We headed down the canyon to Sugar House Park for playgroup this week. Our playgrounds in Park City are a bit of a mushy slushy mess right now. One of these days the snow will stop (although the Valley seemed to get more snow out of today's storm than we did).
Sutton reached another much-awaited milestone this week. She can now sit by herself and eat her puffs with more puffs making it into her mouth than on the floor. Maggie's delighted about this new development since Sutton can now keep herself entertained sitting at the island while meals get prepared.
Sutton reached another much-awaited milestone this week. She can now sit by herself and eat her puffs with more puffs making it into her mouth than on the floor. Maggie's delighted about this new development since Sutton can now keep herself entertained sitting at the island while meals get prepared.
Salem is in the midst of potty-training. She gets to choose a 'present' when she poops in the toilet. She accomplished this great feat this week and chose a train piggy bank as her present. She had a great time painting her train.
Here is Salem with her beautifully painted train and her much-coveted Spider-Man. Salem's cousin Kaden gave her the Spider-Man as a reward for pooping in the potty. Salem adores Kaden and now walks around the house making Spider-Man sound effects (which she of course learned from Kaden).
We spent an afternoon at the pool at Promontory this week. Although the outdoor pool is heated, it's still a bit to chilly for our skinny little girl (lucky for her she seems to have inherited Drue's metabolism). Salem had a great time in the hot tub.
Drue doesn't even stand a chance...with a smile like that Sutton already has him wrapped around every one of her fingers.
Salem loves going to her gymanstics class every Saturday morning. They always start class playing with the parachute while singing songs, singing the alphabet, counting, and learning colors.
Salem's teacher then leads them through two different obstacle courses with various equipment and tasks for the kids to learn. Salem is getting quite good at the balance beam.
She enjoys hanging like a monkey from the bars.
Followed by swinging on the rings.
Then her favorite...running and jumping into the foam pit.
The last portion of class is spent jumping on the trampoline. Salem is working on learning the 'seat drop'.
Class ends each week with the kids getting stamps on their hands and feet which Salem then proudly displays for the remainder of the day.
Salem enjoys the rings in gymnastics so much that we installed rings for her in our basement. She and Drue are getting quite creative with her stunts.
Sutton adores her cousins Parker and Logan. She gets the honor of sitting next to Parker during Sunday dinners and often times tries to grab his face (and food) while he's eating.
5 Things We're Thankful For Today:
- 1. Lazy Sunday morning when all four of us can hang out and cuddle in bed.
- 2. March Madness! Jayhawks are onto the Final Four!!!
- 3. A South facing house. Our neighbors across the street were all out snowblowing this morning, but with our South-facing driveway the snow melts off quickly. We usually only need to snowblow if we get one of those huge storms (which happened on about 5-6 occasions this winter).
- 4. Sunday dinners at Drue's parents' house.
- 5. Tuesday dinners at Maggie's parents' house.
Wise (or mostly silly) Words From a 2 Year Old
- "Papa...I want an otro shanta". Otro is the Spanish word for other; shanta is the Arabic word for bag. Maggie has learned enough Spanish to understand Salem's Spanglish, but now Drue will need to learn some Arabic since Salem's now throwing that in the mix too.
- "Ooooh Mama, there's mucho peepee." Salem was impressed with her bladder capacity while peeing on the potty when she woke up in the morning
We've had a tremendously fun busy week so we hope you'll enjoy our numerous pictures. We don't have many pictures with the entire family so we had to include this one for prosperity's sake.
Both Salem and Sutton prefer taking showers over baths (they must be following in Maggie's footsteps). Gone are the quick easy days of 5 minute showers...with both girls Maggie's lucky to get out of the shower in under 30 minutes.
We took the girls to the Newpark facility in Park City for the first time this week. It's a great indoor recreation facility with an indoor soccer field, track, fitness equipment, etc. They hold "Toddler Time" a couple of mornings per week allowing the kids open access to the indoor soccer field and bounce houses that they set up. Salem loved the bounce house slide. She was a little timid at first, particularly because the bounce house was filled with older, bigger, tougher boys. But once she got a little comfortable she let loose and was off to all sorts of 'head-first' slides.
And so the love affair with soccer begins...it's almost a prerequisite in our family so we start them early. Salem started to learn how to dribble a soccer ball when she was 13 months old. If Drue can figure out how to do it, he'll have Sutton dribbling before she can even walk.
"GOALASSO!!!" That's what Salem was shouting when I snapped this picture. Of course, she also yells the same thing when she makes a basket on our basketball game in the basement. Drue has made sure she knows which sport ranks #1.
"Look Mama...I'm a princess." Salem's idea of a princess outfit is hiking her sweat pants up to her chest and throwing on her crocs.
Sutton reached a big milestone this week. She can now stand holding on to her toys. We don't quite trust her enough yet to not be close by enough to catch her quickly. Her attention span is still quite short and she often forgets that she's standing up :)
Here's our weekly outing to our favorite store, Costco. It's an addiction that we're unlikely to overcome anytime soon, especially since we hear that there are plans to build a Costco in Park City in the near future.
Sutton is very much enjoying the warmer weather and being able to spend more time outside. She watches the birds that have now returned to our house with such curiosity.
Some of our friends have a great annual tradition of a 'confetti egg party'. You can make confetti eggs by gently drilling two holes on either end of an egg. Blow or shake out the contents of the eggs, rinse out, allow to dry, then stuff with confetti. You can then have fun at your party smashing confetti eggs on people (similarly to a water balloon fight). Drue and Salem had so much fun doing this that I think we may adopt this tradition into our family.
Salem had a fabulous time with her friend Avery experiencing a tire swing for the first time. Drue was quite nervous allowing her to swing since they were swinging quite high, but we're slowly learning how to allow Salem a bit more independence.
We spent some time at the kids cabin in Promontory this weekend. Salem loved watching the little chicks there. We didn't notice that the bucket in the pen is a KFC bucket until we uploaded this picture. It's a good thing Salem has yet to understand the potential connection between chicks and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Sutton's favorite in the kids cabin were the little finches. We had to pry her fingers off of the cage to get her to leave.
We painted eggs for craft time this week. Salem had a great time painting, but I think her favorite thing about craft time is being able to wear the apron that she got from Becky, Brandan, Sophie, Abe, Helen, and Gibson.
Salem's new favorite spot at Grandma and Grandpa Hull's house. Dan built a terrific playhouse for all the grandkids and they've put these cute little kid chairs on the playhouse patio. Salem loves anything that is her size.
5 Things We're Thankful For Today:
- 1. How much Becky and Aaron love to play with Salem and Sutton.
- 2. Maggie getting the girls down for bed so that Drue can go play some indoor soccer (time to get back into shape before the outdoor season starts).
- 3. Maggie's mom Suma's willingness to always watch the kids and her seemingly endless patience.
- 4. March Madness! Go JayHawks!!! On to the Sweet Sixteen!
- 5. Our DVR. Now we can quickly catch up on a few of our favorite shows after the girls go to bed. How did we ever get by in the pre-digital age?!
Wise (or mostly silly) Words From a 2 Year Old
- "Oooh, I'm going on a bear hunt to get some candy!" One of Salem's favorite books is "We're Going on a Bear Hunt". We apparently don't go on egg hunts in our family...we go on bear hunts :)
Two Girls with Drue's Energy Level
8 comments Posted by Maggie, Drue, Salem, Sutton, & Xander at 9:25 PMCheck out that perfect plank position! Drue's incredibly proud that Sutton, at only seven months, is already quite proficient at push-ups.
Drue can't get enough of Sutton's amazing strength. She'll balance on his hand for an average of 5 seconds which is quickly followed by her proud smile and giggle.
We spent a terrific afternoon at the Kamas pool with Maggie's mom, Suma. If you've never been there before, it's definitely worth the short drive. They have a very large pool that is entirely designed for young kids with 90 degree water, a jungle gym within the pool with lots of kid-controlled fountains, several slides, and a lazy river. Salem loves it because most of the pool is shallow enough that she can walk around without our help. Who would have thought that a small town like Kamas with only two stop lights would have such an amazing facility?!
Sutton seemed completely at peace in the water. She spent almost two hours in the water and loved every minute of it.
Salem's favorite activity at the pool is the large waterslide. She went down the slide three times with Maggie and at least 8 times with Drue. Salem would ask to go again before her feet even hit the water coming off the slide.
This is the current view outside our master bedroom deck. We're happy to see that the proportion of snow to greenery on the mountains is slowly becoming inversed.
Salem is determined to continue to enjoy the snow while it lasts. This is Maya, Salem, and Alex attempting sledding without sleds during playgroup last week.
5 Things I'm Thankful For Today:
- 1. Internet video conferencing. This allowed us to talk to several of Maggie's family members in Egypt this week.
- 2. That no other cars were on the road when Maggie and Salem were driving to breakfast for their 'Mama and Salem' date. The roads were very icy and the car slid a full 360 degrees into a snow bank.
- 3. Good music, especially when sung by a 2 year old and babbled by an 8 month old.
- 4. March Madness! Go JayHawks!!! (please no 1st round departures to a 16th seed this year)
- 5. A nice relaxing afternoon with a good friend. Drue stayed home with the girls while I had a couple of relaxing hours of hot-tubbing, good conversation, and great laughs with my friend Jo.
We absolutely love living in the mountains. For us it means perfect summers, amazing fall color landscapes, steps away from peaceful hikes, deer and moose in our back yard, no inversions in the winter. This winter it has also meant LOTS of snow. It's been beautiful to live in, but we all have a bit of spring fever now, especially after a week of warmer weather here.
Fortunately the above snow bank has now melted to about half of that size. I (Maggie) have even become quite adept at running the snow blower (although cars driving by may argue with that as they've unfortunately been showered by snow on more than one occasion). It's actually quite easy now that I know that I can electrically start the snow blower (a fact that Drue forgot to mention when teaching me how to use the blower; he got a very frustrated call from me after 15 minutes of trying to pull-start a cold snow blower).
Salem and Sutton's playgroup decided to take advantage of the warm weather this past week and hold our playdate outside at one of our local parks. The girls had a fabulous time sledding.
We love the playground at Willow Creek Park, even when it's covered under feet of snow.
Our bathing beauty! We headed South to St. George this past weekend for some R & R. This was Sutton's first exposure to a pool and she absolutely loved it!
Salem had a great time playing with her cousins Jaxson and Madison in St. George. She remembers them fondly now when she looks at her pull-ups. Her pull-ups have a picture of three princesses (Cinderella, Ariel, & Belle) that Salem has now affectionately renamed Jonny, Jaxson, and Madison :)
Salem agreed to a brief pause from throwing rocks into a nearby stream so I could snap this picture. But the remainder of Drue's hike was spent finding rocks to skip on the water under Salem's direction. We're so incredibly lucky to have someone with Drue's energy in our household.
Wise (or mostly silly) Words From a 2 Year Old
- A conversation between Salem and Drue that I overheard today (translation in parantheses for those who don't know spanish):
- Salem: Is Sutton mi hermana (my sister)?
- Drue: Si (yes). Quien es mi hija (who is my daughter)?
- Salem: Sutton is!
- Drue: Quien es mi otra hija (who is my other daughter)?
- Salem: Salem is! And what is Mama?
- Drue: Mama es mi esposa.
- Salem: Oh, I have a bag too!!!
- Salem confused 'esposa' (wife) for 'bolsa' (bag) :). 2 year olds are just too cute!
5 Things I'm Thankful For Today:
- 1. The way my girls' faces light up when they see me after I've been gone to work
- 2. Terrific parents who take excellent care of our girls so I can go to work without worrying about them
- 3. Finally, a full night of sleep with no one other than Drue in our bed. Salem was sick with a croupy cough for a couple of days so was sleeping with us (she likes to sleep with her arms wrapped around my neck, her fingers playing with my hair, and her feet kicking Drue's neck/face
- 4. An incredible husband who gladly indulges me with my projects and helps me set up the exact template that I want for our blog
- 5. Heated car seats...it was very cold out tonight on our way home from dinner
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