So we were {tagged} twice to put things on our blog that people may not know about our girls. Craig and I worked on this together and came up with lots of stuff. So, here are a few of the things you may not know about Jaycee and Rylee:
Jaycee:
1. She has the most beautiful smile, but when someone takes her picture she scrunches her face up. It crakes us up, but makes us wish we could get better pictures with her really pretty smile.
2. She loves to try to catch frogs and lizards in our yard.
3. She loves hot chocolate. Well, it is actually chocolate soy milk, but she calls it hot chocolate and it is her comfort food. She absolutely cannot have a day without it.
4. She is obsessed with purses and shoes - she has to look at them every time we walk past them in the store.
5. She thinks she is married to her dad. When our family went through the temple she thought that was their wedding.
6. She loves all things Pink! Everything has to be pink. Her plate needs to be pink, her cup needs to be pink, her clothes, her shoes, her lemonade, her blanket, her toys, her pancakes, and on and on. And if it isn’t pink, well then she pretends it IS pink.
7. She puts on singing and dancing performances on her pretend stage (The couch without cushions). And they always start with “Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, introducing the Amazing Princess Jaycee and Queen Rylee” – or sometimes they are pink and green mermaids.
8. She loves to make up stories and tell them to us and they all start with “once upon at time in a faraway land…”
9. She is a total girl. She likes a boy in our ward and when she knows he is coming over she makes sure to wear a certain shirt which she thinks is very pretty and makes momma do her hair.
10. When she meets someone for the first time, or doesn’t know them very well she will act very shy. But when she gets to know them they will tell you she really isn’t shy at all.
11. She says really really short dinner prayers so she can hurry and eat, but says long ones at bedtime.
Rylee:
1. She gives a million kisses all day long. All of us love getting tons of kisses from her every day. And she kisses everything, her family, her toys, her shoes, inanimate objects, etc.
2. She is a helper, she has to help fix dinner, wash the dishes, plant flowers, clean, and do everything we do.
3. She loves pulling mommy’s credit cards out of her wallet to play with them and already knows how to swipe them.
4. She likes pressing the “page” button on the phone base and then trying to find where the phone is.
5. She loves putting on her shoes and going outside. The first thing she does every morning is bring her shoes to me and say “o-side” in her cute little voice.
6. She loves to snuggle but only for a little while and then she wants to sleep by herself
7. She runs to see her dad when he comes in the door and gives him the biggest smile
8. She has a will power that is a gift and a curse. It’s pulled her through the tough times in her life but is also going to make daddy and mommy’s lives really hard when she turns two and probably when she turns into a teenager
9. She had 5 surgeries in one year, was in a body cast for a total of 18 weeks, and some other type of brace or splint for another 26 weeks of her life. That is 10 and ½ months out of her first year.
10. She loves playing with water. She constantly pushes a chair over to the kitchen sink to play in the water she loves playing in the water outside, or anywhere else she can find it!
11. And one more thing you might not know, Rylee’s daddy wasn’t there when she was born. He was only there for the first part of the labor, and her Aunt Janette was there for the delivery and even cut he umbilical cord!
Saturday was strawberry-picking day for our family. We went with our friends the Bruno family to “The PatcH” to pick some nice big juicy strawberries!!!
We had a great time hanging out with our friends and enjoying time together as a
family. It was so much fun watching the girls at the strawberry patch.
Jaycee took to strawberry picking right off the bat. She had so much fun searching through the plants looking for the biggest red strawberries she could find. Craig had challenged the girls - Jaycee, and the 2 Bruno girls, Claire and Hannah - to find he biggest strawberry in the patch! I’m pretty sure the Bruno’s won - they found some really nice berries.
At first,
Rylee couldn’t figure out how to get the strawberries off the plant, but she got the hang of it after a while. She picked some nice rotten ones and green ones for us. But what she
REALLy enjoyed was dumping them from one basket to another.
And both of the girls got covered with strawberries! Once Jaycee fell down and landed right on top of one of the strawberry plants! Her butt was covered with berries! Strawberry Picking is a lot messier than you would think!
Here are the girls with our final 5 baskets of strawberries! I forgot to mention that Jaycee insisted on wearing her strawberry T-shirt, her over-alls (so she could look like a farmer), Strawberry Shortcake socks and barrette for her hair. She was decked-out from head to toe in strawberry apparel. It was too cute!!
So what do you do with 20 quarts of strawberries???
You make 40 bottles of strawberry jam…
Strawberry pancakes with strawberry syrup…
lots of fruit salad…
And of course you just eat them all up!!! Strawberries are SOOO yummy!!!!
Here’s a picture of my big helpers. Jaycee and Rylee helped me move all of our tomato and pepper plants into bigger containers. You can imagine the dirt I had all over the counter and the floor - not to mention on them!
I can’t wait to get them out in the garden! They should be ready to be planted in less than 2 weeks. Hooray! I am SOO excited to have a garden this year!
Jaycee has decided that she loves giving her mom flowers. So, she keeps picking all of the flowers we have planted in the yard. It’s really sweet that she wants to give me flowers all the time - but stop picking all of them!!!
Okay.. so I know I just did a post about Disney Princesses, but I can’t help but put more princess pictures on here. I just love watching my two girls dress up together - they are too cute! They like dressing up like princesses and then using their magic wands to turn eachother into frogs. It is too funny.
Over the weekend i made some paper flowers as part of my primary lesson. Jaycee liked them and wanted to make her own. i helped her cut them out, but she decorated them and put them in a jar of beans. It was a fun little craft to do together…
Last night Craig took his beautiful curly-haired daughter on a date to see Disney on Ice. Jaycee got all dressed up in her favorite princess dress and had a great time with her daddy. She hasn’t stopped talking about it all day. I feel so lucky to have a husband who loves his little girls so much and is willing to put his family first and spend his time with his children. Jaycee absolutely adores her dad and was thrilled to go on a date with him. And, in case you didn’t know, she also LOVES Disney princesses, so this was a really exciting thing for her to do!
She was so tired afterward she fell asleep on the way home last night, and was too tired to even tell me about it on the phone when they first got in the car. But when she woke up this morning, before she even opened her eyes she was saying “Mommy, daddy took me to the princess show” and started telling me all about it. Her favorite part was the Little Mermaid (which I hear was alos the longest part). Her daddy also spoiled her by buying her the collectors program, a twirly light, a rose, and other princess stuff. I’m glad they had such a great time together!!
Here is what Craig wrote to me about it this morning:
“Hi Honey,
Just wanted to thank you for letting me take our beautiful daughter out on a date. She looked so cute dressed up in her princess dress last night. She was the best looking princess there. I think it also helped me out a lot too. After being sick for that whole week I dreaded going to work and I haven’t had any energy to do things. Going out with her it recharged my batteries. This morning i woke up with a lot of energy and feeling good about the day. Thank you for taking care of us.
Love you, Craig”
So this afternoon I got home with the girls and started loading everything in the house. Rylee was asleep and Jaycee was tired, so I carried them both in (Rylee to her bed, and Jaycee to lay on the couch). Then I went out to get the rest of our stuff. I carried in 2 loads and Jaycee was still sitting on the couch, so I went out to get the final few things and then shut the garage door on my way in the house. I set down my bags and start unloading one when I notice Jaycee is not on the couch any more. I start looking around and calling for her, but nothing. Suddenly I hear this blood curtling cry… that’s right, I had locked her outside. She had gone out the door without me knowing and when I shut the garage door she was totally freaked. What makes it worse is that a construction guy was driving by in his truck at the time with the window rolled down, so he stopped right in front of our house when he heard her screaming and watched the whole thing. Jaycee still hasn’t forgiven me…,
Wow. The past 2 weeks have been so boring - I apologize for not having anything interesting to write about. We have spent the time sick with an undying virus, gallstones, and allergies. You should see the pollen out here - our black car has turned yellow! But we’ve taken some advice and let the house go a little more than usual to spend a little more time enjoying each other - which has turned out to be belting our hearts out to Hannah Montana on the karaoke machine (thanks Tammy!) and having a million picnics with plastic food. We’ve also danced around the house like crazy. I love watching Jaycee shake her thing and Rylee get her boogie on. They are too cute. This week we did also enjoy a nice trip to the zoo with our friends and a trip to the mall to ride the merry-go-round (i swear my kids like that thing WAY too much). We are all excited for spring time and we’re glad to be feeling better so we can go enjoy it!!!
