Party prep is sometimes just as much fun as the party itself!
The anticipation for the cake is almost too much to handle!
We're a little bit of a sweaty mess here, but who cares about that when it is finally time to eat the cake?!
And it is going to be hard to convince her that we don't open presents everyday. She is so happy that everybody loves her so much!
One of those cute, sisterly love moments to hold on to!
We're still working on that modesty concept. It's twice as hard when dancing, because without a partner, one must dance with one's skirt.
The girls were pretty excited when Nana and Bopa showed up. And mom was relieved that there was somebody else to help chase down wanderers! Plus they brought snacks.
Loving my girlies!
Clever Girl.
We went to Lincoln City and the girls LOVED searching for sea "aminals" on the rocks. Apparently we have entered the "I'm going to take every pretty (stinky) shell or rock home with me" stage, but as we don't have room for a beach at home, I dumped them all out. Shh. Here the girls are trying to figure out why they can't pull these shells off the rocks.
And, true to her nature, Meri went to town poking the little sea anemones. She just laughed and laughed as they squished and closed up. Hopefully they all recover. She hasn't quite grasped the meaning of the word "gentle." Jell, as expected, was quite a bit more difficult to convince, but she finally worked up the nerve after learning that Nemo lives in an anemone.
I love this picture! That's Grandpa, cousin Taylor and her friend in the distance. It looks to me like Meri's wistfully watching, wishing she knew how to say "hey come back. Wait for me - I'm a big kid too!"
The world's largest crabs - Japanese spider crabs.
And Meri really needs to work on her "chomping" monster face.
It really was pretty cool to touch everything, and of course, to walk through the shark tunnel. Jell's favorite were the jellys. I, on the other hand, have to agree with the little Geico guy. Jellys are really weird. I mean, where even is their face?
And Meri's favorite was probably the sucker Grandma and Grandpa bought her. In this picture, she was pointing out to us that drool was dripping off her chin. Lovely.
Is there any doubt that she's having fun? Jenelle thinks this picture is hilarious. When I asked why, she just said, "because it's me laughing." I thought it might have been the fact that she had no hair but still looks like her.
If you can, take a look at that smirk on her face. She has always been crazy expressive. My mom used to complain that I never had nice, smiling pictures of my baby.
A great (and rare) cute picture of the girls together, getting along in tight quarters, at the gallery.
This was taken when Jenelle was 6 weeks old, when we were enjoying and suffering from new parents' syndrome.
And this is an awesome picture Chris took in Mexico of Meri and a cute little boy named Henry, who kept trying to sell us bracelets when he wasn't busy wooing Mers. They sat there together forever, just content. But I love how in this picture it's like they're wondering why they look so different from each other.
Now this is super cute because it was them chilling on a lazy Saturday morning. Might not be the best thing to be teaching the kiddies, but hey.
This may only be funny to me, but Jell put this little guy in time-out for slicing her finger. Of course, for him to do his little karate chop motion, Jenelle had to be pushing the lever. Poor little guy. That's what he gets for not being the girl toy we asked for in the Happy Meal.
And wahoo! An extremely rare picture of all four of us! This was during the ward's 4th of July kids' "parade" in the church parking lot. The rode around in circles for forever, led by the Webbs (former bishop, empty nester couple) riding a tandom bike with matching polka dot helmets.
I think we now have every color of wood in one room! And stuffed animals filling up every empty space, and the dress-ups taking up the entire space under the crib.
Although in real life, the walls are blue, not aqua. Weird camera. We also took out all the toys and replaced them with books - in the hopes that if Jenelle can't sleep she'll just read silently to herself. Ha, do you love how naive we are sometimes? Gotta try though, right?
So in an effort to make the transition as smooth as possible, we tired them out on a bike ride, and then tried to wind down with calm, story reading time. So far, pretty good. After we put them to bed, they laughed their heads off for nearly an hour. We finally went in there and, as expected, they were both in the crib. What I hadn't expected was Jenelle to have brought her bed, basically only minus the mattress, into the crib with them. They were even both lying down. Cute! Jenelle had just got tired of their game of Meri stealing her binky. I'm wondering though, did Jell really think she was going to sleep in there? Is that what she thought we meant when we kept talking about how they were going to sleep together in the same room now? Anyway, it's been a few hours and they are actually sleeping. So we'll keep our fingers crossed. I actually never shared a room growing up, and I can't imagine Cooper did, but I've always thought it was probably fun. It's probably a grass is always greener thing. Regardless, if you have any advice about how to make this work best, please share!
While on a date the other day, we ran into the Jeffries, a great young family in our ward. (And might I first say, it has been too long since we got babysitting and actually went out?!) But anyway, Cooper mentioned it was my birthday, which got us talking. She was trying to guess my age, knowing that she had been my YW leader when her oldest daughter (who just turned 10) was born. And he was Coop's YM leader when he was our age exactly. Funny thing is that we are basically at the stage of life they were at then. But the joke's on us because at that time, Cooper and friends, called him "middle-aged," and didn't want him on their team for some athletic event like canoeing because they "wanted somebody young." Aah! The fact that they remember this means he went home and was like, "really? Are we middle-aged already? You've got to be kidding! I thought we were still young and cool?" Or at least, that is what I would say before laughing/crying/pinching myself/ranting and raving/reminiscing over old scrapbooks/wondering what the heck happened. So, although I know that none of you will likely ever read this, I am sorry to any and all of our leaders whom we called old before their time!
So Jenelle wanted to play with play dough, and it looked way too gorgeous to stay inside, so I thought PERFECT! We'll play with the messy stuff outside and I'll have basically no clean-up! No crawling under the kitchen table to chase down small balls so they don't get stuck to the bottom of shoes and tracked all over the house's carpet. Yes! So we set up the umbrella, the outdoor kiddie table and chairs and they went to town. I very quickly realized that somehow, Meri's education has been most seriously neglected. She had never played with play dough before in her entire life! Shocking really. Turns out we haven't play doughed recently, and when we did I saved it for Ms. Everything-Goes-Straight-In-The-Mouth's naptimes. Go figure. Anyway, she sat there eyeing it for the longest time. She watched Jenelle go about her business, eyed it some more, and then very timidly touched it. She looked up to me and I could almost hear her shy little curiousity asking what this strange looking stuff was for (But as Jenelle informs any stranger that asks Meri a question, and even occasionally reminds me, "she don't talk good yet. She don't say any W-ooooooOR
DS."). Anyway, I showed her how she could poke it and leave a finger mark, and tried to make it all sound very exciting in a high-pitched voice. She did it once or twice then looked at me to say, "really, is that it?" Hard crowd. So I rolled it out and cut out a shape for her. Again, just more blank staring. This all from the fearless child at the playground. I picked up the shape, handed it to her. She looked at it, looked at me, and without taking her eyes off of me brought it slowly to her mouth. "No, no Meri, not to eat!" She put it back down and looked at with a bit of a furrowed brow, as if to say, "then what in heaven's name is it good for?" I apologize for the play-by-play, but really, the whole situation was so funny to me. It's like she was waiting for it to jump up and sing and dance for her. Maybe this is what comes from all those interactive toys that light up, spin, giggle, vibrate, sing, and do who knows what else. Anyway, she's a funny girl. She did end up playing with it, but got bored and ended up wandering around the yard searching for ripe strawberries to eat, or flowers to pick. Jenelle did make her some "noodles and worms," and I don't think we should call them noodles anymore. That gives the impression of being edible. The only thing she really got into was pulling a b
ig ball of play dough into small pieces and dropping them all unceremoniously onto the grass. No problem, right? Lesson learned: It is actually more work to clean play dough up off the grass, as it gets all matted-in and one spends all one's time pulling play dough out of grass, and grass out of play dough.
And then Omsi and the dinosaurs the next day on top of all that! What fun?! We don't know how we didn't totally wear you out! Thanks for all the memories and good times!
What I learned yesterday while playing Jell's favorite game of Hungry Hungry Hippos:
