Is It Naptime Yet

The girls and I had a girls New Years Eve with Sam and Britta. I gave some details previously, but here are some pictures.

The girls waiting in the tub to hold Squeaks, Britta’s new hamster. Since he had been with them only a week, we took this precaution in case he got out of tiny hands and tried to make a run for it.
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Lilah enjoyed holding him, Eden just watched.
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Britta thought he was pretty silly.
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Here we are with some hats we made for celebrating the New Year.
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Three little birds….
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…. Wait, they’re just three silly girls!
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Sam and me.

Hanging out with Sam and Britta was a fun way to ring on the New Year and the girls and I had lots of fun.

Most are self explanatory….. and I’m being a lazy narrator.

Here is a short little look into our Christmas Eve celebrations.

We were with my family for the reading of the Saviors birth in the scriptures. Lilah and Eden lead one of the songs  and then afterwards is was present time!

Waiting to get started.
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Andrea with a sleepy Z, though I think it was just that particular moment.

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Lilah and Eden leading the music for Silent Night. Eden would just sing that carol around the house and I absolutely loved it.

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Lilah got a cool puppy from Carolyn and Derek, she named him Jack.
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Eden and her dress-up from Carolyn and Derek.
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The girls and me in our pajamas. The girls picked mine out.
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Jon with the girls and Jack.
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Jon asleep in the couch. I think this makes for the third year he’s done this.

Luckily he fell asleep on one cushion so I was able to work around him.

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Our stockings.

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Our tree and presents.
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I have to take one with just the lights….it makes me think of my childhood.

To come….Christmas Day.

Here are the pictures from our visit to Valley of Fire on the 21st. For some reason photo editing has been overwhelming to me since there are so many pictures to look through and post, so I’m starting out small.

Lilah in a cave by the visitors center.

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Eden by the same cave, while Lilah ate lunch behind her.
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On our way to mouses tank.
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Petroglyphs you see along the trail.

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I’m the King of the world.

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The girls sharing a hug by some corner we found off the beaten path.

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A bighorn sheep we saw when leaving the park. This is the first time we’ve seen one while at the Valley of Fire.

Eden loves dress-up. She loves to wear every item of dress-up clothing, though she has toned down a little, depending on the day. One night she fell asleep on Jon still dressed up and I just had to take a picture, plus Jon was asleep too so it was an added bonus.

She always wears her Sunday shoes for dress-up.

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We also made cookies at Carolyn’s house one weekend for the Monday we fed the homeless in November. This is something we started doing with Carolyn’s work a few months back and I think is really good for the girls. Lilah loves it, while Eden mostly just stays attached to my side but there are times where she is ready and willing to hand out cookies and that makes it worth it to me. We bought the girls the heavy coats so they could be nice and warm on the nights we feed the homeless during the winter and possibly make a visit to the snow, but that has yet to be determined.

Lilah helped with each batch and was wanting to be apart of the entire process. She’s by some of the chocolate chip cookies we made.

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Lilah with our tub of chocolate chip pumpkin cookies. I think we made around 75 total, or three batches.

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Eden with the cookies. She liked bagging the cookies the best.

Well I’ve figured out how to use GIMP, or the image editor in Linux. I can’t make videos, but I can actually edit and post pictures finally! I might be playing catch-up over the next little while as I find time avoiding dishes, which is what I’m doing right now.

Here’s the link to my written overview of Halloween and here are just a few photos of the fun we had. I’m really disappointed because I did not get a  picture of Lilah’s side of the pumpkin. I really loved how it turned out, but in the craziness of getting out the door I must have forgotten. 🙁

Eating doughnuts off a string at Carolyn’s work party.

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Gutting the pumpkin.

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Lilah loved the feel of the goo.

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The girls in their costumes (Glinda and a fairy) and Eden’s side of the pumpkin.

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With their cousin Zarina, the cutest ghost ever. ( Mine were going for scary last year.)

It’s that time of year again when we get our family pictures! Here’s last years if you want to see how the girls have changed, though Eden has the same haircut practically.

This year was interesting. When the girl asked if we preferred light or dark for our backdrop I was saying light, but I though Jon said dark because of the girl’s cream shirts, and I was like “Dark, I’m going to fade into the backdrop.” So the girl checked both light and dark and said we would do both. Well, she didn’t do both, and then when we caught on that she wasn’t going to do both I asked Jon about it once more and he said that he was trying to say the light would go better, and I wanted the light backdrop, but she did dark the whole time and we had to ask her to do a white backdrop for one last picture, when she said she would do both. Ugh.

Also the girls weren’t the most smiley things, and I know it was hard getting pictures, but most of the time she would only take one picture per pose, so some poses are cute, but not all the participants are.

I kinda like the dark, but I also like the one white picture.

Here are the ones I will let you choose from. Leave a comment listing what ones you like and you will receive a lovely 4×6  after they are developed either the next time we see you or in your Christmas card. If you’re a parent you may request a larger size, say 5×7 or 8×10.

The names to list them by will appear under the photo. Some are close-ups of a picture, so you could have the farther image, or the close-up.

Family 01

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Family 01 B

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Family02

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Family 03

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Family 04

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Dad and girls

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Mom and girls

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Girls 01

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Girls 01 B

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Girls 02

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Girls 03

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Girls 04

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girls 05

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Eden 01

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Eden 02

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Eden 03

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Eden 04

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Eden 05

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Lilah 01

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Lilah 01 B

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Lilah 02

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Lilah 02 B

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Lilah 03

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Couple 01

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Couple 02

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This pose she called “prom”, but I think it’s more appropriately called “engagement” and I thought I’d share it’s cheesiness with you.

So there are our pictures. I can’t believe how beautiful our girls are.

When we went to Subway later that day, a gentleman who watched us come out of Subway asked if the girls were twins, they were still in the same shirt, and today a woman mentioned how similar they looked even though she knew they were different ages.

Also, you probably noticed the red mole on Lilah’s face. It appeared about a month ago and we’ll be seeing a doctor in November about it. I have them, but they slowly become bigger where this one was just there and has gotten a little bigger than what it was.

Here are the pictures to go with my detailed posted of what we did in Pine Valley.

Saturday, September 5, 2009.

Getting ready to feed the Koi.

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Watching Gary so they can pick blackberries.

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Lilah showing off a blackberry and Britta trying to put it back in the bowl.

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The pond.

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This is the first picture of many of the girls on the swings.

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Eden swinging an singing by herself later in the day.

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Closeup.

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They were on the swings a lot.

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Silly Eden.

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Sunday, September 6, 2009.

The girls outside the church. It’s really hard to take a nice picture of three girls when they’re being silly.

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Eden was the most cooperative.

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The girls were pushing the four-wheeler.

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The view from Gary’s nephew’s cabin.

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Hanging out by the pond.

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pretty peaches

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wild turkeys

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Monday, September 7, 2009

crate on a pulley

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The girls liked “helping” to pull one another up in the crate.

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Pretty flowers that were in the yard.

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Britta twisting Eden up in the swing. Eden was the only one who enjoyed this because Lilah got hurt at one point and Britta was just too scared.

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There she goes!

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And she’s done, and so our are my pictures of the girls on the swings.

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The redneck trampoline, AKA an old box spring. It was fun to jump on it. Sam tried it out and then made me.

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They had fun jumping on it.

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Eden in the pup tent.

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Britta and Lilah in the pup tent.

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All the girls.

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Lilah being silly.

This concludes the picture portion of our Pine Valley trip. I just wish I had one taken with Sam, or had been fast enough to catch her jumping on the redneck trampoline.

As a thank you gift to two of Jon’s co-workers, or two co-workers he works the most with and helps, I made some chocolate covered strawberries. I also made some for Sam’s in-laws for watching my girls and as a pre- thank you to letting us come up to the cabin with them.

I took a couple quick photos of the boxes before I sent them off with Jon, but that was it.

I kept the ribbon off of the two so you could see the strawberries a little better. Little did I know his co-worker would take nicer pictures of the ones she received.

I found the boxes at JoAnn’s. They’re actually to package brownies. I found them when I needed a box to package some strawberries for the bride and groom from the wedding so they could take some to the hotel that night after the reception. The box went so well with their colors. I tried to replicate the ones I did for the wedding, but the accent color came out more green than I liked, but it still worked well with the box.

I had woken up at 6:30 am to make them and gone to bed around 12:30 am after I prepared everything. (I washed and dried them the night before, got all the materials out and ready, and folded the boxes so I could make and package them quickly.) Jon had a doctor’s appointment that morning so I had a little extra time before I had to have them ready. In total it took me about an hour and a half to dip and package and a little over an hour to prepare the 36 strawberries and everything else the night before. The three boxes only held 10 strawberries each so we were able to enjoy some too.

Jon’s co-worker Daly took some wonderful and more artistic photo’s of the strawberries and sent them to me.  She said they were just as delicious as they were beautiful and couldn’t help but take some pictures.

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We spent the Fourth of July at my parents house. I guess it’s just tradition since we celebrate my nieces birthday, have a BBQ, and enjoy fireworks that my dad buys, though this year I actually bought fireworks for the first time since the young woman in our church had a fireworks booth.

After we ate, I’m sure something delicious that my father barbecued, we entertained ourselves by having the kids practice baseball, only with a wiffle ball. Jon and I have a t-ball bat his parents gave us and wiffle balls, so we supplied the materials while we made Carolyn’s husband Derek do the work of pitching. It was for quality bonding time since the kids mostly play with one another and the adults just chat when we get together. We also brought the bat because the last time we were at my parents house Derek was playing “baseball” with Lilah but they were using a hand rake as a bat and I was worried that she might swing it too hard and impale herself. That would have been a terrible memory for all.  The hand rake looked like this, and lets face it, any way you hold it is dangerous if you’re swinging it around.

The kids had lots of fun and the wiffle ball only went over the back fence twice, and luckily the neighbors were swimming and pretty good sports about getting it for us, and telling us when Eden was climbing on a chair and nearly about to climb over the balcony railing, or was it Lilah that almost went over?

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Lilah was able to hit the ball about half the time.

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Carolyn helping Addrienne. Notice Carolyn’s blue shirt? She was also wearing khaki pants like me and Jon joked that when looking at the camera screen if our heads weren’t in the picture he wasn’t sure which sister he was looking at.  For a while there we were constantly wearing the same colored shirts whenever we saw one another.  In fact we both wore green the day we drove up to Ely and I could have worn the same colored shirt another day we were there.

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Kaitlyn up to bat.

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Howie waiting for the pitch.

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Lilah on the balcony.

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After some time playing we went inside and celebrated both Kaitlyn’s and Lilah’s birthday, since we had yet to celebrate it with my family.

Kristi made the birthday cake while I just brought cupcakes.

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We forgot candles so we did what we could with what my mom had. 5+2= 7 and Lilah still likes Dora.

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Lilah likes to read the cards. Also, that’s a picture of her as a baby on the far left.

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Then it was time for fireworks. Lilah and Howie were the only kids outside, Eden was OK, but a really loud one was set off at the beginning and ruined her for the night. Lilah held out but only by plugging her ears the whole time.

A little unsure of the sparkler, but she wanted to try it.

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Liking it a little more.

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Having fun with the sparkler, though this might have been the second one.

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Jon and Lilah enjoying the fireworks, though enjoying is relative term in this case.