10 Months

Ella:

• She has become a really good walker. She can turn around, side-step and catch her balance to stop herself from falling. She can walk across an entire room and is getting faster at it too. She rarely crawls anymore and doesn't really even sit anymore either. She prefers to stand when she's still and walk when mobile. 
• She is such a little bully. 
• She gets into everything is seems. Her favorite is the trash can. She loves to stand there and pull things out and eat them. Yes, it is majorly gross. She also pulls things off the dinning room table now too. That is new as of the last few days and it's throwing me for a loop. She even pulled the camera off the table today. Thank goodness it didn't land on her head!
• She screams, squeals and growls. All.the.time. It is so loud and constant. If she wants something, she screams. If she's unhappy, she screams. If she's excited, she screams. There are days and times when my ears hurt and Ella's voice is going hoarse because she screams so much!
• She is a professional scavenger. I don't care how small it is, she'll find something on the ground to eat. I don't care how upset she is, she'll stop on her way to me to put something in her mouth before coming to me to be comforted. Yes, I have literally pulled a bug, wads of hair and all sorts of fuzzy things out of her mouth. This and the screaming are totally wearing me out and pushing me to my limits.
• She is still quite the biter. She will totally catch you by surprise and bite you with no warning at all. Other times, she'll try and try and try until you move her far away. 
• She loves Isabelle and Isabelle loves her. They play pretty well together.
• She no longer likes or will willingly eat baby food. She likes table food much better, but she's struggling more with not gagging or choking than Emery. She seems to get tired of the same things rather quickly though.
• She rarely sleeps through the night anymore.
• She tries to sit up in her car seat and hates that she has to lay in it. Once she's strapped in though, she's usually okay and content to not complain about having to be in it.
• She's doing okay with the sippy cup.
• She gets so upset when Curt walks out the door, but she gets so excited when he comes home. She loves her daddy!!
• She can hold her bottle with just one hand now.
• She dances to music. It's so adorable. 
• She knows when I say her name in the "your in trouble" way to turn and crawl away as fast as she can go.
• She didn't cut any teeth this past month. 
• She loves bath time. Every single time she gets in, she loves it. 
• She's started to try to jump. Isabelle loves to get in each of their cribs when they wake up and she holds on to the railing and jumps. She's taught Ella to do it cause she totally does it now. It's so funny that my BABY was walking and successfully trying to jump while holding onto something at nine months! NINE MONTHS!

Emery:

• Emery went from being the alpha-baby at the beginning of the year, to definitely being the more calm, less high-maintenance one. 
• She hates her hair being pulled, but she's fine when she pulls her hair herself. If she has to stay in the high chair after she's done eating, she'll start pulling her hair and getting food all in it. 
• She never sleeps through the night. 
• She will still eat baby food and sometimes I think she actually prefers it. She does really well with not gagging or choking herself with table food.
• She has the funniest cry. She buzzes her tongue with every exhale in her cry. Unless she is really really upset...then she doesn't.
• Every time she sees a bottle, she starts crying because you aren't getting it to her mouth fast enough. 
• She spins circles when she is sitting on the floor.
• She may not be my walker, but she is my climber! She can climb an entire flight of stairs.
• She loves to grab onto her toes. 
• When sitting on the ground, sometimes she'll lift her right leg in the air. Usually she'll grab her toes but not always. I'm not sure what it's all about...
• She loves juice.
• She's doing really well with a sippy cup.
• She's perfectly content to play by herself. I am actually pretty sure that she prefers it that way. Isabelle's too rough and Ella's a bully. I don't blame her.
• While playing, or doing whatever, and while she's content, if she sees me watching her or sees me at all, she'll start whining and try to come get me. I have to stay still in a chair and not pay attention for her to remain content. 
• She's a scavenger too. I've pulled the same things out of her mouth. She has learned from Ella how to pull things out of the trash. Everything I said above is the same for Emery. However, I do think Ella is slightly worse than Emery.
• She's stood on her own without holding on to anything a couple of times now. She seems to have no interest in standing on her own, much less walking. 
• She has cut three teeth in the past month...all on top. She's missing her front top left tooth. Strange, I know. You can see it right under the surface, and have been able to for two weeks now, but it hasn't come in. 

Flashback Friday 4: Isabelle Turns 3!

Well, I've only been putting off this post for SEVEN months!! I figured, I better just bite the bullet and do it, or I never would. Before I know it, Isabelle's third birthday will be here for me to blog about.

So, here we go. Isabelle's birthday fell on Saturday, but Heather and Andrew came over on Friday night to give their presents to her early. Heather prides herself on giving Isabelle the perfect gifts. She does really well at it to. She's the one who gave Isabelle the battery operated bugs at Christmas that provided HOURS of continual play a day for several weeks. For Isabelle's birthday, Heather got her a set of fake hair stuff, a Belle Pez dispenser (we still have one of the three candies it came with) and a candy necklace. She loved it all! She still plays with the hair stuff and has actually been one of the two things she's played with this morning.

On Saturday morning, we dressed Isabelle in her special birthday outfit. We told her that we were going to a party for her and that she needed to put on her special "party dress" to go. To this day, this dress is her party dress. After getting dressed, she walked around the house saying, "Party, where are you?!?" It still makes me smile. 

We had her family birthday party at a local park. At the time, Isabelle was totally enamored by parks and we so excited to be there. It was soooo windy out though! We had a hard time getting our stuff not to blow away. Curt and my mom and I made chicken salad sandwiches and we also had chips. I made cupcakes and super cute cupcake wrappers and toppers. :) Just to put into perspective how windy it was, the cupcakes were blowing over! While I was trying to get everything set up, Isabelle played at the park with her cousin Abby and my cousins Emily and Kenzie. 

Since it was so windy outside, it was pretty hard to light the candles. Isabelle sure did like them and loved blowing them out. However, the wind probably blew them out more than she did. We didn't tell her that though. :)

After cake, Isabelle opened presents. She did so awesome! She loved all of her presents...or has since discovered them and loved them! 

She was super spoiled! I have to admit, when I threw her a party, I totally forgot anyone would bring her presents until people showed up with packages. So, thank you everyone!!

Magen gave her a Toy Story book. She was in a Toy Story phase and loved that book! She was content to stop there and not open any more presents!

Aimee, Greg, and their girls gave Isabelle a My Little Pony. Along with her hair stuff, it's all she's played with today.

Grandma and Grandpa Whitworth gave her some kitchen toys. She had just received the cupboard from her great-grandma Clark and was perfect.

Moni and Charles and their girls got her a mini My Little Pony and hot air balloon. She LOVES this! She's only going to love it more in a few weeks after we go to the hot air balloon festival too!

Seth, Lacey and their kids got a Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal.

Great Grandma and Grandpa Whitworth got her a mermaid doll. She didn't know what to think of it then, but she's since discovered mermaids, and loves this doll! I even did a scrapbook page about how much she loves it here.

Aunt Christy got her some Zoobies.

Theresa, Hondo and Andi got her a Leap Frog bear that plugs into the computer. 

Miranda got her a gift card to The Children's Place that we are going to use on lots of leggin's for the winter since she'll only wear dresses and skirts. 

Once again, thank you everyone!!!

A couple of days after her birthday, Grammie and Papa and Mommy and Daddy's present arrived for Isabelle: A Doll House!!

She had grown so attached to Heidi's old doll house and we we're moving out of my parent's house, so we decided to get Isabelle one. We bidded for it on eBay since these doll houses and pieces are no longer for sale. I'm so glad we got it! Now not only does Isabelle love it, the babies love it too. 

Gone to the Zoo

On Columbus Day, my sister had the day off because she works for a bank and gets all holidays off, so we decided to head out to the zoo. You would think that since we go to the zoo so often, I would no longer take my camera, but I still do. We decided to do something special and feed the fish. Isabelle loved it!

She also loves the little statues that they have randomly around the zoo. LOVES them!

Singing

For quite some time now, Isabelle has loved singing. I'm trying to remember when it became so prevalent in her life. Probably in early June or so. Often times we will hear her singing to her princesses, singing along with the Disney song CD my sister Heidi made her, or singing along with a movie, show or a sing-along songs DVD we have. Sometimes we will also hear her singing songs she's learned in Nursery, or nurseries as she calls it. We have been trying for a long time to get them on video, but every time she sees the camera, she stops singing. On Monday though, I got lucky and I got three songs on video. They aren't really the songs I would have chosen to get, as they aren't her strong ones. Hopefully I'll be able to get those soon.

The first one is of "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia. She doesn't really know any of the words since the only time she hears it is when she watches the movie, and she doesn't watch Anastasia very often. However, she picked up the tune really fast this summer, and it has been one of her favorites to sing ever since. She loves for Curt to sing it to her while they dance together. It's very sweet. :)

The second one is one of her newest ones: the theme song for Dora the Explorer. It's funny to listen to the Spanish parts of the song since she has no clue what the words are.

The last one is "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. She's learned this one from our Sing-along songs DVD. It too is a new one and she's just getting some of the words down. I really like this song too, so we sing it together and all three of my kids love it.

Trip to the Fire Station

Yesterday we went to the fire station with a group of friends. I have been really excited for this for about two weeks and have been telling Isabelle how we are going on a big fun adventure to the fire station. She was really excited. Unfortunately she didn't really love it. The beginning of the tour, we were in a classroom inside. They had one of the fire fighters put on their full gear for everyone. Isabelle was fine with this, until the  fire fighter put on his head gear. Then she got scared. Plus the babies weren't happy at this point either. It was kind of a zoo over in my corner of the class room. Which is why my friend Sarah had to send me a picture of the fire fighter in the full gear from the front, since I just saw him from the side. After this though, Isabelle was pretty clingy. She was pretty much on an emotional roller coaster the whole time. She'd be happy, then grouchy, then happy again. At first she liked getting in the fire truck at first, but then she didn't. She didn't like looking at the truck, then she did when they turned the lights on and she liked that. She absolutely refused to get in the driver's seat. I was totally surprised since she loves to get in any toy or real drivers seat. 

So the last picture is of a memorial that they have out front. One of their fire fighters drove to NYC to bring home a piece of one of the World Trade Centers. It's surprising how solemn it is to be in the presence of just one piece of steel. It is a wonderful and solemn reminder of how important our fire fighters are. Thank you Watauga Fire Department for letting us come and take a tour of your new station!

Celebrating Halloween Day 1: Decorating Cookies

Remember how I create scrapbook pages for designers? Well, one challenge I have with this is having enough pictures. Most of my designers come out with at least one holiday kit, so it is hard to scrapbook a holiday five times, like I needed to for the amount of Halloween kits I was given. In an attempt to not scrapbook last years Halloween for the ump-teenth time, we started our Halloween festivities a little early this year. For Family Home Evening last week we decorated sugar cookies in Halloween colors. It is so hard to get the color orange from food coloring! Probably because getting red is even harder... It was totally worth all the food coloring though, because Isabelle loved it! At first she was content to help Curt frost them by placing her hand on his. Can I just say that it's awesome that she thinks this is helping!? It's a lot easier than actually letting her do something, especially cutting things up in the kitchen with sharp knives... However, we got her to try to frost the cookies herself. She did manage to spread the frosting out a little bit. Her favorite part was the dipping of the cookies into the bowl of chocolate sprinkles! When she first saw Curt do it and pull the cookie out covered in sprinkles, she was so surprised and excited. It's one fun thing about her age, still so many cool things to discover...and she is so easily impressed. :)

Nine Month Well-child Check Up

A week ago we went to the doctor's office for Ella and Emery's check up. My mom went with us because taking two babies to a doctor's office to get shots is just about unbearable. Especially when you are there for over three hours. Yes, we were there for over.three.hours! I love my doctor. I love my nurse and my medical assistants or whatever you call them. However, I HATE the wait. When we first started going there, it wasn't so bad. It was good even. Now, well, we were there for over three hours. The office waiting room is pretty cool though. They have huge touch screen tablets for the kids to play on. Isabelle loved that and colored and matched shapes.

Unfortunately we were only in the waiting room for about 20-30 minutes or so. Then we were moved into the private rooms. We were there from about 2:00 to 3:40 with Emery pretty much crying the whole time. She wanted a bottle. She was very hungry, but I didn't want her to have one since she was about (or what I though was about) to have shots. I wanted to wait and give her the bottle after the shots to help comfort her and get her to sleep on the way home from the doctors. When we finally got to see the doctor at about 3:30 (my appointment was at 1:30 and I was five minutes early), we found out Ella has a double ear infection! Who knew? I think the doctor found it just as symptoms were presenting themselves... She had a very rough night last Thursday night but she's had only some minor symptoms since then. Other than that, she's been great. Especially for being sick. Emery is looking good. She always impresses them with how good she is compared to how not good she was at the beginning. Our nurse wrote down their stats for me and I lost Emery's!! How lame of me!

Here are their stats:

Ella:

20 pounds 3.5 ounces    (70th percentile)

28.5 inches                    (74th percentile)

Emery:

17 pounds ? ounces       (19th percentile)

shorter than Ella

We then waited for forever for their shots. This always takes forever, even at a different office we used to go to, it took forever. At this point, Curt actually was done with school and met us there to help with the kids while we waited for the shots. We decided to give them all flu shots and Isabelle the flu mist. She didn't even mind that they sprayed it up her nose at all. She was, however, completely terrified when the babies had their fingers pricked for blood and received their shots. It turned out to be a really good thing that Curt showed up because my mom had to take Isabelle out of the room. I would have ended up being alone with the babies during and after their shots anyways. Phew for that. I guess it ended up being a plus that we had to wait so long in the end, anyways. By the time I dropped off my mom at her house it was 4:23. When we left her house it was 12:55. It was a VERY long day! Thank you mom for going with me!!!

Discovering a Grasshopper

On Friday while talking to my mom on the phone, Isabelle was standing on our couch looking outside. On our screen door was a huge grasshopper. She kept telling my mom all about the bee outside and was even holding the phone out by the grasshopper and telling Grammie to, "See the bee, grammie!? See?!?" It was adorable. :) After she got off the phone with her I told her that it was a grasshopper and not a bee. She...well, she can't say grasshopper. I just had to take this video. I really tried to get it uploaded yesterday because I was so excited about it, but my video camera's battery ended up dying and I just couldn't get it together. It is totally worth the minute of watching to hear her talking and see her expressions! Enjoy!

In the Hot Tub

This past Saturday while we were over at Curt's parent's house, my sister-in-law Lindsay wanted to take her little girl for a swim in the hot tub. They cool down the hot tub, it actually feels like a warm bath instead of a hot tub. Isabelle loves getting in the hot tub and I jumped on board and said I would take all three of my girls too. My mother-in-law agreed to get in and help and all the boys stood on the outside so they could help too. All four of the kids loved it. Hannah was all smiles and loved floating; Isabelle loved jumping, pretending to swim and pretending to be a mermaid; Ella loved to splash and try to eat the hot tub (and Isabelle's cheek while getting a hug); and Emery loved relaxing and being held in the warm water. It was great to sit around and talk and laugh at the little kids enjoying themselves. Wow...we have a lot of girls around. It will be fun when they are growing up together!

500th Post

Here I am, publishing my 500th post! Well, I've published more, but this blog was once just my blog. I started it before I met Curt, before I had a family and before my life centered around them. So, when I transferred this blog from my original blog, some of those posts didn't make the cut and were deleted. On this blog though, currently this is my 500th post. It's kind of amazing to look back at my humble blogging beginnings. :) A lot has happened since 2007. I've been on many trips (maybe I should actually get around to blogging about Italy and Austria) including Las Vegas, Utah (a couple of times), Oklahoma and Europe (what can I say? Kids have slowed me down...). I've graduated college and barely even mentioned it on the blog. I have moved way too many times. I've written about sour cream and reading the Book of Mormon in 40 days. I've lost my uncle and my great grandma. I met, dated, got engaged and married Curt. Unfortunately, I didn't blog much about any of that either though... I had Isabelle, Ella and Emery. I've become addicted to digital scrapbooking and have made several creative teams. I've also become addicted to recording my girls' lives and our family's ups and downs and comings and goings. I love this blog. I am so glad I started it when I did and not any later. I have so many regrets about things that I wish I had recorded and I didn't. Now a lot of those memories are barely there. I hate that. I love looking back through it, and having the pictures and the words all in one place. Yes, I put in a lot of time and yes, sometimes I get burnt out, but this blog is really important to me. Both Curt and I are already grateful for it and I'm sure we will continue to treasure it more and more and be more and more grateful we have it. Especially as the girls grow up and our family expands even more (NO, not any time soon!). Hopefully our children will love it and treasure it too. How can they not though? Wouldn't we all love to have something like this from our very earliest years of our lives? Here's to the next 500 posts... May the not have any near death surgeries, multiple pregnancies, very many moves, cancer or trauma. Hopefully they are full of memories, college graduations, growth and milestones.

Look What Grammie Made Me

Recently I was looking for a picture of Isabelle in an outfit that my mom made her and I realized I haven't ever taken any pictures of it. On Sunday I made Isabelle wear the outfit so I could get pictures. My mom made Isabelle this skirt and shirt and I'm convinced it is just about the coolest and cutest Sunday outfit ever. I love all the ruffles and the colors! It is actually pretty heavy and I think my mom has had to take it in twice since finishing it since it is so heavy and starts to fall off of Isabelle. We are so lucky to have such an amazing seamstress in the family! Thank you Grammie for the super cute outfit!

Walking!

We have a brand new walker in the house! Yep, Ella, at only nine months is now walking. She's been taking steps since September 26th. Not even two weeks later, here we are with a walking baby. Curt would like to point out to the world that he is not surprised that it happened this fast and is constantly reminding me that he told me this would happen. I thought it was going to be closer to her 10 month mark. I have to say though, she is super cute to watch and it is fun to see her try and practice and be successful. While at my parent's house working on a big vinyl project, we put some tortilla piece on a chair for the girls to eat. Ella was standing at a different chair at the time. After seeing the tortilla on the other chair, she walked over and successfully made it to the food without even falling down. She is such a little rock star baby. Although, not as fast as her mother. I guess it serves me right for having a baby who is walking at nine months. I walked at eight.

Utah: Day Ten

This is it! The final Utah post. Since our day consisted of packing up the car and hitting the road, there isn't much to tell. Everyone else went to visit my great grandma that day just before leaving, but we were busy getting some bedding cleaned and our babies were napping, so we didn't go. Now I hate that I missed that opportunity to see her one more time. Oh how I regret that...

Our drive back to Texas was good. Curt was much more prepared since he knew what to expect. He actually drove most of the way and we drive straight through. We did drive through a mini mud slide. It was raining when we left and we head straight into the mountains on the drive. They've been hogging all the rain, so I wasn't surprised to see the mud slide, and it was kind of cool too, since it was small enough to drive through. Once again, Isabelle did awesome. She didn't complain until about an hour away from home. Or at least so I'm told. She rode with my parent's and Heather's family. Unfortunately, all of the pictures of Isabelle scream "bad hair day." :)

Yay...it's done. It feels good to have all of the Utah posts completed! :)

Utah: Day Nine

I am going to finish!!! Nine and ten are here and coming!

Before I get started though, I forgot something about day eight. Curt, my dad, Ella and Emery were in the newspaper! There was a photographer going around during the Independence Day parade and when she saw the girls, she wanted to take their picture. Unfortunately she wasn't patient at all and didn't even wait for my dad to put down the bottle, but still...they were in the newspaper. My super sweet aunt mailed me a newspaper. While we saw it while we were in Utah, we forgot to take it home with us. I was so happy that she randomly bought a copy for both my mom and me and mailed it to us! Thanks Anne!!

Okay...day nine in Utah.

During our Clark reunion every year, we always camp. We brought a tent and an air mattress all the way from Texas in preparation for this night. It actually went over really well. All of the girls did great. They didn't have any problem sleeping in a tent. Plus Curt got to check something off of his 26 at 26 list. It was fun and we were way relieved that we didn't wake any of my family up in the middle of the night because we were all tent neighbors!

1: Emery and me in the tent sleeping. 2: Emery waking up. Don't babies looks so goofy yet adorable when they are waking up? 3 and 4: Isabelle sleeping. 5: Ella our chunk waking up. 6: The babies playing on the air mattress while we are finding their clothes for the cool morning. 7: Sometimes Emery gets confused... :)

Some of my aunts and my grandma decided to go into Logan for some fabric shopping and I decided to go with them. I needed a break from my kids, honestly. I am really glad I did decide to go though. I found some super cute Christmas fabric that I bought to do a Christmas quilt that I will either hang on my wall or put on my table (probably wall...I do have three kids...). We also went to the store and bought sun screen because we had run out on day seven. Unfortunately as you'll tell by some upcoming pictures, I didn't get back with it soon enough for my babies. While I was gone, everyone just hung out and did outdoorsy things. :) 

8: My dad took Isabelle on a ride on the 4 wheeler. Isabelle didn't really like it. She wanted her sisters to do it, so... 9: Emery on the 4 wheeler. 10: Ella's turn on the 4 wheeler. 11: Emery and Ella were pooped out from their ride and decided to go back to the basics and camp in the tent. 12: Ahhh...Isa and Levi. This is very reminiscent of how she is now with the babies... Trying to use Levi as a pillow/wrestling/tackling him. 13: Curt and Andrew hanging out. 14: At least they both enjoy it right. Well, at least for this moment. 

Look! Pictures of the babies! See, we did take the babies with us to Utah! :) 

15: Happy Ella after her nap. 16: Levi is really starting to like the babies. 17: Especially Emery cause she has hair. He LOVES hair. 18: See? It's all about feeling her hair. hahaha... 19: More happy Ella. 20: Happy Emery, showing us that she's getting used to the grass and not so bothered by it anymore. Oh, and that she can get around by army crawling. 21: Yet some more happy Ella. I needed another picture for this collage. :)

22: My aunt Anne showing Isabelle an earth worm. 23: Curt showing her the earth worm. She tried to get enough courage to touch it but she wouldn't. Curt asked her, "Do you want to touch it?" and she would reply, "No Daddy." 24: Excited about the earth worm, even though she wouldn't touch it. 25: Finding the water hose. 26-28: Playing with cups, filling them up with water and trying to get Levi wet. 

Our family reunions are held on two of my uncle's sod farm. They on the mountain bench and on their property, they have a large drop off/steep hill. They have put several water slides down their hills and they rent out the area to people for reunions and parties. I was really excited to take Isabelle to the reunion and have her go down the water slides. At first she was not at all interested and rather mad when we even sat her on the bottom of the slide. However, I forced Curt to just take her up and make her go down. 

29: Before attempting to go down the slide. 30: Sitting on Curt's lap, about to take the first trip down the "small" kid slide, that's about a 20 foot drop. 31 and 32: Down they go. 33: She wasn't in love with the slide, but she didn't hate it either. 33: Spotting some of my cousins about to come down the slide. 34: Watching some of my cousins come down. 35: Applauding them for how courageous they are to not have to go down being held by their daddy. :)

36: Going down the huge slide. It's at least a 40 foot drop, if not 50. You get some major speed on that one. When my cousins make trains, it literally sounds like a train coming down. 37: Trying to stop after coming down the huge one. 38: Happy and asking to go on the big one again. 39: Back to the little one. 40-42: We tried to get Isabelle to start going by herself. Curt was getting tired of hiking up the hill while carrying Isabelle. All of my little cousins were doing it, so we were hoping she would start to follow suit. However, when we put her on and pushed her down, she had no control of herself and looked more like a crashing bobsled bouncing around than someone going down a slide. While she didn't hate it, and was even smiling at the end, she wouldn't do it again. Thus, Curt had to take her down another dozen or so times before she ever got tired of it. 

From there, we ate dinner, talked a little more and packed our stuff up. A storm rolled in really fast so we ran around trying to get everything cleaned up and then we ran off after really short hugs and goodbyes to some of my favorite family members. I was so sad that goodbyes were so quick, and not even had in a lot of cases. Darn Utah, hogging all the rain this summer! We were treated to a huge double rainbow that you could see the beginning all the way to the end as we drove into Morgan again. Ahhh...Utah. It was such a great trip. Stay tuned for the small re-cap of the last day tomorrow. :)

Flashback Friday 3: Silly Faces

I have to admit, as funny as this was and these pictures are, I have no clue why Isabelle was doing this. I don't remember... See, this is why I blog and why I hate missing things I should blog about! I really don't think there was any rhyme or reason to why she was doing this though. 

Conversations with Isabelle Part 3

"No tell me stop that!" Yes, she's already is and has been a smart alec...

Over at her Grandma Whitworth's house, Isabelle plays Barbies. She loves them. Maybe even as much as her princesses. Especially since the new-ness of Barbies hasn't worn off since she doesn't have them here. She is so funny to secretly listen to and watch play them. She sets up plates for them, she talks for them, she dances with them and she strokes their hair. My mom often refers to Isabelle as being like Andy in Toy Story because she loves her toys just like he does. During General Conference we would hear her in the other room "yelling" for the Barbies and saying, "I want Grandma! I want Grandma!" or "Mommy! Mommy!" over and over. She would also cry for them and say other things like, "I hold you. I hold you." I wish I would have written them down in the moment cause now I can't remember...

While trying to wrestle with Emery, I told Isabelle that Emery doesn't like to wrestle and that she should wrestle with Ella. Isabelle frankly replied, "I no like Ella." Ugh. Really!? We are already at that place?

Isabelle plays with her princess figurines all the time. Recently while playing I overheard "Tiana" saying, "No, I uh butterfly!" Cinderella then said, "No I uh butterfly!" When I looked over at her playing, I then saw Isabelle making the two of them fly around together.
These pictures aren't of her flying butterfly princesses, but of her just playing with them...but still pretty cute! :)

Recently while we all had some version of the stomach flu, Isabelle threw up in the middle of the night, in Curt's and my bed. It was lovely. She was wearing her party dress, her most favorite piece of clothing, which was very unfortunate since she asks to wear it every.single.day. Well, because she made a mess on her dress as well as our bed, she had to be told that she couldn't wear her party dress because she barfed on it. So, now she walks around every day telling just about everyone she meets that, "I barfed my party dress." Yes, it's gross, but it's so adorable when she says it so disappointedly and matter-of-factly. 

While watching some Disney sing-a-long songs together, "Apart of your world" came on. Our conversations went something like this...

Isabelle: "A crab! A crab, Momma!"

Me: "Yeah! Is that Sebastian?"

Isabelle: "No that a crab, Momma."

After singing and dancing and entertaining the babies for a good 20 minutes, she came to me and said, "I done singing." Twenty seconds later she was singing "Once Upon a Dream..."

What Would I Do?

Here's another post I've been meaning to write forever... Back in June we had a little bit of an eventful afternoon one day. In the middle of the day, our fire alarms went off. At first I was curious as whether or not it was actually my crock pot going off instead because I wasn't burning anything. However, the whole building's fire alarms were going off. The reason it took me a little bit is because the two sirens in our apartment are in each of the bed rooms, and the doors were shut to each room. Emery was asleep in her room and we always keep our master bedroom shut to keep the kids out of there. Ella and Isabelle were a little bit worried at the noise, but seemed okay with it. Neither one of them knew what it was. I was still not dressed for the day, so I went in my bedroom to get dressed. Of course Isabelle wasn't fully dressed either, but she had a shirt on. While I was getting dressed, I told her to get get her Sadie shoes on, and she actually did what I told her to do. I was amazed... After I was dressed and Isabelle had her shoes on, I went to check on Emery. Before this moment, I hadn't realized that there was a fire alarm in her room and since it wasn't that loud in the living room, I figured she was sleeping through it. I was totally upset to learn she was terrified and screaming at the noise. I felt so bad and was so worried about her poor ears. After I gathered her up and shut her door again, I decided I better go look out our front door to see if people were leaving their apartments. Isabelle was following me around this whole time a little worried, but when I opened the front door she completely freaked out. Our front door opens to a large hallway and there are sirens in it. The echoing sirens were so loud! It totally set her off and she wouldn't get out of my arms. By this time, a good ten minutes had already passed. I was starting to freak out a little bit because the sirens hadn't turned off, so I was starting to get really worried. I decided to call down to the office to see what was going on. When I talked to them, they knew the fire alarms were going off, but they didn't know why. I asked if we needed to get out and she told me that we didn't and that if that changed, there would be people sent door to door to tell people to get out. I told her that if that was the case, I would need someone to help me get all of my kids out. By this time, Isabelle was crying and terrified. I knew that leaving my apartment meant going into the deafening hallway...which is something I didn't want to do for myself, much less all three of my children. With each passing moment, I was realizing that if I had to get out, that I wouldn't be able to actually leave with all three of my children at once. Not only would I have to make at least two trips, but I would have to leave kids alone upstairs and on the street. This wasn't really comforting to me. After another five minutes or so, I went back outside and ran down stairs to see if anyone was out there to know if people were around to ask for help. There was a firetruck and lots of people outside, but everyone was at the other end of the building. I called back down to the office and they told me a water pipe had burst. I wanted to know when the alarms would be turned off... In the end they were on for about 20 minutes. I was so relieved when they finally went off. Unfortunately they went off again for about a minute and about five minutes after they were turned off. Isabelle did not like that! She immediately freaked out. It was quite a trying experience for her. In the end, I still don't know what I would do if there was anything I needed to evacuate for. I still worry and try to figure out a plan for what I would do and how I would get all three of  my girls down the stairs. Honestly, it's a stretch anymore to get Ella and Emery down the stairs at once. They are so heavy now in their car seats that I can barely lift them together. Isabelle walks herself down the stairs, but in that situation she never would and I would have to carry her. I need to get ear plugs for all four of us so that I don't have to worry about covering their ears and adding that into the mix too. I've been saying that for four months now! Ugh...I need to remember while I'm at the store! Anyways, we have to be here for six more months. After that, I swear I'm never living on the second or third floor again! It's so hard!

Day Out at Grammie's

At the beginning of September, Heather had a Friday off of work so we decided to get together and doe some new projects for the kids. We were so beyond tired of the triple digit heat and we wanted to come up some fun new stuff for the kids to do. We each were supposed to come up with an idea to do. I knew Isabelle would love anything, so I was really excited for the day. 

My mom and Heather were out running errands so they took pity on me and came over to help me get everyone in the car. It is not easy and a big reason why we don't leave very often. When my mom got here, she brought a present for Isabelle: a view master. It took a couple tries and some direction, but she finally figured out she had to open her eyes and look into it to see what the big deal was. She was so super excited to see Ariel in there! On the other hand, she didn't love the "mean octopus lady" so much. :)

Once we finally got to my mom's house we put together a simple project for Isabelle. I saw this idea on Pinterest (big surprise, right?). We put some golf tees in a Styrofoam block and gave Isabelle marbles to try and balance on top of them. Apparently I underestimate my two year old, because she had absolutely no problem doing this and it wasn't even a challenge. However, she still loved it and kept busy doing it over and over for a good 20-30 minutes. 

Our other project was playing and digging in some new moon sand that my mom and dad made the night before. Levi decided really quick that he didn't like it. At all. Isabelle liked it, but it took a little warming up to it. She never really got on board with digging for the dinosaurs that we buried for her to find. She did like playing with the dinosaurs one she had me dig them up. Her favorite thing to do was have me build a little mini sand castle and then she would have the dinosaur jump on it and destroy it. She loved that! Overall she really liked the moon sand, and in the month since this play date, she know loves it. 

It was such a fun day that even ended with Curt and I leaving all the kids for a little bit and playing volleyball with some friends. 

Another Project

So, Pinterest. I've mentioned it before. I still love it. When ever I need a project for Isabelle, I log on look at a couple of friends' who are awesome at pinning projects for their kids and I have something for Isabelle within minutes. Last week I printed out a little coloring book that has Book of Mormon prophets in it and scriptures about them. Curt read it to her and she colored them. She loves to color and she LOVES projects! Seriously, every time I ask her if she wants to do a project, she gets so excited! I love that she's so happy to learn or play or combine the two!

If you are interested in printing out a Book of Mormon prophet book, click here. 

Plan of Salvation FHE

After finding these printable Plan of Salvation pages on a friend's blog, I decided to have our next FHE be about the Plan of Salvation. It was very simple and to the point, and I highly doubt Isabelle retained much beyond the shapes, but it still went pretty well. The babies were totally enthralled with the papers and tried everything they could to get at them. In the end, I think FHE ended because they did get them. Overall though, it was a better FHE than most. Isabelle didn't fight it and no tantrums resulted from any part of it. 

Girls Can Wrestle Too

Ugh... Isabelle loves to wrestle Ella. At first she would wrestle both Ella and Emery. However, Emery hates it and Ella has grown to tolerate it. Actually, in some cases, Ella will fight back. She's learned to get on top of Isabelle. Just before I started video-ing these, Ella got on top of Isabelle to fight back. Isabelle really should be more careful since Ella's already bit her once and she will also pull Isabelle's hair and scratch her. In most cases, Isabelle gets hurt more than Ella.