Like Father Like Daughter

Thanks Daniel.

An Evening With Louie

The other night Daniel went on a mini-date with Sadie while Lou and I hung out at home. We decided to play outside. 

First she stopped to touch the bushes for a minute. In an effort to get her to look at me I asked her to give me a five.

 She walked all the way over to me with her hand up high. One of my favorite pictures ever.

Then we stopped at the neighbors yard to pick up a few fallen apples.

After I convinced Elise to throw the apple away we turned back toward our house. She waved every time a car went by. I tried to get a picture of it. You can kind of see the wave in her shadow.

Then Lou decided our townhouse neighbors needed a visit.

Finally, we played on folding chairs in our yard. Elise got super frustrated when she got stuck sideways and she was done with it.

She perked up when she found a lollipop in the cup-holder.

The End.

 Compare to this post I did when Sadie was just a few weeks older than Elise is now

Awesome

We just got back from a 9 day trip to New England. It was fun and tiring. And it was all kicked off with us missing our flight due to my stupidity.

We took some family photos less than 8 hours after we made it to Boston (24 hours later than planned). Here's a preview of that awesomeness:

 

Papa and Nana with Sadie (3), Elise (15 months), Weston (9 months), Lauren (10 months), and Will (2 1/2)

*Does everyone agree that Elise looks exactly like her Papa, or is that just us?*

Summer Activities

We had a lot of fun in the past week or two. 

1. The girls rode in the car cart together. It only lasted 5 minutes. Elise climbed out the side and she was then buckled into the cart seat.

2.  We hit up the Spanish Fork splash pad with the Faucettes. After a little snafu in finding the splash pad and then the kids being cautious about getting wet, everyone had tons of fun. 

Hunter laid down and pretended to sleep a lot of the time. Elise was very concerned about him.

This little boy followed Elise around for a while and stood really close to her. I couldn't stop laughing.

Sadie hates getting her face wet, so I was thrilled when she finally decided to jump into the sprinklers. 

The babes hung out under the canopy and posed with sunglasses.

Kaylie and I took about 50 pictures of these two with the sunglasses, so only posting 2 here is an amazing display of self-control.

3. Played with bubbles. This is almost a daily activity. 

Playing with bubbles is like playing with chalk- it keeps the kids occupied for a while, but everyone gets so dirty that I really don't like doing it. 

Elise started wearing shoes outside and she loves it for the most part. 

4. We played in the basement on the really hot days.

I took a picture to document the girls playing together well again. 

5. The old reliable- the kiddie pool. Most days we play in it with our neighbors, the Sullivans. 

First, Elise looks exactly like my dad in that photo. Second, here's another photo of the girls interacting positively, meaning, no one is crying. 

6. Sadie and Elise watched movies while laying on the floor together. Another positive interaction?

7. We watched the Olympics. I spent 10 minutes trying to get a good picture of the swim commentators who stand awkwardly close and frequently face each other as they speak. I got an awesome one with them gazing into each other's eyes, about 2 inches apart, but I erased it and kept this one by accident.

There are 2 in there...

I cracked an egg and two yolks came out. It blew my mind. 

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