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!

Eliza at 18 months

I hate to admit it, but sweet little Eliza is more toddler and less baby every day. She is growing in to such a fun, sweet, silly little girl. Her language has exploded in the past month! She is signing and talking so much. She is even beginning to use 2-word phrases ("Hazel no!" is her favorite, haha). She has the cutest little high voice that I just love! At her 18 month appointment she had gained a pound and a half bringing her up to 17 lbs 14oz and 30 1/2 inches tall! So tiny still but that's big growth by Eliza standards. Her blood is also doing well too! At her return visit to Primary's in January her levels were all normal for the first time ever. Yay!

I love this age because so much personality start to show through. Eliza loves watching and learning from Hazel. Consequently she already likes dressing up and knows the color purple by sight, sign, and name. Hazel recently taught her to make this silly face and she does it all the time now...

She is a bit of a picky eater. Her favorite meal is breakfast and she eats a TON every morning. Oatmeal, pancakes, cereal, waffles - if it's a breakfast food she loves it! Then she tends to eat fruit and some veggies but pick at the rest of her food for lunch and dinner. She's starting to try new things sometimes so hopefully this is just a phase.

Eliza LOVES toy cars and balls which makes us think she'll be less of a girly-girl than Hazel. She also loves: Baby signing time, books (especially ones about animals, sea creatures, and Elmo), coloring with markers (and Sharpies - she can find them anywhere but thankfully hasn't ruined anything yet), climbing, playing on her slide, pajamas (she cries when you get her dressed and says "jammas, jammas!"), playing with Kiara, baths, and blankets. She also LOVES Daddy!

Saturday night I gave her her first haircut. I hated to cut off her adorable curls but the baby mullet had to go. I think it turned out adorable! 

Here's the best before picture I could find.

After

We love you Big Baby! (Hazel started calling her Big Baby because "she's not a big girl, but she's not a baby")

Sunbeams and Nursery!

 Hazel started Sunbeams this year. She was SO excited the week leading up to the first Sunday of the year. We got a bag from her dress up box that was the perfect size for a scripture bag and gave her a Book of Mormon to put in it. She walked around the house all week saying how she would not forget to take her scriptures to Sunbeams.

Sunday she couldn't wait to go to church and was upset church was now starting at 11am instead of 9am. We teach primary and so we were able to see how she did. She sat pretty well during sharing time but did need a lesson on reverence for FHE that week:) She even volunteered to say the prayer at the end of sharing time and she did such a good job!

I can't believe she is old enough to be in primary! You're growing up too fast sweet girl. (Now if only you'd actually look at the camera when we try to take your picture).

Eliza also started nursery a few weeks ago. Our nursery leaders were awesome and let her come a few Sundays early so she could be in nursary with Hazel for a few weeks. It helped make it a super easy transition. She LOVES it!

 And just in time for us to start enjoying 2nd and 3rd hours without chasing Eliza around, I got released from Primary and called to be the 1st counselor in the Relief Society Presidency.  The calling came as a bit of a shock to me, but I'm so excited!

Hazel to Eliza: "This morning when we were reading scriptures they were wicked. It means that you NEED to share!"

New Years

After a fun trip to California for Christmas, we enjoyed a few days at home before spending New Years Eve at my parents house in Eagle Mountain. Utah got a ton of snow while we were in California and it snowed on and off for the first few days we were back. So, we spent New Years enjoying the snow.

Little E still fits in her 6-9 month snow suit from last year. Christmas story anyone? Haha!

Grandpa pulled out the kid skis and took Hazel on a few runs....

New Years Eve we started a murder mystery puzzle after the kids were in bed (and by we I mean my cousin Matt and I with some help from Gabby and my Mom). I have been dying to do a puzzle for a while and it was great! I'll admit we didn't quite finish all of the puzzle but we did guess at the murder before reading the solutions manual.

New Years Day it was time for more sledding! My parents house backs up to a golf course that has large burms all over that make perfect sledding hills. The girls loved it!

Grandpa and Brenna with my parent's new house in the background

Gram loved seeing the girls. Here she is entertaining all three of her granddaughters...

 And the best picture for last - three little snow angels!

Eliza 17 months, Brenna 3 1/2 months, Hazel 3 1/2years

California Christmas: The Beach!

Thursday was beach day! This was Hazel the moment her bare feet hit the sand...

Hazel LOVED it! She made a sand castle, found sand crabs, played ball with daddy, got soaked walking near the water, and just loved every second of it.

Eliza on the other hand wanted nothing to do with the sand at first. Grandpa took her off for a little adventure and before we knew it she too loved the sand. She spent the last half hour we were there running all over and laughing. So cute!

 Grandma and Jamie made an even cooler sand castle which they let Hazel knock over at the end:)

We ended the day with lunch at Ruby's on the end of the pier. Eliza LOVED all the birds and said bird every time she saw one. After Ruby's we took the ferry to Balboa Island (but sadly the girls fell asleep in the car). I finally tried the famous Balboa Bars and frozen banana bars, yum!

Michael was hoping to go surfing while we were there but it didn't work out. But, he loved breathing in the fresh beach air:) The next day it was time for us to drive home. We had such a fun trip full of all the best things in life - sun, relaxing, and most importantly family!