Aurora is 3!

I can't believe she's three.  Time just goes by too quickly. All the more reason to cherish these precious moments when my children are small. The "cherishing" part is hard sometimes when my terrible-two-year-old exhibits signs of the even-more-terrible-three's.  Aurora really is a very sweet and loving girl, but she definitely has her moments, as all kids do.  Maybe I have my moments more than she does.  Haha.  I'm happy to take part of the blame if need be :)

Anyway, Aurora turned three on January 11th. It was a special day.  Daddy and I (but mostly Daddy because I was working) decorated with balloons and ribbons all over the house over night for Aurora to wake up to.  Most of the decorations are still up at this moment--it's always so hard to take them down when she loves them so much!  She was very excited to wake up and see the decorations all over--Daddy did a great job!

As soon as she woke up Aurora asked me, "Mom, where's my box?"

Me: "What box?"

Aurora: "You know, my box!"

Me: "Do you mean your present?"

Aurora: "Yeah!  Where's my present?"

Me: "It's in my closet.  You need to wait for your friends and Grandma and Grandpa to come over tonight before you open it."

Of course she couldn't wait though.  She wouldn't even wait until after breakfast!  Haha.  I love the excitement of kids.  And, since it was her birthday, we let her open it. :)

She got a new bugsey eyed "ty" puppy named "Rootbeer", the Frozen soundtrack, some jewelery, a couple belts, some new rubber bands for her hair, Monster's University and Wreck It Ralph on bluray.

We made our special Christmas rolls for breakfast and Rori loved that too.  It was mostly a relaxing day, and we've listened to the Frozen soundtrack multiple times daily since then :)  I love to hear Aurora sing along with the songs.  Her favorite one is "Let It Go" that Elsa sings.

Daddy always gets flowers for us on her birthday.  I'm glad he remembers the part I played in bringing her into the world :)


I feel like I missed out on a big chunk of her birthday because I went to a funeral for a really amazing woman in our ward.  She got to hang out with Daddy and Savannah though :)  One of the biggest highlights of the day for her was helping Daddy make her birthday cake.  She asked us about her cake all day long and she was SO excited when it was finally time to put it together.  She really wanted to help with it, and she did a great job!  She helped Mommy make the icing.

And eat it too, of course :)

She helped Daddy frost it and put the candy on it.  I've been wanting to make a Kit-Kat cake for a while and thought Aurora's birthday would be a perfect time to try it out.
[She was making tic-toc sounds instead of smiling because she was singing along with Frozen and wouldn't stop for the picture :)]

After dinner from Five Guys and a quick cat nap in the car, we had some friends and Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Ryan come over to celebrate with us.

Grandma and Grandpa got her the roller skates and pads she's been asking for.  She was so excited and can't wait for the weather to warm up to go try them outside


She got an Elsa doll--she has slept with it every night since she got it!

She got a LalaLoopsie mermaid doll to play with in the tub

Our beautiful little three year old!

She was totally looking forward to blowing out her candle :)

We ate delicious cake and ice cream.  The cake was a big hit with everyone!  And I was especially glad Aurora ate her "special" (soy) ice cream this year.  It's expensive stuff and she didn't eat it last year.

 More important than her presents and the things she got were the people who helped make her birthday special.  Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us, for everyone who called and gave birthday wishes, and more especially the love and support shown to Aurora and us on her birthday.
Thanks, Omie, for the card and money you sent!  She was SO excited to get mail with her name on it, and especially that it was from her grandparents.  I'll try to get the video posted of her opening it :)

We sure are glad you're in our lives, sweet girl!

Happy Birthday, Aurora!

1st Day of Primary

Technically Aurora should be in the nursery at church for another year because her birthday is after January 1st.  I really felt like she would struggle being in the nursery for another whole year because she's pretty mature for her age, so we got permission from our Bishop and primary president for Aurora to move up to primary!  She has really been looking forward to going to primary with the "big kids" for several weeks now.  I thought it was funny that when the day finally came for her to join the primary she kept saying, "I want to stay and play with the toys!"  It was a little too late for that :)

Last Sunday, January 5, 2014, was Aurora's first day of Primary!

 

Her primary teacher said she was the best behaved out of all the kids in her class.  Way to go, Rori!  I was SO happy to hear that, especially considering she is the youngest in the primary.  It's a good thing too because we drilled her on appropriate behavior for primary before church last week.  We know we have a great girl.  She's so smart and such a good kid.

Aurora, it is so much fun to watch you grow up and we admire the beautiful girl you are becoming.  You love to go to church and learn more about Jesus.  You love to sing songs and you have such a beautiful singing voice!  We look forward to learning and growing with you as you go through your years in the primary.  We love you!

Little Fairies

I'm glad Santa brought a dress-up box for Aurora.  I love more that the girls like to play together and that they get along so well.  Let's just hope they keep it up over the years, huh? :)

Welcoming in 2014

Our New Years Eve was pretty mellow, but we like it that way :)  Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Ryan were home from Pittsburgh and Aurora missed them so much while they were gone.  She was so happy we got to have dinner with them for New Years.

Savannah likes hanging out with Grandpa

Aurora has done this with their towel rack since she was tiny and barely standing/walking.  It was funny to see her do it again now that she's bigger and that she had to bend over to get it in her mouth.  I think this is the first time we've actually gotten pictures of her doing it.  Her cheeks don't have to stretch quite so far as they used to though.  Silly goose.



The neighbors across the street lit off fireworks for a while.  Rori loved watching them from the window.

Savy watched from the walker.  She was totally mesmorized!

To appease Aurora we all played a game called "Walk the Dogs".  Aurora was on my team, and we won!

We ate delicious food and watched "Bill Cosby, Himself", a family favorite especially when you need a good laugh.  Aurora really wanted to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house but both girls got very sleepy and fell asleep on the way home.  I had to work a couple more hours when we got home, but it was a really nice evening.  That was about the extent of our New Years celebrating :)

Happy New Year!

Christmas 2013 {in bulk}

We had a really great Christmas, as always, and we did a lot of fun things.  I'm going to just dump it all into one post because my blogging time is few and far between these days even though I think about sitting down to do it often, it just doesn't happen.  Mostly because I've been putting in extra hours for work trying to get all the 2013 stuff wrapped up, and then if I do have a minute to blog, or do whatever, I usually choose to get some sleep :)  I've been averaging 5-6 hours of sleep at night and I can see it starting to take a toll on me and my girls (especially Aurora).  I've been trying to get a little more sleep to try and smooth out my all-too-often-grumpy-edges lately.  But I found a minute to blog and at least get started, so here we go!

Sunday, December 22

Our girls looked so cute in their Christmas dresses.  Of course we had to take pictures! :)

The girls played while they waited for Mommy to finish getting ready

 Vannah's face totally cracks me up in this one :)



Daddy and Rori tested out the position of the camera for us.  Cuties.

Happy family!

Monday, December 23

FHE - Decorating Christmas Cookies

Instead of doing a gift exchange between friends this year we made it a point to get together and do something fun.  So our favorite friends, the McSweeney's and the Hjorth's, came over for some yummy soup for dinner and decorating Christmas sugar cookies for dessert, with a fun game in between.  We planned this the night before--and that's what I love about these guys--we can plan something practically last minute and it always comes together and we always have a great time!  Savannah missed out on the whole thing though.  She fell asleep at 4:30pm that afternoon and didn't wake up until almost 5:00am the next morning!

While we waited for our guests to arrive, Aurora chilled on the couch watching our favorite Christmas movie: The Polar Express :)

 After a delicious dinner the real fun began!


Eating them is always the best part!

This is what she did when I told her to smile. Silly Rori.


Aurora and R took turns taking pictures of each other :)


Thanks again, friends!  You guys are the best!

Tuesday, December 24
Christmas Eve!
One of our favorite end-of-year traditions is to watch all the home videos we've taken over the last year (or as many as we can get through, anyway).  We started watching in the morning, and when the video of our traditional Christmas Eve swim from last year came up Aurora started putting all of our swim stuff together and wanted to go right then--she even grabbed some sunscreen, not that we needed it.  Haha! :)

While Daddy went out to do some last minute shopping, Rori helped me make some yummy treats.  She's such a great helper!


When nap time was over it was time for our Christmas Eve swim!  Aurora was SO happy to be back in the water--we haven't gone swimming much in the last year, and if you remember our last attempt, it didn't go over very well.



I snapped this picture of Dar--it cracks me up that his eyes are totally not lined up.  Funny how water distorts things :)

Savannah's last pool experience was a little traumatic for her, so she and I took things nice and slow.  We even smoothed things over for her and let her have her bink in the pool.  I think the water was the warmest it has ever been when we've gone swimming at the clubhouse.  It was so nice, and I think it helped Savy ease into the water a little more.

No words necessary.

It took a few minutes, but Savannah slowly got more comfortable with being in the pool.

She was eventually okay enough that she let us put her in her floaty, and actually quite enjoyed it!  She even got to the point that she didn't care so much about Aurora's splashing.

Aurora on the other hand LOVES the water.  We love that she has no problems with being under the water.  She thinks it's so fun to practice holding her breath :)

The best part about our swim was that we were the only ones at the pool for the entire 1.5 hours we were there!  That rarely happens, and we loved every second of it just being our family in the great big pool!

 
 After swimming we went home and the girls had baths.  We ate our traditional clam chowder for our Christmas Eve dinner.  I'm not a fan of fish/fishy food, but Dar was really proud of me that not only did I make the clam chowder (we're usually with his family Christmas Eve and his mom makes it, but they were in Pittsburgh visiting Dar's sister this year) but I actually ate it with the clams in it!!  I gave him the big pieces of clams though :)  After dinner it was time to get ready for Santa to come!  Savannah went to sleep really quickly--it was a long, fun-filled day for her, so Aurora got a plate of cookies ready for Santa by herself.

She shared Santa's cookies with her nativity friends :)

 During the night we went in to check on the girls--they frequently kick all their blankets off--and found Aurora like this:
 
My favorite part of the day was that Aurora kept saying to us, "Mom and Dad, this is such a wonderful day!"  It made me smile every time she said it :)

Wednesday, December 25
Christmas Day!
 When we woke up in the morning we saw that Santa came and the opening of presents commenced.



 



Such a cute little fairy!

Taking turns checking out each others toys

Vannah LOVES this tambourine she got from Santa--it lights up and plays music

Daddy got me a nice big mirror for the wall in the kitchen.  Yay!  The girls had a good time playing with it for a while.





Santa brought Savannah a princess tiara--she makes such a cute little princess!  She surprised us by keeping it on for a really long time too.  She usually pulls anything off her head as soon as we try to put it on.  I think she's getting a little better though :)

I love for my house to be clean, but I do kind of enjoy the messiness of the aftermath of Christmas morning

Princess Savannah playing with Aurora's princess castle she got for her birthday last year.  Savannah LOVES Aurora's princess castle!

She looked so cute with the tiara on and I couldn't resist taking a gazillion pictures :)


Our beautiful princesses--we sure love these girls of ours!

Silly Rori.

After opening presents our breakfast was finally ready.  I gave it my first shot at making Dar's traditional family breakfast.  It was my first attempt, and they didn't turn out as great as his mom's, but they still tasted pretty good.  I was bummed that they exploded in the oven though.  Haha.  I guess I let them rise too long.  Just a little more practice, right?

After breakfast we facetimed with the fam in Pittsburgh so Grandma and Grandpa could watch the girls open their presents from them

Grandma and Grandpa got Aurora a strider bike!  Now we just can't wait for the weather to warm up so she can ride it outside!

Checking out the handle bars :)


After a nice, relaxing day together, I made my first ham for our Christmas dinner.  It was so easy!  I'm surprised I've never done it before.  Haha.  I'll definitely be making ham again.
Savannah enjoying her first Christmas dinner!

And so tired after another fun day :)

Merry Christmas, everyone!