My Sweet Babies

Thanks for your support of the haircut. I've noticed lately that if anyone comes up to us and says anything about our "boy" (and they mean Joshua), Hannah says, "I'm a GIRL!" So she's getting a little over-defensive, but she smiles when she looks in the mirror and doesn't seem weirded out anymore. So that's good.

For once I'm not putting up any pictures, I'm just going to talk about how cute my kids are. We'll start with Hannah since she's the oldest. For about 6 months she was going through a difficult stage -- partly her age, I guess, and partly from lack of sleep, learning to go from 1 to 0 naps (not my idea) -- but I just wanted to say how nice it is to have my sweet litte girl back! Hannah is the cutest, sweetest thing alive. With all the gender confusion and things going on in the world today, it is so wonderful to see the development of her distinctly feminine instincts. She is so sweet and tender. She absolutely loves playing "mommy", and by that I mean she actually thinks she's me. I try to lay down with her for quiet time most days, and she puts her arms around me or her little hands on my cheeks and says, "I love you, sweetie" and things like that while she kisses and caresses my face. Whenever she does anything well, she says "I'm a good mama!" Lately she's also been very good at taking care of Joshua, too. If he cries for any reason, she immediately starts singing to him, "I love Joshie, yes I do...", a little personalized song we have for each of them. She also loves to get food for him, and tries to "help" him stand up, take a drink, etc., which he is very patient with, even when she's inadvertantly strangling him. Hannah is also extremely imaginative and loves to make up songs and carry on imagined conversations. Most days she will come up to me, hug around my leg, and start singing a made-up song that starts, "I love you so much..." and varies from that point on. One last thing about Hannah is that she is very helpful and tries hard to be polite and obedient. If I ever lose my patience with her for not listening or doing what I ask, she says "I'm sorry, Mom. It's okay! You don't need to be angry," and then starts doing whatever it is I wanted her to do. She is a true joy to be around and I love having her in my home.

Joshua is just an all-around cutie pie. He is almost 17 months old now, and he is getting so smart. While his pronunciation isn't quite as clear as Hannah's was in some cases, he also seems to have a proficiency for language beyond that of most children his age. Tonight as I was getting him ready for bed, I decided to test his knowledge of Primary songs and found that he can provide the last word of every sentence in "I Am a Child of God"! It was sooooo cute. He can also count to three by himself, which he no doubt learned because he loves to jump off of anything into our arms on the count of three. His favorite phrase lately is "all right", so he goes around the house saying, "all wight, all wight!" and it is the cutest thing you've ever heard. He can also name and point out his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and teeth, but he thinks a "bum" is a vitamin because Hannah always asks for the bum half of her animal vitamins. We're still working on that one. He is so adoring of his big sister and goes around the house calling "Hannah...Hannah!" and loves to give kisses and snuggles to not only his sister, but his parents and teddy bears as well. He is adorable and sweet and I love my little mama's boy so much.

We are so thankful to have our little family and especially thankful for the passing of Proposition 8 here in CA. I just hope the people that opposed Prop 8 understand that we are not trying to keep others from obtaining the same happiness by having their own families; it is just such a true principle that only marriage between a man and a woman can create the kind of happiness they are searching for. I'm so thankful for that knowledge and for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which gives us the opportunity to enjoy our families now and for eternity.

The story...

All right! I thought that would elicit more comments than usual. The story: there isn't one. I could say she got gum stuck in her hair, or she got hold of the scissors, or that she has a terrible illness (which you know people are wondering when she's out in public)...but nothing happened. We just decided to start over. Hannah was born with lots of hair, but it never fell out, so she never got the stronger hair that grows in later. We've been keeping her hair short for the past year and a half, but lately we've noticed that it just doesn't grow. It's so thin and wispy too. (no, she doesn't have any vitamin deficiencies, she's very healthy). In some cultures, they shave their babies' heads as soon as they're born so their hair grows in thicker, and one of my friends did that with her baby girl, who now has very nice, thick hair...so we figured, she's already three, so we better do it and get it over with before she goes to school. Hannah doesn't seem to mind too much; we took her to Walmart and let her choose some headbands and a new hat to decorate her naked noggin. The hardest thing is trying not to call her Baldy all the time...but once again, she's too young to understand the negative connotation associated with that nickname, so she doesn't care. And we think she looks cute. She knows that she's going to grow "princess hair" now. Luckily she has a nicely shaped head... Here's a picture of Baldy and her sunglasses "bra".

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween weekend. Seth took Hannah to our ward Trunk-or-Treat Thursday night, which she loved, and then took her trick-or-treating to a couple of friends' houses on Halloween. Joshua was asleep during all this so we dressed him up as a doggie for Halloween day; then Hannah decided Daddy needed to be a doggie too, and she and I needed to be kitties. So we had a fun time going around as a little animal family on Halloween. Hannah had four Halloween events total, and different costumes for all of them. It actually rained this weekend and of course the kids insisted on playing in it, so Joshua's doggie freckles are a little washed away in the pictures. But they are still adorable. Holidays are so much more fun with these little ones.

Take a good look at the following picture and see if you can see anything different about Hannah...

More Help...

I want to change the background pattern on our blog but I don't know how. I have the pattern downloaded and saved in a folder on our desktop, but does anyone know how I get it from there to my blog page? I can't find anything on the customizing pages that lets me do that. In the meantime, I'm sorry my page is almost mind-numbing to look at. It's so plain it makes me sad.
:(

Vegas Vacation

Here are some pictures from our vacation to Las Vegas with my folks. We all had a wonderful time and it was over much too soon. The kids especially loved M&M World, Circus Circus, seeing a bird show, and swimming at "Grandma Jan's fancy hotel". Hannah also fulfilled her dream of dancing on a stage at a neat little park they have in the Town Square, while I reveled in a trip to the Disney outlet store with my dad. For me, the best part of the trip was just being with family...and eating candy and playing games every night -- two of my favorite things! Thank you so much for making it all happen, Mom and Dad!

P.S. I had a couple of other pictures to add to this but every time I add something it screws up the spacing and I'm getting really frustrated, so this is it and sorry about the layout...by the way, if anyone has any tips they would be welcomed right about now...

This One's For You, Ambyr

So after a week of trying to tame Hannah's unfortunately ridiculous hair, Ambyr suggested that we consider giving her bangs. Ever since Hannah was a baby, I have assumed she would want her bangs grown out, so that thought has not crossed my mind in three years. Still, I didn't have to think twice about it -- the day after we got home I chopped it all off. What do you think?

These other pictures are just for fun.

Hannah is pretty sure she's Betty Boop, her new idol. That grimace is supposed to be some sort of sexy Betty Boop face -- I haven't figured out where it came from yet.

Four of Joshua's favorite things to do: wear a hat, sit in a chair, blow on the recorder, and dance to his own music (even though you can't see that in the picture).

I know I always do a lot of posts in one day. Sorry. That's to make me feel better about not posting very often. I'm not sure how many people actually even look at this, so I don't feel too pressured to do it very often :)

Florida Fun

Seth and I spent the beginning of the month on a fun-filled trip to Florida that we have been planning for over a year. It was our very first time away from the kids, and I feel bad saying it, but it wasn't that hard to leave them behind! Probably because it was a much-needed break for me, and I didn't have to much to worry about because we had great babysitters lined up -- much thanks to Debbie and Ambyr for devoting the whole week to watching the kids for us! I'm sure it wasn't easy, but the kids had a great time and so did we.

We started out the week in Orlando, which we absolutely loved, and spent a couple of days at Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios. Despite the hurricanes (or maybe because of the hurricanes?), this was the perfect time of year to go -- we waited in line for about 5 or 10 minutes for almost every ride both days we were there. The roller coasters there are awesome. And we saw where they are starting to build the Wizarding World of Harry Potter -- can't wait for that one to open up! We also got a quick tour of Celebration, the literally picture-perfect town owned by Disney. I'd like to live there someday. Okay, Seth?

Our last night in Orlando we got all gussied up and went to the Dancesport Championships at the Leows Hotel. We were there for the Professional Latin and Standard finals and they were so awesome. It made us feel right at home to see some of the same professionals that have attended the Dancesports of the past at BYU, and even some (maybe all, I can't remember) of the same judges. For those of you who are familiar with the tv show "So You Think You Can Dance?", Mary the judge sat three rows behind us! (With almost no one in between because it was a very small, intimate crowd of professional-ballroom folk in attendance.)

The next day we went down to Ft Lauderdale to board the Regal Empress for a two-day cruise to Nassau -- but because of Hanna, we didn't actually go to Nassau, but instead enjoyed a "Cruise to Nowhere". We sat in the sun and got burned despite our SPF 55 sunscreen, took a salsa-and-merengue dance class and then enjoyed a late night of Latin dancing on the rolling seas, watched a fruit carving demonstration (pictures below), and Seth learned how to fold the towel animals typically found on cruise ships.

Once we landed in Ft Lauderdale, we stayed there for the last two days of our trip and did NOTHING! It was nice. I read almost two whole books just in that little portion of the trip. Since we got kicked out of our hotel long before our flight left Sunday, we headed over to Festival, this humongous indoor flea market in Pompano Beach. I could have stayed there for days. It was amazing.

Anyway, we had a really great time and I hope we get to go back to Florida someday because I loved it there. And I still haven't seen an alligator. Or Disneyworld. Or the completed Harry Potter world.