One Difference Between Kermit and Miss Piggy

My two, nearly twins, kids are similar in many ways. But there are a few things where they are total opposites! Here is one example...
Miss Piggy's backpack after school each day -
Kermit's backpack after school each day.

Now, I would have guessed it to be the other way around, the girl being more organized and the boy in a hurry. Nope! This is even true with their things at school. They have a fabric pocket that hangs over their chairs at school to hold their pencil boxes and supplies. Miss Piggy's is bulging with crumpled up papers and Kermit's is not. I just thought this was kinda funny and had to document it!

Our Fantastic Weekend

There are perks to having a father who travels a ton for work... frequent flyer miles! For Christmas Mama's parents used their miles to fly the kids and Mama out for a weekend of fun. We arrived on a Friday night and Mama and her little brother promptly left to go to dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then we went bowling! On the way to the bowling alley, Little Brother directed Mama to a favorite place of his... the dump! Yes, my little brother took me to the dump on a date! Ha, ha! Bowling.... let's just say Little Brother got lucky... 5 times! Mama only won 2 of the 7 games we played! We had a ton of fun, we even tried bowling left handed for one game. I wouldn't try this again, lol!

Saturday was a day for the kids! Gram Gram and Papa took Miss Piggy out first. They went to the American Girl Doll store. Here you get to choose your doll. Do you want freckles, brown hair, green eyes, earrings? You can have any type of doll you want, with any feature you want. Miss Piggy is very particular and when she has an idea in her mind, she knows what it is and doesn't stray from her choice. This store is HUGE. You could spend hours there. It only took Miss Piggy 10 minutes. She'd like the blue eyes, no freckles, caramel colored hair with earrings please!

Then they take the dolls over to the hair salon and you can pick any hairstyle you'd like. Miss Piggy wanted straight down so she could play with it. So simple!

Miss Piggy got to choose an extra outfit for her doll, several sets of earrings and a pic comb. She had so much fun! Afterwards she got to choose a place for lunch... McDonalds! Gram Gram and Papa didn't want to leave Baby Girl out, so they also picked up a baby for her.

Kermit's activity was at night. He got to go to dinner at his place of choice... Wendy's! Then it was off to see the Harlem Globetrotters!!! They got special passes to go early and Kermit got to go down on the court to get to know the players! He raised his hand and was picked to come out and learn some of their tricks even!! He had an amazing time and is perfecting his tricks everyday here at home. His Jersey is now his favorite shirt and his ball is his best friend!

Thanks for such an amazing weekend!!! We all had a blast. We missed Master Chief, but he had to work and couldn't come. Bummer. We had an adventure getting back home too! We were delayed by 12 hours... with 3 kids... YIKES!!! But the kids were fabulous and were very pleasant travelers.... at 12am!

Baby Girl is 20 Months

I just love my baby! She's just being so cute today, so I thought I'd do an update on her. She's a talker! She says anything you ask her to and is now talking in sentences of 3 words. "Love you Mom", "Stop that Anwew", "Shh baby seep (sleep)" and such sayings like that! She loves to dance and listen to music. She even asked me in the car this morning, "Song pease."

She recently decided that she does not need her high chair and will eat at the table with everyone else, thank you very much. So she now sits in a big girl chair at the table. She's also trying to tell me about going potty, just yesterday she said, "Big girl potty" and ran to the bathroom, pulling down her pants. She's yet to do anything in the potty even though she's been talking about the potty for a while and I've offered bribery of candy, but I haven't done any training with her as I'm waiting until we've got nothing big planned and we've got one more trip planned in a few weeks. Then if she is still trying to tell me about the potty, I'll train her I guess! Might as well get it over with.

Baby Girl loves puzzles. Oh my goodness, she's good at them too! After she puts a piece in her puzzle, she'll clap her hands and say, "Good job Taitwin". My house is never clean until she goes to bed because only then can I pick up all the puzzles and have them stay put away! She loves baby dolls. For christmas she got a stroller, crib, high chair and baby swing set. She is quite the little mommy to her baby.

Baby Girl loves to have her hair done, clean up her toys (I know, I'm lucky! But don't worry, she pulls them right back out) and get into the fridge. Just this last week she started following in Kermit's footsteps and tried to play in the eggs.... on my new carpet!!!

Baby Girl is the sweetest baby ever. She loves offering kisses, asks for hugs, and hardly ever cries. If she cries, you know she's hurt pretty bad and then it's only for a few seconds after she gets a kiss on her "Owie".

Baby Girl is learning the game of, 'If I drop my blanket and bear out of my crib, my sister will get out of bed and get it for me'. This has led to a few long nights for Miss Piggy as she thinks she needs to take care of Baby Girl! Luckily after a few hours of this game, they both fall asleep.

Baby Girl loves to rub your feet. She'll get some lotion, come to your feet and say, "Toes". Then she'll rip your sock off and kinda scratch/rub your feet. Aren't we lucky!

Baby Girl loves to call Mama (grandma) on the phone and will squeal until she gets her way! She loves to eat. She'd eat string cheese, apples and gogurts for all snacks if you'd let her. And she loves to put on "lips" (lipstick/lipgloss/chapstick) with her 'sisser'.

She is probably around 22lbs (only 11lbs lighter than her big sister) and still rear facing in her carseat!!!! Horray for being safe! She sits in between Kermit and Miss Piggy in the car and takes advantage of having them right there holding her hands everywhere they go!

We are so thankful for our sweet baby!

Lessons I've Learned with Miss Piggy's Cake!

I always like to try to attempt cute birthday cakes for all of my kids. Some years are better than others and most of the time I remind myself that I don't enjoy doing it! This year started out great and ended up as a FAIL!!!

Miss Piggy wanted a cute princess castle she found in the Family Fun Magazine. I attempted to build one of my own and she was delighted.... until we were in route to the party.... and it fell apart into 3 pieces! I have no pictures of this mess, it was too embarrassing!

The things I learned
-If you want pink sprinkles in the actual cake, get the right kind of pink sprinkles! I decided to take a white cake and add pink sugar in the batter to make pink dots... but sugar dissolves when wet! Duh! We got a lovely pink shaded cake though!

-After decorating, place cake in the fridge! Then your icing stays firm. Otherwise, your cream filing between layers won't squish out and allow the cake to slide all over the place.

-Don't put the candles in until you are ready!!! After taking these pictures I placed 6 candles down the center of the cake. Then it sat at room temperature and gravity started to happen! I gave the cake a natural place to split in half!

-Don't assemble the towers until it's show time! With soft frosting and a breaking point down the middle, the heaviness of the towers was just too much! While in transit, we constantly had to push the towers back up on top of the cake.

In the end as I was walking in the door of Chuck E. Cheese, the east wing detached from the castle, taking the tower down into the moat around the outside of the cake! I prayed for us to make it to the party and that we did. Next time I'll pray for the cake to make it THROUGH the party, lol!

It still tasted good!

Happy 6th Birthday, Miss Piggy!

Our sweet Miss Piggy recently celebrated her 6th birthday. She has always been such a small thing and has finally hit 30lbs and has been able to move up to a booster seat! Wahoo!!!! We were thinking we'd be sending her to college in a car seat! So that was her first birthday gift!!! She got it early as we prepared for a trip to CO for her second birthday gift... a trip to the American Girl Doll store. I'll blog about that later!

On her actual birthday she was less than excited about new pants (lol) and tickled pink to find a new Kinectimals game for the Kinect and Zhu Zhu Princess castle. She was such a great big sister and invited Baby Girl to come open up all her presents.

That evening we headed off to Chuck E. Cheese. She decided to have a family birthday party and was able to invite one friend. She came away excitedly telling us that it was the best birthday party she'd ever had! And as much as Mama and Master Chief were dreading a Chuck E. Cheese party, it turned out to be fantastic! Miss Piggy and Uncle K celebrate their birthdays on the same day! What fun it is to find someone as special as Uncle K to share something so fun. Uncle K pretty much ROCKS and found these pretty butterfly earrings and sent them to Miss Piggy. She's not wanted to change her earrings since getting these!

Miss Piggy is doing fantastic at school, learning to read, excelling in gymnastics (being moved up to the next class this week!) and loves to play kindergarten teacher, draw (she is sure she is better than mom at art, and she's right) and she loves all things Hanna Montana and Taylor Swift! It's common to catch her singing and dancing in our living room or putting make up on in her room!

Miss Piggy is such a sweetheart. To think of her early start to life, born at 32 weeks, weighing 3lbs, 13oz and just 17 1/2 inches long. She was a fighter from the beginning! She's growing up into such a lovely young woman and we are so thankful for her each day!

A New Year!!!

Please forgive our lack of posts. We've been so busy we didn't even send out Christmas cards this year. We have new family pictures, taken in May and we've not even printed them since we've had to do our own editing on them and that's been a 'learn as we go' type method! So very soon we'll have them all up, but here is a taste..And since we are updating... I've changed my hair color... and the only reason I mention this is because I have gotten more comments about my hair this time around then ever before when I've colored it red. I'm not sure what this means, lol! What else... Christmas!!! Christmas 2010 was an experience to say the least. Master Chief had to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. What a bummer! Luckily a guy at work who had Christmas Day off, offered to come in and work until 8am, so Master Chief could be home in the morning with the kids. That was great and we were so excited to be able to share the mornings activities with Daddy. However, all good plans don't always work out the way we expect them to! We got the kids up at 6am, thinking the kids would be dying to get up and come out to see what Santa brought them. Instead they were sleepy eyed, half dead, very tired children. They've been dying to fly on an airplane, so we arranged to have them fly to Mama's parents house so that Kermit could go see the Harlem Globetrotters and so Miss Piggy could go to the American Girl Doll store. Baby Girl gets to come along for the ride to eat all of Gram Gram's chocolate! Seeing that this gift is awesome and exciting, we expected them to jump for joy, scream in excitement and go crazy!!! Mama got the video going on her phone so she could capture this fabulous moment and the reaction was about as exciting as a dead fish. Both kids were so tired, they didn't understand what they were doing, and their words were, "oh". Wait!!! Where were my screams of excitement? My squeals of joy? They were just not awake.

After all the presents were unwrapped, it was time for Master Chief to go to work and it was time for Mama to clean up all the mess, assemble all the toys and make breakfast. However, the kids and I worked together, we played with toys and we had a great day! I offered them a nap, and they quickly refused, finally excited to play with their toys!

2011 was rung in with 2 delighted kids that got to stay up late to see the new year in! Master Chief had to sleep since he was once again going to work the holiday and Mama had a nasty cold! It was so fun to see the older kids so excited to see the fireworks and festivities.

This year will be an exciting year. Master Chief's little brother comes home from his mission for our church in February and Mama's little brother will be leaving for his mission sometime after his 19th birthday in June.

This year, if Kermit has his way, he'll be learning to drive. Miss Piggy will become a kindergarten teacher, specializing in art and Baby Girl will be taking care of babies all day. Master Chief will be conquering all things Halo, and Mama will be hiring a maid! We can all dream, right!

Happy New Year to all our friends and family. Stay tuned for a blog giveaway soon!!!