Astoria Rosie girl

So it kind of slipped my mind that Stori won't always be in Nursery. It took me by complete surprise when the Primary president came up to me last week and said she was exited for Stori to come to Primary. I nodded and smiled at first, but then it clicked! She was talking about MY Stori going to PRIMARY in just 2 weeks!!
I'm sure she will do fine, but this girl loves herself some nursery time! Her nursery leaders told me this week that she is the only one who will clean up toys after everyone plays, that she will read books to others, sits reverent the whole lesson, and is their most enthusiastic singer haha. She definitely wasn't that good when I was a nursery teacher with her last year! But maybe me being in there was making her be a stinker sometimes?
One of the leaders gave her the biggest hug when we came and got her because she realized that it was Stori's last week in there. I'll admit, I am NOT ready for her to be in Primary! :( They took them in there last week as a transition and the Primary president said she was so reverent and did great during singing time. I sure hope it's a good transition and she doesn't miss the snacks and toys too much.

"there's a baby in my belly and her name is baby margaret and I'm going to have her on Christmas Day when she's gets big and healthy and strong. So she will need to eat her fruits and vegetables. " (Aunt kristens baby is still an ongoing conversation)

I don't think I have a picture of Stori where she isn't doing a silly face.

my beautiful Belle's. (homeless looking because it isn't even 8:30am yet and they are already "dressed" for the day)

this is a new friend of Stori's. Her name is Lidia and she is only 3 months older than Stori, but about 3 feet taller :) 

Daddy's make the best horsey's! Especially for Princess Ariels. 

lover of legos. 

Man alive I have some dang cute kiddos that I love so dang much.

LSM: DONE!

As of today, Dan is finally done with finals! He has officially finished his first semester of Law School, and now we just wait until February to see how he did. The classes are scored so that only one person can get an A, 5 people get B's, 20 get C's etc. So even though he feels like he did great, he will probably get C's because of how they grade. I personally think he will be the one person that get's the A! :)

Stori drew him these pictures, "so that daddy can be happy while he is working at Law School and missing us." Dan put them up in his carrel. (A carrel is his study desk that he is assigned to in the Law School Library).

picture on the left is a happy sun and happy flowers (I drew the lines for the flowers, but she did some of the 'bumpy bumpies' to make the flowers). picture on the right is of Dan and myself wearing crowns and holding hands. :)

relaxing on the couch. Yes, relaxing!!! 

We head to Idaho in the morning and we are excited for 2 solid weeks of no law school business.
I'm also so excited to see the magic of Christmas through my kids eyes.
Stori is aware that we are celebrating "baby Jesus' birthday," and is also aware that he is watching over her. She is excited to see if she has been a good girl so that Santa will bring her some toys. I would say both of my girls have definitely been on the nice list this year and won't be disappointed on Christmas morning. LOVE this time of year and get wait to be home for the holidays! There better be snow!!

countdown continues: 2 months until nursery

{16 mo} 

the last 3 weeks at church have been surprisingly great! both kids are angels during sacrament meeting, and then we usually hit the crazy button for Sylvie. But nowadays, she will just lay on her daddy's lap so calm. 2 weeks ago she actually fell asleep on him for a whole hour. Last week he had to do ward clerk meetings during 3rd hour and he said she laid on the ground the whole time. It might not be so bad that church is right during nap time! :) the little sweetie.
-She is becoming such a big girl. She totally pooped twice on the potty yesterday! haha, well she was in the bath both times and I noticed her stand up and walk to the corner (ha) and so I asked her if she needed to go and she said yes. So I sat her on the potty and she went. (and yes, I bathed them twice yesterday. sometimes we get bored and need some swimming time).
-first thing she says after waking up in the morning is SHOES! she LOVES shoes! all styles, but especially some red rose ones that used to be Stori's. It's so cute.
-I had the kids stack cheerios on spaghetti noodles again, and each time Sylvie would get one on, she would shout, "IDIDIT!" adorable.
-She is great at feeding herself.
-She loves playing with Stori: tea parties, dress up, hide under the blanket, and their very favorite, 'chase.' all you do is start at one side of the hallway and chase the other person to my bedroom. Then turn around and do it all again…for hours.
-She loves the Christmas tree and is so gentle with the ornaments.
-She LOVES books. I will walk into Stori's room and find her in there with the lights off just reading book after book.
-She has 7 teeth.
-doesn't like to hold hands while walking, and will scream when we pick her up.
-thinks animals are so "cuuuuute." if she sees animals on movies, at the park, in a book (or anything cuddly) she puts her hands up under her chin and cuddles her arms while saying cute. Oh it's adorable. And it's even cuter when she finds a stuffed animal and will love on it until she tips over.
-she loves the Frozen soundtrack. It is magical actually. If she is crying in the car, we just put on "frozen heart," and she will immediately start singing, giggling, and dancing to it. It's so magical, in fact, that if she is crying at home and I start to sing that song, she will stop crying also. just that song.
-her favorite movie is Cinderella, and she has that one pretty much memorized. (it's the only show on my phone and we use it on long car rides, or if I want to go shopping for a long period of time).
-loves to color, stack rings, put together the animal puzzle, likes to play with the punzel tower, loves to pretend grocery shop with Stori, or go to pretend Pirate Island with Stori.
-she hates cold milk and won't drink it even in a cup or a sipper. BUT she will down 5 ounces of it if it's warm and in her bottle. Such a stinker that way.
-still taking 2 (2hr) naps and sleeping 11-12 hrs at night.
-and only 2 MONTHS until nursery. I'm sad her and Stori won't be in there together because I know they would both love that!

eating banana pancakes with cool whip topping. It got a little messy so we put her hair in a pony and I was shocked at how high it was! haha.

loves Sam's Club. Don't worry, that is just water that she is hugging.

such a good little cuddle bug

Little Mermaid dress up

one of the very rare moments of her sleeping in her carseat.

they can go through 5 wardrobe changes in just one day. This one is at about 8am. and those are the shoes she wakes up asking for haha!

and ^ these are Stori's boots that she put on before eating breakfast. They are that important to her haha

our weird warm winter weather

This is by far our weirdest December ever. Sometimes when we go to the park it is 60*!!! that is just not right. I mean, it's nice to be able to go to the park each day, but it makes it really tricky listening to Christmas music. I know that snow will eventually come, so I would prefer it to come before Christmas rather than in January or February. Until it snows, I guess we'll just take advantage of the sunshine.

Park day and picnic with veggie straws and fruit leather. When with the Foresters, we have the ages of

 1, 2, 3, & 4. Pretty neat. All these kids are great little buddies.

 Park day with just us Radfords...

Park day with the Allreds. This park trip was early afternoon, so it wasn't quite as warm as usual. But Stori still refuses a jacket. Not sure if it cramps her style, or if she just doesn't get cold.

Dan took this picture on his way to Law School in the morning. The sunrise is always beautiful on Mt. Timpanogos, but it's even more beautiful with snow on it!

We took a trip to Temple Square to look at the lights. Unfortunately, we didn't do our research and went on the night of a Jazz Game and the MoTab Christmas concert. It took us 3 hrs to get to SLC and when we got there, it took us about an hour to park. It was so crowded that this is the only picture we stopped to take. I wish we could have got a big group picture---we went with the Foresters, and Jon and Jocelyn. And after this picture, everyone took off their coats because it was yet again, 60 blasted degrees! I'm really missing my coats! 

sometimes we go to ROSS and sometimes Sylvie has hair that goes to her shoulders.

 While we wait for daddy to come home, we like to put pandora on while we do art projects. It's grand.

Let us all hope that Idaho has some snow for Christmas, or we will have a very very sad 3 year old.

Ward Christmas party

For the most part, it was just an ordinary ward dinner.
No Santa or Nativity. No program.

But then… they opened up the back partition and they revealed the most perfect 'kid station,' that they set up so that all the adults could just talk and hang out while the kids were entertained. The primary presidency had all these fun stations for the kids; button ornament making, paper plate angels, coloring station, pin the nose on rudolf, shake the bells out of a tissue box, wrapping bow relay races, and puppet making.

 Stori was a little hesitant to go in without me at first, but Sylvie marched right in there, sat at the coloring station, and never looked back. After about 30 minutes she got up and went to another station, where she stayed most of the night.

Our kids were the last ones to leave, and both still cried when we had to take them home. (at 9:30!!!! we got there at 6)
It sure was a lot of fun!

LSM: 2 perfect Saturdays ruined.

Back in the day, Dan would finish his studying friday night at 5 and be done until Monday. Like I have written before, those days have changed and he usually ends up studying all day Saturday also. Making  Saturday just seem like another day of the week.
Well, this month we got lucky and Dan was going to be done studying around noon and we would have the entire day to play together. We planned swimming, eating, and Christmas shopping. Those plans went right out the window at around 11am the first Saturday.
The kids and I were playing "pirate island,"and Stori hid her treasure in my bedroom. To make sure no one found it, she locked the door before she walked out. The funny thing about our apartment is: all the doors have locks, the doors lock from the inside, and….wait for it…the doors don't come with a key to open them. So we contacted our landlord. "Ya, we don't have a key either. We meant to change that before you moved in…" Awesome. So we contacted a locksmith in SLC (40 minutes away) and he said it would be $19 just to come take a look. So after he took a look, he explained that it would be an addition $125 to screw through the doorknob. Well dan apologized for making him drive all the way here, gave him the $19 and told him we would figure something out. The nice young man took pity on us and gave dan the bit for his drill that would be strong enough to go through it, and even told us how to do it before he left. So about 6pm we finally got in our room, but the kids were too tired to go party. Saturday #1=wasted.

Saturday #2…
Same study situation, done at noon. More partying planned. different bump in the road.
This time I noticed around 9am that our fridge wasn't working. Freezer wasn't working either. All that Tillamook ice cream we just bought was ruined. :( Along with everything else in there. Dan contacted the landlord again and we had to wait for him to come measure our fridge so he could go get one. Turns out our fridge is a size that has to be pre ordered. {Of course} He told us it wouldn't be in until Wednesday. After going through our fridge and trying to decide if we could make things work by just using a cooler, we discovered it wasn't going to work. $100 later and we are now the proud owners of a mini fridge. It sits on our counter and decides to freeze our food solid instead of just keeping it cold. Awesome.
It is such a pain, and it totally ruined our day (and week)
Saturday #2=wasted.

The funny part? Our landlord thought we were calling to tell him our dishwasher died because it is so old.
I'm sure it will decide to die this saturday.

haha and here is a cute picture of my LSM (law school man). I feel bad all these stressful things are going on at the most stressful part of the semester. Lets hope for a stress-free next 2 weeks.

California Thanksgiving ----ish not all photos included

first and last day of our trip ^^^

This was Thanksgiving day and Thanksgiving night. it was about 90* that day!

Kristen was a wonderful host and even got Stori her very own snowman apron

And they crafted some Oreo turkeys. You better believe she licked every one just to confirm again that she doesn't like them.

We had plans go to Disneyland on Thanksgiving, but decided to save $600 and just go to the Irvine Mall on Friday instead. haha. the kids seriously loved this place. We were there from about 1:30-8:30: we shopped, took pictures by the beautiful ferris wheel (almost got brave enough to ride it), watched people ice skate,  rode the carousel a few times,  played in a fountain and on the toys, paid a visit to Santa, and ate Chipotle. we ordered the kids each 2 sides of tomatoes and guacamole----and they downed those. My kids are so weird. Chocolate milk? no thank you, pass the tomatoes! What? 

We let Stori ride it one last time right before we left, but I guess we should have paid for Sylvie to ride also. 

Our California Santa. He was in board shorts and a hawaiin shirt. The kids actually really liked him, and he even called them by their names. :) Unfortunately it was called "Selfies with Santa," and my arms weren't long enough to get a good picture.

looking down at Laguna beach

Kristen and Rick were nice enough to watch our kids for us on our last night there and we had so much fun. The town of San Clemente was doing their "Welcome Christmas" festivities. All of the downtown area was blocked off and the streets were filled with booths, christmas choirs, Frozen characters, Santa, Outdoor movie, and the town christmas tree. It was such a fun date. (and our first date in…oh…uh I can't remember our last date) We ended it with a local Mexican restaurant, La Fiesta.

This was our last day in California, and we roasted hot dogs and s'mores on the beach. Stori hates hates hates the ocean we found out. Hates the sand too, but loves the aspect of it. She was very content just sitting by the fire all night. I love her crossed legs in 2 of these pictures. Sylvie found herself a seat underneath a picnic table, and stayed there the whole night haha… cute little bug. (that is a picture from the real camera dangit).

a little slide on the beach helped entertain the kids while we were getting the fire going.

Target shenanigans. She walked around the whole store wearing these, and cried when I took them off.
 We hit up 3 different Targets while on vacation.

entertaining the kids with the extra long drive home.

Only iPhone pictures for now. I don't think I can make my brain upload the camera pictures yet, because they are on dan's hard drive. Nor can I write a worthy post of all the fun we had in California! Stori loved her aunt Kristen and keeps pretending to be pregnant with a baby, that is due on Christmas, just like her. :)
She also hasn't stopped talking about California. So I'm definitely glad we made the trip there (along with every other Utahn---took us an EXTRA 4 hours to get home because of the solid traffic). But despite the long drive, we still can't wait to go back and see the new little baby girl!