So I finally committed to potty training Sylvie, and she took to it the first day. By day 3 she was going potty without even telling me she needed to go!! She has had several dry nights, but a random wet pull-up when she wakes up. Overall she's been a champ!
And in even bigger news, Sylvie mastered chewing gum! Haha, she has struggled with it for so long and is so obsessed with it. She would let it sit on the roof of her mouth until it pretty much disintegrated and stick to her teeth! It was pretty gross! :)
But now she will chew it until she's done and then give it to me.
Sylvie June will be 2 1/2 on Valentine's Day. She is a sweet little munchkin and we love her Sylvie-isms that we will probably say forever:
"HewWwooooo." (A very exaggerated Hello)
"L'yatoo." (Her response when we tell her we love her. It's the most rushed 'I love you' ever and it's hilarious).
"here bo."
"You're welc." "I dotchu" (I've got you... when she thinks she's saving us from something. takes it very seriously).
She is full of so many fun quotes, but those are the ones that Dan and I text each other daily.
She also says some pretty sweet prayers. sometimes she starts singing I am a Child of God, but we just roll with it.
I also love when she makes a scary ghost or witch sound while trying to scare us. Once we get really scared she will grab our faces and say, "I'm just trickin," then laugh.
She is majorly into dancing and can't wait until she's 3 and can take from Miss Cami! any time she hears music she immediately finds someone and says, "you come dance wiff us?" who can say no? Her hair is halfway down her back and is getting super thick and curly. Most days just frizzy. She is very picky with how we fix it too... if i finish and it's not to her standards she sits back down on my lap and tells me again how she wants it. girls...
She is my shopping buddy! Stori is gone for 2.5 hours Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so that's when we go window shopping or grocery shopping. It's pretty fun!
Love this little lunatic and wish she would stay this perfect happy age forever
Cute little sleeper--whichever toddler bed Stori sleeps in, Sylvie also wants. So Stori has just decided to let her choose first haha.
5th annual Radford snowman. Creepiest one also
I've never met better friends
They do everything together-mainly because June bug is her shadow
She even has to wear a dance costume to watch Stori at her dance class. She has stori's ballet recital dance all memorized. Having two girls is fun! Some of these movies are from a year and a half ago, and some are from like a month ago. just catching up.
Dan and I were able to go on a date on Saturday night---correction, we went on a 35 minute date on Saturday night. We had intentions of eating out at one of the restaurants on center street, going to the concert, and then out to ice cream at another place on center street. Our friends Ryan and Amanda came over to watch our kids, and Dan ended up playing with guns with Ryan, and I ended up talking to Amanda all the way up until the concert started. We saw City of Salt perform at the Muse, and they were fantastic!!! Plus the main guy is Dans brother Michael! Dan turned into an old man and got an ear ache from the loud music haha! Michael is seriously one talented dude and puts on a great show. If in Provo, definitely check them out.
^^out on our date.
^^ a totally not posed photo sadly haha!!
Timanogos definitely has my heart! This is the view from Target! I love the whole 'live in the city by the mountains' thing! Just last Saturday we had a deer in our front yard, and I noticed deer tracks in our backyard when I was out doing laundry... Ya. Laundry in the shed haha.
So I am finally getting to all my movies on my phone....and I'm going to start with these videos that show Sylvie getting bonked noggins. Poor little June bug
Let it be known again, that holidays are when I want to document the most, but NEVER seem to take pictures! Ever! So here are the few that I took, or josh took!
We love spending time in Idaho! Stori thinks it's the greatest place in the whole world---might have to agree with her! ;)
^^meg and Joel raised this GIANT turkey for dinner! pretty sure it's name while it was alive, was Thanksgiving. ^^sylvie cleaning the cool whip lid for us. Such a good helper! Oh and in a scandalous dress-up...nothing new here!
Dinner time!
^^sylvie's face haha.
Thanksgiving evening walk with some of my favorite people!!
See what I mean about not taking pictures?!
So here is what I didn't document: The kids played outside for two days straight in the freezing cold, shopping on Black Friday with mom and Meg, decorating for Christmas at moms house, relaxing, eating leftovers, watching elf, and shooting! I wish I had more to say/show about the fun time we had in Idaho for 5 days!! Take me back!!!
Little miss Astoria Rose has become a beautiful little ballerina! She LOVES dance, and would prefer to have it every day of the week if she could. She shows no nerves whatsoever, and dances her little heart out...even in front of a lot of strangers.
Her dance performance was at a Veterans Retirement home in Payson, and all the residents got to watch. After the performance, Dan took Stori to meet as many of them as they could. He is a great dad! Stori just thanked them for coming, but I think it meant a lot that they took the time to visit with them. Sylvie spent that time eating the refreshments haha.
Two thumbs up! She sat so reverently waiting for the performance to start! She really is such a sweet heart!
All smiles after the dance!! :) I was a proud little mama!
I love the beginning of a new semester for Dan. The real work doesn't start for a few weeks, so when he is done with homework and actual work, we get to play! We have done a lot of swimming so far. My kids are absolutely obsessed with it. Stori finally reached the height of the big, huge, ginormous twisty slides and goes down like a champ. It scares me a little, because she only meets the height requirement by centimeters and i feel like she could get all twisted up in the slides because she is so tiny. My claustrophobic self is glad that she is taking after her father in this aspect.
The beginning of January also feels like it should immediately be spring! I feel like taking down our Christmas decorations is some sort of therapy! :) I was able to take all of it down except these 2 cute snowmen that I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to. Story made and cut out hers all by herself, and sylvie perfected the cursive "y" on hers.
We have also made a few new year goals: one of mine is to eat less pop tarts! So far i am failing greatly. Another is to potty train Sylvie... this one is going much better. It is still frustrating because she was pretty much potty trained at 14 months, but I wasn't interested in potty training her when she was so young and we were busy traveling between provo and idaho so much. Rookie move on my part, I should have just done it then!
Dan and I got new callings in our ward. Nursery leaders! I was a little bummed at first: Nursery/Primary are literally the only 2 hours I am not with kids, and now I'm with 15! But it has been a lot of fun because I get to be in there with Dan and a few other fun couples! Plus, I was able to get a 2.5 yr old boy to come to Nursery for the first time EVER! high-five self!
We celebrated MLK day by renting the minions for the kids, and then watching the Help after they snoozed. Of course we downed a lot of popcorn, and I consumed a whole bag of mini Cadbury eggs. Good thing another 2016 goal is to work out more.
When we realized we left all of the kids presents from us in Provo, we came up with a plan. We told them that when we got back home we would have a pizza party on New Year's Eve and we would get to open up all out Christmas presents in front of our tree and watch a movie!! Well that took zero convincing, and they loved the idea! Phew!!
We were lucky enough to have my mom in town to join our Provo pizza party!
^^ watching the movie and eating picnic style by our tree.
Opening up our "Christmas Eve Jammie's," on New Year's Eve. :)
Stori got a Merida doll and Merida dress up
Sylvie got a "rella" doll and princess book
I had to document sylvie sleeping...mainly because she didn't take a nap all of Christmas/New Years break. She stayed up with Dan, my mom, and I watching a movie on New Years and finally crashed around 11:30!
We liked our unplanned tradition of opening a few presents on new years eve so much, that we might make it a new Radford tradition---plus, if we did the shopping the day after christmas, we could really save some big bucks! ;)
We knew we had a long drive ahead of us when we made plans to go to Kennewick, WA for Christmas. 10 hrs in a car with 2 tiny kids can do things to a person.
Well we woke up in Provo with the worst blizzard we have seen in Utah. In fact, it had been unusually warm the entire week(s) before that morning. Took us about 30 minutes just to get out of Provo, and we considered turning around several times because it was a total white out. Then once we got about 2 hours out, we hit Snowville. CLOSED ROADS! I got out of the car and started walking to see how many trucks we were behind to make a guess as to how long we would be stranded. I talked to one trucker, 8 semi's in front of us who had been there almost 6 hours just waiting. I walked a little farther and it was Semi's as far as I could see. Miles and miles! We waited a total of 3 hours before deciding to go a different route. All while contemplating if we should just head to Idaho for the night, for the weekend, or turn back and go home to Provo. I was afraid that if we waited to travel on Christmas Eve we would hit closed roads again and miss Christmas. Dan was quick to say that Christmas would come even if we were in the car and it would still be fun because we would be together. Luckily we didn't have to see if the optimist was right! :) Once we got to our new route, we learned that the road (the one we waited 3 hours for) opened--so we headed back again! 16 hours in the car and we finally arrived!
^^The picture doesn't look as bad as it was. We were inching our way out of town.
^^sad when we realized we hit closed roads.
Waiting....waiting....waiting...
^^....still waiting and going a little cross-eyed waiting for roads to open! the kids were AMAZING in the car both to and from WA; sadly they never slept either way, but they also never fought or threw tantrums! Win!
We got there in time for Christmas Eve, and when we went to go wrap some presents, we discovered we had none to wrap! Hahaha.. So Dan and I left the kids at home and tried to go find cheap presents so that the kids would have something to open--ya know, because we are good parents and left their gifts in Provo. We also snuck in a mini date at red robin! :) We found a Sofia the First dress-up for $1, and some Anna dress up shoes for $4 for both girls! Shopping done! :)
I didn't get pictures of Christmas Eve, or really anything else with family for that matter, so sad!
^^christmas morning! Luckily Santa found us and brought a coloring eisle, a rocking moose, and big pink pillows!
Holding scooters > riding scooters
^^ shopping at the mall in style
^^drawing herself a chalk snowman because there wasn't any snow for a real snowman.
^^Star Wars in reclining leather seats? A hundred times YES!!
^^
I surprised Dan with a painting of the Provo tabernacle--we have a copy in our church building and he always commented on how much he loved it. So I tracked down the artist in SLC, got a painting, and also had him sign it and personalize it. It says: to SDR on the bottom. He loved it!
He surprised me with an iPad mini!!!! He is always great at gift giving! He got it so I can blog easier---so blog I must! :)
The night before we headed home, we learned that the main pass was closed! Of course, right?! Well, by the time we got there it was open to cars and just closed to big trucks, so we lucked out! Just outside of the pass, Dan noticed our car was driving weird, do we pulled over---FLAT TIRE! :)
So Dan Unload the car in the snow to change it. Luckily we had forgotten the kids presents from us, so we didn't have to unload as much! ;)
We Drove 40 miles at 30mph to the next town to buy 3 new tires! Luckily the store was really quick and got us back on the road after only an hour and a half. We really lucked out getting the flat where we did; it was daylight, and not too stormy. We passed a car, later that night, who had the same thing happen---the husband and wife were unloading all of their Christmas stuff onto the side of the road, but for them it was blizzarding and full of semi's. So yeAh, we were lucky!
Despite all the car trouble and all the money spent fixing tires and fueling our car for 6 extra hours, we still had a great Christmas. One big adventure to remember for sure!
Such a good guy!!! He never complained about our flat tire!
Waiting for our tires to be fixed in baker city, Oregon --so no sales tax on those tires!! :)
Other things to note about our Christmas:
-Dan and I going on a date!! Steve and Cathy, Vern and Nicole, and us ate at Costa vida and went to Star Wars, which was AMAZING! And also, Aaron babysat for us and sylvie had TWO poopy diapers haha. He was great and got them to sleep after changing her! I could get used to going on dates!
-playing games
-overeating
-shopping---went to a cute mercantile in Richland with very yummy food.
-scavenger hunts, hide and seek, coloring, playing at play area, and watching movies with cousins.
-loving and hating the dogs
-watching movies
-having a wonderful Christmas program
-scooter rides with the girls
-flying dans helicopter and watching him perfect his landings
-staying up late
-opening presents
-and enjoying the Christmas season with family. It was worth all the crazy road mishaps!
Just glad nothing got stolen like the last time we were there for Christmas! :)
