Photo shoot

For Christmas we got a game from the Tolman's called "Pretty, pretty princess." It is a huge hit around here. Yesterday the girls decided that they would dress up as their princesses and play the game. Once they had all received their jewelry Ellie suggested we take some pictures. Since I had just bought some flowers to do pictures at some point, I decided to go ahead with it. Steve did some really great editing on some of these. I'm starting to learn, but still not as good as him- so when I can get his assistance, I take it!

Valentine project

We have been doing many, many Valentine projects around here. The girls did tons while we were visiting my mom last week to include heart cookie pops and a valentine tree (they painted a tree branch and hung heart-shaped ornaments that they decorated on it. I'll try to get a picture before it gets too destroyed). Then Saturday we made these Hershey Kiss Valentine mice. I don't know if you can see them in the pictures very well or not. Regardless, the girls really enjoyed these projects.

Ellie

Last night as we were reading scriptures Ellie said, "I hope I'm little when Jesus comes again so I can gather 'round his knee."

Ryan turns 1!

It does not even seem possible that Ryan is a year old already. It has been a wonderful year with our little guy. There have been hard times with his diet and he still doesn't sleep through the night, but those are extremely minor complaints compared to all the wonderful joys he has brought into our family.

At a year old Ryan:
-Learned to walk on his birthday! Steve was really hoping he would do it and tried to encourage it all day long. Finally after dinner Ryan saw a ball Steve was holding and since he can't resist playing with balls, he walked right over and got it. Then he was on a roll. He practiced walking the rest of the evening until bedtime. And he has been going strong ever since.
-Is still the cuddliest little baby. I can't even begin to explain how much I love this attribute of his. My kids have all been snuggly, but Ryan especially loves to lay his head on my shoulder or come sit on my lap.
- has an extremely happy personality. He is constantly lighting up the room whenever he's around. Although, he does not perform for strangers! Ryan is the one that keeps me laughing.
- is able to eat a lot more food now. I saw the allergist and he didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but just encouraged me to keep adding new foods to Ryan's diet. So, we're still avoiding preservatives, onion, garlic, strawberries, and egg whites (the one allergy he tested positive for) and so far he's doing well. There's a little bit more eczema, but otherwise he's definitely enjoying his new diet!
- is definitely growing. He's now between 18-24 month clothes (at least on top) and is thinning out a bit. Oh- and he's actually starting to grow some hair! It's amazing!
- has 3 words that he uses consistently: "hi," "dis" and "dad". When we go to get him from his bed he always greets us with that "hi". (Steve gets the "hi dad")
- plays very well with his sisters. Katie likes to harass him and Ryan likes to harass Sarah, which I must admit is really quite amusing. He loves chasing them around the house- definitely a favorite game right now.
- loves, loves, loves balls. On the first day he started walking it was that ball that motivated him. And then he continued to walk over and kick it.

We had to postpone his birthday party because of bad weather, so on Saturday we had my parents as well as Dick and Sybil over for dinner and cake. Steve was the artist yet again on this cake and I must brag that it turned out great! We let Ryan eat as much as he wanted (I actually found a recipe that didn't use egg whites that was very tasty) and he even got to eat some of the ding-dong tire, which was his favorite.


A bit later he decided to show off his walking on the table and tipped over into his cake. His demolition was quite impressive.
Ryan was extremely tired by the time we did presents and insisted he sit in my lap. He loved the cars he got (even knew how to make the car noise... how do boys always know?).


Mom blew up a lot of balloons (at the girls' insistence) and Ryan has been thoroughly enjoying them with the girls.


And here's a picture taken today of the girls. They all stayed home from church with Steve today (all were sick in one way or another) and Ellie requested this picture be taken.

Beautiful Day

As we were leaving church today, Sarah told me that it was a beautiful day. I asked what she meant and with a sweep of her hand she pointed to the sky and said, "look- it's all blue. I'm tired of the all-white sky". And I had to agree! I never know what that little girl will come up with next.

I seem to be quoting Sarah a lot. The others say very clever things, too. I just forget to write them down while they're fresh in my memory. And I still need to do a post about our cruise. I'll get around to it soon...

And then of course the biggest news around here lately... the ultrasound on Monday.


If you're not savvy with ultrasound pictures...
Top left: two feet
Top right: profile
Bottom left: boy...
Bottom right: looking right at us- this one is the toughest to pick out probably.

Ellie has been teaching Katie how to spell her name lately. Since Ellie stays up about 1/2 hour later than the others she has started doing art projects at night. Last night she decided to surprise Katie with what I call her "trail of love." She drew pictures and wrote Katie's name on all of these papers- leading from their bedroom down to the living room. She was so excited about this and even woke her sisters this morning so they could all discover it together. I love when they do sweet things like that for each other.


Tonight they dressed up similar and were marching around the house. Funny the things they come up with. Those are Ryan's ties, by the way. And with Children's Place clearance I found those cute sweaters for next to nothing and Carter's had those footy jammies. Can I just say that I love to shop clearance!

New Family Photo

Finally Some Pictures!

I have been wanting to do something with pictures, but I'm lazy and prefer to have Steve do the editing since he does such a better job. But he's busy and I want to share, so you'll have to make do with my photo editing this time around :) A few of these are from Christmas morning. Here are some of my favorite shots...

After a whole lot of messing up and frantically searching for sold-out fabric to fix my mess-up, I made these nightgowns for my girls as well as the two Tolman girls. I swore it wasn't worth all the time and effort, but the girls wear them all the time, so I'm starting to rethink that promise. Then Grandma was wonderful and made matching jammies for their dolls. How fun is that?
Steve got these noise canceling headphones for his woodworking, but we thought Ryan should try them on for size. Looks like it'll be awhile before he can help out in the workshop :) Oh- and the orange was one of his favorite Christmas presents.

This toy is quite popular and is used all the time in the house. Ryan thought he should get a turn and he loved it!

Another of Ryan's favorite toys. He loves to push things.

Now this is by far the favorite gift from Christmas. There are girls riding this horse practically nonstop. If you turn it on, it plays "Home on the Range", galloping sounds and neighing. It gets old after awhile and we have them turn it off, but the girls love it.

I know I said I'd post pictures of everyone in the snow, but only Ryan was here (the girls were corralled to make cookies at a friend's house) so I bundled him up for a photo op. You never know when we'll have such a beautiful snow again. Thanks to all the friends who passed down these wonderful snow clothes! He was really quite enjoying himself until the mittens started falling off. It was cold!





Ellie asked my mom to make a sweater for her doll. Well, Mom had the fabric all cut and ready to go and her machine broke. I told Ellie and she was crushed. She even started crying. It was really quite tragic. So that night I decided that since I had extra fabric I would make a cape to keep Lilly warm until Grandma could get her sewing machine fixed. Ellie was quite pleased. But here's a quiz for you. At the breakfast table we were having a discussion about the fact that Belle had a cape, too. Steve was sure it was blue, Ellie was insistent it was red. Steve finally looked it up. How well do you know your Disney movies? Who was right? The colorblind Dad or the fashion expert Ellie? That may or may not be a leading remark...

I have never actually documented this and thought I'd do it for memory's sake. Ryan doesn't get to bathe in the big tub with the girls. He gets the purple bin, which he actually loves.


And there you have it. Steve and I are leaving early Monday morning on vacation. My parents are being saints and taking all four kids for the week so we can go on a cruise alone. We haven't been on vacation alone since we were first married and went to Disney World with our good friends, the Tolmans. I can't even begin to say how extremely excited I am about this trip! Now I just need to get packed so we can go...

Backwards

Why is it that at the beginning of January, when it actually snows, there are no snow clothes to be found? They're already bringing out the Spring line! So, ebay, here I come. (Ellie has a snowsuit, but we are in need of just snow pants to go with her winter coat so she can wear it to school).

There is an absolutely gorgeous snow outside right now. Hopefully I can get a picture or two before three little icicles come back in the house :)

Family Newsletter 2009

Steve went ahead and shared this on Facebook, so I suppose I ought to put it on here as well :)

2009 Family Letter

quote

“A home without books is like a room without windows… A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” ~Henry Ward Beecher

Love it.

naked pizza

Sarah carefully pulls off the cheese and meat from her pizza. Afterward, she picks up the slice and hands it to Tiff and says "It's too naked for me. It's because the cheese is all off."

10 months

Ryan is 10 months old as of last week. Where has the time gone? We took him in to the doctor on Wednesday for his 9-month check-up and he's a healthy 24 pounds and 29.5 inches. We have a referral to see an allergist next week to figure out his food issues. Ryan loves to eat... he's just limited as to what he's allowed at this point. The preliminary blood tests only revealed allergy to egg whites (and negative on the peanuts). His diet consists of cereal (as long as there's no fruit added), rice Chex, Cheerios, homemade bread (no eggs), beans and formula. Pretty boring diet if you ask me! Hopefully we can figure it all out and get him eating more.

Ryan at 10 months is:
Pulling up on everything and cruising along furniture.
Loves to push the little push-toy bus around. He almost gets giddy when he's doing it.
Climbs up and down stairs very well. It's a relief that he's figured out the "down"!
Yells and screams right along with his sisters. I'm trying to break that habit!
Is very snuggly and loves to give kisses. He doesn't bite as much as he used to :)
Has 7 teeth.
Is amazingly content. Even when he's exhausted he's a good baby. I love that!
Still eats anything and everything he can find off the floor. I have to sweep the kitchen floor multiple times a day to keep him from eating something he's not supposed to (aka: something the girls dropped)!
Loves his daddy. Always lights up and crawls over when Steve enters the room.

I love my little guy!

At this same appointment we weighed Sarah and Katie and found out Sarah weighs 2 1/2 pounds more than Katie! We were very amused.

More from Sarah

Sarah just says funny things.

Sarah comes down crying... "Ellie being mean." pause... "Mommy- you have a big nose."

After she wakes up this morning (the last one) she's sitting on the stairs and I say, "you were a tired little girl, weren't you?" "No! Not a little girl!!!" She does not like being called little these days. She's a big girl!

Random Thoughts

Here are just a few things that have been running through my mind lately...

It always amuses me when I have friends complain about going shopping/ running errands with one or two of their kids. Oh... it's just soooo hard. Picture this: it's pouring rain, the wind is gusting up to 30 mph, temp is hovering around 30 degrees and I have 3 places I need to go. I could wait, but the next day it's supposed to be colder and even windier. So of course, I take all 4 kids and we run in and out of the stores. Sometimes we're out for 2-3 hours running errands. Is it always ideal? Ha! Far from it. But mostly they're really good and that makes me happy. Oh- and today, when it would have been ideal to stay inside all day, I have had 6 kids to run around. I guess you never know your limits until they're tested?

Cooking. How can a girl reach the age of 14 and not know how to cook? I hope I don't offend anyone by telling this story, but it's really taught me the importance of letting my girls be in the kitchen with me. Our babysitter is usually solicited over dinner time so we can do a dinner date. In the past I've just let her do mac & cheese or frozen pizza. But my kids had eaten both within the week and I wasn't going to feed them that again. So I put out pancakes and sausage. You know- add water and cook the pancakes. Defrost and heat the pre-cooked sausages. When we got home Steve said, "what's that smell?" Needless to say, she had charred both the pancakes and sausage. I think my girls were less than gracious about it, but it looks like they ate it anyway. And maybe she just never cooked that kind of food before? Or maybe it was my stove? I hope so. But again- I plan on having girls that can cook the basics by the time they're that age.

And finally, what is it about turning 30 that made my metabolism stop? I've picked up exercising again lately (finally am healed well enough to actually get a good workout) But alas, all this exercise is not giving me the desired results!

asleep...asleep...

Tiff was tucking in the girls last night and was singing the Christmas carol "away in a manger" to and got to the part where the song goes "asleeeep, asleeeeep, asleeeeep, asleeeep..." and Sarah interrupted her showing great concern and said "nuh huh! and then proceeded to sing "awaaake, awaaake...."