Little Tomboy

I've always said Eva was a nice mix of girly-girl and tomboy, but lately she's been leaning much more toward tomboy. Her latest obsessions are:

• cars - we're helping keep hot wheels in business
• pirates- "walk the plank sister!", "don't touch my treasure matey!", "where's my stinky eye patch?" and "mom can i have a real sword?" are all very frequent sayings in this house
• mulan - probably because she dresses up like a boy and carries a sword
• boys clothing - while shopping at Target: me: "isn't this CUTE?" eva: "umm..i'm not wild about that one. where are the boys clothes?" i point. she grabs a blue dinosaur shirt. "i AM wild about this one!"
• hyenas- i'm not too sure how this one got started. but they have taken over the house and they must be exterminated with special "hyena spray" on a frequent basis. if you ask her what she ate for dinner it's always "hyena".
  

i love her quirks and crazy imagination.


mama pirate and daddy pirate commandeering "boy car". mama's the bald one. i don't know how i feel about that.

One Whole Year

I write letters to my kids on the back of the growth/stat sheets the doctors office gives you at their checkup appointments. This is my letter to Lyla from her one year check up.

Little Lyla-

This year has FLOWN. You have been such a joy and it has been amazing to watch your little personality develop. You are such a loving little girl. Whenever I get you out of bed you always 1.) hand me your blanket 2.) lay your head on my shoulder and hum and 3.) pat, pat, pat my back. Melts my heart every time. You are so funny! You love to laugh and love to tease. You love your sister Eva. You say "bye bye" "uh-oh" "da-da" and, your favorite, "was sat?" :) It sounds like you try to say sister, but I'm not sure. You are just now officially sleeping through the night. Whew! You walk, but are not yet 100% confident. You love to eat! We just found out that you are allergic to eggs. :( You think dogs, balloons and bubbles are hilarious. You are a climber! I have to watch where I put the step stool because you utilize it! You also love to rip books; it drives me bonkers. You love to give kisses, but only when it's your idea. We love you.

love,
Mama

2011

2010

One Year Older

I recently celebrated my birthday. I discovered a few things that day and thought I'd share.

1.) A gray hair. YEAH. on my birthday. wasn't the greatest way to start the day. I decided to leave it since my hair isn't that thick and I can't lose any more volume.

2.) I'm clausterphobic. I never would have thought that I was, until I was in this situation....
I'll spare you the story of why I had to crawl behind the kitchen cabinet. It's pretty uninteresting.

3.) I'm cheap. Not really a discovery, but it held true on my birthday as well. I pretty much spent the day making sure I got all my freebies for having to get older.

4.) I like coconut cake. A LOT. Jared made me the best 4 layer coconut cake. After we consumed half of it in one night I made him take the rest to give to the priests at church.Have to have a picture with my girls on my b.day!

Lyla is 11 months

I can't believe she's almost a year. She wants to walk soooo bad, but has only been successful with a couple of steps at a time. The first signs of her having curly hair are emerging over her little ears and nape of her neck, but we'll see. She is such a smiley sweet baby. More to post on this sweet girl in a few weeks!

Sunbeams

My itsy bitsy little girl started SUNBEAMS this year.
I'm sure I looked about like this when I dropped her off.

Poor kid. Jared and I have decided that we are going to be the most embarrassing parents on planet earth. Jared sat out of sight to make sure she did alright and I chucked her at her teacher and ran out attempting to not let her see me cry while she screamed after me "MOM DON'T GO! STAY HERE!" It was traumatic. I can't even imagine kindergarten. If I even let her go. I don't think it helps much that I just received a calling in nursery, which I love, I just don't like that Eva's too big to be in there. They probably gave me that calling so that I couldn't lurk outside her class room. Since church is in the middle of naps the nursery calling works out really well. Jared teaches the priests the 3rd hour, so Lyla hangs out with me which helps distract her from the fact that she's insanely tired.She's trying to convince me that her expression does count as a smile.

Just for fun. A picture of her on her first day of nursery.

More visitors

After Christmas my mom, dad and baby sister were able to stop by for a day and a half. I'm such a knuckle-head I'm always determined that I will take plenty of pictures while they are visiting, but inevitably I forget. While they were here we made sure we hit the little Venezuelan restaurant we recently discovered for my dad, who served his mission there. My mom celebrated her birthday during their visit, and I had fun taking her around to all of the places you can snag free food on your birthday (and then batting my eyes and stealing bits and pieces of her goodies). I made her dark chocolate cupcakes which were intense, even for a die-hard chocolate fan like me. Poor Lyla was sick and cranky the whole time they were here. Apparently they made quite an impression on Eva who has talked about nothing else since they left.Happy Birthday mom! Apparently only 3 years old too.

Abba took Eva on several walks which she LOVED. They were tricky to get a picture of.

New Years Eve Jared's best bud from Washington, Russ, and his wife Christiana spent the evening with us...until they realized how old we were and our non-stop yawns sent them home around 10:30. :) We promptly flopped in bed and started the new year right...snoring. Naturally I forgot to take a picture on this occasion but I'm sure the boys would have just given me the "you're kidding right?" look anyway. WHEW. only 2 more catch up posts to go.....

Our Christmas

Dang I'm behind on blogging. As usual.

We had a nice Christmas this year with several visitors which is always fun. The weekend before Christmas, my sister Megan had her baby, so we spent a few days in Tucson watching their little boy while she was in the hospital and taking care of her (or at least attempting to) when she arrived home. Christmas Eve Jared's brother Aaron, his wife Kjerstin, their little girl Aelyn and Kjerstin's grandparents hung out at our place and we had a lot of fun eating fondue. Eva thought that eating everything off of a stick dipped in cheese was the greatest invention ever. Then when the chocolate fondue came out the stick became unnecessary. Her hands, arms and elbows worked just fine. We saw them again on Sunday before they left. It was so fun to see them since it's been quite awhile. We had a couple more visitors after Christmas, but I'll save that for another post.Eva and cousin Aelyn

Nose picking while reading "The Night Before Christmas"

Christmas day we were by ourselves which was good since I had positively no intention of getting out of my pajamas. The girls finally woke up at 8:30. They usually get up around six, so we were just sitting around cameras charged and ready for HOURS. Eva's alarm finally went off at 8, so I waited outside her room and yelled "MERRY CHRISTMAS" when she came out. Her response was to glare at me, shut off her alarm, slam the door in my face and hop back in bed. I so look forward to the teenage years with this one. :) I expected a big reaction from Eva over her requested tiger and cement truck, but it was just kind of like "oh. there they are". and that was it. The Tiger. He goes everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE that we do.

Lyla was digging the traditional cereal under the stockings so the rest of the gifts were kind of pointless. It reminded me a lot of the Christmas when Eva was near that age. We spent the rest of the day painting and installing doors and baseboards. That's our idea of fun on Christmas day. :)

Mmmm...cereal.

It was kind of a bitter sweet Christmas for me. I kept reflecting on the differences between this Christmas and last Christmas when we were unemployed. This Christmas we has a real Christmas tree. Last year we whacked a limb off the pine tree in the back yard. This Christmas I wasn't upset and worried about not having a store bought gift to give to Jared or the kids. We did home made gifts last year. It was a BIG deal when we received a subway gift card last year and that was our big celebratory meal on Christmas Eve. This year there was a full course menu. Last year we were at the mercy of others generosity. This year we were able to decide how much to give to those in need this Christmas. Last year we spent a great deal of time on our knees being THANKFUL. We were (and are) so blessed in a lot of ways. My testimony that our Savior knew us personally was strengthened tremendously last Christmas. This Christmas took a little more effort to feel the real spirit of Christmas. After all the gifts were unwrapped I looked and Jared and said "Last Christmas was better". Not in the unemployment aspect, but in the "This was really special" kind of feeling. I guess I need to work on having that feeling every year no matter what circumstances are going on. A very Merry (and very late) Christmas everyone!