Pictures

This was taken Christmas morning, look at that hair!!


Here she is later with her ringlets. This isn't a good picture of her hair, but look at that eye!!! Poor Maddy!!

Read the Christmas Sweater....

LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it and recommend it to anyone looking for a good short book to read.

Back on the Radar.....

I think it's time for an update. No, we didn't fall off the face of the earth, although I know that is what all of you were thinking, our computer was broken. Which made it feel, to me at least, that we had actually fallen off the face of the earth.

Katherine is now 8 MONTHS OLD!!!! She full on crawls, pulls herself up to standing position, has 4 teeth which is good because she loves to eat. About two weeks ago she started refusing baby food and after a few days of wondering what to feed her I just started giving her some of our food and she LOVES it. She loves to be able to grab it herself and put it in her mouth and USE her teeth. It is very fun to watch her. We have been to the doctor multiple times with this child in the last two months. She really has not been the same since she first got sick at Halloween (our last post). The doctor has diagnosed her and attempted treating her for several different things from Croup to Bronchitis to Allergies and alas our final diagnosis (with new doctor) has been asthma. She gets breathing treatments twice a day to open up her airways and it is making a huge difference. She has started sleeping for an extended amount of time again, even for naps and has been back in her crib for two nights. She has her color back and isn't coughing/congested all the time anymore. I am starting to feel like I have my baby back!! Although she still has a ways to go and doesn't like the treatments, she is doing much better.

Madelynn is almost 2 and a HALF!!!! She is the typical two year old except lately her temper tantrums have developed into more of a sassy/attitude type thing and I suddenly feel like I have a 13 year old. What happened to my baby?? She has lost a lot of her baby face and is looking more like a little girl each day. She has started singing the ABC's and can point out several letters, she can count to 10 by herself, 20 with help, she knows all her colors and shapes and is learning her vowels. Her latest fascination is the M-O-O-N. She constantly is asking "where is the moon mommy (or daddy)?" and if it is day time we tell her it is either sleeping or hiding and if it is night time we make an attempt to find it. It is so cute. She will put together different things that we say and make her own conclusions, for example, the other day (it was nighttime) she said "The Sun is hiding huh mommy." I got the biggest kick out of that, I know it is simple, but I love to see her little brain work.

Anyway, all in all things have been very eventful lately. I will have more specific posts to come of a few highlights like Madelynn's black eye and stuff like that. We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and we miss you all so much and think of you often.

The Princess and The Pea

Happy Halloween!!



We had a different variation to the tale of 'The Princess and the Pea.' Our tale included a pea with a double ear infection, and a princess with a terrible cough. This tale included lots of tears both from mommy and babies, double trips to the doctors office and just when we thought we were at the worst, mommy got sick too!!

This tale did have a happy ending which included TONS of candy and homemade carmel apples from the best mother-in-law in the world.

Yes on 8 = Protecting Rights

I saw this on a sign the other day. One might think, "how is letting homosexuals get married affecting my rights?"

Recently I received an email from a long time friend. We have very different political views and have been discussing Proposition 8. In her last email she made the comment "a church's rights to discriminate against homosexuals."

Just think about that. We live in AMERICA, that statement does not make sense to me.

This is a really good video put out by the Catholic Church. Please everyone, go out and vote!!! Thank you for viewing this video.

Breakable

I saw this on a friend of a friend's blog and I thought that it was beautiful. It reminds me of how precious my babies are and they are breakable. It never ceases to amaze me how much love they have for me, their mother. Such a powerful blessing and responsibility that I cherish.

Disneyland Vacation

This is going to be a really long post, but it entails our family vacation at Disneyland which includes so much fun and too many details to share it all, but we will hit the highlights.

Blogworthy moment....

we had just gotten home from picking up Jacob from work and were getting out of the car when Madelynn passes gas. Jacob said "Madelynn!!!" and she said, "nooo, mommy!" totally passing the blame. It was soooo funny!!

We Miss Auntie!!!

It has been a week since my sister Amanda officially moved out and we miss her so much!!!

I didn't realize it before but she just stopped by and Bella was jumping for joy and Katherine snuggled right in.

Bella misses snuggling in bed (she came to snuggle with me tonight instead)

We miss her:
dress up clothes, jewelry, shoes
watching Ice Age on her laptop
always fun ideas
fine cooking
opinions
most of all, we miss her!!!!

Love you Manda

Disneyland Teaser!!

Okay, it is 12:30 at night so I am not going to spend too much time on this but I want to get a little bit of Disneyland on here, mostly to tease you all of the most wonderful week we could possibly have. Not only were we all together for 9 days, yes 9; but we were also at the best place on earth!!!

The highlights were:

Mickey & Minnie
Pooh Bear, Tigger included
Broken shoes
Fastpass Wednesday
Princesses, princesses and yes, more princesses
and RIDES, RIDES, RIDES

Yes, we had a blast. By Wednesday we were convinced that Maddy was thinking "thank you so much, mommy and daddy, for moving to Disneyland, I LOVE it here!!

Katherine's First Tooth!!

Which came about three weeks ago when she just turned 5 months old. These pictures were taken September 18th, so I guess it was before she turned 5 months. The tooth is a lot bigger now and it looks like it might be getting a companion soon!!

Katherine will be 6 months old next week!!! I can not believe how quickly the time has flown by but I love the stage that we are at right now. She is at the stage where her favorite toy is her toes, she is getting the hang of being on the floor and I wouldn't doubt if she is crawling before too long. She rolls and scoots but hasn't ventured too far from where you put her down probably because it is generally on a nice soft blanket verses the hardwood floors. The best part of all is that if she drops her toy, you can lower her down to it and she can grab it herself then laugh while you bring her back up all playful. She adores Madelynn and Madelynn adores Kate. Yesterday I was holding Kate on my hip and Maddy was doing something to make Kate laugh, it was so cute! I love mommy moments like those.

Crafts for Enrichment

This has been the biggest time consumer for me lately. I am getting ready for a Super Saturday "Getting Ready for Christmas" Enrichment Activity in November. These are just a few of the samples. I was quite pleased with how they turned out although I am quite sick of the project. I am starting to figure out that that is one of my downfalls: I have a great idea and am all gung-ho getting it going and getting everyone else excited about it, but then I get sick of it really quickly and it gets difficult to follow it through, huh!!

Too busy!!

Tonight is the first time I have been on the computer in literally about 2 weeks and it has been fun to check in on everyone's blogs, there have been lots of updates, thanks!!

I have lots to blog about as well, here is my list so I can remember:

1) Katherine's first tooth
2) Crafts for enrichment
3) Canning
4) Disneyland trip
5) Maddy & Kate updates
6) Tag by Liz (yes, I saw it but I wasn't at my house so I couldn't do it right then, but I will do it)

Amanda moved out last week and since she has been here since we moved in, I have never had access to use that room. So now all of the sudden it is like my house has an add-on and I have lots more space. We are going to make that room the office/guest bedroom which means the desk will be out of my kitchen and the dinning room table will be back in the kitchen and out of the living room. Hopefully we can get a few more projects done on the house in the next few weeks and get things a little nicer for the holidays, needless to say I am very excited!!!

Kern County Fair

Today we went to the fair with our mom-n-tots group. Madelynn and I were late getting there so we missed seeing the animals with everyone else. However we went on our own after our group disbanded and I am so glad that we did because we got to see a baby cow about 2 minutes old, literally, the mother was still in the middle of the birthing process. It was pretty cool!

Here are a few pictures that I got of the kiddos today. They really had a blast, and the funny thing is, we didn't have to do anything for them to have a blast. I think they had the most fun when we were eating our snow-cones and they were running around the tree and playing ring-around-the TRASH CAN (yuck!!) I love the facial expression in every one of these pictures, the pictures say it all!!







So then we get home from the fair and about an hour later Katherine's skin is starting to get all blotchy on her forehead and she is rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands profusely. I called the doctor and they thought it might be an allergic reaction. So about an hour from the time I call the doctor we are sitting in the waiting room never having intended being there in the first place. Sure enough it was an allergic reaction. By the time the doctor looked at her it had turned into a full blown rash covering her belly and back and diaper area. What caused it....I have no idea!! It could be any number of things from teething tablets (she got her first tooth last Tuesday, need to post about that), to the soap in the bubbles that Madelynn has been blowing for the past three days, to Madelynn's new shampoo we have been using (strawberry scented, very nice), to rice cereal that she has started eating, to who knows what else Madelynn might have sneaked in!!!! The possibilities are endless. But the doctor gave her some Benadryl (I would like to emphasize doctor) and she has been in a drug enduced coma every since. I think she has been awake for maybe 30 minutes since we left the doctors office at 3:00 this afternoon!!! But she seems to be doing much better rash wise.

For Sale

BABY SLINGS!! $25.00

Here are the fabric selections. I only have one available in each fabric print. Just let me know which print you want and your size (measure yourself from top of shoulder to opposite hip where you would carry your baby.) I will ship them for free.

Tropical print with cream baby fleece as lining.




Teal & lime green print with lime baby fleece lining


Salmon floral with brown background and matching dark brown lining.


This one is already made.

Black and white. Made for 29" measurement.


This is a good picture of the sling (found on the web). This is how Katherine likes to ride because she can see.

Now to our trip

This past Saturday we made the trip to Ojai, we haven't been there in almost a year. We went for Grandpa's birthday. Madelynn got to make new friends and had a ball. Here she is eating cake and ice cream with papa at the kiddies table. She really loves her papa.

Here is Madelynn's Great-Grandpa, Hughy. He cried when he saw the cake. There are pictures of the cake in an earlier post. My cousin, Katy, made the cake. It was delicious.


Here is a picture of the back yard. You can see Grandpa's work shop and in front of that is the bbq, which is a circular pit about 5 feet across with a crane that raises and lowers the grill. Then you can see the picnic tables in front of the bbq.

Meet Larry

Larry is Grandpa's pet Raven.

My grandpa had a tree trimming company and as a child my dad's family were always raising some kind of animal that had accidentally had it's nest cut down. They had birds, squirrels, owls and various other animals. And even still, grandpa always makes sure the squirrels in his trees are properly fed with lots of nuts and fruits. A few weeks ago they found a Raven with a broken wing and nursed it back to health. A little while later Grandpa was outside and fell down and even though there were several people around, he was not able to yell loud enough to get anyones attention for help. Well Larry came along and saw Grandpa's predicament and perched himself on Grandpa's chest and started to make all kinds of noise until he got someone's attention. Grandpa seriously loves this bird and feels that he owes his life to him.

So now the funny thing is that this bird thinks he is part of the family. He picks on the little kids, teases the dogs, and eats catfood from your hand. The best part is that the bird knows his name and will come when you call. It is so funny!!

Tribute to Dennis Shives

Dennis Shives is one of my grandpa's friends. He has had several interesting friends that I can remember as a child, people he went on adventures with and I remember them to be. He and his friends would go to Alaska, out to the Channel Islands and many, many other things and places, my dad has stories that would truly amaze you and could go on for days about the things they used to do.

Grandpa is one who I would consider an inventor, not a true inventor because he was able to design and use what he needed to do the work he did to provide for his family. A true inventor is someone who is always inventing, doesn't really live the life of the 'norm' and probably won't be realized until they are long gone. Well, Dennis is someone I consider to be a true inventor. He is artistic, talented, and able to turn his ideas into reality. One of his most common inventions is bubble blowers, generally something you find in toys'r'us now days. He sold his idea to a toy-maker a long time ago. Anyway, he is also a carver. Here are some pictures of some of his work. There is a website address on the sign www.YourMonument.com where he sells some of his carving, so if you are interested in putting one of these in your front yard, here is a plug for him.

Anyway, I have lots of fond memories of Dennis. He lives out of an old Volkswagen minivan and used to spend a lot of time at my grandpa's house. He would often let me watch him work and listen to him talk about his projects, they always intrigued me. He would start with a HUGE log and start widdling (sp?) away until he figured out what that piece of wood gave him inspiration of what it would soon turn out to be.




I also remember as a girl being in the Ojai Valley 4th of July Parade. Grandpa and Dennis built a nest on the trailer of a semi truck, it was huge. They also made beaks for everyone. The word Ojai in Indian means 'nest'. So this was a very meaningful float in the parade. Both of my grandparents grew up in Ojai and there are over 100 decendants from my Grandmother and Grandfather, not my great-grandparents, but my very own grandparents. I think we are getting close to 130. My grandfather is about to be a great-great grandfather in a few months. Anyway, this particular year we all got into the nest and had beaks on. Dennis made Grandpa this street sign that sits in front of the house, it is a nest with some baby birds poking their heads out. It brought back some fond childhood memories.