Tooth Fairy the third chapter

 Sabrina's losing teeth left and right!  Third tooth in the bottom fell out today. Big girl. 

Kalira is Three!

Kali turned three yesterday!  Here are some photos from her birthday "Walk around the Sun" celebration at school (wearing a great new dress from Grandma and Grandpa), a crazy, fun dinner at Nana and Poppys with Lindsey and all the Baumgartners, and her new playhouse in the backyard (which required extensive late night construction...in the rain!) 

We love this lady!!

Our Tiny Dancer

Sabrina was wonderful in her Holiday Dance Concert this weekend! We were so proud of her. It's been amazing to see her maturing and really loving something. She never wavered for a minute on dance this year (which was different from other activities we've tried in the past...swimming, soccer, etc.) She woke up each Saturday morning excited about dance, she thought about it whenever we missed it if we were out of town, and she knew exactly when her show was and all of her moves. As you can see in the video, she was pretty enthusiastic too. Celia was in the class as well and that made it even more fun. They were just great together. Unfortunately you can't see her much in the video (Celia) but she was right next to Sabrina in the second row. Sabrina is second from the left in the second row. You'll be able to spot her by the exuberant hand motions right at the beginning.

Sleepover with Lindsey

The night before Thanksgiving we spent a great night and morning with Lindsey at our house. She was a wonderful houseguest and the girls had a blast together. 

Happy Halloween 2014

Halloween 2014

We're finally getting better at this Halloween deal! We managed to make it to the Munchkin Masquerade on Pearl St. in Boulder, hit Brent's office party, then made it home for trick or treating and avoided any meltdowns completely! I think that's a first for this sugar-fueled, hyped-up event. Sabrina was very excited about her Elsa costume (complete with a ribbon "long braid" that we devised together to make up for the fact that her hair is still pretty short), and Kali didn't understand WHY we were dressing her up like Tinkerbell, but she thought the wand was cool and the wings were annoying...then she discovered the candy in big bowls all around her. Jackpot. I have to give her credit though - she was fairly subdued even though she's definitely our candy kid. Fun times for sure!

Kalira Teal is 2 1/2!

Last Tuesday, we surprised Kali by letting her know that it was her 2 1/2 birthday.  She was thrilled!  She kept asking "It's my birdday??" When we explained "half birthday" she tried to say it, but just ended up at Birrday again.  It'll do.  Speaking of her verbal skills, she's killing it on sentences and much more advanced thoughts lately, but we're also noticing the difference between her and Sabrina at this age.  While Sabrina had an adorable "lellow" phase, she said almost everything exactly right.  I think we took it for granted.  Kali says many things with much more of her own "twist" than Sabrina ever did.  Her sister is "Sabweena," oatmeal is a very long word "ooooAAAtttmeal," breakfast is sometimes still indecipherable (in fact Brent came up one morning to ask what she was talking about and we finally settled on breakfast) but it's something like "bweaakist," and our favorite is still when she's explaining where something is, it's usually "ober der."  She is extremely polite most of the time and almost always says "Thank you for cooking" whenever we sit down to eat, or "thank you for opening that for me, Mommy" or even "thank you for saying 'you're welcome' Mama."  Everything needs to happen "in two minutes" these days - whether that's leaving for school in the morning, not playing with her toys anymore, or going pee on the potty (we learned to ignore her request for 2 minutes in that situation).  And speaking of peeing on the potty, she's had a breakthrough week!  We started sending her to school in underwear last Tuesday (coincidentally on her half-birthday...easy to remember for us) and she's only had a handful of accidents - and that includes no diapers during naptime.  She's getting it!  We've noticed a big change recently and she even asked to get out of the bathtub tonight to go pee in the potty.  Huge strides there!

We tucked away a few presents at Christmas when we could see that she'd gotten enough already, and we're so glad we did because it was very fun for her to open two gifts that night.  She got a Little Mermaid Duplo set from Aunt Deed and a latch board puzzle.  She pulls us downstairs regularly now asking us to "go play with my mermaid blocks."  Thanks for the set, Deed!

Here's a photo of her opening the gifts and up top are a few of her being goofy in the bath last week.

Happy half-birthday you sweet, funny, challenging, strong-willed little lady.

MommyBriniKali Go to the Pumpkin Patch

This weekend I took the girls to Cottonwood Farms (by myself because Brent was off mountain biking in Fruita/Moab) and we managed to take some photos with the good camera, AND buy 4 pumpkins, 2 squash, 2 small pumpkins...and an apple to feed the starving children. It was comical at times, very sweet and bonding at times, and extremely crowded which made everything that much more...exciting. Example: finding a wagon to pull along is difficult when it's crowded, especially when you already picked out the pumpkins and the girls are dead set on the exact ones we chose! Scramble back to the entrance to get a wagon, run back to find people taking pictures with the pumpkins you just stacked up and put off to the side, assuring the girls that "those other people" weren't taking them from us, then realizing that you really needed two wagons because you chose big pumpkins...at least I could laugh at myself). All in all, we had a fun morning, scored some great pumpkins, and got some even better photos. I really love these girls. Sabrina took several of these - she found the "big" camera pretty fun!

Cottonwood Farms 2014

Happy Birthday to me, Jill and Natalie!

Lots of Libra birthdays to celebrate this week!

The girls and Brent made a wonderful breakfast and dinner for me on Wednesday to celebrate my birthday. Sabrina was most proud of the pink mashed potatoes, made with puréed roasted beets along with the potatoes. They (ok Brent) also made creme brûlée. My favorite. It was perfect. In fact, it was so good that we had to eat it again two days later to celebrate Jill's birthday. 

Then we had a big milestone in our extended family with Natalie turning 40 today!  We celebrated grown-up style in a fancy penthouse in Vail. Fourteen of us (plus three babies who snuck in) went for the night and had a hired chef for the evening who made a four course meal and a fabulous dessert for us. 

The kids stayed with a teacher from BMS named Janina. She was wonderful with them. She even hung in there when our fall weather turned into a complete blizzard in Vail this morning and they closed I-70 for several hours and we were stuck on the other side!! Doh!  We got home several hours late but to two very happy and well cared-for girls. (We really miss Nana and Poppy, and yes, we realize how spoiled we are!).  Here are some photos from the drive up and the cool sculpture in the square below our penthouse. The ski hill is just behind me taking this photo. We were on the top floor. It was fairly amazing really. 

(And one of sweet baby Emma who got to tag along to the grown up party)

Happy birthday Libras!