Ballerinas

On the day of the recital, I decided to try and give the kids some naps because the recital didn't start until 7--which is pretty much bed time. I didn't think it would actually work, but I laid them down, put on some music, and out they went.

Pre-dance excitement...

^^Capri and Stori loving on the nervous Sylvie

^^Telling stories before the dance.

and some dancing scenes until I upload the videos

After dance cuddles!

With Miss Cami

^^wishing the Veteran Residents a Merry Christmas.

Went with our friends to Rockwell Ice cream to celebrate a successful night of dancing...the place got an encore show despite our best efforts to stop them. Love having little girls, and love watching them dance their hearts away! 

A little pre-Thanksgiving Christmas.

It's not unusual for us to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Iin fact, we have done it every single year since we have been married. But even though it gets put up the second week of November, we still only get about 3 weeks of actually enjoying it because we are gone so much during the holidays. I love having it be the only light in our living room. We moved all of our books out to our living room, and our kids will read for hours by it. Stori is the first one to wake up in our house, so she always turns the tree on and then get's some books out. I love seeing it!

Laying by the bell music box daily.

^^This blurry picture is one of my favorites. It was a Sunday night, the kids were in bed, and Dan and I picked out a Christmas movie to watch. We always have either popcorn or ice cream with our Sunday night movie, but had NOTHING! So for the first time in our marriage, we made some chocolate chip cookies together. I don't even own a recipe for plain cookies, so we searched Pinterest and succeeded. Neither of us are fond of cookies at all, but Dan said making the cookies together was the highlight of his week. It really was SO fun! We blasted Christmas music while we measured the ingredients and then waited for them to cook. We only made about 4 cookies and that was plenty to last us 2 days. Sylvie finished off the last one in the morning for breakfast. I feel kinda bad that I actually do have one child that likes cookies, but never get's them because no one else likes them haha. So a cookie for breakfast was perfect. Love that husband of mine!

This girl is so funny! She pretended to take a nap like this. For almost 1.5 hours she pretended. it was just as good, or better than a real nap in my opinion. I still got to cuddle this girl and take a rest AND put her to bed at the normal time. I wish pretend naps happened daily around here.

We were playing Trouble one day and Sylvie LITERALLY rolled 12 6's in a row. She had all of her guys out before Stori and I even rolled twice. She won the game while I only had one guy out haha. We were all laughing so hard every time she rolled another six. I need to upload the video of that.

Boot season!

After swimming at the Rec Center one Saturday with cousins, we walked out of the pool area and found this cute couple. there wasn't a line at all, so the kids got to talk to Santa for about 5 solid minutes. It was so fun for them. 

^^wish I could have heard what they were all saying to each other.

Hanging up our lights...

Stori was somewhat appropriately dressed for the task...

And Sylvie wasn't even close to being ready to help. Dan sent her right back in to watch from the window. She thought having boots on was good enough. I swear this child never gets cold. Good luck trying to get her to wear pants ever!

finishing out our Provo Fall

Still so sad that this could be our last fall here. But so happy that it gave us 70-80* weather all the way up until Thanksgiving. 

We continued our "night night walk,' even after the time change. It get's dark around 5:30 now, so it's not technically a walk we do right before bed to get our wiggles out, but we love it just the same.

^^One thing on my Fall bucket list, was to convince Dan to skip a day of law school. Something he hasn't done in all of his 3 years. (With the exception of skipping one of his classes for my gender check Dr. Apt,) So on a perfect fall day, I managed to convince him of skipping and going for a bike ride. We rode for about 2 hours and then we were going to go to lunch, but he remembered he had a meeting with this graduation counselor and that he had an in-class exam after that. We were pretty bummed when he remembered those things--he still only got to skip one class, so I'm keeping it on my bucket list, until he actually skips an entire day and hangs out with us! :)

Spent most of our days at different parks; playing with friends, jumpin in leaves, and making beards out of dirt.

Stori has become an amazing little swimmer. She can swim the short length of the pool, and has even figured out how to do it while taking breaths. Before she would come up for air and almost sink all the way down before swimming again haha. But It's so fun to see her excel in it without ever having lessons. If we stick around Provo, I wouldnt' mind putting in her in a kids swim team. 

Also on our Fall bucket list was going to a women's BYU vball game. I coached one of the girls on the team, and she is amazing! I regret not going to more games, because the kids really loved watching them play.

During one of their timeouts, Dan and Stori completed a scavenger hunt and earned us some free concessions food haha.

Provo, keep on rocking your Falls and we will never leave.

Thanksgiving 2016

We made our very last journey to good ol' Kennewick, WA for thanksgiving. It really is quite sad realizing that we probably won't be back there again--and for sure never to that house! It is SOLD and empty now. Nicole is still living in Tri-cities, so there is a small chance we could be back there, but hopefully they end up moving this way, closer to everyone! 

The girls really enjoyed their time there; playing big kid games with cousins, playing with little Drez outside, watching the musical 'Cats' with aunt Nicole, crafting with Grandma, and cozying up with Papa Radford. The night before we left, I had to console a sobbing 5 year old. She just kept saying, "I don't understand why we can't all just live by each other. WE ARE FAMIly!" 

They even really liked Millie this time. 

^^It about made Stori's entire life when Nic asked Stori if she would play cards with him. They played cards and crafted every free moment there was. I can't even count how many drawings we came home with.

^^We also went to our favorite little mercantile in Richland Luckily the kids walked in right as this little train was taking people for rides around the lot. We all piled in for a cold but fun ride after we filled our bellies with about a million samples from the mercantile.

While we were in WA, Dan and I got our first official babysitter. It was a little YW from dan's parents ward. She was great, and stori thought it was great! The babysitter and Stori hit it off really well and gave each other big hugs when she left. I guess it's time to get an actual babysitter here in Provo so that Dan and I can go on some dates. our girls really are at the best age for babysitters.

Anyway, we had a great time and sure glad we made the 20 hr round trip journey.

 

Luckily when we got home, it snowed and snowed all day, so we got to play in the snow for several hours. We built our annual "first snow of the year" snowman. It sure cured any Post Holiday Monday blues that were bound to creep up. It's always so sad after vacation--I love getting to spend day and night with Dan, only for him to go to school and work all day every day after that---lame.

^^he started out with just a beanie for a hat, but Stori had the great idea to make him a reindeer. I think he looks pretty happy. :)

Sure love my family, and glad I get to be home with them during the day.