Gingerbread house

Since my aunt and uncle didn't have their annual gingerbread decorating party this year, I borrowed their gingerbread molds and we had a party of our own. I'm still waiting on a friend to get the pictures to me, but here is the extra house I decorated after the party was over.

Dear Santa 2

Dear Santa,
Even after much coaxing, Victoria has decided that she doesn't want you to bring her anything. She told me today, "I don't want Santa to bring me something." This was after telling her you only bring things to good little girls and boys. I guess she decided orange gummy candies weren't worth being good for. I told her you might bring her a doll too, but she still said no. I guess this means you are off the hook. I certainly hope it doesn't mean that she is going to be naughty from now on. I'll keep you posted if there are any updates in the future.
Anny

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,
We visited with you a little over one week ago at the IBI Group party in Salt Lake City. It was so great that you showed up and Victoria was able to tell you what she wants for Christmas. So far there have been no updates, so Orange Gummy Candies should cover it. Maybe you could throw in something else too, just to surprise her. As for Leah, she still refuses to say what she wants, so your guess is as good as mine. Thank you very much for the books! We have had a lot of fun reading them! You must have known we love to read at our house. I must admit I was a little surprised at the retelling of Rapunzel. I didn't know that people could perform their own wedding ceremonies... well maybe the man being a prince gave him some kind of authority in that country... and at least they got married before Rapunzel got pregnant. Anyway, the pictures are interesting to look at and Victoria will ask her own questions later, when she starts wondering about these things a little more. :) We look forward to your visiting our house soon. Have a Merry Christmas!
Love,
Anny

One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving:

We only had 25 pies to split between the 36 of us. Strangely I am craving pumpkin pie more than ever now. :)

Shredded Paper

I had a few papers to go through and shred today. I let Victoria help me. She was really great at taking the full shredder and dumping it in the bigger garbage can then bringing the shredder basket back to me. After I was finished I went into the kitchen to find I had shredded a lot more paper than I realized.

Halloween

This last week has been pretty fun. We actually celebrated Halloween! First we had a good friend visit us and we carved pumpkins and made pumpkin pie, my favorite. Then we had friends over to watch a movie on Friday night. Here's our pumpkin.

And here's our punkin pie.

Saturday I was in the mood to make some wings for Leah's bee costume, and since I made those for her... of course I had to make some wings for Victoria.
And then because I was in the mood, and Victoria and Leah fight over the one tutu we have, I made another tutu for Leah.
But Victoria was a unicorn for halloween, so the wings for her were for playing like a butterfly or a princess or as I overheard her dad telling her... a fly. She did consider being a unicorn with wings, and about five minutes before we left for the party she claimed she wanted to be a butterfly instead of a unicorn. Luckily the wings were still wet and she couldn't change.
We had a great time at the ward Halloween party. Leah definitely "got" the trick-or-treat thing. It was pretty funny. Victoria got a load of goodies and wouldn't trust anyone to help carry her bags. Here they are after the party, a little tired, but I think happy with their haul.

My little princesses are sick, but I can be grateful that they are happy still and not whining any more than usual.

I just came across this picture and thought it was...
sooo cute!

Finally Another Update

Weeeelllll..... It sure has been taking me a long time to update this blog. I have no excuses other than I just don't get around to it.

Stoyan's brother came to visit us for a little over a week. We had a good time. My children were spoiled with many gifts from him and friends and family in Bulgaria. Thank you all!!

We took him to meet my parents and for his first horse ride. I took care of the kids and my brother took Stoyan and Samuil up into the mountain to Big Springs. It seemed like they had a good time, but no one took any pictures so there isn't any real evidence that Samuil has ever ridden a horse.

The following day we went on a long drive to Monument Valley. We stopped a lot on the way there so the trip was broken up some and didn't feel too long. The ride back seemed a lot longer for some reason. It was so great to see Diana and Lewis and their girls. Victoria and Leah loved it too! I sure wish we lived closer to each other so our kids could play more often and so I could visit more often with them. I definitely loved being there. Thanks so much Diana and Lewis!

Okay, so here are some pictures of our trip.

Finally an update

Well, it sure has been a long time since I put anything on our blog. We've been doing pretty much the same old stuff everyday. Stoyan is going to summer school, and I'm at home taking care of the girls. Victoria is doing good, she's finally potty training, and has been pretty good,--well was doing good until just a few minutes ago, she had an accident-- I suspect it wasn't really an accident though. Leah has been doing a lot of standing and whenever she can she tries to get people to walk her by holding their fingers and then taking off. I think she wants to walk soon, but I'm not pushing it... I don't need to push more work upon myself, that will come naturally.
Here are some picts of some fun and ordinary things we've been doing.

Victoria and Sadie at the Family Reunion.

The lake was a lot of fun to play on/at.

Alonzo trying to give Victoria "loves" after pushing her, she wasn't so sure she wanted that kiss.

Diana and Lewis and their girls came to visit. Sadie and Victoria and Lara all got new clothes, and yes, we play in a swimming pool without water at our house.

Victoria and Mom made a butterfly mobile to hang in the girls' bedroom. See how Victoria's bed is finally painted? We also added a rail because she kept falling out of bed.

Leah's favorite thing to eat is toilet paper. Boy is it hard to keep that stuff away from her. I hope it isn't bad for her health and development because she sure knows how to find it. Sometimes if she sees me coming she stuffs her face as fast as she can before I can get it.

The Days of 47 Youth Parade was on July 18. Our stake had a float so between rushing around for other things, the girls and I took a quick walk and watched our friends in the Parade. It was lots of fun to see, and very very hot!

Laundry is never done at our house. Victoria is a good helper. She knows how to switch the loads and start a new one, but needs help reaching the buttons for the dryer.

And there you go! A somewhat of an update.

Stoyan's Paintings

As has been requested, I am posting some photographs of the paintings Stoyan has been doing for his classes.

...and the Easter Bunny came

The Easter Bunny came to our house and left a couple toys and some candy in eggs (next year that Easter Bunny will have to leave some much better tasting candy, or he's fired--wax tasting chocolate--blah!) It was really fun to see Victoria as she walked into the living room and said, "Oh! My candy!" as she picked up the first piece she saw and started to unwrap it. Then suddenly she looked around and said, "Look at that!" It was pretty fun watching her. Here is a clip of the moment she found the baby doll the bunny brought.

Little Dancer

Stoyan sometimes feels like he isn't a very good dad, but I would definitely disagree. It isn't every dad that is willing to "dance" with his little girl and teach her boxing moves disguised as dance moves. Victoria sure had a good time dancing with her dad, and I sure got a kick out of watching them together. You won't see Stoyan in the clip, I've been threatened with an equally embarrassing post of me if I post him "dancing," but I tell you it was pretty funny as you can probably guess by the faces Victoria was trying to mimic.

I like books

I have to do a spill here about books. I like books, and I like to read to my girls. We haven't been able to buy a lot of books for them, so we have gone to the library a lot. This is how our library trips go.
We arrive at the library and scurry through all the weird looking people that seem to congregate there and go into the kids section. We make a bee-line to the boardbook section where I begin to grab as many books as I can before Victoria disappears for too long (if I can't hear her I'm worried). Then I do a search for Victoria, find her, drag her back to the board book section, grab some more books (who has time to look at titles) and then follow her around the kids section of the library for a few minutes before we're off to check-out or find Dad who is always in the art section three floors up.
When we get home we pull out our books and begin to read. Usually we go through them pretty quickly and out of the 10 to 20 books we've checked out there are two or three we like. We read those two or three books over the course of the next month so many times they are memorized and we wish we owned them cause we don't want to take them back. As for the rest of the books? Well, they sit on the shelf waiting to be returned to the library where they can be checked out by some other unsuspecting mother that will be disappointed she took all the trouble to carry them home. And I wonder, how in the world did someone manage to get such a stupid book published? Surely the publisher must have been tricked into printing something that so obviously wouldn't entertain a toddler. Surely next time I'll have to take more time in picking out the books, but how?
Then there are the times that I've wondered if it really was all worth it. Like when Victoria somehow got water all over a new library book and feeling guilty I decided I should pay for it-- $15 for a book neither of us liked! Holy smokes! I could have gotten 3 new books we like for that price!
Okay, so after all that I decided it is cheaper to buy books I like, than to buy ruined books I don't like from the library. I still like the library, I enjoy finding books to read and return and not keep, but I want some at home that we will read over and over again. Then my old roommate showed me these Usborne books that she sells, and I really liked a lot of them. They aren't too pricey and kids definitely like them. I decided to learn more about them and she talked me into joining up to sell them. So I did. Then I remembered... I AM NOT A SALESPERSON!

I signed up to sell these books over a week ago and have been too embarrassed to even talk about it much to anyone besides my mom and sisters. Why am I embarrassed? I don't know... I do really like the books. I guess it's cause I've gone to "parties" for things like tupperware or Mary Kay and even though I don't really have the money to buy anything, I've felt obligated to buy something because it is my friend. I would never want someone to feel obligated to buy something I'm selling just because they are my friend. My kickoff show is on Thursday the 26th and I haven't invited anyone yet. Hmmm... this should be interesting. Last night I was doing my complaining to Stoyan and he basically told me that I signed up to play the game, I might as well do it. I decided he is right, I should just swallow my pride and say, "Hey here are some really fun, educational books for kids. Do you want some?" So there you go, I said it. If anyone actually read this far into the blog and is interested in some really fun, cute, educational, entertaining, books for kids of all ages you can come to my party on Thursday March 26 at 7:00 p.m. I promise- if you come I will not be at all disappointed if you don't buy anything. I will be happy if anyone comes at all. If you are interested just leave me a comment so I can give you my address, or if you are interested but can't come, the title of this post is linked to the website where you can look at/buy the books online. So here are the books that arrived in my start up packet. Victoria and I have really enjoyed most of them, though neither of us are really into forensic science, or medieval knights. (I didn't get to pick which books we got.)

My favorite book is Princess Stories. The pictures are so fun to look at, and there is a little yellow duck hiding on every page so it's fun for Victoria too. The stories really made me laugh... not your typical little princess. Victoria really likes, That's not my monkey. It's a touchy feely book and the wording is easy enough she can "read" with me and say the words like "velvety" when she touches the velvety tail.

So there's my spill. The End.

Follow up

Okay, so I thought I'd add to the last post. Victoria and Leah, after visiting the Pediatrician, both got sick. They got the cough and last night Victoria woke up screaming and holding her ear. I gave her some medicine and after it finally kicked in she went back to sleep. Today she seems fine and only complained about the owie in her ear a couple of times, but has been happy and playing fine. I did mention we might need to go to the doctor to see if something was wrong with her ear, she seemed to like the idea and started to say we needed to go to the doctor I'm not sure if it is because she really does have something wrong with her ear, or if it's because last time we went she got stickers from the nurse and a doughnut for being good. Hopefully it's the latter and we don't have an ear problem to worry about, coughing and runny noses are enough for me. Now I know she's not afraid of going to the doctor.

Pediatrician Appointments

Today we went for well-child check-ups. Victoria was promised a doughnut if she would be a good girl. She was amazingly good!! And she really enjoyed her doughnut. Hopefully my girls won't be as afraid of going to the Dr. as I am. I think overall the whole experience went smoothly,so that was a relief. Poor little Leah got three shots and she hasn't been feeling well since then. Victoria only had one shot and doesn't seem to have any side effects, unless this shot makes you run around like crazy and create big messes.

Victoria is now a whopping 24 lbs.(10.9 kg) and 34"(86.4 cm) tall.

Leah is 14 lbs. 6 oz. (6.5 kg) and 25 1/2" (64.8 cm) tall.

What'cha doin under there?

Leah has started to roll a lot! The other day I discovered she and Victoria having a great time under the couch. It's so fun to see her developing new skills so fast, but at the same time there are new challenges right around the corner, i.e. picking up all the choking hazards left behind by the toddler with the scissors. I guess it's a good thing we bought a new vacuum last week, now all I have to do is use it.

McDonald's Playplace
Yesterday we met up with my old roommates from college. We decided to meet at McDonald's because we each have kids and thought we could let the kids play while we visited. The idea to meet up with friends while the kids played must have been on the minds of the whole city because I have never seen a McDonald's so packed full of moms with kids in my life. I was lucky to find a parking spot, and the only table available was in the middle of the room where the sun was beating down and baking anyone dumb enough to sit there. :) It was fun to see my roommates even though we had to visit with split attention as we tried to keep track of our kids.
Victoria seemed to enjoy her first time at McDonald's. I didn't get any good pictures though because my hands were shaking a lot yesterday.

Tiny toes

This past weekend we were in Kanosh visiting family. While we were there Leah learned a new trick--sucking on her toes. Of course Victoria had to join in on the fun. They are so cute together!

New Clothes!

Victoria has been wearing out and growing out of her clothes. I was getting a little concerned when I had to cut the feet out of her pajamas. I thought we would have to go on a shopping spree for her (which is great when you have the money for it) but then one of Stoyan's co-workers asked if we'd like some clothes from his kids. I never imagined he meant two boxes of very good clothes, including snow boots and a snow suit that should last at least two winters, pajamas galore, and socks! I was pretty excited and so was Victoria. She's been having a great time trying all the clothes she can and the hat is one of her favorites. I must say the Lord truly blesses us.

Sisters

Yesterday I put Leah in the jumper for a while and when I returned I found Victoria reading her a story. A little later I found her teaching Leah how to draw on a Sudoku book. It sure was cute and especially fun to see that Victoria likes her little sister a lot. Something I'm always concerned about and hoping for is that my children love each other and feel like their best friends are found at home. This video didn't capture the most cute part, but that's how it goes with me and the camera, the cute part is over before I've figured out where the right button is.

New Year, New House

We finally got the internet! After dealing with three different internet providers and waiting, waiting, waiting, we got the internet up and running. It's funny how dependent I've become on the internet for every little thing... bills, recipes, information, communication, telephone calls occasionally, maps, businesses... you know, I'm betting most people feel the same way as I do.

The end of December took us to Kanosh. We spent Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa and family there. Victoria was so thrilled about Christmas, when I gave her a wrapped present to open she said, "No, don't want it!" That made me laugh. I had to force her to open her gifts. I guess I can only hope she'll feel the same way next year and that will save some money. She was perfectly happy with candy. She is always perfectly happy with candy.

The 29 and 30 Stoyan, Leah, and I came back to SLC and packed, or tried to pack up our house. Grandma and Grandpa brought Victoria on the 30th. The 31st we moved. Wow! I don't think anyone could ever miss those stairs, except they did give some good exercise. We are now on the ground after spending two years on the fourth floor, I must say carrying the girls and groceries and stroller into the house has become a breeze in comparison. We love it! Victoria loves that we go outside much more as do I. Though we did really enjoy living in our last apartment, the addition of Leah made life a touch more complicated. It was definitely time.

We went to bed that night at 11. Happy New Year!

Many more things have happened since then, but they've all blended into one another. If it weren't getting so late, I'd probably go on and on and on, but I am still trying to pick up my new year's resolution to go to bed early. So far it hasn't gone well, but I'm not totally giving up on it yet.