Happy Birthday Rachel!

My sweet baby Rachel turned 2 yesterday!  I can't believe we've had her for so long already, but it also seems like she's been with us forever!  We couldn't imagine our lives without her!  She is so precious and we love her so much!

I made her a "Princess and the Frog" ice cream cake.  It was oreo cookie crust with layers of mint chocolate chip and chocolate ice cream, and whipped cream on top.  The writing and frogs were done in chocolate and dyed white chocolate.  As we were serving it to her, I realized I forgot to cross the T in "Birthday!"  Oh well.  We also had turkey burgers for dinner, with baked beans, grilled yellow CSA squash, and CSA salad.  I put the recipe for making your own ice cream cake on my recipe blog: http://sarahsfavrecipies.blogspot.com

Here's Rachel preparing to blow out her candles!

Here she is, opening her presents!  She got lots of fun presents: a little swimming pool from Grandma and Grandpa Gale, "Princess and the Frog" movie from Lizzy, "Toy Story 2" and the game Hi-Ho Cherry-O from Mom and Dad, a sippy cup with her name on it from Aunt Katrina, and the Toy Story 2 Barbie and Ken with some extra outfits from Grandma Sue.  Rachel loved them all, except for the Ken, which she said was scary, and gave him to Lizzy, who was thrilled.

A video of Rachel the morning of her birthday!

Rachel did such a good job blowing out her candles!

Also, we had Rachel's 2 year old checkup today at the doctor.  She did very well, and only cried during the shots.  She only had to get 2 shots, so that wasn't so bad.  She is 33 inches tall, and weighs 22 pounds, which puts her at 10th percentile for weight and 80th percentile for height.  She's really healthy, and right on track developmentally!

Lizzy's Writing

Lizzy is getting better and better at writing; and she loves it!  She's always asking me or Jason how things are spelled so she can write them.  She knows several words by heart, and writes them often.  Both girls love to color with crayons on their easel!  They're so cute, and growing up so fast!

So Proud!

I went in to the kids' bedroom today to make their beds, and here is what I found:

Lizzy had made her bed... all by herself!  She was so proud, and so was I!  Rachel also tried to make her bed, but she's too little, and the covers were too heavy for her to pull up.  Anyway, I will hold on to this precious moment when my children actually WANTED to do housework!

Day at the Pool

My sisters, Angela, and Katrina, and my cousin, Barbara, came up to visit us today and we went to the Roy Aquatic Center with the kids.  It was lots of fun:

My sisters, cousin, and children!

Lizzy in the pool in her new innertube.

Rachel walking around the shallow play area pool with Barbara and Angela.

Sarah preparing to go down the "speed slide!"

Sarah splashes down at the bottom of the speed slide... and gets a giant wedgie for her bravery.

Here is a video of my sister, Angela, going down the speed slide.  I love the scream!

Happy 4th of July!

The kids had a super fun time this 4th of July!  It was on a Sunday, and I was asked to fill in for the music leader in sacrament meeting, so the kids and I sat on the stand behind the piano, and, it was so cute, every time I got up to lead the music, Lizzy and Rachel would come up too, and stand next to me, waving their arms like they were leading too.  I got a bunch of comments about how cute they were up there, and how well behaved they were when we weren't singing.  (Thanks to the story books and coloring books I brought!)  Anyway, after Jason got home from work, we ate dinner, and then went outside to do fireworks.  I had bought a small (non-scary) pack of LEGAL fireworks, and a box of sparklers.  The girls had so much fun doing sparklers and watching daddy set of the little fireworks.  The neighbors down the street had much more exciting fireworks than us, and the kids enjoyed seeing theirs from a distance too.  The only sad thing was, I tried a technique I saw on a cooking show for dry-aging my own steak... we ended up with rotten steak instead.  Bummer.  Lizzy was really upset when I threw it out.  She cried for a good 10 minutes, "I want to eat steak!!"  I'll have to get more steak this week and cook it for her, minus the "dry aging" process.

Doing sparklers in the driveway!  Right after this was taken, when Lizzy's sparkler went out, she threw it to the ground, but threw it a little too hard, because it landed on my skirt and burned a small hole in my new dress!

A video of the kids watching a firework go off.

A Story for Lizzy

Lizzy is always asking me to tell her stories... mostly she likes ones about mermaids, Jesse and Bulls-eye (from toy story) and of course about herself.  But yesterday, I made up a story about a barnyard, and I thought it ended up being really cute, so here it is in case any of you want to share it with your kids.  Lizzy laughed like crazy while I was telling it, and wanted me to tell it over and over, so I thought it must be good!

Follow this link to go to a printable PDF version of the story: http://www.box.net/shared/n99dv572d8

It would be super fun if anyone is good at illustrating and would like to illustrate the book!