was nice to see them, even though it was very short. 

 This weekend Lyndsy and Levi were nice enough to visit us and bring their photo booth for our ward Christmas party.  We had a lot of fun spending time with them.  We took the kids to the children's museum, and they all loved it.

Claire loved having some girly girls to play with.

"Nuggling Paislee's hand

Ward Christmas party- the Bella, Kailia, and Paislee sang Christmas songs with the primary

Claire and Jayce Updates

I've had insomnia since I was a teenager, and it's worse now than ever.  It does give me a time to blog, write in my journal, watch boring documentaries to try to put me to sleep, play on Pinterest and Facebook, catch up on the news and much more.  The best part is hearing Blake, Jayce, and Claire sleep talk.  I really need to get out the video camera one night.  I did record Blake snoring like a train one night to prove to him that he actually does snore.

Here are a few updates on the girls.  Claire is talking like crazy.  She's been really quick with her speech.  She says the funniest things.  Here are some of the more memorable ones:

"Don't poop you pants, K Mom?"
"Jayce do you homework NOW!" (when Jayce was bugging her)
"Come on Jilly!  Lets go!" (to Jillian Michaels when I do her workout video)
"Tootis is a good boy!" (about our cat)
"I need to lay down, nuggle, baba.  K, Mom?"

She calls Granny and Coley and others every day.  I can always tell what she's saying, but I'm not sure if they can.  She tells them about Santa, her owies, Jayce being at school,  Footis playing outside, Cinderella being a cute princess, and much more. She has always been very social, but she's starting to be afraid of strangers and not talk to them as much.  I guess that's a good thing, but I don't want her to be shy like me.

She is the best little cuddly girl.  She loves to rub people's arm or face.  She calls it "nuggle".  As sweet as she is, she has a terrible temper.  Sometimes when she gets mad she throws herself back and bangs her head on the floor.  I try not to give her attention when she acts like that, but it's hard.  Sometimes I want to laugh.  She's gotten better since I've been putting her on timeout. 

She looks so much like Blake!

Here she is wrapped up in my scarf.

She is obsessed with princesses right now, especially Cinderella.  It makes me happy after having my little tom boy Jayce not let me have fun dolling her up and giving her all the girly things that I love.

Jayce is still my little athlete, and loves most sports.  When I was picking her up from school a lady approached me and told me I should have seen Jayce flying around the basketball court.  She said Jayce is awesome at basketball.  It was her PE substitute.  Jayce said to me, "If she thought that was good she should have seen me play soccer." Her PE coach has told me Jayce is "quite the athlete" and has "great abilities".  Her favorite sport is soccer, and she wants to be signed up for soccer, basketball, and baseball.  We told her she had to choose between two of those sports or gymnastics since gymnastics is so expensive now.  She chose gymnastics, which made me glad.  She was moved to a competition team this last week and she is really excited about it. 

She is really into rocks right now.  Her collection is constantly growing.  She wants a rock tumbler for Christmas and a jewelry making kit so she can make necklaces with her rocks and sell them.  She said she wants to open up a rock shop in the basement that she will run it from 5 pm to 7 pm and all day on weekends.  She has been gathering bins for her rocks and cardboard to make signs.  I love that she has something that she is really interested in that has made her want to study and learn everything about it.

Jayce is the best helper to me.  On top of her chores, she changes diapers, takes out trash, gets the mail, helps me with Claire so I can get stuff done, and much more.  She is so much fun to have around.  She has a great sense of humor and is always cracking jokes.  She also has a good heart.  She will bring change to the store so she can give it to the Salvation Army when they are out ringing the bells this time of year.  She told me today that the #1 most important thing to her is her family.

Thanksgiving Break

This year I made my first Thanksgiving dinner.  I'd never cooked a turkey before.  I was afraid mine would turn out like the one on Christmas Vacation.  Everything actually turned out great.  Blake is pretty picky and doesn't like stuffing, cranberries, or yams, so I didn't bother making any of those.  We had turkey, potatoes and gravy, corn, green bean casserole, rolls, peach cobbler with ice cream (Blake's favorite dessert), and Jayce made a chocolate cream pie.  I was going to make homemade rolls, but we were stuck at the doctor's office for two hours, so we had to have rolls from the store. 

I let Jayce make a pie all by herself.  She is a chocaholic, so she chose to make a chocolate pudding pie with an Oreo crust and she decorated the top with Oreos.  She was so proud of herself.

This was Blake after eating.  I'm lucky to have Blake because he always help clean-up and he likes to make mashed potatoes for me.

We decorated our Christmas tree a couple days before Thanksgiving because we were going out of town later that week.  I've been fighting with Blake and Jayce to change the lights to white, but I always lose the battle.

Footis loves to take naps under the tree, but only when the lights are on.

The girls and I visited Utah for the last part of Thanksgiving break.  Blake couldn't get the time off work, so he stayed home.  We made it just in time for my mom and Kevin's Thanksgiving dinner, which is always amazing.  We had pies at Granny's later, and then Jayce had a sleepover with her cousins on the Yak side.  My dad was visiting as well, so we had a great time with all of our family.  It's kind of hard to divide the time so we can spend time with everyone, but we tried our best.  I feel bad I didn't take many pictures, though.

Jayce's cousins all worship her and think she's the coolest kid.  In this picture they all wanted to sit next to her, so they made a circle around her.

Jayce adores her uncles Jacob and Isaac.  Claire was kind of scared of them at first, but she liked them after a couple days.

 Granny had her Christmas party that weekend so Ryan's family and mine could attend.  It was a lot of fun, but sad not to have Poppy there complaining about how much money Granny wasted.  He always loved the parties anyways. :)

Sprained Ankle

Jayce had her first gymnastics injury a couple weeks ago.  She jumped of a big cheese mat and rolled her ankle.  She was a tough girl and finished gymnastics.  She told me she hurt it, but didn't complain much at all.  I really didn't think much of it, because she didn't really say anything.  The third grade was having a field trip the next day to see The Nutcracker ballet, and she was really excited about it, so she didn't want me to not let her go.  After school on the field trip day, she showed me her ankle and told me it was actually very painful.  I couldn't believe how swollen it was.  We took her to the doctor and he said it was a really bad sprain.

Don and Renee Colorado Visit

This Halloween Blake's mom and dad came to visit us.  They arrived the night before Halloween.  The girls were so excited to spend time with them.

Papa Don and Grandma went to Jayce's Halloween parade and class party with us.  It was a lot of fun to have them there.

 Claire wanted to be in the parade with her big sister.

Later that night we went to the city's Halloween party.  The girls had a great time.  Then we went home and ate chili.  It was the first chili that I've ever made, and it turned out really good, but it was sad to not have my mom and Granny's chili this year.  After dinner, Blake and Papa Don took Jayce out trick-or-treating.  Claire was too scared to go because of all of the masks.

 Blake as Jigsaw

 Renee, Blake, Jayce, and Don- pretty scary!

 Claire loved cuddling with her grandparents.

The next day we went to the reservoir, the riverwalk, and later to Colorado Springs where we walked around Garden of the Gods and ate dinner.  It was a really fun day.

It was kind of late when we went to the Garden of the Gods, but it was still really beautiful.  We walked around a lot of it and saw some wildlife.

We are so lucky to have the best families!