Started out with this girl's birthday. Four years ago was one of the best days of my life - Emily was born!
It was so fun for her to pick what we did all day. Basically, we played "Sleeping Queens" for a couple of hours (her favorite game) and....
She picked a bead craft for each of us to do. Emy loves coloring and crafts...
Angela's butterfly she made...
....opened presents...a lot of coloring books and books to read.
...and sweet gifts from the girlies. Angela drew her lots of pictures...like this one of church...
Emily loved "Spot" books so she got a book with 3 Spot stories in it...
...she also is inlove with Clifford books so she got a few of those, too (Yay for Ebay).....the one that is under her hand ("Clifford's Family") is her all time favorite Clifford book.
...Carolyn gave her a bunch of candy. Emy loves candy so it was so thoughtful of Carolyn.
...Emily is quite the reader. She likes reading "Bob Books" to us and so she got a little set. Her favorite Bob Book to read to us as of right now is "Bow Wow."
....as Carolyn points out, Emily is so amazing at sharing. She shared her coloring pages as well as her painting book. The girls all painted on her big day...
We pulled out the Wii after months and so it was super exciting to play it. We played bowling.
Emily's icecream cake. Yes, Emily and I accidently picked up a 3 instead of 4....so 3 plus the Cinderella counts as 4.
Seriously, love this beautiful, sweet, and crazy girl.
The day ended with us snuggling and eating her icecream cake and watching a movie of her choice- "Maleficent"
.....and non birthday related that happened this month. Emily loves coloring pictures and usually colors atleast one while the girls are at school to give to them when they return. I loved this picture she colored for Carolyn. Look at that pretty rainbow hair she did. She sure works hard on her pictures.
....and I LOVE how her drawings look....this is her picture she drew. Look at that detail! The eyelashes, hair, poke-a-dot dress, fingers, heals on the shoes...pretty amazing :)
VALENTINES DAY!!!!!! This girl had 2 boys fighting over who would be able to be her valentine. Kyle ended up being the winner eventhough the class found that he wrote "Carolyn" with a heart around the name on his valentine bag he made. Here she is at her Valentine party. Love this girl and the silly and crazy and fun girl she always is. And very sweet.
I love her monster valentine bag she made. She is super creative and often talks about being an inventor some day. I loved her mouth she made and hair.
Carolyn's friend, Sophie, loves talking and taking care of Emily.
....and Angela's class!!! I just LOVED her heart person she made on her Valentine bag! Angela was very busy for this day with her good little heart making lots of Valentine notes and gifts for people.
Angela and Journey.
On Valetine's Day, the girls and I were completely spoiled by Andrew. This is what we woke up to find on the kitchen table on Valentine's Morning. To say the least, we were very excited.
Angela named this dog "Poke-a-Dots" and he goes everywhere with her these days.
Also, on Valentines Day, we got to do some extra curricular activities. Daddy took Angela to dance. I will post pictures soon of her dancing. Her form and poise is incredible. Emily and I went to Carolyn's basketball game (more pictures to come of that, too). Here Emily is, the crazy girl she is, cheering her sissy on and being her silly self.
Carolyn is wearing the green. She had 4 incredible rebounds today and played her best at being aggressive and getting in there. Those games are so much more fun to watch than I ever could imagine!
She's #1 :)
After games and dance and fun Valentines gifts, we all headed to the zoo together. Going to the zoo with the family is one of my favorites. After the zoo we went to one of Mommy's favorite restaurants, Cafe Rio. It was especially fun to see Emily's favorite animal peacock....
...and Emily is always wanting to see the giraffes inside. Usually they are always outside. I asked a zoo keeper once when we can see them inside since Emily was always asking when they go inside. It's pretty much rare to see them inside but sometimes you can catch them right after opening and right before closing. TODAY they were inside! VERY exciting! Emily and Angela infront of the giraffes inside!
A day with this amazing man, Andrew, is always incredible! Carolyn and Andrew :)
When we got home, the girls opened a Valentine Package from Nana and Ponka (Randy and Carolyn Kim) full of little valentine treats and cards. So sweet of them. After that, Angela sat us around the table and had us close our eyes at various times as she presented to us all the Valentine cards that she had made for us (she's been secretively working hard on Valentine Cards for us a few days prior to Valentines Day). She's such a sweety!
What a great Valentines Day!!
Yesterday (Sunday), we had such a great Sabbath. I love just sitting and talking with the family. We were playing a game that we sometimes play as a family "5 questions." We hold up a hand and people pick a finger and the person holding up the hand asks the person that picked the finger a certain question. We played this for a long time on Sunday. It was fun. We played it at dinner and then carried it over to snuggling on the couch all together and playing it. I love the sweet moments that are so simple yet so significant and wonderful. And it's so fun getting to know each other even better. After that, the girls and I sat around the table and colored while Andrew did the dishes for us. I love this picture Angela made for Andrew: (Silly Dad...to Dad (with a picture of a church)).
I also am inlove with the fact that Andrew fixed the kitchen faucet over the weekend!!! It's been squirting water and I love him for doing it.
Today (Feb 16th) was a day off of School. Carolyn wanted her best friend, Kaycee come over and play so we invited the whole family. Carolyn and Kaycee played animals (as they usually do)...they set up some pretty awesome homes for the animals with blocks. They also wrote in their pioneer journal (we started it the last time Kaycee was here...we learn somethings about pioneers and then they write journal entries as if they were pioneers. Today we learned about some of the rules Brigham Young had for pioneers (we read about it at lds.org)...like they had to wake up at 5 - pray and feed their animals and then they would walk starting at 7. They were in bed at 9 that day....Carolyn's journal entry included her sleeping in ...and the one before that about how she ate a rabbit?? They are so silly these two!!!) We are sure lucky to have such great friends around. No one can replace Kaycee. Carolyn loves her. She's really funny and super nice...just perfect for the Carolyn.
Andrew surprised us all and got home early from work today!!! It was so fun! His boss let them leave early because it had been snowing bad and he wanted them to beat the really bad ice. 5:30 he was home!! Perfect for Family Home Evening Night!!! Blessed are we to be counseled to have FHE! Love the spirit felt and how we always grow closer to the Savior and as a family. Carolyn sang a beautiful song for us ("I love to see the temple") and provided us with chocolate eclairs. Angela always loves to teach - she shared a scripture about Christ being baptized to show us the strait gate to Heaven and to set an example. She drew a beautiful picture of Christ being baptized and of course had a little give-away to remind us of the scripture (ribbons that we were to wear as rings so we can remember to be nice). Emily gave a beautiful lesson on an attribute of our Savior (we have been focusing on attributes of our Savior). Carolyn did such a sweet job of helping her. She talked about how our Savior is our Light and how we can be a light to others, too. She shared a video on lds.org with children singing about how Christ is our light with some beautiful pictures of Him. We then did an object lesson where we turned off all the lights and just had a candle. We talked about how Christ is our light and how we can either hide our own light or put it up on a hill. Such an amazing lesson where we could feel close to our Savior and want to be like Him. I should mentioned that we played "Candy Land" and we talked about Ann Amelia Howarth, too (my great grandmother). I was able to find her obituary today and put it on familysearch.org - so exciting to put that on there and share it with the family! We also did Angela's Dance routine. Can I just say that Andrew is the best Dad and husband ever? Yes, he actually does the dance with Angela and REMEMBERS the entire dance and helps her with all the moves. He's pretty amazing. No idea how I got him, but glad I did!! :) It was so fun to watch Angela dance and teach Carolyn and Emily the dance. I can't wait for her dance recital in a few weeks! Good thing she's got Andrew to help her and was blessed with amazing grace and poise!
.JPG)
