The Things They Say!

I fed the girls peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner tonight. Sarah ate most of hers, pushed her plate back and said, quite plainly: "I'm done with this garbage". I thought I might just go into labor over that, I was laughing so hard.

The Great Sugar Scramble of 2010

Should I be worried??

So this is the conversation, Sarah and I had today....

Sarah: "Momma, you Snow White"
Me: "Okay"
Sarah: "I Snow White Grandmother"
Me: "Okay"
Sarah: "I give you apple"
Me: "I don't want an apple"
Sarah: "No, you eat apple"
Me: "I'm not hungry"
Sarah: "EAT APPLE"
Me: "Are you trying to kill me?"
Sarah: *smiling* "Um,.....No."

The Great Worm Adventure

Revelations on my Chosen Carreer

A long time ago in a land far, far away....

Wait a minute, I'm not that old. Let's begin this again.

It happened back in my high school days, I can't remember if I was a sophomore or junior. The school district decided that it would be a fabulous idea to give each class a standardized personality test that was supposed to predict what we should be when we grew up. You know, according to our interests and personality strengths.

So after 2 hours of questions like “Do you prefer to sit alone in a cubical or slaughter helpless farm animals”, my test was done and submitted for interpretation. After waiting several weeks for the return of the test results, I found out my future career.

I was destined to be a Vintner.

What the heck is a Vintner?

A vintner is a person who makes wine. Yes, I was destined to be a lush. Of course, no one got the answer they expected. Very few of the tests actually predicted what us high school kids thought we wanted to be. We laughed over our results and then promptly forgot about them. We graduated high school and moved onto college.

Fast forward 12 years. (Yes, 12 years. I’m getting old now). I’m the mother of 2 beautiful girls and have another girl who should arrive in April 2010. I have a degree in Political Science and I am a stay at home mom.

(By the way, thanks mom and dad for paying for my college education. Thank you for the $40,000 piece of paper.)

I had forgotten about that stupid career test, taken so long ago, until one of the girls who babysits for me mentioned that she had to take it the other day. I began to reminisce about how stupid I thought it was.

Then it hit me. The stupid test was right! I became a vintner, of sorts! Only, my wine is spelled slightly different.

I make whine.

Yes, the fruits of my life, my darling little girls, are big time WHINERS.

What a fool I was to doubt the validity of standardized tests.

It's been awhile!

So today, Sarah made me smile. She asked for an apple so I handed her one. She looked at me, looked at the apple, and looked at me again! Then she handed me the apple and demanded "Make it Nakey.".....so I peeled it for her.

We found these kites for a $1 at WalMart. Maddy chose Buzz Lightyear and Sarah liked the the one with Elmo. The kids played with these for about 10 minutes before they lost interest. It took Brice considerably longer to get tired of his. All around a good $2 investment.

We walked from our hotel to the local outlet mall. Brice and I splurged on some summer clothes. We both needed some new things to replace worn stuff from last year (and the year before that, and the year before that....). Sarah completely sacked out in the back pack, while Maddy relaxed and enjoyed her ride in the stroller. Mommy and Daddy were wiped out by the time we got there. Strangly enough, a sleeping child feels a lot heavier than one who is awake and active. I wonder what theory of reletivity that falls into?

Right out front of our hotel, they had this great swingset. We got there on Thursday night and walked out to the beach right away, even though it was cold and windy. We weren't on the beach 10 minutes when we found our first WHOLE sand dollar. That has never happended to me before. I took that as God's blessing on our first family trip together (without friends or grandparents. Not that we don't love you all, but it was fun to be the 4 of us).

Sarah didn't like the sand at first. She didn't want to get down at all and insisted on being carried for the longest time. She finally got the hang of the sand and began to enjoy it. In fact, she developed a taste for handfuls of wet, salty sand. We caught her eating quite a bit of it. Yuck! I'm pretty sure that isn't hygenic.

Oh yeah, check out our awesome hotel. Our room was right under the that big "Seaside" in the middle. 2nd balcony down on the right. You can see the Oregon Flag waving just in front of it. It had a full kitchen, dining and living room, 1 bedroom with a king size bed, a full bathroom with a jetted tub (the Lord is Gracious!). It also had a Murphy Bed (those pull down kind) which Sarah fell off of and scraped the skin off her forehead. Didn't use that again, ha ha. The hotel pool was heated to a wonderful 95 degrees. That was the pool; the hottub was hotter! Felt great to swim at 8 pm when it was 50 degrees outside. The kids loved it.

It was VERY hard to leave.

The Ocean Just Wears You Out!

Its amazing how a child who never wants to sleep can end up like this by her own choice. She just wanted to go to bed.

We were actually in a restaurant. One minute she was laughing and talking to Sarah, the next she was very quiet. Just nodded off without us even realizing it. Needless to say, she was a hit with our fellow diners. A table next to us thought it was a blast to watch her head nodding. She almost cracked it on the table a couple of times.

Easter Dresses are So Wonderful!

The girls were so excited to get into their Easter dresses. We purchased them about a month ago. Maddy has been begging to wear hers.

Maddy just adores her cousin Hope. Hope is a "big girl" and very cool in Maddy's opinion. Maddy had so much fun playing with Hope, Seth and Meaghan. Lots of fun on Easter Sunday.

Maddy is our little fashionista. She's very into pretty dresses this year and constantly asks to wear a dress. It's been hard to keep explaining that it's just too cold to wear dresses in the winter. Now that Spring is here.....

Sarah wants to be just like Maddy. If Maddy is in dress up clothes, then Sarah must have one on too. Sarah is big into shoes. She was very excited to get her Easter Sandals this morning. She showed them off to everyone.

And this is my baby's true personality. She's so quiet around most people, they don't get to see the inner beauty and goofiness of my sweet smiling girl. Daddy told her to give him her biggest smile...she gave that and much more. This picture says it all.

Very Tired Girls

Just a couple of funny pictures of the girls falling asleep in odd places.

Sarah was sitting in the rocking chair, having such a wonderful time rocking herself. She managed to rock the chair so hard that she actually moved it from the corner of the room to the edge of the carpet where it stopped. By that time she was so exhausted that once the chair stopped rocking, she just fell forward and ended up in this position...completely out.

Maddy was having a rough time one night. Brice was working late on our bathroom and Maddy had to play downstairs. This is how we found her.

Father Daughter Ball

Maddy hasn't learned that no one really wants to see her bloomers. Sorry about the view all, but its kinda cute!

At first everyone wanted to Dance. Dancing with Brice and the girls are Dale Vrieling and his daughter Lilly. Maddy and Lilly are best friends. They both are as girly as can be. Sarah was absolutely rocking out. She's a girl after her Daddy's dancing heart.

This lasted about 30 minutes or so. Until Lilly and Maddy decided they just wanted to play. They sat at the table, ate grapes and drank tons of pop, and talked up a storm. Maddy refused to dance anymore, so Sarah and Daddy danced all night.

Nothing cuter than and 18 month old all hyped up on pop. These 1/2 cans are the perfect size for little mouths.

Sarah was looking a little out of it by the end of the night. She ended up falling asleep in my arms, while we waited for Daddy to say the "Goodnight Prayer" for all the dad's. What an honor for Brice and the girls to be the hosts of the evening.

God Bless Renae Quigley for all the hard work she does. My family had a wonderful time.

Uncle Scott's Wedding

Welcome to the family Aunt Laureen. We had so much fun at the wedding. The girls dressed up all pretty and were very well behaved during the wedding.

Maddy was introduced to "Decided Cider" (sparkling cider), which was eventually shortened to "Decider". It was a complete hit. It was funny to watch, because she would take a small sip and then let a small burp. She would politely say "Excuse me" and then repeat. She talked about it for quite a while after.

This is probably one of the best smiles I've gotton on film of Sarah. She's got this thing with taking her socks off and then laughing because she knows it drives me nuts. I got her with the tights though. HA!

Snow in Leavenworth

We had a lot of fun in Leavenworth over Valentine's Day weekend. We had a TON of fun playing in the snow.

On Friday morning, we had our first try at sledding. It was a blast. The girls got really brave and even started going alone. Of course the hill we found wasn't all that steep, but to them I'm sure it was a mountain.
We dragged them around the yard for awhile, but the snow was about 2 feet deep. While the girls were light enough to walk on top, Grandma and I sank through almost to our knees. It was quite a workout...which was good since we ate pretty well while we were up there.

Daddy and Maddy made tons of snow angels. Sarah was quite content to sit in one spot and eat the snow. The girls ate tons of it. Daddy took the girls out on Sunday morning to play while the rest of us (Mommy, Grandma, Grandad, Great-Gram and Great-Grandad) packed our stuff, loaded cars and picked up the rental house. They were out there for 2 1/2 hours, I think.
Great memories for Daddy and his girls. Definitly doing this again next year.

It's been awhile since I've posted because I'm a slacker. I admit it. But here's some pictures to keep you entertained.

We had a fabulous time in Texas. We picked up golf balls on Uncle Wade's homemade driving course in his front yard. It's almost as fun as Easter Egg Hunts.

Sarah loves shoes. Anyone's shoes. Loves to try them on, loves to wear them, loves to fill them with toys.

Here's Us girls at the Children' Science museum in Kansas City. We went with Nana and Papa. We liked the alligator and playing mini golf with Nana.


And here's our family picture we used on our Christmas cards this year. It was a lot of fun. The girls loved the snow. We're heading up to Leavenworth for Uncle Scott's wedding next weekend and we're finally going to try sledding. We'll let you know how it goes.

The Pumpkin Patch!

This afternoon we headed out for the Pumpkin Patch...and to get more apples. We had a blast with the kids. They loved the place. Maddy ran all over with Henry looking at the pumpkins. Sarah alternated between sitting on every pumpkin she could get her rear end onto and eating dirt. What a fun afternoon. We came away with 46 pounds of apples, 3 large orange pumpkins, 2 white pumpkins and 4 acorn squashes for only $27.

We've made a bunch of applesauce with the original bunch of apples we brought home a couple of weeks ago. It is fabulous! I will never buy store applesauce again. The kids love it too...especially Maddy. She's eaten about 1/2 a quart in the last 2 days. I had to cut her off because I'm not sure what the effects of too much applesauce could be!

Pumpkins and Apples!

We took the girls to the pumpkin patch a couple weeks ago and to a local apple orchard last week. What a blast. I forgot my camera in the car so I don't have any pictures of the kids picking out their pumpkins, but what fun pictures of the girls playing in the maze and on the straw bale pyramid.

Maddy has some good girlfriends now. Lilly and Angeline are her buddies. Lilly is a sweet little blondie with a big personality. She also has as strong an attitude as Maddy. Angie, as we call her, our little brown haired friend, is quiet and sweet and very loving.

We also took them to this awesome little farm to pick apples and asian pears. Talk about CHEAP fun. The apples are 25 cents a lb, asian pears were 60 cents a lb and pumpkins for 15 cents a lb. The Farmer was this awesome sweet old guy who showed the kids the orchard and cut up fruit with his pocket knife for them to eat. The pumpkins were HUGE, way bigger than you get at the pumpkin patch we always go to. One guy was loading a pumpkin that weighec at least 50 lbs. I totally recommend this farm. We got 8 lbs of asian pears and 33 lbs of apples for $13. I'm making applesauce!

We picknicked in the orchard and had a wonderful time!

October Updates Continued...

Maddy is a 3 year old going on 13. She loves clothes, shoes and anything girly. The more sparkly the better. We just took her to get some clothes (kid outgrew everything) and picked up a new pair of Dora the Explorer tennis shoes. She's big into Dora right now. Everything is "Vamanos" and "Bellissimo". When Sarah tries to steal anything from her, Maddy yells "Swiper, No swiping!".

She also has her little friends she plays with: Henry, Isabella, Angeline and Lilly are the main playmates right now. We're doing homeschool preschool with Henry, Isabella, and Logan. They are learning about bugs. Here they are with their little magnifying glasses searching for bugs for their mason jars. All we found were a bunch of spiders and a couple roly polys. Maddy informed us this evening that spiders eat blood. Heaven knows where she came up with that information.

She's very talkative and keeps me on my toes all day long. Questions everything. Doesn't understand the phrase "because I'm your mom and I told you to" at all? Do they ever learn that?

October Updates

Wow! Its been a long time since I've posted. Well....what has happened since then.....

Women's Retreat on the weekend of Oct 3-5 was AWESOME! Talk about spending a weekend in the woodshed. I guess better in the woodshed with HIM than all hunky dory without HIM.

What a beautiful view though. This is the lake..I went canoeing.

Sarah is starting to say her first words. Of course the first ones I actually

understood are Shoe (shuh), this (dis) and that (dat). And she used these words to tell me she wants her shoes on. She'll bring me her shoe and tells me its a "shuh". After I take it, she lifts her little bare foot and says "dis" while patting the bottom of her foot. If I don't respond, she points to the shoe and says "dat", then pats her little foot again and says "dis" in the most pathetic voice you'll ever hear. I spend a lot of time taking her shoes on and off just to go through this process over and over. What a laugh.

She's becoming such a big girl now. I can't believe how the time flies. She loves the slides at the park and throws herself down them headfirst.

She ate these flowers too!