These are two of my favorite things...

Gabriella and Gwen!
Well the other day I was reminded again how important it is to take time from hectic mother/wife/personal duties and play with my children. We were outside enjoying a nice afternoon when I picked some flowers for the girls. Gabriella decided that they were maracas and danced and danced in circles. When she was too dizzy to run anymore she wanted to share her fun with Gwen and gave her the "maracas to shaky, shaky, shaky". They played with these little flowers for 30 minutes having the time of their lives. I feel nothing but pride when my girls show love towards one another and I just had to share!

I love my girls to pieces and I am reminded multiple times a day how blessed I am. Gabriella is entering the stage of imagination...although she is not 100% understanding of what it means to pretend. Her little friend wanted to "be" Care Bears and told her that she was a Care Bear and Gabs responded with "no, I, Gab-e-ella" She just kept saying that over and over, she didn't want to be a Care Bear at all. Gabs is realizing now that she can just keep talking and talking and it all makes sense, so we get ear fulls of random 2 1/2 year old thoughts! She says things like "Holy Gholy" when something is really unfortunate (a cross between holy moly and holy ghost), and she told me about signing the Holy Pokie at nursery. She was looking at our slide show screen saver and naming everyone she saw as the pictures rotated through, mama, daddy, Gwen Gwen, Gordon B. Hinckley. I had to turn and see what she was talking about and she had seen a picture of my grandpa whom she has only met twice, but to her, Gordon B. Hinckley was the only name of an older man she knew. I was dying by her innocence! Earlier this summer, after a very long winter, we were getting ready to go and she saw that I had on flip flops. She said "mama has sandals" and I told her "yes" and she said "mama has sandals like Jesus and John the Baptist" I realized in the My First Book of Mormon Stories and New Testament Stories the illustrations show sandals on their feet. Poor girl had only ever seen sandals in scripture stories, do we live in the Great Northwest or what? And to top it all off, last night she was saying a great prayer. Usually her prayers go pretty fast but last week for FHE we talked about prayers and how we can be reverent during them, and her prayers have been improving. Last night she was going on and on and we were having a hard time understanding everything she was saying until we heard "bless Costco"...maybe we need to cool it with the last minute week night dinner Costco pizza runs! I love that girl!

And then there's Gwen, my sweet, sweet Gwen. I couldn't have asked for a better baby! Her personality melts your heart instantly! She is quite independent right now and goes crawling off into a room all by herself and will sit and play quietly for ages...Gabs never did that (she still doesn't). Gwen is happy, silly, smiley, naughty (i.e touching the TV and laughing when you go to get her) and kinda like a steam roller, just up and over anything and everything in her way...especially Gabriella in the bathtub. And of cousre, she is the best cuddler out there and we enjoy her putting her head on our shoulders each day! We love Gwen so much! How great can life get?