Various and Sundry

Some other things we've been up to the past 3 months:

I've been really embracing the nerd shirt. It brings me much joy. My collection is skyrocketing, but this was the first:

 Eliza and Ruby are sweet friends.

 Ruby "with a bunny"

We took Eliza with us to the Discovery Museum at the Gateway in Salt Lake. The girls had an amazing time,.

 Waffle Love came to Springville!  I now follow them on Instagram so I can catch them when they come back again. SO GOOD.

 Daddy took a long lunch so he could watch Ruby at ballet class.

 We spend a lot of time with the Robbins family. It's awesome.

 Shopping with Mom is fun when there's a whole side room for kids. (Randomly at Partyland.)

 Jane is not sure about these princesses.

 Swimming class continues to be amazing.  Ruby loves it so much.

 Our YW Evening in Excellence was a HUGE deal this year, and it turned out to be amazing. I did the decorations with Nicole, who is super talented.

 For my birthday and Celia's birthday, Mom gave us tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance tour!  It was such an awesome show!  Getting there was rough but as soon as we sat down the rest of the night was spectacular.  We loved it and had such a good time! Our seats were SO AMAZINGLY GOOD.

 Ruby played Twister for the first time at her friend Lucy's Candyland birthday party.

 We took Trax to Salt Lake for the first time. Ruby loved riding the train!

 Ruby's first time in Primary! For the month of December they have the incoming Sunbeams join Primary for opening exercises before going back to Nursery.  Next week will be her first time as a Sunbeam. She's really excited! But she'll miss Mike and Morgan, her awesome Nursery leaders.

 Eliza and Ruby did a Christmas craft and were silly.

Ruby, uhh, discovered Brad Pitt. Whoops.

 We made these gingerbread cookies that, while ugly, were SO DELICIOUS.

 Everyone got sick with a terrible stomach flu in early December. So miserable.

Ruby is a fan of the Tardis. I'm a fan of hers.

 Ruby freaked out when she saw Olaf and a minion painted on the windows of SOS Pharmacy and insisted on taking a picture with them. (Oh my gosh speaking of Olaf, FROZEN IS SO GOOOOOOOD.)

 I saw The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug with Celia and my girls Julia and Brittany! It was the BEST NIGHT.  They are really mature or I am really immature because I just feel like we're buddies.  We saw the first Hobbit movie together too.  I liked this one WAY more.

Kyle and I have very different tastes in art.  One of the only artists we both admire happens to be my good friend and former roommate Elise.  She's actually a very successful artist--I'm so proud of her!  We have some of her early work from freshman year hanging in our dining room :)  But now we finally have a real Elise Wehle print that we bought from the Beehive Bazaar.  Check her out, she's amazing.

 Ruby has always had a maternal instinct, but she now cares for her baby girl "Joey" (I don't know where that name came from, but I love it) 24/7.  I love Joey.

 All through December, we periodically went through Ruby's toys with her and she picked out things to donate to make room for her Christmas gifts.  She was so good about it!  She still talks about the little girl who is happy because she has new toys that Ruby gave.  We filled up the Santa bag--I was very proud of her, and Kyle was very happy to have more storage space in her closet.

 Ruby's preschool class had a Christmas program for the parents.  Ruby was Mary in the nativity, super cute.  She also memorized a scripture and recited it for us.  It was amazing!  I was so proud of her and amazed that a 3 year old could do that.  It wasn't even a super short one!

 Ruby's presents from Eliza's Grandma Homa--she's so kind to us!

 As my hair gets longer, I am TRYING to learn how to do it.  This was me trying to curl it. I have a long way to go but I was excited it worked at all.

 Christy's surprise from my mom was this Frozen Castle that she REALLY wanted her girls to have for Christmas.  I bought it here and had it waiting for her when she and her girls got here on Friday for her brother-in-law's wedding.  She was super surprised and the girls LOVE it.  I feel bad for Ruby because now it's gone but she still wishes she could play with it!

 Ruby loves her cousins so much.  She has been moping ever since Lucy left for the Leininger reunion. She misses them already!

Jane at 4 months

4 months! That's when things start getting good! Things got so much easier.  She slept awesome through the night (although not so much during the day...) and started eating slightly less frequently and became a SMILER. She's the most adorable baby in the world.

Thanksgiving!

My sisters and mom and nieces were in town for a whole week at Thanksgiving! It was heaven.  My dad and Danny also managed to be here for a few days.  The fun we had was outrageous.  Usually when my family is here, we are kept so busy with visiting and shopping and jobs.  This visit, we focused on the kids having fun.  We stayed home most of the time and just let the kids play with each other. It was SO FUN.  While the kids played, us older women folk made Christmas ornaments for my tree (so many awesome nerdy ornaments! I'm so proud of them) and watched Doctor Who specials on BBC America.  So, basically, we had the best time ever.

One night, my sisters and I went to see the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special in 3D on the big screen. I can't even tell you how amazing it was.  We wore our Tardis shirts (ok Katy has a Dalek shirt on) and Tardis earrings and basked in the nerdiness of it all.  It was such an amazing show!  As soon as we saw the 10th Doctor I started weeping.  Christy managed to hold her emotions in check pretty well, but I heard Katy full out sobbing at least once, and I bawled through like 5 different parts. I WAS JUST SO HAPPY.

The cousins love Jane :)

 We went to the Riverwoods to see the lights and...Santa!  I was wearing a new shirt from Katy--it was a Christmas shirt with the Tardis and a couple Daleks, it's freakishly awesome--so Santa didn't even ask Ruby what she wanted.  He just talked to me about Doctor Who. She had intended to ask for a Tinkerbell doll though.

Snuggling with Jane was on the top of some people's list of activities.

 The fam took a Thanksgiving morning walk to the park.

The day after Thanksgiving, we went to my uncle David's house for a Christmas singing party.  I taught Grandma the art of a the selfie.

 My favorite part of the night was at the end--most people had finished singing and were eating dessert, but we couldn't stop without singing a few of our favorite songs. A few of us belted our favorites and had a grand ol time. During one song she didn't tell us until the end of all 4 verses that she had cut her finger and was bleeding on the keys. My Grandma Joyce is one tough gal.

Jane at 3 Months

Oh my GOSH what a cute baby girl this is! At 3 months, she seemed so much more babyish than Ruby did at the same age.  Probably I was just clinging to her babyness more--and actually I still am.