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. :)

Frozen Easter #1

I suspect this will be a recurring theme as long as we live in this fickle-weathered state. It's the same at Halloween, though. Snows. Every year. On Halloween and on Easter. No matter when Easter is. Snows.

At least it's predictable!

Here's a slideshow of the pictures we took on Saturday before we left the house for the Easter Egg Hunt, and immediately afterwards.  I'm so glad I didn't get the girls fancy Easter dresses! I wouldn't have dressed them in them because it was too cold, and then they wouldn't have ever worn them! The outfits I got them, though, are pretty cute and totally practical.




I hope you had a wonderful Easter!

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!

10 on the 10th

Sprout is 10 months old. Can't believe it.

She has such a great personality. She's not interested in crawling or walking, yet, but that's okay. :o)  She is clapping, and (almost) waving...she kinda flaps both arms at the same time whenever we come into the room. :o)  I will get video. I promise!

She says "mama", but not always only at me. I know she knows I'm the mama, and that's good enough.

There's a million other things, and not enough time, so I hope to either add more pictures later, or create another post later.

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)

It Was NOTHING Like Today...

You know those scenes in movies where it looks like someone is standing on a ladder dumping huge scraps of paper to make it look like it's "snowing"? That's what it looks like outside my window today. Big, puffy, heavy, wet, white snowflakes are flitting about.

And it's cold. Not 70 below zero like it was last week, though. :o)

10 short days ago, it was balmy and rather tropical here, so I took the girls to the park for a picnic. It was Sprout's first, and she did FAHbulously. She sat on the blanket and played and watched people and ate her Gerber puffs like a champ. Mookie wanted to play rather than eat (which is nothing new.), so I made her sit and eat half of her lunch before she could go play. :o) I love the park. I miss having a park at the end of the street where we could go every. single. day if we wanted  to.

I took quite a few pictures of the picnic, but I'm only going to show you 2, but I think you'll see that we had fun.

Wook at doze smoochy cheeks.

Mookie was bouncing.

It's important to remember that the sun does shine around here, and there are days when we can venture to the park. Now that it's February, it'll probably be a few weeks till we can do it again, but at least I have pictures to remind me that those days will come again.

I hope you have a great week!

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!

Nibble Nibble

Old Navy, I heart you. You make what I want for cheaper than I can make it myself.

And it looks adorable on my child.

Thank you.

Introducing, Mookie Cupcake...

(Some people thought she was an ice cream cone.) 

(They were wrong!)

Do you know any ice cream cones with attitude? :o)

Sprout went as a Mummy. I didn't get any pictures of her, though. (Mummy because she was all wrapped up in my white Moby.)  :o) 

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?)

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)