Valentine's Cookies

The girls and I cooked cookies last Sunday, decorated them on Tuesday and delivered them to our neighbors on Wednesday. Ava prefers the frosting, as you can tell from the picture below...

When you frost and decorate cookies with a 5 and 3 year old, you do a lot of hand washing!

Here is the result! The girls had a great time and the neighbors loved the cookies (or maybe they just loved two cute girls at their door shouting "Happy Valentine's Day!")

Funny Thing

Here is a very funny thing about Ava....she opens gifts and then puts them back in the bag...never to be looked at again. She likes them all packed up and put away. I brought home the gift in the heart bag from Wisconsin in January. The gift in the silver bag was given to her a week later. She also added a gift from Daddy that he brought home early February.

When I left for Wisconsin in January, I wrote the girls a note and left it under their pillows. Cat read the note, ate the candy and put it all in the garbage. Ava read the note, put it back in the envelope, re-licked the envelope...

...and it is still sitting on her bedside table. Is there a name for this behavior?

or is it just "craziness?"

1st Tooth

Catalina lost her 1st tooth on January 16th, 2010. The tooth fairy was so good to her! I was out of town so she waited until I got home to put her tooth under her pillow. Of course, it was very scary to her that the tooth fairy would actually come into her room but she pushed through it. She was so excited to see the new "fairy" earrings, 2 dollar bill and four special coins!

Flip Video

I just bought a new, very small video camera called a Flip Video. I can't wait to use it with the girls. It's small enough to fit in my purse so I hope to use it more than my big video camera. Uploading it onto my blog was a snap. Here is some video of Catalina reading to Ava May. They do this every night. Enjoy!

Hoppy

Catalina brought "Hoppy" home again from school. It's the kindergarten mascot. She gets to have Hoppy and his accessories for 3 days . She has to write about Hoppy and what she did with him. She adds pictures to her page and all the pages get put in an album.

Catalina took Hoppy to gymnastics. This is one of her coaches, Victoria.

Hoppy on the bars.

Ava loves to play with Hoppy too!

Oh my goodness, this girl can read! She is reading everything. She knows her first 300 sight words and and she can spell the first 100. Unstoppable!

Just a side note, yesterday Catalina took a back handspring clinic at the gym. After 90 minutes, she can do a back handspring if someone spots her. She just loves gymnastics!

Catalina's Haircut

Catalina wanted to get her hair cut short again. I tried to talk her out of it...you won't be able to put it in a pony, it will take a long time to grow out, you can't change your mind once it is cut....blah, blah, blah. She did it and look at the results. She is adorable!

And she is so happy!! Ava does not want her hair cut...ever.

Christmas 2009

We had such a great Christmas this year! The girls were a perfect age. They woke up Christmas morning, ripped open their Santa gifts, and played with their babies all day. I had to beg, plead and bribe them to open the rest of their gifts! Unbelievable! For those of you who are wondering...yes, daddy had to meet Santa outside again this year to bring in the presents.

Ava got her baby with a blue blanket, a bottle and a pacifier.

Even Daddy was a good boy this year and got a new bike!

Catalina got a Baby Alive. Just what we need, another mouth to feed (she also pees and poops!).

The Merrill's on Christmas day at the Tolars.