Dancing

We took this video a few weeks ago but finally figured out how to upload it to the blog.  The girls love to dance during the credit music after movies.  Thought this was a cute video of Becca and Leah dancing. Enjoy!

Sisters!

Sorry for not posting last week.  We have had sickness going around, again.  The last 2 weeks have seen 3 trips to the doctor, 2 ear infections and one sinus infection.  Hopefully we will recover and be healthy for a little while.
This week is spring break for Emma.  It is actually this week and 2 days next week.  She goes back to school on April 3rd. We started spring break off with a bang-the biggest snow storm all winter! The girls had fun playing in the snow this morning.  On Saturday we went and saw the new movie The Croods.  It was pretty good.  Becca almost watched the whole movie, just missed the last 10 minutes or so.  The girls enjoyed it and I enjoyed listening to Emma laugh really loud and make funny comments during the movie.
We decided to make today Make-over Monday and curled all the girls hair and painted their nails.  It was Becca's first time getting her nails done and she sat really still and watched.  I officially have 3 princesses in the house!

Becca dressed up as a bee with her favorite boots on!

Leah making rice krispie pops!

Sisters enjoying an after nap snack on Sunday

Playing in the snow

Making pink pancakes for breakfast

Princesses!

Gettysburg

This last weekend we visited Gettysburg National Military Park.  It is only an hour away from our house and the the weather was good.  We drove around and saw all the different monuments and we even got out and went on a little hike.  It was nice to get out and enjoy the warmer weather and sunshine.

Just another week

This last weekend was exciting at least for Emma and Leah.  They both had a birthday party to go to on Saturday.  It is fun that we actually know people and they get to go be with friends! We spent most of the last week still recovering from the stomach flu.  Now I am trying to catch up with all the things I got behind on being sick and taking care of sick kids.  Gotta love laundry and cleaning :)? 
Friday night we went a major costco shopping spree.  We are trying a new approach to grocery and meal planning this month-one trip for the whole month.  I spent last week planning out enough meals and making lists of what we needed and what to eat when, you know the freshest stuff at the beginning of the month and the things that last longer or are frozen towards the end of the month.  We will see how it goes! 
 The pictures this week are from Sunday.  We had the girls in their matching holiday dresses (thanks mom!) for the first time at the same time and took their pictures.  Becca has grown attached to a certain beanie hat and even had to wear it during story time with dad so I just had to take a picture-so cute!
Our alphabet "days" are few and far between lately and we have only made it to G so far.  So today we made giant ginger cookies for our FHE treat and made green collages-hence the picture of Becca with green marker all over her!

Oogies

So this week I am a little late in blogging.  We have had the oogies or stomach flu at our house.  So far just Emma, Leah and Mom lets hope that is all! 
This week has been pretty normal except with a plethra of scouts.  Saturday was the Blue and Gold blanket. Hot dogs and cheetos yum!  True cub scout food.  My girls were in heaven.  I don't think they have ever eaten so much at a ward function.  The best part of the night was the angry bird sling shot game and other angry bird activities.  The girls had lots of fun and I got a nice thank you gift and my trained badge. Last night at den meeting we did strength activities.  9 year old boys trying to do yoga poses-priceless!
Emma got to paint on canvas and make a junk mobile as she calls it in her art class.  She loved both.  Leah has been busy being sneaky and experimenting with various things around the house.  The best one was giving her squinkies a bath in the bathroom sink and then losing them down the drain! I guess water isn't too bad to clean up but the cornstarch goo we made last week was a beast! Fine little powder all over the dining room and kitchen!
Becca is busy busy busy.  She is very concerned with details.  She makes sure you turn lights off, use your toothpaste and even insists on having blush too when I am putting on my makeup. She even helped set the table last week. I was yelling at someone to set the table, can't remember who since they take turns everyday, and look over to see Becca in the middle of the table putting her plastic play dishes around the table! At least she listens to me for now!

Setting the table for Dinner!

Becca fell asleep during lunch in her high chair!

Funny journal page from Emma. "I was playg tempolrun on my Dad's tablit." Translation: "I was playing temple run on my dads tablet." Thought youwould appreciate this Spencer and McKay!

Presidents Day

I know it hasn't quite been a week since our last post but I had a few minutes alone (amazing!) so I thought I would write.  We had a great Valentines Day at our house.  We had a heart filled day. Red velvet heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, heart sandwiches for lunch and heart shaped pizza for dinner.  However the pizza was one big heart and once we cut it the girls could no longer tell it was a heart and had to use the heart cookie cutters to cut their pieces into hearts.  But alas with all the cooking I was too busy to take pictures of all our heart shaped offerings.  The girls did all wear their valentine shirts (thanks Aunt Cathy!) and I got a few pictures of them wearing them.  They also happened to be riding their bikes on the deck at the time so they aren't great but we got some.  The girls all loved their surprises from mom and dad.  Emma got a new Ivy and Bean chapter book, Leah got the new Olivia princess book(which is hilarious) and Becca got sparkly tom looks alikes.  She loves shoes and walks around the house alot of the day with shoes for everyone. She says "here, shoes, here!" She puckers her mouth really funny when she says shoes, it is so cute!
 Our weekend has been low key.  We did go to our friends the Olers house for their daughters 6th birthday.  It was nice to spend time celebrating with them.  This morning we went to the far away costco and bough a chest freezer!  We have been longing for this appliance for quite some time and when the tax return came Grant suggested we get one.  I was all for that!  Now I need to get busy filling it up!

Emma's homework journal page on Valentines Day.

Valentine Cookies!

This last week was pretty good.  We watched Hotel Transylvania for our annual friday movie night this week.  I didn't get to see much since Becca needed to go to bed but the girls liked it alot.  Saturday we went to Costco and the grocery store to get food. Then Grant and I put together 7 freezer meals for the crock pot in an hour or so.  I have been wanting to try this for awhile and we finally did it.  Hopefully it will make the after school-dinner rush hours a little less rushed.

 This morning I took Becca to get her 18 month pictures taken.  She was not happy about it and we only got 1 picture with her happy or smiley, but at least we got 1! The funny part about it was the photographer was very talkative and told me about his idea to include a picture coffee mug with the traditional portrait package because who doesn't drink coffee, right? I just smiled and nodded and decided not to mention the fact that I do in fact not drink coffee.  We are definitely not in Utah anymore!

Last night we made Valentine sugar cookies as per downs/townsend family tradition.  It is always a little bittersweet-fun to do but makes us all homesick.  Leah especially enjoyed it and worked on her cookies for 45 minutes!  Emma like that the hearts were graduated in size and stacked really well. She made both me and Grant our own cookie stack-oh boy! Becca had fun licking frosting off her knife.  We tried a new frosting recipe and it was delicious. It is called whipped cream cheese frosting and was super light and airy.

The last exciting thing this week was Emma getting a black eye.  Actually it is just a bruised eye brow not a black eye she says.  She was doing a flip over the ottoman and came face to face with the piano leg!  She had a huge bump and now has a nasty bruise.  We included pictures for everyone to see, per Emmas request.