Fourth of July

We had a fun Independence Day in the Nielson household. The girls and I played in the basement while Daniel cleaned the rest of the house. Super fun for me. Sadie has taken to making Elise play dress-up, which just means I have to put whatever outfit Sadie demands on Elise.

Louie played on the slide for a long time while dressed as a "fairy" according to Sadie.

Then Sadie decided Elise needed to be the prince, she'd be the princess and I could be the red dragon.

We played that for a while until we decided we should go mess up all the cleaning Daniel had done.

We drove up to the Highland splash pad, which was surprisingly not busy. We observed the fire in American Fork canyon on our way there.

I actually took that picture on July 3rd, the day the fire started. It looked much less ominous on July 4th.

The girls love going to the splash pad but they don't like being splashed in the face, which is pretty hard to avoid.

Sadie told me it was too sunny to put her hands down for a picture.

When it was time to go Sadie ran away after I took off her swim suit. Again, with the streaking. Should we be at all nervous about how much she loves to be naked in public? She actually just ran towards our car so we followed her and put her clothes on in the car.

The whole family took naps when we got home and I put together Sadie's birthday present from Nana and Papa- a new bike. I decided to give it to her now so she could get a lot of riding time this summer and to spread out her presents. Some toys inevitably get neglected when you get them all at once on your birthday.

Sadie was so excited when she spotted it after her nap. Here she is checking it out for the first time.

We brought it outside where both girls had a good time playing with it.

Then we made sno-cones (I gave Daniel a sno-cone maker for Father's Day) and made Daniel get up from his nap.

Sadie spent some more time outside with no clothes on. What's more patriotic than that, right?

It took Sadie a few days to get the whole pedaling concept and we are still working on steering, but at least now she can move the bike on her own. That bike has become a hot commodity in our house. I was surprised at how much Elise loves it, but she can't keep her hands off it.

Sadie even watched a movie while sitting on it.

Back to July 4th, we played in our neighbor's kiddie pool after eating our sno-cones and then had an all-American dinner of Cafe Rio salads. Elise went to bed while we watched our annual neighborhood fireworks show. Sadie shocked us by actually holding a sparkler and loving it.

Princess Party & A Good-bye

A couple weeks ago I took Sadie and her friend Ella to the Princess Festival at Thanksgiving Point. The Dunns were about to move so we squeezed in as much time together as we could before they left. The idea of the festival is very cute- a big party where everyone comes dressed up and they get to see lots of princesses, but it actually wasn't that well done. Any girls over age 5 would probably recognize how lame parts of it were, but that doesn't matter because Sadie LOVED it. Yes, she loved it enough that it warrants CAPS. We just won't bring Sadie again since next year she won't be free anymore.

 

It started off a bit slow. They tried to make us attend these little performances with made-up, non-Disney princesses. The girls could care less about story time with someone they have never heard of. They didn't even want to sit through Cinderella story time (below). We left after 2 minutes.

Sadie was in the zone. She ran around taking pictures with everything possible.

Rapunzel the live princess and Rapunzel the cardboard cut out.

Ella was mostly happy to just stay with me and watch Sadie take pictures. She finally agreed to take a picture with Belle here, but then immediately ran back to my arms. She wasn't as enthusiastic about the princess festival as Sadie. I think she just wanted some good snuggle time with me since she knew her family was moving soon. :)

During lunch the girls were being so incredibly adorable. I got a little teary-eyed as I watched them laugh together.

Seriously, this is what lunch with a couple of three year olds (Sadie's almost 3) should be. If only life with Sadie was always like that.

After lunch Sadie got her nails and hair done. I was so impressed with how still Sadie sat as they curled her hair. She has asked me to curl her hair a few times since then but I don't have any tiny curling irons so I can say no without feeling too guilty.

Then we attended a dance party with lots of princesses.

Ella sat on my lap and watched the dance party.

Sadie was feelin it. She danced like I have never seen her dance before.

Our last event of the day was a little dance performance. Sadie jumped up when they asked for volunteers. It's funny, mostly because Sadie is normally fairly reserved in new situations, but I think because everyone was dressed up and they called her by her first name (all the little girls had big name tags on), she felt totally comfortable.

Ella sat on my lap and sprinkled pixie dust in her hair the whole time. Earlier in the day we had seen a little girl with a bag of glitter, AKA pixie dust, and Ella really wanted some. We found some at a little booth right before this last activity and Ella was happy to sit and sprinkle it. Funny girl.

 The next day we had one final get-together with the Dunns and some of our other friends before they moved to Jacksonville. It's hard to have good friends move away. Tyler and Daniel were roommates almost 10 years ago in Liberty Square and we have all pretty much lived in Utah since then. 

We will miss you, Tyler, Amber, Ella and Cooper!

Life Changes

On top of Sadie being potty trained for everyone but her mother, we have had lots of changes in June.

1. Lou is in a forward facing car seat. She understood exactly what to do when her pediatrician said she needed to gain a couple more pounds before she could make the switch. She gained 2 pounds in 3 weeks by eating all food in sight and now is back to leaving most of her food on the highchair tray. This is her maiden voyage while forward facing and she was visibly excited the entire time.

2. The girls played well together a few times. Don't worry, Sadie still terrorizes Elise the rest of the time, but just let it be known they actually had a good time while interacting on a few occasions. Elise got some revenge the other day when Sadie was laying on top of her. She jerked her head back quickly and popped Sadie in the nose real good. Sadie had a nice bloody nose for a while. I really hope it means she'll stop laying on top of Elise. It's really annoying.

3. Definitely not major, but Sadie can stack all of the pieces to her block puzzle and she's mighty proud.

 4. Elise plays on the playground a little. Sadie showed her how to turn the steering wheel she thought that was pretty cool.

 

 5. Sadie seems to finally understand what a fire truck is. She used to ask me about them every time we passed one. And then reply with "why" to everything I said. Wal-mart was having a safety day so she got to check out the inside of this fire engine and an ambulance.  She tells me that ambulances have lots of medicines and band-aids and fire trucks have water to help smoke and fire.

6. Last, and most importantly, Elise is walking! She still crawls if she wants to get somewhere quickly, but she does walk more than half the time.

Boston Visitors Again

My mom and dad came to visit us in June as well. My mother has been in Utah 3 times since February and we love it every time. We like to see grandparents as much as possible. (Can't wait until Mimi comes in 2 months!)

It was a fairly laid back trip. My parents took the girls to the park every morning while I was at work. I would come home and put the girls down for naps and then they'd play in the kiddie pool. They taught Sadie the sweet relief of "being in the shade" when it's hot out. Every time we are outside now she looks for some shade and tells me how nice it is.

 A few days before they arrived I tried to potty train Sadie. It didn't go well so I decided we'd try another time. Well, Sadie randomly started telling my mom every time she needed to go potty and only had a couple accidents. 

Some underwear with Nana and Papa in the background

What the?? Those were 3 great days of having "potty trained" status and going places in underwear. Don't you worry, the day after my parents left Sadie refused to pee in the toilet. 

Playing catch with Papa in cool underwear 

She still pees in the potty for her babysitter and at friends houses, just not for me. That girl and our power struggles. Teenage-hood terrifies me.

  I found Sadie like this one day when I got home from work. She has been quite the little streaker lately.

Elise was also a perfect angel for my parents, of course. She has since become a very picky eater. The foods she is currently willing to eat: mandarin oranges, yogurt, toast, apple sauce, pb and honey sandwiches, and animal crackers. That's about it.

 I'm glad the girls were well-behaved so my mom can continue to think they are perfect angels and not believe me when I call and complain.

I cannot get over how much I think Elise looks like my father in this picture.

We also squeezed in a lot of family dinners with my siblings, some shopping at the Park City outlets, and some quality use of the backseat of our minivan.

And finally, a sweet photo taken by Sadie

We can't wait to see Papa and Nana again in less than a month! This time we'll go to them, along with the rest of the John family for our first ever reunion.

Summerfest

We also hit up Orem's Summerfest (basically a big carnival) in June. I bribed the Gessells with the promise of fried food and we were off. Sadie went last year with the Dunns, but I didn't know what to expect since I hadn't gone. It was mostly just rides for little kids and lots of unhealthy food. My kind of day. Except those spinning rides all make me nauseous, so take out the rides part. Just give me fried foods.

Ride #1 was the rockets. The line was like 20 minutes long and then Sadie's seat wouldn't go up and down like it was supposed to. Good thing she still thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever done.

 I took the girls on the merry-go-round, which was a real accomplishment for me since I usually can't deal with the spinning on that. Elise didn't want to stay on her horse so it was more like me standing on a spinning floor while holding Elise and trying to look at stationary objects so as to avoid nauseousness.

 This picture is hilarious. And Sadie loved these cars so much she did them twice. 

Not pictured: some of the most delicious mini donuts ever, a ridiculously overpriced Toy Story funhouse, Alicia thinking she lost my cell phone, me trying not to get mad at Alicia for losing my cell phone, and Elise whining to get out of the stroller.

Pool Time

 Almost every day after naps we are outside in our kiddie pool. Sadie loves it and Elise has a love/hate relationship with it.

 Elise spends most of the time climbing in and out of the pool. She'd rather climb up our front steps than play in the water. (Don't you love the matching suits and Sadie's pose?)

 Sadie jumps in the pool repeatedly trying to make as big a splash as possible. You can see above that Elise has carried pool toys all over the yard.

 We always take a break for snacks. That's important for us Nielson women.

 Sadie pretends to spray people with the hose. 

She doesn't much like to hold the hose when water is actually coming out.

Sadie doesn't like to get water on her face or hair. It makes it difficult to produce large splashes when you don't want to get the upper half of your body to get wet.

Maybe the best part of playing in the pool is when Dad gets home from work.

 

Catch Up

Where did the month of June go? We got back from Portland a month ago and I haven't said a word about June. Here's what we did the first week or so of June:

Went to Trafalga. Sadie had a blast hitting buttons on every game. Fun free activity for toddlers. Just make sure your toddler is like mine and doesn't notice the games get a lot more fun if you pay money.

 Visited Daniel at basketball camps

Here's Louie sitting by the side of the court eating, aka slobbering, an apple

Went to Seven Peaks. It was bit traumatic for me so I don't know if we will be returning this summer. Way too many people with music playing way too loud. Too much potential for tantrums, meltdowns and drowning. Maybe if Daniel comes we'll go back.

Here's Sadie sulking because she didn't want to leave.

That's after crying for the first 20 minutes we were there.

Got sick some more. Is it too much to ask for us to go 7 whole days without someone getting sick? We've had colds, ear infections, allergic reactions to medicine, croup, more ear infections, stomach flu, and then stomach flu some more. I will say that we've been lucky I haven't ever gotten sick, but that means I just get to attend to the sickies. When Daniel go the stomach flu I basically just got mad and told him to suck it up.

And that's just the first part of June, folks. More posts coming...