Princesses on Ice

Last week my friend Amber called to see if the girls and I wanted to go to see Disney's Princess on Ice with them today. I had been thinking about how much the girls would enjoy it, and we love to hang out with Amber and Corinna, so we decided to go for it. We had such a great time! Ansley was a little overwhelmed at first with all the lights and noise, and got a little scared. Once she stopped crying she put her fingers in her ears through the first fifteen minutes or so of the show, but then finally relaxed and enjoyed the show. The girls sported their favorite princess dresses and looked oh so cute! We got to see Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel and Snow White in the first half, followed by Cinderella in the second half. Tinkerbell, Mickey, Minnie and Goofy also made appearances, as well as the princes from each story and extras like the Dwarfs, Sebastian, etc. Here are some pictures of my little princesses on the big day!

And This Girl

This girl never ceases to crack me up! She loves being silly and making people laugh. I'm afraid she may someday be the class clown--unless she lets her "shyness" get in the way. I don't think she would actually have a shy bone in her body if she didn't see how her big sister acted at times. But since she sees Kennedy being shy, she often follows along. Her personality seems to be much more like her father, unlike Kennedy who is a carbon copy of me.

Ansley is perfectly content staying home all day playing either 1) Dora House or 2) Pink Castle (a Little People castle). Both of these items stay put in our living room and many of our mornings are spent on the rug playing with these two things. Mommy however, gets very bored playing these two things over and over that I often try to find some sort of errand to run each day, just to get out of the house! Besides just running errands, we have gone to the Magic House, Butterfly House, some parks together, and the library each week for story time, and she does enjoy doing those things. It's just trying to pull her away from the Dora House or Pink Castle that is hard. Once we're out of the house she is fine.

She LOVES macaroni and cheese and requests it daily for lunch. She's trying very hard to give up her naps, but I'm just not quite ready for that. Many days she plays quietly in bed and never actually goes to sleep. She loves watching her sister get on and off the bus and often tells us about all the things she will do when she is a big girl: "When I a big girl I going to ride the bus to school too." She is goofy, goofy, goofy, but very sensitive too. She does not like to get in trouble, and rarely does for that matter. She generally is pretty easy going and doesn't cause many problems around here. She is starting to get a bossy side and last night I overheard her tell Kennedy "We don't talk like dat in dis house." I'm not sure what Kennedy said to evoke that response, but Jeremy and I both chuckled when we heard it!

She has also decided she wants to be Velma for Halloween. That would be Velma from Scooby-Doo, you know the nerdy girl with glasses? I found a Daphne costume at a consignment store that I bought today thinking Kennedy may want to be Daphne for Halloween. That's when Ansley proclaimed she was going to be Velma. She has not stopped talking about being Velma since this morning. She has also asked me about 87 times when we will get her Velma costume. Looks like I'm now on a hunt for a red skirt and orange turtleneck for the child! Now I'm really hoping Kennedy will want to be Daphne...how cute would the two of them be?

This Girl

This girl never ceases to amaze me! She is loving Kindergarten and is soaking up every little thing. She can tell me which kids got in trouble each day and why, how many girls are wearing Twinkletoe shoes (like her Nana gave her), all about each and every school fundraiser (and the awesome prizes she can get), and just about anything else I ask her. She has learned to read a total of 8 new words so far and loves pointing them out to me when I read to her at night. She has a friend named Montesweeni (I have no idea if I am spelling that right) who I think may come from a family of Middle Eastern descent, and a friend named Yadiera (again no clue on the spelling) that is Mexican and teaches her Spanish words and phrases. She has a few other friends that she talks about as well, but her circle definitely is multi-cultural!

Something else has happened to Kennedy since school started. The first week or two was not real pleasant for us once she got home. She was ornery, sassy, and cried at the drop of a hat. But since we have gotten more into a routine, things are going much better. I'm sure our 7:30pm bedtime doesn't hurt either. She has been super polite lately, using manners whenever she can, she asks if she can help do dishes/dust/sweep/etc., and she hasn't complained about my cooking in weeks! I don't know what's gotten into her, but we definitely like the changes we are seeing. Hopefully they'll last!

Last, I will leave you with a funny story. Every Monday at school each child can share something they did over the weekend, and apparently they draw pictures about it too. With this past weekend being Labor Day, we had a fun-filled weekend with Betsy and Chad in town. We went to the Cardinals game, had a cook-out, and went to Six Flags. When I asked her what she shared with the class she said: "I told them we sat at home and watched TV all weekend." I was flabbergasted and asked her why she said that instead of share some of the things we really did. Her response: "What? I don't know how to draw all those other things!"

My silly, silly girl!

The Name Game

Who knew naming a baby boy could be so hard? Jeremy and I usually know the name of our baby the day we find out the gender, and had this one been a girl, she would have already had her name long ago (Brooklyn). However, we just could not decide on a name for this baby boy! We both had our two favorites, and they didn't match up. Jeremy wanted the name Landon, with his second choice being Jonathan (after both his favorite Bible character, and his Grandpa John.) I like both of those names, but I just didn't feel like they were "the one," plus I always spell Jonathan wrong! My favorite choice was Evan, with my second choice being Brayden, although Jeremy was completely against that one. Neither one of us was budging, even with the help of most of the youth group members trying to pressure me to pick Landon, so we decided to scratch all four of those names and start over.

Thanks to the Complete Idiot's Guide to 40,000 Baby Names we finally struck gold! Our son's name will be. . . (drumroll please)

Ian Jeffrey Picker

We both really like Ian, and it happens to mean "God is gracious" or "Gift from God" depending on where you look. But my favorite part about it is that it is the Scottish equivalent of John, so we feel like it has some meaning there as well. Jeffrey was my dad's name, so that was the given middle name regardless of what the first name was going to be. I immediately liked it and decided that was my new first choice, but Jeremy made me wait all day long before he admitted it was his favorite too. It took Kennedy saying in her prayer before bed "Please help Daddy to say we can name the baby boy Ian" before he finally told us he thought it was a great idea. We're all excited to finally have a name so we can stop calling him "Baby Boy."