Fashion Trends

For the past three days, Rachel has chosen to wear dresses and be a "beautiful princess." Since she has so many dresses, seriously about a dozen, I allowed her to and she didn't even get them dirty after wearing them all day. Elizabeth has gone an alternate route in picking outfits the past few days. She has deliberately chosen a shirt and pants that don't match, even though they have coordinating pieces. Here are my little trend setters each in their different way.


And who do you think follows after their mother?

Fun in the Sun

Is it really winter? The past few days have felt more like spring but of course we'll take it. Today would be absolutely beautiful except for the wind and the chill it brings. Did you know Denver can get really windy?

Monday we went to the park and the Elizabeth actually rode her bike, hallelujah! I don't have any pictures of that but here are some other ones.


Yesterday we went to the zoo since it was a free day. I think they make more money on a free day than regular days with refreshment sales and all those little extra things--wagon rentals, train/carousel rides, etc.--so it's not a bad business model I say. I didn't spend a cent there but I was the exception (and I'm too cheap to pay $2 for one train ride ticket). We had to park a ways away but I got a good workout pushing Elizabeth and Rachel in my double jogging stroller and carrying Evelyn in the baby carrier. We saw lots of animals and had fun at the nearby park playground afterward.

Since Eric took the kids to the zoo last time and only took pictures of the animals, I made sure I took pictures of our little animals, I mean lovely girls.

Rachel still talks about being a giraffe for Halloween so I think they were her favorite animals at the zoo. If I heard right, I got a picture of the baby giraffe who is only one week old.

Fire Station & More

This past Friday our ward had a play date at the fire station. If you ask Elizabeth about it she'll chew your ear out about the magic tricks the fireman did with the kids at the end of the tour. They did more than magic tricks so here are some pictures, it seems like most of mine came out fuzzy.

So I saw Elizabeth and Callahan doing a lot of this. Good thing both their moms were watching carefully.
Since babies grow up so quickly, I thought I'd post a picture and video of our little cutey Evelyn.

Baby Talk: Evelyn just found her voice and here's a sampling of it.

Valentines Day Part 2

To prove I'm not completely heartless (pun intended).

I'm a horrible mom and allowed Rachel and Elizabeth to eat all of their Valentines candy right after they got home from there parties. Talk about sugar high!

My beef about Valentines Day

Some of you may know that I really don't like Valentines Day. Sure I'll dress my girls in hearts and pink (I even bought matching Valentine socks), make valentines cards for their class, and even put a cute Valentines background on my blog but I still don't like Valentines Day for couples. My husband is off the hook as far as I'm concerned about getting me flowers, chocolates, taking me out for a romantic dinner, etc. This isn't even one of those woman tricks where I say "no you don't have to do all that romantic mushy stuff" but secretly I want him to do it. I really mean it--no celebrating Valentines for Eric and me.

So where did this dislike of Valentines Day come from? Maybe it was because of all those girls in high school toting around huge teddy bears and balloons expressing to the world "my boyfriend loves me so much." Gag me, the relationship probably didn't even last the month. Probably the biggest part of my dislike is the whole commercialization of the "holiday." Sure retailers make bank on Christmas and Santa Claus but that holiday is actually based on something real called the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ (even though his birthday is really in the Spring). I think Valentines Day was created by Hallmark and 1-800-FLOWERS to make more money on this forced love thing. And what is Sweetest Day all about? I really don't think that a $100 bouquet of flowers that will die in two days or waiting in line for two hours for a nice dinner is all that it's cracked up to be.

If you ask me, if a man really wants to say "I love you" to his wife he should wash the dishes, mop the floor, or watch the kids so the woman can have a little break. All this is FREE, requires no extra planning, and can be done any day of the year, not just February 14th. Okay so I'm an act of service gal on the 5 Love Language scale so maybe it's not for all women. And no, Eric, this isn't a subliminal message that I want you to do these things because you already do.

End of rant and have a lovely Valentines Day.

A runt, a ballerina, and an artist

No I'm not doing a joke where the three go into a bar, they're just labels for my daughters today. We'll start youngest to oldest.

Evelyn had her 4 month appointment today and she's a runt (I know it's bad to label), at least compared to her sisters at this age. She's 12 lbs 12 oz. (25%), 23 1/4 in. (12%), head 39 cm (5%). Elizabeth and Rachel were at least 75th percentile at this time but it's nice to think one of my daughters might be my size or shorter. She's still a major cutey though.

Rachel has requested her leotard every day this week and leaves it on all day, even though I go through all the hard work of getting her dressed in the morning. Maybe she's hinting that she wants to take either ballet or gymnastics lessons.

Elizabeth had an art class yesterday where they do step-by-step art and here's the result.
She also pulled out the play-doh today and made this. Can you tell it's a cow in a pasture?

Some Weekly Happenings

This week we hung out a bunch at home to help sick kids recover. Evelyn even got the cold and lost her voice so it was sad to hear her try to coo with no voice. Everyone is healthy now, or at least I hope so.

Rachel had her last week of swim lessons and since the one other girl in her class was out of town, she basically had private lessons. She loved the water and especially loved doing to monkey crawl on the wall. We have to work on her floats but I'm sure we'll take swim lessons again soon.

Happy to be in swim lessons.

Watching Big Sister at swim lessons

Yesterday the weather was too beautiful to stay inside so I suggested we head down to Castlewood Canyon State park for a little walk. I would say hike but with the girls we never get very far. I forgot that even though it was high 50s outside, if the sun doesn't hit the snow it will still be around. The part of the canyon that we walked hadn't seen the sun so it was muddy and snowy but still fun. It was gorgeous and can I just say I love having warm days in the winter to get outside and enjoy beautiful Colorado.

The frozen waterfall

The CanyonThe serenity of nature in the winterOur little "hikers"
Even Evelyn got in on the fun (I got to carry her)

I just had to mention that Eric and I have found our ideal vacation. Any of the trips here that include biking, hiking, and kayaking look like so much fun, especially the tropical ocean ones.