I never posted memories from Wesley’s birthday in September, so…

He went to school in the afternoon, and we had a friends-birthday party afterward. Wes picked an Angry Birds theme.

I always make Wes a birthday badge to wear to school.

His grandma and grandpa donated the beautiful balloons.

The kids colored.

We played a game in the backyard where they tossed a ball at a wall with piggies, like unto Angry Birds.

My friend offered to make this terrific Angry Bird cake. It was chocolate and Wes liked it.

Grandma and Grandpa dropped by afterward with presents!

We are glad to have Wes every day. He constantly reminds us what life is all about by forcing us to slow down, have fun, and love.

I realized I never put up memories from our Carissa’s fourth birthday party in August. We had a party with friends (and grandma and grandpa). Carissa picked the theme: Hello Kitty. For the Big Day, she wore her Hello Kitty (pajama) shirt and put a pink bow in her hair like Hello Kitty.

We started with coloring Hello Kitty pages and decorating Hello Kitty sugar cookies. The kids liked this part. Wes liked eating the frosting.

We did “Pin the Bow on Hello Kitty.” John did the terrific job of drawing and coloring Hello Kitty on poster board. I would have just free-handed it, but he made a grid with pencil first so it was all proportional and it looked really good! Carissa still tells me today that she can remember how she could see when it was her turn to pin the bow on. But that’s because she was obviously cheating and peeking.

Next Carissa opened presents. The kids all want to help. She got some amazing gifts that are very reflective of HER: lots of arts and crafts type of things, nail polish, a Hello Kitty umbrella, etc.

Then we moved to the backyard where we had decorated a canopy and had the birthday cake. When I asked Carissa what kind of cake she wanted, of course it was Hello Kitty. I showed her lots of pictures on the Internet of Hello Kitty cakes and she clearly showed me that she wanted a cake that looks just like Hello Kitty. And then I–the non-cake decorator–had to figure out how to make it. I think it turned out really good.

We ran out of time for the pinata, which we saved for Wesley’s birthday. The kids had fun and Carissa had a beautiful celebration of her wonderfulness. We are so blessed to have Carissa in our family. She is full of creativity, full of life, full of opinions, full of surprises, and we are glad she’s here to stay.

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Carissa’s preschool class at their Easter Egg hunt. I asked Carissa if she knows why we celebrate Easter, and she said “So the Easter Bunny can come.” There’s a little boy in her class with Down syndrome. I know the boy’s family because his older brother is autistic and was in Wes’s preschool class. I asked Carissa about this boy and she said, “He is silly. He doesn’t listen to the teachers or help clean up.” Sounds just like Wes!

Carissa’s winter gear in spring.

I bought Carissa this book that she picked out from the BYU Bookstore. It came with an ink pad. She makes fingerprints, and then follows the directions to turn the fingerprints into cute animals or objects. I was unsure if she was mature enough to really get it, but trust me–she really got it. I love looking through the book and seeing her creations. Carissa is very creative and getting more creative all the time.

She gets a little carried away sometimes, though. I’ve also noticed Elizabeth starting to draw on herself, which I’m sure she’s learned from her big sister.

One day we made blue Jigglers from a zoo Jell-O mold.

Elizabeth has learned self-reliance. She is often seen toting a chair around so she can reach something she’s expressly not allowed to get into. I’ve started stacking the little red chairs on tables out of her reach so she can’t do this anymore, but she can still push the big kitchen chairs where she wants them.

One day I needed to get out of the house so I took the kids to Kiwanis Park near BYU. The kids had so much fun. There was a little neighborhood girl who was selling Otterpops, but she was giving them away free to kids three and younger. So Carissa had a little treat.

Carissa loves goggles. And all accessories. She also loves her swimsuit. Sometimes she’ll wear it to bed, either by itself or over her pajamas.

John and I had this crazy idea to take our kids backyard camping. We wanted a practice run before we go real-camping.

Wes and Carissa were BEYOND excited. Carissa helped Dad set up the tent.

We put Elizabeth in the playpen in the tent for bedtime. Which didn’t work at all, but Carissa took care of her without me asking her to by running back and forth between the other tent (the “toy tent”) and the playpen, getting toys she thought Elizabeth might like. When it came time for her to really fall asleep, John held her until she did. The kids slept really well in the tent, even though it was a chilly night.

Once it was dark we gave the kids new little flashlights and explored the backyard. It was so cute to hear them say things like, “Look! A rock! Mom, check out this stick!” Everything is cooler in the dark, with flashlights. Wes kept saying, “Spooky!”

Then we roasted marshmallows.

This was their first time making and eating s’mores. I even found pink marshmallows for Carissa.

We sang a song together (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat”–in a round, even!) and then it was bedtime. We will probably do this again sometime. The kids loved it.

The day after camping was our annual Easter egg hunt at BYU with Wesley’s Down syndrome group.

Carissa knows she’s allergic to nuts (or, at least, that they “make her sick” and she can’t have them). So with every egg she opened she showed me the candy and asked, “Does this have nuts?” Good girl.

Carissa loved chasing the ducks in the stream. There was a mama duck with about fifteen ducklings. Fifteen!

We walked through the Wilkinson Center and posed by Cosmo Cougar on the steps. Wes loves BYU football.

Then we got ice cream at Baskin Robbins and ate it outside. Good times.

The big news around here is two new scooters. John took Carissa for her inaugural ride down our street.

The park by our house on another day when I just needed to get out.

Carissa has great poses.

Native American Baby. Carissa says she didn’t do this, but I’m not so convinced.

Eating cereal.

Carissa made this lion. I think it kind of looks like one, too! She’s getting better with scissors and glue and tape.

Easter! During the Easter egg hunt Carissa insisted on only collecting purple ones. She helped Wes find all the rest. Wes and Carissa both got watches in their Easter baskets. Wes’s is Angry Birds (his favorite game) and Carissa’s is…well, can you guess? Hello Kitty.

Carissa has finally mastered writing her name. I thought she had it down a while ago, but in February when she was signing her name on Valentines I discovered she writes her name backward. It was perfect, just backward (even her S’s were backward). Her preschool teacher says it’s really common, and they worked on it at school. This week is the first time I saw her write it correctly (even her S’s!), so I snapped a picture. (Then, the next day or so I saw her write her name backward again. But now I know she can do it forward.)

Oh, and check out her picture. She told me this is a picture of herself. She has bangs, and a rainbow on her shirt like the one she’s wearing. What a great artist!

Elizabeth enjoys the sandbox.

Wes is really liking bubbles lately. This is great because blowing bubbles was a really hard skill for him to learn. But he can do it now all by himself!

Three kids on a couch.

With the holidays fast approaching we’ve been enjoying the season.

I tried taking photos of the kids for a potential Christmas card but they all basically turned out like this. No Christmas cards for us.

We bought a pile of hot chocolate for a church activity. Wes and Carissa liked using it to build a giant tower.

Wes is really improving at his art and writing skills. As his mom, I am Super Impressed and Proud. And so I share:

He did this picture AND the word all by himself. ALL BY HIMSELF. (I just told him how to spell “spider.”) Did I mention I’m Super Impressed and Proud?

Elizabeth is 13 months going on 13 years.

This afternoon the sun was shining and it was above freezing, so when Carissa asked to play outside in the snow I couldn’t object. For the first time, both kids got to make snow angels. Carissa did one and was happy (“Just like Kipper!” she said, referring to the dog on one of her favorite shows from Netflix), but Wes made about six. He really liked it!

Carissa was my helper decorating our goodies for neighbor gifts. She was in her element and did a good job. She helped decorate, Wes helped eat them.

We had this brilliant idea to go to Salt Lake City the day after Thanksgiving and to stay in a hotel right by the new downtown mall.

Then we remembered it was Black Friday. But we went anyway.

Getting ready took most of the morning, as things do with kids. When we were all finally packed we were on our way to Salt Lake City. We checked in to our hotel downtown, parked the car, and started pulling stuff out. That’s when John said, “Where’s the suitcase?” and our conversation went something like:

“I don’t know, didn’t you pack it in the car?”

“No, I thought you did.”

“No, I thought YOU did.”

And so we checked ourselves out of the hotel and transformed our overnight plans into a short daytrip.

We began at the Leonardo, a science and creative arts and technology museum.

Our first stop was the creative studio. Carissa, Wes, and I each made something out of clay. (Elizabeth played on the beanbag.)

Wes and Dad made a train. I made a turtle. Carissa made…I’m not sure what it is.

Next we went upstairs where the kids played in the pixel station.

Next was the green screen room. The kids could stand in front of the green screen and see themselves on a TV with a weather map behind them. They thought that was neat, but even neater was holding up a green piece of fabric and making themselves disappear on the TV. Cool science!

See how Wes is partially missing?

The kids spent a lot of time in the Motion Capture room, where they could dance to music in their bare feet. A motion sensor could pick up one person’s structure and while you dance, you can see your skeleton move with you on the TV screen. Carissa was too little for the motion sensor to detect her, but it worked for Wes. (P.S. Do you notice how he’s pulling the same dance move in the picture below as in the picture above from the green room?)

The kids loved dancing in this room, especially Elizabeth. Good thing the place wasn’t busy.

Even I got to rock it out with my kids.

John helped the kids make a stop-action film in the room near the dancing room, but I guess I didn’t take any pictures. They also used a paintbrush to touch a computer screen and create art.

By now it was 5 pm and kids (namely me) were getting hungry. We took the Trax train back to the City Creek Mall and walked around to find a place to eat. Turns out that on Black Friday, at a new mall, on the night Temple Square turns on its Christmas lights, restaurants are pretty busy around 5:30 pm. We went to four different places but all had an hour wait. We went to the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and got this picture:

I thought that might be the closest we’d get to the lights, but we decided to take a quick stroll through them before heading back towards our car. At least it was above freezing, which was especially nice since I left our kids’ hats and gloves and my scarf in our car back at the hotel parking lot.

It was about 6:30 pm. We thought we would go back to the hotel and end up at a drive-through somewhere. This was a little disappointing since we had been looking forward to a sit-down restaurant (which we haven’t done in a long while). Just as we were headed back through the mall towards our car John pointed out a Brazilian steakhouse. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask, so for the fifth time I asked what the wait was, and for the first time I got a “You can come right in” reply. Hallelujah!

It was a Brazilian churrasco-style menu where they serve yummy fresh-grilled meat at your table, and you can get additional sides from the salad bar. We were hungry, and the children were tired. It was pricey but we didn’t care. We weren’t paying for a hotel anymore, so why not?

And it was delicious. The filet Mignon, grilled pineapple, garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy bread, caramelized bananas, fresh Parmesan… Yep, it was a tasty dinner. Carissa made it through the whole dinner happily, but progressively more tiredly.

Elizabeth fell asleep in the stroller not too long after we sat down. Wes ate a little and then crawled into my lap and fell asleep around 7:45 pm. We enjoyed our peaceful dinner.

Thanksgiving was this week. On Monday my brother Matt came for Family Home Evening, which we do together as a family every Monday night. We made cookies, had a short lesson about gratitude, and decorated our Grateful Tree with leaves.

Wes and Carissa enjoyed making cookies with Uncle Matt. They get excited when he comes (Wes says, “Uncle Matt–white car!” because he knows that’s what Matt drives). Carissa likes dumping in the ingredients, and Wes likes eating the cookie dough (Carissa can’t because she’s allergic to eggs).

Wes brought a pilgrim hat home from kindergarten.

Our Grateful Tree.