Family/Maternity pictures

The other week my friend, Jamie was gracious enough to take some maternity/family pictures.  I figured since this is probably the last time I'll be pregnant I might as well have it documented ;)  It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the sun was shining, but it was also only 33 degrees!  The girls lasted about the first 10 minutes then had to go warm up in the car.  We did get some good shots in though.  These are just a sample of the great work Jamie did.  Can't wait to have baby boy pictures taken when he gets here.

Christmas 2010

Ok, so we "lost" our camera with the Christmas pics, but just found it under the couch cushions yesterday. That seems to be the place where all lost things go. Anyway, Jarom's parents came out for a week at Christmas. We had a great time going to Zoolights, the Nutcracker, and just hanging out at home making Christmas cookies. Christmas morning was lots of fun watching both girls and their reactions to all the presents. The hit of the presents was probably the big chairs my mom got, they played with those all week figuring out all kinds of ways to make forts or slide off of them. It was nice to have family in town for the holidays, we'll have to require that from now on.

At the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle

Really excited about their chairs

Make a greeting card

Nativity play

This year the Christmas church party had the kids do a short Nativity play.  Riley of course volunteered to be an angel.  Her part was to just stand there and look cute.  Her friend Allie thought it would be better to take control of the mic and sing instead.  Pretty cute.

Traditions & Two year olds

A couple days after our anniversary is my birthday, seriously the celebrations never end around here.  I turned, dare I say it, I won't so here's a picture instead.   I can't believe that number, I certainly don't feel that old.

Anyway, we decided to go get our Christmas tree this past weekend.  Every year for 8 years we've gone to Mitchell's Tree Farm just down the street from our house.  So we attempted to get the girls bundled up.  Ella threw a major fit because she did not want to take off her short sleeve dress and put pants and a jacket on.  It took both of us to hold her down and dress her.  She was still screaming as we strapped her into the car.  We got to the farm and told her she had to wear her jacket to get out of the car. She refused and stomped off into the woods alone.  I sent Jarom after her and here he is bringing her back.

 Still screaming and kicking! We tried walking down the lane to the trees but Ella planted herself in the middle of the road and refused to walk or be carried.  Plan B.  "Let's just go get a pre-cut tree fast at another market."  Left, drove to the other place and Ella refused to leave the car.  Which left just me and Riley walking around looking for a tree.  Couldn't find anything we liked.  Plan C.  Drove back to Mitchell's Tree Farm.  Ella stopped crying but still refused to put on her jacket.  So we walked around the farm for 30 minutes as I watched her hands turn purple.  It didn't seem to phase her too much but I could see her start to shiver.  Luckily we found our tree at the last minute.  And here's some pictures to prove that even a crazy dress wearing 2 yr. old can't break our Christmas tradition!

Riley attempting to help

The trouble maker

The End

November to remember

 It's been awhile since I've posted but I have a good excuse!  Power outage, husband in Canada, birthdays galore, Thanksgiving, Anniversary, burnt lips/nose, etc...

November has always been busy here but this one was with some extra craziness.  Jarom left for Toronto for a week for business, during which time we had a power outage, not long, but still I was sitting alone in the dark...not cool.  Then a winter storm passed through and we got a couple inches of snow, but what really devastated the area were the winds which knocked down tons of trees in Gig Harbor.  Undoubtedly we had a power outage again, although this time it last for 3 days!!! So every night I kept thinking to myself this will all be over with they have to get our power on tonight.  Next morning it was Ella's birthday and it was 57 degrees in the house!  Poor Ella had layers of clothes on while opening her presents, we were all so cold by that evening that we didn't even have a cupcake or candles for her. She also ended up burning her nose and top lip on our gas fireplace glass.  She didn't cry but said "Ow, mommy, ow!"   By the next morning it was now 48 degrees and I think that's when I lost my mind.  Luckily we have good friends who brought over their generator and some heaters.  When it got up to 55 I thought it was a heat wave!  We have learned our lesson and will be getting a generator this year for sure.  

    Onto happier times, we had Thanksgiving with our friends down the street and saw the movie, Tangled.  The girls loved it, Ella sat through the whole thing with the 3D glasses on!  Then it was our anniversary, we didn't do anything special because we have an overnight trip to Seattle planned in a couple weeks! 

So needless to say, I'm glad November is over, but now it's time to tackle December ;)

Toronto

Princess of course

New nightgown, she wore this for 3 days... seriously all day

Riley was "helping" Ella unwrap everything

Talent

Riley started her first team sport a couple weeks ago....SOCCER!  I am officially a soccer mom.  The first game was quite entertaining to say the least.  Riley's friend Allie is also on the team and it was funny to watch them just stand there watching the ball as the coach came up to them and told them to run after it.  By the second half of the game they were running up and down the field trying to get a foot on the ball.  Last week Riley played goalie and did a great job stopping a couple shots, she seemed to proud picking up the ball, throwing it back in play and the promptly running back to her position.  So cute!

Ella's talent lies in the spotlight as seen from the last couple posts.  This is just a little video of her singing like she always does running around the house ;)