On Being Cute and Relaxing Gun Laws

Ever since Ariel got bangs, Annika has been asking for them too. I figured out that she would probably look cute with bangs becasue her hair was always getting in her face anyway, and then her part would get all messed up. So, I decided to cut them myself. After I was done cutting them and she looked in the mirror for the first time she proclaimed, "Bangs look great on this kind of face!" I giggled and asked her what kind of face that was and she said matter-of-factly, "A beautiful one." The whole rest of the day I kept being surprised at how cute her bangs really were and commenting on them. She decided that she looked super-cute with the rest of her hair back in a ponytail. That night when I told her it was time for me to brush her teeth, she asked if I wanted to brush the cutest one's teeth first. Adriana was in the room am mock-indignantly put her hands on her hips and said, "Hey, I am the cutest!" I laughed and told them that everyone in our family was cute. The next day she asked me to do a ponytail again and while I was doing it informed me that she was the cutest person in our whole family. I told her that everyone was cute to which she replied, "But not as cute as me," in a sing-song voice. I was laughing so hard. Sometimes I worry that Annika will suffer from middle-child-syndrome, but I guess we have the self-esteem part taken care of.


On another note, Alice found her toes!!! It think it is so cute when babies play with their toes. Next thing you know she will be sucking on them.


Alice and Annika, the cutest little sisters in our house.

Running through the sprinkler is not enough for these girls, they must have their beach towels, sunglasses and water-bottles.




Remember how I wouldn't buy Dallin a toy gun for his birthday. Well........
Papa took care of that. There are a lot of factors that lead up to this momentous event in our family. All of the kids have really been getting in to Avatar, the Last Airbender, and play fighting a lot, which Nikolay has a lot of fun with too. He especially likes to play fight with them right before scripture time in the evening. Then they started watching Narnia over and over again, leading to more play fighting. Santa Claus gave Annika and Dallin foam swords for Christmas becasue they wanted to be Musketeers, but they hadn't really used them much because they couldn't "play" fight without getting really offended at each other. This all changed with the aforementioned movies and the reoccurring nightly sword fights with Papa. A few nights ago the sword fighting got so intense that one of the swords was rendered useless, even tape couldn't fix it. It just so happens that earlier that day, we went to a small town street fair where a cub-scout troop had a duck-shooting booth set up. The kids couldn't get enough of the nerf-guns. Afterward, Nikolay said, "Maybe we can find those kind of guns at a specialty store." And this is when I made my fatal mistake, I informed him that you can buy them at Walmart. There is a whole aisle of them. So yesterday he came home from and innocent trip to the store to get bread and apples with 2 nerf swords, and 3 nerf guns. That is how we spent our Memorial day. We do have some rules though: No shooting at people (we use stuffed animals for target practice) and they can only play with the guns under Papa's supervision.
A classic father-son moment.

P.S. Have you ever seen Nikolay smile so big in pictures?