Eliannah Is So Funny

Eliannah is so funny! She is always laughing and seeing life on the silly side. she has a great sense of humor, but some of the funniest things she says, she doesn't even understand why they are so funny. She will repeat them just because she knows that they made me laugh so hard.

For Martin Luther King Jr day I got out my paper dolls for the girls to play with. They were having a great time looking through them and the clothes that the dolls came with (its the whole family) Eliannah said, "Who would wear these clothes, they are horrible!" hahaha I personally am a fan of the styles from the 1950's, but apparently she is not.

Loving sister. Eliannah is beginning to develop herself as an older sister. she is now doing things more and more with just MiKaylah. Like when Tsadakah is at school. She is loving and fair most of the time. Whenever MiKaylah takes something from her she cries but she never fights back or hits. I am proud of her for that!

In her hand is a tiny purple elephant. She loves it. It is her favorite toy right now. She gt it for Christmas from her cousin Asher. She tells everyone about it when they are around. "This is my purple elephant. I got it from Asher-boy!"

One of the other cute things she is doing right now is telling us what she wants us to say. "can I have a cookie? say 'Yes, darling!" Everything ends with "darling."

And best of all, when she's excited, she runs. She runs in circles when she is waiting for me to finish MiKaylahs book and read her favorite book next. (Its: Rainbow Fish) Or when she is going to get a treat or get to help with making some cookies.

She's my little firecracker. We love her dearly!

Tsadakah's Awards

Tsadakah has earned some great awards in the last few months! I am so proud of her! The first is one that is given out every month to children who have been "builders." The theme at the school for this year is building up instead of tearing down. Tsadakah was chosen and recognized in November. I love the nice things that were said about her. She really is kind and good and sweet. She always wants to do what is right. That is why she is my angel baby!

Then in January I was informed that she has won the Inspirations contest in the Literature category. She received second place for K-2nd! Wow! I am so proud! There was a third place awarded so I know that she didn't win as a default that there were only 2 entries.

The day she was to get her award I got a sitter and took my camera so I could take a picture of her getting her award at the assembly in front of the whole school! She was so excited! Well unfortunately the power was out for all of Tooele county that morning and the assembly was rescheduled for the following week.

Well that day came and I was so distracted by other things that I forgot that it was her day to be at school (she goes every other Wednesday) so I didn't get her to school until after the assembly was over!!! I felt Horrible! Really I felt like the worst mom. I kept saying sorry over and over.

Her amazing teacher recognized her in front of the class and gave her the award, ribbon, box of markers, and box of colored pencils that she had won. She came home totally excited and happy. All the kids said nice things to her and made her feel special! I was relieved that I hadn't ruined her life.

She is going to the regional competition on February 17Th. I will be sure to be EARLY and with my camera! :) We are so proud of her efforts and her hard work!

Tsadakah is very interested in fashion and art and cooking. She is so cute! I was making bread sticks to go with our dinner and she decided that we should make them like cinnamon rolls. She made this one all by herself! Isn't it good for a girl of 5! I was so impressed that I had to post it!

Potty Training

Starting in November, my baby started showing signs of being ready to potty train. In fact I went over the list of skills she needs and she has them all down with flying colors. However, with he holidays and the new house and the fact that I dread potty training I kept putting it off. Well it was becoming a problem because she would just take her diaper off and go anywhere. Something had to be done! Yet, I still kept putting it off, until Martin Luther King Day when she refused to be put in a diaper. So I am potty training!

I had no idea how to potty train a baby so small! I didn't feel like she would understand or be motivated by charts or any of that so I talked to my friend, Angie< who potty trains all her kids as soon as they are walking! It is basically you cut the diapers cold turkey and let natural consequences teach the child. It was working really great until she got sick and then I lost my focus and got distracted with projects so we are still in the process of training, but she is doing so well! I am impressed with how quickly she has gotten in and how much control she has. She is a very smart girl who watches people and learns from them. When she goes she'll say, "AHHH" which is what Ellie does. lol

Other mimics that she is making, she fake burps after she drinks, she scrunches up her nose and squints back at me whenever I do it to her, she will copy your dance moves, and she laughs when you laugh.

Seriously, I am so proud of her potty training skills! She is doing an amazing job without the bribes of toys and charts. She wants to do it for her own reasons. She is such a sweet heart!

New Year's Resolutions

New year's Resolutions are always very important to me. I take them serious and I try to really get through the whole year with them. This year there were way too many improvements that I need to make. I kept thinking of more and more things that could be my resolution, but they were so overwhelming, and I wanted mine to be a really good one this year.

So after a lot of consideration I decided that what I needed was to learn how to live in the moment! Live for today and not for tomorrow. I have written in my journal how I plan to track and achieve my goal.

One thing that I did to live in the moment was to take pictures of my kids in their clothes. Tsadakah LOVED it! She put on every outfit she owns! Then together we drew on them adding flowers, bracelets, and other such stuff. She was so happy about it. She kept saying that this was the best day of her entire life! Considering that Christmas was only 2 weeks away, I thought that was quite a compliment! :)

Eliannah didn't love it as much, she wanted to stop after 3 outfits, but she loved having her picture taken! She smile and then move just as the picture was taken so she looked like this.

MiKaylah also loved the attention she got. She said "Teese" and looked so pretty. Its the little moments that make up life and life isn't always perfect. Sometimes life is a mess, but if you can't smile about the little this that happen to warm your heart, then you will struggle to get through those bigger messier things.

For FHE we made goals as a family. Our family goal is to hold 42 FHE evenings. Tsadakahs goal (which she thought up all by herself) is to write cursive small. Eliannahs is to count to 20. MiKaylah's is to be potty trained. :)

Well wish us all luck!

Christmas/Hannukkah/New Years Party

Yea! happy New Year! With my family we had an all in one party. A lot of us couldn't be there until then, so we celebrated all of the holidays on New Year's Eve. It was fun, but also exhausting! I am going to describe the night backwards.

Here we are running down the street at midnight screaming and yelling and trying to be as loud as possible. There were a few neighborhood fireworks that we saw go off and one other person out who wished us a happy New Year.

This is me with Yumi, Ramsom (my brother) and Erin. They came all the way from Japan to spend Christmas with us! It was a very special time and my girls loved playing with them. Tsadakah still talks about them. His wife Kieko was still in the house. She is an amazing person.

Before that we had Hannukkah. It was a fun and beautiful thing! It included lighting the candles and singing the prayers, which I love to hear my dad sing. It is beautiful to me and reminds me of childhood.

We also played dradle which is fun. We played the speedy version where any time a person has to leave the game because they are all out of candy you up the anti.

The rule is that you are not allowed to blow the candles out, they have to burn out on their own, s it is common to still and watch them at least for a little while. I remember my father used to put them into the window and I would watch them until the last one burnt out. Its so peaceful and relaxing!

Before that we did a Nativity play. It was Tsadakah's year to be Mary but she declined the role. She said that she wanted to be an angel again because I call her my angel-baby. Really sweet! Here is the curtain call. Four wise men, Mary, Joseph, and our star baby Jesus :), 2 angels, a cow, a horse, and a shepherd.

The wise men. My nieces were so cute in it. Christ in Christmas was an all new concept for them. They played their parts beautifully.

Tsadakah was so so so cute! She was killing me with her dramatic flare, but then she would always break character to wave to mom! She makes me so happy!

Eliannah was also an angel, but in being rambunctious behind the scenes she had ripped her skirt. Here she is coming to tell me. She didn't want to be in it after that. :(

Look at that pose Tsadakah is doing! It mkes me giggle. I missed the shot, but she was looking over her shoulder at me like, "Are you getting this mom? I am looking so fabulous!"

"And Mary took the new born babe and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger..."

Before that, we opened presents. My mom gave everyone a blanket. Tadakah is a blanket-a-holic. If she could sleep under a hundred blankets, she would. Every one that my mom has made her is her "special" blanket! She adores my mom!

Eliannah was being silly with Grandma and the bows. She is such a silly personality. She can be absolutely fabulously photogenic!

My dad built every one of us a solar heating oven. It was pretty cool. He tried it a couple weeks ago and they re-heated some food. He said it wont be able to cook from scratch until summer time. He loves to make home made gifts to show his love!

Mike's blanket was the Packers because that is his team. We loved that they won the super bowl last year!! :)

MikKaylahgrabbing her blanket! haha

Eliannah got a Dora blanket. She loves her right now, so that was perfect. My mom put a lot of thought into these blankets to geive what we would truly love.

For our exchange this year we did books. Moriella and Tsadakah! :) Tsadakah was pretty excited to give her selection to Moriella. It was called St. George and the Dragon. She loves our copy and that was ok with me because they live there so it was extra fun!

Eliannah and Erin exchanging their books. Ellie got her How Many Is A Million.

MiKaylah, reading her new book with Daddy! She got too even!

Before we opened presents we sang carols together. We love to sing. Its kooky to go caroling these days, but singing the carols just with family is always beautiful. Here Moriella is dancing to the music. She can be quite a hoot some days.

Mike and Tsadakah singing. (Tsadakah doesn't sing at church. It makes me sad, but she never has. even if she knows the song word for word, like I Am A Child Of God.)

So this was our holiday celebration shibang! We loved family and fun and we were litterally exhausted by the end. Eliannah put herself to bed somewhere in there and didn't make it to midnight.

Happy New Year!

A very special week!

Christmas morning included Church this year. Mike and I really enjoyed it. Other people complained, but what better way to spend a day that you are supposed to remember Jesus Christ? Not to mention, that there is nothing open anyway so you cant go do something so you might as well be at church.

The bishop in our ward talked about the gifts of giving. He challenged us to ask, "What did you give for Christmas?" instead of what did you get?

Tsadakah in her new winter church dress! (and baby elephant)

MiKaylah in her new church dress.

This is the baby Jesus that we received on Christmas Eve! Seriously so special!

December 30 I was waking my girls to start going on the day, and this is what we saw! It was so beautiful, even more than this picture can provide. It was such a special moment for me and the girls! We all stood there looking at the sky and loving the closeness of each other in that moment!

Now my girls ask every morning if they have missed the sun rise. When the sun is setting they get excited too and they say, "Mom, come look at the sky!" I love it!

Christmas Day!

What time did you wake up on Christmas morning? I am usually the first one to get up and want to open presents! I usually can't last longer than 6AM. As much as I love Christmas Eve, I hate Christmas night, because I can hardly sleep. It is seriously like a series of cat naps.

Well this year, I was not the only one who had this problem. lol Tsadakah came in our room and excitedly exclaimed that it was Christmas morning and that Santa had come! So we groggily got out of bed and then we saw the clock 3:18! She had already seen it all and was bouncing off the walls about it so we decided that there was going to be no way to get her to go back to sleep, so we woke Ellie and let them open presents. (We let MiKaylah sleep in) Eliannah loved her barbie! It is something she has been desperately wanting for months.

MiKaylah loved the attention. Since everyone else had already opened their presents we had nothing better to do than give her 100%. She loved the candy more than any of the present, in fact, she didn't open one! We would give her one and ask if sh wanted to open it and she would say un un with chocoate dripping from her lips.

Mike enjoyed his scrap book and loved reading through it for quite a while. He appreciated all the work that went into it, which was a lot!

Ellie's obsession with frogs was increased with this stuff toy!

Tsadakah and her stocking.
For Tsadakah I wanted to get her this Disney magic Artist because I think that she is good at art and she has good computer skills too. I thought that she would really like it because she saw it on the previews for her favorite movies all the time. She does love it.