The Randalls

There are many days I wish I had a sister. I guess that's why my mom and I are so close; we talk a lot on the phone. I always thought about what it would be like to grow up with a sister. A lot of my friends had sisters and couldn't stand it. Their sisters were always stealing their clothes, fighting with them, had to share a room with them. But now that they are all grown up they are the best of friends, most of the time. I watched Piper the other night take a book to Calista and squish her way onto Calista's lap so she could read a book with her. This was when Mark was in China so I was glad for the little reprieve of having Piper off my lap. But I realized that this moment was the start of what will hopefully become a great relationship of sisterhood. I had to snap a picture so I can show these girls in twenty years how it all started.


On the other hand, I got to grow up with an older brother. I feel sorry for those girls out there who didn't get this opportunity. You see, I have the coolest brother ever. Hands down. Anyway, I didn't post this to have a pity party because I don't have any sisters. I have great girl friends that make up for that. I just had these ideas floating around lately after seeing my daughters playing together. Actually just last night Mark and I checked on the girls before we went to bed and found Calista sleeping on the top bunk in Téa's bed. The night before Téa told me that Calista woke her up and asked if she could sleep with her because she had a "nightmirror". I thought it was cute but you never know what to believe when your kids tell you stories. But when I saw the girls cuddled up together I caught a glimpse of what having a sister means. Téa and Calista can fight with each other all day long. They don't need to use their fists. They use words that hurt (girls are so good at that) and they do it on purpose sometimes. But moments like this where I see that they love each other and Téa is willing to share her bed because her little sister had a nightmare, I see hope that they will grow up to be best friends someday. Sorry for the long, mushy post. This is somewhat of a journal for me.

What do you do to pass the time away when your spouse leaves the country? Well, here's what I did (a story in pictures)...

(Now picture the person in the red jersey with a long ponytail (that would be me) and leave the guy in the yellow jersey just like he is...on his butt. Now you have an idea of how our game went. It was sweet. I love beating a team that has 21 year-old boys on it.)

Ok, one more post. I finally got a video of Piper saying "applesauce" which happens to be my favorite word that she says. It's right at the beginning so don't miss it. I love this stage of learning to talk. Her words sound so cute. Although she now knows how to say "no" and "mine" which I hear constantly. Not so cute.

Mark, Téa, Calista and Grandma all went sledding with Leslie's and Jeff's family. Here's a video of Téa sledding. The girls had fun but I think Téa went down the hill a few too many times on her tummy. As soon as she stepped in the house she spewed all over the kitchen floor. I, thankfully, missed that episode. I was at the store getting more pink-eye medicine for all three girls. This was on New Year's Eve day, by the way. I'm playing catch up.

Mark figured this was blog-worthy stuff so since I'm pretty much the sole author of this blog, I'll have to do it for him. Tuesday morning at 1 am Mark and I were awakened by the bed shaking and the clock and other glass objects on our bookshelf rattling. My first thought was that one of the kids was bumping into the bed but when I heard things rattling I knew it was something different. The shaking was over in a few seconds. Mark ran to the window to see if a huge truck drove by. I went downstairs to see if maybe it was just our garage door opening up for some strange reason (and for some stranger reason shaking the entire house). I came back upstairs to tell Mark I didn't see anything. He went into the girl's bedroom and found Piper sitting up. The other two were still snoring away. Piper is by far our lightest sleeper. After a few minutes I mentioned something about it being like an earthquake. Mark has never been in one so it was up to me to tell him what one was like. I didn't think what we felt was an earthquake. I must add something here. I'm from California, people. Now do you understand?

Mark woke me up just as he was leaving for work and said there was no news of an earthquake on any Utah website so it must have been something else. At this point I'm thinking maybe it was some super secret military airplane that went over our heads and broke the sound barrier or something. I think I've been reading too many fictional books. Any who...about 45 minutes later he called to tell me that it was for sure an earthquake, 2.9 on the Richter scale. I had to laugh. 2.9? That's nothing. As my good friend Lisa said (also from Cali) that's a train going by your house. But, Mark can now check off 'been in an earthquake' on his checklist of life. For me, it was kind of refreshing to have gone through an earthquake where I didn't have to worry that this was the 'Big One' that was going to send my parents into the Pacific Ocean. Oh, and sorry for the wordy post. It wasn't supposed to be.

Merry (belated) Christmas! I slacked off this year and didn't do a family Christmas letter. It got so close to the holiday that I was thinking maybe I'd make it a New Year's letter but that didn't happen either. Maybe next year. It also has to do with the fact that I didn't get our family pictures done this year. So our last family photo was taken when Piper was 5 months old. I'm sure our parents are anxious for an updated photo. I know I am. This year I even had the outfits picked out and everything for the girls. Oops.

Our Christmas was fantastic. Santa came, ate our fudge and drank the milk that the girls left out, left the stockings filled (too bad he couldn't remember that Calista's stocking was the purple one and not the blue one...oops) and even left some presents under the tree. Even though the girls were threatened (more than once) that if they didn't start to behave they wouldn't get gifts from Santa, I guess they made up for it somehow because he did come. Here's the proof.

Here's Téa with a huge box of coloring stuff.
Calista scored this year. She got a bike that she's wanted forever and she got a kid-sized guitar. She's told lots of people she wants to be a rock star when she grows up.
Piper's favorite gift so far is the baby doll that Grandma Randall gave her. Here she is trying to paint her toes with the nail polish the girls got in their stocking. I don't know how she knows what to do with it. I usually have to wait until she's asleep to paint nails.

We were lucky enough to have Grandma Randall stay with us for all of Christmas vacation. She even babysat for us New Year's Eve so Mark and I could play games at his sister's house to ring in the new year. We are becoming wimps, though. The clock barely struck midnight and we headed home straight to bed. Maybe when the kids learn to sleep in we might stay up later. The day after New Year's my nephew, Nicolas was baptized so it was yet another excuse to get together with family and eat, play games, eat some more, play more games. I was introduced to a new fun game called Mason's. I only played it once but I loved it. Maybe it's because I won. Hmm... Happy New Year everyone. I hope you all were free of pink eye. Did I forget to mention that each kid had pink eye during the break? Twice? And we feel terrible because we gave it to Grandpa Randall.