Friday, May 30, 2008

The Lake

We spent Memorial weekend down at Eric's family's lake house. It was a nice weekend with no ringing cell phones, to do lists, or any other outside responsibilities! We hiked around, ate lunch in the nearest town on Saturday, fished, rode around in the boat, and just generally chilled. Claire and Emilie even went swimming in the lake for a while. It was a little too cold for me! I'll wait until later in the summer. The dogs also had a blast in the water. You couldn't keep them out of it all weekend. Their favorite game was fetching a water bottle that was thrown out there. This game also kept the kids occupied as the throwers :-) And then Monday afternoon, we came back to the real world. We're ready to go back...

Here's some pictures of Claire:


Catching a catfish


And yes, we threw him back :-)

Our dog, Hanna, on one of her brief stints out of the water. She was finally tired!

Emilie's preschool graduation

Emilie officially graduated from preschool last week. They had a cap and gown ceremony that was really cute. The kids walked across the front of the church to get their diplomas, sang a few songs, and then had cupcakes and punch downstairs. They had a lot of fun. Of course, all the moms (and a few dads) were a little teary eyed. Hard to believe my second baby will be in Kindergarten!
Walking down with her class.

A typical family portrait :-)

Very Excited!

Mmm, cupcakes

The after-party

Grandma's new puppy

Since I posted about my mom and dad's shih tzu, Daisy dying a little while back, I thought I'd show some pictures of their new puppy or should I say my mom's new puppy- LOL! Her name is Blossom and she's about 10 weeks old. She's a little puff ball who acts a lot like Daisy did when she was a puppy. And of course my kiddos absolutely love her.



Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Anniversary

This Friday, May 30 is Eric's and my 10 year wedding anniversary. I put together another slide show (yes, I know I've been in slide show overload lately- all of our big events seem to be in spring and early summer!) I also have several other things to post about. Hopefully I'll get to those tomorrow. But for now, here's the slide show:

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Claire's birthday slide show

Also known as, why I haven't posted in the last week. Claire wanted a slide show for her 8th birthday this year. While that sounded great, it proved to be a lot of work. I had to scan 91 pictures (in addition to the ones that were from our digital camera) since we were just using film until Claire was 4 1/2. Even though I'm 2 weeks early (her birthday is June 3rd), I'm going to post her slide show now. I can't believe I'm finally finished with it!

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Eric's post

Eric has been thinking that this blog is just too girly and that we need something to give it some perspective. So he went to the races a week ago with some guy friends, and here's his favorite pictures, taken with his i-phone. Love you, sweetie.


All right, masculine break's over. Back to girly stuff :-)

Step Up Day

This past Friday, Emilie had Step Up Day at her new school for next fall. On Step Up day, the future kindergartners get to come and see their new classrooms, meet the teachers, color a picture, and take a short ride on the school bus. Emilie was super excited to go to Claire's school with her daddy and try everything out.

Ready to go

She insisted that both of her sisters (Claire was already at school) needed their picture taken with her.



Monday, May 12, 2008

Mother's Day

Over the past week the girls have been bringing me various Mother's Day projects.

Elise brought home a potted marigold and a painting with her hand prints holding some flowers. Both really cute, and she was very proud to give them to me.

Claire brought me home a place mat with a poem on it, a coupon book with coupons for things like clean her room, rub my back, etc. Sounds good to me. She also had to write down the 10 best things about my mother. They had a list on the board at school to help them as they picked their 10 best things. Mine were:

1. you take care of me
2. you spend time with me
3. you give good hugs
4. you give good kisses
5. you play with me
6. you a good cook (yes, that's how it was written)
7. you read to me
8. you love me
9. you are there for me
10. you are beautiful

Also super cute :-)

Then we come to Emilie's mother's day surprises. They began last Sunday with a Mother's day luncheon at her preschool. The kids did a small program for the moms and then we had lunch. Sounds simple. Well Emilie decided somewhere between my dropping her off downstairs and the presentation upstairs in the church that she didn't like her sandals. So you can see from the following pictures what she did during the presentation. She is all the way on the right by herself... glaring... refusing to participate.


Her teachers apologized and said they told her she could take her shoes off when they got done in church, but evidently that didn't cut it. By the time we got downstairs for the lunch part, Em had completely forgotten about her shoes and loved getting to serve me lunch. Oh, well. I actually thought it was kind of funny. And so typical Em. She also made me a flower with the following sentences on each of the petals:

My Mom is 15 years old
My Mom is funny when she makes silly faces
My Mom's job is work on her computer.
My Mom always says "no scratching"
My Mom's favorite color is purple, I mean light green
My Mom and I have fun going to Riverchase

Its amazing the things you learn about yourself. Anyway, belated Happy Mother's Day to any moms reading.

Chloe and the birthday cake

Well, Sunday we had some of Eric's and my families over for Chloe's 1st birthday party. Everyone had a good time, including the birthday girl. We found out that my picky eater's list of foods she does not like includes birthday cake. She enjoyed smashing the cake between her fists, but didn't let one bite come into her mouth. Not even when offered on a spoon would she taste it. In fact trying to give her a bite off of a spoon made her start crying. So that was the end of the first birthday cake.

Her list of foods she will eat is small at least when compared to her sisters. It includes any baby food fruit (but no pieces or dices of fresh fruit), baby cereal (who knows why she will eat that but not a cut up strawberry), sweet potato (baby food or baked), pasta, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, cheerios, crackers, gerber puffs, sometimes bread, and carrot or squash baby food if its mixed with a fruit baby food. That's pretty much it right now. I am currently reading through some homemade baby/toddler food recipes to get some ideas because I am at a loss. My other 3 kids had me spoiled. They at least tried everything and liked most things- at least for the first couple of years. We are also not having a fun time with weaning from breast feeding. She refuses milk/formula out of a bottle/sippy cup/straw cup. She drinks water from any of those sources, but let her even taste milk, and she spits it all over herself and then cries. She goes to the doctor for her 1 year check up tomorrow, so I'm hoping to get some more suggestions. Must keep repeating to myself, this too shall pass :-)

Here's some pictures from her party:



She loved her hat and she also really liked it when everyone sang "happy birthday" to her
My mom, Chloe, and I

Hmm, what is this?


Ahh! Its poison, I tell you. They're trying to kill me!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Aunt Pam



This Sunday, May 11th marks the 5 year anniversary of my aunt's death. It also should have been her 52 birthday. Her death, from esophageal cancer that spread into her liver, left behind a husband and college-age son who miss her desperately, her parents who will never be the same, and her sister and brother, nieces and many friends. Before her diagnosis, she was an active, fun-loving, seemingly healthy woman who was very committed to her family. My aunt died a horrible death. The problem- she was a smoker. Not even a heavy smoker. My point in this post is to encourage anyone who smokes to quit. If you can't quit for yourself and your health, do it for the family you will leave behind. She has missed so many things we would have loved to share with her. We love you and miss you, Aunt Pam.

These are some pictures of her and me that I had.
My baptism in May 1977.



My wedding shower in April 1998

Monday, May 5, 2008

Chloe's Birthday Slideshow

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Nothing much...

I can't believe it has been over a week since I last posted! Springtime is definitely making the days go by fast!

Let's see, Saturday night we had dinner with my parents, sister, and her boyfriend; then the next day my parent's 16 1/2 year old shih tzu, Daisy, died. They got Daisy when I was a freshman in high school, so she had been around for a lot! I spent a good part of the week trying to help my mom locate a breeder with puppies. (We've got a couple of prospects so hopefully she will have a puppy in the near future.)

I also spent a lot of time working on the financial end of Eric's business. If you didn't know already, Eric has his own IT consulting firm. I am "in charge" of the accounting aspect of it, with my great love for math and background in accounting (HAHAHA!). Its actually not too bad, I kind of like the fact that I'm doing something other than being "mom" right now.

Next, Claire's choir wrapped up their season last week. They had a party, last rehearsal, and a concert this past Sunday. They sang 5 songs and did a great job. Her group is 2nd and 3rd graders so its fun to see how they've progressed since they were in the kindergarten/1st grade choir last year.

I'm also trying to put in some extra time with Emilie working on pre-k/kindergarten skills. She has her kindergarten screening (the Dial-3 test) next week. She's doing pretty well with most things. Having 2 more sisters born while you're preschool age definitely limits the amount of time your mom can spend with you on writing your ABC's and other school stuff. That's one of my "mom guilt" things. That I didn't spend as much time with Em as I did with Claire getting ready for kindergarten. Luckily, Emilie is a fast learner and she's very forgiving ;-) Her preschool has also done a good job taking up the slack where I've left off! Anyway, she is super excited about starting school in the fall. I know I'll miss her, but I'm also looking forward to only have 2 kids to shuttle around and care for during the day.

On to the next thing, Chloe got her 1 year portraits done today at JC Penney's. We've got a photographer that we like up there, and she does a great job every time. Chloe's pictures turned out really cute. I'll post them when we get the email images in a week or so. I can't believe she's going to be one next Thursday. We're also getting ready for her big birthday party on the 11th. It should be fun watching her smash up her cake. I'll also try and get a slide show put together next week so I'll post that when its done.

Elise is doing good, too. She cracks us up everyday with the "beyond her years" things she says everyday. She is currently obsessed with 2 stuffed kitties(named Mimi and Twila) and a tiny gray poodle (creatively named Poodle, and pronounced Poo- doh) figurine. These 3 must be together at all times and go everywhere with her. She also loses at least one of them for part of every day, so its always a challenge to help her keep track of them. I know I've lost my patience a few times and just told her they were lost for good. All in all just typical 3 year old stuff. She's also super sweet though and a great snuggler.

Other than that, we're spending as much time outdoors as possible. We have a block party with our neighbors on Friday night. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn't rain. The kids have a lot of fun playing with the neighborhood kids. We have got a group of close to 20 kids (if you count ours too) that live in our block. Mostly girls, too. (Even if you don't count our 4!) So its always fun to let them go play, and the adults sit and talk (and take care of the occasional skinned knee or juice box run).

Anyway, I guess that's it for now.

Here's a couple of pictures of Claire's choir. I don't have a telephoto lens for my camera, so these are as close as I could zoom in from where I was sitting (in the back, in case Chloe got too noisy!).

Claire's second from the left in the second row.

Claire's in the front row on the right.

Chloe loved jamming to the music!