Our "Angel" Anna

Let me describe our Anna to you. Anna is the self-appointed second mother in our house. She's extremely helpful - sometimes overly helpful. She is usually eager to clean up, and she reminds us that she needs to brush her teeth before bedtime. If William is doing something that he shouldn't, we can always count on Anna to let us know; we'll hear "Ooooh!" as she runs either to or from Will getting our attention. She's even been known to chew him out (in her gibberish) and spank his bum when she thinks he deserves it. I'll have to catch a video of that sometime. As annoying as it is to have to repeatedly say, "I've got it under control, Anna," it's pretty darn cute to watch.

However, there is another side to our girl. She has no fear. NO FEAR. She causes me mild heart attacks on numerous occasions, but she is undaunted by any height or foreign object. She will look at you while you tell her something and then turn and do the exact opposite. She will then look at you while doing that thing and give her "silly smile" - as if to say, "You wouldn't dare stop me. I'm so cute!" (That has never worked for her, I might add.)

This picture captures all of that. We typically move the monitor away from her crib during naptime so that she won't play with it. We forgot this time. Also, the pillow does not belong in her crib. She managed to pull that off of the chair close to her crib. How she fell asleep without losing her grip, I'll never know.


We love our Angel Anna, but we fear we're going to have our hands full with this Annamal.

Monkeys at the Zoo . . . and at Home

We took the twins to the Hogle Zoo today. We wanted something fun to do as a family, and the kids have learned to LOVE animals. We would point out the animals to them, and both kids would instantly start making those sounds. It was funny to hear Will "tweet" at the penguins and Anna "neigh" to the zebras. (If anyone knows what sounds a penguin, zebra, and giraffe for that matter make, please let us know. The kids are curious.) Will's favorite by far was the swinging orangutan; Will giggled, blew kisses, and waved to him. Anna loved the giraffes and the snakes. She went up to the glass, pointed, and "hissed" at them.

Will using his elephant trunkAnna admiring the giraffesWill making friends with penguinsAnna taking notes from the orangutanTwins enjoying kangaroo and giant turtle

When we got home, Will showed us that he learned a thing or two from the orangutan. After trying to somersault for weeks now, he has perfected the art.

Anna got mad that she wasn't able to do it on her own, and after a while, she refused to keep trying. (That's my girl!) She'll get it soon. Don't worry.

My Husband is Stronger than Your Husband

After watching an episode of Mythbusters, Larkin decided to test a myth himself. Is it possible for a mere mortal to rip a phone book in half?



How amazing is that?! He's practically a modern-day Popeye, if you ask me.

Reasons Why We Love Our Dad

You may think this is an early Father's Day post for Larkin, but that thought hadn't occurred to me until right now. The reason for this post is to tell our Daddy how much we love him and how much we miss him! Daddy's out of town for the week (hopefully securing our future for the next few years), and we miss him. LIKE CRAZY! The twins wanted to tell Daddy some of the many reasons why they love him so much.

1. He's the most fun dad there ever was.

He'll do things like set up a fort for us to play in.

2. He teaches Will how to be a man. These instructions include things like, "Put down that pink purse and pick up your football" and "Stop crying; you're not even hurt." 3. He'll relinquish control of the remote for us. He has watched more episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Imagination Movers than any daddy should ever have to.

4. The number one, most important reason why we love our dad is because he loves us SO MUCH!

Also on this note, we love Dad because he loves Mom. Mom is kind of silly, and it takes a special guy to love her as much as Daddy does.

We miss you, Dad! We can't wait for you to come home and be with us!

A Rockin' Good Time

In the last few months we have given the twins more freedom in our house by opening up the nursery for them to play in. There ARE several shelves filled with toys for them to play with, however, in true kid form they ignore their toys and find "toys". First they discovered the little bookshelf full of kids books that they can pull off and throw around the room. I wouldn't mind the fact that they get books out to look at, except for the fact that to find a book they have to pull out all 200-ish books to find the one they want. In effort to slow this we have put the rocker in front of the shelf. It makes for fun reading opportunities like this one.



Allyson is reading them an animal book and if you listen close you can hear them making cat noises (cat is Will's favorite animal/noise - thanks Grandma Karen). It would have been longer but the battery died on the camera.

Of course the penalty of using the rocker in front of the books is that then the rocker itself becomes the toy. I think they see it as a roller coaster. Just listen.




The funny thing about this video is that at first glance you might say, "Awe, look they really do love each other and play with each other." But then if you watch closely at the end Anna gives William a nice little push that, you would see if the video had lasted a little longer, resulted in his belly-flop/face-plant on the floor. Ah, aren't kids the best!

Swingers

This week we went to a public playground for the first time this spring. Now that the kids are older they seem to enjoy outside time TONS more. They ran around the playground and loved all the things they could do. Anna particularly loved the slides. They were both timid at first but Anna got over it eventually (she must have gotten inspiration from cousin Bella's video). William liked running through the tunnels and looking at the other kids more than going down the slides. Eventually we tried them in the swings. The video speaks for itself, we're pretty sure they had fun.

No One Mourns the WICKED!!!

I was first introduced to the musical Wicked about five years ago. I got the soundtrack and was even so intrigued by the storyline that I read the book (don't, by the way - it's terrible for all sorts of reasons). I looked online to see when it would be in a city where I might see it, including cities in Utah, Colorado, Ohio, Nevada, etc. When I went to NYC four years ago, I stood in the lobby of the sold-out theatre where it was playing hoping that my name would be drawn out of the lottery so that I might see it. Of course my name wasn't drawn. More waiting.

Back around October, I read that Wicked was coming to Salt Lake. Larkin, who I had made listen to the soundtrack on numerous occasions, had promised me that we would go see it if it ever came to a city nearby. This was my chance! Tickets went on sale to the general public in December for the shows in April through May. The morning they went on sale, Larkin and I got online on the laptop and on my work computer (yes, during work hours), and we both started calling the ticket office on each of our cell phones. After FOUR HOURS of online website difficulties due to "overwhelming response" and a phone's busy signal, we got through! Yes, I made Larkin continue trying both methods for four hours. I was desperate. When I finally got to talk to a ticket agent, the only tickets left were for shows on Sundays. I didn't care. We bought our tickets! We bought four, and our friends Russell and Shyla came with us.Us outside of the theatre - so excited!Shyla and me waiting for the theatre to open. I look a little wicked myself in this pictures. That's unfortunate.
Us in our seats. What is that behind us? Yes, it's the wall. We were in the very last seats in the very top row of the utmost rear balcony. Nosebleeds. To the extreme. Luckily, we could stand the whole performance and not block a single person's view. And we could see the whole stage, every actor, dancer, stage hand, etc. This gives you a better idea of where we sat:We actually ended up loving our seats. We made friends with the other poor people around us. We really had a great view of the stage, and most importantly, we got to see Wicked! We absolutely loved it! We'll rave about it for years to come. I've already looked up its tour schedule for the next few months to see when I may be able to see it again. Obsessed? Yeah, okay. But it was also a great opportunity to go on a date with my amazing husband. That alone made it a wonderful night. Thanks to Aunt Sally, Aunt Marie, and Jacen for making it so that we could go. We love you guys!