The Nutcracker

Jerusha was really great this Christmas about making it special for the girls. While I was busy with finals and she was sick she somehow found the time to do Joy School, take the girls to the Nutcracker, put up and decorate a tree, and do countless other things like helping Amelia make her Christmas wish list.

If you were wondering, she wanted a ducky, two picture frames in the shape of a heart, a piggy bank, a crocadile, a princess Aurora doll, and a turtle. She got everything but the turtle, and if anyone knows where you can get one cheap let me know.

Here are some pictures of the Joy School girls at the Nutcracker.

Pre-Christmas fun

Here are some pictures of the Amelia and Isabelle at their Joy School Christmas Program. It was really great. Amelia was able to show off some of her moves she's been learning in her dance class, and she played the angel in the nativity reenactment. Isabelle played a very surly inn keeper; when she says, "NO ROOM!", she means it.

Halloween

Millie decided she wanted to be a crocodile for Halloween, but the closest we could come to that was a dragon. She spent a lot of time while tricker treating correcting people who called her a dragon, until on of the ladies in our ward told her she was the cutest dragon she's ever seen. After this comment was made I waited for Amelia to correct her, but Millie just thought for a minute and then said, "Yeah I am a dragon. See because I have wings."
Isabelle was Tinkerbell. A very cold Tinkerbell by the end of the night.
Here are some pictures of the girls at Joy School in our house.

Late Summer Pictures

So we had our friend take some more pictures of the girls this year. This time she took them to the park across the street from us. Well ok it's not a park, its really a cemetery, but it is pretty there.

Grandma and Grandpa Reid's Boston Trip

This is my first time adding video to a post so we'll see how it goes. When my parents were here the girls had a great time going to Jordan's Furniture store, the frog pond, and just dancing around the house. They also had a great time playing with the blocks my dad made for them.

Church history tour 5

Some fun pictures from Nauvoo.

Church history tour 4

It turns out that the coolest thing to do at the Carthage Jail is run up and down the handicap ramp, or at least that's what Isabelle thought when she wasn't picking up acorns.

Church history tour 3

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa at the Kirkland temple.

Church history tour 2

Good times at the Hill Cumora.

Jerusha and Isabelle at Niagara Falls.

Me and Amelia at Niagara Falls.

Church history tour 1

This first picture is of the girls at the Smith Family farm. They had a good time watching bumble bees and picking flowers.

The next pictures was taking in the sacred grove. Apparently Isabelle didn't think Jerry was being reverent enough and she felt the need to shush him.

The last picture is of me and Amelia on our way out of the grove.

A new post. Can you believe it?

So a few things have happened since last we blogged. I finished my first year of school, we went on a church history tour with Jerusha's family, my parents came out to visit, I started my second year of dental school, Jerusha's mom came out a few times, I got commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, Amelia started joy school and ballet, Jerusha is teaching joy school, Isabelle learned that Millie is afraid of her when she acts like she's going to bite her, my mom and Janice came out, and Amelia and Isabelle were a dragon and fairy for Halloween. Now I'll post some pictures.

Some photos of the day

That's right, today only, you get two posts for the price of one. Today I kept the camera close by and photographed a few of the significant things that happened today.

Photo 1. This morning as I was helping Amelia put a puzzle of Cinderella together at the table Isabelle decided she wanted to help out by putting her hands on the box of the puzzle and sliding it back and forth on the table. Unfortunately she slid it too far one of the times and slid right off the table onto the floor. She was however able to break her fall slightly by catching her chin on Amelia's chair on the way down. She hit hard enough to break the skin, but not enough to need stitches. I was able to calm her down by letting her play like she was sleeping in our bed, which happens to be one of her favorite things to do.

Photo 2. Millie felt left out and wanted to sleep in our bed also.

Photo 3. Millie spelled her first word today. Lately as we read to her we've been trying to get her to recognize words on her own like hat, bear, cat, mud, zoo, etc.. Today she picked up the two O's and put them side by side, and after looking at them for a moment she looked around for the Z and put it in front of them. She then turned to me and said, "ZOO!"

Fun With Grandma Tenney

Jerusha's mom came out to see her grandkids for about a week. The girls loved having grandma around, and really missed her when she was gone. Indeed the first question Isabelle asked me the morning after grandma left was, "Where Megan go?" (No matter how hard we tried she wouldn't call Judy grandma, instead she would call her by the other name she knows most of her mommy's friends by, Megan. Some examples include Megan Jaeger, Megan Mower, Megan Williams, Megan Palmer, etc..) Amelia was a little more troubled by Judy's absence and woke us up that morning in hysterical tears asking where her grandma had gone. Here are a few pictures I took of Judy and the girls.
P.S. I wasn't sure if everyone knew this, but if you click on these little pictures they will open up in a new window much larger so they are easier to see.

Trip to the aquarium

Well I finished my first year of dental school, and all I keep hearing is how hard next year is going to be. Which makes me want to redouble my efforts at making this summer a great one for my family. Since Wednesday Jerusha and I have been relaxing and taking things slow. Yesterday Jerusha needed to go shopping with her friend Megan Mower, so she took Isabelle with her to the outlets and I took Millie with me to the Aquarium. Isabelle definitely got the short end of that stick, but I'll make it up to her later.

Since Jerusha and Isabelle took the stroller and the car Millie and I ended up walking the short distance to the T station. This wouldn't have been so bad if Amelia hadn't been wearing her pink jelly sandals that she kept catching "rocks" in. Millie defines "a rock" in her shoe as any particle larger than 2 microns in diameter. About every ten steps she would complain of another rock in her shoe, so I would take her sandal off and brush it out. Finally I got tired of undoing the little buckles, and I put her on my shoulders.

Once at the T station we took the orange line to state street and then the blue line to the aquarium. While on the train Amelia felt the need to touch everything. This included a discarded newspaper, some gum on the floor, and a few of our fellow passengers. After hearing me tell her that so many things were dirty she began to point to things and ask if they were dirty too.
While pointing at the slash marks in her seat, "Dad, is this seat dirty?"
"Yes Millie."
While touching the grease smudged window, "Dad, is the window dirty?"
"Yes Millie."
While holding onto the hand rail, "What about this poll is it dirty too?"
"Yes Millie, that's why we need to wash our hands before we eat."
While pointing at the lady across from us, "Is she dirty too dad?"
"No Millie, do you want a drink or a snack? Let's look out the dirty window. Oh, look boats!"

Once at the aquarium we saw many things, but by far Millie's favorite were the penguins. Although she did get excited by the giant sea turtle and the brightly colored anemones too. After about an hour and a half it was time to go home and I took her to the bathroom so we wouldn't have any accidents on the T. Unfortunately, I needed to go as well and Millie spent her free time scrambling under the stalls surprising unsuspecting bathroom goers. She also nearly succeeded in washing her hands in one of the urinals.

As we stepped out of the aquarium into the bright summer sun the wind caught hold of Amelia's hair and threatened to whip her butterfly clip out, so I took it out before it was lost. Millie then said, "Now my hair is loose like an anemone so you can swim through it."
That comment made the whole trip worth all the trouble.

Books and Blocks

I know, another post about the kids, but hey when your life revolves around something it's hard not to talk about it. Any way, Isabelle is really into reading books right now. In the picture you can see that we have a bookshelf on her left that is just for the girls books. We also have enough children's books to fill that bookshelf due to the generous contributions of grandparents and aunts and uncles. The reason why you only see a few books in the bookshelf is because Isabelle has relocated the majority of them to the living room, which apparently has a better reading atmosphere than the hallway.

Amelia on the other hand likes books, but she is really into blocks right now. She will sit and build the tallest tower she can; or make little clumps of 3-4 blocks and arrange them into a trail calling them cars (see picture); or she will build her favorite thing, a birthday cake. A "birthday cake" in blocks is really just a very tall wall of all the same shaped blocks with a single row of different shaped blocks on the top that represent candles. At any given time there is always at least one birthday cake present in our home, at least until Isabelle gets to it. Each cake she makes is also specifically for one person. One day's cake will be for Grandma Puzy, the next day's will be for Uncle Addison, however most days they are for her friend Tyler.

Haircut, train-ride, ice-cream.

Today I had the day off from school and we had planned to do something special as a family. The girls needed haircuts so that was the first order of business. We take them to a place called Snip-its that specializes in cutting little kids hair. The girls love it cause they have all kinds of things there to keep them from realizing that a stranger is grooming them. Amelia sat quietly in the chair and you could tell that she enjoyed having her hair combed through. Isabelle was pretty good too, but she needed the extra distraction of me blowing bubbles at her to sit still.

After the haircuts we were going to go down town and walk around for a bit, but it was obvious that the girls needed food and naps, so we headed home. While the girls were asleep it Jerusha drove to the grocery store and ended up locking her keys in the car there. So she took the subway home to get our spare keys. We then all made a trip to go get the car. This was the girls first time on the train, and they were mesmerized by it. When we got off the train and passed by the area in the station where all the bums tend to relieve themselves Millie said that it smelled like flowers, which made me curious as to which flowers she has been smelling at the park. Once we were in the car again we found that the weather had gotten to cold to take the girls out again so we came back to the house to watch The Sound of Music. The girls played on the floor with their toys until a song would come on and then they would watch the tv for a little while.

At 5:30pm we started getting them ready for bed and because Amelia and Isabelle ate four pieces of chicken each they earned the right to have some strawberry ice cream, but they just call it pink ice cream. Later after they were washed up and in bed I asked Millie what she had done today and her reply was, "Haircut, train-ride, ice-cream." I think I'm going to try to sum up all my days into three words from now on too.

How to win friends and influence big kids to do what you want

I really don't know how Amelia does it, but whenever I take her to a park she immediately finds a child older than her and usually female to hang around with her and pretty much do whatever she wants. Apparently this ability of hers can even span language barriers. The pictures in this post are of Amelia and a little Muslim girl named Zena. That day her and Zena played with sticks, pretended they were flies caught in a web, played kick ball and generally chased each other around for about an hour. The interesting thing I noticed was that while Zena speaks very limited English, Amelia was able to get Zena to help her up onto swings, slide down slides with her, and hold her hand as she jumped down from some of the equipment.
I had thought that this was an isolated incident until I watched her do the same thing a few days ago with a Hispanic girl named Jaqualin at a different park. This little girl was even strong enough to lift Millie on to the swings and always made sure she was safe when Millie was climbing the ladders up to the slides.
Today, however, it was two girls. These two little girls were the most attentive yet. Amelia didn't even have to touch the ground to get from one piece of equipment to another; these girls would carry her. One even had a little stuffed animal dog that Amelia commandeered for the remainder of her time at the playground.

Tyler's Party

The girls recently went to a birthday party for their friend Tyler. It was a western themed party, and the girls were given little cowboy hats and bandannas to wear.