Poisonous Love

A fun little video done with a friend from highschool.

Our upbeat, happy mix of party rockin’ beats are guaranteed to make you smile. You will find all things high energy, big beat and fun from nu disco electro pop to uptempo vintage vibes. Each track is infused with an electric, lively, joyful beat.

And finally a commercial using our music-


And a film trailer using another piece of our music.

When Daddy Gets Home

When One Door Closes

We were babysitting my nephew and the girls got into an argument and started crying.  When he saw me hugging both of the crying girls- Thing 1 burst into tears and wanted in on the hugs too.  So Two Fish took pictures of me trying to hold the three of them in my lap as we all hugged each other.  I have a lot of people to love.

 

In a few days our adoption file at LDS Family Services will expire.  It will be the first time in seven years that I'm not busy getting adoption paperwork done and frantically scrubbing my house for a home check.   There was a three month break in between Red Fish's finalization and when I started the paperwork again for approval before she turned one.  There was another break while I was pregnant with New Fish but we still had to keep our file updated during that time.  So it has been seven years of obsessing about profile pictures and checking the stats on our profile and website.  Seven years of thinking, wishing and hoping.  It was all worth it to have Red Fish join our family.  I don't regret a day of it.  I'm sad it's going to be over.

We aren't going to continue down this road anymore because it isn't working.  It's our decision and I feel like it's time to close this particular door but it is just so hard to actually do it.  I keep bursting into tears just thinking about it.  It has been a rough morning/mourning.  It isn't giving up on another baby yet.  It's just choosing some other options for now but I really hate the feeling of closing a door.  Sad and happy at the same time is a familiar emotion.

When I look around at my life, I am keenly aware of how lucky I am.  It's amazing to me that my Heavenly Father has trusted me with these two little girls.  I get to be their Mom.  I get to hold them and love them and care for them to the best of my abilities.  They have promised to stay my babies forever even if they insist on continuing to grow up at an insane speed.

K is for King and Q is for Queen

New Fish's Princess and the Pea

 Today in preschool we talked about the letters K and Q.  We made them into royalty.  We looked at some pictures of kings and queens around the world and talked a little bit about what they do in real life.  The kids were not impressed as the reality did not match up with their own ideas about royalty.  New Fish didn't think most of the pictures were fancy enough. Our main theme was fairytales, which was perfect for New Fish right now.  She is fairytale obsessed.  She has a book that my Mother in law gave her that she pours over multiple times a day.  We read fairytales together on a almost daily basis and I think the girls know many of them by heart. 

This morning, we started with The Princess And The Pea.   The kids illustrated the story by using fabric scraps as the mattresses and drawing a sleeping princess on top. 

Red Fish's Princess and the Pea

 The favorite story of the day was The Three Little Pigs. We acted it out and then made a little collage of the three houses out of yarn, popsicle sticks and cardstock "bricks."  We also built castles out of blocks and did some singing and spent time playing in the sensory bin.  Not a ton of pictures this week.

Red Fish's Three Little Pigs

New Fish's Three Little Pigs

Snow, Snow & More Snow

 

Our lives revolve around the snow right now.  We went skiing in a whiteout blizzard on Saturday.  The kids loved it and we drank a lot of hot chocolate.  We have been shoveling snow every single day and the kids are out there right next to their Dad with their little red snow shovels.  THey have attempted to ride their bikes and pulled the wagon up and down the street.  We have been out sledding with friends.  Our snow clothes are constantly on a drying rack in the middle of our family room.  We never get a chance to put them away because they are always wet from some sort of snow related activity.  I guess we are at least enjoying the winter!

More Dinosaur Week

 We have been loving dinosaur week.  We go to the dinosaur museum frequently because we have a membership but yesterday's visit was the first time my kids have been really interested in reading the plaques and learning about the different dinosaurs.  It was fun.  Today New Fish went to Buddy B's house for school and they had more dinosaur fun.  I thought C's sensory box was epecially fun with all of the tile spacer Xs. 

They also made dinosaur feet out of shoe boxes.  New Fish made her feet into monsters.

Red Fish

Red Fish started piano lessons a few weeks ago.  She loves it so far and begs me to practice with her.  She is doing a group class with a couple of friends and so far I think the program is pretty interesting.  A lot of our neighbors go to the same music program.  It involves a lot of ear training and theory but at a very relaxed pace.  Everything is very child friendly and easy for Red Fish to understand and enjoy.  It will be fascinating to see how things continue.  It's exciting to see her starting on an instrument.  Music has had such a profound impact on my life, I'm excited to see where it takes Red Fish.

I always have to keep Red Fish busy.  Her little mind moves so fast.  She learns things quickly and easily and I really enjoy her thirst for knowledge.  It's hard to keep up with her.

We have been doing speech again for the past 5 months with a new therapist this time and we work daily at home but not for as long as we used to.  Speech is so much less stressful than it used to be.  We are closer to home, it isn't quite as intense and  Red Fish is doing fabulously.  We have almost nailed "sh" "l" and her multi-syllable words are so much better articulated.  She hardly ever drops syllables now.  When she was tested in October for "j" and "ch" she couldn't even pronounce them in isolation but now she is starting to add them into conversation on her own.  She is at 100% on "th" when we quiz her and she is just working on getting the percentage up in normal conversation.  We just started really drilling on "ch" and she is doing awesome.  It's so exciting to see all of her progress.  It really is miraculous how much progress she has made in the last few years of speech therapy.  I'm so proud of her.  I guess it's difficult to understand the depth of my excitement and pride when she is articulate and talks so much unless you know how much work serious speech therapy is.  I have a small circle of friends and family who really get how huge her accomplishments really are or how much work she has had to put in.  Our hurdles aren't nearly as big anymore and the battles we are fighting are so much smaller than they used to be.  It's difficult for me to stop myself from grabbing people by the ears and shouting- "Did you hear how well she articulated that sentence?  Aren't you excited about how easy that was to understand?"

X Is For Extinct and Excavation

Today we talked about the letter X and dinosaurs.  Our nursery rhyme was A Hunting We Will Go.  We started with our calendar and sang the days of the week and months of the year and read several dinosaur books.  We read out of the USbourne children's encyclopedia, read a few online books from Two Fish's tablet, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight and How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas. We looked at a lot of dinosaur pictures and tried identifying their main features.

For music time we are going to start using the children's song dice I made a couple years ago one at a time.  The songs we started with are Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Ring Around The Rosie, The Bear Went Over The Mountain, London Bridge, I've Been Working On The Railroad, and Bingo.   We use instruments, the parachute and rainbow streamers and have a lot of fun.

 We played a game of memory with dinosaur cards.

 We did a bunch of prewriting worksheets.  The kids love drawing with the markers.  We also talked about the same vs. different and the kids did some little exercises.  We practiced patterning and sequencing with some cute laminated printables from here.  We practiced counting to 12 and recognizing the numbers 1-12 by counting dinosaurs.

 Next we talked about paleontologist and practiced opening a "fossil" made out of salt dough with a plastic dinosaur inside.  They loved this.

Then we did a dinosaur dig in a bin full of wheat.  They were digging for paper dinosaur bones, plastic dinosaurs and the letter x (for extinct and excavation) that were made out of pipe cleaners.  They loved this project.  They would scream every time they found something and they were very meticulous with their little paint brushes and shovels. 

 When they had found all of the bones and letter X they attempted to reassemble the bones into a dinosaur on a piece of paper.  Their dinosaurs were pretty creative.  We finished up by letting the kids play with all of our dinosaur toys and doing a dinosaur puzzle.

 It was a good dinosaur day.  I'm sure we will make it to the dinosaur museum this week.

 We had to repeat most of the books and activities when Red Fish came home.  She also loved opening her fossil and doing a dinosaur dig.  We also spent some time singing and playing with the parachute.  The kids love that parachute.

Blurry Dance Party

 Sometimes when Two Fish comes home from work we break into a family dance party.  That's how we roll.

Raising Girls Who Ski

 Today we skied with the girls and Two Fish and I took turns doing runs higher up on the hill.  When I am a single rider on a busy ski day, I end up riding the lifts with people from all over the country.  It's interesting to jump into conversations with them on a myriad of topics. I find that skiers are generally interesting and pleasant (at least those who have moved beyond their teens.) It is never dull to have these random 10 minute chats with perfect strangers I will never see again.

One man that I rode up with was talking with me about raising daughters.  He came from a family of all boys and has one little girl in the middle of a pack of boys, all of whom are skiers.  We chatted about how much confidence and love of adventure can be cultivated through learning to ski as a little girl.  He was telling me that when he and his wife were expecting their daughter they felt like they need to totally readdress their parenting and what they would want out of life for their daughter.  They came to the conclusion that they wanted the same things for their daughter as they did for their sons.  They wanted her to be tough, brave, smart and have the confidence to take on anything.

That confidence to take on any obstacle or goal is something I have thought a lot about while raising my daughters.  I really don't want them to grow up wussy.  I want them to know they can do anything they put their mind to.  I don't want them to be afraid to try new things.  I want them to be tough, brave and feminine.  I want them to be proud to be girls.  I want them to be smart and well educated.  I want so much for them.  Obviously they can be all of these things without learning to ski but it certainly doesn't hurt.

 It was a beautiful day on the mountain.  Presidents Day is the biggest ski day of the year but the crowds didn't bother us too much.  New Fish doesn't need us to hold onto her harness anymore and we are just using the leashes to help guide her and keep her from falling too hard.  She is started to make turns on her own although it is much easier for her to turn right than left.  It will come to her.  Mostly, I'm just happy that she is so excited about it and willing to try it over and over.  She kept asking me: "Am I skiing great Mom?" or "Was that a great fall Mom?"  She totally crashed in the afternoon and took a long nap in the lodge while Two Fish and I took turns skiing.

We took a couple of runs with Red Fish at the end of her ski lesson.  She has made so much improvement over the past few weeks.  It's amazing.  She is zipping down green circles and a few easy blue squares.  Today she was taking all of these side paths through the trees and going off jumps.  It was a little scary to watch her.  She is going to be such an awesome little skier.  She is well on her way to be just the kind of woman I hope she will be.

I love sharing this sport with my family.  It brings back a lot of fun memories of being a kid and skiing with my Dad and brothers.  (We still ski together sometimes.) All of those good times skiing with my family are a big part of the reason that the mountains are my happy place in all four seasons.

Forts

Good Saturdays involve forts built from furniture and blankets.

Uncle Lawrence

2008

2006

Uncle Lawrence-We love you.  You will be missed.

Bowling

 We went bowling for the first time with friends and Thing 1.  The girls loved it.  They loved the shoes, the pizza, the heavy balls, everything about it.  New Fish was everyone's cheerleader.

She insisted on carrying her own ball even though I was freaked out she would get her toes smashed.

Little S declared bowling "a horrible sport".  Lol.

This little guy mostly stuffed his face with pizza and cheered for everyone.  He had a blast.

Happy Valentines Day

Love dinner 2013

Today is the 10th anniversary of when Two Fish asked me to marry him.  He asked me with a "marry me" sweetheart candy taped to flowers.  This year he gave me more flowers with sweethearts taped to them.  I'd say yes all over again in a heartbeat.  I'm lucky to have him.

We had our annual Love dinner last night.  We've done it every year since Red Fish was born.  Our meal didn't start out as I had hoped (does anything when you have little kids?) but after everyone settled down, we had a great night. We always decorate and try to make it special with fancy drinks, food, treats, candles, etc. and this year was no exception.  We even had fancy cupcakes from a local shop that everyone got to choose their own flavor (mine was gluten free.) I used to hate Valentines day and think it was just a commercialized excuse for a holiday.  Now that I have my three Valentines and an opportunity to celebrate how much I love them, I see Valentines Day completely differently.  I adore my little family.

We didn't get to delivering all of our Valentines this year but the girls went to a cute little party with their friends to celebrate and Red Fish took Valentines to school.  We decided to call that good enough.  Sometimes it is more important to go with the flow.
2012
2011
2010
2009

Hair Stories

 I've let my kids use scissors pretty freely. We've had a lot of discussions about hair stylist going to school to learn how to cut hair properly and that we never cut our own hair.  Apparently the message did not get through to my girls.  They cut their hair off.  I'm not sure why I was so shocked.  I probably should have been expecting this day.  New Fish cut some of her hair to only a couple of inches (I considered crying) and Red Fish cut a big chunk out of hers.  It was unfortunate.  Luckily we had a stylist fix them up and they both look pretty cute.

New Fish was a little devastated when she figured out that we were going to have to cut her hair short.  We added a pink streak and now she is happy.

Red Fish refused to look at the camera- apparently her Mom takes too many pictures :)