Happy Haircuts!

Ive been afraid this day would come and it has happened...Makella gave herself a haircut! Lucky for us, Ella apparently is pretty good at cutting hair and did a pretty good job!
I should have suspected something when she gave her doll a haircut during quiet time a few days ago. I thought that I had put the scissors away, but she somehow found them. We didnt even realize she had done anything until we found a pile of hair under her pillow. Here is a before..her hair was all the same length..Its the best picture I could find.To this...she pretty much layered her own hair and gave her self some side bangs..Good job Ella!
After the fact, she got pretty upset about cutting her hair and im hoping she learned a lesson...
Since I needed to fix her hair a bit, I decided to just go all out and get her a real haircut. Ive been growing it out for such a long time that it seemed fun to change things up a bit. I heard about this cute place in Meridian that does kids haircuts and paints their nails and stuff, so we made a morning of it. She loved it and I think her hair is so stinkin cute! Much better than what she had before. Here are a few pictures and another before and after...Enjoy!

Getting her Hair washed...

Then her nails. I loved her little head wrap, it was really cute!


The chair she sat in was a little jeep and she got snacks and toys too.


Here is the before:
And the after!:

I think she looks so cute! I love it! Every girl needs to be pampered and Im glad I got to do it for such a sweet little girl!

Fun times

**Ive had this post sitting here waiting to be finished and haven't felt like writing, so here is a quick summary of the pictures.**

February has been a pretty good month so far! At the beginning of the month, I went on a little vacation with the kids. We drove to Yakima to see my neice and nephew (twins) get baptized! They were both so excited and I was really glad I got to be there. I haven't been able to see any of my other nieces/nephews get baptized yet, so it was fun. Makella had the best time with her cousins. She got to have a sleep over with them and she slept in the bunk bed with Emery. I was glad she got to spend so much time with them!

Then after that, I drove to my parents house and left the kids at their house while me and Jon spent a couple of days, kids free, in Seattle. He flew in on Monday and left again the next day. Those were his days off and we had a free flight. So it worked out. Everything is pretty expensive in Seattle so we didn't really do a whole lot. But it was fun to just be able to hang out with each other and enjoy some quiet! Seattle is definetaly an interesting place and a great place for people watching!

Wandering around all the different buildings and alleyways was fun too. Around Pikes Place, we found and alley that was covered in gum! Apparently its the gum wall and there was a bunch of people taking pictures. The whole alley smelled like gum, which was pretty gross, but it was funny. Jon hates any/all gum, so he was especially grossed out. But it was fun to see. I wished I had some on me to contribute, but i didn't!

After Jon went home, I spent the rest of the week at my parents house. Its nice to go there and just relax and spend time with family. We had a birthday party for my dad, Ella and Mandy because they all have February birthdays. We made them all their own cakes and there was a lot of presents for everyone. Ella got so much fun stuff and thought it was pretty cool to share a birthday with her aunt and grandpa! Danika and Ella during quiet time watching a movie.
It felt too soon, but then it was time to go home. We celebrated Makella's birthday again when we got home by taking her ice skating. She has always talked about going, so we decided to just go for it. It was pretty hard for her but she was happy to be able to go. We actually got some skates on Noah too. They wouldnt let us take him unless he had skates on, so I dragged him around for awhile and he had fun for about 5 minutes, then me and jon just switched off.

We weren't going to make her another cake, and then I saw this really cool idea to make a Neapolitan cake and I just decided to try it. I seem to have bad luck when baking and it either tastes really good but look bad, or looks great and tastes bad. This time it was the first. It tasted great, but didnt look so good. I tried to cover up the bad frosting job by smothering it sprinkles. Makella is obsessed with sprinkles, so she loved it! Happy birthday Ella!

Sick Day

This is how Noah spent most of his day. Wrapped in a blanket/towel, whatever he could find. If it fell off he could come back turn around and wait for me to fix it. He has a cold and his nose has been running like crazy! Poor guy isnt feeling good! He looked so sweet with his poofy hair and red eyes, all wrapped up, I just had to take some pictures! I hope he feels better soon though.

Luckily Makella is feeling just fine and we had lots of fun doing a funny face photo shoot. She's so funny and had some really good faces!

Just Because

I don't have a whole lot going on at the moment, but was looking at some pictures from the last month and felt like posting some of them. I have awesome kids and Im grateful to be able to be home with them all day! Here are some of the fun times from this last month!
Jon is now working in the afternoon and doesn't get home until about 10, so I am stuck to making dinner by myself. By the time dinner comes around, Noah is usually clutching my legs and screaming while Ella runs around and makes a mess of everything and bugs Noah as much as she can. Its just usually a little hectic. But on this particular day, I asked Makella to try to play and help Noah instead of bugging him. She came up with a great idea and it worked! Dinner was made in peace and I got to see a very sweet moment with my kids. She read him stories and after each one, she would tell him to go get another book and he would run off with his silly run and get another book. It was so cute!



There have been some nice days, so we all went outside to play. It was lots of fun! Makella made her own "racing path" and wanted me to take some pictures of her. She would check the camera after each one to make sure i got it right. It took a few shots before she was satisfied.

Noah's favorite thing to do is to read books and get into the kitchen cabinets. Apparently, he realized it would be fun to do both!


We have done a lot of painting, and this time Noah got to join in. He did a pretty good job and didnt get it all over his face! He's just so cute, I can hardly stand it!

Makella is a pretty big perfectionist and so I have a hard time getting her to draw or anything for very long because she gets frustrated and just wont do it. But on this day she decided she was going to paint a picture for dad and she worked so hard! She painted a rainbow and got frustrated a few times and it took awhile, but she stuck with it and it turned out so good! I was so proud! :) Then just this morning she spent half and hour drawing out the whole rapunzel story and writing the words for each picture. When she was done she even said, "well its not perfect, but thats ok!" I loved it!

Other than that, we just hang out and do a lot of giggling and playing! These kids definitely know how to be silly and have fun! I love them both!

Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all! We had a really great christmas this year! I was really excited that we were able to get a real tree this year! We have been using a fake one for the past couple of years, which was fine, but I just love getting a real one. Since we moved, we realized that we had left our box of christmas decorations at his parents house in Utah, so I was bummed to not have my christmas village and stocking and everything else. Luckily I have a really awesome mother in law who helped us make our house and our tree beautiful and christmassy!
I started a tradition last year of doing a christmas countdown thing with Makella and everyday we do some kind of christmas activity. I guess its not really a tradition yet since we have onle done it once, but I would like it to be! Well, it didnt really happen this year. I had a hard time getting into the christmas spirit at first, but I did get around to doing some fun things with the kids! It will be better next year! One day me and Ella went by ourselves to do some christmas shopping while the boys stayed home and did boy things. While we were out we stopped at the mall and Makella was so suprised that Santa was there. Her face was priceless! She was so excited! I wished that Noah could have been there, but it was ok, because I dont think he would really care anyways. It was fun to just be out with my girl! Here is Ella with Santa!

A few days before christmas we were planning on going to our ward christmas party but we didn't end up going. Well, ella was super upset about not going, so we decided to do gingerbread houses instead! Poor Noah ended up just going to bed because he just likes to sleep, so the rest of us stayed up and decorated our house! It was lots of fun!
We have tried to focus a bit more on the Savior this christmas, so for the 12 days before christmas, we read a christ focused story with ella and noah (more just ella) every night. She really loved it. Then on one of the last days, we watched the nativity movie with her. Just the shortened one, and she loved it! She loved being able to See the story instead of just reading about it.



It was a Graff Christmas this year which worked out since Jon had to work on Christmas anyways. Since most of the Graffs live up here in Boise and some of us had to work right around or on christmas, Jon's parents came up here to celebrate! I love getting together with family so it was fun to have them here! They came on Thursday and dropped off all kinds of presents for us and the kids, which was super nice and it was fun to have some presents under our tree! Then on Christmas Eve, we went to Kami's house and spent the evening there. There was awesome food, treats and great company! The little girls dressed up as Mary and an Angel and watched over baby jesus. Malia took her role as Mary very serious. She was so sweet and definetaly had the "meek and mild" thing going on. Makella was more of a silly Angel and just liked the fact that she had everyone's attention on her! I guess its ok for and angel to have a little fun! Jon's dad gave a really great christmas devotional/message. He challenged us to take this next year to really get to know Jesus Christ and become closer to Him. A challenge that I plan on doing!

After the party was over, we packed up so we could go get ready for Santa to come! As we went out to the car we looked up and in the sky was a bright slow flashing red light the looked just like rudolph. Im sure it was a plane, but you couldnt see it. Makella couldnt believe it! It was rudolph! She was SO excited she was like shaking! So we ran back in and got Malia so she could see it. She went Racing outside as fast as she could and they were both so excited! It was pretty much the perfect way to end the night! Christmas morning was a different because Jon had to work from 6:30 am to 2:30. So we woke the kids up at five and opened our stockings. I wanted to get a video of the kids getting up and stuff. Makella woke up to the sound of jingling bells and Santa outside her window. She was so cute and her face when she saw the tree and all the gifts was so cute! Noah Loved his stocking! He got a bunch of dinosaurs and cars and a big foam battle ax! Makella got a bunch of girly cute things. After all the stocking stuff I realized that my video camera had stopped recording for some reason! I was so upset! So I have no pictures or video of the morning! It was a bust, but they were both so cute! We waited to open all the gifts when Jon was done with work. So we spent the morning, being lazy, taking naps, and getting ready. Then we headed over to Aaron and Kelly's for a little christmas brunch. It was fun to just relax and be with family. Then we headed back home and opened all our gifts! We all got such great things and we are so grateful to all the grandparents and family that got us and our kids such awesome gifts! We felt so blessed and grateful! After that we went back to Aaron and Kelly's house to spend the evening there. Kelly made an amazing dinner for a large group and we had a really great time! We were one of the last to leave and both the kids managed to do pretty good for staying up so late! We definetaly enjoyed our first christmas here in Idaho! I hope that everyone had a wonderful christmas. This turned out to be an incredible long post, so if you are still reading, Im impressed!

Our little dancer!

Makella has been taking dance classes with Tip tap toes (my sister in law). The dance studio is in our garage, so its pretty convenient! She has loved it though. She got to make some friends and was always excited to go. They had the recital at the beginning of december and she did such a great job. I would sometimes be able to watch her while she was having her dance class and she always seemed more interested in playing with her friends or watching herself in the mirror to really care about the actual dance. We werent sure if she would really even remember the dance once it came time for the recital. I wont go so far as to say that she will be a dancer when she grows up, but she did so good! I think she remembered pretty much all of it and all the little 3 year olds were so cute! She loved being on stage and wasnt scared or nervous at all. Im excited for her to do dance again starting in January! Here are some (alot) of pictures of her all dolled up in her dance costume! Enjoy!