Beanies

The kids dug out their winter hats to wear despite the 100 degree heat

Love them!

Face Paint

The kids playing with face-paint on my bathroom counter

Just getting started

Parker painted a heart on his knee

The finished products: 

And Terra joined us after her nap was done, and though I kept her out of the paint-- she is still so cute, so I had to take a picture anyway...

Terra Berra

 So Terra is 11 months now

Yes, she's almost a year already, it's hard for me to believe, too.

Here's an update on my almost one year old:

*She started walking a few weeks ago. and now walks everywhere.

*She makes some animal sounds and it just kills me! She does: owl, horse, monkey and duck

*She does a little sign language, and says  few words (mama, dad, etc)

*She loves to climb- anywhere and everywhere

*She loves reading, especially her ABC books

*She plays peek-a-boo with anything she can find (shirts, blankets, pillows, towels, etc)

*She loves hats, especially her mickey mouse ears hat from Disneyland. She'll sign 'hat' and then sign 'up' and say "uh, uh" while she points to up where her Mickey hat is kept. Also in her ABC books she can't read H for hat without wanting to get her hat down.

*I'm happy to say she is still nursing, but she is also great at eating solid food. She likes anything except oatmeal. But she especially loves bananas and green smoothies.

Now on to the real cuteness.... the pictures:

Let's Go Fly a Kite

So, I recently made the kids watch one of my favorite movies; Mary Poppins.

The kids loved it... they laughed a bunch several times, but they nearly fell out of their seats laughing at the end of the 'spoonful of sugar' song. 

And since then they love to listen to the Mary Poppins sound track.

Parker's favorite is 'Step n Time' and he spends all 8 minutes of the song running and dancing around our living room until he is all sweaty and tired.

Aria's favorite is 'Let's go fly a Kite'

And one morning they were listening to Let's go fly a Kite and they used their balloons to pretend that they were in fact flying kites:

How cute are they?

My Three Kids

Nothing much to say here, except that I swear I have the three cutest kids in existence!!

Oranges

We got a bulk order of fresh organic oranges a few weeks ago and it was awesome!

The first time I squeezed some orange juice and gave it to the kids Parker went something like this:

"This is yummy! This is yummy, yummy, yummy! This is really, really yummy!"

Orange juice is just so much better when it's fresh- even my four year old could tell the difference.

Anyway, one morning Terra was 'helping' me make some orange juice, and it was just too cute!

Look at that face! I love it, and I love her!

My Little Parker

All things Parker:

Parker likes counting, counting backwards, and 'skip counting' he was counting by tens one day and he went "eighty, ninety, ten-ty" He also sometimes counts up too 100 saying "98, 99, ten-ty, 100

Once out of nowhere he said "I'm going to count backwards from 100" and he did... really well. Then later that days he announces he's going to count backwards again. Here's how it went "1200, 100, 99, 98, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0." Then he said " I counted backwards from twelve hundred, but I skipped some" Ya, I noticed.

He does recently think skipping things is very funny. He cracks himself up singing "A, Z, now I know my A, Z. Next time won't you sing with me?" and other similar songs

Lately, Parker has been obsessed with Tic-Tac-Toe.
He loves to play it on the computer, or on paper, or with some little X & O bean bags I made for him.
We went to the zoo and he knelt down and started to write Tic-Tac-Toe in the dirt (though he was writing it backwards)

He'll even play it in his head. I'll see him just staring into space, sort of 'writing' in the air with his finger and muttering about x's and o's. Then sometimes he'll call out: "I won! I got three X's in a row!"

He made up his own version of 'The three little pigs" Instead of a wolf it was a crocodile, and it wanted to eat three birds. They built their nests out of sand, leaves and grass, and furniture. But the crocodile didn't have to huff and puff he just had to blow once 'because his mouth is so big!' When I asked which nest was the strongest he laughed and said "the furniture"



This one is a bit old but it's priceless.
Jason and I had gone to the temple and returned relatively late at night. So the next morning our temple bags were sitting on our bedroom floor. Parker was using the bags to play pretend of "going to the temple' (go figure!) Anyway, after a couple of minutes, Aria no longer wanted to participate and Parker was getting upset about it.
I said "It's okay she doesn't have to go to the temple" (meaning for pretend)
Parker gasped and in an incredulous voice said "But then she'll never get to be with her husband forever!"


Somebody taught Parker that vegetables are yucky- and if I find out who, they will be sorry! He was such a great eater, now everyday for dinner he complains that I make "A too yucky dinner!" I got frustrated one day at lunch when he refused to eat a bunch of vegetables that he previously loved and I pointed out to him that until a couple weeks ago he loved broccoli. His reply? "But that was before I knew it was a vegetable"
Too bad he's got a mom who's not going to stop serving him veggies.


Parker can read!!! Now I know I can succeed at homeschooling! This was what stressed me out the most when I thought of my future as a homeschooler... Can I possibly teach someone to read this stupid language with no real rules? I've done it! Parker still 'sounds out' most of his words but he's read a whole pile of books all by himself.

Along with this he has learned to write a little- and I LOVE this so much his messy handwriting, the silly spelling and then of course the things he chooses to write.

Writing lesson (here you can see the genius idea I copied off of a homeschool blog I read... put worksheets in plastic sleeves and use dry erase markers!)

And in the bottom corner do you see how he spelled tree...hcree which is supposed to be chree-- So Cute!

And here's a Mother's Day card he made at the children's museum.

PRCR *heart* YOO

which of course means: Parker loves You.

I told him it's really P-A-R-K-E-R

But, he argues with me all of the time that his name is better when it's Prcr.

And along with learning to write, he has learned to draw.

A colorful ship

Specifically the ship that Nephi built with three sails

A Monster:

"It has two bellies, four crazy arms, a smile that goes up around the eyes and feet like P's." That is exactly how Parker described it, then later he turned it upside down and said it had "two bellies, four crazy legs, a frown that goes up around the eyes and hands like P's."

He is really into showing us he loves us. He argues all the time that he loves me more and puts it in terms of days:

 "I love you one hundred two days"

or

"I love you two hundred million days"

After I taught him billion he created his own number 'which is the biggest' It's villion. And I guess he loves me two villion days

Also, he'll sometimes do things to 'show ' that he loves us.

And when we looked for a present to give Daddy for his birthday he found this stiff felt heart and knew he wanted to show Daddy he loved him. 

Throw in some colored glue and pony beads and you've got yourself a birthday gift:

Aria picked out the smiley face, and kept saying "Appy, Appy!" (Happy, happy, of course)

He really likes 'new' places. New parks he hasn't been to. Stores that we don't go to regularly. He also says he thinks the cabin is better than our house because our house is 'so old' and he's 'so tired of our house'. And the other day he was throwing a fit and got sent to his room to calm down I overheard him crying to himself about how our house is "so old and I just don't like it anymore"