The Cutest Cake

My sister in law, Katie, made the cutest cake for her cake decorating class.

It's a cake of her dog, Sophie.

She brought it over for us tonight, because she knew the girls would love it.

I just had to share the cuteness!

Updates

I've been too busy playing this Summer that I haven't been blogging as much. The fact that Summer is almost over, is really a sad thing for me. I love shorts and sandals and swimming and playing outside. I don't want it to end :(.

Anyway, we have spent the bulk of the summer going swimming and to the outdoor story time/picnic & Crafts they have at the library. It's been lots of fun. But, I never bring my camera, so I don't have pictures to show for it. (Although I did buy a disposable camera that we took to the waterpark a few weeks back - so I am anxious to get the pictures back from being developed.)

Anyway, I thought I'd update on what my girls have been up to. Aubrey has been such a good helper lately. She has always loved helping me with the dishes. So, I discovered that a really good chore for her was to put away the utensils. It's great because it is actually helpful and she enjoys finding all the right spots for the utensils. It's like a game for her. She also clears her dishes after every meal. She likes that she has her special jobs to do.

She has also been really good at sharing with Brooke. Which has been fabulous. Brooke will come up wanting something Aubrey has and Aubrey will say, "OK Brooke you can have a turn." It's great - except Brooke hasn't quite caught on to letting Aubrey have a turn again!

The girls absolutely love playing in the backyard. The days we are actually at home they will both stand at the back door begging me to take them outside. Brooke will point and say, "Ou si, Ou si." And if I ever open any door Brooke & Aubrey will come as fast as they can to get outside with me. Funny girls.

One of Aubrey's favorite things again this year is picking the tomatoes. And this year she doesn't squish them and she knows to only pick the red ones. So, it's been quite helpful. Brooke has joined in the fun a few times too.



I just had to take a picture of our corn, it's looking and tasting so good.


Brookie is just getting more and more capable everyday. One day Aubrey was water painting and Brooke was playing with toys. I ran to the back for a few minutes and when I returned, Brooke had taken over the painting. She must have been watching Aubrey, because she was doing it perfectly.

First you dip it in the water,


then you dip it in the paints,


and then you paint the picture.

It was so cute to watch her do such a big girl thing so well. She just watches Aubrey and catches on so quickly.

She is still talking a lot - new words everyday. Some of my favorites are, "I'm stuck" - which sounds like "I tuk" and "itsy bitsy spider" which sounds like "Iii pie". She puts her cute little fingers together like the climbing spider and says "ii pie" when she wants us to sing her the song. She'll also, put both hands on her head and say, "head" when she wants us to sing "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes." And she claps her hands and says "pat" when she wants us to sing "Pat a cake". It's really fun watching her pick up on so many things.

She is making some progress with walking. She now will push herself to standing and then let go for a few moments. Her favorite places to do that though is in the swimming pool, or tub, or on a bed - all of the most dangerous places of course! She did take her first step the other day. It was completely accidental and she sat down immediately upon noticing what she did.

She will walk with her walker sometimes or will push chairs around like a walker. So, I don't know how soon the walking will happen, but I feel like progress has been made.




We had our 11th year anniversary on July 23rd. We had such a fun day. We both decided it was our favorite anniversary so far. First thing in the morning we let off our ladybugs (see a few posts back). Then Aubrey wanted to ride bikes together. So we played around with the bikes for a bit. Then after naps we went to the water park. It is so much fun to have Jeff there too. Aubrey gets so excited to show off all of the big girl things she does there. Then we came home and got ready for a date. We went to dinner and a movie. I know that's not very creative, but since we rarely get out, it was heavenly. It just was so nice to get to spend the day all together as a family and then get some alone time that night. It was the perfect day!

Awesome video on Motherhood

Elder Holland's thoughts on being a MOM.

Vote Vote Vote

I am way behind on the photo contest and need more votes! If you haven't done so already, please go here: http://blog.karenbagley.com/?p=311 and make a comment to vote for my photo!

If you've already voted have your family vote as well. Even young kids can cast a vote (Feel free to do the typing for them!).

Thanks for all of your help. And while you're there look at my Sister in laws awesome photography!

Photo Contest Finals

Thanks to all of your votes - my photo of Aubrey made it into the Finals of Karen's photo contest!

That means I need your votes again. Please go to Karen's blog again and make a comment.

Thanks for your help!

Our Pet Ladybugs

For my birthday, in October, Jeff got me a ladybug land. It has a coupon to send for Ladybug Larva and you get to watch the whole life cycle. We had to wait for the weather to warm up, or we wouldn't have been able to send them off into our yard. (If you keep them in the ladybug land their life cycle is only 2-3 weeks, but if you let them go after a week, their life cycle is a year. But you can't let them go in cold weather. It seemed cruel to shorten their life by that much. Plus it's fun to get to take them out of the land and watch them fly away.)

Anyway, after our Yosemite trip, I sent away for the larva. Almost everyday after we sent the coupon, Aubrey asked to check and see if the ladybugs came in the mail. So, she was super thrilled when they came a couple of weeks ago.

They come in a little tube with food, and you just dump them into the ladybug land.

Both girls were super excited to get to see bugs crawling all around.



This is what the larva look like.


Then 8 days later, we saw them attach themselves to the dome and some to the bottom of the land and start to curl up.


Then the next day this little yellow puffy thing came out. I thought it was the ladybugs and was confused because the pamphlet said they would be in the pupa stage for 5 days. When they started to turn black and hard, I thought we had done something wrong and killed them. But, I looked online and found out that the yellow blob becomes the pupa and all was well.


Exactly 5 days later we checked our ladybug land and saw a few ladybugs crawling around. They were still yellow, but had their spots so I knew they had emerged just a few hours before.

Then I looked closer and saw that one was emerging right then! This is the ladybug coming out of the pupa. It's all soft and yellow.


The girls were so thrilled to see the ladybugs crawling around!




Brooke is so fascinated with bugs right now - it was such good timing to do this.






In this picture you see on the far right a pupa that a ladybug has not emerged yet from. In the middle is one of our ladybugs that emerged while we were sleeping. The yellow one had just emerged from the pupa to the far left. You can see that the spots are starting to appear on the yellow ladybug.




We kept our ladybugs in the land for about a week. Aubrey loved giving them water every other day. She also was soooo excited for the day that the ladybugs would crawl all over her!


Then this Friday morning we took them out to the garden to let them out. Aubrey was so excited to get to play with them!




A few times Brooke saw the ladybugs and got excited as well.


"Hey, what's that on my shirt?"


Here's Aubrey trying to put the ladybug on Brooke.


Patiently waiting for daddy to get another ladybug out.

It was seriously so fun to watch the whole process. It was also so exciting to see both my little girls so intrigued by the ladybugs. Thanks Jeff for the fun birthday gift!

Love the Curls

When Aubrey was Brooke's age, she had the perfect little curls around her neck and her hair looked absolutely adorable pretty much always. I LOVE Brooke's blonde hair and think that her hair will actually be much easier to style when she's Aubrey's age - but for now I am really missing the girly curls.

So I decided to get some smaller rollers and see if her hair was actually long enough to put in rollers. I first tried them last Saturday. She looked absolutely adorable with them in!

But I didn't put enough rollers on top and she ended up with a Mohawk type look. Thus the no after picture.

So Sunday, I added a few more on top to see if that would do the trick. Could she be any cuter with curlers and a hair net?!

I thought her hair turned out soooo cute. Here she is with her cute curls.

Aubrey of course wanted pictures of herself in the curlers - but this is the lovely face she gave me!

Here's her after shot.

She still has naturally curly hair, but it's not even. There's parts that are straight and parts that are curly. So if she's going to wear her hair down for church, I usually have to curl it.