Out and About...

Grace and Hattie and I have been on our own for the last couple of days. David has been working morning til night and went almost 48 hours without even seeing the kids. I know lots of women who live like that with their kids regularly because of their husbands jobs. I am very grateful that it only happens rarely with David. We have had some fun on our own though.

On Thursday, our "mom's group" held their monthly field trip. This time, we visited "The Butterfly Place." It was a bit of a drive - definitely out of my 15 minute comfort range, but we did find it and we did leave ourselves enough room to arrive on time. If you have ever been to the Hogle Zoo butterfly tent/atrium they have in the summer, this was very similar (except much more expensive than Hogle Zoo's $1 admission charge for the tent!) Both girls, well all of us, were delighted with the vast number and variety of butterflies in the atrium. There were these huge bird sized ones that had blue on the insides of their wings, but brown camoflauge on the outside. These swooped through the atrium, buzzing past the kids heads, and scared and excited them at the same time. Eventually, they got pretty brave and started landing on us too. Grace was grateful that one didn't land on her, but Hattie and I were excited to have a landing. You had to be careful though, because if you were caught with your hand or arm out encouraging a landing, you were thrown out of the atrium. It was hard to keep yourself from doing it.

Not only were the butterflies beautiful, but so were the plants and flowers in the atrium. Butterflies feed on very pretty things and I have half a notion to put some butterfly attracting plants in my yard this year. Lots of people and places around here do that and it seems to work pretty well.

Yesterday, (a Saturday) David again worked a long day. He hadn't planned on being there that long, or I would have made other arrangements for Harriet and Grace while I did my riding lessons. However, his work just got extended one more hour and one more hour until the kids ended up spending the whole day with me at the barn. We got a foot of snow the night before, so Grace spent most of the time digging through the snow in the arena and making snow castles with her beach gear. She did get to ride Tinky too in the snow and that made the afternoon much more fun. Hattie, bless her soul, hung from her carrier on the front of me for about 4 hours. I got this very cool new carrier a couple of months ago. I absolutely love it! It saved me yesterday for sure. I gave her a couple of short breaks, but she was basically there the whole time. She took a couple of naps that way and I fed her little snacks as we went. She was amazingly good - they both were. I was very grateful for that.

Here is a photo of the barn in the snow. Rita, my friend and boss, is riding her horse Tucker in the picture...We all (David included) arrived home after 5pm exhausted, cold, and a bit disgruntled for various reasons, so we quickly freshened up and went out to dinner. Grace chose "The Quarterdeck" restaraunt - a local favorite seafood place of ours. The kids love going out to eat and making friends with others at the restaraunt. Both of our kids are crowd charmers of sorts and like to be friendly to people. For dinner, Grace ordered her favorites: a cup of clam chowder, and a piece of "pink fish" - salmon. They don't even have salmon on the kids menu, but since neither of us was ordering salmon, we asked the server if they could bring Grace a small piece that didn't cost $18. They obliged and she was thrilled. (What 4 year old would pick a seafood restaurant for dinner and order clam choweder and salmon?) She ate a little too much clam chowder and didn't have room to finish her salmon, but we did bring it home. She is way too funny!

Hang on tight, here we go!

Hattie finally has her own set of transportation... her knees! She has been trying to figure out how to crawl for at least a couple of months and has been scooting around on her bum or whatever to go from corner to corner. Last Saturday, March 3rd, she woke up (in my bed) and I put her down on the ground so she wouldn't fall off my bed while I got some clothes. She saw something on the floor and got up on her hands and knees and just crawled right to it. It was like she had always been doing it that way. It was very weird, but I knew she was close to figuring things out. I just didn't think she'd do it straight away without trying something else first thing in the morning.

Now, she's up and away and crawling all over the house. We're back to dirty hands and knees and soon to have worn out pants. We just hope she might start walking before summer so that she doesn't have to crawl on bare knees like Grace did.

Now, she doesn't want to be held much - she just wants to get down and go explore. Her new fast and favorite thing to do is to crawl to the entertainment center and pull out all of the DVD's. She is also figuring out the DVD player buttons and drives Gracie insane when she pushes the buttons and stops the movie or restarts it. She also now crawls over to Grace's train table and pulls herself up to it and ruins all of Grace's train creations and takes her favorite engines. It's still pretty cool to see Harriet start acting like a kid and wanting to do the same things as Grace. She's well on her way to giving her sister a run for her money.
Way to go Hattie!

Happy Birthday Gracie!

Gracie turned 4 years old on Monday. (she doesn't like to have her picture posed and taken, so she's not smiling here...) We were so lucky to have my sisters Melissa and Emily and her cousing Sean still here to celebrate with us. We had a spectacular day together. Grace wanted to ride for her birthday activity, so we took her to the barn for a great time with Tinkerbell. She had to try out her new paddock boots she got for her birthday and her new grooming tools she got when we were in Salt Lake in January. A picture tells a thousand words - here she is on Tink as we brought her in from the pasture. Grace was in heaven. Here's the real smile you just can't pose.

Then, we took her to lunch at Not Your Average Joe's where they treated her to a pretty cool birthday cake for her special day at the request of Aunt Em. When Daddy came home at night, we had some of Grace's favorite things to eat - fettuccini alfredo with asparagus and snickerdoodles for dessert - and then opened the rest of her presents. She was so excited to open more things and got some pretty cool stuff. Everyone was (as always) extremely generous in their gift giving to Grace. Even I can't keep myself from getting her lots of things. She is so easy to buy for and I always find way too many things that I know she would love. Grace and I tried to send thank you e-mails to everyone. We hope we didn't miss any. Hattie gave Grace a puzzle that is a picture of "The 119" train that we saw at the Golden Spike last summer. Grace actually spotted this puzzle in an antique store window from across the street and yelled "mommy, it's the 119!!" I couldn't believe she would know that from so far away, but sure enough, she was right.

Mommy's note: I can't believe my tiny little girl is already 4 years old. In the past year, she has learned to count to 100 and beyond, add and multiply simple numbers, has learned so many new words that she sounds even more articulate than I do half the time, and has begun to read. She really can read and she reads or recognizes words wherever we go. I am always amazed when she points out something and tells me what it says. She is very smart. She can use a computer to check her e-mail, play games, and "surf" the net on her favorite websites, perform any technological function on any piece of equipment you show her, ride her trike WELL, hit a baseball VERY hard with a bat, throw any sort of ball overhand better than her mom (not saying a whole lot there), ride Tink without anyone leading her, and make phone calls by herself (mostly to her Aunt Em.) She also started going to Primary instead of the nursery at church this year. She is in a class of 9 Sunbeams! It is a great little class with 2 very good teachers and she is having a fine time in there. She goes back and forth on being willing to do things like talk on the phone with family, say prayers in front of us, and being nice to her sister. However, I have noticed that she is much more apologetic lately and sincerely says that she is sorry when she has done something wrong or when she has hurt someone. She ALWAYS points out the good things in life. I think about the U2 song, Grace, a lot. It has lyrics that go "Grace finds beauty in everything" and "Grace finds goodness in everything" and "Grace makes beauty out of ugly things." She really does do all of those things on a daily basis. Things to which I wouldn't give a second thought, she says "mommy, isn't that beautiful?" I remember when she was blessed as a baby, part of her blessing talked about how she would love life and live it to the fullest and find beauty in the things of nature and her surroundings. What a cool kid, and I'm so lucky to be her mom. (note to self to read this tomorrow when she's screaming "NO" at me for something!)

Gracie's 4th Birthday Party!

Grace's official birthday is not until tomorrow, but we had her party yesterday. I can't believe my little sweetie is turning 4 years old! It was the first party we've had for her where we invited little party guests of her own age. She always likes to have a theme. This year she chose to have a "horsey party." I made a barn cake with a horse on top, bought horsey plates, wrapped her gift in a horsey bag, etc, etc. We ate horsey afternoon snacks (carrots and apples.) We played horsey games - pin the tail on the pony, horse shoes, and musical chairs (ridden on stick-horse-back.) Her gift from Mommy and Daddy was her first pair of paddock boots that she can wear to ride Tinkerbell and use for horse camp this summer when she goes with her cousin Janie. She also gave out little stuffed horses and horse pens as party favors to her 3 party guests. She invited the two girls in our town, Rindy and Jacki, that she knows and plays with and then her cousin Sean of course. They had quite a good time for the most part. One of the little girls is just about as horse-crazy as Grace so I think she really liked our theme. There was a girl scuffle over sharing and playing with one of the presents. But, what's a birthday party if someone doesn't cry? It was a little dramatic, but Grace recovered from it much more quickly than I did. I'm over it now too though.
Grace's Aunt Lis promised her last year that she would come for her birthday and Grace does not forget promises that are made to her. So, Aunt Lis made good on her promise and brought Sean and Aunt Em along to spend the week-end with Grace. That was a great birthday present - to have so many fun people staying in our house. We are so thankful that they came and are still here to have a couple more days of fun.

We'll blog about Gracie's birthday again I'm sure...we have more activities planned for tomorrow!

Long time no see...

I haven't seen my cousin Abbey since I moved to the East coast. She lives in the mid-west and we haven't crossed paths in Salt Lake in 2 years. She called us up last month to report that she would be in our area on business and wondered if she could spend some time with us. Of Course!!! We are always so happy to have family and company come to stay with us. The more the merrier. Fortunately, she was able to come the same week-end as my sisters and nephew, so we spent one day and night together doing some serious hanging out and catching up. She is SO much fun and so cute. Grace had a ball with her and they played and played and played. We only wish she could have stayed the whole week-end. I had forgotten how much fun I use to have with my Mitchell cousins. We were really close, but adulthood, marriage, and kids have made it more difficult and seemingly less necessary to get together. After seeing Abbey this weekend, it made me realize that I really do miss seeing all of them and I will have to do a better job of keeping in touch with them. I also look at my kids and at their cousins, especially those of similar age, and hope that they will have close relationships and want to spend time together too. It is more difficult when you don't live in the same state as any of your family, but there are so many modern ways to communicate and travel that it shouldn't be impossible. My siblings are so important to me and I would hope that our kids would be important to each other too.

Thanks for coming Abbey. We immensely enjoyed having you at our house and welcome you back anytime. That invitation goes for any of our family and friends!!!

Bundt vs. Bunt

David promises to blog about his own birthday, but being a person of extreme linear thinking, I can't post about Grace's birthday until something is recorded about his so that it's in order. I will let David speak for himself when he chooses to, but for the record, Grace and I made him a carrot Bundt cake for his birthday (photo later when I can find it) and he reports that it cured his Bunt. And, I should also say I knew the Bunt was coming because it didn't happen at Christmas. He is never any fun the 2 weeks before Christmas and this year he was fine. So, I knew we would be in for some Bunt sooner than later.