Hannah's recipe for magic powder

"Put 1 or 2 cups of powdered sugar in a bowl, then 100 or 99 cups of brown sugar to sweeten it in case someone eats it, then take sourdough bread and break it up and melt it. Mix it all together and bake it for 25 minutes. Then take it and sprinkle it over my head and then I will get long hair like Rapunzel!"

(We saw Tangled while we were on vacation, can you tell? She was terrified during the whole movie but all of a sudden she decided she loved it and now she is obsessed with growing hair like Rapunzel's.)

A couple of other funny things from Hannah:

- While we were on our way out of the airport coming home Sunday night, Hannah was complaining about being hungry and wanting to eat when we got home. Really she was just tired and we had already fed them dinner on the airplane, so I told her no, she was just going to go to bed. Her grumpy answer: "I always never get my dreams come true!!!"

-This was months ago and most of you have probably already heard this one, but it is funny and I don't have it recorded yet. Seth was trying to feed her lunch and she was (once again) in a bad mood and complaining because she wanted quesadillas instead of cheese and crackers. When Seth asked her why she wouldn't eat, she said vehemently, "These crackers taste like dirt! Dirt mixed with bees and gorillas!"

Joshua...what else can I say???

Meet Mr. Mischief (aka Miss Amy, but Miss Amy moved away so I guess he felt that he needed to change his name). He is 3 1/2 years old today. To see how he chose to celebrate, watch this video. (BTW, Hannah's commentary throughout the video is pretty funny. And I'm sorry my voice is so awful, I have been congested for weeks and I had just woken up...it was not quite 7 in the morning when we took this!)

I'm telling you, this kid has been on one lately. He has become the WORST troublemaker!!! he is SO stinking cute, but man is he a pill! Earlier this week, he destroyed a little beaded-rope Christmas decoration Hannah made in preschool last year, dropping one bead in the toilet and swallowing another one, leaving Hannah crying because he'd eaten her favorite decoration. One of his favorite pasttimes lately is squeezing tubes of toothpaste as hard as he can with the cap still on, causing it to ooze out the sides and up into the cap and make a pretty nasty mess.

Joshua is hilarious. He is a walking contradiction. He can be soooo sweet...he is very gentle and kind with Eli, he loves hugs and kisses and is very generous with them, but then he goes and chooses his snowman pajamas because "they are bad guy clothes...and I am going to kill my sister!" ...making Hannah cry again. He loves money and is very generous with it...he loves to pay his tithing and give his money to Heavenly Father, and wants to donate to every single cause on the tithing slip; he tells me "I am so excited to go on a mission! I want to go on lots of missions!" and then tells us some variation of a scripture story to demonstrate how "wicked" he is, such as this story from the other day: "Well, Laman and Lemuel were wicked because they wouldn't help Nephi build his ship. So I'M mean because...I don't want to help him either!" His favorite thing to say to people is "You are very, very stupid!" Other name-calling favorites include silly billy, silly punk, little pal, silly butt, stupid butt, and silly-stuff-sir (you might recognize that last one as a phrase from Dr. Seuss's Fox in Socks).

Anyway....in terms of maturity this boy has regressed by about a million years lately. He has such a temper and will scream his brains out when something upsets him. And hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, and hit some more. He has even started sucking his thumb, mostly I think because he likes how Hannah sucks her thumb and holds her snuggy blanket in her face to go to sleep, but it seems like he actually might be starting it for real (or "for life", as Hannah would say). And the worst part is that he has started talking like a baby and crawls around saying "Goo!" when he wants to whine. It is REALLY annoying!

I'm hoping that all of this is just a phase that he might snap out of once he starts going to Sunbeams in a couple of weeks and can feel like a real "big boy." Until then...it's a good thing that he is SO cute and so smart and so fun (when he's well rested and not upset). He LOVES to play games, read stories, and be tickled. Nevertheless, if anyone has any advice on how to encourage a swift departure from this stage...bring it on!

Merry Christmas!

Hannah Rae had her first real school Christmas program on Thursday night. It was so cute!!! Usually those seem to drag on a little bit but I was really impressed with how great all the classes did. It was so cute to watch her sing the Hokey Pokey in Chinese...she didn't seem to sing much but she did all the dancing really well. So cute!!!! We brought our local "grandma", Cay, to enjoy the show with us.

That picture is of Hannah with Hung Laoshi, who must be the best kindergarten teacher ever. Hannah absolutely adores her. She is the cutest lady. And Joshua is officially in love with that Santa hat. He wears it everywhere and even sleeps with it -- not wearing it, just cuddling it!

Also, because we are visiting family on Christmas, we decided to let Santa come a week early to our house. We had a fun day -- the kids loved their new toys and Eli loved his moose antlers :) .