Gorgeous and Gorgeous ~ with words this time. :)

The weather was GORGEOUS on Thursday. Ridiculously gorgeous.

So after I picked Mookie up from preschool, we went to Subway and grabbed some sandwiches and went to the park for a picnic and some fun play time.

Sprout LOVES to swing. Holy cow, that girl loves to swing. And, sadly, she wants her big sister to swing, too, but Mookie won't. Mookie is, for some VERY strange reason, scared to swing. But every time I put Sprout on the swings, she points to the other one and says "Nini wing! Peas? Nini wing?"...which is her way of asking her sister, begging her sister to swing. And her sister continues to break her heart and mine.

Anyway, once she gets to swinging, Sprout giggles and laughs and smiles and throws her head back and her hands out and just. has. fun. She's just as happy swinging by herself as she is sitting on my lap swinging (which Mookie will do, she just WON'T swing by herself. Even in the baby swing. I wish I knew why.)

She loves to play at the park, but she always wants to swing. One thing I miss about where we lived in California was that we had a park on our street, about 7 houses up, so we could go every day if we wanted to! And, believe me, Mookie wanted to!! Sprout was too small to enjoy that park much, but Mookie sure did! It didn't have swings, but whenever we went to a park with swings, she was happy to swing...so I'm not quite sure what happened. :-/  She also loved to go down the slide. Big or small - loved it! Now? It takes a small miracle to get her to go down the smallest slide.  It's the darnedest thing. I know I need to get them out to the park more often, but it's just not the same. And it's sure-as-heck not as easy as it was! And the weather? A lot less cooperative. :)

It's cold and snowing now, but at least we had Thursday!

Christmas 2011 ~ Recap and Highlights

(I also posted this at We Shall Sew, in case you go there, too)

Well, it's Tuesday now, the 27th, and we finally ate Christmas dinner tonight. :)  There is no real reason for the delay, except that I kept sleeping through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window.  How was I supposed to prepare a turkey and get it in the oven smack dab in the middle of my nap time?

And I sure needed my nap on Christmas day.

Dave and I were up until after 3am Christmas morning, and we were tuckered out! It was totally worth it, though.

TOTALLY!!

As referenced in my last post, we made a puppet theater for the girls. Other than the curtains and the re-build upstairs, it was done in plenty of time. But the curtains took me a while since I took my sweet time. And the re-build took a while since Dave had to hand screw everything in so as not to wake the girls up with the drill.

See, we went from having only a little tree, and no presents, in the loft area when the girls went to bed Saturday night, to having a large puppet theater and a mass of Christmas gifts in the loft area when they woke up.

That kind of transformation takes time, people. It takes time.

Every morning, Mookie has this tradition, if you will, of stumbling into our bedroom around 7:30 for a bit of a snuggle and to play games or read while we all wake up. So we weren't really worried that she would see anything out of the ordinary before we were ready for her to see it.  And Sprout has this tradition, if you will, of sleeping till about 8:30, so we were all set in that regard.  Once Sprout woke up, we all went downstairs for some breakfast...and to build the hype a bit. Since Mookie hadn't seen any presents under the tree, she didn't really expect anything out of the ordinary, but we kept talking about this BIG surprise, and how excited we were, and how excited she would be, and how much fun we were going to have, etc.

So about 9:30, I went upstairs first to set up the video camera and to hide in the puppet theater to take pictures, and then Dave brought the girls up.

Here's the before (you can see the puppet theater on the left):

Mookie was so startled by the transformation! You can see the surprise, and fear?, in her face.

She was actually so scared that she got down on the floor and started to crawl! Poor girl!

But when she figured out that it was a puppet theater and that it was all good, she jumped up and RAN for the "puppet feetar" as she calls it. :)

I love that photo! I love that face!! :)

"Look, Mama! I can do my very own puppet shows!"

Then she came around back, grabbed the few puppets we had (many more showed up soon!), and commensed to wowwing us with her mad puppetry skillz.

There were quite a few puppet shows that day...and every day since. :)

Not one to be left out, Sprout was trying to get in on the puppet show action. (LOVE the hair!)

Here's the whole family before we opened any of the presents. The loft was a WRECK by the time we were all done. Still is...

Dave gave me a pair of Christmas socks (among other things...like an Accuquilt Go! Cutter) (Score!!) and Sprout desperately wanted to wear them. How can you say no to that cute face?

Here she is with them on. These are certainly easier for her to wear than my regular slippers!

This is such a goofy shot of my goofy girl. I love it.

We got Sprout a little kitchen tools set, and both girls really loved it. Occupied them for quite a while, actually.

I found these little fairy wings at Target on clearance, and thought Sprout might like them. Well. Little did I know! She immediately said "Ningabow! Ningabow!!" (For Tinkerbell), and held out her arms. I said "Do you want to put these on? And she said "Yup" And I said "Okay." And she said "K."  I just adore this age!!

Her Tinkerbell wings stay on pretty much every moment she knows they're there. We sneak them off every now and then, but when she sees them, she wants them on again.



I love that she's wearing fairy wings and trying to build something with her Mega Blocks. Every fairy is an engineer, my love. :)

Here's Dave with his fairy baby.

Poor girl. She was just poopin' out, there! We'd only been going for about an hour and a half at this point...

She found her second wind, though, and got to playing again.

So, that's it! We took our sweet time, and very leisurely opened all of our presents. It took us about 3 hours, really, but there weren't THAT many presents. We just took. our. time. We read stories. We had puppet shows. We snacked on candy. We played with new toys. We stayed in our jammies all day.

And then we used our new sandwich press to make fancy triangle sandwiches, and then had a nice, well-deserved nap.

Which explains why I slept right through my put-the-turkey-in-the-oven-NOW window, and we didn't eat our Christmas Turkey until 2 days later. It was good, though. :)

We Let The Wine Do The Painting

Last month, my best friend, Angela, told me about a new (to me) place in Denver called Canvas and Cocktails. They provide all the art supplies, a "goal" painting, and an instructor to guide you through creating your goal painting. Well, and there's a bar in the back in case anyone needs additional assistance with their painting. As Angela and I were trying to figure out when we could go, I had to discuss the dates with Dave. This is pretty much how our conversation went:

Me: "So Ang wants to go to this place in Denver called Canvas and Cocktails. There's a teacher who teaches you how to paint a certain picture and everyone in the room paints the same one. We're trying to figure out when we can go. What are your plans for May 1st?"

Him: "Is it like that guy on PBS that says things like 'this is a happy tree.' or is it different?"

Me: "Ummm, I don't know about happy trees, but there is a teacher."

Him: "Hmmm...that sounds pretty cool. We should do that sometime for a date night."

Me, cocking my head to the side: "What?"

Him: "Yeah, you know I love art. It won't look half as good as yours, but I think it might be fun!"

Me, cocking my head to the other side: "What??"

Him: "Well, I know I haven't had a paint brush in my hand since approximately 1981, but I would really like to do it. We should go together on a date!"

Me, cocking my head back to the other side: "Who ARE you?"

Him: "No, really. It'll be fun. What's the website. I want to see what painting I might want to paint."

Me, cocking my head back again: "No, really. Who ARE you??"

After the shock wore off, we were sitting at our respective computers looking at the different paintings they offer and trying to decide when we could go. He really liked the "guitar trio" painting. 3 guitars, primary colors, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  I tried and tried to convince him to pick another painting, but he was pretty adamant about the guitar trio.  I was not too keen on having two (somewhat) identical paintings in the house, but figured I could at least paint over it if I hated it, right?! :o)

When I called to make the reservation, the girl was all excited, and informed me that the phones had been going crazy since they had just announced that Guitar Trio was going to be the first ever "Guys' Night" where the men would paint for free!  To which I said "Sweet! Sign me up! I'll happily paint a trio of guitars if it's free!" :o)

When we got there Saturday night, the room was pretty crowded, and only got more crowded. Too crowded, but it was fun, so that's okay.  After we paid, they took us to a couple of open stools, gave us our brushes and a piece of cardboard and showed us where to get the aprons and the paints. Then Dave went to the bar and bought himself a nice, chilled bottle of "painter's aid," if ya know what I mean. :o) Brittany, the owner, then introduced herself and proceeded to give us our basic painting instructions. It was really a great way to begin painting, I think. I've dabbled in painting for decades quite a while, now, so it wasn't new to me, but for Dave, who admits he hasn't painted in nearly 30 years, this was really great. She would say "take a scoop of yellow, and two scoops of white and mix them together." She went over brush sizes, paint combinations, light hand vs heavy hand. Good stuff. And she took us through the painting step by step. Again, cool for me, GREAT for Dave and the 34 other men in the room that haven't painted since elementary school! :o)

And as we went, she played some really rockin' tunes in the background. I don't recall any AC/DC, but there was plenty of man-friendly music that she played. I suspect the playlist is different on a night when most of the painters are women. :o)

Dave followed her instructions to the letter, but I chose a different set of colors to use. I chose to go ahead and paint the guitars, though, because Mookie LOVES guitars and she LOVES to play her guitar and she LOVES to play guitar with her papa. So I picked some girly colors for her. Brittany talked us through each and every layer, every highlight, every shadow, every nuance. The way we created the painting step-by-step really made us all feel very successful, I think.

One highlight of the evening was when Brittany called Roger up to the front and made up some excuse to get him up there. As he was up there, he said something sweet about his girlfriend, Kimberly, and asked her to join him up at the front. As she walked up there, he got down on one knee and proposed to her. Right there in Canvas and Cocktails. So sweet. I'm thinking she didn't really care how her painting came out after that. :o)

It took about 3 hours to get through our paintings and everything (there were a few breaks, too), but I'm sure it would have taken me longer to paint a trio of guitars at home. They took pictures, which is good, because I forgot my camera. If you look HERE, it's a picture of Dave and me on their Facebook site. You can't see our paintings, though.

I did take a few pictures with my phone, though. Here's a picture of Dave and me with our new creations. You can see the instructor's painting in the background.  Dave is actually pretty proud of himself -- as he should be! He did great!  (But there wasn't much "creative license" with him...we pretty much had to have anatomically correct guitars.)



And here are the paintings in the light of day. Still not too shabby, eh?



When I told Mookie that I made the painting for her, she said "Really? For me?" and began to clap like crazy. And every 15 minutes throughout the rest of the day she would say, "That's Papa's, this is mine." I love that she's so excited about a painting I made for her.  Since Dave is officially hooked on painting, and I had fun going along and enabling his inner artiste to emerge, I think we'll be doing a LOT more painting in the future. We've already got a plan for painting this Friday night. We're not going to C&C, though, we'll just paint at home. But if they turn out good, I'll be showing them to you next Sunday.

And, no. Angela and I haven't yet worked out the dates when we'll get to go and paint flowers and listen to girly music and chat chat chat the night away.

And Now For Some Comic Relief

I actually captured some cuteness the last few days. I've been SO ridiculously remiss.

The first is a video of Mookie dancing at the end of Shrek 4 (whatever it was called). SO cute.



And the second is, well, you'll see.



Sprout has been saying it for a week, or so, but at first, she didn't associate it with an action. Now I know she does.

And, in other news, Sprout is almost ready to sign "cat." She's trying really hard, and she lifts her hands up when the cat comes in the room, but she can't quite get the rest of the action down.  I didn't catch that on video, but I'll try.

I hope you enjoyed those. :o) Have a great day!

For The Chronicles

(poor, neglected blog)

Here's a video for anyone still checking in!


I took it one night while I was getting ready to make dinner. Sprout didn't want to sit in her high chair, so I thought I'd try an old tried-and-true method of entertaining the baby...pots and pans!

These aren't really a pot or a pan, but the end result was the same. Loud baby = happy baby.

And here's a picture I took of Mookie this morning. I doctored it up with Flickr's Picnik CinemaScope tool, and I pretty much love it. :o)

So Good It's Worth Sharing Again

This morning Mookie wanted to watch old YouTube videos of herself, and we came across this
CLASSIC!

I know you've seen it before, but it's SO worth seeing it again. And again. Brings tears to my eyes all over again. :o)

Enjoy!



Cracks me up. Every. Time.

Precious Moments

When we were house hunting, I really thought I wanted a finished basement. But now I know why God had a different plan.

I would have missed precious moments like these...

It's snowing outside, but that doesn't stop Mookie from riding her bicycle. In her jammies. With her fancy skirt on. And her helmet on backwards. :-)

As much as I miss living in LA, if we still lived there, I would have missed this. :-)

The Note That Became A Tome

(tap, tap, tap)
I can't see out there, so I'm not too sure how many people still come to visit. I'm thinking Megan, Kelly, Tink, NZ-Jen when she's not busy lassoing the stork, Claudia hoping for pictures of grandbabies, and a few others when time allows, right?

Well, I have to apologize first. It's been a whole heckuva long time since I put any time and energy into this space. I've been trying to blog from my iPhone for a few weeks, and have been entirely unsuccessful. I know blogger has changed some settings for mobile blogging, and so I'm thinking that might be the cause, and I HOPE I can get that sorted because the time I spend in front of an actual computer is minimal at best. Mobile blogging really makes it easier for me to keep in touch, and when that's down, so is my communication. Sorry!

I can't upload any pictures right now, but when I can, man alive, you better be ready! It's been a busy month for us! We've been on dog sleds, on snow machines, to a 100 year old birthday party, had a million hugs from wonderful family and friends, had a wonderful and blessed Christmas season. We've baked, we've sewed (sewn?) (stitched?) (been sewing?), settled in a bit more, we've painted, we've celebrated...on and on the list goes.

Oh, wait. Here, try this. I copied these from Facebook.

There you go. Here's a picture of a real life musher (a.k.a. dog-sledder person)  Dave's aunt and uncle live in Alaska, and have a team of sled dogs, and his uncle ran the Iditarod. They are in Michigan for the winter (a balmy one, if you ask them!), and brought the dogs along. We spent the day with them earlier this week, and had the chance to go for a ride. Of COURSE I jumped at the offer. :o)  Mookie and I sat while Chris drove. What a fantabulous experience!

Here is a slew of other pictures from that day...

(Mookie was howling because the dogs were HOW-HOW-HOWLING with excitement and anticipation. They sure love their job!)

 Just being cute. It's easy for her. :o)

The dogs really do love to go for runs through the woods. They usually go for a 5-6 mile run a day, but they are not tired anymore, so a longer trail is being carved for them. :o)

Another action shot of us mushin' along.

Here's Dave coming in after his ride. He was pretty quick, and we didn't get very many good pictures. Sorry! You can see the dogs' area, though. And stop right there if you think these dogs must get cold at night. They're used to living in Alaska! This is toasty for them! :o)

Mookie and I were just foolin' around, waiting for Dave to return from his ride.

My beautiful, sweet, pensive daughter.

My beautiful, sweet, mischievous daughter. 

Doesn't that picture just warm your heart? She would much rather chew on the spoon itself than possibly ingest anything that might have once been ON said spoon. Silly girl.

I just look at this and laugh. We tried and tried and tried to get a picture where all of us were looking at the camera at the same time. Well, we got it! Nevermind the fact that the four of us were apparently reacting to four different scenes in a movie! Why can't we all be smiling?!?!? Into the camera?!?!?  At the same time?!?! (sigh)

And, finally, the reason we are gathered here today. The beginning of it all. 100 years ago, a sweet little baby girl was born, and we celebrated her birthday in style!

Here she is with her two youngest grandchildren (no great-grandchildren! Can you believe it? 100 years and no greats!)

The beginning and the end. Bookends on the story of life.

And that, my friends, is the end of this post. Good night. Hopefully I'll be back again, soon. Until then, have a happy New Year!

I Elfed Us

In honor of my 500th blog post, I decided to Elf us.

Did you do it this year, too?

Cracks.
Me.
Up.

What's your favorite part? 

Mine are at 22, 30, and 37 seconds. Ahahahahahaha!!!

Cheerderella

We discovered a bag of hand-me-down costumes this morning and Mookie saw the Cinderella costume and decided that she HAD to wear it.

Over her jammies.

Then we discovered the pom poms. And we had to "cewebwate." :-) We celebrated how awesome Mookie is. :-)

Must Read: I'm Sharing A Secret...and couldn't come up with a better title.

I have a an important secret to share with you here today.

Are you sitting down?

I've been meaning to do it for a while, now, but couldn't muster up the courage.

I have twins. Twin daughters. They are a marvel of science, and just to be clear, they are fraternal twins.

Here are their Halloween pictures:

Fraternal "twins" who just happen to have been concieved and born two years apart.

They are a marvel of science, my copy-cat babies.

(P.S. You know I'm kidding, right? I had you going, though, didn't I?)

Hello, June

The apron came from Aunt Carolyn, the necklace was my mother's, and the combination? All Mookie.

She cracks me up.

Now That's Professional!

Flock of Seagulls paid good money for hair like this.

Moms worldwide would pay good money for the nap that created this hair. :-)

And man alive, we needed a good nap!

Welcome To Our 'Ool

So, um, issssHOTTTTTTTT up in soCal.

I know some of you are enjoying autumn, enjoying the crisp change in weather, enjoying the cooler nights. Not I. Oh, not I.

Back in July and August when it was hot everywhere but here, my neighbors were complaining about the cold. I was not. Not only was I not uncomfortable, but I knew our inferno was coming. And oh, has it ever. In spades and buckets and dumptrucks.

Right now, at 3:18 pm, it is approximately 104 degrees Fahrenheit outside. And there is NO breeze. None.  And inside? It's 89. (edited to add that it got up to 95 in Mookie's bedroom later on in the afternoon).

We don't have central air conditioning in our house, nor do we have a window unit. Most of the time, we don't need it! But when the winds shift, and Mother Nature decides to have mercy on the rest of the nation at our expense, we get our comeuppance. And we are instantly shellacked with sweat. It's like living inside an oven.

This afternoon I thought of putting Mookie in a cooler bath just to help her cool down, but then I thought "Why should she have all the fun?" So I inflated our little pool, and filled it up. With nice, cold hose water. In the garage. A bit unorthadox in the inflatable pool realm, but the garage was much cooler than outside! And much shadier.

And it was goooooood.  I invited Kelly and her girls down, and I think it's safe to say that we were all cooler when it was over. Mookie dumping buckets full of cold water on our legs might have had something to do with that, but it sure was a welcome shocker! :o)

Tomorrow the high is only supposed to be 87...but I'm keeping our "indoor pool" up just in case we need an afternoon cool-off.

It Ain't What It Used To Be



We went to the county fair. Sprout conked out. Look how pretty my fingernails are! I guess I need a haircut, though, huh? Looks like I've got a tree growing out of my head!

No, in all seriousness, folks. It wasn't the county fair of my youth. Of course, I didn't grow up in Los Angeles county, either, but there just weren't enough goats and pigs and cows and smelly farm animals. Like, for real. At the fair, you're supposed to be able to smell the animals, NOT the food vendors!!  It was just too commercialized. There were 2 gigantic shopping plaza buildings, in addition to all the vendors in their tents!  I didn't see a single quilt or jar of pickles or half-eaten apple pie with a blue ribbon on it anywhere. I'm sure they were there... somewhere...but they were obscured by all the overt attempts to take our money in exchange for a good memory. It was absolutely a wonderful experience to have had, but it's not something I would have season tickets for.

With that said, though, Mookie rode a pony, and she did REALLY well (until the very end). And I hope you'll forgive for showing you all of these, but I think they're funny, in a sick-mama kind of way...

CHEESE

Okay, I'm over it.

Mommy come get me?

I must be seeing things. I'm still on this dang pony!

Wait a second. Who are YOU??

Mama? Mama come get me?

Maaaammmaaa. Why you stay over there?

And she petted some goats.

(she looks thrilled, no?)

And she threw up on herself before the pink elephant ride got started, so I don't have a picture of that. :o)

And she sobbed and sobbed all through the carosel ride.

(clearly traumatized by her earlier pony ride)

(So Dave found a little teacup to ride in. She wasn't having any of that.)

I'm thinking she'll have great memories of this day!! :o) I'm sure she'll forget the fact that she didn't nap and we left the fairgrounds approximately 3 hours after  her normal bed time.  Can you say overtired?!  Poor kid.

In other news, I got to try a Pink's chili cheese dog without the horribly long line at their LA restaurant. It's nothing to write home about. Grandma makes better chili, and they put (I cringe at typing this) processed "cheese" on it. Glad I had one. One is enough.

And in ENTIRELY other news, the doggie went home on Friday evening. His owner found a sign and called, and I knew as I was driving down his street that we were near his home because he got all whiney and animated. :o) The owner was very happy, and promised to get tags and a microchip this weekend. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you how I knew it was his rightful owner... :o)