zoo adventure with the cousins

While the Irish family was in town, we went to the zoo and met up with my sister-in-law, Natalie, and her three girls. It was a fun, long, crazy day. Hannah had a blast being carried around by Stacey, which was good because at first she and her cousins had a bit of a fight over who got Grandma. Poor Cheri. She needs a clone. We did some things we've never done before, like go to the amphibian house which was a lot of fun.

I was the only one brave enough to touch the snake. What a bunch of woosies.

Flamingos!

The white tiger likes to pace back and forth in front of the viewing window, which is totally awesome. It's so pretty!

watching the white tiger

Monkeys!!!!

Hahahahaha. Don't ask.

family visit

A few weeks ago, Dan's sister Christy and her family came for a visit from Ireland. They were here for two weeks, and so we got to spend a lot of time with them. Hannah loves her Irish cousins and the feeling is definitely mutual. They spent lots of time playing and singing with her. Leah, who's 8, spent a LOT of time playing with Hannah and even taught her "Ring around the rosie" and now it's her favorite game. She gets really confused and frustrated with other little kids when they don't know it or aren't as interested in playing it as she is. She can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to walk around in circles 50 million times. She definitely misses Leah a lot. She misses the older girls too, and asks for them every day now. She doesn't quite get the concept that they live thousands of miles away. She still expects them to be at Grandma's house all the time. My oldest niece, Stacey, is extremely talented. She has a beautiful singing voice and is very good at the guitar. One night we were able to get her to serenade us for a while. Hannah wasn't sure what to make of the guitar at first, but eventually we were able to get her to strum it. It was funny watching her watch Stacey, though. As you'll see in the video, she was pretty mesmerized and wanted to figure out how she was playing the guitar, but then she'd get scared and back away.

Swinging like a big girl with Leah

Getting pestered by Becky

Family Home Evening

We have started having Family Home Evening every Monday night. It is usually really short and simple, since Hannah has such a short attention span, but it is a lot of fun. Since we started, she has learned to fold her arms and to say "amen." She gets really excited and wants to say prayers, but we haven't been able to get her to repeat after us yet. Our "lessons" are usually only a couple of sentences long, and sometimes we will do some coloring. But the majority of FHE at our house consists of singing time. Hannah LOVES to sing. All the time. She has an amazing memory and can remember surprising amounts of lyrics for her age. She especially loves the songs with hand motions like "Popcorn Popping" and "Twinkle Twinkle." These videos don't quite do justice to her. She always gets nervous in front of the camera and clams up, but they're still really cute.

Old friends, new friends

 Back in December, my friend Hollie and her family moved here to DFW. Hollie was one of my best friends in high school, and we had even planned to be roommates at BYU- Idaho. But, as you may know, I decided to go to BYU in Utah instead, and so over the years we kind of lost touch. But thanks to facebook we stayed in touch enough for me to find out she was moving here. We've been trying to get together ever since, and finally a couple of weeks ago we made it happen. It was so great to see her and meet her family. We had a lot of fun talking and catching up, and Hannah made instant friends with her son, Quinn. They have TONS of toys, and she was in hog heaven playing and jumping on his toddler bed. Then she discovered they have a rocking horse and I wasn't sure we were going to get her to come home with us.

That's Raelynn. Isn't she cute?

Fort Worth Stock Show

My Mother-in-law really wanted to take Hannah to the stock show. Since I'm not from around here I really didn't know anything about it, but figured that since she was so excited about it we'd give it a try. Plus it got us out of the house- always a plus. It was really fun. We got to see lots of different animals, but mostly cows. The cows were being groomed that day. That was pretty entertaining. We walked down rows and rows of cows being combed, clipped, washed, and blow dried. Seriously. Their owners were standing there with blow driers and brushes. It was like a big bovine salon. Weird. We got to see some horses, but only because we went back into the holding pens. I guess they weren't doing much of anything with the horses that day. They were doing a show in the big arena, but it was really boring and the horses were too far away for Hannah to even realize they were there. At least it gave us a few minutes of rest. Hannah loved seeing the animals, well, until they either got too close or started making noise. Then she turned into a big scaredy cat.

Seeing the bunnies for the first time

DUCKLINGS!

Not so sure about the cows..

 The pictures really don't do justice to how seriously massive these cows are, especially the tan one.

The cow shower

This cow was really pretty. It walked right by us and then Mooed really loud and freaked Hannah out. But at least it got her to stop Neighing and say Moo!

My little cowgirl

Hahahahahaha. I love Cheri's face in this picture. And Hannah's. I'm pretty sure the horse had just made a sudden move or made a noise, or maybe not. Maybe it just looked at her funny. Who knows?