A Glimse of Our Christmas

Christmas Cookie Baking

Annual Christmas Eve Hockey Game

and OPENING PRESENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We enjoyed every minute of it! It was a wonderful weekend, even though we didn't have a white Christmas. The girls were thrilled with all the fun and food and of course the presents. (too many presents to make room for in our house... good thing our basement isn't finished yet or the toys wouldn't all fit!)

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas weekend,

and best wishes in the NEW YEAR!

Tis the season...

for Christmas tree shopping,

decorating the house,

staying warm on the cold days,

and being very thankful for all that we have.

Dear God, Thank you for grandma and grandpa,

cartoons, the holidays,

Dora, and my toys. AMEN!

-Maria's bedtime prayer earlier this week

Merry Christmas everyone!

Almost Walking!

A few days ago, Emma turned 15 months. She finally decided she could try walking without holding on to anything. Here is a short clip of her longest trip so far!

Pumpkins

What goes with Halloween better than pumpkins?

Picking pumpkins:

Carving pumpkins:

Eating pumpkin pancakes:

Dressing like pumpkins:

Happy Halloween!!

Another busy fall :)

Here's what we've been up to this fall:

Landscaping

Playing with our favorite cousins.

Hanging out in Duluth :) Watching dad rollerblade.

Going to weddings (one down, one to go this weekend)

And practicing our dancing skills for Auntie Hannah's wedding coming soon!

(Dancing skills for Maria that is, and normal crawling and walking skills for Ems :)

Happy Fall! Enjoy each and every day of it!

The BIG 1!

August 6th, 2011....Emma turned 1! Here is the birthday girl all ready for her big day! With lots of family at our house, we enjoyed a taco bar, and a little Mexican themed cake :)
Opened lots and lots of presents (including some little people, a water table, movies, dolls, a purse and some clothes)

Then we enjoyed that wonderful cake! Especially Emma, who devoured her entire little one!

We were having so much fun, we even forgot to have Emma open her gifts from mommy and daddy! So we had more presents to open later...:)

She was a very good girl the whole day and enjoyed all the wonderful company.


Happy 1st Birthday Ems!

We love Waterama!

The last weekend of July brings us fun times at Waterama! What a beautiful, hot weekend to enjoy the activities outside! Here is why we LOVE Waterama:

1. Riding the rides! (and watching in Emma's case...)

2. ICE CREAM! (Milk mustache and all!)

3. Watching the parade, waving to the princesses and getting loads of treats!

4. Winning cool prizes! (Emma won a little unicorn flashlight toy, and Maria won this below. As if we needed more big toys in this house! haha)

5. And playing in the sun at the park and the beach!

Now, we are officially exhausted! Even daddy is, who played in a total of 4 softball games (their team got 2nd place over all :) and 2 baseball games this weekend!

We were looking forward to a peaceful evening of sleep last night...but unfortunately we were awoken by a terrible storm. Check out this hail:

We were lucky compared to the nearby towns who had lots of damage. Hopefully tonight we can get the rest we need!

Hope you enjoyed your weekend too!!

(p.s. 5 more days until my baby is 1!!!!!!!!!!)

Hello HOT Summer!

I sit here in the air conditioning on this miserably HOT day... wishing it were nice outside, so we could go and play. June was a month full of rain. July seems to be a month of pure hotness! Where is the in between? There has been a few nice days to get out and enjoy summer.

The weekend of the 4th brought lots of fun to our family. We spent Saturday playing carnival games and enjoying the festivities of Heritage Days in Starbuck. Sunday was a full day of family with picnics on both sides and then an awesome showing of fireworks. Well, at least I think they were good. I didn't see much due to an overtired young child not liking them one bit! Here are our treats we made for the fun weekend! YUM!

We also had a great party this past Saturday in celebration for Joe's grandparents 50th wedding anniversary! It was so fun to see all the family, and the kids had a great time playing with all the other kids. I unfortunately, didn't get to stay long because I was sick. But thankfully I'm fully recovered now!

We have been busy working on our projects that I mentioned before. Most of them are a good way along or done. Next big thing: DECK. I wanted it done before Emma's birthday, but that probably won't happen because it's sneaking up on us. Only 18 days until this cutie turns 1!


Emma has been so busy lately. She is crawling (or army crawling) all over the place. She has discovered new places to play all over our upstairs. She is so smiley and is getting to use lots of baby talk! She also loves eating food by herself. She is not such of fan of us feeding her anymore. Learning to drink from a cup has been a bit of a challenge, but hopefully she will catch on soon. She LOVES being outside and went to the beach for the first time a few weeks ago. She enjoyed it very much, although she wanted to eat that sand so bad!

Maria is in her "terrible twos"! If that is what you call a two year old with strep throat, cutting some big teeth and with too many mosquito bites to count ! The poor girl :( Other than that she is enjoying summer and loving playing outside too. She is still not very good at sharing things with her sister and seems to think everything in this house is, as she would say, "mine"! Her other new favorite phrase is "I don't want to..." It makes for some interesting days... :)

About a month ago, I misplaced my camera. (A major reason why I haven't posted sooner!) I had suspicions that my oldest had hid it. (She had been hiding things like that... our house phone for example was found in a box in the dining room behind a curtain.) I was so upset. All of my pictures were uploaded to my computer, except this one below. A very rare find to get ALL 4 cousins sitting nicely, and even mostly smiling! But I finally found my camera...in MY purse. (so it wasn't Maria after all!) So I was able to get this cute picture back!
Other than that, we are trying to stay cool and hoping the that church's AC can keep up with all the people at the church supper tonight, since I have to work it! :) Hope you all are staying cool!

Projects, projects, projects....

Summer is officially here at our house! School is DONE for the summer!

And summer means big projects at our house!

Project #1: Siding the garage. (In progress...)

Project #2: Building a new swingset. (complete!)

Project #3: Planting the yard. (in the background above) (half complete!)

Project #4: Planting the garden. (almost done!)

Project #5: Retaining wall & deck. (hopefully starting soon....)

Project #6: Painting the basement. (Hopefully starting soon also!)

It's a big to do list, but hopefully it all gets done! HAPPY SUMMER TIME!!

Bring on the Spring!

Hello!

Ok, so I know I'm terrible at keeping this up to date. It's been nearly three months since the last post. I'm sorry!! But these girls are hard to keep up with!

Today, it's nearly 80 degrees out, and it's about time!!!! We've had some crazy weather this spring, and I haven't been a big fan of it. But today, it almost feels like summer!

The girls are doing great! Emma was 9 months last week and she has been doing a lot better (except those darn teeth that are coming in on the top finally!) She is happy and loves playing with Maria. She likes to play with the toy playhouse and chewing on anything she can find. She's also enjoying eating big girl food! She's still working on crawling, but she's pretty darn good at rolling around to where she wants to be. She likes to talk a lot too, even though her talk sounds like screaming, she's smiling! :) At Emma's 9 month checkup yesterday, she weighed 16 lbs. 4 oz. Just 2 oz more than Maria at this age. That was quite surprising for us since she's wearing much bigger clothes than Maria did at 9 months. Everything else went well at the doctor's...and even better news... no shots!

Maria is growing up so fast too! Her words and sentences are improving daily! She loves to sing and dance and read nursery rhymes. She already knows several of them! She also continues to love doing puzzles, reading books, and playing games. Another favorite---playing outside (usually in the mud! :). Last night, she planted trees with daddy!

We've been busy around the house cleaning up the yard of all the lovely house scraps, etc. And we finally got half of the yard planted. Let's hope that the grass springs up here in the next week or so even after our severe weather we had two nights ago! Joe's been working on getting the garage sided as well as finishing up some sheetrock in the basement. Then...next step is the deck!

Here's a small look at what we've been up to the past few months:

Maria turns 2!

Wednesday came and went, and my sweet little girl is now TWO! I can't even believe it! Here is a picture of the big girl on her birthday! And here is a picture of her Dora cake that I made! She loved it! She kept saying "ria's cake"!

And here is her with some of her presents, including her new potty chair! Let's hope she puts it to use soon!!


We also had a doctor's appointment yesterday. Maria is still below the 1st percentile for her weight. But she's still growing...even if not very fast! She seems very healthy otherwise! She still loves being big sister and now she pretends she is the doctor and Emma is her patient! :) So cute!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Emma is 6! (months that is...)

Yesterday Emma had her 6 month appointment after turning 6 months on Sunday! I can't believe it. The little squirt is only 14 lbs and 26.5 inches long. For her length, she is in the 78 percentile! Way bigger than Maria at this age. She is much more normal in size than her dear big sister. In fact, Emma wore the same outfit the other day that Maria wore for her one year pictures last winter! :)

In other news, Emma is rolling around like crazy and loving to grab and chew on things. She also is eating lots of baby food and loving it! (except the green beans!) She gives us lots of smiles, but her sister knows exactly how to make her laugh and laugh! It is quite entertaining.

Maria's new favorite thing is playing with her new kitchen that my cousin gave us. She loves stirring up food in her pots and feeding us supper. She makes sure we have our bibs on too! :) She also enjoys snuggling with Emma and giving her kisses. She is usually a great sister, but still has to learn how to share sometimes! She is also very good at telling us how old she is going to be in a few short weeks! 2! She is looking forward to her party!

In the last month we have been busy playing and playing! We had a play date with cousin Thatcher the other day, playing outside in the snow and going on a sleigh ride, continuing playing with all the new Christmas toys, playing with grandmas and grandpas, and playing with friends at the Superbowl party!

Here are some things we are looking forward to in the near future:

1. Another new baby cousin arriving any day now!

2. This weekend with Grandma and Taya

3. A trip to a water park

4. Hopefully some warmer weather! :)

5. Daddy's snowmobile trip out to West Yellowstone

6. Maria's 2nd Birthday!

Hope you all have some fun things to look forward to too in the middle of this snowy, cold winter!