So behind!

I have known that I was a bit behind with my blog.  I have always tried to get things up here quickly so that I don't get backlogged and so that I remember it all, but I knew that lately I have been slipping.  Yesterday I went through all of my SD cards and emptied them, and all of my pictures on the computer.  It turns out that I am even more behind than I thought!  I forgot to post a lot of stuff.

So here goes . . .

February.

Kaitlyn had a gymnastics show.  I know why I didn't put the pictures up right away- I was mad at myself.  I took tons of pictures, and when I zoomed in with my new camera they looked good at a slower shutter speed than I thought I would need.  I thought that was strange, but great, so I went with it.  But when I got home I found out that my intuition was right, and all the pictures are blurry because I didn't just bump up the speed anyway.  Grr.

Anyway, Kaitlyn did great.  She isn't the most driven at gymnastics, but she is improving all the time and she loves it.  What more could we ask for?

Her cartwheel is improving, for sure!

And I think she got the splits all the way down a few weeks after this. (She's on the far right.)

She even had a little solo in the dance they did.  It was cute.

As part of the theme that night, they had each team come and pick up fake trophies.  Kaitlyn decided it was entirely hers.

She wanted to pose with it for quite a while, actually.  Silly girl.

Also in February, she competed in her school's "Storytelling Festival".  I wasn't sure what sort of story she should tell, so I showed her a poem that I memorized when I was her age.  "Eletelephony" is a bit lost on this generation, since it is all about an elephant that gets tangled up in a telephone cord.  But she still loved it, memorized it, and then insisted that she should dress up for the part.

There she is, in grey, elephant ears on a homemade headband, and wrapped in telephone cord that I found buried in a box of old cords.  She did a great job!  Apparently our poem didn't really work, since it didn't have a "beginning, middle and end" layout, but we both learned what it was like.

Jasmine's birthday . . . long ago.

I have been meaning to write this for a month now!  At first, I thought I had written about Jasmine's birthday with the Bryce trip, since her birthday was the day we drove home.  But I figured out that oversight a long time ago, and have been procrastinating for a month.  The blog posts are all piling up in my head.

The day before Daddy went on his business trip I suddenly realized that if we were going to involve him, we had to celebrate either a week early or a week late.  So I told Jasmine we would celebrate her birthday that day, and hurried to get everything ready.  When I told her that she could pick anything she wanted for dinner - going out, or staying in- she picked "chicken nuggets!" Ah, the simple palates of three year olds.  All of the kids also love edamame, so we threw that in too.

And of course, she dressed up for the occasion.  She typically goes through 3 or 4 outfits a day, to be honest.  She is either switching out dress-ups every few hours, or changing because some part of her clothing got slightly wet (she loves to "baaash hands"as long and as often as possible) and wet clothing is totally unacceptable.  This Tiana costume is far too big for her, but that's a small detail to a toddler.

After dinner, it was time for the cake that the kids had helped me make.  Someone gave Kaitlyn this mix for her birthday, and she had been looking forward to making it for Jasmine's birthday ever since.  (I had told her that we could make it when she got it, but making it for Jasmine was Kaitlyn's idea.)

What makes this cake so amazing to my (really easy to please) kids is that it looks normal on the outside . . .

But awesome on the inside!

So much fun.

After cake, we had presents.  We debated on this present, because it was actually something that Kaitlyn begged to get for Christmas.  We snagged this on a Black Friday sale, but Kaitlyn had too many presents already.  We needed one for Jasmine, and since I knew they would both love it,  I warned Kaitlyn ahead of time that it was meant to be shared a bit.

Kaitlyn was, thankfully, a great sport about it when that little puppy was unwrapped, despite how sad she was.  And honestly, I think it did go to the right home.  They both love to play with her, but Kaitlyn doesn't seek out that puppy nearly as much as Jasmine does.  The silly doggy walks, sits and makes cute little noises at random, and has been quite adored around here.  Of course, the app that you can use to feed it makes it even more fun.

Jasmine tried to name her Kylie, after Grandma's white little dog named Kylie Q, but when we told her that name was already taken, she just called it "puppy".

A day or two later, Jasmine and I met some friends at our favorite skating rink.  You pay per age during the day, so I figured I would snag my last chance to pay $2!  For a while, we were actually the only people there.  And that was a good thing, because she had no sense of direction on that scooter.  She just zipped whatever way the wind took her, and the guy that was sweeping the floor dodged the tiny obstacle on each pass.

When we woke up in the Bryce hotel room on her actual birthday days later, I was excited to tell her it was now truly her day.  But she was pretty sure I was pulling her leg.  "NO!  I already have birthday!"  She wasn't wrong, but . . . it was her birthday . . . again.

We talked her into it eventually, but it took some work.  We drove home in time for Sunday dinner at Grandma's house, and Grandma made sure to have a lovely cake ready for her.

The Annual Snapshot:

*I heard someone say the other day that their child "only believes in extreme emotions", and I thought that was a wonderful way to phrase it.  When she is happy, Jasmine is the most sweet and fun and adorable little girl.  And when she is hungry or tired or down with a scraped knee, you will hear her fury a house or two away.  I hope to someday train her to see the good side of life instead of constantly letting tiny things ruin her, but it will be a lifelong process, I'm afraid.

* I will be very sad when we no longer have a toddler to mispronounce everything and make us laugh.  She really doesn't like it when we laugh, but it is just too funny!  For a long time, she said that her name is "Da-fin", and the kids would tell her "Oh!  Hi Dolphin!".  She would jump back "no!  I not do-fin!  I Do-Fin!"  Poor girl.  She has settled on "Jas-fin" now.  She also used to say "don't-nope-know!" instead of "I don't know". and she still believes that all people are "him".  "His need binkie!" she will say when she sees a baby girl crying.

*Another favorite phrase of hers is "you trick me!"  She often says that when people do something she didn't want them to do, but seems to know what a trick is, too.  One evening while I was out at a meeting, Daddy laid down on his stomach to play a game on his iPad.  As usual, the kids all crowded around to watch, and Jasmine perched herself on his back to look over his shoulder.  And then she laid her head down.  And went very still for a long time.  Daddy finally asked Kaitlyn "is she asleep?" and Kaitlyn confirmed that her eyes were closed.  He spent a minute or two wondering how on earth he was going to get a sleeping girl off his back without me at home, when suddenly Jasmine said "I trick -a - you!" and popped up with a smile.  Silly little girl!

*She LOVES Disney Junior.  She would watch "Doc McStuffins" and "Sofia the First" and "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" all day, I'm afraid.  I do try and limit her TV time, but . . . she does love those shows!  And Doc really improved her pediatrician visits.  She screamed all the way through her 2 year visit, but at the 3 year visit she was bouncing up and down with excitement that it was time for her check-up.  And the dentist said they had never had a "happy visit" go so well with someone so young.  Usually they shoot for teaching a kid to open their mouth, but she got a full cleaning and check for cavities.

*She still doesn't want anything to do with potty training.  She has the speech memorized now.  "Mom!  I just peed!  Aww, that's too bad.  Pee goes in a potty.  I should use the toi-let.  Then I be a big girl, and get chocolate."  But now matter how much I offer, she doesn't want to sit on there.  We are going to take a week at the cabin over the summer and just keep her outside, naked, and force the issue, but for now I just sigh.  She hates having a wet diaper on, or even dirt on her hands of any kind, so I really thought she would love it, but it just hasn't clicked yet.

*She still falls asleep anywhere, doing anything.  I should make a side blog entitled "where my kid fell asleep", because I keep waiting to post them all at once and she keeps finding funnier spots to crash!  Here are some of my favorites, though:

(Yes, that is a Costco cart.  She was totally asleep, but I needed to finish the errands.  I noticed my bean bag was in my car, so I put her on that and she slept through the whole trip.)

(She loved seeing Big Hero 6 in the theater . . . until she drifted off.)

 When it is nap time, it is nap time.

*The highlight of her week is the Nursery at Church.  She honestly talks about it all week.  "I go -a nursery?  I need a dress!  I go see my friends!"  And when we pick her up, she tells us all day about how " I color a picture a nursery!!"  Most awesome place ever, clearly!

*Tyler keeps leaving things with me with strict instructions that "you make sure that Jasmine doesn't touch it, okay, Mommy?"  She does tend to ruin things behind his back.  So now Jasmine brings me toys and says "you make Tyler no touch it, 'k Mommy?"  She often sees no difference between herself and the big kids, and gets a little confused when they do things that she is not big enough to do.  Though she will admit "I tiny," with her fingers held up to show how small she is.

She is just such a fun little girl!

Bryce trip

February weekends took a while to plan.

Christopher has been going on weekend trips with his friends for years.  And he has always said that any time I found some friends to go with, I would be able to do the same thing.  Most moms don't have that option very often, so it hasn't really happened.  Until this year!  I finally scheduled with some friends to have a Saturday at our cabin.

And then Christopher found out that he had a business trip scheduled for that same weekend.

A little frustrated that I would have to take the kids on my day off, I saw a Groupon for a hotel deal at Bryce Canyon.  Christopher wasn't as excited about it as I was, because he wasn't sure why we should go down there to spend a weekend in feet of snow.  We do have the same conditions at the cabin, but not nearly the view! And the hotel has an indoor pool for the kids.  I talked him into it, and we booked the trip.

And then his work trip got moved from the weekend of my girl trip onto the weekend of the Bryce trip.  Since we booked through Groupon, we couldn't change dates.  Which meant that everything sadly went perfectly for me and quite terrible for Christopher.  I had a great day off at the cabin with my friends, and then the next week, he got to fly to Pennsylvania and work from dawn until dusk while I had a fantastic time with the kids.

I feel pretty horrible about that.

Thankfully, the kids are old enough that I was fine without his help.  I never once thought "how am I going to make it through this without him?".  But we all missed him dearly.

The trip itself was an adventure, that's for sure.  We have had a shockingly mild winter this year.  If fact, it was warm enough that Jasmine and I have gone on bike trips while the kids were in school.

So while I was reading on Bryce Canyon's website about their Ranger led snowshoe hikes and where you could go cross country skiing, they also said that there was not enough snow for that this year.

As I got closer to the trip and watched the weather forecast, however, that changed.  I ended up taking the kids out of school at lunch time to try and beat the storm that was coming in, and we almost did.  Not quite, but almost.  I could still see the parking lines when we pulled in, but it was coming down pretty hard. The early arrival gave us plenty of time to go swimming and check out the huge gift shop.

After telling them not to touch everything over and over, they were relieved when I realized they couldn't actually break the magnets.  And when I tried to keep moving, I stopped and recognized that they were playing together so well that I let them stay there for a half an hour.

 By the next morning, we were buried with no end in sight.

In fact, the storm was bad enough that we lost power.  When I talked to the man at the front desk, he said that the entire power grid had knocked out all of the Bryce area, and they weren't getting any answer from Zion National Park either.  So we went back to our hotel room for a while and I just decided we needed to go for it.  Blizzard or no blizzard, we came all that way to see Bryce Canyon and I wouldn't be able to find out if the park was open unless I drove the 2 miles down the road to find out.  Snow plows were going by, so we should be fine, right?

There was no one else on the road, so I stopped to take a picture of how crazy this plan was.  I passed through an empty entrance station and went into the visitor's center to find a half a dozen Park Rangers standing around in the dark.  They cheerfully told me that the road was plowed, so I could just go to a lookout point and see what I could see.

Yup.  This was the view from Sunrise Point.  This picture makes laugh every time I look at it.  We could see exactly one hoodoo.

I found other things to take pictures of, of course.

A beautiful snow scene like that is just too fun for anyone holding a camera.  The kids had a lot of fun in the snow, too.

Yummy, yummy snow.

After a bit of walking, we even found a (slightly) better view.

By that point, however, the girls were totally exhausted, so we headed back to our power-less hotel room.  We broke out a Kiwi Crate that I brought along, and those are always a hit.

Tyler was SO excited to spend some of his birthday money on a Sheriff badge with his name on it.  He even wore it to bed that night!

And of course, we had to go swimming again.  We went swimming three times in two days, and the kids loved every second.

I dragged them out of the pool to give the park one more try, and I was so glad I did when we got outside.  Blue skies!  I hurried to the next lookout as fast as we could.

And when we got to the lookout point, Kaitlyn's jaw dropped.  The morning left her a little lost on why Mommy cared so much about this park.  But as she stepped up to the fence she told me "I can see why you wanted to bring us back here!  This is AMAZING!"

It was nice to have the kids on my side.

Riding along as we walked turned out to be exhausting!

More accurately, hotel beds are too much fun to go to sleep on time in, and hiking and swimming twice was exhausting.  She was so asleep that I transferred her out of the carrier, into the car seat, and onto the hotel bed without a peep.  Our luck was so perfect that it started snowing again right as we were driving out of the park.

Over dinner that night, Kaitlyn told me that she was sure she was having more fun that weekend than anyone in her class.  I am SO grateful that I had young kids on this trip, because I could imagine teenagers getting a bit testy when the power went out and we were surrounded by snow!  But to these kids, it was a grand adventure.  

"I'm sure I'm having more fun than even Miss Sharma!" she told me,

"Oh yeah?  Where was Miss Sharma going this weekend?"

Kaitlyn crinkled up her nose.  "Hawaii."

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.  I didn't want to take away the optimism that our trip into a blizzard was better than Hawaii, but it was just too funny!

As a picture-taking crazy person, though, I had to agree that it was an awesome trip.  Even the drive out of the park was too beautiful!  I had to stop a few times for pictures.  

The morning before we left, we headed back to the Visitor's Center to see the movie (now that they had power) and let the kids get their Junior Ranger badges.  And when I tried to get everyone to leave, Kaitlyn told me she wanted to see the museum more! I was so glad.  That's why were were there, after all.  I want our kids to grow up impressed by nature and not just stuck to their screens and busy schedules, hopefully.  We'll just have to go on more trips when Daddy can come too!