Brian's Valentines

Brian started at a new preschool at the beginning of the month and brought these Sees sucker bouquets to his new teachers and the school directors. It's never too early to "suck up." Pun intended. They were easy to make (and cheap, especially if you use cheap suckers, I chose to buy fancy suckers) Here is where I got the idea:

Skip to my Lou Baking Cup Flower Tutorial

Then for Valentine's Day, we made his school friends some heart shaped crayons. They were also easy to make and he could really help me with these. His favorite part was breaking up the crayons with a hammer. Any excuse to break stuff and not get in trouble.

Start now collecting the restaurant crayons you get free everywhere you go. We must eat out alot because we had tons! I sat in front of the tv one afternoon and peeled the damn paper off every crayon! It took forever and I still have crayon under my never-manicured nails! (Not really, that would be gross)

Divide them up by color, put em in a baggie and go to town on them with a hammer!

Keeping them divided by color, fill the wells of a silicone mold. This one is from Michaels, but of course after I paid $9.99 for it, I saw similiar ones in the Target dollar section. Ugh. Just make sure whatever you buy is oven-safe! I think you could also use metal pans but then you might have trouble getting the crayon out? These just popped right out.

Bake em at 350 degrees til the crayon turns completely liquid. This took about 9 minutes for my particular mold, crayons, and oven.

I just set them out on the counter to cool and harden for a few hours.

And wah-lah! A whole bunch of heart shaped crayons!

We bagged a couple up for each friend and sealed the bag with these stickers I had made by Olliegraphic. And then Brian made sure to tell his friends that these are crayons and not candy!

Brian turns 4!

Our first-born turned 4 on January 31st! Where has the time gone? I can still remember every detail of his birth and the first moments we held him. I still remember the drive home from the hospital with our first two-day-old and thinking that the people at the hospital were crazy for letting us take him because we had no idea what we were doing!!! Totally clueless! We figured it out soon enough, the little guy just needed lots of love and some regular food. Not a whole lot has changed in 4 years in that regard. He still needs food and love, but now he gives us back so much more than we give. I love his silly personality and his sweet love for his sister! I love when he says something so funny that I laugh so hard, I cry! I love hearing him say his prayers at night with his Daddy. And when he counts to 30 with no help. I could go on all night.....

Minute one of hour one of day one of year one

One year old


Two years old

Three Years Old

Four Years Old

Emily at 9 Months

Emily just went in for her nine month check up today and weighs 16 lbs, 14 oz (50%ile) and is 29 inches long (90%ile) so she's long and skinny like her brother. She is into everything now. I can't put toys away while she's awake because she can get them out faster than I can get them away. She's become very interested in what brother has to play with and is quite the toy snatcher, which means the honeymoon period of Brian loving his sister has been replaced with cries of "she stole my toy!" and attemped kicks in the face. Okay, he's never actually kicked her but he's given a few warning kicks. And also time-outs have become completely ineffective on him, so I've resorted to toy removal as discipline. It works. We've also moved his most prized posessions and the choking hazard toys up to his room so that Emily can't get to them, hopefully avoiding any further face kick attemps.

Emily is a smart little thing and loves to chit chat and doesn't want to sit still long or drink a bottle. She's really interested in people food and always wants what the rest of us are eating, so I've started a little bit of table food when I can. She still puts away the baby food though. She absolutely hates having her face cleaned and you might even consider calling CPS on us if you ever hear the screams that come out of her at the end of the meal during clean up time. She definitely knows what she does and doesn't want and will let you know! She's a fun loving gal though and loves to play and laugh.

A common sight for me as she follows me around and pulls up on my legs when she wants up

Loves looking at her reflection

She'll find the softest thing on the floor and give it a good cuddle

And here is Brian totally transfixed by Mater's Tall Tales, he sits in the weirdest positions to watch TV

Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon

We recently spent the holiday weekend on our annual squadron ski trip in Flagstaff, AZ. We stayed at Ft. Tuthill, a military recreation place. It is a pretty awesome place, with lots of land and trails, cabins, and hotel rooms and in the winter, a nice, fast tube run. We stuck pretty close to the Fort, tubing the morning away most days, until the sun was high in the sky and Brian and Daddy deamed it too "melty" and thus not fast enough. Then we would nap until the tube run was in the shade, the temps started to drop, and the tube run would freeze over and provide another hour or so of screaming-down-the-hill fun before dark.

We ate out at a couple of nice little restaurants, the first, a burger joint favored by the college folks, called Bunhuggers. It was loud and cheap and yummy. The next night we hit the Beaver Street Brewery, which Steve and I had been to before years ago. It was delicious also. Steve was planning on skiing but holiday crowds on the slopes were terrible and he was sidelined by a cold we were all fighting. To be honest, I thought the whole weekend was going to be miserable because I'm not a huge fan of snow and cold, especially when each little one requires nothing short of 10 items of clothing to be properly bundled and it somehow became my job to do the bundling! But I really did have a good time and Brian absolutely loved tubing and playing in the snow with his squadron friends.

We did make one little trip, an 86-mile drive up to the Grand Canyon. Steve and I had been there in the spring and summer, but never in the winter (unless I did as a child but don't remember). So we thought we'd like to see it decked out in white, but it ended up only being speckled in white. It was still beautiful and it was fun to show Brian. We lectured him on the drive up about safety and then kept him safely strapped into the stroller the entire time.

Both strapped down

We let them unstrap for a quick picture and then right back in!

This was the best in a string of maybe 15 silly pictures of the boy

Our cozy little A-frame at Ft. Tuthill

Homemade Christmas Gifts

A few months back, my parents gave me a doll highchair that was mine when I was little. It was in shambles, needed some sanding and paint and wood glue. I got it whipped into shape just in time for Christmas for Emily.

The before picture, my mom made the little blue seat cushion for it when they bought it. My sister had a matching highchair with a pink seat cushion and we shared a doll cradle, also with mom-made bedding.

After lots and lots of sanding, a few coats of white spray paint and some clear coat. Oh and some pink vinyl.

Emy's doll cradle, also adorned with pink vinyl, part of her Christmas presents from my parents.

She has to have a flight suit diaper bag for her dollies! Now she just needs to get old enough to care about playing with these things!

So, then the motherly guilt started weighing in heavily that Emy was getting an adorable family heirloom and Brian wasn't, so I decided to make him a kitchen helping stool. Sounds exciting, right? What almost 4 year old wouldn't love a stool for Christmas, you say? I know it's sort of lame, but he really enjoys helping in the kitchen and this way he doesn't have to drag a chair over. He's also found many other uses for it, like he can use it to climb onto things and get into cabinets we'd rather he not. He can slide it over to the back door and get to the top lock, there are all kinds of shenanigans this stool can assist with!

So here he is helping me mash some potatoes. I got the plans from my favorite-est website ever, http://www.ana-white.com/. The paint is Lowe's Martha Stewart "Barn Red." The ladder stool took me about 5 hours start to finish since I'm a newby woodworker and an absolute perfectionist when it comes to painting. The assembly was easy (saws are fun), the sanding and painting were a pain.

I also whipped out this little "Future Fighter Pilot" sign for his room last week with a 1x3 scrap and some blue paint I already had and of course, some fun with my vinyl cutting machine. He actually says he's going to be a "Papa Jet Pilot" and fly the airliners like my Dad. Steve's becoming okay with the idea.

The Happiest (and most crowded) Place on Earth!

A few days after Christmas, we left Emily with my family and took Brian to Disneyland and CA Adventure. So did every other family within 500 miles of Disneyland. Both parks were at capacity that day and it was slow going the whole day but we did have fun and Brian got his first taste of Disney excitement. He's hooked and we will have to go back. But not at Christmastime, ever ever ever again. His favorite rides were the Ferris Wheel in CA Adventure and the Matterhorn. He said the Imbomidable (sp?) Snowman wasn't scary, he just needed a hug. He was probably grumpy from all the long lines and expensive food, just like Steve.

I might have been educated in the CA school system but I know there's no "B" in the giant letters that spell California, so we had to settle for an "N"

The excitement was just too much for his little shoulders to handle!

This very well could have been Steve's only smile of the day (until he got his hands on a frozen lemonade and a churro)

It was great to spend the day alone with our boy who so graciously shares the spotlight with his sister everyday, it was nice to focus on just him. He did tell us a few times throughout the day that he missed her but "her would be screaming alot if her was here!"

Autopia was a big hit

Another smile!

Christmas Day

We spent Christmas and New Years with my family in California. My sister Julie and her daughter Grace were there too so she's the little brunette in all these pictures. Brian enjoyed seeing his cousin and having a built-in playmate his age in the same house for 9 days!

My parent's dog Yeager, who is as much their child as my sisters and I are, got to open the first present on Christmas morning while the grandkids watched. He got a new bowl with a treat.

Emy got a kisses attack

Okay, on the count of three, everyone look any where in the room besides the camera. Older two: fake smiles please! Little one: chew on something. Awesome, everyone did great!