It is hard to believe Olivia is already 3!  I thought it was really funny when I weighed and measured her to find she was 3'3" and 30 lbs...so many 3's for my 3 year old!

Here are some things about Olivia at age 3:

-Lately every morning when she wakes up, she comes up to me while I am still sleeping and wakes me up by saying, “Mom, it’s Spring! It’s Spring mom, get up!” She equates the sunshine and birds singing to Springtime I guess!

-If something bothers her in some way, she tells me that it “freaks” her out. There was a small bug on the window sill and she kept saying, “Mom, this is freakin me out!”

-She LOVES dogs and really any cute animal. Ben’s sister’s dog Jimmer was here for a short while, and she loved to just hold his leash and walk him around the house. She said, “I just want a dog so badly.” She loves my sister's dogs too, especially the little one, Taco.

-She loves her old Nursery leader Sashiere, and would always talk about HER friend Sashiere. She has a new one who she is still getting to know, and is a little shy around. When we go into Nursery, one of her hands is holding my hand, and the other is covering her eyes. She is just too shy to even look at them! Then she warms up to them and is fine and happy to be there.

-She loves singing songs and music in general. The Singing Time Leader told me that Olivia loves to sing songs in Nursery! She said that when we were away for two weeks, none of the other children would really sing, but when Olivia is there, she sings, and so everyone else does too! Her favorite songs right now are Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the theme song to Doc McStuffins. She has an aptitude for learning songs and remembering them. She will often hear a song on the radio and shout out what movie she has heard it in, even if she has only seen the movie once!

-She loves to wear dresses and skirts, and requests to wear them EVERY DAY. Even in the winter she would do this, when it was colder. She likes to pretend she is a princess and sometimes will say to me, “Today I am going to marry a Prince.” Sometimes that Prince is Daddy, or Grandpa, or Brock! Sometimes she’ll bring me this poofy white dressup dress we have, and say to me, “I want a bride dress now. I want to be bride today!”

-She asks for “bones” in her hair, which means any kind of bow, or hair elastic. BUT, she ALWAYS, always, always, rips them out!!! One time she begged and begged for a “bow” in her hair, and I said I would put one in as long as she didn’t rip it out. She assured me she wouldn’t and that she would keep it in her hair all day, so I did. Sure enough a couple of hours later I found a ripped out elastic on the floor. She likes the idea of ponytails and pigtails, but can’t stand them actually in her hair! Although, just the other day, she kept one in for the entire day, so maybe she is starting to get used to them!

-She loves to tote around purses, baskets, buckets, anything that will carry her little “treasures” or toys.

-She loves her sisters very, very much! She loves to keep up with them and participate in any game or project they are doing. If one of them gets in trouble, or gets disciplined at all, she often will stand up for them and say something like, “Don’t get my sister in trouble. She is my best sister!”

-LOVES makeup…lipstick, blush, powder, mascara, any kind of makeup! She will often take my makeup bag and run and hide under her bed and play with it and put it on, and make a MESS! We were at Ben’s parent’s house and after we left Ben’s mom emailed a picture she took of her bathroom. Olivia had gotten into her makeup, but she didn’t make a mess! She very carefully and neatly lined every item up in a row. Ben’s mom told me that Olivia earlier told her, “I am not playing with your makeup!” She was confused why Olivia said that, but figured it out after she saw her bathroom! She also loves jewelry like necklaces, rings, and earrings. She was so proud of these ones we bought for her the other day (this was also the day she wore a ponytail in her hair for the whole day!):

-She loves to sleep in my bed with me. Once it was time for everyone to go to bed, and instead of climbing into her bed, she climbed into mine. Ben then layed down next to her, and she started waving her hand and said, “Shoo! Shoo! Shoo now! You go lay downstairs!”

Seashell Frames

The girls had so many seashells from the ocean, we glued them onto frames.  Even Olivia glued her own on.  It was fun and good way to use  those shells!

Our BIG Family Vacation 2012

******I posted this trip in 7 different posts and for some reason only 4 of those appear as you scroll through the blog.  So please click on one of the following links to look at and read about that part of our trip!  There are A LOT of photos!!!!******

 

Salt Lake City

Las Vegas and The Pacific Ocean 

DISNEYLAND

California Adventure Land

Sea World!

Home Sweet Home

We have returned from our 2 week long Super-Vacation!  It was fantastic and one to always be remembered.  We calculated that we were on the road for approximately 52 hours total!  Everyone did really well, and even our van survived. 

We were well prepared for this trip in terms of entertainment for the kiddos.  We had 2 iPhones and 2 iPods with games, movies, music, and books on them.  We had 3 DVD players and every DVD we owned.  We even bought them Spy Kids 4 in Great Falls since they love that movie so much.  I think the favorites that were watched over and over were the Harry Potter ones, Rio (by Olivia), Chicken Little, and Spy Kids.  We had an assortment of coloring books, sketch books, crossword puzzle books, word search books, and journals for them to write in.  We had music, various car games to play, and of course just plain old looking out the window!  They did SO well, I can hardly believe it!  It was only the very last day, when we were just about at the Canadian border that Ben pulled over and threatened to make them walk because they were fighting so much.  Only that one day out of 12!  Not too bad I must say. 

But no matter how prepared you are there is no way to avoid the, "Are we there yet?"  In fact we had only reached High River, 30 min into our trip, when Lily asked, "How many more minutes until Disneyland?" 

They each had their own set of headphones, and all of the DVD players had two headphone jacks so sometimes they could share.

Lily and Izzy kept their own little journals of the trip.  They are so adorable to read and look at their drawings and learn what their perspective of everything was. 

Very happy travelers!

Once Chloe fell asleep in a really awkward postion so I reached back to sit her back up, and she woke up slightly and started saying, "Cheese balls, Cheese balls, Cheese balls."  It was so funny!  I guess she was dreaming about CheeseBalls!

Our first stop was in Great Falls, which made the first trip about 5 hours.  Not too bad.  Chloe in the past has had a tendency to get car sick on long car rides, but surprisingly she didn't get car sick once the whole trip!  When we arrived in Great Falls she said, "And I didn't even throw up once the entire time!"  Haha.  The hotel there had a bouncy castle and a pool which was great for the kids!

At the pool, and at many other places on this trip, people would always smile and stare at Olivia, I assume because they like looking at a cute little girl like her.  Well, she would always get so shy, and on several occasions would say to me, "Mom!  People are looking at me again!  I don't want people to look at me!"  I would say, "Well Olivia, they are looking at you because you are so cute."  She would then say, "No!  I am not cute!  I am a big girl!"  It was so adorable.

My parents gave the girls each a little money to spend on something while we were down.  They gave them cash in US currency.  I held onto it for them, to keep it safe.  Lily called it "New York money" and would always ask me if I was keeping her "New York money safe."  It was really cute!

So all of our stops were as follows:

Great Falls

Idaho Falls

Salt Lake City

Las Vegas

Anaheim

San Diego

Las Vegas

Salt Lake City

Butte

Home!

We stayed in hotels and camped along the way, to help cut down on costs.  We stayed in hotels more than we camped, thank goodness!  It was exhausting packing up the tent, deflating the air mattresses, etc. but it was still fun to sleep all together in the tent, and be in the fresh air.  But, the hotels were so relaxing. 

We saw licence plates from all over the place!  We saw some from Florida, Massachusettes, New York, New Jersey, and Mexico! 

In Idaho Falls we camped at a campsite called Snake River.  The river that runs through Idaho is called Snake River.  When we came home to Calgary, Olivia saw the Bow River and said, "Daddy I saw a river and it was the snake river!"

The campground had the biggest play structure I have ever seen!  The kids loved it.

Something really fun about this trip was stopping to look at some temples along the way.  Here we are at the Idaho Falls temple before we left:

It really was the pride of the city.  There were signs and advertisements for it all over the place.  It was situated in a really beautiful area with waterfalls near by.

Izzy was kind enough to take a photo of Ben and I at each temple we stopped at.  We stopped at the

Idaho Falls Temple

Salt Lake City Temple

St George Temple

Las Vegas Temple

San Diego Temple

and the Cardston Temple on the way home! 

We also saw from our vehicle many other temples along the way.  There were so many along Utah, it was crazy!  We saw the Draper, Jordan, Timpanogos, Provo, and Bountiful just to name a few.  They were easy to spot being so bright white. 

Salt Lake City

Here is a picture of The Great Salt Lake.  It was really big and we could see quite a bit of it just from the highway.

Driving on the freeways in Utah and even in Idaho, we saw a lot of chapels and temples.  More than a couple of time we saw this, two chapels in one parking lot!  Or we saw two chapels very close together.  I guess there are a lot of members of the church there.  It was strange to see temples so close together too. 

This was when we arrived at Temple Square.  Ben was paying for parking and Olivia was so tired she was still sleeping up on his shoulders!

This mini temple was neat to look at and see what it looked like on the inside:

It was about 36 degrees that day, which is so hot for us!  The girls were drawn to every pool and fountain around, and would always touch them, even if they weren't supposed to.  One time we saw Olivia take off her shoe and dip it in the water and try to drink from it.  I geuss she was that thirsty!

The old Conference Center:

Happy to get a drink from the fountain:

Beautiful flowers everywhere:

The new Conference Center.  We actually went through a guided tour.  It was pretty interesting.

On the roof of the Conference Center:

You can see everyone's flushed cheeks, it was so hot out!

The girls loved this Children's section:

They had this woman on a screen teaching the children how to dance.  The girls had fun with it!  Olivia did not want to take off her skirt!

It was fun to try out the conference pulpit:

We stopped at St George at the temple.  It was so big and beautiful.  The pictures don't show how big it really was.  It was very nice.

On our way home, we went to Seven Peaks the Raging Waters water park.  It was a scorcher that day, so the water was nice and cool.  I took Olivia down a tubed water slide and she liked it until the end when our tube flipped.  I think everyone's favourite was the lazy river.