My Girl

My sweet little girl Gracen is not always such a little lady.

She's tough.  She's strong.  She's Brave.

 She's messy and proud of it.

 She's got a whole lot of spunk and personality stuffed into her 25 pounds.

 Did I mention she's messy?  You may notice Alden's handprint slapped right across Gracie's chest.  

You bet Gracen started the fight!

 But then...there are moments...

...when Mary J. Blige is singing on TV...

 ...and Gracen can't help but do her thang...

 ...with a grand finale, of course...

 

Oh, how I love my girl.

Sledding

We are having the mildest winter here in Kansas.  It has snowed a grand total of twice, both of which wouldn't even be recorded as a snowfall in Canada. :-)  The first snow barely stuck to the ground and was only visible for a few hours.  The second smattering of cold wet stuff managed to stick around for a grand total of 24 hours before it melted away.  

 We didn't let that snow get away without having  some fun in it first, though.  We have the perfect little sledding hill right outside our back door.  Throw in a few garage sale sleds that cost a grand total under $1, and we had a perfect winter afternoon with our little friend Nathan.

 I love this.  At one point the boys figured, "Who needs three sleds?!"  

I love how Gracen's high-tailing it to safer ground!

 More snow, please!!

A Little Early Morning Boredom

I've been doing my best to exercise every morning.  It's nothing major, but I do try to get in a good half hour's sweat sesh each day.  At first, I used the TV to occupy the kids while I got to work.  Lately, though, I use the reward of a half hour's worth of mindless morning TV to motivate myself to exercise.

Meanwhile, the kids have been finding other ways to entertain themselves.  Like this morning.  I snapped some pictures as soon as I got done sweatin' up a storm.

 Love this one 'cause Gracen has my sweatband on. :-)  This girl's great, even if she did fry my phone in the microwave yesterday morning!

 P.S. Happy Birthday to my best friend.  He's the absolute greatest.  I am so grateful I get to walk through life with someone who's so good for me.  We love him for all he does for our family.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of the "wild" birthday bash the kids and I threw for him.  I so need a new camera!

Winter!?

This winter has been unbelievable, weather-wise.  We've had two very light snows - the first one hardly even stuck.  Most of the rest of the days have been absolutely beautiful sweater weather.  On a particularly warm day, we spent a really fun afternoon at the park.

 This park has a whole bunch of fun stuff.  It has a miniature city, complete with a school, general store, bank, town hall, and blacksmith shop.  I had a really good time playing "cops and robbers" with my kids.  We took turns being sheriff and we'd chase the robber(s) down, throw 'em in jail, then fall asleep while the robbers escaped and we'd have to start the cycle over again.  I love running around with my kids - they keep me young!

 Just look at the tough sheriffs I had to answer to!

 Alden has been finding new things to master at playgrounds lately.  Last week he mastered the fireman's pole.  On this day he climbed this rock structure for the first time by himself.  It's great to see the kids accomplishing new things as they get older.

 I'm pretty sure that Gracen thinks she and the boys are all the same age.  She was very upset when she couldn't scale the rock like Alden did.  But she didn't let much else at the park get her down!

 We also had a good time at the lake that is at this park. 

 Have you ever seen a tree with such interesting roots?!

 What a GREAT DAY.

Crown Center with the Jensens

What a way to start the new year - seriously behind on my blog!  A few weeks ago we had the chance to go to Crown Center in downtown KCMO with the wonderful Jensen family.  I don't know why I can't get that second picture to center. :-)

Amber Jensen is my roommate from my undergrad days in Idaho.  Her family just moved to the area and it's been fun to get to hang out so much with them.  All of my college roommates are amazing ladies and we still keep in touch even though it's been (really?!) NINE years!!

Crown Center is a mall owned by Hallmark, whose headquarters are in Kansas City.  We went to their visitor's center which had fascinating dresses and shoes made out of Christmas cards!  There was an incredible history of Hallmark cards there but we didn't get to spend much time there because we were scheduled into a session at Keleidoscope.

 Keleidoscope is a fun area to go in and use your creativity to create art.  The kids had a blastcreating superhero capes and puzzles.

 We walked down the skywalks that led to Union Station.  One skywalk had an amazing view of the Kansas City skyscape.

 This is the roof in Union Station.  Beautiful!

 On the way back to the van we found this amazing gingerbread house display!  Unbelievable!!

 

We also got to spend New Year's Eve with the Jensen Family.  We had a ham dinner and then did the Jensen's tradition of donuts on a string.

Christmas

This Christmas we stuck close to home and enjoyed the fact that our kids are at really fun ages for Christmas morning.  I got the boys these Imaginext space shuttles that I've been eyeing since last Christmas.  Unfortunately I wasn't willing to pay the steep $45 price tag.  Then I watched as they slowly climbed down the clearance ladder at Wal-mart.  When they were $19, I decided the boys would both love them so I snatched up two of them, took them home, and realized I hadn't saved myself any money. :-D

 We started Christmas morning opening our stockings.  Gracen seemed especially excited to see candy in the stockings.

 When we were almost through opening presents, I realized that Gracen was making the rounds, unwrapping every piece of candy she could find on the floor.  I scooped up what I could find that was left and put it on the table for the boys to enjoy later.  Unfortunately, while I later went upstairs to get ready for church and while Jaron was on Skype with his family, Gracen climbed up on the table and polished off the rest of the Christmas candy.  Nice, Gracen!

Fortunately, the boys didn't notice.  They were too into their new play things.  

Sometimes we all opened gifts at the same time.

 And sometimes we were patient and went one at a time.

 However it worked, we all had a great Christmas morning.  We went to church and enjoyed the music and words of the scriptures that reminded us of the real reason for the season.  

The kids' favorite gifts seem to be the boys' space shuttles and Gracen's garage-sale kitchen set. 

I am discovering a most wonderful side-effect from Christmas.  This week has been so pleasant at our house!  The kids have been pre-occupied with their new things, which translates into less boredom, less fighting, and more imagination.  Awesome.

I hope I never forget...

...that Gracen says "I lub you, mom" every night as I tuck her in and leave her bedroom and that all through the season, every time she saw a Christmas tree she yelled out "Happy tree!"