A Princess and an Owl

This year for Halloween, Tessa wanted to be a princess. Her Grandma Wilcox was already planning on making her a princess costume from a skirt she had so it worked out great! Princess dresses are way beyond my sewing expertise so thank you grandma!

Here is a picture of Tessa in her costume with Grandma Wilcox after trying it on for size. Extra credit to Grandma for the hat!!

It was unfortunately pretty cold on Halloween so Tessa's costume was partly covered by her winter coat, but I suppose that's just how it goes most Halloweens in Utah. 

Jenny kept flip flopping on what she wanted to be. First she wanted to be a pirate. Then she changed her mind to a mummy. Then she wanted to be a nose. When I asked her how she was planning to walk around in a nose costume, she said I would carry her the whole time. When vetoed mom holding her the whole time, she changed her mind to be a witch. Then she finally decided she wanted to be a Halloween Owl. After confirming a few days in a row she still wanted to be that, I told her she was locked in and began working on her costume. I cut out felt feathers and sewed them to a piece of fabric cut into a cape shape, sewed some feathers on some sweats, and painted her face. This was the result and while a few people seeing her guessed that she was a flower most everyone said bird or owl - success!

I had a lot of fun making her costume. It got me back into sewing and wanting to do it more. Maybe I'll even finish the baby blanket quilts I started for the girls before they were born someday -LOL. The girls had a lot of fun with trick-or-treating. We tried to keep up some traditions and do some fun Fall activities before Halloween as well. 

First, we had to pick out our pumpkins at our usual place - Bob's Pumpkin Patch.

Or just roll on them - LOL.

Silly Tessa! Then we had to climb the hay bales and go down the slides and feed the animals.

We had to paint our pumpkins.

Then a new thing - we went to the Witch Festival and Six Hags. The Witch Festival had a bunch of these cute decorations and displays of witches.

Then at the Six Hags, there were a bunch of fun little activities. Tessa's favorite was the rope swing.

Jenny's favorite was the corn pit. She had me bury her probably about 5 times. And she even buried me.

Happy Halloween!

Feeling on Top of the World

David and I bagged our first summit. We climbed to the top of Mount Timp! It was awesome! The hike took all day; we hiked from 8am to 6pm - 10 hours! It was tough and we were in quite a bit of pain by the end - mostly our toes from the downhill, but it was totally worth it. It was incredible standing at the top of the summit looking down at the tops of the nearby summits along the range. It was a super surreal feeling just being that high. I mean how often do you look down at the tops of clouds! It was incredible. Looking back at the pictures, it looks almost photoshopped to me since it is just so unusual to be on the top of the world like that. I promise they're not photoshopped though.

 

Tessa Turned 5

David and I have a 5 year old! I feel like now I have a full blown kid. Tessa seems to like being 5; she seems to regularly mention things that she can do now that she is 5 at least. We let her have a friend birthday party for the first time and she loved that. She picked a Princess theme. We did Princess invitations. 

And then Princess themed snacks.

And Princess themed activities like crown decorating and bracelet making.

Then she wanted a Princess Ariel cake.

Then for her party with her family she picked a Princess cake. It was my first time making a figure out of fondant frosting and it was a lot of fun.

At 5, Tessa's favorite things are playing with friends and cousins. She likes her growing independence. She'll tell me sometimes at the park, "I'm going to play with my friends on the playground and you sit on the bench and watch, but don't come up on the playground with us." Our 5 year old is growing up for sure. We sure love her and are glad to have her.

Kids Say the Darndest Things VIII

(Loud thunk sound)
Jenny: Ow!!!
Mom: You okay?
Jenny: I was watching where I was going and I just hit my hand on the wall.
Mom: Oh sorry honey, I used to do that kind of thing when I was a kid and I still now even. Sorry, you probably got that from me.
Jenny: No! I got it from the wall!

Happy Birthday Jenny!

Jenny turned 3 this week! I asked Jenny what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday and she strongly responded that she wanted an ice cream cake. I let her pick each component and she picked out chocolate cake, rainbow sherbet ice cream, funfetti frosting with funfetti sprinkles and decorated with jelly beans and unicorns. It actually wasn't as inedible as I expected - not great but it kind of almost worked.

 Jenny was so excited to open her presents. We did it the first thing in the morning, in bed even.

Then she spent most of the day playing with her new toys. She really loved playing with her new legos and makeup especially.

When I asked Jenny what she wanted to do for her birthday, she said she wanted to make "bartlebiscuits." She got the idea from this show the girls like called True. In the show a character - a cat named Bartleby makes these sugar cookies cut out and decorated to look like his face. He gives the cookies to the namesake character - True - on her birthday.

Life Goals at 4

So since Tessa was probably 2 or so when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grows up she has consistently responded with "Princess" and occasionally "Queen." It's also been what she responded with on a handful of worksheets she has done for preschool and bring your child to work day type things.

We never told her that that wasn't a real profession or anything. We would just nod and say "thats's great" or "sounds good". Then in the last 6 months or so, she has started responding with real jobs. The first one she mentioned was wanting to be the worker at McDonald's who gives out the happy meal toys. That was her answer for a few months. Then a few weeks ago after starting swimming lessons, she started saying that she would like to become a swim instructor. Then most recently, she has said she wants to be a gymnast or a gymnastics coach when she grows up. It's fun to watch her come to understand what jobs are think about what kind of job she would enjoy.

Dinosaur National Monument

We had such a great trip to Dinosaur National Monument a few weekends ago. It was about a 3 hour drive away so not too bad. We had never been before and it was a super family friendly destination. The highlight might have been the girls getting to become Junior Park Rangers. They loved doing the little dinosaur educational pamphlets, recited the pledges with the help of the Park Ranger and were totally tickled to get their badges.

The National Monument was really neat. It has this exhibition hall which was this big building encasing this section of rock that had dinosaur bones exposed poking out of the rock. It was so cool. There were so many bones! And archeologist didn't even have to dig them out to put them on display. Tetonic plate movement lifted them to the surface and then erosion exposed them. It was so cool to see this two story tall wall of rock just littered with bones.

We went on a few hikes at Dinosaur National Monument. We went did Fossil Discovery Trail which was ranger led, which was cool because he pointed out fossils along the hike and talked to us about the plants, history, and geology. Then we also did the hike at Josie's cabin. That was a really neat hike. The hike started at her home she built herself in 1913 and lived in mostly alone for 50 years. The hike meanders along on her land and you can see the fences she built, the fruit and shade trees she planted, her chicken coop she built, and the canyon where she would let her cattle roam. She lived there all the way until the 1960's until she was 90 years old. It was really neat to feel like you were exploring this farm and getting to know this incredibly strong and independent woman and imagine what it would be like to live that Waldenesque life.

Another really awesome hike we went on was actually not inside Dinosaur National Monument but a little outside the Monument on an independently owned ranch. The hike is called McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs and it was really amazing. You hike uphill a little way until you come up on this massive shear wall and the wall was just covered with so many petroglyphs. It was so cool! You hike around the shear wall and just keep your eyes peeled and see petroglyph after petroglyph as you hike along the wall.

Then we also went to the Dinosaur museum in Vernal which was fun as well as two parks with playgrounds for the kids to play at as well as the hotel pool. So we mixed stuff David and I wanted to see with kid stuff and it made for a really nice Memorial Day weekend.

Record for Latest Ever Christmas Post

So ... Christmas in June. We had a really nice Christmas this past Christmas ... cough ... 6 months ago ... cough. We went to Mexico over Christmas so we celebrated a bit before going and then when we got back.

Per our tradition, we set up our tree the day after Thanksgiving.

Then also per our usual tradition, we did our annual gingerbread house making. It's a fun tradition that we all enjoy (especially the sneaking candy part of it).

This year we even did a little competition for best gingerbread house. Tessa was the judge and declared David the winner. He accidentally caved in the roof of his within the first 30 seconds of decorating but managed to turn it around making the house into a barn/farm. And here is a close up of the winning gingerbread house complete with cotton fields made from marshmallows and cornfields of of course candy corn, animals out of animal cookies, animal poop out of jelly beans, and a lasso out of a peach ring.

And a photo with the winner:

And Tessa hard at work on her house:

 And Jenny working on hers:

Then this year, we made some of our own Christmas tree decorations from cinnamon, nutmeg, and applesauce combined into a dough and then cut into Chrismassy shapes and dried. They smell lovely and were a lot of fun to make.

Then we got our pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus. Jenny is still scared of them, but Tessa actually sat with them on her own this year.

 

The girls went all out with setting out the milk and cookies for Santa this year.

We made chocolate chip cookies so he had the traditional cookies and milk. Then the girls wanted to give the somewhat commonly left carrots for the reindeer. Less commonly left but done at our house, the girls wanted to leave Santa apple slices and water to give him something healthy since they thought he would like something healthy since he probably would have an upset stomach from having eaten too many cookies from everyone. 

And then Christmas itself was fun. Christmas with little kids is just a massive play day. They open one present and then want to play with it. So present opening lasts pretty much all day. It's really fun though. I enjoy it.