Random Videos

Here is a video of Lucy singing I'm a Child of God. She is always singing some song or making something up. This one is one of my favorites though!

here is another of her singing Angels We Have Heard on High

Here is a video of Cole walking! He was 11 months old the first time he walked

And one of Cole laughing, just because it's cute :)

Going on a Bear Hunt Video

This is for you Esperanza! 

And of course anyone else who would care to see it :)


--At the begining when she says,"I don't want the girl, that's for the blagh, blagh." Hahaha, that is what she says when she doesn't know a word or phrase for something. She just says jibberish. 

A peek into our days lately

Somehow I forget to take the camera with me to important things but remember on days when nothing really special is happening! Ah, I really need to work on that. Anyways, Devin turned 25 on monday! We had a BBQ and played Frisbee last Saturday! It was so much fun, and the day was PERFECT! (sorry, no pics). Monday morning came and I told Lucy that today was his real birthday, so we made him a Toffee Cake (his favorite breakfast) and she insisted he have candles to blow out. We stuck a few candles in and sang to him! 

Since I forgot the camera for the party I figured I'd at least take pictures of this! 

The kids just stared at the candles :)

The camera was too slow and I couldn't get a picture of him blowing it out! This one is right after.

Happy birthday 'old man'! 

I LOVE YOU!

With all the wonderful sunshine and warm weather we've been playing outside everyday. It has been so fun! Cole is discovering just how fun outside can be, and Lucy LOVES that she doesn't have to wear a jacket or shoes! (Not going to lie, I Love it too! and the fact that it doesn't take 20 mins to get us outside).

 First day it was warm we played in the sand...Cole still eats everything. I guess he thinks dirt tastes pretty good, because he doesn't mind eating it. 

 He also thought I would like to have some!

 It took Lucy a while to want to get in the sand and get dirty. She kept sitting on the side and would stick a foot in the sand and say, 'yoot mom! I'm in da sand!' 

haha, eventually she sat in it and got her hands and feet in there too!

 We've been reading a lot of books lately. Some days I feel like this is all we do. These are very common scenes around our house..

 I've almost given up on putting the books away.

If we take too long to sit down with him he gets very frustrated and starts crying. Most of his favorite books he has a hard time opening and turning the pages. 

 We play with our animals everyday. We found these little Toob Animals at JoAnns. They are 8 buck a Toob, but with a 50% off coupon they're only 4. So we've bought two sets and the kids love them!

 Lucy usually hides out on the couch where Cole can't reach them :) 

 But thankfully she is still willing to share and doesn't really care....yet!

Cole really does think that I like to eat everything he eats too!!

Under the Umbrella

Did you know it could be so much fun? :)

Naptime Creations: Felt Flashcards

Last year before little man was born I made some flashcards for Lucy. 

We were introducing shapes and numbers and colors and I wanted some flashcards that she could hold and manipulate without me having to worry about them ripping or getting soaked in her mouth, etc. I found this great tutorial at Sew Much Ado. It was perfect for what I had in mind.

 She put grommets in hers and found a big metal ring to put them on. I couldn't bring myself to buy the whole grommet set of stuff at the time. So I just sewed button holes and put them on a little ring (I couldn't find a big one like the one she has). 

She also made two sets. I only made one. At the time Lucy wasn't really old enough to play memory, we just worked on learning the names of the shapes and number recognition. 

Don't mind the random off colored brown ten...I ran out of the darker brown. I think when I make my second number set I'll use the lighter brown, or just make two new dark brown tens. 

It was a really fun project. Only took about 4 hours, including cutting and sewing around all the pieces. I enjoyed it and am planning on getting the second set done soon (after I finish the rest of my unfinished projects :D )

Naptime Creations: We're Going on a Bear Hunt

We're going on a bear hunt

Have you ever read this book???

It is one of our favorites! We found it at the library when we were looking for 'B' books. Then when I was looking at activities to do I remembered the Making Learning Fun website. And found some fun printables for a feltboard story!

Some I copied some I made up on my own. We didn't actually do this activity the week we worked on the letter B because it took a lot longer than I thought it would. I initially thought I would just glue the pieces together. But I started with the bear and it just looked so cute to sew the pieces together and since I started with stiching one part of it I thought I should stitch all of them....hence the super duper long project. BUT I must say it looks pretty good! :)

Here is our long wavy grass! I used some green scrap fabric that I had, cut strips most of the way down. Sewed it onto some green felt (so it would stick onto our board) and voila...it doesn't stick as well as I would like, but its fun and actually looks wavy!

Here is our 'deep cold river'. I wasn't sure what to do with this one. So I cut it out and thought I'd try some glitter to make it shimmery like water.. I used spray on adhesive, sprayed it - poured on the glitter - then sprayed it again. It took a few days to dry enough for the glitter to stop falling off. But it doesn't come off anymore, so yay! It worked :)

Here is our mud hole. I still don't like it very much. I tried to make some foot prints (turns out sewing these things on is a pain in the rear!) So I only did two sets of feet and maybe someday I'll be inspired on how to make it look more like mud.

 I made up the snowstorm. There was no printable for this piece. I cut out a cloud and free handed some stars, circles and random pieces to make the snow. Then I used embriodery thread to sew it all together. I actually really like it!

And our forest!  I didn't have enough green to make two big ones so I free handed the smaller one. Good thing I did too, because they ended up really big. I wasn't sure how to attach the leaves to the trunk while keeping with the hand sewn look. 

So I started with some diamond shaped leaves on the big tree. I was going to just do lines across, but after just doing the part to attach the trunk, I decided that would take WAY too long. So I just went around the edge. 

For the small tree I changed my approach (for time sake) and just stitched straight lines. I was using multi colored green thread so there are different shades of green on the tree. Wasn't intended but left kind of a cool touch!

Here is my Cave. Pretty straight forward and simple. I only sewed the two pieces together.

And Mr. Bear. He was my funnest piece and turned out pretty stinkin' cute if I may say so myself :) I had some left over plush felt from Little Man's halloween costume so I used that for the bear. 

 Here is the whole set on our big board! It takes up the whole thing....Sorry for the funky lighting. The sun came out right before I took the picture ;)

Lucy Mae

I just wanted to give a quick update on Lucy, since I'm already up late :)
Her vocabulary is growing more and more everyday! She tries to use words and phrases that she hears us say throughout the day. He newest addition is 'so' at the beginning of everything! She keeps telling everyone about the Zoo and every sentence starts with, "so." "So, we saw ostriches, mommy, yittle baby, daddy, an dree. Dree ostriches." Today we were talking with Oma at lunch and Lucy was trying to convince me that we could go to the Zoo again today. She kept saying, 'it not told outside.' "it not nowing, waining, windy!' We tan doe Zoo!" It was pretty cute. Then she'd ask Oma if she wanted to come with us. I wish we could go everyday. But yesterday it was free so we lucked out!
Lucy is also trying to us time. I don't know how long it takes to grasp the concept of time. I know she's far from it. But she is showing interest. Here are some examples of what she does
     -whenever she wakes up she will say, 'I watked up dree minutes.' And she'll hold out three fingers (she says this after naps and in the morning).
    -when it is time to wake up in the morning she will either tell us it's 7 o'clock or 6:30 - I guess those are the times we talk about the most when we wake up or wake up daddy.
    -she'll always go up to the clock in our room and ask what time it is...but no matter what time I tell her it really is she'll always tell me it says 'seven o tocked.'
    - She talks about it getting dark at night and sun coming up in the morning

Here are some everyday driving occurrences:
     -She loves cop lights. We've seen a few while driving and she always asks if we are going to see 'top yights.'
     -She also likes to look for stars. We don't usually drive or go outside at night (it's just too cold). But the first time she noticed the stars she started saying something over and over and over again. After about 10 minutes I finally figured out what she was saying, "stars twinkle at night." I don't know where she came up with it, but she did it all on her own. Now she always wants to look for stars....even in the midd of the day :D
    - We always sing in the car. Lately she asks for Circle of Life, from Lion King. So we are usually belting that while driving to get daddy or on our way to the store. It's a lot of fun..and I don't have to be embarrassed because my kids can't tell when I don't quite hit the right note, or when I squeek :)
    -She goes back and forth with her sharing, but you know she really likes something -edible- because she'll want to share with everyone. She loves black licorice, it's one of her potty treats (for number 2). And she always asks to share with everyone upstairs whenever she gets it.
    -She likes to make sure everyone has everything they need at meal times. This includes salt and pepper on their food, if we're not paying close enough attention.
     -She's getting big! And everyday brings something new. She is a gem and I love her. She is also one of my biggest challenges...this is probably more of a lack of my knowing how to be a good parent and stay calm. She's a pretty headstrong little girl, poor thing...she got that from both sides of the family. We're currently working on manners; when to say excuse me, sharing, and saying please, not yelling, you know, all those good important things we will probably be working on for the rest of our lives :)
     -She is back and for with the potty training thing. Somedays she will tell me every time and stay dry all day. Other days we go through almost every pair of underwear she has. I'm trying to remind myself that she is only two and will probably continue to have accidents for a while. It's just hard when I know she knows, she just won't tell me...
    -So a funny story that I have to write down just because. Whenever Lucy toots (passes gas) I ask her if she has to go potty or if it's just a toot. Almost every time she will say, 'no potty, my bum jus do sdilly, bwaghagh!' Hahahaha! It cracks me up everytime! I have no idea where this came from. But I love it and hope she keeps doing it for a long time :)

She's a kook! She loves to dance (always has), love to play hide and seek, loves to ride on our backs. still loves to read, loves walk, playing with friends, going to church, her nursery leaders, singing at church, wearing cute clothes, wearing ponytails, spending time with her daddy.

That's all for now folks....i've got to get to bed!

I just love these pictures. 

Lucy will sleep forever if he holds her. She loves her Daddy so much, and always asks when he is coming home at the end of the day. 

Oh boy! He is walking!!!

This week Cole has been standing up by himself! Every time he stands he'll look at me and make his "Look at me, I'm so big!" face....I LOVE that face :) The other day we were all upstairs and just for fun Elaine wanted to see if she could get Cole to walk to me (reminder: Elaine was the one who was with us the night Lucy learned to walk!) and he did--TWO STEPs-- then fell into me at the end. Well, this week he's been taking one or two steps and then falling down. Which is pretty big, because a week or two ago, as soon as we let go of his hands he would lower himself to the floor (so slowly that you wondered why we would walk, he has pretty good control of that sitting down motion). Well, tonight Cole walked somewhere from 8-10 steps without falling!!! He didn't even look unbalanced (which if you've seen Cole walk while holding hands you would think this is amazing....somehow he falls even while holding hands!)
I'm excited for him. ...

Do you just love this face?!

I'm little nervous of the things this opens up for us (the fits that will most likely ensue for wanting to walk everywhere all the time) But I'm excited because this means he will get to start walking after Lucy! Yes, he gets around just fine and crawls pretty fast to keep up. But you know, walking is just exciting!!!

 He's playing with one of those pom-pom tupperware toys

This is his concentrating face! One of my favorite faces :)

He makes it whenever he is focusing really hard on something

...like reading a book with Auntie Celecta...

Sheesh. This kid is already 11 months old. I don't like how fast time is going by. How could almost a year already have gone by? I guess my baby is no longer a baby. 

Cole UPDATE

-He can go up the stairs and then back down backwards! Going backwards is a new development. He used to try to go down frontwards....that doesn't work so well :)

-He LOVES animal books, and loves to read. We went to the Zoo yesterday (I forgot my camera so I'll have to bum pictures off of my friends) and he was in heaven! He was ooo-ing and aahh-ing and roaring the whole time.

-tries to climb up everything and is pretty successful most of the time. 

-Likes food. A LOT. he has recently started crying/yelling for more between each bite. Hopefully this doesn't last too long! 

-He will go up to Lucy and grab her arm or clothes or something and 'scream'. It not really a scream, but it's the exact same sound she makes when she doesn't want him to play with something she has... yeah, he is learning a lot from her...the good and the not so good :)

-Knocks on the doors that lead upstairs all the time. I must not be very exciting :) A lot of his favorite things are upstairs....people, toys and baths...how can I beat that?

-Hates having his diaper changed...one of my friends quoted her husband on facebook saying, "Every time I change Emma I feel like I'm changing a wild squirrel" (or something to that effect). I think of that every time I change Cole. I'm surprised the diapers are actually on the right way by the end of it all!

-He likes to brush his teeth, but doesn't like it when it's mommy's turn to do it. 

-He really likes babies! One of our good friends just had a baby a few weeks ago and while we were over visiting, Cole couldn't stay away from their little boy! He was gentle -at first- and just wanted to follow me around the whole time I held the baby! He wasn't even jealous, like he gets when I hold Lucy :)