MOTHER DEAR

I think Abraham Lincoln said something like the way I am feeling today
All that I am I owe to my Mother!

I am one of the few people who have had the pleasure and privilege of being raised my such an intelligent, kind, optimistic, hard working, beautiful, talented, brilliant woman. I am so grateful to have such a wonderful example to pattern my life after! I know that she too had a wonderful mother, Josephine Cassell, was such a dynamic fire-ball that there was no stopping the creation of such a woman as my mother!
Thank you so much MOM for being a light to me and an inspiration to be more and better than I tend to be!
I love you Mom!!!
You are the BEST!

My Uncle Tim, My Grandmother Josephine, My Mother

My beautiful and wonderful and spectacular Mother and me!

3 year old Girl!

Good morning Birthday Girl....

Ellie is just a joy!!

She is now a big 3 year old girl...and proud of it

Her biggest accomplishments and loves of the year are:
potty training (just after turning 2)
turning into a big sister (thanks to Maggie)
talking like a champion
Watching Dora....and Diego
Candy Candy Candy (it's all she asked for for Christmas)
singing
ballerina and princess dancing
playing dolls (she loves to feed her babies)
playing the piano

she was really into her Dora!

The only shot I got of the Ariel Cake...it was actually cute...sad it's so blurry

Battling off potential candle blowers

Ellie had plenty of help opening presents....and yes, she is hugging her Pirate Dora movie the boys got her!

modeling her new princess jamies....it's so fun to give gifts to people who appreciate them!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!

we got chickens

This is batch #2....in our first batch 5 of 8 were escape artists and with all the wildlife ...coyotes, rats (yes, really big chicken hunting rats...they knocked off part of batch #2), foxes, and a big furry cat that lives here....they didn't stand a chance...so sad....but these ones did better until we put them out in the coop with some of the adult hens....then like I said before...rats...literally...yikes!

This is Gordon's first little chick named spike...it was the cutest of the whole bunch....it died of natural causes...R.I.P....he was really sad so he made a little coffin for the little guy!

"the baby scientist"

I have such cute pictures of all my kids in these glasses that came with a Doctor's set ages ago....they are a hot item still! putting them on Maggie was E's idea...she called her a baby scientist!

PS a little update....she has 3 teeth and is a crazy girl...she is going to be crawling any second and is pulling her self up in her crib and on anyone she can grab--life is about tot get really really interesting around here!
Yikes!

Burglars

While I was unpacking things Gordon was sitting playing playmobil. I wasn't paying much attention so Gordon had to call me a few times.
Once I finally looking in his direction he held up a little crytal saying, "Look at what my guys burgled!"
"What?"
real slow "Look at what my guys burgled"
"What?"
"Ugh, Mom, my guys are burglars and they burgle things. Burgling is like stealing just is their job."
"oh, Okay!"

I love little kids!

We made it!!

Well we have finally made it to the Great State of California! For those of you who didn't know--we moved! The weather is beautiful and we are LOVING being so close to family (literally SO close...we're living with Merl & Candy until we figure things our here!) I am far behind on the blog but have decided to post on from here and occasionally catch up on what I've missed-which I realize is quite a bit!

Enjoy some of the latest pictures from our move and first few days here!

We got a little crazy in the packing stages of the move....

Maggie has been spending quite a bit of time in her high chair...with quite an interesting assortment of "toys"

I was trying to post some things on craigslist and Gordon couldn't resist trying to jump into ALL the pictures...it was moderately annoying but the pictures turned out pretty cute...

Gordon's first day of School!....he has LOVED IT, thank you to his teacher and classmates for being so wonderful!!

more to come.....when I get to it....

Christmas Tree Hunting 2009

Okay so this year we decided to do the real deal Christmas Tree Hunting...
We drove out to a big farm in the country (which let's be serious only took us 20 minutes to get there since we live in a tiny city!). We bundled up since it was in the 30's grabbed our saw and rode the hay wagon ride out to the field where the trees were! It was great fun even with the crying kids& snotty noses!

The Hunters!!


We looked and looked (I was rather picky--as I should have been) until we found it! The perfect one!

The kids loved helping Steve saw it down!





The perfect spectator! This is the view of her from the sling!

Then we dragged it out to the lane so that it could be picked up and hauled back in to the main barns where they shook it, bundled it, and loaded it onto your car!

While we waited we saw frosty, ate hot chocolate & cookies in the Barn, and played on the playground!

They even had a tiny barn that "Santa" visited (he was a great Santa by the way!) and gave out suckers and little prizes! Gordon was not going for it...we walked in and right away he leans over to me and says "that is NOT the REAL Santa. I'm not talking to him"...and he didn't until we were leaving and "santa" called his name....Gordon gave in and agreed to help out the "real" Santa by putting out cookies and milk and some snacks for the reindeer!

Good work guys....now lets get it home...which is a whole other story!

* a note: as we were loading up the car I was looking around all the other families packing their "tiny" trees onto their cars and thought...they're all the same price why would you pick such a small one?

Maggie was so happy to be in the warm car!

Little did we know that our scale was so off....surrounded by larger trees and endless sky, our eyes were a little bigger than our living room! I wish I had gotten a picture of it before we started pruning it back...as you can see we cut a whole lot off--the trash can is SO packed! (PS it took us until Midnight to get it all pruned back and into the stand and positioned...so needless to say we won't be decorating it tonight!)

*the middle picture is taken more than half way up our stairs....and not even level with the top!

Oh and we didn't even think to take off our gloves to touch the tree...so it wasn't until we were home and were handling the beast bare handed when we found it has quills not needles...or maybe needles is the appropriate word for these! I had them draw blood on 2 occasions! (after this I grabbed the info sheet that the farm hands out when you get ready to go and hunt your tree, of course there where I didn't read all the descriptions there is one that has "prickly" needles! Oops!

The one advantage to the tree being so sharp is that we won't have to worry about the kids messing with it!

We'll post some pictures when we get it decorated...of course most of our lights weren't working today so we're going to get some Monday!