Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm not on Pinterest, but enough good ideas get out that I'm surviving.  Celia loved making these for her friends in preschool.  She cut out all the pictures by herself.  She diligently wrote each of her friends' names and then signed her own name.  I added "You're Sweet.  Happy Valentine's Day!"  And then Celia posed and had me take a picture.  Today, after preschool, I have big plans for the girls involving heart-shaped pancakes for lunch and making and decorating cookies.  We'll see how Super Involved Mom handles the holiday!  Should be a blast!  Hope your Valentine's Day is AWESOME too!

2012: Year of Goals

In 2005, I was doing a study abroad in London when London was trying to win the Olympic bid for 2012.  So I spent 4.5 months surrounded by 2012s.  (Even when visiting Paris, which was also trying to win the bid, I was inundated with 2012s... even on the Eiffel Tower.)  In London, 2012 was sewn into the seats on the Underground, and painted on the sides of the Underground trains, tunnels, and city buses everywhere.  So, for the past 7 years, I've felt like 2012 is my year.  This is it!  This is the year I can accomplish anything!  

I started out with my pledge to clean the house.  While it is only partway into February, so I can't declare this resolution nearly complete, I've been doing really well.  I have a chore chart for myself that I take care of while the girls are playing in Celia's room right after they've woken up.  I spray down my bathroom sink and counter every morning when I'm done in there.  Tom has three chores a week as well that he has done excellent at completing.  And we both help straighten up the living room and clean the kitchen every night.  A few things have derailed me briefly.  It turns out having company stay means I break my cleaning routine along with all our other routines (sorry Sue!).  But we're back on track and going strong. (Don't read this and then come look at my house... we may have different definitions of "clean.")  Anyway, this has been fabulous.  Celia helps around the house a lot more.  We have several "clean up" times built in to our schedules before moving on to other activities, so things stay put away a lot better than they once did.  (Sabrina is still a dumper of all things... but we'll work on that.)  Maintaining this cleaning skill has helped me organize my days so much better as well.  I am much more able to compartmentalize my days into housework that needs doing, my quality time with my kids, and my job.  Because of this, the girls and I have had some solid quality time, I don't worry so much about what needs doing around the house, and I get way more work done in a day for my job.  I feel great.  

For February, I added the goal to try to be a more proactive, chill mom.  I'm a generally chill, roll-with-it, spontaneous person, so it surprised me that in my mothering style, I've gotten a bit uptight and get easily stressed out with the screaming, hair-pulling, dumped-out-sugar-in-the-kitchen moments.  So this month, I've decided that I'm just going to let it be.  I'm going to be a chill mom.  I can do this.  To really test myself, I've also decided to add some projects and baking with the children into the mix.  If you'll recall my previous attempt at cooking with kids, you'll know this was a big thing for me to tackle.  So, we've been doing a lot of cooking to get both myself and the girls used to it.  Just this past two weeks, we've made homemade cheez-its (delicious, but I didn't roll them out flat enough, and we didn't have a tiny cookie cutter, so the consistency was more like thin biscuits, but the flavor is perfect), buttermilk biscuits twice (a little too white-floury for my wheat flour desires, but the homemade cultured buttermilk I made really made these puff up... and the pancakes with the homemade buttermilk were super fluffy! And we made the biscuits into hearts and stars and gingerbread men), and today we made six-week bran muffins (Substituted half of the canola with coconut oil.  Loved the whole-wheatness of this recipe, but it has too much sugar... though it is very sweet and delicious).

The event usually turns out with Sabrina eating flour by the handfuls, and two cups of flour ending up becoming a sandbox-type thing on the counter, and another two cups on the floor.  But I'm learning to roll with it.  Slowly, but surely.  And the girls really have a good time.  

We also made a Winter Sun Catcher this week (it's still freezing in the pie pan... we'll hang it up tomorrow). So February is going well.  Learning to roll with it.  

I also started the year with goals to go on a monthly date and a monthly trip to the temple.  Since both failed in January, I decided to not run too fast and take things a month at a time.  We already have a date lined up for Tom's birthday next weekend (thanks Emily!), and March's goal is to start going to Ward temple nights.  Stay tuned.  I'm holding myself publicly accountable here.  Because 2012 is MY year and I'm going to finish it being an awesome, active, chill mother that has it all together.  (Ok. Maybe not ALL together...)

Sabrina: The Smart Non-Talker

Sabrina doesn't talk much.  In the past couple of weeks, she's just started saying "mama," "dada," and "hi" both correctly and consistently.  She also just learned what a lion says (more of a Grrr), a kitty (either "eeeow" or Muhrrr"), and a horse (basically a violent laugh).  

Despite her lack of words, she is still intelligent and held a full civil argument with me on Monday.  She's cutting her forth bottom tooth and has been hurting.  So Tom gave her a plastic teething ring and we told her she could put it in her mouth.  She did and walked away happily.  She then went and got a plastic ball (too tiny for mouth consumption), and approached me with both.  She held them up to me, tapped the two together indicating that they felt the same.  She then put the teething ring in her mouth and nodded.  Then she held the ball up to her mouth and waited for my response.  I still told her no... but almost wanted to reward the argument.  Well played.

Her current obsession is "Wheels on the Bus."  She makes us sing it five million times a day (always with the book we have... we can't ever sing it without the book).  When we said "The Mommies on the bus go..."  Sabrina did this:

and then exhaled through her mouth to make the "shhh" sound.  I thought it was funny.

(And notice Celia to the side always in her Rapunzel dress.  I was hoping it would last two Halloweens but it gets an awful lot of use...)

Celia: First Talk in Primary

Celia has now been in Primary a total of four weeks.  And she was asked to give a talk on her fourth week.  When I told her she was giving a talk in Primary, she had only seen three other kids do it, and she frankly had no idea what I was talking about.  We talked about the topic of the talk, I asked her some questions, and wrote the talk based on the things she said.  Here was her talk:

When I choose the right, I am blessed.  Choosing the right means making good choices like sharing and being nice to my sister.  When I make good choices, there are good consequences.  I am happy and I can have the Spirit with me to help me.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

We practiced several times at home and it looked like a "go."  For the real deal, Tom helped read it to her in her ear.  She repeated nicely and reverently into the microphone.  Halfway through, she closed her eyes and folded her arms, and kept repeating the talk.  She told us later it was a "prayer talk" because it ended with Jesus.  So there you go.  Moral of the story: have Sunbeams understand what a "talk in Primary" means before asking them to be involved.  But she did very well and was very cute and very proud when she was done.  What a big girl!

Celia: Funny Princess

Let me preface this post about Celia Sillies by saying that I had a moment today--after I had spent the day attempting to paint nails, do french braids, and tie bows on ballet shoes--where I thought to myself: "How did I get here in my life without any of the necessary skills?"  Then I thought how worthless all of my accomplishments (except the sewing of the Rapunzel dress, which has made a reappearance and gets worn daily again) are in the eyes of Celia because I cannot do french braids and paint nails.  I wasn't prepared for this!

Funny things Celia has said lately:
- When it's summer, we will go camping in a cabinet.
- Mommy!  Hurry!  Change Sabrina's bum!  She's got a diaper radish!
- My teeny tiny friends, Hockadoh and Galeeshee live in (don't remember the name she said here).  It's summer there and they have an outhouse potty.  They have no water to wash their hands.  But the germies go away.

Alaska: Dogsledding

This is Tom writing this time. My mom has been wanting to go dogsledding for a while but we didn't know how or where, but when she was here last week there was fortuitously a Groupon for dogsledding in Girdwood. So we went down and met our musher in a mountain meadow and had a nice ride. Along the way he would stop and give facts and tidbits about dogsledding history, techniques, and racing. While he was talking he stood up with the dogs, as in this photo, and at first we wondered why he spoke to us from so far away, but it soon became apparent as the dogs were so excited to run they would sometimes start on their own, and standing out in front of the sled like this gave the musher ample time to jump on and stop them again.

The night before we went about 2 feet or more of snow had fallen, making for some extraordinary backcountry scenery that would have been quite difficult to access on foot.

We were cutting new trails in the deep snow for much of the time, and the lead dogs had to leap like deer to keep moving forward.

On the way home we also stopped to take some pictures along Turnagain Arm.

And my mom was also pleased to be able to buy some moose antlers while she was here from someone on Craig's List.