{7 months}

Our little "woo" as we call sweet Jane just pulls on our heart strings all throughout the day.

She is still a calm little spirit among the fray and she is so content to just go with the flow.

She is loving eating her solids, mostly green beans, peas, carrots, and sweet potatoes.

She does not like squash so much and still gags when she tries it.

She has this new grin where she just can't seem to grin wide enough and so she

scrunches her little nose and wiggles her head a little.

She loves to suck on her binky upsidedown which makes us chuckle because it

looks so funny and she turns it around herself.

She has started giving wet slobber kisses on our cheeks and it makes her giggle.

Sitting up and staying up is getting easier for her.

She has two tiny and sharp teeth.

She is super smiley baby, unless you take her to get pictures done :)

When you arrive home after being away from her, she is one of the best welcoming committees I

have ever seen!

Thanks for brightening our day EVERY DAY little woo!

What a Merry Christmas!

The rush of the holidays is over and I loved running across all of our pictures this week.  It was a jam packed season filled with The Christmas Carol Musical (that was fantastic!), Zoo Lights, Adam's company party and a stay in Park City, 

family parties, a handmade gift exchange with neighborhood friends, old roomate party, Madrigal party....we welcomed a relaxing January after all of that fun!

The girls, minus Jane here, enjoyed talking to Santa at our ward breakfast.  Caroline sat for what seemed like 15 minutes on his lap, deep in thought because she wanted to tell him just the right thing to bring.

Our Elder's Quorum put on quite the bash!  We had a progressive dinner with small groups which was fun to get to know a few families better.  Then we had a white elephant exchange and dessert back at the ward.  I was thrilled that we had the perfect gift for this party.  We have toted around this gift from New Hampshire, to D.C. and back to Utah, waiting for just the right crowd.  Well, why not bring it to our first ward Christmas party?

We brought The Sperm Bank that I received at a friend party years ago.  It was a hit and had everyone rolling, I would highly recommend this if you want a good gag gift!

We were relieved that it went over well and that our dear friend Brooke found the humor in it!

At one point during the game we were thrilled to get a plunger, sombrero, and various treats from Mexico.  Turns out that was another hot gift that was stollen from us.

Attempts to get a calm picture before church went probably as expected.  We have a few cute pics with 2 out of three girls smiling, and then lots of stressed out ones.  I just had to share some real life :)  Look how stressed Caroline is as Jane is slipping a little bit.

Another real life moment that was very sad for Olive was when her gingerbread man fell off of her plate and was decapitated.  I felt bad for her, but I was also fighting back the laughter because she was hysterical!

It's so hard for these little ones when it seems their life crumbles to pieces...no pun intended.

Our family Christmas parties were cozy, relaxing, and delicious.  We had one with my dad's side of the family that I will post later because there are too many funny pictures!  My cute parents getting the feast ready.

 My mom knit these Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty dolls for Caroline and Olive.  You flip them over and under their skirt is the more casual Ella and Briar Rose.  The girls now sleep with them every night.

My sister gave the girls these darling personalized plates.  

I just died at how adorable they are! 

Sweet Grandpa B with baby Jane.  He just loves our girls so much and has such a tender heart.  We lovethe Beckstrom party where we play Don't Eat Pete and Righty Lefty. The kids had a blast!

We were so happy to be with everyone during the most wonderful time of the year!!

{Rainbow Party}

Happy Happy Birthday to our sweet 3 year old Olive!

She is such a silly, happy, intense little ball of delight.

People walk away from talking to Olive and they are usually chuckling because of a funny expression she made with her eyes, or something nonsense she said.

We LOVE you little O!

If you know Olive, you know that her favorite color is purple.  She is obsessed.

As I started planning a purple party for her, it became a little boring just focusing on one color, so we involved all of the colors of the rainbow!

Olive was super excited about the idea, so we went with it.

It was fun looking for all sorts of rainbow things to spice up the party.  We kept it pretty simple with fruit, veggies, rainbow jello and the cake.  The circle garlands came together super fast with just a continuous line sewn with the sewing machine.  On the clouds I just wrote,

 You are my sunshine Olive

You make us happy

everyday!

What sealed the deal for having a rainbow party were these darling favor bags from Papernook.  I instantly fell in love to have these for her little friends.  

We filled them with a few little things like a rainbow crayon, a sparkly mini notepad, gold coins, and a few other goodies.  

The cake was a trial and error process.  I filled the 6" cake pans waaay to full on the first go around.  Once we figured out to only fill them about 1/3 full, they turned out great!  To even out the top of the cake I used the dental floss method where you wrap floss around the top of the cake and overlap it.  Then gently pull it and it slices the slightly rounded tops right off to make a nice flat layer!  I used this Almond Sour Cream cake recipe  but I halved it because it makes a ton.  And for the icing I used this recipe which was the perfect consistency.  

My favorite part about the cake was that Olive helped make it all.  She helped add the food coloring and mix it in.  She sat on my lap the entire time while I frosted it and it was definitely a treasured moment for me.

At her little friend party with all of the bouncing 2-3 year olds, we had milk in these mini mason jars.

The kids didn't need any more sugar in their drink!!

On the invitation we invited everyone to wear their favorite color.  Our cute sister Kate wore her cozy rainbow socks which were a hit!

Here is an example of one of her many hilarious expressions.  She was mesmerized by this light up wand.

Olive makes everyone smile and is such a blessing in our home.  She has a tender heart and has such a contagious excitement for so many little things.

She has some sweet dance moves, pretends to read books out loud in a jibberish fashion, and is really loud like her mama.

Right now one of our favorite things she does is her bedtime routine.  She MUST give us a regular kiss on the cheek, a butterfly kiss, an eskimo kiss, and then a huge bear hug.

Melts my heart every night!

Happy Birthday sweetheart!

best.weekend.ever

it snowed for three days straight.

2 snowmen were built, one with chalk for buttons named Frosty,

the other with eyelashes.

Hot chocolate was constantly brewing and we enjoyed sipping it with mini marshmallows.  

The power went out and we had a sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa Winegars where

we slept by the fire.

I knew I enjoyed the snow while skiing, but building a snowman with my little girls

may have just trumped the ski slopes!

Mr. Berkeley

I have been wondering why I can't find the time to blog.  I guess blogging was more of a necessity when we lived away because our family didn't get to see the girls all the time.  They weren't involved in all of the activities that we were doing.  Now that our families are living our life with us, I guess I just slack on posting about our lives.

I miss having more updates though more for the sake of our own memory book.

I love printing the blog out and having a book with all of our pictures and priceless times.

Hopefully after the holidays I will visit here more often!  This week is crazy with something every night of the week...including Olive's 3rd birthday!!

For now, meet David Berkeley.

We spent a very cozy evening with him and other friends a couple of weeks ago.

Our friends said that they were going to have an intimate house concert and that we should come.

We had no idea who this guy was, but they mentioned the buzz word of "Guster", who he opened for several years ago, and we were in for sure after that.  We also invited our cool sister and bro-in-law, Jamilyn & Nathan.

Right when he walked in the door I feel like we all had an instant connection to this laid back, chill guy.

As he set up all of his equipment, he was just talking to us about his day, why he flew to Utah...and yet he was hilarious!  He wasn't trying to be charming and funny, but he just couldn't help it.

He writes all of his own songs and they have really amazing stories behind them.  One of which is about his life abroad in Corsica.

We relaxed by the fire, chowed incredible food and listened to all of his wonderfulness.

Thank you David, come again soon!

Farewell Fall

Snow fell nonstop all last weekend. 

 We built two snowmen, one named Snowman, the other named Frosty. We lost power for half a day and had a cozy sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa Winegars.  Fall is officially over and we have been enjoying the 18" of snow.

Here are the last little bits of our long and beautiful fall.  

Gardner Village with the Winegar cousins.  This is the day that my cute sister surprised us with a tiny pumpkin and said they are "adding another pumpkin to their patch!"  Boy number 5 is on his way and that announcement brought me to tears.  We are thrilled for them!

Another day at Gardner Village with friends in 70 degree weather.  The girls spent most of their time enjoying the company of the horses.  I have always loved horseback riding and would absolutely love to have horses.  Dream on, I know.  It was fun to see the girls be so into them as well though!

We have continued on with our joyous play school that we were involved in back in Virginia.  Caroline was off early the day I hosted and she had all 7 little toddlers eyes on her.  She lead the music, told Halloween stories, and had them dance.  I may keep her home on the days I host and she doesn't have a short day :)  She made it so easy!

Farewell Fall, you were lovely!

*Happy Halloween!*

What a holiday we had!  It was a good old fashioned Halloween, with trick-or-treating throughout the neighborhood and all.  We have not just taken off from our home and gone to all the neighbors on Halloween in years!  It was so fun to see what spooks and silliness went on in our neighborhood.  We loved it!!

We had so much fun dressing up several times for different events, the celebrating just continued on and on.

We loved taking our flower and two little bees out on the town.

We started off the candy extravaganza at Adam's work, where they had trick-or-treating. 

They went all out and totally decked the office out!  One group created the Gnomeo and Juliet movie, have you seen it?  The girls and I caught it on Netflix once and Caroline loved it.  

Another area had all the details of Harry Potter.  Fake potions, candles hanging from the ceiling, and Dumbledore was even there!

You wouldn't mind getting stung by this little sweet bee now would you!?  

These two could.not.contain.their.excitiment!  I always say this, but nothing is better than enjoying your children on holidays.  They make everything brighter, richer, and more festive!

The girls scored about 10 pounds of candy each it seemed.  The little girls were booking it from house to house, we could seriously hardly keep up.  We were exhausted when we got home and slept in the next day, which made Caroline miss the bus.  We did not even care, we were too tired to rush, we just enjoyed our morning.

We love our friends in the area.  We are so blessed to have tons of little girls around that are so fun to have for playdates!  

And now for the endless sugar rush until after the New Year!

Enjoy!