Happy International Women's Day!

From the three Morningstar gals to the many women near and far who have nurtured, inspired, challenged, encouraged, and loved us - Happy International Women's Day!

We toast you with a strawberry and creme Frapuccino (or "pink drink" as the girls call it), blurry/crazy photos by the under-7 set, and a whole lot of love and gratitude.

Hot Dogging

 by Sasha

I like my hot dog hair because they're kind of like the dinosaur horns.  People think my hair is funny and they like it.  My teachers Miss Teresa and Miss Shaila like it.  Next time I want five six ten hot dogs in my hair.

Editor's Notes:  In case you're wondering why this hairstyle is called "hot dogs" in our home, I finally figured it out a few weeks ago - I think that "buns" and "hot dogs" got a little confused in the space between Sasha's brain and mouth and buns have been been called hot dogs in our family ever since!

Prettiest Princesses

Right before Christmas, my girls got to participate in the most coveted rite of little-girlhood - they got to be flower girls!  Our wonderful friend Sarah (we were in the Computer Science program at St. Mary's together and Sarah is Sam's godmother) graciously invited the girls to be flower girls in her wedding and I have to say that they were up for the challenge.  It was a simply beautiful day, made even a little more special by two little princesses :)

The girls did a great job as flower girls and didn't exhibit any of the last-minute stage (aisle?) fright that I was worried about.  I think it helped that they were together, so they didn't have to walk alone and they were so focused on out-cuting the other that they didn't have time to get nervous :)

WanYing and Sasha scattered petals like pros and my very favorite part was meeting the girls at the front of the church and bringing them back down a side aisle to our seats, watching WanYing scatter petals the whole way across the front of the church and down the side aisle to her seats.  The girl took her petal-distribution responsibilities seriously!

Sasha gets some princess-in-training advice from Sarah

The sisters have their baskets stocked and are ready to go!

Let's get this party started!

WanYing shows off a little flower girl sass

The whole wedding party

Time for the reception!  The kids (and their parents) were thrilled that there was a kids' table

I think this is my favorite photo of them all - Sash watches Aunt Sarah get garden pictures taken.  So cute!

Mommy and Aunt Sarah finally get a photo together

Ok, maybe we still need a *little* more princess training

It was such a beautiful day and we were so grateful to be a part of it!

Blessed Retreat

A couple of weeks ago while Grammy was in town, a couple of friends and I headed up to the big city for a night on the town. For us, that means cooking class, tea and stationery shopping, and playing board games into the wee hours! Now that's my kind of girls' weekend :)

If you're in SLC and looking for a fun way to spend an evening, I can definitely recommend the soup-making class at the new City Creek Harmon's - it was delicious fun!

Fashion Show!

Raising girls is such an undeniably different experience from raising boys. I have been repeatedly reminded, with stark clarity, this summer how differently our boys and girls express (not to mention groom) themselves. I have to beg the boys to change their clothes every two to three days. The girls go through two to three outfits per day.

Consider the following conversation in our home this week:

Mommy: Girls, do you want to go shopping with me?
Sasha: What kind of shopping?
Mommy: Clothes shopping
Sasha and WanYing: [squeals of delight] Yeah, yeah, yeah (WanYing echos). Can we get something special for me?
Sasha to Ben: Ben, we going shopping with Mommy
Ben: [interested in what's causing the excitement] Mom, where are you going?
Mommy: Gymboree
Ben: Uh [walks away]

Well, the three Morningstar girls had a delightful time using up our Gymbucks and getting something special for everybody. And, of course, as soon as we returned home each outfit had to be modeled for Daddy, bedtimes be damned!

If you're confused about the open mouths in these shots, it's because the girls kept chanting, "fashion show!" as they posed upon the playset. And, yes, the playset had to be scaled in order to properly show off each outfit. No other catwalk could possibly suffice.

I have to admit, I do like a good fashion show. The whole experience reminds me of my own childhood when I got a new set of hand-me-downs from my super-cool cousins and spent the next days happily constructing and showing off daring new styles.

It's simply fabulous delighting with the girls in how special and beautiful they are, even if it does multiply the laundry pile.

Piggies and Bunnies

In our home, there are only two hairstyles worth mentioning - "piggies" and "bunnies". Sure, we have the occasional "pony hair" day, but let's be real, the ponytail is no match for the insane cuteness of piggies and bunnies.

I can recommend the bunnies without reservation to all of you in the three-inch-and-under hair set. It's a style that never ceases to amuse.

Watermelon Afternoon

Finally - pictures of the girls together wearing the adorable dresses that the moms got us for WanYing's shower! Watermelon and warm days (not to mention cute dresses) make for happy girls.

Tea for Two

[Contented sigh] I admit it, these were the scenes in my head when I dreamed of having two girls.

Sash pours out (she still has some control issues, but WanYing is patient with her)

Sasha still toasts, "To China!" every time we clink glasses

Delish!  Sasha makes a mean cupa

Wawa was really hungry and needed lots of Goldfish refills (Wawa is  "doll" in Mandarin - WanYing refers to every doll, Elmo, teddy bear, and stuffed animal in our house as Wawa)

Beautiful girls enjoying beautiful sisterhood on a beautiful day!

Sleeps 6 - Cute and Organized

I am happy to announce that the girls' room now:

1. sleeps two
2. is cute 
3. and is navigable without first plotting each step with great care (read: is organized)

Bring on the Travel Approval, we are ready for our gal to come home!

Here's the view from the closet, highlighting the girls' new art nook

The canopy and lights under Sasha's bunk are so dang cute!  They don't show up well in the pictures, but trust me, they're charming in person.

Sasha has been devoting hours per day to her art projects and "homework" with a gusto that we have never seen from our other kids.  So, we were excited to create an art nook in the girls room to 1) provide the girls a place to exercise their creative tendencies and 2) hopefully keep the markers and crayons confined to only one of our home's horizontal surfaces.

And Steve gets massive kudos for leading the charge on Project Girl Room Declutter.  It feels great to have their room qualify as inhabitable again and all of the credit goes to my amazing man!

Sleeps 6 - Getting Cuter!

We worked hard on the girls' room this weekend and it's all looking significantly cuter. I was congratulating myself on the fact that it could almost pass for organizedish until I realized that the only reason I could walk in their room is that the toy box and table and chairs were relocated to our room. On the up-side, if I lose 75 pounds and two feet of height, I will be able to comfortably enjoy tea parties in my very own room.

The faux-canopy and fairie lights above WanYing's bed are really cute - the photos don't do them justice. Once we get the bookshelves/cubbies/junk repositories installed next to WanYing's bed, I'll try to take better photos.

I figure that I must have succeeded in the cuteness efforts since it took Sasha roughly 2 hours to settle down and fall asleep on her first night in her new bed. Only something really cute would keep a kid awake and excited for that long, right?

And kudos to Daddy for ensuring that the girls' room is free from decapitation hazards thanks to the new light fixture (goodbye, fan) and normal-sized persons can enter the bed thanks to the newly shortened bed legs (thank you, hack saw).

Sasha and Grammy Bedazzled

Today was a historic day in the Morningstar household - the day of four piercings!  That's right, Grammy and Sasha both added a bedazzled hole to each ear!  And, yes, they chose coordinating sparkle flower earrings (Sasha's are pink and Grammy's are blue).

On a related note, I came to a new understanding of why it is called "ear piercing" - my goodness but our girl can scream! But I do not believe that there was any lasting trauma; right after it was all over Sasha was proudly strutting about the mall, exposing her ears to anybody who was likely to admire. And, to their credit, Sam and Ben have repeatedly feigned surprise and awestruck wonder at the sheer brilliance of the pierced ears. They are truly good brothers.

Grammy was very, very brave.

Sasha starts to have second thoughts about whether or not this is really the great idea it seemed when we picked out the lovely, sparkly earrings.

I think Sasha would have liked seeing her newly-beautified ears in the mirror if she would have stopped screaming long enough to open her eyes... the mall piercing girl said that this would cure her of wanting piercings for life... I'm not sure I buy that, I'm pretty sure she'll still come home someday with some youthful indiscretion extraneous piercings.

But mere moments (and two lollipops and an ice cream) later, Sasha and Grammy proudly show off their new jewelry.  Both princesses look very lovely with their extra sparkle and all is right with the world.

Sasha did mention, however, that she doesn't want her WanYing to get her ears pierced because she doesn't want her to cry. Now that's a quality big sister for ya.

Girly-girl

I admit that I am at least partially to blame for the phenomenon that is Sasha's obsession with nail polish. Although I would never, ever even consider painting my own nails, the novelty of painting my toddler's nails is irresistible.

Here we are picking out the finest 60-second nail polish that $1.99 can buy at Target. We had great fun choosing colors and ended up with pink and blue. We also wanted to get a fabulous metallic grape color, but it was $3 and that's way outside of my toddler nail polish budget. I am happy to report that the pink toenails match her pink Crocs perfectly.

Teeny-tiny three-year-old nails are deceptively difficult to paint, especially with all of the wiggling. We did, however, persevere and ended up with quite an extraordinary polish job, as Sash displays here in this picture when encouraged to, "show off your nails!" Polish does come off of kitchen counters with nail polish remover, which is made necessary because 60-second nailpolish doesn't really dry in 60 seconds (lies!) and it's so hard not to scrape your bright blue wet nails along the counter while grooving to Alvin and the Chipmunks.

And here's Sasha's attempt to show you her pretty pink painted toenails. I like that she's still keeping her fingers splayed in, "let the nails dry" style. Obviously I put the fear of God into her rather effectively after the 31st time I had to redo the polish on her left index finger.

You'll just have to take my word for the cuteness of the toenails, she refused to stay still long enough for a proper picture.

And here's my best attempt to show off Sasha's, "pony hair" as she calls it. Like I said, there was a lot of wiggling involved.

I've gotten pretty darn good at the pony hair over the past week and am probably unduly proud of the accomplishment. We even got the pigtails going on earlier in the week. It takes a brush, a comb, a spray-bottle of water, and specially purchased toddler hair teeny tiny rubberbands, but the resulting "princess hair" is well worth the effort.

Lagoon - Utah's Disney World

I know that this is hard – nigh impossible – to believe, but despite calling Utah home for nine glorious years, we had never visited Lagoon.

We took our first trip to Utah’s fun Mecca (slogan: "It’s what fun is") last week and were very pleasantly surprised by the largest family-owned amusement park left in the U.S. Granted, the day had its oddities, such as the Pioneer Village, which includes what is apparently a very large and fine collection of guns and other assorted weaponry and several old Mormon meeting houses that were moved to Lagoon from around the state... but Pioneer Village also had a pretty darn fine water rapids ride so I can’t criticize too harshly. Sam went on his first loop-de-loop roller coaster and both boys rode a first wooden roller coaster, my favorite part of the day (Sam was a fan, Ben not so much).

We were jolted into a newfound appreciation for just how different it is to have a girl when Sasha spied a singing-and-dancing musical spectacular and was immediately and immovably rooted to the spot until the show’s completion. After relieving Steve so he could go ride a roller coaster with Sam (one person could not be expected to endure that whole show, and I was flabbergasted at the length of the production. Wow. Really long. Not a good thing. They should have modeled the musical extravaganza after the Extreme Parrots show we saw earlier in the day. Yes, bizarre name, but reasonable length.) I sat down between Ben and Sasha for the remainder of the spectacle.

In the middle of the Ode to Billy Joel I leaned over to Ben and asked, "Ben, are you enjoying this?" To which I received a puzzled yet emphatic, "No, I think it's kind of weird" (roger that). Then I leaned over to Sash and asked the same question. Without removing her transfixed eyes from the stage she whispered, "Yah, I gike it a wot" as she swayed along to the music and mimicked the dancers' hand motions.

Good times, good times. Glad that we could all agree that the Ferris Wheel was the perfect way to close out a great day at Lagoon.
And a shout-out to inContact for footing the bill for the day's fun. If there's anything I like better than a day off of work at an amusement park with my family, it's getting it all for free. Best work summer party I've ever been to!