Happy Birthday Shane!

We love you and all of your alter egos!

 Handsome business man

 handyman

 

sous chef

 marathoner

 playground pro

 BYU fanatic

 All- round class act

Happy Birthday to the best husband and daddy in the world!

Caught in the Act Take 1 and 2

Picture this: it's 9am.  Molly's dressed, but just barely.  I'm upstairs doing my make-up and I hear Molly walking downstairs.  A little bit unusual, since she usually hangs out with me while I get ready, but I don't really think anything of it.  10 minutes pass and I head downstairs ready for the day.  I hear noises coming from the kitchen so I peek around the corner and find Molly, knife in hand, trying to cut the butter that she's retrieved from the refrigerator that she just learned how to open.  She looks over and smiles.  Mac-and-Cheese!

Fast forward 2 days. Picture us eating cereal as a family around the kitchen table.  Molly's finishing while I put my bowl in the dishwasher and the milk in the fridge.  The dryer buzzes and I go into the laundry room to switch out the laundry.  Not gone for more than a few minutes this is the scene upon my return:

 "Mommy, I spill"

Notice the milk on the table?  Yep, that's the one I just put away.  Molly looked so sad and worried about the spilled milk it was all I could do to not burst out laughing.  She got a little embarrassed when I called Shane to come see what she'd been up to.  We moved her to a different chair so she could eat the bowl of cereal and milk that she'd poured, all by herself.  (A first with the milk.)  After much reassurance from us telling her that it was okay and that it was only an accident we asked that next time please ask for help.  When she finished eating she helped me clean up the milk.

Fast forward to today.  Molly's eating cereal.  I've put away the milk and am checking my email in the next room.  "Mama" Molly calls.  I go into the kitchen and find the milk back on the table and ready to be poured.  She looks up at me, "More, please."

My heart swells with pride, music fills the room and a small tear forms in the corner of my eye.  I love my little girl!

Thanksgiving 2011

We had such a fun Thanksgiving weekend with Grandma and Grandpa and lots of cousins to play with.  Molly was in heaven!  We had so much fun playing, shopping, eating deep fried turkey and spending time together.  Molly was so sad Sunday morning when she woke up and everyone was gone.

 Molly and Cha Cha.  It's so fun to have a cousin your age to play with.  We went and saw Arthur Christmas.  It was Molly's first time going to the movies and she loved it!

 The lights at the Mesa Temple

 Playing "chase"

 We love Grandma and Grandpa!

 Smile!

 Yum!  Watching the Krispy Kreme assembly line.  It smelled heavenly.

 The lights at the Mesa Temple.  See the wise men with their camels in the background.  So beautiful!

Grandma bought fun holiday p.j.'s for the kids

Ready for the Show!

I asked Molly if she wanted to exercise with me and while I turned my back to put it the DVD she lined up some of her favorite things in front of the couch for the show.  Not only cute, but entertaining as well (she keeps books in the shopping cart and read them while I exercised.)  I only tripped over her a couple of times!

Happy Halloween!

Ready for some candy!  Molly was really excited for her 1st year of trick or treating.  She was thrilled to get candy but had just as much fun passing it out to the kids who came to our house.

Trick-or-Treat

Last night was our church's annual Fall Festival including trunk-or-treating for the kids.  Molly wasn't too keen on dressing up and she took off her witches hat as soon as I took the pictures, but boy did she love going from car to car filling her little pumpkin with candy!  After a few cars she was even saying "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" without any prompting.

trick-or-treat!

She was especially in love with the little packs of m&ms

We've been doing all things pumpkin lately: cookies, decorations, clothes; I love hearing Molly sing, "Good morning pumpkin!" first thing when she wakes up and see's the pumpkin in the window.

I've been teaching Molly all of the Halloween songs that I grew up singing: 5 Little pumpkins; Mr. jack-o-lantern; Witches flying through the sky; and Boo, Boo, boo, boo! I'm a ghost to scare you.

She loves to sing and follows along with the actions!

I hope you're enjoying this Bewitching Season!

BYU Homecoming Game

This weekend we had the coolest experience as my dad was honored by being asked to be the Y-Lighter at the BYU Homecoming Game.  We didn't find out about it until a few days before the game but were able to make arrangements to fly in for the weekend.  The entire family was invited to be on the field before the game while they highlighted my dad's career and how he's influenced BYU Football (he played football for BYU and was a BYU honorable mention All-American; he coached 3 of BYU's current football coaches when they were in high school; and he coached two of BYU's current players).  Coincidentally being honored at BYU was just the icing on the cake for my dad who reached a career milestone the night before the game: his 300th career win as a high school football coach.  Pretty Amazing!  You can read about it here and here. 

Here we are walking onto the field

Shane and the goal post

My parents on the field

...and walking off of the field

Molly playing the piano with Grandma

Autumn...

 

It's October and suppose to hit 100 degree's today.  Fall is one of my favorite seasons, but despite my best efforts I'm having a hard time getting into it this year.  I'm homesick for sweaters and colored leaves!  As the weeks pass and the temperature dips below 100 I know that things will start looking up.  I'm counting down the days until we can spend all morning at the park or go on a walk without getting heat exhaustion!  Until then, I'm in need of some serious mental intervention ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog-gone-it it's fall!")  My plan is to do something Fall or Halloween inspired every day this month.  I'm not going to blog about everything we do, but if I come up with anything super cute or fun I'll definitely share.

I got this idea from the family fun website.  We taped a couple pieces of posterboard together, cut out a jack-o-lantern, covered the back with yellow tissue paper and put it in our window.  So cute!

(view from inside) 

(view from outside)

The pumpkin made Molly a little nervous, but by morning she 

was pretty excited to see her friend still sitting in the window!

Friend

We're big fans of magazines around here and Molly has recently discovered that we get one for her too.  We started getting the Friend at the beginning of the year but recently Molly has become attached to her "zeens".  She's flipped through the 9 or so copies that she has and names them too.  Her favorites are "Happy Birthday" (Pres. Monson's Birthday pictures on the cover) and "upside down" (the cover with kids playing on the monkey bars.)  Pretty cute stuff!

Princesses...

We were at the fabric store on Wednesday when Molly pointed to some fabric and exclaimed with excitement "Mama, princess!!!"  Yes indeed, she'd spotted a bolt of princess fabric.  I love princesses, but other than our favorite disney movies, we don't have any princess things in the house.  We don't really talk about princesses and Molly hasn't spent a lot of time (if any) playing with princess toys at other peoples houses.  Knowing that, you can imagine my surprise when she pointed to the fabric with Cinderella, Belle, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and knew that they were princesses.  It really must be genetic.  Last night she picked out a dvd and instead of asking to watch a "moo-fee" she held up The Little Mermaid and said "Princess".  Where she learns this stuff I'll probably never know, but I'm secretly hoping that she wants to start playing dress-up soon!

Birthday Fun

 Our sweet baby girl turned 2.  Here's the play by play with pictures of Molly's birthday last week:

Wake up.  Ohh and Ahh over the birthday decorations for a millisecond before making a mad dash over to birthday gift - a Molly sized kitchen.

Mmmm breakfast.  Molly's choice: waffles, whip cream, raspberries, whip cream, chocolate milk and whip cream.  There might have been some bacon and eggs in there somewhere, but breakfast really was all about the whip cream!

Open some presents...

Get dressed, go to the car wash (one of her favorite activities), pick up birthday balloons, make cupcakes, talk to grandparents and cousins on the phone, skip nap because we're having too much fun today, and play more kitchen while watching the BYU game.

Molly chose pizza for dinner and then it was finally time for cake and ice cream.  Earlier in the week I showed Molly one of my cookbooks that has a picture for each of the cake and cupcake recipes.  I asked her to pick out the one she wanted for her birthday and she immediately pointing to the picture of strawberry cupcakes. "Happy Birthday!  Happy Birthday!" she sang with glee.  Those were the ones I was hoping she'd pick!

Yum!  They really were good cupcakes.  

(I'll post the recipe on glutenfreebetty.com soon).

 more presents...

Happy Day.   Happy Family.

Molly Loves...

 BYU

Stickers

backpacks, bags and purses

Pink

Purple

Helping in the Kitchen

She pointed out the church as we drove past the other day.

She reminded us to kneel down for prayers this morning

She asked for a purple towel during her bath
-she's getting one for her birthday

while we were making lunch she found the cupcake papers...

She knew exactly what to do with them!

Today as I was putting a darling little sundress over Molly's head she promptly pulled it off.  I tried again with the same result.  After a third failed attempt I said,"But Molly, this dress is so cute and it's one of Mommy's favorites." 

She looked at me with defiance and firmly responded,"No. BYU!" 

I guess my little lady has decided to take an active role in how she dresses.  This was the first time she's wanted a say in her outfit and  there aren't enough tears in the world to show you how sad we both were that her BYU shirt was in the dirty clothes!!!

What can I say...train them while they're young!!!

 Don't you love the crossed ankles?  She thought of that all by herself!