Before we left to head back to Ohio for Christmas, Ethan took the girls out on their annual Christmas Daddy date. This year, he took them for a train ride to go see Santa and then out for a sleigh ride. The girls called in absolute giggles to say hi and tell me they would be out longer (in other words, Mommy had more free time!!!) from Wendy’s where they were having such a great time together.
They are still talking about their time with Daddy on this afternoon
We just made a few cookies this year and the girls had a great time helping me do it! They LOVE all the traditional “ribbon” hard candies that I remember being in my grandma’s candy dish growing up. I think most of the cookies had way more candy on them than frosting or even cookie for that matter! The spice cookies are a recipe from my great grandma which is super fun to make those with my girls.
We were all on a bit of a sugar buzz between tasting dough (an absolute necessity), candy and frosting. Honestly, I think between the three of us, we probably ate close to a dozen cookies worth of dough. Oops!
On Saturday, we headed up to Squaw Valley to get Hannah Gray on her skis and asked Tenley if she wanted to try. She was very excited and talked about it the whole way up to Tahoe. We let Hannah Gray go first as Tenley watched from the bottom and made “sand castles” out of the loose snow by the magic carpet. Then it was her turn! She belly laughed the whole way down and wanted to go faster. I held onto her coat by the nape of her neck and ran down the hill with her. Definitely not the best way to do it. We saw another dad teaching his young kids and he had a long pvc pole that they could hang onto, like a boom for water skiing. It was brilliant. We will definitely try this next time!
Hannah Gray retained a lot from last season and enjoyed it just as much as ever, maybe even more as she stayed out for most of the afternoon. Yay for little skiers!!
Lately, Hannah Gray asks me to draw any assortment of animals about 10x a day and then she colors it. I just can't keep up with the level of her requests. So I started letting her use my iPad to look at pictures we look up together and then she draws them. We started this about 4 days ago and her observation skills, attention to detail and confidence in her artwork has gone through the roof.
Today, she asked for her Clifford dog and set it on the table and this is what she did. She is learning depth perception today as she added hind legs to Clifford today. She is growing up so fast and seeing her interests grow and develop is so much fun. She is one cool kid.
For the last month or so Tenley will often interrupt you while reading with her and just start asking/saying, “Jesus in your heart? Jesus in Daddy’s heart? Jesus in sister’s heart?” and the list will go on to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the babysitter, people on tv, Tuk, cartoon characters, etc. Then usually during some quiet moments, she will say, “I want Jesus in my heart” and we’ll talk about what that means and explain that there will be a time when she’ll understand What Jesus did for us. A couple weeks ago during lunch, she started crying and I had no idea why despite the fact I was sitting right next to her. I asked what was wrong and she was trying to tell me but I just was not getting it. Hannah Gray quickly piped in, “She doesn’t want Jesus to take her heart and is worried about him taking her stomach”. Somehow she had missed concept of Jesus living in her heart and confused it with him stealing it. Hannah Gray and I worked together to try to explain it a little better to a two year old heart and mind.
Fast forward to tonight. Ethan and I took the girls to see a live drive through nativity on the other side of town. We had a packed dinner in the car while we were waiting in line and it was finally our turn. The amount of questions that were packed into that 15 minutes of driving through the scenes was absolutely flabbergasting. The scenes actually ended up including Jesus as an adult, the cross and the empty tomb. So the conversation naturally went back to answering the question, “Why did Jesus die when he could have saved himself?”. After talking about this for most of the ride home with Hannah Gray, Tenley finally had questions of her own. We had a MASSIVE, I mean MASSIVE temper tantrum that added a good 15 minutes onto our drive and as Hannah Gray sat in hot tears and heavy breathing, Tenley’s quiet voice piped up. “I want to ask Jesus to live in my heart”. “Tenley, you do? Why do you want to do that?”. “I just do. I want him live in my heart”. I quickly tried to formulate some type of simple question that would not be leading but give her a chance to explain why she wanted to do that and give a glimpse of her level of understanding. Hannah Gray asked Jesus to come live in her heart last December 16th after we talked about our advent calendar and having a choice of receiving a gift and that gift being Jesus. So there I was thinking that our Christmas traditions are actually bestowing a sense of wonder and awareness of who Jesus is and why he came. This is fantastic! Then Tenley says, “Yeah, I want Jesus and Mickey Mouse to hold me. Where Mickey Mouse live? (Ethan and I bust out laughing after the intense time of dealing with Thing 1’s tantrum) “Well, Tenley, I think Mickey lives at Disney World and Disney Land”. “Yes, I want Jesus and Mickey to hold me. I go there, they hold me.” Ah, the understanding and innocence of a 2 year old!!!
Hannah Gray and Tenley actively and intently watching the live Nativity.
We had a fun day over at the Petro’s today… we all headed out for a little field trip,
So there you have it! I am just over 15 weeks along and doing well. Still feeling like not many foods sound very good (and the best husband of the year award goes to Ethan Petro for currently being out on a Chinese food run for me!!!), but my energy is returning and I am still doing CrossFit which has been amazing. I feel so good afterwards and it helps my queasiness tremendously.
The girls are beyond excited (we all are) and cannot wait to “hold baby” as Tenley says. Hannah Gray has just grinned ear to ear about it and has been such an amazing helper to me when I haven’t been feeling well. The morning after we shared the news with them, Hannah Gray woke me up with her little face in mine and said, “Mommy, I am sooo excited to have a baby!!!! I am going to show the baby everything and I promise to be a good helper to you!!”. So, so sweet. We are blessed and love the idea of having a trio of girls or rounding out testosterone levels in the house with a boy. So we will find out come the end of May!!!
So this year, our tree is SO much better!!! Our Charlie Brown tree from last year had it’s own “charm” I suppose, but at least this one looks real and we actually have room to spread our ornaments out instead of lining them up several deep on the same branch. But we have to admit, we tree lot-ed it this year… After our wonderful, but exhausting weekend at Tahoe the day before, we kept it simple and we had a good time and still have enough time left for the girls to help decorate it. Mission accomplished!
Tenley discovering the ornaments and then finding “ASLAN!!!”.
