Aloha Oe...

Our "Summer Fun Luau" was a big hit! The girls had a great time decorating flip flops with silk flowers and sequins... they made picture frames and I printed out these photos as a memento of the day. It wasn't entirely HOT... but they all got in the pool and stayed in despite their lips turning blue. They enjoyed their tropical fruit kabobs... and their water balloon fight - although I think making the water balloons was more fun than actually throwing them at each other.
Now it's time for Mommy to relax and take a couple days off... ha!

Aloha! Time to think about the Nursery....

Found this Laguna Collection on sale at Pottery Barn Kids... loved it... talked hubby into letting me buy a couple of things... the little palm tree pillow pictured in the 3rd picture was a must-have. Now I'm very excited for the possibilities of decorating the nursery. A palm tree bookshelf, perhaps? Some shadow box frames with bargain Old Navy flip flops...? Thankfully, I found some much-needed inspiration today to get the ball rolling and prepare for Baby Girl #3.

Now... if we only had a better name than Baby Girl #3....

Oh - and if you know the perfect patterned paper to go with this bedding - let me know!!

How quickly they grow!

My girls definitely have their own strong-willed preferences when it comes to clothing. As you can see, little R's fave color is yellow. Head-to-toe yellow can be hard to pull off, but I think she does it with style! And T's got the dance/grunge thing going with her leggings under her mini-skirt... and the ever-present green GAP sweatshirt. 6 going on 16...

As easy as...

Windy and COLD... but the girls loved playing on the beach at the ocean this weekend. They also got to run wild at an indoor waterpark... thought that R might be a little scared - but she was ALL IN. Gotta love that 4-year old spunk!!

Space Flight!

At R's gymnastics class, they get to do the "Space Flight" every few weeks as a special treat. Clearly - she loves it!!

YUM-O!

The girls are obsessed with The Food Network... they recognize all the celebrity chefs that appear from 3 pm to 7 pm daily... and call them by first name. "Did you see that thing that Giada did with the noodles? COOL!" They call Ina Garten (aka The Barefoot Contessa) the "Aunt Patti girl" because she looks and sounds a bit like my Aunt Patti... they ask what "stock" is made of and what Paula Deen is saying when her twang gets a little too thick for them to interpret.

Riley's new catch phrase with anything she finds delicious? YUM-O a la Rachael Ray.

We own a Rachael Ray cookbook... and they are saving up to buy the Sandra Lee cookbook they saw at Fred Meyer.

I guess there are worse things for them to be interested in than cooking and entertaining... I just hope they don't wake up one day and realize how unlike their mother is from their new culinary heroes. But we're all learning some new tricks... and maybe they will actually eat their vegetables someday!

March is tumbling by....

The girls have been enjoying gymnastics classes at a local gym. It's fun to see them upside down and flying around... especially when it's not in my house on my furniture! The top 2 photos are of R - and the bottom 2 are of T. Enjoy!

Oh - and the Baby Countdown... 12 weeks + 2 days...

One good thing about living on the edge of a mini-cliff...

If you don't live in the Pacific NW... you might wonder why we're all excited about sledding. Well, this is the first time we've had enough snow to try sledding with the girls. They LOVED it!! Riley especially, is an absolute die-hard snow fan. She's going to be my kid who goes Snowboarding... she has a very high tolerance for the cold. Her feet were totally wet because she crawls, rolls, and flops around in the snow and it goes down her boots. Both girls simply cannot get enough of this wintry white delight!

And yes... that's Thomas catching some air as he goes off the big drop-off at the bottom. Straight into the Wildlife Sanctuary. Hmmm...

Another one for the books...

Riley's New Word

Who needs Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious when you've got Thingamajiggo in your vocabulary?

Taking a bite out of the Big Apple

I meant to post this last week when we got home. But you know, it's Christmastime... and there were a few other things on my to-do list.

Rachel and I had fun exploring the BIG Apple. Did I mention that it was BIG? Everything seemed really BIG. And also, just plain BIG. So we were a little dazed and overwhelmed when we arrived. Not to mention that just getting there was quite an adventure!

We arrived at the airport to find that our flight had just been cancelled due to technical problems in Salt Lake City. They re-routed us thru Atlanta... which meant a 5 hour wait at the airport. Then we found out we had an "illegal" connection to NYC... we had less than 20 minutes to get to our next flight once we landed in Atlanta. No problem - we'll just ask the flight attendants to help us get off the plane first and we'll be fine.

Hmm. Except that apparently "it's not their policy to ask First Class passengers to stay seated." Elitist pigs! (would I trade places and sit in First Class? In a heartbeat!)

Wouldn't have mattered whether or not the piggies in First Class stayed seated... because the jetway was malfunctioning. Frantically watching the minutes tick by and kissing our hopes of seeing Matt Lauer slip away... the pilot decides to do a play-by-play of the jetway mechanic's progress. "Xxxxppp... he's climbing the ladder. He's opening the control panel. He inserted a small screwdriver into the panel. He's pressing the button... oh, that didn't work. He's radioing for a supervisor. We should have some additional assistance in just a few minutes, folks. On behalf of our cabin crew, we thank you for choosing Delta."

Right. Thanks for NOTHING! It gets worse.

We missed our connection. And as we're standing there looking for some clue as to where passengers with crushed Matt Lauer dreams should go next, we ask a large woman in a long blue cardigan who has overheard all of our confusion, "Do you work for Delta?" She grunts and peels back one side of her sweater, revealing her large "Delta Cares" button pinned to her shirt, "What do you think?" Apparently Atlanta has no knowledge of the reputation the South carries for hospitality. She waves her hand abruptly and sends us to A4. We check at that gate, the next flight is overbooked and checked in as full... but we can still try standby. Sure. That sounds like a good plan.

We finally find someone with a brain and an ounce of compassion - and of course, she's from Washington originally and grew up in the town where we live. It's a small world after all. This lovely person puts us on a plane to DC and books us with a legal connection to LaGuardia. *phew* We lost 7 hours of our reign of chaos in New York City... but at least we got there in one piece... found our luggage (which took completely different planes and probably has its own story to tell) and we were on our way to Manhattan!

We found this AMAZING ribbon store in Manhattan called M&J Trimming and the nicest girl wrote down idiot-proof directions to take the subway to SoHo and find Kate's Paperie. We were restored in mind, body, and spirit after spending a few hours back in our creative zone.

I'm just hitting the highlights... Wicked was awesome! We loved Serendipity 3... loved the huge Macy's - even if I did lose Rachel for about an hour and she got panicked... loved Times Square and the throngs of people... and loved going to Little Italy with Bob & Heather!

Start Spreading the News...

I'm leaving today... I want to be a part of it, New York, New York...

I'm going to wake up in the city that never sleeps...

and so on, and so forth.

Next blog post: Pictures of NYC!!

United Colours of Belize...

I am working on a slideshow of children around the world... and Joel, a missionary from Belize sent me this awesome photograph. I just had to post it today!

There's No Business Like Snow Business....

To quote Billy Joel, "I'm in a New York state of mind..." and hence the title of my post. Trying to merge all these random topics and subjects into one... because, snow has indeed come to blanket the NW in an icy traffic nightmare. You have to love Seattle drivers in the snow!

The girls are loving it though... Riley was rolling down our back lawn earlier... she never does anything half-way. Taryn is busy collecting ice from anywhere they can find it - I think they may be building a skating rink next door? Better check on that!

The Cowgirl and The Butterfly

Surely some kind of urban legend in the making... or an ancient Chinese proverb. Never squash a butterfly when you're on the open range. hmmm... better work on my ancient Chinese translations.

I never got around to posting these from Halloween... so here they are.

A Very Blustery Day

There are many things I love about where we live. One of the few things that I do NOT love is how windy it can get sometimes. Today is one of those house-rattling, gate-banging, door-slamming days... last year during one of our windstorms, our barbecue was actually picked up by the wind and unceremoniously dumped on its side on the lawn - 10 feet away.

Toto-we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-kind-of-windy.

On the plus side... Riley now has a favorite Beatle. Ringo. I'm sure it's more to do with the name being funny than any astute percussive evaluation. But, I'll take it. They actually ASK to listen to the Beatles in the car now. I'm SO proud. If they inherit nothing else of my exceptional qualities... at the very least they seem to have inherited some old fashioned common sense when it comes to admiring the greatest musical talents of our time.

Next week, we'll work on ix-naying Barney and The Wiggles from their vocabulary. :-)

Happy Winds-Day...

Paper Moon Press is in *da house*!

Rachel successfully made it through her first 2 trade shows last week. I would have been with her, of course, if it hadn't been the same dates as the Creating Keepsakes convention... with Karen, one of my favorite people on the planet.

It was a roaring success... well, roaring like when MGM substitutes a kitten for the lion on a movie intro... we didn't strike it rich, but we did succeed in:

• purchasing a few really cute accessories for our booth and/or office
• making contacts with several important and influential people
• getting at least 4 different invitation orders
• putting ourselves on the map due to Rachel's uber-cute purse and iPod cards

The next show we will be at is the Seattle Tennis Club Bazaar... should be a hot one! *tzzzzz*

Contact Paper Moon Press for more information on our custom cards and invitations! info@papermoonpress.com

Reach the Beach...

while that is an old 80's album title by The Fixx... that has absolutely nothing to do with my blog post today.

Recently, we rented a beach house in the sleepy little town of Manzanita on the Oregon Coast. It was completely furnished with wall-to-wall kids, legos, and marble tower components. Well, okay... the kids we furnished ourselves. Did I mention that there were 4 families sharing the beach house? Hence, the wall-to-wall kiddedness. Certainly our 2 small angels wouldn't provide a wall-to-wall capacital feeling. Unless they were hopped up on fruit snacks.

This was the 9th Annual Beach Trip. We have been to other choice NW locations... notably La Push... with the musty, saggy old beach motel rooms that certainly did NOT sleep 8 adults comfortably. And the other noteworthy memory of the trip to La Push was our field trip to The Hoh Rainforest... which was "just down the road"... yeah, 4 hours later on a switchback logging road we finally reached the Hoh... Mike's memory for distances is not always trustworthy. But if you long to see moss oozing from trees... the Hoh is the place for you. Lots of moss. The capital of moss.

But I'm getting off track... this was a lovely town, lovely house, totally moss-free. The sun shone, the waves crashed, the sand stuck in all those hard-to-reach places, it was the beach experience that poets extoll and hearken. Hence, my current need to extoll and hearken.

Our favorite side trip destination has been The Death Cliffs at Hug Point. Well, at least Mike likes to describe them to newbies as the place where his nephew almost died last year. A strong selling point to mothers of small children... but back to my story. Last year, when we visited, the tide was coming in and there was the occasional "sneaker" wave that came in a lot farther than any of the others before. One minute, you're exploring a cave and the water seems miles away, the next minute you're scrambling up the rocks escaping the onslaught of frothy water that sends your discarded shoes and towels out to sea. The thrill-seekers were all about the near death experience and clinging to the rock walls as the undertoe beckoned... I had my moments as I watched Mike scoop little Riley up just before she was knocked down and hopelessly lost to the deep. Well... it seemed that dramatic at the time. But Hug Point really is a cool place to explore. I'd go back.

It was all lovely... until the vomitting started. Those stories are not worthy of extolling or hearkening... I'll just leave it at that.

PERFECT Fall weekend in the NW....

The foliage is brilliant... the sun is shining... the air is crisp... I shall feel comfortable declaring this to be the PERFECT FALL WEEKEND.

We went to the Pumpkin Patch yesterday with the fam... the girls loved going through the corn maze with Daddy and Grandpa... we picked out some GI-NORMOUS pumpkins to carve... and we had a lovely time with Grandma back at the house enjoying my first home-made soup of the season. Yum!

Karly is a wonderful photographer...

and friend :-)

Since she's one of the few faithful readers of my blog... I thought I would dedicate a post to her. And she took this photo of me at the beach... thanks, Karly!