What have we been up to?

Today I received a dreaded task. I really hate it when someone in our household (um.....Jon) does something incredibly well, but asks me to do it for him. It makes me so nervous that I am going to screw up even though in my little head I KNOW I can do it. It seriously shouldn't be so hard. So while Jon got to take Marcella to see a movie, I received the task of making bread. I figure that while I am awaiting the next step in the recipe, I will indulge you with some things that have been going on lately. And hopefully, when it's been cooked, I will be able to show you a picture of bread that looks just like this one:

(I really shouldn't set myself up for failure like this. I don't think I will ever be able to make it look like that. I guess we'll find out in 25 more minutes.)

It has been fun to watch the storms here. You can look to one side of our house and see this:

Then you look to the other side and see this:

I am loving all the thunder and lightning.

Silly Girls

Did I mention it rains a lot? Since we have been here it has rained at least 5 days a week. This little down pour happened right after we all got back from exercising.

In about 3 minutes the gutters were full of water. Marcella was so happy.

Then the afternoon looked something like this:

I love Watermelon. We had a great time eating watermelon and trying to teach Marcella how to spit the seeds without getting slobber all over us. It was fantastic. I still don't think she has mastered the technique, but we will keep trying.

Not sure who started it (JON!), but we ended up having a water fight and sticking the girls in the swimsuits. I can't even remember the last time I had a water fight. We had so much fun.

Gotta love summer wedgies.

This is what Jon found when he came around the corner on Monday:

I guess she was a little hungry...

She would take a scoop in her hand and try to put it back in the box. With every handful she would say, "Thank You."

YUMMY!

"I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world, life in plastic it's fantastic."
(I bet you just said "c'mon Barbie let's go party. ah ah ah ah." just admit it. ha ha)

We went to the Children's Museum in Indiana-apolis as Marcella calls it. it was super fun. They had a huge Barbie play place. They were celebrating Barbie through the years. The girls had fun dressing up and going down the runway, doing hair and make-up, and looking at all the dolls.

Look familar Mom? That Barbie in the black looks exactly like your Barbie, We should make it some clothes like that.

The girls had the most fun in the section for kids 5 and under. They would have stayed and played in the sand part the whole time we were there. It makes me want to get a sand box, but I am afraid with the rain it will always be wet... any suggestions? Do you think they would still like it if it is wet sand?

When we pulled them away form the sand box Claire had fun feeding the birds. it is the perfect thing ever. You just stick the bug in its mouth and then it falls out and you just keep doing it over and over. She LOVED it.

Little gardener in the making:

Look out Caroline, you might have some competition.

This might not look like much to most people, but this seriously made me extremely excited:

I definitely wasn't this excited when Marcella started walking up the stairs. In my memory, she just did it one day and I thought cool. For Claire, this is huge. I must have looked like an idiot because I kept clapping and shouting, "Yay Claire Bear!"

Another milestone for little Claire was painting fingernails. She finally held still long enough for me to paint her fingers and toes. She looks so adorable. I LOVE it.

Our little Monster

Moment of truth. Definitely not as pretty, but I am willing to work on that. I am just glad I didn't burn myself or the bread, so I will chalk that up to a success. I hope you all have a fabulous day and I am going to go and enjoy this delicious bread. Ciao!

The Girls

One of my favorite prizes Marcella gets to pick off her chart is a date night. She earned her Mommy Daughter Date night last week and so we went shopping for Claire's Birthday and went and saw Toy Story 3. We had so much fun. As we were driving around I couldn't help but think about how much I like being with this little girl. She is so cute and fun to talk to. I am so glad we decided not to put her in preschool this year. We are going to have so much fun at home. I love you Marcella Bella Mia.

Next up, Claire. Last night She started crying so hard so we went to see what happened, and well you can see for yourself...

According to Marcella she had a book in her hand and started running away from Marcella when she ran into the wall. This leaving much to my imagination makes me think she ran into the wall but the book hit first and then she hit the book. Or something like that probably happened. It looks pretty good today and she seems to be doing fine. We will just chalk it up to black eye number 2. Hope you all have a fabulous day.

The Tour

Here is a tour of the inside of our place. I am kind of excited because now when I actually decorate things I will have a little before and after. I hope you all enjoy.

Bob

Yes that is what Claire calls me. Not because she can't say M's but because I think she thinks it is funny. This grumpy goose was suppose to go to bed early tonight. With a combination of a short nap and her grumpiness we thought for sure she would be out after dinner. Needless to say her grumpiness was so bad at dinner that she wouldn't eat. So we figured she must not be hungry. She seriously never passes up food. So after being in bed for over an hour we got her out and we got some fun videos of her. I hope you enjoy.

Bikes, Yikes!

This has been a long time coming. For over a year now Marcella has been earning money and saving up so she could buy a bike. She would do chores around the house, save her sweet from Easter egg hunt money, birthday and Christmas cash, and occasionally get some money from her Grandpas when she would give them a cute smile. Some people thought we were a little crazy, and there were days that I wanted to just go and buy her a bike (like almost everyday last summer), but I held on. She knew the type of bike she wanted, and we made a chart with how much it was going to cost and she saved for it.

In April it all paid off. She got the bike of her dreams. We stopped by the bank to get her money out of her account and the smile on her face when she got to put the money in her pocket was priceless. All the waiting and keeping track was all worth it. Especially when she paid for it. We headed down to Taylor's Bike Shop in Provo and she started looking around. I was completely surprised she didn't take the purple bike she first tested. I thought for sure she would choose it or want to get a pink one, but she spotted a yellow one and, at that moment, decided yellow was her favorite color.

She loves riding to the park, to the church, and to her friends' houses. A month ago I decided it would be fun to go on a long bike ride with her. Once we were down the street, I realized it was a terrible idea. I think I pedaled 3 or 4 times the whole ride, but she got a good workout. She was so excited to tell Jon that she went on a 3 mile bike ride. It was super cute. Afterward, she was completely worn out.

Fast forward to now and we have been having fun at the park by our house. She will ride her bike and I will run next to her. She likes to have races, so this is perfect, I have my own personal trainer who makes me run faster when I feel like I am going to die and she gets to laugh the whole time we are out there.

And now we're at the next big step: taking off the training wheels. We took them off Saturday and she did great. She is having a hard time starting and stopping, but once she gets going she does fine. It was so fun to watch her and Jon practice. The sad thing is we decided to do it on the hottest day in history and it was about 98% humidity to make things a little worse. So we cut the practice short. Hopefully the next few days are a little nicer.






I love that she jumps off her bike when she feels a little scared. Don't be fooled by the wind noise, it was hot air promise.

Our First Week in Indiana

Sunday I had a couple of helpers and we made chocolate chip cookies. It was so exciting because we have been without a mixer for close to three months and we were so excited to be able to bake something. It was YUMMY!

Jon found a sweet garden that you can walk through. It is the closest thing I think we will get to being in the mountains, but we sure had fun hiking through the forest.

We made the girls climb up to this cave to get this picture, poor things they were surrounded by spider webs. At least we got Marcella to smile.

This really was fun. The only thing was it was HOT. It is hard when you are used to hiking and then after a while having to put on a light jacket because it starts getting a little chilly, but here I wanted to start taking things off. Jon was such a great sport carrying our little dead weight; Claire Bear.

Have I mentioned the bugs here? It has been interesting to see different kinds of bugs. One thing I am in love with are these. I have seen so many Butterflies it is amazing. They are all so big too. There are also some pretty interesting bugs that I don't want to even look at.

Let me tell you a little story. I remember when Marcella was really little and I don't remember if Jon told me or if I just decided this, but I wasn't going to let my little girl be afraid of bugs. Side note: I HATE bugs. They give me to willies. Anyways, I feel like I have been pretty good at stepping up to the plate when Jon isn't around and having her check out a bug here or there.

Well while we were on our little hike we found this fella. You tell me.....

Have I succeeded in creating a bug lover?

I think I have to give all the credit to Jon, mainly because I would not have picked that thing up ever.

Do you think she is enjoying the park in our back yard?

I think we all are. It has been so fun to run around the park while the girls play etc. I love it.

Oh little Claire. She has seriously made us laugh a lot lately. She loves to make you laugh as well and will try hard to get you to laugh. Jon asked Claire if she wanted a bite of his sandwich and this is what he got when he asked for it back.

We have been having such a good time. We miss all our family and friends, but we are trying to enjoy each day. We made it down to Indianapolis yesterday to go to Costco before we left Marcella said are we heading to Indiana-apolis? Hope you all have a wonderful day.

We are off and we made it...

We fit everything in this huge truck and all I kept thinking was wow, I can't believe we had most of that in our tiny 700 sq ft apartment.

Here are the girls after our first day of driving. We stopped in Omaha to sleep and boy was it nice. Both girls had a lot of fun running around in our HUGE hotel room and jumping on the beds after we ate Claire decided she would find a better place to play...

It took some pulling to get this little on out of here. She is so funny. We made it around 6 pm on Tuesday and was pleasantly surprised that Jon and Spencer had already unloaded the truck. I am really sad to say that I don't have any pictures of our visitors... mom you need to send me some of yours. We were sure lucky to have Spencer, my mom and dad and Nathan. Thank you so much for helping us unpack, and kept the girls entertained etc. You guys are the best!!

On Thursday we took a break from unpacking and went to the first cool place we could find. (I am hoping I continue to find cool places to go here... but I am keeping my expectations low as to not disappoint myself and keep wishing we were back in Utah.) We went to the Zoo. The best part about it is that it is FREE. It isn't very big, but it was really fun to walk around and see some of the animals. Here is Claire chilling with the goats.

You can crawl through a tunnel to see the sea lion swimming around.

Pretend you are a gopher

See if you are as big as an Eagle,

Walk with the Kangaroos,

and even see a baby one. It is in it's mother's pouch.

They even had water you could play in which was amazing considering you felt like you were in an indoor pool, but there was no place to swim. We are slowly getting used to the humidity and I am enjoying the rain storms we have been having.

I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday. Love you all and miss you like crazy!!