Natalie is 4!

My sweet little baby who looked like this yesterday:
is now FOUR!!!

Her birthday was fun-we had a little family celebration on her real birthday, then a small birthday party a few days later. She loved it all and drank up all the attention.

Modeling her new birthday dress.

We went to the movies for her first time ever and saw Tangled with cuz Brooklyn and my two sisters. She was in awe of the size of the screen and we all just loved the movie.

She and I hit up Joe's Grill for breakfast (free on your bday) and they happened to throw in my meal for free too. Can't beat that! Especially when their pancakes are to die for.

Playing games at our little party. It was so cute to watch all those little 3 and 4 year olds!

She had her heart set on this Belle cake so we got it for her. She's still shy when people sing her happy birthday. I love it.

Everyone else got these scrumptious beauties, made by yours truly.

Some fun facts about Natalie:

• She loves to sing all the time. We make up songs constantly or sing ones we already know.
  
• She plays really well with Hannah and Han does everything Natalie does.
• She has a great memory. She always surprises us by remembering big words, movie lines, names of people and places, etc.
  
• When I lose something, I ask Natalie to help me find it. She will almost always remember where she last saw something around the house. It's soooo helpful!
• She loves to do simple addition and subtraction
  
• She can write her name and recognize it and "Hannah" on a page of words
• She is 43 inches tall and 43lbs. That puts her in 95% in both, but in weight for height, 50% (meaning for kids who are 43 in tall she is right in the middle for weight). She wears size 5/6 and 11 shoe. I'm pretty sure she'll outgrow me by junior high.
  
• She is such a big helper. I can't wait till baby gets here so she can help me out.
• We love her sooo much and we're so grateful for her in our family!
  

Christmas

Better late than never, right? Here are a bunch of pics of our delightful Christmas:

The girls holding stars at the Kleven family Christmas party (my side)

Ringing bells at the Hatch Christmas party (Mark's side)

Our little nativity was lacking in children to play all the parts on Christmas eve, so some of the grownups participated. Doesn't little Tommy make the cutest shepherd?

We went and saw the temple lights just after Thanksgiving hoping to avoid the crowds--nope, it was the first night with the ceremonial turn on of the lights. It was packed and we could barely move anywhere. Note to self: do not go on the day after Thanksgiving.

Natalie making a gingerbread house. Mostly it was just eating the candy.

My mom answering the phone when my brother called from his mission in Detroit on Christmas morning. It was so fun to hear his voice!

The big morning finally arrives...

Hannah stopped all present opening to eat her M&M's. All we heard for weeks was, "em nem?"

Natalie had been asking for a Tiana doll for months and wrote a letter to Santa about it, AND told him she wanted one when she sat on his lap. He pulled through and even brought an Ariel doll for Hannah.

This is the only picture I got of the plate of goodies left for Santa--both girls were grumpy at this point and the water for the reindeer (Natalie's idea) had just spilled all over the piano bench.

This one is of the girls opening their traditional ornaments on Christmas eve. Natalie's was a ballet girl and Hannah's a little dog in a Christmas box.

Hannah did NOT like sitting on Santa's lap. We love his expression. And Hannah's belly button.

This is the first year Natalie has been brave enough to sit on his lap and actually speak with him! It was amazing. So they do grow out of some things...

It was a delightful Christmas. Aubri (Mark's sister) had gotten married the week before, so things were a little crazier than usual with wedding plans, etc. Several of my projects got finished after Christmas was over so another note to self: finish projects before December even starts. And do Christmas shopping early! I know everyone tries to do that but this year I didn't really make an effort to do it early and boy did I regret that. It was not so fun.

The girls were super excited about Christmas which made it even more fun for us. They even sang along to Christmas songs (mostly Nat) which was sooooo cute. There is nothing like a little child's voice singing songs, I tell ya.

New years was really nothing too exciting-we didn't even tell the kids about it (we were exhausted) and put them to bed at the usual time, then we watched a movie and went to bed before midnight. Woo hoo! Happy 2011. :)

Annie

So back in November or so, we scored some free tickets to see Annie at the Broadway Palm Dinner Theater in Mesa. I had never been there before but we were willing to try it out! Turns out my sister Katie had 4 free tickets to the same show, so we made it a girls night out with me, Natalie, Melanie, Brooklyn, my mom, and Katie. It was so fun. There was a buffet dinner then we watched the show from our tables. Food was delish, and the show was superb. I was especially amazed at the little girl who played Annie. She had a great voice and was a really good little actress! Natalie really liked it most of the way through. It was late for her, she was getting hungry again towards the end of the show, and there was a lot of dialogue in the second half. We had some crying on the way home but overall it was a very fun evening and I'm sooo glad we went!

The girls are so excited to see the show.


Top: Natalie and Katie enjoying dessert. Bottom--my sampling of the chocolate delights they had to offer.

Natalie and me . Don't you love her enthusiasm?
The girls got bored after we were done eating before the show started, so we all hunted through our purses to find them something to do. I happened to have a brand new pack of stickers! They stuck them all to their ticket stubs which occupied them for quite a while.

New Year's resolutions

If you thought this was going to be a bulleted list, you were wrong. I am a fan of goal-setting, and naturally the new year brings this out in me. I mulled over what I was going to resolve to do and came up with a big list of things--if I were to accomplish them all, I'd be perfect! Yesssss. I would keep my house clean, be up to date on my blog, have emergency prep stuff all ready to go, my recipes organized, exercise daily, eat healthy food and very little processed sugar/carbs, be diligent in my preschooling of Natalie, never watch tv again, filing neat and tidy, my garden producing food, work on my genealogy, attend the temple more, and only look at facebook once a week. Soooo with all that floating around in my head I procrastinated the goals. Once my birthday hit last week I had decided to simplify and choose two things to work on personally. They are:

• Read my scriptures every day
• Keep my kitchen clean

Yes folks, that is it. I'm all about tackling small goals and feeling good about doing well at them. My kitchen has been mostly glorious and sparkly since Jan 1 and my scriptures are being opened more than they used to. Feels good. I'll get to those other things here and there, a little at a time.

As for weight loss goals, it's kind of on the bottom of my list at this point, haha. Once this baby pops out, it will become a priority!

Family pictures

**noticed that some were cut off for some reason...now it is fixed**

We took these in mid-December at a junkyard by our house. I took the ones of the kids, Mark took ones of me with the kids, and Melanie (my sis) took the ones of our family and I post-processed them all. It was quick and easy and the kids did great! We love how it all turned out.