The Zoo with Cristy!

While we lived in Colorado our dear friend Cristy used to take Hazel to the zoo. They went probably 3 or 4 times in the months after Eliza was born. Not only was it a huge help to me but Hazel loved every minute of it. She still talks about how she wants to go to the zoo with Cristy.

Well last week that's exactly what we did. Cristy was in town babysitting her sweet grandson Porter for the week so we packed up the three kids and spent the morning at the zoo. It was Eliza's first time.

All three kiddos ready to go!

Hazel's favorite - the giraffes!

"Cheese!"

Eliza's favorite - the elephants!

It was such a great day! I didn't get any picture of us with Cristy though. Thanks Cristy for joining us at the zoo. For Hazel the zoo will never be the same without Cristy!

Amber and Michael's Wedding

In our family there are a lot of Michaels. I have two uncle Mikes, my cousin is married to a Michael and then there is mine Michael. Well my other cousin Amber married another Michael last month in the Oquirrah Mountain temple. Between my mom and her twin sister they have 4 daughters - 3 of the 4 are married to men named Michael! Welcome to the family Michael Saint-Laurent!

The sealing was beautiful. I always love attending living sealings and seeing the joy in the eyes of everyone in the room. It was also a very special day for our family because it was the first time all 5 of us were in the temple together since we were sealed.

Eliza was being such a sunggler that day and was loving having her picture taken...

She looks so big in this picture!

Hazel on the other hand was having too much fun socializing with all the family and didn't want to take the time for pictures.

The girls with "the aunties" minus Holly and Lindy

My cute parents!

My Greatest Blessings

Yesterday I'm spent Mother's Day home from church with a sick little Eliza. I barely got to sit down to eat dinner because she was so upset and walked to go on a walk. And yet there is nothing I would rather be doing. I love my girls and I feel so blessed to be a mom. Here's some of what the two cuties are up to theses days...

Eliza grows up so much every day. She's strong willed just like Hazel and it shows through in how she plays. Currently she is obsessed with the chicken leg and ice cream cone from the play food. Why those two? I have no idea. But she loves them and wants to carry them everywhere. If they drop or get misplaced she says things like "Drop it my i-ceeam!" or "My chick-ee my chick-ee!" She loves them!

One chicken for each hand!

Eliza and I have a fun game right now. She will say "no" then just smile at me. I say "yes" and she answer back with a longer, louder "no!". We go back and forth. Sometime she throws in a "noooooooooooooooo!" After a while we switch to nodding, then to sign, then back to talking. Haha I probably shouldn't encourage this behavior but it is so stinking sweet!

Rockin' it! (with the ice cream of course)

Tonight I caught Eliza standing on the decorative cut-out at the end of her crib, gripping with her toes and not holding on. To add to the stunt she signed "monkey" and said "oo-oo-ah-ah!" I told Michael we seriously need to start looking for a bunk bed so we can move her out of the crib. Climbing is not her only night craziness, she has taken to stripping off her pajamas and often her diaper. One night she had me in tears of laughter when I walked in to find she had taken off her pants and diaper then put on the tutu from her teddy bear. Such a cute little stinker!

Then there's Hazel. Lately everything in our house turns in to a game of mommy and baby. Often she will be the mommy. At first I was the grandma and Eliza the baby but I refused to play this way:) So now I'm the big sister. She walks around all day calling me "honey". She cooks us soup (water in a cup), kisses boo-boos and puts the baby to sleep (aka puts Eliza in a laundry basket and covers her with a blanket). When she mommy to me and Eliza she's playing mommy in some form - the monkey mommy, the mermaid mommy, mommy to Rafi, etc.

Modeling for grandpa. 

A few weeks ago her Sunbeams teacher came up to me after church to tell me about what she said during the lesson. They were learning about animals and how Heavenly Father made animals to help give us food. She was asking them things like "Where do eggs come from? Right chickens! And where does milk come from? Cows that's right. Does anyone know where hamburgers come from?" At this point Hazel blurted out "In-n-Out!" Of course she made her daddy so proud with that one!

My favorite Hazel sayings lately include: "Primary was awful today!" (she didn't get to sit next to her friend Thomas - such a sad day), "I'm going to learn to wear pants today. (Five minutes later) See I did it, I wore pants!"

"See I did it!"

I love these girls! What a wonderful gift it is to be a mother. It's hard and exhausting and tons of work. But it's such a wonderful gift!

Easter Weekend

I'm way behind on this one, but I had to include some pictures from Easter. We had a wonderful Easter weekend! Thanks to adoring grandparents (okay who are we kidding grandmas) the girls had new Easter outfits. Terri sent up a few outfits for each girl that we let them open Friday. They had fun modeling in picture for her.

Sweet Hazel

Eliza is signing "cute" in this picture. I love it!

 

Then they got a bit crazy...

Friday afternoon we dyed Easter eggs. The girls were so excited for this. 

Then on Saturday they got dressed in their new matching dresses for the city egg hunt. I can't tell you how thankful I am for all of the people who spoil my children with cute clothes. Seriously, they are lifesavers!

Hazel was so excited for church on Sunday and to wear her new Easter dress from my mom. She insisted that she needed curls. This is the second time I've done rag curls with her. They turn out adorable first thing in the morning but the poor girl got her daddy's hair and by noon the curls are all but gone. Oh well, she LOVES them anyways. 

Now for the home egg hunt stories... Since Mike has gone gluten-free I've been working hard to eliminate a lot of the processed food from all of our diets. In addition to the real eggs the girls dyed, the Easter bunny hid plastic eggs with trail mix and a few small candies (that they had picked up at the city egg hunt - yep I'm a good mom like that haha). I was so proud of myself for eliminating most of the candy from Easter without one word of compliant! But then the Easter bunny hid candy at my parent's house too. My master plan was ruined! Oh well.

During the egg hunt at my parent's house, Michael's brother TJ saw Eliza going for a lose Snickers bar (most of the candy was in eggs but some was just on the floor). He told her it was yucky and to bring it to Uncle TJ. Eliza obediently brought it to TJ. The hilarious part was after that every time she found another Snickers she picked it up saying "Yucky! Yucky!" and walked it over to him. TJ ended up with at least 11 mini Snickers thanks to her!

Here are the girls in their Easter dresses from Gram. Sadly this was the best picture I got of the two of them.

Hazel, Brenna, and Eliza

All of the festivities and new clothes were fun but certainly the highlight of the weekend was remembering the Resurrection of our Savior. This year I felt especially thankful as I pondered how my life would be if I didn't know the truth. Could you imagine not knowing that you would live again and see your children again someday? I am so thankful for the knowledge we have!

Squeeky clean

I love bath time for so many reasons - giving the girls my undivided attention without feeling like I need to be doing other things, winding down at the end of the day, the cute games they play, watching Eliza watch Hazel's every move and imitate her. Most of all, I love the sweet, silly mood the girls are always in after bath. These pictures pretty much sum up every night....

St. Patricks Day

Even if St. Patrick's Day was two weeks ago I have to share the cute pictures from our day. Green breakfast and cute matching green dressing for church. These dresses were Christmas presents from Grandma Teri and they couldn't have been more perfect for today.

The highlight of the day... I saw that Michael's brother TJ had installed the kick boards under the cabinets in the kitchen (yes our poor kitchen is still not completely done and we've still got a few more small projects like this). I was SO excited because it means no more sweeping nasty stuff out from under the cabinets. Anyways, I saw it and shouted "Yay!" aloud. Hazel was in the other room and came running in asking "Did you find a pot of gold!?!"

Then the day ended like this. Hazel started this and I thought why not let them enjoy themselves before bath time. Little did I know pen takes about a week to wash completely off of soft little tummies. Live and learn.

Ringing off the Hook

Hazel cracks me up sometimes. Recently she has been killing me with her pretend phone calls. She likes to pretend that people are calling her. These "calls" always come in when she is busy and her adoring callers just won't stop calling her. It's always one person that keeps calling back and it's so funny because she gets all exasperated that they keep calling her, haha.

Then the other day she got a phone call from her preschool buddy Thomas. It went like this:

"Hello?"
"Hi, it's Thomas."
"Hi Thomas! Guess what, I got a new swimsuit."
"Really!?! Is it a princess one?"
"Yes"
"Which princess?"
"Ariel"
"Ariel with her mermaid fins or with her legs?"
"With her mermaid fins"
"Oh, I thought you were going to say with her legs, but whatever."
...

Haha! Poor girl is going to be upset when she finds out that no boy in the world will care this much about an article of clothing and would never ask such in depth questions. I love her imagination though!

Last month in review

February has been a whirlwind around here and it flew by so fast! By far the biggest news of this month was that Michael was diagnosed with something called eosinophilic esophogatis (EoE). To make it simple, his body has been mounting an immune response in his esophagus for many years now. Over time that has caused his esophagus to shrink causing him to choke on his food frequently. The good news is, it's totally treatable. The bad news? It's usually caused by a food allergy. After a few weeks on steroids to reducing the inflammation, Michael was able to start noticing reactions to certain foods and the culprit was...wheat.

After bemoaning the loss of wheat from his diet for a few days, we both got things together and started his gluten free lifestyle (yes, his not ours. The girls and I aren't joining him fully on this journey but dinners at our house are now always gluten free affairs). Surprisingly it hasn't been as bad as I thought. There a tons of naturally gluten free dinners and dinners we've always eaten that I've easily adapted to be gluten free. Breakfast and lunch have been a bit harder but doable. Baked goods are a whole different story and I'm only just beginning to dabble in that. My first attempt at gluten free corn bread was just plain nasty. But, after the addition of a Blendtec (LOVE!) to our house this week, I've been able to mill by own GF flours and made a pretty tasty GF pumpkin bread tonight:)

One of the great things about Mike going gluten free was it gave me the push I needed to eliminate most of the processed foods from our diet. For a while I've been slowing making more things from scratch instead of buying the processed versions, but this has sped up the process. While we're not giving up processed foods entirely, we're getting rid of all of the ones we feel are most harmful (ie - have unpronounceable ingredients, long lists of ingredients, lots of added fat/salt/sugar/etc). Things like tortillas, cereals, some crackers, etc will continue to be purchased, but frozen foods, cream of anything soup, etc have been eliminated. I'm loving it!

Now on to the princesses...

Eliza has been so adorable this month. I love this age and seeing them learn new things daily. Some of the cutest things she has been doing lately...

She is becoming quite the comedian. Here she is fake sleeping. She is fake snoring but of course peeking to see if you're paying attention! 

If we forget to say a prayer to bless the food, Eliza yells "Payers! Prayers!" at the top of her lungs. If you get seconds even she is yelling for you to say a prayer again:)

 One Friday Eliza decided she had to join ballet. So put on this skirt all by herself and imitated different steps. It was adorable!

Have you ever seen such skinny baby legs!?!

 Eliza has also decided she wants to be potty trained. She steals Hazel's panties all the time and puts them on, sits on the potty, and cries when you put a diaper on her. I'm glad she's ready! Now I just need to find a few days to focus on potty training with her.

Hazel's had a good month too. I took her to see her first ballet! I think I was more excited about it than she was:) We went to see BYU perform Sleeping Beauty. We were even able to meet up a friend I danced with at BYU and her daughter. It was surreal watching them perform and thinking how we were up on that stage not too long ago. Hazel really enjoyed it too!

 

I love how she knows she's supposed to be looking at the camera but can't take her eyes of the dancer!

 Here's just an adorable picture of sweet Hazel with her new princess quilt that Gram Holly made her.

Michael and I rounded off the month with a date to the BYU v. Gonzaga basketball game. Of course he was rooting for the wrong team (and they won) but it was a fun night anyways!