Throw the Party of the Month, Nah the Party of the Year

Bonus points for anyone who knows the song those lyrics come from.

 As I said the other day, we celebrated Sadie's birthday on the 24th. She opened a few presents from us first thing in the morning. I would have cropped this picture, but you can see Louie signing "more" in the background. She could care less about presents- just give her the food!

Sadie could not wait for her party. Now that she understands presents it is all she could talk about. For the party we invited a bunch of our friends to meet us at the splash park in Highland. It has wide open grassy areas all around so we set up a canopy and brought a bunch of food.  For the first half hour Sadie would not stop whining and asking for presents. I finally threatened if she whined one more time about it I would throw them away and she went to play in the water. 

I am so mad at myself that I didn't get a picture of all the little attendees. They varied in age and gender, but the beauty of the party at the splash park is that they all could do their own thing if they wanted to. 

Daniel's cousin Megan got this adorable shot of Sadie and her second cousin Jack. 

I told Sadie once the water turned off again (it turns off at the end of each hour) that we could eat cake and open presents. 

She came running over all excited to announce the water was off. She posed with her cake and then we sang happy birthday. The wind was blowing too hard to get the candles to stay lit so she pretended to blow them out. I'm pretty sure she didn't care at all. She was just eyeing the presents.

Hillary, Ben, and Diane (my cousin) created these masterpiece cakes. Ever since Claire Sullivan's party where they had a Barbie princess cake Sadie has been asking for one. I asked Hillary if she could make the cake and in typical Hillary fashion, she made two. The Cinderella Barbie cake was a strawberry cake and the Ariel cake was carrot. Everyone was impressed. They achieved the ultimate in baking- delicious and impressive looking. The only casualty was the Barbie- they had to take the legs off to make her fit and then her arm fell off later and Daniel couldn't get it back on. Shhh- don't tell Sadie her triple-amputee Barbie is in the trash now. 

Then it was on to presents.

 Alicia and Bryce got Sadie this set of paper magnetic Disney princesses. Sadie has played with them every day since. 

 I love how excited all the kids, no matter the age, get about present opening. 

Elise spent the entire party grazing and stealing food off plates people left on the ground. She ate almost 2 whole pieces of pizza this way. Everyone laughed at her. 

And probably my 2 favorite pictures from the party:

 Sadie and her second cousin Elly. Elly was our favorite kid during our pre-kid stage of marriage. She is still awesome. That Dora birthday crown was a present that Sadie and Elise fight over daily. 

Ben captured Daniel's favorite activity- throwing his girls. And Elise happily posed for him.

Thank you to all of you who made it to the party and for your generous presents. Sadie is set for toys and art supplies for the next year. 

We sure love our Sadie a whole lot. 

Tres Anos

Happy Birthday silly girl! 

This is the pose she gave me today when I told her I wanted to take some 3-year-old pictures of her. I guess it does a good job of portraying a)how exhausted she looked after waking up at 5:30 AM and b)her scraped up knees from a bad fall on the way to church today. This year we declared Sadie's birthday to be on Tuesday, the 24th, since we both had the day off (Pioneer Day) and Daniel was going to be traveling on her actual birthday (as usual- the only year Daniel was around on her birthday was her actual birth day in 2009). 

I'll do a separate detailed post on her fun birthday celebrations, but today I want to expound on Sadie. My thoughts are all over the place as I try to write about her. She is a unique kid. I know all parents think that about their children, but Sadie is really unique. :) She is hard to predict and, at times, hard to parent, but from most accounts she is just like me, but with a little more boldness. She has been surprising me lately with her friendship with Elise. It makes me so, so hopeful for the years ahead. A year ago I would have said that Sadie's tantrums were a part of her personality and not related to age, but I am happy to admit I was wrong.  Most of her tantrums are gone. She does things when she wants to do them and she will only do them if she can do it the way she envisions. I distinctly remember getting very frustrated in art class during elementary school because I couldn't draw something the way I wanted to. Sadie has done this multiple times lately while using her coloring books. She gets mad because she can't stay in the lines and she can't control the markers how she wants to. She frequently asks me to color things for her so they get done right. I have tried to get her to write letters lately but she won't even attempt most of them. She just tells me she can't and I can't even get her to try. We are still working on potty training. I am trying to be patient and let Sadie do it when she's ready. She wore underwear most of the day today without accidents. Sadie hasn't taken a nap for about a month. She is exhausted most afternoons, but she opts to play quietly instead of nap every day and I've just given up. She stays quiet for more than an hour so that's fine. 

Of course Sadie has been saying funny things lately like:

-"My baby is a trouble maker. Just like Louie Goo."

-A month or two ago Sadie looked up at Daniel on the stand during Sacrament Meeting and yelled "My dad is at the top! Mom, my dad is at the top!"

-After we saw a few minutes of Olympic badminton: "Bad mutten. Why it called bad mutten?"

-While playing princesses and dragons (I am the dragon and Sadie is the princess), Sadie made Elise be her grandma instead of the usual prince. Her goal in the game was to keep her grandma safe and she would drag Elise behind her as I chased them. 

-Also Olympics-related "Mom, that's not bally-ball (volleyball) that's basketball" after arguing with her for a few minutes about it I gave up, but what??? How many basketball games has she watched and she insisted volleyball was basketball? 

-"Louie, I am getting sick of you." (Unfortunately she may have heard this come out of my mouth before)

-When I told Sadie I was getting upset because I had called her 4 times for lunch she said to her coloring book, "I'll see you later, k? It's time for lunch. Mama's getting upset" (I also really love that she calls me Mama)

-After spotting her friend Claire, "My Claire, my Claire, my Claire, my frrrriieeeennnd Claire."

-When she opened up a card from her great-grandparents with $3 she gasped and said, "I got 2 million dollars! No, 8 million dollars!" 

-I told Sadie we live in the USA; she said, "No. I live in Utah"

-After opening a Tinkerbell barbie on her birthday she ran around making flying sound effects and declared "I'm flying to O-wu-guhn. Now I'm flying to Boston." 

-I tried to hide some of her birthday presents so we could spread out all the new toys. A couple days after her party she said, "Where are all my special presents?" I pretended I didn't know what she was talking about and she said, "Yeah, mom, my silly animals (Littlest Pet Shop animals)". Guess there's no more hiding presents after birthdays and Christmas

Rexburg

Last weekend we hit the road to visit our good friends and former neighbors, the Singers, who are around for Phil's internship in Logan this summer.

We packed up the old minivan and headed on out. Elise was happy to oblige me with a beginning-of-road-trip picture, but Sadie just wanted to watch her new movie. I don't blame her, Shrek 2 is hilarious. 

Apparently Idaho does not both begin and end with Malad. Daniel and I realized we have never driven north of it. I snapped a shot of my Grandma John's house from I-15. It's just on the other side of the green patch in the center of the picture. We briefly considered making a stop, but we were making amazing time and the girls were happy so we didn't want to tempt fate.

We were pleasantly surprised at how beautiful Rexburg looked. I've heard it's terrible in the winter, but the summertime is gorgeous.

We jumped right in to talking, eating, and marveling at the difference in size between Felix and Elise- only 1 week apart in age.You may notice Sadie wearing no pants in the picture above. This was the result of a McDonald's playplace trip turned horribly wrong when I noticed another child at the playplace had peed in her pants and her mother hurriedly left (without saying anything to anyone about it). You guessed it- Sadie came down the slide with urine-soaked shorts. And she was wearing a pull-up so we knew it wasn't her own pee. 

Sitting in highchairs makes them look closer in size. Felix has a good 3 or 4 inches on Lou.

I love this picture of Sadie looking mischievous while the babies look to their respective parents for help.

The next day Jen took me on a tour of BYU-Idaho's campus. Felix sat forward-facing for the first time ever and he looked confused most of the time. 

After seeing campus we went over to Rexburg's awesome splash pad. I've included entirely too many pictures, but they are all cute.

Elise's tongue is always out when she's concentrating. I guess that's genetic. My mom used to yell at me during my softball games to put my tongue in my mouth. I'm embracing it with Elise. Stick your tongue out all you want little girl!

Check out those eyelashes.

Check out this cute little boy. You can't tell very well in this picture, but Felix is one ripped little guy. He is so strong! I suspect they make Felix work out at night to keep up his toned physique.

After stumbling around for a while without getting wet Elise discovered the fun of standing directly on the fountains.

Pure joy.

Sadie started to do it too, but decided it wasn't that great.

Look at the stink eye Louie is giving. I laughed so hard when I opened this picture from Jen.

And one more cute one just for good measure

Right next to the splash pad there was a merry-go-round. The girls were thrilled to ride it with Daniel. And I was thrilled to sit on a stationary bench nearby and watch. I don't do well with spinning.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the Clark's awesome basement.

Elise enjoyed driving cars along this ledge until she fell off of it. I warned her lots of times that was going to happen, but some 1-year-olds never listen.

 

Sadie spent much of the time hoarding toys and trying to keep the kids from getting them.

 

Then I started building a train track with Sadie and when Daniel saw how awful it was he couldn't keep from butting in and fixing it all. He claimed he was just helping Sadie, but I heard him tell her a few times not to touch his track. I tried to get a picture of it but they had already started cleaning it up.

That night we ate a delicious dinner prepared by Kim and Sue and then jumped back in the car again.

Another shot of these little kiddos in their highchairs. Felix taught Elise the hilarious and exhilarating art of throwing food on the floor. Since we got home she has been tossing food all over our kitchen. 

We took one final group shot and then we drove back to Utah. It was a quick 2-day trip, but it was so fun to hang out with them. And somehow in this picture it looks like Jen and I are only separated in height by a few inches- rest assured she is still a good 7 inches taller than me.

Licia-Bryce

Photo Credit: Sadie

And another bites the dust. 2012 has been the year of the goodbye for us. No joke. Multiple close friends, almost all of the Nielson family, and now my sister and her husband have moved away from Utah.

We have known the Gessells were going for a while now, which softened the blow. We were able to force them to hang out with us a lot before they left. 

One thing we will miss a lot is our John sibling dinners. We have had a lot of them over the past couple of years. On Sunday we gathered for one last sibling dinner.

The girls were a bit rowdy during mealtime so we stuck them in front of the tv with popcorn. That's some great parenting right there.

Our girls, and especially Elise, love the Gessells. They first started dating when Sadie was a few months old  so Bryce has always been in their lives. 

On an unrelated note. Louie was so proud of herself as she sat on the footrest and clapped. She's great. 

After the girls were in bed we sat outside talking for a while. We will miss the Gessells a whole lot.

We made them take a family picture with our kids so they can frame it on their wall in Boston.

We don't have to go cold turkey away from the Gessells because we are heading to Boston next week!

Music in the Park

Last week we went to see Caleb Blood-- a talented musician who just happens to be Daniel's cousin-- perform. You can see him on stage in the picture above. You can also see Sadie savoring every last sip of that juice box. Caleb is really talented- writes his own songs and everything. Daniel likes to think he sparked Caleb's love of music with some dumb song he taught him a family reunion long ago. I think we all know how far Caleb would've gotten with Daniel's teachings- nowhere, perhaps even backwards.

 

It was a gorgeous Utah summer evening. The girls danced/ran around/made noise and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Elise enjoyed some one-on-one attention from dad while Sadie ran circles behind us.

Lou's favorite part was clapping when each song was over. She'd look around at everyone clapping and get so excited that she was part of the group.

Sleeping Beauty

Am I the only one who tends to feel an overwhelming amount of love for their children when they are asleep?  It's like all the tantrums and bratiness melt away and all I can see is the most angelic child in the world. Then Sadie wakes up and throws a massive tantrum about eating candy for dinner and I come crashing back to reality.  

PS- How do you get children to just give in to their tiredness and take naps during nap time? The above photo was taken after 1.5 hours of playing in her room instead of napping. 

Prince Hunter

Part of Sadie's bedtime routine is that she wants a "Shrek story". This means she wants us to tell her a fairy tale (but she dictates the story line) about Princess Sadie and all of her princess friends (only allowed to use names of Sadie's actual friends) and the red dragon from Shrek. Prince Hunter is usually the only male.  

Moving on...Sadie has been hanging out with Hunter a lot. 

 We've gone to the Lindon pool twice. It's so great for kids. $5 for adults and free for kids under 4.

 Elise likes it fine, but as long as she's got her afternoon snacks she is generally happy in all locations.

 I turned around to see these two laughing and singing together. Could this picture get more precious?

 (Only if Ella Dunn was in it, I suppose. Miss you, Dunns!)

One day we just camped out at the Faucettes while Daniel and Garrett were both working away elsewhere. I'm not kidding, we were there for 4+ hours. 

 The kids played so well. At one point Kaylie got concerned when they had been upstairs for a while without much of a sound. She found them just playing happily. In the pictures above they were stoked about dinosaur chicken nuggets. And rightly so. Dino nuggets are amazing.