My Amelia Bedelia (and Jr.)

My Melissa is becoming Amelia Bedelia more and more every day. By that I mean... she takes things VERY LITERALLY and has been making me laugh ALL day! Kayla seems to be following in her footsteps. Yesterday was a particuarly long day for our little family and it started with the girls going to the doctor with me. The stroller was SOAKED (which I didn't know until time to leave) and Daddy had the backpack "leashes" in his car so I pretty much talked the girls into being good by promising a trip to the hospital gift shop for candy after my appointment. Every couple of minutes Melissa reminded me that she and Kayla were being good and were going to get candy. (this in front of my endocronologist who handles diabetes everyday!) All of the doctors got a kick out of it. Kayla just kept doing the sign for eat. They are so cute. Later in the day we went out to Wal-Mart and when I realized what time it was I said, "We need to pick up the pace ladies." Melissa then said, "Where is the pace? Where do we find the pace. Is it over here by the apples? Where is the pace." Laughing I explained that we don't BUY the pace and she asked, "well, did we lose the pace? Did we drop it back there? We can help you find the pace." I thought I would laugh forever! When we were finally home I made the comment that my lips were burning from being out in the wind and Melissa reached out and touched my mouth and said, "whew! They sure are!" Cute! Later that night I went to Young Women's and Ray watched the girls and told me the following story... The girls were in the bathroom waiting for him to return with towels for bath time and Melissa decided she needed to "attend to business." So... she did. In the couple of seconds that Ray was out of the room Kayla decided that she also needed to "attend to business." So... she did. Only she didn't have a diaper on. Ray said she backed up beside Melissa, turned around and did her "business." The yucky kind. The gross kind. Right there on the floor. (I am SOOO glad that Ray was taking care of them!!) AND there were questions. Kayla said, "Ewww!" and Melissa said, "What's that?" (I guess she has never seen such things out of a diaper or the potty. Ray handled it well. He just laughed... and stopped Kayla from playing with it. Oh... the adventures of parenthood. (I say this as I have one child standing behind me on my chair playing with my hair and another one standing between me and the keyboard pushing my hands away so that I will pick her up... fun times.)

FHE

Tonight during "Family Home Evening" we talked to the girls about our dear Prophet dying. They took it harder than I thought that they would. Melissa said, "I don't want a new prophet. I want that udder guy." (meaning, of course, President Gordon B. Hinckley.) And Kayla followed her example with, "No." It was a wonderful time for us to explain that we will always have a prophet on the earth. After a short discussion and re-assurance that our next Prophet probably has grandchildren, the girls are off to bed happily thinking about the Gospel... or the parties that we had with our imaginary friends today.

Kelly's House

This past Thursday Kelly and her family really rescued us! I had to go to the ER for some medical tests and we knew it would be a long day. After I was in my room Ray called my cousin Kelly to see if she could take care of our girls. Lucky for us she was able to and Ray bustled them over to her house. They had SO much fun and really enjoyed the time with their cousins. (Kayla didn't even fuss if you can believe that!) We picked the girls up around 8PM and as we were driving home Melissa said, "I want to go back and LIVE at Kelly's house!" It was all over after that! She persistently asked to go back and LIVE with Kelly at her house and told us that she did not want to go home to go to sleep... She wanted to stay awake... At Kelly's house! Eventually we called Kelly and Melissa asked her if she could live with her. Luck for Ray and me, Kelly said that she should live with her mommy and daddy but that she could come back and visit and play soon. Melissa was pacified for the evening, but brought it back up the next morning. We REALLY love Kelly and her family!

Some people are clueless...

The story I am about to tell you is true. It actually happened to me. That being said... Two weeks ago I took my 2 girls with me to my Cardiologist appointment praying the entire way there that they would behave. They were in the double stroller and actually doing pretty well. When the nurse called us back for our turn she said the following, "I don't see how you ladies do it. You get up, feed your kids, get them dressed, get yourselves dressed and out the door to be to appointments on time." (I didn't tell her that I tried to call and cancel my appointment because the girls were out of sorts that morning) She then said, "I have been in the store and have seen moms in the store with ALL of their kids! They actually take them everywhere!" (Like it was a rare occurrence!) I was floored... I absolutely did not know what to say. At first I thought that she couldn't possibly be serious. But, she was! I guess I made a face while trying to figure out what went wrong in that head of hers because she started to look uncomfortable so I said, "well, if we didn't take our children with us, we wouldn't go anywhere." Great... good response. :} Oh well, I guess some people really are clueless!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! Our Christmas Day was an adventure! We started with Kayla refusing to wake up. It was SO cute! Melissa was gently nudging her and asking her to wake up... obviously it worked. We went downstairs to see what Santa had brought to us and Ray and I really enjoyed watching the girls and all of their 3 and 1 year old excitement. As the day progressed, so did their tiredness and grumpiness. By the time it was bedtime we were ALL ready to sleep! All in all it was good. We did something new this year. Instead of starting Christmas day out with the scripture reading about the birth of the Savior, we ended our day with it. We knew the girls would be too excited about Santa to pay attention, and we were right. They LOVED watching Luke 2 before bed and went to sleep happily thinking about Jesus. It was nice.

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Yippee! Here it is... the last of the videos that I need to "catch up on!" Like always, I made this one for our family, but you are all welcome to watch it. It is long like all of the others... Enjoy!

Playtime Captured

A couple of days ago I captured the girls on tape playing together. I love their little conversations. (Please note the spot for Uncle Adam on the Ark towards the end.)

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Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was lovely. The girls were still out of sorts from vacation, we visited Grandma and Grandpa and we decorated cookies for Santa. The girls wrote him notes and drew him pictures and it was off to bed for most everyone. Merry Christmas!

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Day 8... Heading Home

Today was such a long day! We let the girls sleep a little this morning while Daddy went downstairs to bring us breakfast. Everyone woke up grumpy and ready to go home! We packed up, took our stuff out to the car and realized we were going to need to perform some magic in order to make everything fit! We had an additional bag AND an additional stroller to fit and we barely made it the first time. We rented a compact car and must have looked like a clown family piling out of it when we finally reached the Hertz dealer! Our flight was not scheduled to leave until 6:30 that evening and we still had an entire day to fill up with activities... We were not successful! We went back to the Temple to purchase some things from Distribution, went to the LDS bookstore, ate at KFC and still had 5 or 6 hours until our flight! So... much to Ray's dislike, we headed to the airport. We originally wanted to be there 3 hours early because the security lines are SOOO long there, but, also to Ray's dislike, we were through in about 45 minutes which still left us with over 4 hours to go. Oops! What else were we supposed to do? So, we found 1/2 of a bench, pulled out our 3000 pieces to Mr. Potato head and played. We also ordered dinner, watched people walk by, used the potty and talked about how early we were. Exciting, isn't it? I know that it is hard to not be jealous! At 7:00 we finally boarded the plane only to find that our sweet, laid-back little girls had become "those kids!" Oh yes, they cried and cried and cried almost the entire flight home. They really wailed when we started to fly lower and their ears started to hurt. Then, the unthinkable happened... Melissa dropped her passie under the seat! It was nowhere to be found! It wasn't until we landed that Daddy thought to take pictures with the digital camera to see where the passie was. We found it... and the scariest toes you may ever see! You'll see what I am talking about when you watch the video. As soon as we landed the girls stopped crying, people hurried off the plane (probably to get away from us) and we left without many more adventures. Daddy drove the girls home while Mommy went to the store and we were all in bed by 1AM. Whew! It is good to be home!

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Day 7... Back to the Magic Kingdom

Day 7 Back to the Magic Kingdom Today was our last day to visit the parks and we decided to spend a full day at the Magic Kingdom. We started out by taking the train to Adventure land or whatever it is called and went on the infamous “Jungle Cruise”… it was fun. Then we climbed and climbed up the Swiss Family Tree House only to head back down once we reached the top. Melissa thought that that part was silly! We arranged to have lunch at the Crystal Palace, and though the food wasn’t very good, meeting Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, and Piglet totally made up for it. Kayla was a little worried in the beginning, but was soon shaking Tiggers “hand” and letting the other fellas touch her shoulder. We FINALLY were able to meet Minnie Mouse and Kayla actually ran up to her! She is the first character that Kayla hasn’t been afraid of right from the start. That was priceless. It was so fun watching Melissa with all of the characters… Whatever the one that she was talking to was doing, she would do the same… etc. if Pluto was interacting with them on his knees, Melissa would kneel the same way to talk to him. She did that with everyone of them! It was so cute! We had so much fun riding all of the rides, eating the yummy treats and spending SOOO much money! (Funny, we bought SO many “souvenirs” that we had to go to WalMart on the way back to the hotel and purchase another duffel bag!) Leaving the park was interesting…. We stayed till closing and there were literally masses and masses of people trying to get off of the “island”~ we decided to ride the ferry out to the trams that take us to our cars. Wow. It took forever! We enjoyed riding the “big boat” for our last adventure with Disney. The girls were SOOO good today. They are SOO ready to go home tomorrow. Enjoy the video!

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Day 6 MGM and the Epcot Light Show

Day 6 MGM and the Epcot Light Show Today we went to MGM and had so much fun! The girls LOVED the “Disney, Live On Stage” show with Bear in the Big Blue House. It was pretty awesome. There was a “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” set to climb on and we were enjoying it until… the nose attacked. I am serious… Dad and Kayla were climbing through the grass and sliding while Melissa and I were investigating the top of a container of play dough when it happened. While investigating we came to a HUGE dog nose. As we approached it actually SNIFFED us! It was ALL OVER after that. Melissa just knew that it was a real dog trying to find food and that he ate girls. I think that you could hear her crying across the park. Eventually she did calm down and continued to play with Kayla, but it was a very cautious play. Kayla, on the other hand, has proven to be fearless. She loved the big dog, she loves the dinosaur scary sounds, she loves the roller coaster, and she even smiled at one of the characters today. Excellent! Tonight we went back to Epcot to see the spectacular firework and light show. It was So awesome! Kayla fell asleep just before the fireworks and even through all of the sound, only woke up a couple of times. Melissa put Daddy’s hat over her hands and eyes to shield the noise from the fireworks and actually fell asleep DURING the show. Now those are sleepy girls! All in all, it was a fun day!

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Disney Day 5 Epcot

Day 5 Epcot Today was the LONGEST day that we have had so far. Epcot is… well… HUGE! We saw Nemo, met so many characters and walked from country to country gathering these “decorations” at cool little Kidcot stations for the girls to put on their Christmas masks. We ate lunch at a neat Japanese restaurant where they cook the food on the huge stove right there at our table. We LOVED it! Mommy had to buy some new shoes today because she severely underestimated the pain that would come from walking for 5 days in shoes without much support. So, she now has some really cute, really expensive Mickey Mouse head Crocs. They are VERY comfortable and Mommy did not complain again about her feet! We decided to head back to the hotel “early” and get a good night sleep so that we can stay out late again tomorrow. Good Night!

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Disney Day 4... Downtown Disney and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party

Day 4 Downtown Disney & Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party We started our day today with a trip to Downtown Disney! Mommy and Melissa had a date to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where Melissa met her “Fairy God Mother” and received a beautiful princess make-over. She LOVED the attention and the MAKE-UP! While Mommy and Melissa did that Kayla and Daddy had a Daddy-daughter date! Kayla LOVED the daddy time and LOVED that he bought her a Princess Aurora baby. What a surprise when Melissa came out of the boutique as Princess Aurora! Such fun! We went back to the hotel for a bit and then headed out to the Magic Kingdom for the “Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.” WOW! What a treat. There was “free” hot chocolate and cookies, a really good musical of “Twas’ the Night Before Christmas, and then saw the most awesome Christmas Parade. At the end Santa pointed to Melissa (who was on Ray’s shoulders) and told her to “be a good girl!” She couldn’t believe it! It was such a fun day! We came back to the hotel and CRASHED!

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