Snowman Party

For R's 5th Birthday, we had a fun Snowman Party. We made snowman hats, snowman necklaces, played "Pin the Carrot on the Snowman", had a pinata, played with some Insta-Snow and ate snowman cupcakes...

Princess Emma and her domain...

More photos...

Photo Shoot with Karly...

more to follow...

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!