My little girls

I have never been very good at documenting the funny things my kids say and do. So in order to try and preserve some of the memories of their youth, here are some recent highlights.

--Anna suddenly began to talk constantly about 2 months ago. Before that she had a very limited vocabulary. Hence she delights us every day with new favorites. With more talking, she has begun to offer the prayer at night. She usually starts, jabbering something we can't comprehend (there is usually a "bless Daddy" in there somewhere). Eventually I prompt her.

Mom - "In the name..."
Anna - "Name"
Mom - "of Jesus Christ"
Anna - "Jesus Christ"
Mom - "Amen"
Anna - (pause)"......bless the food!"

--Hattie knows that we kill bugs/spiders that are found in the house. She'll often ask me, "Mom, did you dead that spider?"

--Recently I've had the song "Video Killed the Radio Star" stuck in my head. Hattie keeps saying, "Mom, that wasn't very nice of Video to kill the Radio Star...we shouldn't sing songs about killing." She then changes it to "Video tickled the Radio Star" or "Video smashed the Radio Star."

--Paul has been gone a lot lately. When he isn't interviewing somewhere, he's working at the hospital. Anna's most common phrase is "Daddy come to our house" or "I miss you Daddy."

--The other day I attempted to potty train Anna, which meant that a wonderful friend of mine watched Hattie all day. When Hattie left, Anna was distraught. She ran around the house, screaming, crying, tantruming, for about 10 minutes, about how Hattie had gone. When we went to pick her up, Anna said, "I want Hattie, my best friends." Nothing makes me happier than to see my girls playing and loving each other.

Christmas time

This year we made a lot of gingerbread houses, but the first one was the best! Our friends the Mayer's invited us over and had homemade gingerbread and awesome royal icing...and tons of candy. Hattie totally got into it, but Anna was more interested in Lilly's Minnie Mouse toys. Sadly Paul was off interviewing somewhere so he missed the fun.

 One of my favorite Christmas treats to make are Paintbrush cookies. The girls loved painting (and often smashing) their cookies with egg yolks mixed with food coloring.

 And we were lucky enough to have Paul's parents, sister Christina, and brother Daniel out for Christmas. If you can't tell, the girls are sitting on Christina.

 An Iverson family tradition is to play a present exchange game on Christmas Eve. Everyone is given a word on a piece of paper...this word comes from whatever Christmas book we chose to read that night. And it's usually a pretty common word, like 'and' or 'he.' Every time your word is said you get to either take a present from the middle or steal one from someone else. The fun part is that even though you don't know what's inside, you fight and battle for what you suppose is the best present. This was the first year Hattie really understood how it worked and she loved switching presents. Anna, on the other hand, became possessive of one of the presents and refused to trade with anyone.

 The girls got Lion King toys while the rest of us got a movie or an iTunes card.

 My sister Lisa made these awesome costumes for us! Can't wait to use them every year! (nice pregnant wise man!)

 Paul, of course, loves to buy gifts and got the girls each a Nerf sword...and he got himself a mace and battleaxe! I was sure that the girls wouldn't really be into it, but I have been proven wrong. Whenever Dad walks in the room, Hattie runs to find her sword to do battle with Dad.

 Modeling her new Christmas attire...

 And Anna just walked around smiling all morning.

 And we had a yummy Christmas feast...on the 26th. Christmas was just too busy to cram in making a ton of food too, so we enjoyed it more the next day. Hope you all had a great Christmas too!