Elsie sings Adele

We are having a Sick Sunday this week. The girls and Alan aren't feeling well. We arranged for substitutes and stayed home from church to get some more rest and so we don't pass it on to the rest of the ward. With 60+ kids in nursery, they need all the help they can get in keeping germs out. Hopefully we can kick this thing before my parents get here on Tuesday...

Elsie and I have had a relaxed morning. Alice was up for a little while and ate breakfast with us and watched an episode of Veggie Tales before going down for a nap. Elsie and I just finished up the first couple of steps in making mock Farmers Market Spicy Cheese Bread and now it is sitting and rising. Elsie also favored me with this little song with no prompting from me:

I admit, this song gets stuck in my head a lot and I guess I sing more often than I realized. We also turn it way up when it comes on in the car and sing as loud as we can.

If you don't know what song she is singing, listen to the next video. It's not the actual Adele version, but I think I like it better than the original.

Blues, Pet Stores, and Harry Potter

This picture pretty much sums up how I've been feeling the past couple of weeks:

 I think I've got a full blown case of the Winter Blues. I've had half a dozen blog post ideas floating around my head, but I have had the hardest time motivating myself to sit down and write them. Forget blog posts, I've had a hard time getting anything done around here. It feels like the days just slip away without anything really happening. I know Spring is just around the corner, but it is still cold and windy and I'm sick of being stuck in our apartment and stuck indoors. I'm tired of bundling the kids up to go out and having to squeeze them into their carseats in their big puffy coats. I'm ready to get out of this funk. At least we will have house guests next week. If nothing else, it will get me to clean my bathrooms...

We have gotten out a little bit. We went to the fabric store and I made Elsie a deal that if she was super good and listened and stayed with me while I was looking we would go to a pet store after I was done. She held up her end of the bargain, so I had to keep mine. The kids loved running around looking at all the animals and even petting a few of them. It was a small store with small animals, but they had fun anyway.

 Alan wanted to watch the Harry Potter movies since they where finally all finished and out on DVD. I had only seen the first couple and I really didn't like them. Alan hadn't seen any of them that had come out since we've been married, so he really wanted to finish the series. I finally made him a deal that we would watch the movies only after he read all the books. He started them last August and he finished some time in December. Since he was reading them, I of course reread them for the 40 billionth time.

 One night when Elsie was driving me crazy, I turned to Alan and asked if we could just turn on a movie and eat dinner. It became a family affair to eat pizza and watch Harry Potter together. We made it through all eight movies that way. Here we are getting ready to watch the first one....

And getting ready to watch the last one. Elsie loved them and it became an incentive for her to get to watch Harry Potter. There were a few scary parts where we covered her eyes, but she was okay most of the time. She would get worried when the "friends" (Harry, Ron, and Hermione) weren't together and kept asking "where her friends be?". As long as the three of them were together on screen, she was happy. All the way through the movies I kept promising Elsie that I would read the books to her when she was older.

After seeing them all the way through all eight movies, I stand by my earlier statement. I don't like them. I feel like they were poorly done and were made in too much of a hurry. It really irks me that they added parts to the movies that weren't in the books. I understand that they are longish books and that some condensing must be done, but if they were already cutting things out, why waste so much time on things that didn't actually happen? Even Alan said during one of the movies "did the screen writers even read the books?"

Anyway, that's my Harry Potter rant. Maybe I've read the books a few hundred times too many to really enjoy the movies. Maybe if I'm lucky they will do a remake of them in my lifetime and actually do the books justice.

Maybe next we will start introducing Elsie to Star Wars...

Happy Valentine's Day!

I saw this on a friends blog and asked Elsie the questions to add to this post. Here are her answers...

1. How do you know who to marry? 
Well, you... go to the temple!
2. What is the right age to get married? 
Like Mommy and Daddy
3. How can a stranger tell if two people are married? 
Ask them
4. What do you think your mom and dad have in common? 
They have kids
5. What do most people do on a date? 
Go to the house
6. When is it okay to kiss someone? 
When you love someone
7. Is it better to be single or married? 
Married
8. How would the world be different if people didn't get married? 
Well, everyone not get married and go to the temple
9. How would you make a marriage work? 
You go to one truck and drive in the truck
10. Where do people get married? 
At the temple
11. Who are you going to marry? 
I'm not going to marry anything

Little Walking Girl

Alice's Evil Genius Laugh

Happy Birthday Alice!

Alice had a fun birthday. We opened presents after her nap when she was in a really good mood. Here she is opening up a book from Aunt Becky.

 Look! I'm actually in some of the pictures!

 Stacking boxes from Grandma DeeDee and Grandpa Ken.

 I love her face in these next few pictures.

 Stacking bowls with a little ball on top from Grandma Nean and Grandpa Boyd. Alice loves the little smiley face ball that came with this toy. As a matter of fact, she is playing with it as I write this post. She thinks it's pretty silly.

 Dinosaur Train books from Grandma Nean and Grandpa Boyd. I have to say these were a big hit, especially with Elsie.

 Even Elsie got a present! She was a little sad that everything was all for Alice and was so excited when we pulled out a present just for her. (Thanks Mom)

Lace up patterns! Elsie works on them and tells me all about how she is sewing like Mommy.

 Finally Alice gets to open her present from Mom and Dad.

 A new carseat! It might look like a boring present, but Alice loves sitting in it. She climbs in it and demands toys like a little princess on a throne. She still fits just fine in her old carseat, so it will still be a little while before we put this one in the car. That just means she has a longer time to play with it in the living room. :)

 Alice with all her presents (minus the book from Becky which somehow missed this picture... I think Elsie had stolen it and was looking at it.)

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."

 After a dinner of Alice's favorite food (meat and more meat), we brought out the birthday cake.

 Lots of messy cake pictures. Alice tried to shove as much of it in her mouth as she could as fast as she could. I think the cake was a big hit.

 Mmmm, tasty birthday cake thumb...

Happy Birthday Alice!

Twelve Months

One year old today! How did that happen? Alice's walking has taken off today. I guess she decided that she's one year old now, and one year olds need to walk everywhere. She is crossing the entire room to get to where she wants to go before falling down and crawling. She has a total of nine teeth with a tenth about to pop through any day. Four on bottom, three on top (with one on the way), and two back molars on the top. She is in a hurry to get teeth so she can eat all the yummy food we have. She still loves to eat and out eats her sister at every meal. She has developed a very diabolical laugh and will throw her head back and cackle like an evil genius when she thinks something is silly. She is still very loud and likes to speak her mind. She can say Mama, Elsie, hi, uh-oh, and a mimics a lot of our words.

We love you Alice! We're so glad you came into our lives one year ago!