Puckering Pumpkin Princess

I have a very talented friend - we'll call her "Sarah" because that's her name. Anyway, Sarah has started a photography business and had a "Fall Photo shoot" at her home. I got very excited because last year we did the photos with the babies in the pumpkins at her house. Sarah is multi-talented and even made tutu props for people to use at the shoot. I got a little crafty and made Eliza a pumpkin shirt to wear. Everything was set.

The perfect weather

The leaves on the ground

The pumpkins placed

The clothing selected

And then . . .

Eliza wouldn't smile.

Oh well, here's to personality!

Midnight Harry Potter

Cassie was really excited about a certain movie opening this week. She even re-read the book in preparation for the event. She heard about the midnight showings of it and asked if we could go. I replied "Are you crazy? That is sooo VERY much past your bed-time. The movie will be there next week when we can go." She was a little sad that we weren't going to be going that weekend.

Little did she know when I let her fall asleep in my bed that I had already bought tickets for the midnight viewing of it. She was told that she had to go to bed early because we were having friends over early the next morning. At 11:00pm Jon and I went into our bedroom and turned on the lights and told her that she needed to wake up and get dressed. We explained that it was almost "tomorrow" and tomorrow was when Harry Potter opened and that we needed to go get in line to see it.This is what she looked like when she found out we were going to see the midnight showing after-all.

OK, so when you don't get in line by 10:00pm for a show that has 16 sold-out screens at midnight you end up near the back of the line. We weren't worried. We bought our snacks ahead of time and waited in line with them. (bad idea giving Cassie soda before a 2 1/2 hour long movie I'd later find out)

My mom came with us - I'm glad my mom is always up for a fun adventure. She's so cool.The end of the line meant that the seats that we got together were in the VERY front row. On the very far edge too, mind you! At least we were together. Cassie thought it was great that we were in the very front row. Nana and I were just grateful to be sitting together. I think it's been many years since I sat that close to the big screen. While we were watching the previews she saw a preview for another movie from a series of books that she devoured this last year. She now wants to go to the midnight showing of that one too. I'm so grateful for this great girl. She's super smart and lots of fun to be around. I love hanging out with her and surprising her.

Kabobs

Aren't these the cutest things you've ever seen? I've been making all sorts of "food on stick" lately, but these are by far the best looking. I did squish a few little hearts in the begining, but now I've got the hang of it.

I haven't taken pictures of my savory varieties, but those are super yummy too. Summer time is all about eating fun food and what is more fun than food on a stick?

We have a swimmer

I finally feel comfortable calling Jeremy a swimmer. Last year and at the beginning of this summer we were calling him a "non-drowner" but not exactly a swimmer.

He's been at 49er camp (run through Cal State Long Beach) for four weeks straight these past weeks. Friday was his last day and parents were invited to come and see their progress. He's been learning archery and he almost got a bull's eye, soccer, basketball, gymnastics, and playground games (dodge ball being his favorite). They keep them running and busy for 4 hours a day, but the most impressive part of the day for me was watching him swim.

He loved his lessons and they were the favorite part of the day is his day. He especially liked the free swim time after. I was so proud of his progress over the last few weeks.

Jon and I joke that if he swam any slower that he'd be swimming backwards, but it's a start. He's very happy with himself. He's ALWAYS loved the water and has never had any fear of putting his face in (or walking into a pool completely) and finally he's swimming.

He's growing up so fast. Now he can read, ride a two-wheeler and swim all on his own. I'm afraid that the next step is going to be driving . . . and I've seen him on Autopia at Disneyland . . . stay off the sidewalks when that happens (it's a good thing I'm giving you an 11 year warning)

I went looking for my sunglasses . . .

and found them here.

Two-Wheelin' it now

We've been trying to get Jeremy to ride his bike without training wheels for literally months now. My dad took off his pedals so that he could use his feet to power the bike and glide to learn balance, but that only made Jeremy mad. He refused to even try. A few weeks ago we got him to try his bike without the pedals and he seemed to have fun. With his sister there riding circles around him, though, he quickly began to see the limitations that no pedals brought. We put the pedal back and started trying again. His balance was excellent and we knew it was just a matter of time before his confidence caught up with his ability. Sunday evening was that time. We went over to the church parking lot (where we taught Cassie to ride - open space without grass and other obstacles) and within two minutes he was riding. At first he wanted Jon to hold on, but then he told him to let go and he'd push with his feet.All of a sudden out of the blue he lifted up his feet and put them on the pedals and off he went.

I'm so glad I brought the camera because this is a picture of his first solo attempt. The very first revolution with his feet on the pedals. And then he rode right past me - isn't that always the case (wink).

He was so thrilled with himself. We were proud of him too.
It's amazing to me that Jon and I had gone through all this preparation work get him to ride and were ready for the traditional "Don't let go, Daddy" style of learning to ride with two wheels, but this little guy told his dad to let go and then just basically did it on his own (and on his own terms). I wonder if that is a foreshadowing for the other milestones in his life.

Hey Eliza, how old are you?

ONE!!!!

I guess it had to happen. She's officially one year old now. We had a little family party for her on Saturday and had lots of fun. In fact you could say it went "smashingly" well (especially the cake)

She had some earlier experience with birthday cake smashing (hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures later) and so she was a pro at her birthday party. Yummy!
She really adores her brother and sister and they dote on her too.Cassie picked some hydrendras from the bush outside and we filled the house and patio with these beautiful hot pink floral arrangements. They matched the table cloths perfectly.She was an angel for the party and loved being the center of everyone's attention. For her birthday my mom gave Eliza her childhood rocking chair. It plays music when you rock it. Eliza has been loving rocking her babies in it.She also got a hot pink dolly stroller. So fun. Raggedy Ann was honored to be chosen as the first rider . . .
but it didn't always work out well for her.Eliza was very kind to Raggedy Ann and picked her up and gave her loves and kisses and put her back into the stroller to be dumped out a few feet later.

This past year has flown by. Eliza has been such a wonderful addition to our family. She has a sweet and easy personality. She's fun and curious and smiles all the time. We all love her and look forward to watching her grow up. I hope the next year slows down and we can enjoy it longer.

Uno, dos, tres "FIESTA"

Hola mis amigos! Es tiempo para una fiesta! AYE Aye Aye! The fourth graders here in California study California history and at the end of the year there is a big fiesta at Cassie's school. The kids all dress up in "fiesta" style clothes (a huge thank you to Liz for lending us Cassie's outfit) and party like it's 1845 (pre-gold rush). It is such a fun tradition and the kids all look forward to it.

They have games like hoop rolling and cattle roping and ring flicking with sticks. All sorts of 19th Century fun. One station makes Banuelos (think tortilla shaped churros) and another one (one of the favorites has eco friendly confetti eggs with torn up flower petals inside. A quick side not about the eggs. Each kid was given 8 eggs to crack, multiply that by 36 kids in a class times two classes and you've got yourself over 500 eggs that needed to be blown out, washed and carefully taken to school to be stuffed. We brought in 3 dozen ourselves and if I blow out another egg anytime soon I think I might lose my mind.Even the baby wasn't safe from a flower egg cracking. After an entire morning of fun they are served a variety of Mexican treats for lunch - tacos, taquitos, quesadillas, burritos, rice and beans. A local Mexican Restaurant caters it every year and it is super yummy.

After lunch comes the Square Dance. The kids have been practicing these calls for weeks and on Fiesta Day they show their parents. It was so cute to see them paired up in partners.

The weather was cold and overcast the whole day, but at least it wasn't blazing hot like some fiestas in the past have been. All in all it was a good day and a fun way to end their unit on California history. Next year is a walk through American history . . . anybody have a colonial dress?

Jeremy's Kindergarten Program

I truly believe that there is a special place in heaven for Kindergarten teachers (hopefully a nice quiet and calm spot). Everyone of them that I've met has a wonderful sweetness about them. This is especially true of Jeremy's teacher this year. She is everything you'd ever want for a Kindergarten teacher; patient, kind, loving, firm and truly dedicated to her kids.

I love everything about a kindergarten program - the kids are super cute and still so eager to please. Here is Jeremy (who was stoked to get assigned the letter J because there are 3 other kids in the class whose names start with "J") during a cute song called "The Kindergarten ABC's" or something like that. My new favorite kid song is the one he introduced (and not because he introduced it). It's called "I can't spell hippopotamus". It goes something like this

I can spell hat, H-A-T

I can spell mat, M-A-T

I can spell rat, R-A-T

but I can't spell hippopotamus.

H-I-P-P-O I know

Then comes P-O-T

What comes next I just don't know

and that's what worries me, GEE!

The song has another four verses of words they can spell, but not hippopotamus. Super cute!

At the end of the song they all spelled hippopotamus for their parents to show that they can spell it even if the song says they can't. I wonder if Jeremy will think of this song every time he spells hippopotamus. I know I will for a while (wink).

On a sadder note . . .

I'm not sure if our Jeremy is destined for a life of stage performance. He didn't seem all that enthusiastic about it. He sang and did what he was supposed to do, but his heart just wasn't filled with the love of performing until . . .
he found out there were popsicles, cookies and cake for refreshments.

Now that's one happy kid!

Nothing in the clean fridge . . .

. . . except a half naked baby!

When I got home from Seattle (I still need to get all the photos together to post) I went through the fridge to clean it out. Then I decided to give the whole thing a really good scrub. You know the type of attention it needs - taking all the shelves out and basically detailing it on the inside. I got off maple syrup from the door, something sticky in the back and I could almost see some leftovers had grown legs and were about to run out on their own accord. EWWW!

When I was putting things back I came across this

Eliza had wiggled out of her pants and climbed into the fridge to get either her baby food or Jeremy's medicine. She's a quick one. Cute, but into stuff.

Fun Rainbow Cake

I got this idea from Jon's cousin's wife who in return got it from this blog (don't you love how a good idea can travel?). On Sunday Jon had to go into work and my mother-in-law was watching my cute nephew and brought him over to my house to play. I had already decided to make this cake and it made it even more fun teaching my nephew how to lick cake batter off the beater (which he didn't like doing - he did end up licking the bowl for me).

Cassie is really wanting to know how to cook and so we made a white cake mix cake and she separated the yolks for me and did all the measuring. She also was allowed to use the hand mixer all by herself including putting in the beaters. She is getting to be so independent.

Next we divided the batter into several different bowls and added some gel food coloring. This is where Jeremy and Evan came to help us stir the color into the batter. We made purple, green, yellow, pink and orange batter.

You dump the batter into the cake pans on top of each other in the center and wait while it slowly creeps to the center and then you bake it.

As a side note . . . during this process Jeremy found a clear plastic wrapper from a Capri Sun straw and balled it up and stuck it up his nose. He kind of freaked out when it got stuck there and tried to use his finger to get it out and managed to push it up further. I should have taken pictures of him during this process, but I totally forgot. We made several attempts to extract it and after a call to the pediatrician we ended up going to Urgent Care to get it out between taking the cake out of the oven and frosting it. Ironically the cousin we got the rainbow cake idea from also balled up a gum wrapper when he was a kid and got it stuck up his nose. I wonder if there is a connection? Hmmm . . .

Cassie (who would NEVER put a straw wrapper in her nose) made some yummy butter icing from scratch and frosted the cake. We thought it would be fun to do plain white for the frosting and get a surprise when we cut into it. The top layer was done well as far as putting the colored batter into the center and letting it even out on it's own. The bottom one, however, was a less care driven and I can now see the results.

It was a really fun project and now she wants to try making a zebra cake with dark chocolate and white cake. I'm so glad that she wants to learn how to cook. I'm hoping that she continues learning and that we can do lots of fun projects like this again.

Family Pictures Again!

I figured out what the problem is with downloading the photos. I'm only allowed a certain amount of space for pictures and these fies are really big. Here are some complete family photos. One of these lucky pictures is going to get a place of honor in the hallway. The others will find some other place (like on a blog or something).

I know which one is my favorite. How about you? I'll try and be sneaky and post the rest in a different post on the same day and they should follow right after these.

Family Pictures

I've been wanting a good family picture since Eliza was born. Every day that I pass by the family photo on my wall in the hallway I think , "Great family photo - where's the rest of the family?" One of my mommy friends from Cassie's school came and took pregnancy photos for me. That's one BIG belly.
Then she came over and took cute newborn pictures of Eliza when she was less than one week old.

She included in her overly low price a family photo session. I wanted to wait a little so Eliza would be a little older and I would be a little slimmer. Well Eliza got older, but I appear not to be slimming yet. I kept waiting and waiting until finally I said, "Enough . . . I can always take more family pictures later."

We met her at Seal Beach and I brought my great-grandmother's red velvet chair (thank you Natalie for letting me borrow it) to mimic some of the cool photo shoots I see on my favorite photo blogs. I love how they turned out. Cindy was even able to get pictures of Jeremy looking right at the camera. She went to get individual shots of the kids and the females did a little better at posing than the male did. She did manage to capture the essence of the family at this point in our lives. Thanks Cindy (who I don't even think knows about this blog)!

Here are a few highlights from that day.

I'm having some technical difficulties with uploading more photos. I'll post more later.

I think they are lovely and I had lots of fun taking them. I think I'm going to try to take more family photos in the future. They are only going to be this little for a very small time.