The Terrible Two-year-old

Grace has been making life ....interesting.... lately.  I try to remind myself that she is just acting her age, but I don't remember the other kids being this rotten. Maybe my memory is just being selective again.

Here are just some of her recent exploits:

1. A few weeks ago, I made some pulled pork. I had taken it out of the crock pot, shredded it, and it was on a dish on the counter when I went into the other room to tend to the baby. When I went back into the kitchen, Grace had emptied the salt shaker into the dish with the pork. (insert angry face emoji).

2. Yesterday, she bit Andrew in the back so hard that it broke the skin (even through his shirt).

3. The other day, she chewed through a package of graham crackers.

4. She emptied an entire bottle of Aveeno baby wash into the tub a while ago.

5. She is obsessed with tape, glue, and stickers. We have also had some close calls with scissors.

6. She refuses to wear shoes, even after getting several slivers that had to be removed.

7. She said over and over last week, "I can't wait to go to church."  Then, when I dropped her off at nursery, she threw a mega screaming fit. I ignored her.  She cries whenever a family member is not with us. She had a little fit when Preston left in a different car to go to his speaking assignment last week. "Dad doesn't need to go a different church, ever!"  I tend to agree with her there. She also freaked out when we dropped Lauren off at a playdate last week.

The Fourth Child

Allison has been a welcome addition to our family and has transitioned pretty easily into the chaos of our family life. The kids still argue over who gets to hold her. She defends herself by sleeping.

Her ptosis is pretty evident here.

Preston and I agree that she doesn't really look like any of the other kids. She's also skinny, which is unusual.

Preston says holding her is like this is like a never ending hug.

This is a common (and frightening) sight.

She loves her paci and is starting to smile a lot, although my attempts at obtaining photographic proof were not very fruitful.

The Fourth of July

We skipped out on our ward's July 4th breakfast this year and went to the Field Day at our town park instead. The kids decorated their bikes and they had foot races, sack races, an egg toss, a dunk tank, a bouncy house and a water slide. It was a lot of fun and I think we'll make it a new tradition.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to celebrate America where it all began, in Plymouth. The Plymouth Philharmonic put on a concert and the kids played with the other kids around us.  We had a great view of the fireworks over the harbor and it was unanimously declared the best 4th of July ever.

Independence Day is pretty fun around here. You should join us one of these years!

Birthday Week 2017

We survived another round of birthdays and I am officially pizza-ed and caked out. It started last Sunday with Auntie Gail's birthday party, then Andrew's birthday on Wednesday.

Ice cream sandwich cake to avoid baking, butter, and cake overload.

The only thing he wanted for his birthday was the game Busy, Busy Airport. He was thrilled.

Andrew's favorite past times are watching TV, playing abcya.com, and playing games on the ipad. When he is sadly not allowed any of the above, he settles for playing board games, playing Car Patrol of Car City with his cars, or reading books and magazines. He also likes to help me cook and really likes jokes, but don't ask him to tell you one.

Auntie Gail gave us a gift certificate for a birthday party at a bowling alley, so we invited two other families from the ward and had a party on Saturday. He wanted a minion theme and said it was his best birthday ever.

Hooray for Pinterest. I figured nothing represents our family better than bananas.

How toddlers bowl. Adults help by giving it an extra push.

My favorite 2-year old's birthday was on Sunday. I was pretty tired of cake and decorating by this point so I made a simple one layer yellow cake, the recipe for which I plan to post to Donning My Apron at some point, and turned it into a butterfly.

It was supposed to be purple, but it looks more like the Play-Doh the kids mixed all together.

She's not sad, she's blowing. It got the hair out of her face, but didn't work so well for candles.

Cutie.

In case you're wondering what Grace is like at two years old, she loves puzzles, play-doh, coloring, baby dolls, building with blocks, and our neighbor Madison. She is wild and crazy and wants to do everything the big kids do, including using the potty (hooray!), and is starting to sing a lot. She sang herself to sleep last night with "happy birthday to you" over and over and over.

I am looking forward to spending less time in the kitchen this week and hopefully more time on the couch or possibly outside if it ever decides to be spring here.

Sisters

I dare you not to laugh at some of these.

Brothers

I've been scanning some old family photographs that Dad sent me. They tend to fall into two categories - me with my brothers or me with my sisters.  I think it's pretty clear that I was the leader early on.  Also, that Ben was the goofball early on.

                       

We obviously needed some distance by this point.

Holiday Happenings

I should resolve to take more pictures. Maybe that would lead to more blogging.

Happening #1: We took a quick trip to Utah to see Preston's family because they wanted us to. The kids had a ton of fun in a long weekend.

Happening #2:

Andrew, Grace and I hosted a reindeer party for our toddler and preschool friends. We made these peanut butter cracker reindeers for the party. I was pretty proud of them.

The main event was making reindeer hats and marching around to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. 

Please excuse the itchy bum. 

Happening #3:  Instead of more toys or stuff, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge for their Christmas gift. Lauren had been wanting to go for years and we got a decent deal. They had a great time - Lauren reported that she had even more fun than she was expecting. Andrew would only go on the toddler slides and walk around the lazy river, but he seemed to have a lot of fun doing that. 

He stinks at looking at the camera. 

Grace wasn't sure at first, but she enjoyed herself too, especially the "ocean" (wave pool with a beach entry). 

Happening #4:  Christmas Eve: Our next door neighbor Arlene came over for our traditional Christmas Eve candlelight dinner. She is one of the few adults Grace likes and she thinks our kids should be models, so we get along well.  

The Christmas books I chose for the kids this year were a home run. Andrew got The Circus Ship and we have read it every night since. 

Grace got Blue Hat, Green Hat. I wish I had thought to take a video of the first time they read it together. There was lots of giggling. Now she reads it herself. "Yewwow hat! Yewwow hat! Yewwow hat!  Oops!"

Lauren got the next book in her favorite series, The Kingdom of Wrenly. It happened to be about mermaids which went perfectly with the mermaid tail she got from Aunt Joanna.