Short and Sweet

Grandma Karen and Grandpa Dave came out for a quick and fun visit at the beginning of the month, and the girls loved it!

We celebrated Rylee's birthday (for the first time) while they were in town.Grandpa Dave was only here for one night and then he went up to work.

Grandma Karen stayed for 2 more days and the girls had fun baking cupcakes,
baking in their room,

and reading with her.

It may have been a short visit, but it was plenty sweet, too!

Sunbeams and Quail

Today was the day. Rylee has left nursery and moved on to bigger and better things...she is now a Sunbeam!After church today our friends, the Barretts, who are in town for the holidays came over for lunch. (Ryan and I were good friends at BYU, and Debi's dad is our bishop here...small world!)

After we ate, we went over to Debi's grandparents' quail farm.

Rylee LOVED the quail!The eggs were very cool - all so unique!

But the highlight of the afternoon was seeing these little guys - about 8,000 3-day-old quail chicks!

Rylee was very interested in seeing everything.

Cailyn was a bit more hesitant.

And little Joshua was about as interested in them as you could expect for an almost-1-year-old.

Rylee loved catcing and holding the babies.

She kept making the funniest high-pitched giggle!

Cailyn never really wanted to hold one, but she did finally decide that she liked petting them.

Pronouns

Cailyn has gotten a really good grasp of the English language over the last little while. She properly conjugates all of her verbs and uses pronouns correctly almost every time (occasionally she says "me do!", but I think in the last few weeks she's been saying "I do!" instead.)

Tonight, Quinn was reading this alphabet book with her and asking her what all of the animals were, and she knew all of them. When he asked her what the unicorn was, she said

"Me-Corn!"
I laughed and laughed. That girl is too smart for her own good.

Christmas Morning

Santa didn't need to write names on the presents this year...Cailyn got her green present, and Rylee got her blue one! I don't have pictures of the girls opening their presents - I was videoing instead (and can't get any videos to upload for some reason...) - but Rylee did get her Baby Cruncher Knees, and has been taking very good care of her - she even gave her a name: Ava.

And there was in fact something inside of Cailyn's green present: Swiper and Boots dolls, and they have gone to bed with her every night since!

The girls also got Squinkies (you can see Cailyn's cupcake one above) from Grandma Karen and Grandpa Dave...I was surprised when Rylee opened hers and excitedly squealed "I got Squinkies!" I didn't even know that she knew what they were!

Can you tell how excited Rylee was about this Fancy Nancy Christmas book?

Grandma and Grandpa Mac gave the girls lots of fun play food

And we gave them the "Big Presents!" (as Cailyn said when she first walked out)

Grandma Karen made the girls aprons, so they were all set and have been cooking up a storm ever since!

And here they are all ready for church in their Christmas dresses the next day...

Doors and Magnets

These are the advent calendars we used to count down the days to Christmas.Every day, the girls traded turns choosing a magnet for the cookie sheet or opening the door to see what activity we were going to do. This post is to record some of the things we did and memories we made during the "doors and magnets" days this year.

These necklaces were inside the door on December 1st, and the girls wore them all season. The gingerbread girl is Cailyn's, the Rudolph is Rylee's.
We made a gingerbread house,

ate the cute Rudolph cupcakes that Grandma made,

went to Rylee's preschool Christmas pajama party

(this is Jack...he and Rylee have a little romance going on!),

made sugar cookies

and ate them

(I wasn't lying when I said that Cailyn has a habit of sticking her face straight into her food),

and made messes out of ourselves......and everything else.

We put on Christmas shirts

and went to see Santa.

Rylee knew what she wanted Santa to bring her ever since she saw it in the store around Thanksgiving - a "baby cruncher knees." (What? You need a translation? That would be "a baby who crunches her knees." Still confused? Click here for a demo.) She talked about the baby cruncher knees all the time. Cailyn, on the other hand, had no clue; when we asked her what she wanted Santa to bring, she always said "I don't know!" That is, until we went to see Santa. Amongst the decorations that were set up around Santa's sleigh, Cailyn spotted just what she wanted: a green present. So she told Santa she wanted a green present, and from then on, that was her answer whenever anyone asked her what she wanted Santa to bring. Of course, if we asked her what she wanted inside the present, she still said "I don't know!" Cailyn hadn't talked about this green present business too many times before Rylee decided that she wanted Santa to bring her a blue present. Oh, and one more thing...in the very top left corner of the picture with Santa you can see a stuffed tiger. Just before the girls said bye to Santa, he asked them if there was anything else they wanted. Rylee looked up behind her and pointed at the tiger saying "I want that tiger!" Fast forward to Christmas afternoon, and this is the conversation Rylee had with her Grandpa Mac:

Grandpa: Did you have a good Christmas?

Rylee: Yes!

Grandpa: Did Santa bring you everything you wanted?

Rylee: No! I wanted a tiger!

Keep in mind, there had been no mention of a tiger before or since Santa's lap, until this conversation! That girl is a trap...she NEVER forgets anything!

Other fun memories this year:

-Rylee's favorite Christmas song was Jingle Bell Rock

-Cailyn's favorite Christmas song was Santa Baby...she got pretty good at singing it!

-The girls loved watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman

-Rylee played "present" several times a day...she would come up to us with a blanket, wrap herself in it, lay down on the floor and tell us to open our present; when we pulled back the blanket she would bark or meow or make some other kind of noise so we would know what kind of present we got.

-When walking around in public, Rylee loudly tells everyone she sees "Merry Christmas!" Most people would smile and tell her Merry Christmas too, but if they didn't hear her or for some other reason didn't respond, she said "Mom, they didn't say Merry Christmas!" (She is still telling everyone Merry Christmas...we've tried to get her to switch to "Happy New Year," but haven't had any luck yet.)

-When we got our nativities out, Rylee held Mary and the lamb and started singing Mary had a Little Lamb...I caught Cailyn doing the same a day or two later.