Mele Kalikimaka

Sarah has refused to wear hats since she was six months old...well until a couple of weeks ago.  Now she's obsessed.  This one is mine and she thought it was extra funny to wear.

Last Tuesday we went to Temple Square before we picked up Justin's family from the airport.  Sarah loved running around, being outside, almost getting ran over by other people, and the lights.  She ran around nodding her head and saying, "I like it."

She really wanted to touch all the lights.  We let her a few times.

Sarah "playing" the Xbox with Dallin.  She sat with him for like an hour. He got a kitchen chair to sit on and she got a kitchen chair too. I asked her if she was hungry and she said "No, I watching." Yikes. I'm glad we don't own video games.

 

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house.  The kids got out Headbands which is really one of the best games ever.  But the game goes really slow when it's an 8, 7, 6, and 2 year old playing.  I tried to help them form good questions but when your card is Alaska and you don't understand what a state is, I gave up.

Sarah's says Pentagon.  She did not win.

We had the kids fish for their dollar store present -- primary party style.  It was a big hit.  They each got 3 presents and still wanted to fish so they were catching licorice, mini candy bars, packets of honey....

Jack wearing the hat Isabella caught.  Sarah caught a pink one but wouldn't go near it.

Christmas morning.  Justin got individual shots of his family coming into the living room that I am very tempted to post.  But since I don't want to make any enemies, I'll leave them off.

Sarah didn't want to put down her Kitkat while she opened a present from her stocking.  Smart kid. Note to self: 2-year-olds are good with dollar store stickers and a slinky for Christmas.

Sarah got a pig Pillow Pet and a piggy bank.  She loves pigs.  And she got some farm animal bath toys that actually got her to sit down in the tub and play with. Talk about Christmas Miracles. Pretty much anything that has to do with farm animals and baby dolls she loves. She also got a sled but won't put on her snow suit. She got 5 DVD's but we've watched she same one 5 times, pajamas she won't wear, a book she's not interested in, and a doll she takes everywhere.

Justin got her a box of microwave popcorn.  She wanted to eat it for breakfast.  I relented but made her eat her Flintstone vitamin so I feel okay about it. And she got that big bottle of water in her stocking too.  She would take a bottle of water over a can of soda, any day.

Here she is with her new baby doll.  She plays with all kinds of toys but her dolls are close to her heart. I think she's going to love having a real baby in the house.

The pillow pig and baby doll are now part of her bedtime entourage.  That makes a doll in each arm, Little People Farmer Jones and Mike the Fisherman in each hand and the pig pillow under her head.  Her blanket (aka Bye, as in rock-a-bye) as covers and another blanket if we can sneak it on without her noticing.

Justin M. Dye, B.S.

Justin finished his bachelor's degree this past week.  I'm assuming his diploma is in the mail. Since BYU doesn't hold December graduation and he begins his master's degree in 2 1/2 weeks, I've been trying to make this time in Justin's life memorable.  So I made him go through a painful interview and and took his picture.

How does it feel to be graduated? If you could sum it up.

I never thought this day would come.

What's the number one lesson you've learned by earning your bachelor's degree? You know, a life lesson.

I don't know. Learning to get stuff done.

What's been the hardest part of going to school, working, being a dad, all at once?

Combination of everything.  But I did do it, so take that.

If you could go back in time and meet the right-off-the-mission Justin, what would you say to him?

Quit working, take loans, atleast don't work full time.  Wait to get married until after.

Is there anyone you'd like to thank?

My mom.  That's all I can think of.  My dad.....You I guess.  For always making me sign up and for never once helping me with my engineering homework. Well you did help me with my English paper.

What are you going to do with your time off?

I hope to go rabbit hunting.  I'd like to go fishing.  Sleeping, play basketball.

Do you feel smarter?

Yeah.  Like I couldn't see "first year me" doing this semester.  But there was no dramatic moment.
How do you feel about your experience at BYU?

Pretty good. It would have been nice to spend more time on campus.  Most of my professors were really good.

What's in the future?  What are you future goals?

Masters degree and then sell my soul for money.  Then I'm going to do everything to sell out.  Live where I want to live.  I want to own my own small engineering firm.

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And those are her pj's that she's wearing as a jacket. A few minutes later, she had them zipped up over her clothes and wore them like that the rest of the day.

Sit back, relax, wait for Santa.

I finished my Christmas shopping today. I got some really good deals on things I had my eye on. Plus all the gifts are wrapped and hidden away in my closet.

But I'm most proud that I did it all without setting foot inside Walmart. 

Funny Kid

I always say 1-year-olds are so much fun.  And they are. But 2-year-olds are funny.

Another one of Sarah's outfits.

Sarah in a good mood:

Me: Sarah, you have a pretty face.

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Sarah in a bad mood:

Me: Sarah, you have a pretty face.

Sarah: (buries head in hands) No! No face!

I waited until Sarah was nearly 18 months for her to call me mom.  8 months later I am persuading her again.  She figured out everyone else in the world calls me Di and she thinks she has come across a hilarious secret. "Di!" she yells in the morning from her crib.

I've been pretty good about correcting her but it is kind of funny.  Sometimes I don't even notice and answer "what" without thinking.  Last night I was in the living room, she was at the table in the kitchen eating cereal.  She called me Di and I ignored her so she said "Mom" and once she had my attention, she said "Di" and laughed and laughed.  This went on for awhile...I would ignore her until she said mom and then she'd say Di and giggle mischievously.

Randomly she says "Listen teacher"  (Listen to your teacher)  I must say this to her when I leave nursery.

We've been listening and singing Christmas songs the past couple of weeks.  She already memorized Santa Claus is coming to Town, Jingle Bells,  Must be Santa and Rudolph.  This kid is a sponge. She can't say all the words but she tries. If I can ever get her to do it on camera, I'll post it.

Decorating the tree. Sarah loved it so much, she took the ornaments off the next day to do it again.

My baby can read.  Well she likes to recite her favorite books along with me while we read. And she fakes it if she doesn't know the words.  She has a second delay as she repeats what I'm saying right after I say it.  It's pretty funny.

Monday she found this Glow-Worm in her basket of baby toys.  She hasn't seen it since the batteries died 18 months ago.  Now she rarely lets go of it. She calls it More Doll or Button since it has a button on its chest that makes it light up and play songs. I wonder what other baby toys I could wrap up and give her for Christmas......

And I'm a really bad mom and didn't get Sarah any gloves until the snow was crusty and half melted. 

These are prints she made with the side of her hand.

For FHE Justin and I pick a picture on the Gospel Art book and talk about the story with Sarah.  A few months ago I chose the Good Samaritan.

No matter what story we've done since then, Sarah always interrupts and asks for "ouie".  She loves to look at this picture and tell us all the things that the beaten man needs.  Food, water, bed, shoes, pants.  And the Good Samaritan is "nice" and a "helper".  And she gets so upset when we tell her it's time to put the book away.

Oh and here's a parenting moment that backfired. Here I am teaching Sarah to do a loogey.  Well, she had done it before to copy Justin but she hasn't stopped doing it since this day, a couple of weeks ago.  But now she's added the spitting part.  Justin couldn't be prouder.



Baby Math

I'm not exactly sure how this face

plus this face

can equal this face. But then again, my math skills are at a 10th grade level.

I wonder what will happen a second time around. We'll all find out May 2011.

Adventing

I finished the advent calendar last night.  Here's 3 weeks of my life.  It took a lot of time but I had fun making it.

The idea came from HomemadeByJill who found it on this Inchmark blog.  But I didn't do all the same ornaments that they did. Mouse ornament? Sick. And I made my car ornament after a Hotwheel car, a Syme family stocking tradition.

I had the idea of buying mini ornaments at the store if I didn't finish in time but technically I just needed to stay ahead of the calendar. But once I started, I discovered some of the ornaments went really fast, like the lights, so I'm done with time to spare.

So now all the ornaments are tucked in their pouches and the calendar is in the closet for another week. I kind of need a break from looking at it.

Here's a post.

I haven't updated the blog in awhile since, as you can see, we've been really busy.  No, she's not sleeping; she's watching the Prince of Egypt.  I've finally gotten Sarah to branch out in her movie watching and it's been weeks since we've watched Mary Poppins.  Yay! This week's movie du jour is the 1972 cinematic gem "Charlotte's Web" or "Piggy movie" as Sarah calls it.

Sarah's birthday was 21 days ago.  These are two of her birthday balloons as of this morning.  I had no idea getting balloons from Macey's was going to be such a long-term commitment.

What do we do other than watching Sarah's balloons die a slow death? Justin has been furiously busy with school.  One more month and he will have his bachelor's all done.  The respite will be short-lived as he starts the graduate program in January but I am proud of him and excited just the same.

I've been working on this awesome and time consuming project of a Christmas advent calendar.  I'll post pictures when it's done but let's just say for now Sarah can't leave it alone--it's that cool.  I'm pretty sure my children will fight over it when I die.

Sarah cracks us up all day, every day.  She says "sorry" and "thank you"  more times a day than I can count.  She is way more polite than I taught her to be.  Sharing is a completely different story. I blame her bad attitude on nursery.

Her Halloween candy is finally gone and I am so relieved.  Candy was the first thing on her mind in the morning and the last thing at night.  She wanted me to sing a song about candy the other night. I was at a loss. 

Here's a little conversation we had:

Sarah: Mom help?
Me: What do you want?
Sarah: Canny.
Me: You want candy? (I was making sure I understood her)
Sarah:   (shrugs shoulders) Sure.

Now that my battery and camera have been reunited, I may be taking more pictures now.  The battery sat in the charger for 3 weeks so we should be good to go. I am soooo excited for Thanksgiving.  I love food.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Wednesday my baby girl turned 2.  When is a child no longer a baby? I keep extending the date by adding new benchmarks she has to reach.  Walking? Nope. Talking? Nope. 1 year old? Nope. 2 years old? How about when she's potty-trained? Good, she's still a baby for a little while. Relief.

We started off her special day by having breakfast in the special Birthday Bowl.

Then we went to the mall with Kenzie and her kids, Malea and Isaac.  They played in the playplace and then we got pretzels.  That's what you get when your birthday is on a stormy day.

During her 40 minute nap (grrr) I managed to finish her cake.  Pretty cool huh?  The frosting was delicious.  I bought it from Macey's bakery.

Justin brought home balloons for her.  That would have been enough presents for her.  She had to hold them while she folded her arms for the prayer and has barely let go of them since. She cried that night when I wouldn't let her take them to bed. Notice the cool red Birthday Plate.

 Super excited to open presents.

She was pretty much a spaz all day.  It must have been all the treats.

 She caught onto opening presents pretty quick considering it had been since last Christmas that she opened one.  Maybe I'll post the video.  Basically she stopped looking at was in the bags and just moved onto the next.

I love this sequence of pictures.

She got kind of nervous when we started singing.

But she knew just what to do.

The next morning we played with her new toys for a couple of hours.  She is all about cooking and feeding her stuffed animals.  She says "more salt?" dumps more in, tastes it then says "more salt?"  She gets that from Justin. 

She even put on her apron. Victory!

I came into the room and saw this.  I told you she's obsessed with her balloons.

I took some pictures of her today in her new dress at my parents' house with their awesome new camera.  It's way too complicated for me to figure out all the settings but I think we did pretty good on the auto-setting.  And it helps to have a gorgeous little girl to photograph. I took 167 pictures (yikes).  Here are of my favorites.

Okay, here's a bunch more since she's so dang cute.