short track

My new favorite sport: short track speed skating. How could anyone not LOVE this!? How could you not be entertained? So crazy and exciting. And the relay? Wow.

I've been obsessed with the Olympics since I was like 10 years old, when me and Allison used to pretend to be figure skaters in our roller skates on our driveway. We spent hours making up routines! I spent many nights dreaming of being on that podium listening to my national anthem.

And now I just spend hours in awe of the talent of others. As I watch them excel, I just think of the years of working out for hours every day that it took them to get to that point. AMAZING. So here's to all the athletes of the Olympics. Even the ones that got 39th place or whatever. I salute you.

I am so sad to say goodbye to the Olympics for 2 years. But it will be nice to go to bed before 11:30. Oh and one last shout-out to our DVR. Love it. Every night we tape the Olympics primetime, then put our girls to bed and get other things done before starting them at 9 or so and fast-forwarding through all the commercials! Hooray!

Kate's first talk

Katelyn gave her first talk in Primary yesterday and she did so great!!! We were so proud. Here's how it went down.

Last Sunday: We find out she was asked to give a talk. We are surprised, we didn't know they asked the 3-year-old Sunbeams to do that! But Katelyn is excited, so we are too.

Monday: For Family Home Evening we practice giving talks by each choosing a picture of a scripture story that we like and telling the story. Katelyn tells the story of Nephi and his family travelling on a boat to the Promised Land. We ask her questions and she answers them, and we figure this is how her talk will go. Which is fine.

Saturday: I remind Katelyn about her talk. She is excited and wants to bring her toy Liahona to show everyone. Perfect! We review the story. She tells me "most kids have their moms whisper in their ear what to say," but she doesn't want me to do that! I ask her if I can stand by her and hold up the picture, and she says yes. I figure that way I can help her know what to say and it will be fine.

Sunday: Eric and I spend the morning putting finishing touches on the talks we're giving in Sacrament Meeting. We try to practice her talk, but she doesn't want to. At the last minute leaving for church, we forget Katelyn's Book of Mormon, which she really wanted to "use" in her talk. Luckily she's okay with borrowing one from the church library.

We get to the primary room, and she's thrilled to sit up in front waiting for her turn. Eric and I get to watch her enthusiastically sing a couple of songs, very cute. She gets super excited when they say her name, announcing she's giving the talk after the scripture.

Finally it's her turn. Eric and I still have NO idea what she is planning to do! Will she freak out and just want to sit down? Will she want me to tell her what to say after all?? I walk up and hold the picture as I was told to do. And Katelyn comes up to the podium with the Liahona and her scriptures and says:

"mom, can you show me the Nephi page?"

I turn to a random page in 2nd Nephi for her.

She holds up the Book of Mormon story-time style, so both she and the audience can see it, and gives her talk:

"This is the story of Nephi, going on a boat to the Promised Land. (pause) There was a big storm, because his brothers tied him up....... then they forgave him, (pause) and they made it!" She smiled a big smile. Then I wanted her to show the Liahona, so I said "what did they have?" and she said "The Liahona!" and held it up, smiling, but I could tell she was done so I told her to say "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen" and she did. It was the cutest thing ever. She totally did it by herself, she didn't even need me there. All the teachers were like "wow!" and she was so happy. Eric and I were impressed with her version of the story. :)

I'm sure I'll laugh at this post later, because this is just the first of many talks to come. But it was a big day for us. :)

Whitney's favorite way to eat anything and everything- dipping!

We love that Whitney will eat things like this Spinach Artichoke dip. She's a good eater!

movies

Here is a random movie. More to come.

word of the week

Me: Whitney, why aren't you eating your cereal?

Whit: cuz.

as in "because"....

She's said it a few times now and we've laughed so hard that she knows it's funny. I have NO idea where she got that from!

a paint job

Apparently I never took pictures of Katelyn's room before we just painted it. But here in the background you can see a little what it looked like: blue with a red stripe and Thomas the Train wallpaper which was coming off. Very fun, but very BOY. Now, we all know that Katelyn loves boy stuff, but lately she's been saying her favorite colors are pink and orange, so we wanted to give her the chance to change her room up a little.

So she and Eric went to the store to pick out paint and came back with this: (and yes, those are corkboards covered in fabric on the wall. I LOVE them, until Katelyn started wanting to actually stick things on them, then they're not quite as cute. OH well. )
okay i didn't make sure to use the flash, but you get the idea of the curtains I made- pink, orange and green stripes.
when we first started painting I was like "WOW, this is fluorescent green!" But it turned out good. And Katelyn loves it. Very exciting!

new car!!!

Here she is! isn't she a beauty??? Meet our new (used) Mazda 5! The coolest mini-minivan ever!

It seats 6, with 3 rows of two. You can kinda see the back row here
or there, behind the car seats. And yes, that's a built-in DVD player. I remember the first time I saw one of those, and I thought I'd never have a car with one because they're for "rich people". :)

It also has a SUNROOF, a 6-CD changer, and sliding doors with windows that roll down!! Maybe I'm behind the times but I've never seen that before! I remember hating that about vans, you're sitting in the back and all you can get is an inch of air with those windows that popped out a little. Oh and I think the back is so cute. AND it fits in the garage with our Accord, barely! (not in the picture below)
Hooray for having a second car at last!!!!! It's been so weird to not plan which days I'll have the car, to not have to move car seats constantly from Eric driving carpool or me driving to Young Womens activities. I feel frivolous driving to storytime or the park, places I'd usually just run to. I feel so free. :) Yay!

Elder Jonathan

We got to have a whole day with Elder Jonathan Hansen, my youngest brother, before he went into the MTC to prepare to serve a mission in Columbus Ohio. It was awesome.

Anyone who knows Jonathan knows he just loves little kids, and they can't help loving him. He's just so kind and caring with them. He was so sweet to my girls and Whitney totally fell for him. We ran a bunch of errands with Jonathan, and towards the end Whitney was getting tired and refused to walk OR let me carry her. So I picked her up and she started screaming, then turned and reached for Jonathan! She let him carry her all over and was as happy and calm as could be. Whitney and "Jon-teen"

Obviously Kate had fun with him too, he was always excited to see whatever she wanted to show him or play some game together. I had to laugh though, in the car she sang "Give Said the Little Stream" about 50 times and he was about to go nuts. He was like "I guess you're preparing me for having a companion! [on the mission]"
Also Katrina stayed the night with us so we three could hang out and go to the temple together. It was so fun, the girls loved her too and she totally cleaned my kitchen for me while I was stressing about buying our new car.... that post is coming soon.... anyway I love these siblings of mine. Katelyn took this picture by the way. It's cropped. We were way down in the corner. :)

I am so proud of Jonathan. He's going to be a great missionary.

random events captured on camera that I'm grouping together into one post.

lately we've been doing a little bit of THIS....

(wrestling with dad, if you couldn't tell!) and this:
Some of this: (although our snow is almost gone now! crazy!)
And a lot of this!!! (more pics of Katelyn's newly decorated room to come- as soon as I finish the curtains.)

Lovely February 1st

I ran outside in short sleeves and capris today!! It was nice when I was running south facing the sun. Then I almost froze to death running north to get home. But thank goodness for a 45-degree start to this month!

Also, Katelyn said to me yesterday-whispered in my ear actually- " You are my beloved mom." So cute. And hilarious.