Sister love and random fun.

I hope that it never goes away as they get older because they are such good friends right now and it makes me so happy. They don't want to see the other one sad and want to do everything they can for each other. Sometimes LC wants to hold on a little longer than Lilly, hence the fact it looks like she's pushing her away, but they first thing she always says to me when I get her from daycare is Colista? and is ready to go get her sister.

Sorry about the sideways picture, I can't get it to rotate at the moment.

Lilly is a monkey and can climb right up the back of my couch, which I"m not sure if you can tell or not, but is quite straight and higher than normal couches. After this day is when I made my decision to rearrange my frontroom and have the couch away from the window so it's not quite so tempting to climb on the couch. So far it's working, we'll see if it lasts.

Lilly's hair is getting longer. (It's even longer now), but this was too funny to not take a picture of.

Simple joys

This summer one random Saturday we were over at my Mom and Dad's and decided to pull out the sprinkler and play in it.

LC has a grand time.

Lilly didn't last very long as it was nap time.

So of course we had to do it another time. This time we had cousins here to join in the fun.

I forgot how fun little things like that can be. (I know I've posted about this, but I wanted to share some pictures, as they are way cute :))

Lilly's Birthday

My baby turned 1 on May 5!! Last minute I wanted something with a 1 one it, so I threw a crown together and now it has become tradition becasue LC has decided that if it's your birthday, you're supposed to have a crown. (She even talked about Grandpa needing one, but wasn't too adament).

There she is with her birthday cake, she wasn't sure what I was doing when I was trying to get her to blow her candles out.

And was quite fascinated with the candle. She decided she definetly like the cake though. Tried to dig right in.


After cake it's time for presents.

She was very good about handing me all the wrapping as she pulled it off. Made clean up easy for me.I love that little girl and I can't believe how fast time has flown.

Since I'm several months late here's the latest picture I have of what she looks like today.

Really behind!

So life has been a little crazy. I haven't posted in awhile. I will be doing several different post to try to lessen confusion. :)

Fairy daycare teachers

So awhile ago we had gotten a little craft kit to make flower fairies basically out of pipe cleaners and flower petals and LC wanted to make them yesterday so we pulled them out. Well I finished the first one and gave it to her and she decided it was Miss Jody (the cook at her daycare) and then we had to make a fairy that could be each of the teachers at daycare. Miss Debbie the director, Miss Wendy, Miss Bobbi, Miss Kari, and Miss Ericka all got designated as to what Fairy they were. Luckily there were 6 fairies to make in the kit and there are 6 people that work at her daycare. Then she procedded to have Miss Jody make dinner for everyone else. It was so cute!

Let's try again

I have been having problems posting lately. I have tried to post this several times last week and was unsucessful.

Lilly finally got a tooth!!! Last Tuesday the 20th we went over to my mom and dad's and we discovered that she had finally broken a tooth through. And she has been a much happier girl, it's been wonderful for her and mommy.

She is also trying really hard to talk lately. She's in the stage where if you know her and see her a lot (or are her mom :)) then you can understand quite a few things, but they aren't really clear words yet. Her latest word is shoes. She has decided that she is always supposed to have shoes on. I guess it just took finding the right ones, because I have never been able to keep any shoes or socks for that matter on her before. I got her some sandals and some tennis shoes and she thinks something is wrong if she doesn't have one of them on. The other day she fell asleep before she got jammies on so she was asleep in her clothes and shoes. When she woke up in the middle of the night, when I was calming her down, I took her shoes off and she got really mad at me. Crazy girl!

Other words she's saying now are night-night, bye-bye, momma, grandpa, grandma, Ericka (her daycare teacher) cup (or sometimes ba-ba still referring to her cup), and my favorite is still Colista. She doesn't call her LC which seems easier for a little kid to learn to me, but it's so cute the way she says Colista. I can't help but smile. And she says love you with hugs and an ahhh. It just makes my day. :)

...This is my sacred beauty.

LC has an amazing memory for music and songs for a 2 year old and lately the song she has wanted to sing is I Love to See the Temple. She does really well and can pretty much sing the entire song, but the was she does the last few lines makes me smile every time. It's supposed to be: I'll prepare myself while I am young, this is my sacred duty. She sings, I'll prepare myself while I am YUM, this is my sacred BEAUTY.

I love that little girl!

I need to work on this whole blogging thing...

So once again, I have not been keeping up on my blog. I'm working on getting better I promise. In the meantime, I thought I'd do a quick update about our weekend. It was Memorial Day weekend and we had a lot of fun. Saturday my plan was to just stay home and play and work on getting my house cleaned up. I had a very productive morning and then realized that I was wanting to put away the rest of the winter clothes, but all I have is boxes that are taken down with no packing tape to put them together, so I called my mom and asked if she had any that I could use and she said sure, come on over and get it. Well, we went over and then I was playing outside with the girls while my mom and dad did yard work and my mom mentioned taking the hose out and playing in the water, and we decided to run home and get swiming suits and get out the sprinkler and really have fun. (for anyone that isn't aware, I live a mile and half away from my mom, so it's easy to run over and back.) So the afternoon went to running in the sprinklers and it was really fun. I decided one of the best perks of having kids is you get to be a kid again and experience all the little fun things that you forgot about. Lilly didn't last very long as it was naptime right after we started playing, but she crashed and then I just played with LC. Then she watered Grandma's flowers and thought it was the greatest thing. The rest of the day and then Sunday when we went over to their house for Sunday dinner, she kept talking about how the flowers were thirsty and we gave them a drink and made them happy. Sunday was a pretty typical Sunday except I didn't have to worry about getting up the next morning since I had it off work. Monday we went to our ward activity which consisted of a short memorial service and then a service project. I didn't really do much but watch the girls, but I think they enjoyed themselves for the most part. I didn't like the trek I had to take for a potty run, but oh well, such is life. Then Monday we went to my mom and dad's again and helped then get ready for a BBQ where we had several friends over and had a pretty good time. So I had a great weekend, hope everyone else did too.

My baby's turning one!!!

Where did the time go? Lilly's 1st birthday is Wednesday and it seems like she was just born. She is such a fun baby. I love her beautiful red hair, and will never forget that is the first thing my doctor said to me when she was being born was to ask me if I wanted to know what color hair she had. At the moment I didn't care I just wanted her to be born and done with labor, but I have fallen in love with her red hair, and now that it's getting longer, it looks like she's going to have curls in the back like her big sister. Yay! I love it. I get to fulfill my wish that I have always had for pretty curly hair through my girls. It's for sure they didn't get it from me since my hair is very straight and while it will take curls very easily, it's a whole different matter to keep the curls from falling out for more than a couple of hours. But at least I get to enjoy my beautiful girls' curls. :) Lilly is a very busy baby and can crawl seemingly at the speed of light. She is at the point that she has taken a few tentative steps several different times, but doesn't seem very interested at the moment, she knows that she can go faster crawling and is happy with that and I'm not pushing it too hard, it seems like my baby is growing up so fast. Also her focus seems to be on figuring out how to talk. She is constantly babbling and making little baby sounds and I just love it. My favorite is when she tries to say her big sister's name (Colista), all that really comes out is a c sound and some kind of ta, but it's adorable. All you need to do to make her day is just sit and "talk" with her. She just lights up. She is also learning to communicate without words. She makes it pretty clear what she wants. This weekend we went to Michigan to my sister's new baby Susan's blessing and on the way there, she picked up the can of formula that was sitting next to her and threw it towards me in the front seat. That was her way of saying, "Mom I want a bottle!" She will point and grunt and physically make her wants known as well, or turn away or push what she doesn't want away. Holding little baby Susan made me really realize how much much she has really grown. Hopefully soon she'll actually have some teeth as well. She's following the same trend LC did who didn't get her first tooth until she was 13 month old and now at 2 1/2 still has her eye teeth to get in. My Lilly's not really a baby anymore, she's toddler. It has been a crazy year and I am so blessed to have such an amazing little girl in my life, as long as her basic needs are taken care of and nothing it wrong, she is pretty much the happiest girl on the planet. She has such a sparkle and glow and brings such joy into our home and lives. I can't imagine life without my little Lilly and am so glad she's mine!

Easter and Misouri

Over Easter weekend we went down to Missouri to my Grandparent's house and it was way fun. Here is LC dying the Easter eggs:

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to post and I want to get some pictures up while I have my mom and dad's computer available to do it, so I'll just be putting lots of pictures with little detail and hopefully will be able to post some more info later.





Those were all from the Easter egg hunt we had on Saturday. My cousin who lives close to my Grandparent's came over and we had an egg hunt with all of our kids. It was fun.

I've been neglectful.

Life has been a little crazy the last little while and I haven't really posted anything for awhile. Both LC and Lilly are growing like crazy. Somedays I swear I blink and they are bigger or acting more grown up. Lilly is trying to talk now. She is trying to say Colista. It's so cute. LC is not a morning person and I hate waking her up in the morning because she is always crabby. So one day I just let Lilly wake her up and I guess she's been watchiing me, cause I'll sit next to her and say Colista, Colista, LC, etc as I'm waking her up. Well, Lilly basically climbed on top of her and said her little version of Colista. Pretty much a C sound and then TA, but it's cute and she knows what she's saying. (or trying to say I guess).

One of the reasons I haven't been posting as much, is I told myself that I was going to keep this blog upbeat and about happy things about me and the girls, and the last few weeks have had some difficulties in them. But just in the last little while, things are taking a turn for the better, my divorce is final, so no more dealing with the courts and paperwork and red tape, and I bought a car! I'm so excited. The airbag light wouldn't go off, so the dealer is getting that fixed and he'll call me when it's done. Hopefully Thursday will be when I get to take it home. It's a good day. Yay!

Valentine's Day and a few updates

I realized it's been awhile since I posted anything. Life has been a little crazy.

So, I'm sure not surprisingly, I wasn't looking forward to Valentine's Day this year, but it actually turned out really great. Friday night I had my dad's car and I knew that I needed to get valentines for LC to take to daycare on Monday, so we went to the store, and they had some good sales, so I got new valentines shirts for the girls, they looked way cute if I do say so myself. :) Then as we were getting ready to go check out, we walked by one of the card displays that they put in the middle of the isle and there was a card with Cinderella on and LC pulled it out and sings the enitre song "A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes" right there in the store to Cinderella. It was adorable. Then we get home and in front of our door there was a package. It was from the Friel aunts, uncles, and cousins with a letter in there from Grandma and Grandpa Friel as well. To any of you that read this, Thanks!! It was really sweet and the girls loved it. You did get sizes right on the clothes and I did get some pictures taken and I'll try to get them posted so you can see. And since there were clothes, LC had to immediatly try them on. (Anytime there are new clothes we have to try them on, she is all girl) Then Sunday since we had a box of 32 valentines for LC's daycare class of 6, I decided to take some for her to give to her nursery class too. I had her give them out herself and I told her to say Happy Valentines Day and she went up to everyone and just said Happy Valentines, it was cute. Then the girls had their daycare party on Monday and they had the babies "make" little frames and flower arrangements (fake) to give to their moms. And then Colista's class had a single flower (fake) and made "leaves" with two of her handprints glued together. It was really cute. However LC has decided that they are all her flowers and will get them down anytime she gets her eyes on them, and get really mad at me if I don't let her have them. So while not what traditionally comes to mind as a good Valentines Day, this year was great and I feel so blessed to have two such amazing girls in my life and that I get the opportunity to be their mom.

On a not so happy note, I took the girls back in for their follow up for their ear infections again and LCs ears still looked pretty bad, so we get to go see the specialist. We'll see if she wants to do tubes or what direction we're going, only time will tell. Lilly's ears looked clear when we went in except one of her ears had a lot of fluid that the doctor was worried would easily turn into an infection. Well last Wednesday (it was Monday we went to the doctor) I got a call from the daycare that she was acting like she had an ear infection, so she's on another medication and will have a follow up with the regular doctor and hopefully at least she will be done with all of this. I ready to be done with ear infections, I've decided we've had more than our fair share at our house and it's someone else's turn, but I guess life doesn't work like that, so we'll just keep working on getting the girls better.

One of the reasons life has been so busy lately is I took on being the teacher for a rs meeting that is going to be this week for quiet books and I wanted to get one all made so I knew what I was doing before I tried to teach someone else. I didn't realize how difficult crafts can be with little helpers. It's been interesting. I've adapted trying to do as much as I can after the girls go to bed because it's really so much easier. Well, I'm not quite there, but close finally, so hopefully I will at least be mostly finished on Thursday when the meeting is. So wish me luck on that one we'll see how it goes.

Toddler Speak

So LC is really getting very talkative and I decided that one of my favorite things is the little quirky things she says. I've decided to try to think of as many as I can.

• Paper toilet instead of toilet paper
• One of the characters from her favorite TV show Backyardigans is Uniquewa (not quite sure how to spell that one) and since she's understanding the whole me you context, she calls her MY-nequa
• Her favorite game lately is to call someone the wrong name and then tell you it's wrong. i.e. Mom you're not Grandma? Then if other people are there she cycles - Grandpa you're not Grandma?, Lilly you're not Grandma? and then finally Grandma you're Grandma? And it's always spoken like a question, but she giggles afterwords, so she's fully aware of what's going on.
• She feels it's very important to establish that I'm her Momma. When I pick her up from daycare, and when I drop her off sometimes too, she feels the need to make sure that whoever she is playing with at the moment knows that I'm her Momma, not theirs. She has decided that it's okay that I'm Lilly's momma too, so at least there's not that issue. i.e. Jordon, that's MY Momma! but not angry just informative and always excited
• With this being the first Christmas that she really understands enough to be really involved and whenever Santa was brought up, she would say at least Ho, Ho, Ho! and at least half of the time add on a Merry Christmas.
• She loves music and has gotten to the point that she can actually sing some songs, she can sing Twinkle, twinkle little star, the ABCS, and the Wheels on the bus without help and a good number of other songs, she knows parts of and will join in while you're singing. Oh she also knows A Dream is Wish Your Heart Makes from Cinderella fairly well and can almost sing it on her own.
• If she wants to be held or carried, she always says, Momma hold you. Or Momma carry you, meaning Momma carry me, but while she understands me and you fairly well, she hasn't completely connected it to this yet, but she has said it right once or twice, so I'm guessing it won't be long before this is obsolete.
• She finally is calling Lilly her sister, while it just used to be My Lilly. While I loved that too, there is something really endearing about her talking about her sister. Last night at bedtime she was mad at me because I was making her stop and go to bed and she needed her sister to help her feel better by giving her a love, but she wanted to hold on a whole lot longer than Lilly was interested in. Although Lilly was interested in it for a few minutes and for an eight month old baby, that's pretty good.
• Just in the last couple of days she figured out I missed you. My dad is still giving us rides to and from work and daycare. Last night when I picked them up from daycare, we went out to the car and she ran to Grandpa and said "I missed you Grandpa" and just wanted him to hold her. He told her he missed her too. Then it was the night my girls spend at my parents house and when they came home and I was putting them in bed, she gave me a big love and said "I missed you too Momma" (before I said I missed you)
• Pretty much without fail when I first put her in bed and am trying to get her to settle down and go to sleep, she'll have to go potty. Well a few times I've said, you better hustle, and told her to go. So now, after I tell her to go ahead and go to the potty, she stops, looks back at me and says, "I hustle."
• She will sometimes fake cry and I was getting really frustrated with it one day, so I started doing it with her. She looks at me and in a fake sad crying voice tells you "You Alright" and then I did the same to her and now it has turned into a game for her. Lately she's added telling me "I Sad"
• "Thank you so much"
• When she's on the potty and lets out a little gas, she say excuse my bum-bum and giggles

I'm sure there's so many more that I can't think of right now, and I really should get back to work, but one of the greatest things about how she talks is unless she's upset about something or really tired, everything is wonderful and exciting. She talks so dramatically, everything is just completely wonderful. Her attitude is infectious and keeps me happier and more positive as well.

LC vs Colista

I just realized that anyone reading this that isn't familar this would be confused. I believe that anyone that reads this will know, but better safe then sorry. My oldest daughter's name is Colista, but when she was a new baby I was living at my mom and dad's house and her name is Colista. Since it is such an unusual name, she had never really dealt with anyone else having her name, so she would always answer when we were talking to the baby. Well, to compensate we started calling her Little Colista, but it was quite a mouthful for such a little girl. Then one day my brother Joe just said why don't we call her LC for Little Colista and it kind of stuck. I tend to sometimes refer to her as Colista and sometimes as LC, so in case there was any confusion, LC and Colista and the same person, LC is just her nickname.

Trying to get back to normal

Well, I'm back at work for the first full week for the last little while due to the holidays. We had a really good Christmas despite the lack of sleep. We stayed over at my Mom and Dad's for Christmas so we could do Christmas morning together and then over New Year's we went to my sister's house in Michigan. Well, Colista apparently doesn't go to bed when we're not a home. Christmas Eve I didn't get to start doing Santa until 10:30 pm because it took her that long to go to sleep and being in a strange bed, I had to stay with her until she was really good and asleep. Then she didn't sleep well at my sister's house either. Good thing that we had a 4 hour drive home for her to get a good nap or she might have become a little terror. LC loved Christmas and had fun with everything, it was really fun to watch her. She helped Lilly open some presents and really just enjoyed everything. After all the craziness was done, apparently she needed to just have some calm as she took her barbie doll into the other room and was just sitting there on the floor. As most people know when you can't see a two year old and it's quiet, you tend to worry cause usually they're doing something they shouldn't be, so my dad went looking for her. Well he found he in the back room just sitting on the floor and when he asked her what she was doing, she told him "I'm sitting Grandpa."

We did fight sick again in between Christmas and New Years. Lilly got really sick and I ended up taking her into the doctor and she was having a severe reaction to the antibiotic she was one for her ear infection. She is doing much better now, so we're good now.

New Years we went to Michigan to my sister's house and it was a lot of fun. My sister has three boys and a girl and LC and Emma had so much fun together. Last night I was kind of prepping her that we were going back to daycare so hopefully we wouldn't have a really bad adjustment, and I was talking about her friends that were going to be there and she tells me "and my friend Emma". Emma is 5 and was really good and playing with her and taking care of her, it was fun to watch.

Now we get to try to get back into our regular routine and get used to normal life again. Wait what am I talking about, there's no such thing as normal. So I guess we'll get ready for the next crazy thing to happen and hoepfully be ready for it.