Are You Beautiful?

Whenever we tell Willa that she's beautiful or cute she always says, "No, I'm not." (Actually, if you know her that's not an extraordinary answer. Just about any question gets the same response. When Casey tried to tell her the sky was blue the other day she told him it's not blue, it's purple, and she wasn't taking arguments about it.) On Sunday Casey decided to get to the bottom of this, and find out exactly what Willa's standards for being beautiful are. Here's their exchange.

C: Are you beautiful?
W: No, I'm not.
C: Is Mommy beautiful?
W: No, she's not beautiful.
C: So who is beautiful?
W: Um, Jesus.
C: Is anyone else beautiful?
W: Heavenly Father. And Cinderella. And the prophets.

So there you have it. In order to be beautiful you must be a deity, a prophet, or a Disney princess. High standards for a two-year-old. No wonder I can't match up.

Christmas

Nothing like posting about holidays that happened two weeks ago, right? Anyway, Christmas was crazy, the kids barely survived the big day, but every day after that has been great. Casey was able to be home for almost two whole weeks, and it was great having so much time together as a family.

Andrew was the first one up, of course, but thankfully he's still young enough that the sun was already up.



I think he was most excited by his Transformers Tooth Tunes toothbrush, and danced all around the house playing the music. At that moment Santa wished he'd taken things a little easier this year.



The other big hit was a coin counter and a Tootsie Roll piggy bank. Ever since Christmas he has been tirelessly moving all his coins from bank to bank (all spare change in our house belongs to Andrew). Score another one for Santa.



When Willa woke up, she made up for lost time. Here are a few of her costume changes throughout the day.






Andrew wanted to get me "jewels" for Christmas, so he picked out a nice ring for me. (He told Casey when they went shopping that "when I'm grown up my girlfriends will be grown up too, and I will take them to Kohl's and give them jewels and make them my wives.") Willa immediately wanted my ring when I opened it, and this is what happened when I said no.



It took us literally all day to open presents. The kids had to play with everything as it was opened, and around mid-day were completely out of gas. Check out the expression on this little face.



Casey and I were incredulous. I mean, what kids on the planet play on Christmas day while presents remain unopened under the tree?

We almost didn't make it to Christmas, though. Here's what happened when we told Andrew he had to eat the ham at dinner on Christmas Eve.







But all was forgiven when he got to open a present.