Bad Guys and Monsters

I'm starting to worry about my sweet little two year old girl.  She's slightly obsessed with bad guys and monsters.  Forever now, her absolute favorite thing to make believe is monsters!  Whenever she has friends over they take turns pretending to be monsters at her insistence.  Whenever Aunt Kylie or Uncle Nathan come to visit a majority of the time is spent playing monsters.  I fear London will forever be cast in the role of monster.  As soon as Derek gets home from work they head off to the bedroom to play monsters under the covers.  And every night before going to sleep, the last thing we do before saying prayers is each take a turn pretending to be a monster while the rest of the family acts scared.  Craziness right?

The bad guy thing all started when I first introduced her to Snow White.  To this day, I still get creeped out by the evil queen in Snow White.  I honestly get anxious and cower in my seat every time that old lady with the apple pops out in the Snow White ride at Disneyland.  It's one of the scariest rides there for sure.  So, the first time I decided to show Liv the Snow White movie I figured I better prepared her.  We talked about the bad guy and I pointed her out on the cover and said she is a little bit scary but that I would be sitting right next to her watching the movie so there was no reason to be scared.  To my surprise she had the opposite reaction.  As soon as that queen turned into that scary old lady she screamed, "Mom it's the Bad Guy!!!" with excited glee.  She kept telling me that "the bad guy's not scary, she's nice".  And when those mean ol' drawfs pushed the poor queen off the edge of the cliff she just kept asking over and over where the bad guy went and wanted her to come back.  Weird. 

Since that movie, it seems Livie has developed a soft spot for all bad guys.  She insists that they are all nice and eagerly anticipates the arrival of the bad guy in every movie.  Our Disney trip is fast approaching and she keeps asking me if the bad guys are going to be there.  She knows Snow White's mom is going to be looking out the window and can't wait to see her.  But shouldn't she be obesessing over Dumbo instead?  And she keeps telling me she wants to give the bad guys hugs.  Oh brother!  Does anyone know how to set up a hug session with bad guys at Disneyland?  I feel Liv will consider the trip a failure if she doesn't get to hug the bad guys.

Last weekend Liv spent the night at Aunt Stephanie's house with her cousins.  I guess Uncle Jon was quizzing a bunch of neighborhood girls on their knowledge of the princesses.  Liv loves princesses as much as all the other girls her age, but her passion, it seems, is for the bad guys.  So, Liv participated for a while and then said, "Let's do the bad guys now!"  Uncle Jon began quizzing...which bad guy looks like an Octopus?...  Ursula!  She knew all the answers.

This whole is making me wonder.  Should I be glad that she can see the good in all even bad guys and insist that they are nice?  Or rather, should I be nervous that she seems to be attracted to the sinister and scary? 

I turned 30 and other way more exciting things

 

Well it happened.  I turned 30.  I wasn't too excited about it, but I don't feel too much different so I guess you could say I'm managing.  Derek threw me an awesome shave ice party so that made up for the fact that I had to turn 30!

 

Someone left a dead tree on my doorstep with a card that said "Happy Birthday! R.I.P."  Not funny.

Liv finally got her Dad to take her on a camp-out in the the backyard.  She loved it so much that we actually made an attempt at a one night camp out with the whole family.

 

Even though Derek swore he would not go through with the annual Thorsted/Marshall camp out this year (because of the twins or the fact that he spent last years' camp out barfing or both...not sure)  But, at my insistence, he made it happen.  One of his clients had this fabulous private campsite just 10 mins from our house.  It had a little fort to play in and a swinging bench with a fabulous view overlooking the whole valley.  Unfortunately we had crazy crazy wind.  So, we didn't really get to have a fire, the cobbler got burnt (which was salvaged only because said client also had a peach orchard and gave us some fresh peaches to help disguise the burnt flavor), and we honestly felt like packing two cribs (and diapers and wipes and baby food, etc...), sleeping bags for all, and all the set up was maybe not worth it just to take it all down the next morning.  The kids slept great considering but Derek and I spent the night lying awake wondering if our tent was going to collapse on us.  It was that windy!  Oh well, Liv had fun.

 

Aunt Kylie came to visit and we had so much fun.  We surprised Dad with an afternoon tea party lunch complete with butterfly tea china.  He wasn't as thrilled as Liv.  We went to the Provo pool.  So so cool.  They have redone the whole thing.  Liv went down their two huge tube water slides over and over and none of us complained about getting to go with her (they were fun)!  We tried out the Classic fun bounce stuff.  Liv loved it and totally attached herself to some unknown girl, but the girl didn't seem to mind.  And we kind of tortured Aunt Kylie making her carry a kid for a hike and push a kid on a jog. 

Hmmm what else?  The peach tree has come and gone.  I canned peaches and made a peach pie as the grand finale.

The boys' first dress up.  Dad was not happy probably won't be happy it's on the blog either.

 

 The latest adventure that I have started embarking on in an effort to be a fun Mom despite twins and a two year old.  Highland splash pad

 A few gems of the kids.  The boys' favorite place right now is outside on a blanket in the shade.  We spend a lot of the day this way.

 Liv one morning.  Had to capture the mismatched jammies, sunglasses, bedhead.  Blackmail one day.

 Derek took Liv to the BYU preseason training game.  This was her with all 12 princess books for entertainment.  Doesn't look too enthused...I wouldn't have been at that event either.

Liv had her first day of preschool today.  She was so excited and bouncing up and down that I couldn't get a non-blurry picture.

        

   I feel like I am playing detective trying to figure out what she did there. Every few hours I learn another tidbit. So far I got that she painted a picture of a mommy just like me with brown hair, but it wasn't dry yet so she didn't get to bring it home.  There was no paper in the bathroom so she couldn't wash her hands.  Her teacher got mad when she took her shoes off.  And she claims she didn't learn any letters or numbers or sing songs or read books.  Not sure if any of the above is accurate.