Random Happenings

Skyler has been working on writing his letters, and the other day he managed to write his name. I had to draw boxes for him so he knew which size each letter should be, but he did it all by himself. We haven't started working on lower case letters yet, but he's getting pretty good with the uppercase.

Andy wants you all to know that this is what we are really doing in Florida. We've opened up a burger and shake place, and apparently we serve breakfast.

When it rains, Skyler and Ally have found a new game. They take bowls out to he patio and collect rain water, then use it to wash off their picnic table and other patio toys. Ally doesn't understand the concept of standing in the covered part of the patio and sticking her bowl out under the rain, so she always goes all the way out and gets drenched.

We have a Children's Museum in Naples that is pretty close to our house. One of my friends from the ward told me that you can check-out family passes from the library and go for free. There are always 7-8 holds, but if we put one on hold with my card, Andy's card, and Kylee's card, we can get passes every month or two. We got our first ones a couple of weeks ago, and I took Ally and Skyler one morning while Kylee was at school. They LOVED it. We stayed there for four hours, and they would have stayed longer. I forced them to leave because it was way past lunch time and I was starving!

One day I went looking for Ally and Skyler because they were being way too quiet playing upstairs. I found them laying in my shower reading books. Ally had applied blue eye shadow to one whole side of her face, and had my deodarant out as well. And yes, that is her wearing underwear on the outside of her onesie. She loves to wear underwear. Now that she is bottle and binki free at bedtime, I think we'll just potty train her.

Ally Shenanigans

About two weeks ago Kylee built a fort in our front room.

The next day while Kylee was at school, Ally was in there playing. I checked on her a few times and she was happy and having fun.

Then I went to organize the pantry in the next room, and after a while I realized Ally was being way too quiet. I went over to check on her again, and she came crawling out of the fort like this.

The she showed me how she had it all the way up her legs on both sides:

The she proudly showed me the bottom of her feet:

Then I got some baby wipes and started wiping off her arms...and she lifted up her shirt to show me this:

Yikes. I almost died. If you look really closely, you can see that she was very meticulous about making lines with every single marker color she had. She said, "Wook, mom! Colors!" As it turns out, Kylee left markers in the fort, and Ally thought they were meant for decorating herself. Amazingly, she didn't get any marker on her jammies or the floor. Just ALL OVER her body!

In other Ally news:

1) We went to the alligator walk last Monday (a week ago), and Ally stood on top of a fire ant pile and got 15+ fire ant bites on her leg before Andy and his dad were able to strip her down and brush them all off of her. At first they didn't look too bad...but somehow as time goes by they seem to be getting bigger and uglier. Apparently that happens if you scratch them, but how do you stop a one year old from scratching?!? Let's hope they go away soon.

2) Last Tuesday (the day after the fire ants), Ally escaped from Andy at Kohls and nearly gave me a heart attack. We were shopping for jackets for the kids, and Ally was with Andy in the little boy section while Skyler was with Rich and I in the toddler section. All of a sudden Andy walks over and says, "Hey, is Ally over here with you guys?" See, Ally loves to run around the racks of clothes when we shop. However, she usually just runs around the same rack over and over and thinks it's funny to come crashing into your legs each time. She was apparently doing this to Andy, but one time she didn't come around. He went in search of her and she was gone. We started running around yelling for her. Other customers joined the hunt. I found an employee and gave her a description. She radioed all the other employees. Finally an elderly lady told me she had seen a little girl run through the dressing area. I ran through there yelling her name, and heard someone call out, "She's over here!" She was happily playing with tubes of lotion in the beauty department, on the opposite side of the store from where we were. The employee there had caught her, and was keeping her from running away again. When I scooped her up I was crying and she was laughing. Crazy little thing didn't even know that she was lost. She's going to be the death of me, I swear!

3) On a happy note - Ally is binki free! Not two weeks ago she was addicted to her binki. Like she would have it in her mouth 24/7 if we would let her. If we took it away she would find it no matter where it was hidden. She would drag chairs over to climb up to the highest counter, etc. If we didn't let her have it she would scream bloody murder. You might think she was being tortured. Then while our family was here last week, we lost a binki at the beach, and then we lost her other one on our air boat ride. That night we put her to bed with no binki. Then the next, and the next. Suddenly it's been over a week, and she is binki free! We even went to Disney World where she had to sleep in her pack n' play in the same room with us, and she survived without it. Ha.Le.Lujah!

Kylee Turns 8!

I know what you're probably thinking. ONE photo!?!?! Yep. One. Kylee's birthday arrived very quickly after Christmas, as it always does. I can't believe she is already 8! She made sure I woke her up early so she could open her presents before school, and then that night she got to pick where we went for her birthday dinner. She picked Red Robin, and it was delightful. On Friday we had a birthday party with her friends at our house, and it was super fun. We were going to do outdoor games but the weather finally turned after all this time, and it was pouring rain all day, with tornado warnings. The power even went out while I was at the grocery store buying her a cake. So, last minute I altered the games to become indoor games, and it worked out just fine.

I was going to have Andy take a picture of her with her cake and blowing out her candles...but Ally and Skyler were kind of flipping out and we had 8 crazy girls waiting for food...so it got missed! Ah, well. It was fun anyway, and she loved having her friends here.

Things we love about Kylee at age 8: She's very creative. She loves to make crafts, play dress-ups, and read. She also loves to draw pictures and write little stories. She's also very generous. If she has money, she always wants to share with Skyler and Ally, or go to the $1 store to buy stuff so that she can afford to get them something, too. She is also very smart. She's (and we've) been a little worried about school here because it is A LOT harder and way more advanced than school in Utah, but they got report cards on Thursday and she got on the Honor Roll, so she's still doing great. I also love that she is old enough to help with a few more of the chores around the house so I don't have to do quite so much. She's really good at unloading the dishwasher, helping fold and put away laundry, and helping the littler kids keep their rooms clean.

She's really excited to be getting baptized soon. We scheduled it for Feb. 6 because Connie and Sugi were planning to come visit us at that time and we thought it would be fun to do it while we had some family here. Then we found out that Grandpa Rich might be able to come too, and my Aunt Rhonda volunteered to make her a home-made beautiful baptism dress, so now she's even more excited, and so are we. It will be such a special day and I'm so glad some of our family can share it with her!

Christmas

We came home from Disney World on Christmas Eve afternoon, and the kids opened up their Christmas Eve gift (which is always new jammies). I was excited to have found these Frozen ones online (and on clearance), because it was way too warm to wear winter jammies! Kylee and Ally love that theirs match.

Ally got a new toddler bed from Santa, which she loves. She also got a baby and baby carrier from Grandpa Rich and Grandma KD, and after she opened up those (which were the first things she opened), she didn't want to open up anything else! She just wanted to sit on her bed and take care of her baby. Eventually we convinced her that she should look at her other gifts, too.

Skyler was super excited that couple of his gifts were "bu-mongous". He almost didn't even need to open them; he just wanted to hold them and look at them. However, after opening one or two he also understood that it was much more fun to see what was inside.

Kylee got all sorts of new science and craft things, and loved every one of them. By the end of the day she had tried pretty much every single thing she got.

Ally is still in the phase where she thinks she needs to wear her pink cowgirl boots 24/7. She wears them all over the house basically ALL the time. When she goes to take a nap I always ask her "Should we take off your boots now?" And she always say, "No, I fine!" I've already purchased her the exact same pair in a larger size so that we're prepared when she outgrows these ones.

On Christmas Day all our friends and family in Utah were posting pictures of the awesome Christmas Day snowstorm they got. We were really missing the snow (it was 88 degrees here), so we decided in the afternoon to make the best of our different climate and go down to the beach. While we were there Kylee and I built "sand"men. Skyler and Andy found me shells to use for the eyes, mouth and buttons, Skyler found the sticks for the nose and arms, and Andy even got me some seaweed (eeeww!) and wrapped it around to make a scarf.

Ally is still not at all afraid of the water. She goes and sits close enough that the waves will crash over her lap and just digs and digs and digs in the wet sand.

She fills up her bucket with the wet sand and then it's too heavy for her to carry, so she needs daddy to help her.

Overall, it was a really great day. We had a nice quiet time with just our own family, and it was perfect.

Disney World Again

The week of Christmas Andy actually had off from school (they went back and had a test the Monday right after...) so we decided to head up to Disney World for a couple of days again. It was cool to see it all decorated for Christmas. Each park had a HUGE Christmas tree, and the castle at Magic Kingdom was decorated to look like an ice palace at night.

The very first morning that we were there Andy and Kylee were going on the race cars and while Skyler and I were waiting with Ally, Skyler pointed out to me that an airplane was writing letters in the sky (which he thought was just about the most exciting thing he'd EVER seen). It first wrote "U + GOD = :)" and then he wrote "JESUS [Heart]'s U".

Later, to Ally's ultimate joy, we discovered that she is actually tall enough to GO on the race cars now. She went a few times and loved every minute of it.

We of course always have to hit up the carousel a million times. Kylee always goes for Cinderella's horse (the only one with a gold bow on it's tail), and usually gets it because other people either don't know or don't care, and she makes a beeline right for it.

Ally allowed me to ride on her horse with her only one time. After that she insisted she needed to ride on her OWN horse, and she was not pleased that I kept putting my hand out to catch her in case she fell. She kept swatting my hand away and telling me, "No Mom! I do it!" She's quite the sassy baby now.

Skyler agreed to go on Splash Mountain again with me on the condition that he got to pick which ride we went on next. Of course he picked "the train that goes around the park." He LOVES trains. If you look super duper close in the photo from Splash Mountain, you can see Skyler's hair. I know he hates the drop, but he loves the "silly animals", and he'll ride it with me because I told him it makes me happy if someone rides it with me. After we got off he said, "That was fun mom, right? I maked you happy? Let me see your smile! Yep, you ARE happy!" (This is something that I say to the kids a lot - "Let me see your smile.") I love that he copies what we say.

  Of course we always love the People Mover as well. I've lost track of how many times we ride that thing. Any time we're over in Tomorrow Land we ride at least once or twice because the line is never long. I used to joke with the kids on the dark part, "Oh no! Where are my children? I can't see them! Oh no!" Then Skyler would kick his light-up shoes and I'd act all relieved that they were still there. Then I stopped doing it and now every time we go Skyler says, "Oh no! Mom! Where are your children!? (except he says - 'cho-dren') Don't worry mom, here we are!" And then he kicks his shoes and Ally laughs. Crazy kids. You would think the joke would get old at some point, but apparently it does not.

At Epcot the kids always like to look at the aquarium after we get off the Nemo ride. This time we got there just as they were starting to feed the fish and sting rays. It was super fun to watch. After they fed the stingrays they did a dolphin show. We were there for over an hour and the kids loved it.

I never realized that stingrays really do look like they have eyes and smile on the bottom of them! This guy was HUGE. He kept swimming right up next to the window.

At Hollywood Studios the kids went to play on the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground and loved all the slides and tunnels. They got sooooooooo sweaty. It was gross. I made them go play under the water sprayers so that we could claim they were wet from water and not soaked in sweat, but we knew the truth.

And of course the Buzz Lightyear ride. Kylee loves that she is old enough to ride alone because she can shoot both of the guns in her car at the same time. Ally thinks she is a big girl and trys to shoot her gun the whole time as well. She got a high score of 100 points. I don't know why I always look so cheesy in these. I always think I'm going to remember where the camera is so I don't look stupid in the photo...but I never do!

I got fast passes for Andy and Kylee to go see the princesses (because I know how much Andy secretly wanted to go see them), so they took Ally with them while Skyler and I rode the carousel.

 At Hollywood Studios Skyler and Ally and I went to see a 3D Muppet Show, and when we came out Lightning McQueen and Mater had just come out and their line was super short, so we jumped in to go and see them. Skyler was in heaven. When it was our turn he spun around and did a little dance in rapture. The workers were laughing at him. Ally never really cares or knows what is going on, but at least she was looking for the photo!