Once There Was a Snowman & Some Cupcakes Too!

 Last Monday the girls requested cupcakes for FHE dessert. I absolutely loved the clean chocolate cupcakes they made for my birthday, so I promised them we would make them. After dinner we made our cupcakes and put them in to bake. I didn't realize how long they took to bake, so our Family Home Evening lesson was done before the cupcakes were finished. Jeff suggested that they build a snowman while they waited. The girls jumped at the chance!

Here they are building their snowman in the dark.

Aubrey had a ball rolling snow balls for the snowman.

Brooke thought it was more fun eating the snow.

 Time to add the accessories.

Look at that darling snowman!

I brought the girls in for cupcakes while daddy wanted to build a surprise with all of the snowballs Aubrey made.

These cupcakes are seriously so delicious - the best cupcakes I've ever had! Here's the link to the recipe.

Cute chocolate mustaches!

Daddy's surprise. An Aubrey and Brooke snowman to go with the Daddy one.

Week 32, 33 & 34

Weeks 32 & 33 I didn't loose any weight. Finally I lost a pound this last week. It's not much but at least it's something! Now that I am much closer to my goal weight it's coming off a lot more slowly - which is to be expected. I'm just planning on doing what I've been doing and hopefully I can slowly loose the rest of the weight!

Bounce Bounce Bounce

 A new bounce house place opened up nearby. I've never gone to the others close by because they are more expensive then I'm willing to pay. This one was much more in my price range. It was a pretty small place but definitely worth the amount we paid. The girls were thoroughly entertained the whole time. And I liked that I could easily see them as they ran from around the place.

 Aubrey doing tricks.

The cutest two sisters around.

BFF's

Jumping pillow tricks!

Aubrey was sufficiently worn out!

I love finding new, low price, fun places to go with my girls!

Miscellaneous

 Aubrey has been going through a scared at night phase again. We are starting to get out of it, but she's still sneaking into our bed several nights a week. One night I thought I'd see if she would stay put if she slept in Brooke's room. They did pretty good going to bed, but Aubrey ended up in our room in the middle of the night anyway. But they sure looked cute having their little slumber party.

Brooke looked so cute one Sunday dressed up for church so I tried to take a picture of her. She was not being the least bit cooperative. This is her favorite dance pose.

 Mom I just gotta dance!

 We went to another family art class. The girls got to make cat's out of lots of different materials. Here are their cute kitty cats.

More dance pictures of my cute dancing Brookie. She's starting to learn her dance and she loves it.

First they lay down and pretend they are sleeping.

 Then they wake up and dance. She loves doing her little dance.

 This day they were dressed up like "Little Red Riding Hood."

 We had Esther and Isla over last week and Isla looked so cute in the hat I made for her back before she was born. I love the expression she's giving me in this picture!

The girls were dressed up like Fairy's when she came over, so they had to get a tutu for Isla.

She looked so cute when she crawled because all we saw was a great big poof of tulle. 

Here's some of my favorite quotes from my girls over the last week or so.

These were some Brooke quotes from Sunday: While eating breakfast Brooke blurted out "When we die we're going to live in Heaven with Heavenly Father and Jesus and not in our house anymore." 

Upon hearing the names of Laman & Lemuel in a sacrament talk she said, "Hey she's talking about Nephi's brothers!" 

When asked if she had fun in Nursery today she responded, "Yeah, we colored pictures and learned about the Holy Ghost." I'm glad she's paying attention in church!

Brooke was admiring her hand as I put her to bed about a week ago, then she looked up at me and said, "Heavenly Father made my body so good - like magic."

Aubrey found Jeff reading his scriptures a couple of weeks ago. She jumped on the bed and he read out loud to her. After they were done, Aubrey ran to me all excited and said. "Mommy I got tingles when Daddy read his scriptures to me. I think the Holy Ghost was talking to me."

Last Sunday, while watching a show on BYUtv that was showing depictions of Christ through the ages, Aubrey turned to me and said, "Mommy I believe in Jesus Christ."

Family Mission Statement

A friend of mine requested that I blog about our Family Mission Statement.

When Jeff and I were first married our Stake President was John Covey (Stephen R Covey's brother). We had a special Stake Activity with presentations on different areas of the family. We went to the class taught by our Stake President on Family Mission Statements. It was interesting to hear about how they had applied Stephen R. Covey's principles on creating a Mission Statement for your business to the family. I went into the class a little wary and thinking it was kind of cheesy. But I left understanding that it really was important for us to think about what we wanted most for our family and have some ideals to shoot for. 

The next Family Home Evening we wrote our Mission Statement. We decided to center ours around our home. We brainstormed what an ideal home looked like to us. Then we took the most important attributes to each of us and wrote it up as our Mission Statement. Then of course being the LDS woman that I am, I had to crochet it for our wall!

The Buell Family Mission Statement

The Buell home is a place of peace and safety.

A place to enjoy love and laughter.

A place full of respect, understanding, support and friendship.

A place to resort to as often as possible.

A place where the Lord will make known many wonderful things.

We certainly have much work to do to live up to our ideal. But it is nice to have an ideal to reach for!

Playing Dress Up with Isla

 Esther & Isla came over to play last week and the girls had fun giving Isla her first experience dressing up like a Princess.

Cutie little Snow White's!

These girls just adore their cousin Isla!

Brooke thought it would be fun to try out Isla's car seat. Nope she didn't fit!

It sure is fun to have Esther & Isla over to play!

Brooke's First Dance Class

 Last week Brooke had her first ever dance class. She was sooooo excited! The studio Aubrey goes to just started a 2 & 3 year old class, so now she gets to dance too!

She was so excited to get on her dance clothes. She especially loved the ballet slippers!

Giving me a dance pose before we left.

We got to the studio early, so I could get her ready and comfortable before I had to run off to the registration table.

She had fun dancing away in the empty studio. I think she looks like she's doing some Ballroom dance here!

So happy to have her own dance class!

Yay! Class is starting. I was assuming registration was going to be pretty busy like the day before for Aubrey's class and I was sad that I wasn't going to get to watch Brooke's first dance class. Luckily Brooke's class was tiny and the other class going on at the same time is a competing team that doesn't need to register. So it only took a few minutes to get everyone registered and I was able to watch most of her class!

Noticing mommy at the door!

Brooke's class is a more laid back creative dance class. After some warming up they read a fairy tale and get to dress up like a princess. This day they were Sleeping Beauty.

  Look at those darling Princess'! Then they act out the story in dance form. Sort of like doing a ballet of the story.

  Brooke was a little shy to hold hands and curtsy, so Aubrey stepped up to help her out.

Time for some stretches. Here's some butterfly stretches.

 

I love this picture because it's a very accurate representation of the class. Here's Brooke running to me to give me 5's (she was feeling a little shy and came several times for reassurance). And there's Aubrey in the background taking pictures and video. From now on Aubrey will be in the hall with me, but since there were several other mother's in the class and Aubrey was so excited for her sister, I let her go in and take pictures.

Here's one of the pictures that Aubrey took with her camera.

I only took a couple of short video clips. Every time Brooke would see me she'd run over to give me 5's, so I was trying to keep a low profile. Thus I was only able to take a couple of short clips.

Because I could tell she was feeling kind of shy, I wondered what she thought about the experience. But as soon as it was over she came running to me and exclaimed, "That was so much fun!" Yay success! She usually takes a little bit to warm up to new situations, so I think after a couple more classes, her shyness will wear off. What fun it is to have two cute little dancers!