Update on the Girls

I just thought I'd give a little update on what our two girls have been up to lately:

Nora has been working on potty training. We have good days and bad days, but she has made a lot of progress! One of the things we need to work on is not getting five squirts of soap every time she washes her hands, and not unrolling half the roll to get some TP.

I also love a lot of the funny things she says. Some Nora-isms include:

"Hold you! Hold you!" with her arms reaching up (meaning, hold me!)

We were playing with some clay stamps with different shapes, and she found one that was the shape of a hand and said, "Look! A five!"

When I ask her to do something she doesn't want to do, sometimes she'll say "I just can't do it"

She also frequently says the old toddler standbys "NO!!!" and "LOOK AT ME!!!!"

Nora up to her usual craziness

Nora has been very big into dressing herself lately. Sometimes I'll put her down for her nap, or in time out in her room, and when I come and get her she'll be in a completely new outfit. Here she is in an outfit she picked out all by herself, and put on by herself too, even the shoes and socks. The Halloween glove is a nice touch.

Last week, we went up to my parents' house, and Nora made a special rainbow cake with Grammy. Nora enjoyed mixing the colors into the batter.

This picture accurately shows Nora's usual reaction when she sees someone getting ready to take a picture.

The finished cake - it was really cute!

Evie loves music, and does her little "dance" anytime she hears music playing. It is really funny in church when she dances to the hymns! Here she is playing a drum with Aunt B.

Evie loves to eat little finger foods. She was never very excited about baby food, but loves to eat cheerios, bananas, peaches, pears, cheese, bread, beans, peas and corn. She is also getting very good at drinking from her sippy cup.

She's also been going through a rough teething period for about a month, but she has this cute little toothy smile to show for it! She has six teeth now - four on the top and two on the bottom.

She has also earned the nickname "dandylion" from Grammy because of her cute fuzzy hair. Around here she is sometimes called Evie bug because she is little and always crawling around, or little puppy, because she is always following me around while crawling, and she also likes to put a toy in her mouth to carry it, and then crawl around like that. We also sometimes call her Evster. Nora was saying a prayer the other day and said, "Grateful Daddy, Mommy, Evie, Evster"...hehe.

Valentine's Day

Nora was very excited to help put up the Valentine's decorations when we got back from our trip. She especially liked hanging the heart ornaments on this little tree. She rearranges them daily. 

She likes to play with these little fabric hearts, too

On Valentine's Day, we made some chocolate cupcakes and decorated them with Valentine candy

Evie enjoyed playing with the soft stuffed heart decorations

On Sunday, the girls wore their heart dresses to church, and after we went to my parents' house for Sunday dinner. My mom had made a very cute meal, with heart shaped cheese on the salad, and spaghetti with little heart shaped meatballs. My dad made a yummy cheesecake. 

I tried to get a picture of the girls together, but Evie was NOT in the mood

Nora loves strawberries!

Holding Grammy's heart wreath

Just in the past week Evie has become a real wiggle worm. She wants to be moving all the time!

Woah, Brace Yourself!!

Major updates today! Mike is always saying that I post too many pictures on the blog, and I think that today's contributions are probably my worst offense yet. Scroll down to the first Disneyland post to see all of them. We had a wonderful trip, and took lots of fun pictures. Thanks to Mom for sharing her pictures, and they are in these posts too. She took some really great pictures, especially ones of the girls with characters. So anyway, I just wanted to warn you for what is ahead. :)

And for a few more pictures... here are some souvenirs we got to remember our trip by. In Disneyland there was a little booth where you could get names painted with some your favorite Disney characters in the letters. I thought they were darling, so I got one for each girl to hang in her room. 

We also stopped by the silhouette studio on Main Street in Disneyland. They have an artist there who hand cuts silhouettes with a pair of scissors. It was really fun watching her. I couldn't believe how fast she was! I guess that is an especially good trait when working with wiggly little kids.

Toontown Morning Madness

Oops, looks like I got a little ahead of myself there. Here are some pictures from Toontown, which is in Disneyland.

On Monday, Feb.2, we had tickets to go to Toontown Morning Madness, which is when they open Toontown an hour early, do a cute little show with the characters and then let you go meet the characters and ride the rides without the long lines. Toontown was great for Nora because there are so many things she could touch, climb on and explore. This was also our warmest day in the park. I couldn't believe it was February. Hooray for sunshine!

The show - Mickey gave a speech

Nora was tall enough to go on Gadget's Go Coaster this year

Meeting Chip

Meeting Goofy

The Roger Rabbit Ride

Uh oh, looks like Nora, Mike and Evie are in jail

We got to meet Minnie at the entrance of her house

Minnie's vanity

Minnie's kitchen was very fun

Evie checking out the bucket to Minnie's wishing well

Evie and Mike outside of Mickey's house

We got to meet Mickey in the entry of his house

Hanging out in Mickey's living room

Mickey's laundry room

Heading back to the rest of the park

San Diego

After we left Disneyland, we drove down to San Diego and stayed there a few days. The weather was a little cooler for this part of the trip, but still much nicer than the weather in Utah! There were some seagulls and ducks that would come up to the sliding door of our hotel room and we would toss them little pieces of bread. Nora got a kick out of that. 

The drive

We visited Balboa park one day. Nora's favorite thing there was this crazy crocodile sculpture.

The buildings there are very beautiful

We visited the Natural History Museum

They had a great dinosaur exhibit. Nora really loved all the interactive stuff they had there.

Evie checking out the geode

The next day we paid a visit to the wonderful San Diego Zoo

Nora loved the petting zoo they had in the children's area

Meeting a pot-bellied pig

Nora and Grandpop feeling buggy

Nora got to meet a Panda - we also got to see the real pandas they have at the zoo

We had the opportunity to feed some little veggie biscuits to the giraffes. It was fun, and very different. They had a nice hand washing area to use when you were done (which was good, since one of the giraffes licked my hand).

Evie and I on the Skifari bucket - headed back to the exit.

On our last day it rained quite a bit on and off, so we mostly relaxed at the hotel, and watched a couple of movies. During a break in the rain, Dad and I took Nora to a nearby playground and she had a blast.

Here we are in the San Diego Airport on our way home. I thought this sculpture was neat. It had kelp, seals, fish and crabs over a fountain.

Back home in cold Salt Lake - Nora tried out her new hat that Grammy made her.