Bella and Claire, Bama and PopPop

I wanted to thank Mom and Dad for such a great visit. Mom was able to cook with Bella and Claire. Bella wakes up and asks to watch the Food Network so it was a lot of fun for her to be able to make homemade mac n cheese, Coco Wheats, and especially the Christmas cookies. I love seeing the little ways that Bama and PopPop have influenced the girls. Claire was eating corn on the cob last night with handles screwed in the end. She held the handles and pretended she was rolling out dough and making cookies. I told Dad that one of Bella's favorite snacks is prentzels and cream cheese. She calls them prentzels just like i think Sarah did. At school they were having bagels and cream cheese and she said she did not want it. She got out her left over pretzels from lunch and said she wanted some cream cheese. The teacher told her she thought she didn't want any, but Bella said she only wanted the cream cheese to dip her prentzels. Silly Pop Pop is getting her started on weird snacks, but I love to see it.
Back to thanking Mom and Dad, it was great to get some things done around the house. The day after they got here, Dad helped me finish the swing set. He put up shelves in the garage and two closets the last two days he was here and fixed the kitchen sink. He also helped me put MR's elliptical together. Mom fixed Claire's blanket, made cookies, filled and sewed my bean bags, and had fun taking walks with the girls. I also have to thank Elizabeth and her mom for the bean bags. All in all, it was an excellent Christmas with Mom and Dad. I still really missed my siblings and hope that next year we can all have Christmas here. Bella just put my lion, Spike, on my chest. Remeber him?

I also wanted to share something that Bella has been saying since last year. We drive by the Superstition Mountains every day and she asked me a while back if I ever climbed them. I told her that Uncle Sean and I did climb them once. Well, last week she asked if I have ever been poked by a cactus. I told her that I only have ever stepped on one and it went through my shoe, but that Uncle Sean was coming down from our climb and he lost control of his momentum and almost impaled himself on a Sagauro cactus, but I caught him before he ran into the cactus. She said, "Ouch, that hurts my bottom!" That was a recent time when she said it, but she always says it when she sees someone bleeding or hurt or even pictures of the girls immediately after they were born. It is so funny the way she says it.