Is this not the sweetest girl?  I just wanted to write a little memory down so it doesn't go unremembered. 
Caroline is really receptive to learning about the gospel.  She loves to learn about Jesus and her favorite thing about Christmas is Baby Jesus.  She loves babies and Jesus so the fact that there is a whole holiday celebrating Baby Jesus just blows her mind! 
Here is the memory:
On Sundays we usually watch either general conference or the Mormon Messages videos.  Right now, on lds.org there is a beautiful video of the Nativity.  We watched it and she loved it.  There is another one on there featuring a piano and a cello playing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" with scenes of the Saviors birth and life.  It is really really beautiful.  Everyone should watch it.  So, we were watching that and there is one scene where Christ heals a man, who rises and gives him a hug.  Caroline's eyes lit up and she said, "Hug Jesus?  Baby hug Jesus?"
 Sidenote: She refers to herself as "baby."
 I said, "You want to give Jesus a hug?"  She said, "Yes, hug Jesus."  I told her we can't literally give Jesus a hug right now in this life, but we can pray to Heavenly Father and tell him how much we love Jesus and that we want to hug him.  I asked her if she wanted to say a prayer and she said she did. 

Another side note/contradiction to an earlier statement: About two or three months ago Caroline was all about saying her prayers, and she wanted to say them for every meal.  And by say the prayer, I mean repeat what we told her to say.  But lately she has refused to say a prayer except for her bedtime prayer.

So this is the prayer that she said, repeating after me and pronouncing everything clearly (at least to me):

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus, I love Jesus, I want to give Jesus a hug.  Thank you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Now, imagine her saying that in her sweet little voice, and she really does have the sweetest little voice.

I'm not bragging on her, I just don't want to forget it.  Sometimes when she's screaming no at me or throwing a tantrum, and I'm sure the power struggles will get way worse, it's hard to remember that children really do come from a place where they knew what this whole life is about and they know exactly who their Heavenly Father is and who their Savior and Redeemer is.  They are so sensitive to the spirit and are such enormous blessings.  We can learn a lot from them about faith and what really matters in this life.  We are so blessed to have her.  This is what I will try to focus on this Christmas, just like Caroline, I want to really be so excited about Baby Jesus.  It really is the most wonderful thing to ever happen to this Earth. 

Merry Christmas!

(Minor) Home Improvements

We've recently added  a few things to the apartment.  Take a look.

           We found these wall stickers at Dollar Tree (which is my FAVORITE place).  It started with the animal stickers.  She loves zebras, and saw the zebra from across the aisle.  We put them on her wall and she loves them.  She goes up to them several times a day and points and names all of the animals.  Except for the rhino, for some reason she has no interest in the rhino.   So then, we decided the next time we were there to add the alphabet to the wall, for educational value, and the butterflies for fun, because she loves them.  I figured it's cheap, $1 each, and when we get sick of them we can just take them off.  Anyway, they are fun. 

I'm sure you've seen the tutorial for these prints all over the internet.  I just took the picture to staples, asked for an engineers print.  It was $3.50.  Then I got a foam board at Hobby Lobby and painted the edges black, and glued it on.  It was really easy, but the hardest part was finding a way to get it to hang on the wall. It took several days and failed attempts, but I finally found the command picture hooks.  They work really well.  I feel like I had done a lot of little things all over the apartment except in our room.  This really adds a little interest to our room.  I like it a lot.