Every day stuff...

Today I made bagels for the second time! It's getting easier and I think they are getting better too. They are half whole wheat and half white flour. Most have mustard seeds on them and some of Caraway and poppy seeds.

This morning I found the girls riding together (I didn't put them this way!) So I snatched a picture really quick!

It's Spring!!!! So many buttercups!

We walked up on the hill and picked flowers. The girls liked it up there I think.

Sitting on the rock where Youssef proposed to me (for the final time.) ;)

I love Lily's expression. :)

The other day we went outside and played soccer in the little bit of dry grass! We have more grass showing now and it is SO nice to be in the sunshine!

Renna played too! She was getting good at pushing the ball to me and "catching" it too. :)

We also went sledding (just me and the girls on one sled).. it's pretty fun when it's warm enough to go with just a light jacket and still go sledding. :)

This is Renna's expression every day when she wakes up from her nap. She turns the light on the baby monitor on and off (and of course I hear that.. she actually doesn't cry when she wakes up so this works well to tell me what's going on) and when I come in she's a little cutie.

Every Day...

Lily is learning chess at a young age.. though insists upon calling the queen a princess. :) She's getting pretty good at how the pieces move though.

We still have much snow here and have been sledding and playing in it still!

The sun has been out though and has been shining through the stair-well window. I'd put my rainbow catcher there because that's the only window down here that gets enough sun. Well, on a recent sunny day Lily saw the rainbows and said all excited like, "Oh, my rainbows. I missed you!" and then she blew one a kiss. It was so cute! :)

girly cuteness...

Youssef caught a picture of us reading together in the little pink play house. ;)

The other day I decided to make Lily some play jumpers since she loves to wear dresses all the time and didn't have any good *play* ones so this is the fabric she picked out form my stash. She calls it her "candy cane dress" and has worn it a lot. I finished sewing the dress while Renna was sleeping and when Renna woke up from her nap Lily went into the room and said, "Yook, Wenna! My Canny Cane dwess!"

This is of Lily spinning of course, but I have to say something about the princess nighty. We were looking at clothes in Walmart, I wasn't planning on buying anything, but Lily saw this princess nighty and and she said, "A Princess! It matches me!" Because she has EVERYTHING princess themed now adays. And considaring that she only had one other nighty.. a tinkerbell one from Christmas.. and she wares it ALL the time.. I thought it would be good to get it for her. She wanted it so much that when I tried to put it in the cart she wanted to get down from riding in the cart and just walk with it drapped over her arm.. to keep track of it I guess. It was pretty cute. I don't mind buying things for her that she wears and loves THIS much. I don't often buy her clothes because she mainly wears jammies all the time. ;)

This is just tonight. Lily fell asleep in the car on the way home from our church in Spokane and so she is up a bit later than usual. Youssef and a friend were watching a show that had some bad language in it ("Eagle Eye" - really interesting, but not appropriate for a three year old) She's watching the "Barbie Christmas carol" with head phones.. and this is just so much more advanced technically than when I was a kid.. it was funny. :)

Eleven Months!

Concentrating...

"Head and shoulders knees and toes..."

-yeah I'm doing it!!!

And she's walking!

Birthday Princess!

What you can't tell in the picture is that the tiara and wand had flashing lights!
This was such a fun birthday party because she is now at that magical "3" age where everything says "3 and up" ... she is playing (princess) bingo and (princess) dominoes and candy land and everything now. It's really fun to see her grow into things and it's so much fun to play with her! I love hearing her imagination as she makes up little things with her toys and dolls too.

Her party wasn't really long enough though! I wanted to play more games, but it was just right for the kids I think. After the hot dog dinner (that she'd picked out when we went shopping a few days ago), we watched the "Pirates who don't do anything" on the wall with the projector. It was just the right time for the kids to watch a movie... what with all the sugar at first and then hard playing afterward they were ready for some down time.

She's looking in a mirror. ;)

The girls took turns wearing the crown too. And all the girls got princess lip gloss necklaces and a pirate compass (because of the pirate movie.) They were pirate princesses, of course. ;) Lily was pretty excited about all of it, and it was so fun to be able to ask her what she wanted for her party (like what movie) and to have her tell me and remember what was going to happen and keep being excited and anticipating things.

The crazy candy-land-castle-cupcake-princess-birthday-cake
that I made for her was well received.


It was really fun... I've never really tried decorating a cake before since I'm not a huge fan of the taste of cake, but it was really fun! Though... I'd do some things differently now that I know more of what to do.

Her favorite thing about the cake was the princesses that were decorating it and she started playing with them right away. It is really cute to hear her little diologs with her toys. The cake actually just survived long enough for her to enjoy the singing and blowing out of the candles and about an hour later the top had toppled over.... perhaps it was from a little kid grabbing a snack? Or perhaps it just couldn't take any more stress, but it didn't matter much anyway since we threw away most of it. The point wasn't really to eat it (since we did all the decorating of cupcakes and eating candy bit right before this...) It was all about the princesses and the castle. Though the blue "mote" cookies were eaten even if not much else on it was!

I'm really glad Lily had so much fun! :)