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.

Junior Bucket Lists

These are some of the things the kids have mentioned wanting to do someday. Most are from things we've either done and they've asked if we can do it again or books we've read or things we've talked about.

Tessa:
- Go to the zoo inside Central Park and meet Tango.
- Go inside crown of the statue of liberty.
- Visit the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in southern France to see some of the oldest cave paintings.
- See the Eiffel Tower.- Go to Mini-City in Tijuana, Mexico again.
- Go to Dinosaur National Monument again.

Jenny:
- Go to San Diego and collect seashells.
- See a rainbow.
- See a bear in the wild.