March

As you can see below, we actually got to play outside and not even in the snow in March! We finally had a bit of nice weather and loved it. These girls were meant to be outside. They are insanely happy when they are outside. It's a lovely thing! We had another family date to Chuck e Cheese (can you tell Brooklyn picks the dates? ha!) My friend, Brooke, hosted a super fun St. Patricks day lunch where everyone brought some green food. It was quite the variety of fun lunch foods. The kids had a great time! We had our annual dinner of corned beef and cabbage for dinner (pics on my mom's camera). I actually really like the dinner, and Curt is a fan of everything but the cabbage! Gotta celebrate my Irish heritage, ya know! We went swimming at the YMCA (the once a month we use our membership), and other than Brooklyn throwing up on the side of the pool from swallowing water, it was super fun! The girls love the water slide, and we were reminded of Bryn's total lack of awareness of the danger of water. She is INSANE in the water! Must be one-on-one at all times, even in two inches of water! 

More dress up, Brooke reading books to her sissy, Brooke eating spaghetti with a giant serving fork, making fruit loop necklaces, and playing with princesses. These are the every day moments of life that I want to remember. I love these girls, their energy, adventure and creativity. They keep me smiling, laughing and tired :) Love my job and I make sure and tell Brooke and Bryn often that I have the best job in the whole world. I really am grateful to be able to stay home with them. It's difficult at times, but mostly it really is so wonderful and amazing and I wouldn't trade it for anything! 

February

February was LONG and COLD!! So, once again, we played outside in the snow. Grandma and grandpa joined us and we had lots of fun! We played lots of dress up, and Bryn even learned how to take her shirt off (at least part way..she wasn't too happy when it was stuck like that!)

Valentine's Day!

We got the girls balloons and princess chocolates for Valentines day. They were so excited (and it only cost us $4!) We had heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, and made/decorated sugar cookies. Troy and Tyler came home for the weekend with their girlfriends, so Curt and I celebrated with a simple date the weekend before. We have actually been quite lame when it comes to celebrating holidays. Maybe someday we'll put that higher on the priority list, but for now, we are good and happy and in love, even if we don't do anything crazy to show it!

January

January isn't always my favorite month, but looking back in pictures, it looks like we had some fun! (If I would blog when things actually happened, I'd be able to remember a lot more. So instead, I'll use pics as my memory!)

We had a fun family movie night and made cars to go to the "drive in" movie. The girls had tons of fun making the cars and watching the movie in them. Such a fun, free activity! We will be doing it again for sure. We also had a fun family trip to Chuck e Cheese on "daddy day." That's what Brooke calls dad's days off. It's adorable! We had tea parties and played games and enjoyed some solid indoor time.

We played outside in the snow, which isn't my personal fav (takes like 20+ minutes to get everyone bundled up to go outside), but they loved it so much they actually stayed out way longer than I expected! And they were giddy with excitement. They ate snow, made snow angels and ran all around. Brooke always says she loves winter, and it shows in her love of playing in the snow. {I don't share the same love of winter} We had a fun lunch/play time at McDonalds, and grampy is always such a good sport to go up the play thing. Those girls love their gramps and gram! Bryn decided to have some fun dumping out the diaper bag (she's obsessed with digging through wallets..so beware!) We made indoor smore's and had a family campout in our tent in the family room. (Ok, so maybe the whole family didn't sleep in the tent. Bryn must be contained so up to the crib for her after about 5 minutes of her jumping on everyone and running around crazy!) We had a good January!

New Year's

We had a quiet New Year's Eve, but tried to make it fun for the girls. We had homemade Chinese food (complete with fortune cookies) and even had the supposedly good luck black-eyed peas (in the best form possible of Cowboy caviar). We celebrated east coast time with the kids. We had noise makers, little confetti poppers and banged on pots and pans. I'm pretty sure the girls had no idea why we were making all the noise, but they sure had a good time! Curt and I sorta fell asleep while waiting to watch the ball drop, but luckily woke up in time for the actual thing. We shared a New Year's kiss and then to bed! He had to work New Year's day so it was just another usual day. I loved seeing tons of fireworks out the window. It was an awesome view!! Cheers to 2014!

My Golden Birthday

I turned 27 on December 27th..my golden birthday! I used to be way crazy about my birthday, and made sure the world revolved around me on that day, but honestly, since having kids, it's more like just another day. And that's ok. Curt's day off happened to fall on my b-day which was nice. Everyone felt a little sick, so it was a stay-at-home-and-chill kind of day. We relaxed, got some mexican food for dinner and had Nana and Papa and Madi over for brownie sundaes (my fav!) My parents were in CA at Disneyland, so it was a quiet celebration. The girls loved the balloons that Curt got me and had fun celebrating. I'm so lucky to have Curt and our cute daughters and can't wait to see what 27 holds! 

Christmas 2013

We had such a fun Christmas season. Christmas is SO SO magical and has always been my favorite holiday! Having kids that have such sweet and innocent excitement about it makes it even better than I ever could have imagined. We did lots of fun activities, and since it was so long ago, I'm sure I won't remember everything. But I'll write what I can remember. We went to "Winter Wonderland" at Riverside State Park, where we went on a hayride and saw Christmas lights, learned about and saw a live owl, saw Santa, and walked across the lit swinging bridge (except Curt didn't..he's afraid of heights, especially on things that move). It was a cold night, but there were fires set up all along the trails and it was nice to be able to warm up! If we do it next year, we'll definitely bring stuff for smore's! We went Christmas light looking LOTS of times, and Brooke especially loved spotting the Grinch (her major obsession!). We found lots of cool houses and never got bored of that. The girls are gooood Christmas light lookers. We did the Lake Coeur d'Alene cruise to the North Pole and had so much fun doing that with the cousins. The conservatory at Manito Park was beautiful as always. We sang lots and lots of Christmas songs and read so many Christmas books and loved everything about Christmas! My mom and I took the girls downtown on Christmas eve day to watch "Arthur Christmas" at the IMAX and rode the carousel that was way fun. We had a quiet Christmas eve with just our family and Gma and Gpa and played ring toss, clothespin game, and the dice game, our annual traditions. As well as read and acted out the Nativity, opened PJ's, and of course ate yummy food. We left out cookies and milk for Santa and Brooke was insistent that we leave carrots for the reindeer, so that we did! 

Aside from all the festivities, we really tried to emphasize to the girls the importance of Christmas, because of Christ. That He truly is the reason for the season. I'm grateful for the time of year to focus even more on our Savior and to be able to spend time teaching about Him and what He has done for us.

 Things I want to remember:
-How Brynlee would yell "Santa" every time we saw him on the corner of Sullivan and Sprague. No matter what direction we were coming from, she always spotted the blow up Santa and the Santa on top of the Christmas tree stand amazingly fast. It was totally her gauge for where we were at!
-How much the girls loved singing Christmas songs. They love music and were totally hooked on Christmas music (as am I).
-The magic that was in their eyes on seeing what Santa left. They were totally spoiled (Santa needs to learn some self-control) and they soaked it all in.
-A new tradition we started by writing our gift to Jesus on a piece of paper and wrapping it up. Our "gifts" are still in our rooms, and help us remember what we are trying to be better at.
-The wonderful time I spent with my little family, enjoying the warm, peaceful feelings that come with the Christmas season. We took Brooklyn to the store to pick out a toy to give to a child who wouldn't have presents otherwise and she chose the Doc Mcstuffins doctor kit (the one she wanted so bad) to give away. She picked it knowing that she would give it away, and did is so willingly and with such a pure heart. She really is so sweet.