Life's Little Moments

Friday, March 22, 2013

Hey, I was using that!

So Google, in an effort to "improve" things, is shutting down Google Reader in July of this year. Don't they know that I am using that to keep track of all of the blogs of friends and family. I am a little upset about this discontiunation for a number of reasons. There are good reasons that I took blogs off of my sidebar and started using Google reader to begin with.

1- Google reader is a place that I could go and have all of the 50+ blogs I was interested in together.
(Not that big a deal since having them linked to my blog does the same thing.)
2- Google reader told me when new posts were made on each of those blogs. (Apparently a list in my sidebar can do that too.)
3- Google reader also made those blogs disappear off the list when I had read the new content.
4- The blogs I read are for my eyes only.

I have some people in my blog list that would like to have a private blog, without going private. In other words they try to keep their names off of their blogs. Then there are those who don't want people to know that they even have a blog. They could be in my reader list without other people knowing that they have a blog.

Somehow I need to transport all of my blogs to the sidebar again so that I don't lose them. I don't know how to input them so that I can tell who they belong to, but I want to respect the privacy of those friends. Curse you Google for complicating my life! I liked things fine just the way they were! I could bookmark all of these blogs, but that wouldn't tell me if new content had been added. Google reader was doing exactly what I needed it to do. Maybe for now I'll just throw them in by their given blog name. Suggestions would be much appreciated, especially from friends who care about how your blog shows up on my list. You can email me or send me a private message on facebook about it.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Are we Irish? No, not one little bit.

There, there Aliya, we can still celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

I've had fun today coloring our food. Green pancakes for breakfast. This for lunch...

Later we will have the traditional corned beef and cabbage for dinner. I do love holidays. There is something almost magical about taking an ordinary day and making it special. Hopefully something my kids will look back on fondly. Ok they will probably never look back at avocados with fondness, but what can you do?

My special thanks to Molly H. for making it possible to dress Aliya for the occasion. I got so many compliments at church about this adorable dress. I have never had such a fabulously dressed child for St. Patrick's day, and I love it!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

She is growing so fast

Aliya has been able to hold her held up quite well since day one.

This week Aliya has started to smile. Baby smiles melt my heart.

I am always amazed at how quickly a tiny baby grows. I mean she looks nothing like that tiny infant anymore. I am excited to watch as she continues to grow. I know that saying so out loud might jinx me, but my goal is to take a carseat picture each week for at least 40 weeks. Just so that I can watch her grow. It may prove to be more interesting for her scrapbook than the belly pictures which I neglected to take during my pregnancy. This is as close to the belly bump pictures as I got.

I wasn't even able to do that as well as whoever it was I stole the idea from on pintrest. Super cute idea, that was super hard to duplicate. It is incredibly difficult to get the same perspective in two pictures. Especially when they are taken on different days (or weeks or months).

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Kaelyn's Epic Party

I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I do know late last year I asked Kaelyn to start thinking about what she would like to do for her 7th birthday. I knew that I would have a newborn, so all of the party planning and prepping needed to happen before the baby's arrival. She immediately responded that she wanted a Kirby's Epic Yarn birthday party. If you have never heard of Kirby's Epic Yarn go ahead and click on the link, it is a short demo of the Wii video game, and seeing a bit of it will give you context for our ideas. That and you should check it out because it is seriously the cutest video game of all time.

Kirby and Prince Fluff balloons

Unlike last year, when I had no clue how she came up with Wild West as a theme, I knew exactly where she had come up with the idea. We got a Wii back in October and this Kirby game is one of two that we own. The girls love it and have spent a number of hours playing together. I was completely baffled though as to how you theme a birthday party around a video game, that is without letting the kids play said video game. I thought and thought...and here is what I came up with.I am actually pretty excited about it, because unlike many parties past I actually came up with all of these ideas on my own.

The first idea I had was for the invitations. In the video game Kirby is changed into yarn and transported to Patchland (a land made up entirely of fabric) where he meets Prince Fluff. So I thought it would be fun to use up some scrapbook paper scraps to make a patchland of my own, complete with a yarn Kirby and Prince Fluff. Making characters out of yarn proved to be a lot more work than I thought it would be. I am glad that she was only allowed to invite 7 kids.

Now for a very funny story about the invitations. I made 8 of the invitations (the cutesy part you see above) about a month before Kaelyn's actual birthday. However, since we weren't sure where we would be holding the party I didn't put the actual information in them until the night before I wanted Kaelyn to hand them out. I typed out the info, had Jon look it over to make sure there were no errors, printed them, and tried to glue the first one in with some past its prime rubber cement. That didn't work at all so I trashed that insert and switched to elmers glue. Gluing the remaining 7 inserts into the invitations. The next morning I helped Kaelyn write her guests names on the back of the invitations and sent her to school with them. It was much later that day when I realized that one of the invitations I had sent with her was the blank one. Yep one person got an invitation that looked like the one above and when they opened the fold they discovered a whole lot of NOTHING! We spent the entire next week trying to figure out which friend did not get the party information. That would have been a completely impossible task, except I inadvertently FORCED people to rsvp. We had forgotten to include our address! So I got more than a few, "Sure my child would like to come to the party, but where am I supposed to take her/him." kind of phone calls/emails. I just let them know in no uncertain terms. Sorry about that, but I just had a baby the brain is not yet functioning again.

Waddle-Dees all ready to be knocked down

As for party activities I created a Waddle-dee bowling game. Where the kids got to throw big balls of yarn at one of the "enemies" from the video game (waddle-dees). I found the image of the Waddle-dee online and had copies made. It was a fun little game, and I just let them play over and over again until they seemed to be getting bored of it.

When the kids seemed to be losing interest I had them each play one more round so that they could earn their bag of beads. In Epic Yarn as Kirby defeats enemies he collects beads of different sizes and colors. The big star beads are worth the most. The beads can later be traded for furniture and fabrics to decorate Kirby's House.

So each child at Kaelyn's party earned a bag of beads by defeating the Waddle-dees. They were then able to spend some of those beads at our treat shop.Kaelyn was thrilled that I let her choose what we would have available to purchase: fruit snacks, MandMs, licorice, gummy bears, and mini marshmallows.

We finished off the party with cake, ice cream sandwiches, and presents. I had fun creating the birthday cakes, one for the birthday party and one for the next day, her actual birthday. I am glad that I got to make two cakes, because I think the second one turned out so much cuter. I learned a lot from the experience like the ups and downs of using spray coloring and how some tastes should never be mixed. I am confident that if I ever need to make an Epic Yarn cake again I could use the best of both cakes to have a truly awesome cake.Kylie is currently claiming that she also wants a Kirby's Epic Yarn birthday party. I hope it sticks because that means less work for me in the future.

Picture I found on the Internet to use as cake decorating inspiration.

Cake I decorated for the party. FYI- sour punch straws and frosting should NEVER be mixed.

Cake for the actual birthday.

I think the party was a great success. I am thankful for Jon and my parents who were all there to help things go smoothly. They helped me wrangle kids, took care of my little ones, etc. I am especially glad that Jon was willing to take all the party goers downstairs to play for when I had run out of party and still had time left before parents would start arriving to pick up the kiddos.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A not so typical Tuesday morning

***I had more detail in here, but the computer killed it while trying to save and I am not going to try and redo it, because it has taken me long enough to finish this post that I need to just get it done. ***

It was a typical Tuesday morning, on January 29th. I woke up at 7am and took a load of whites down to the washer to start just before waking Kaelyn up. Much to my surprise while filling the washer I had a contraction that hurt enough for me to start counting seconds in my head. About 20 seconds. I continued on with my morning and when I got back upstairs I wrote down the time I guessed that first contraction was at (7:15am) and how long it lasted. Ten minutes later I had another contraction that lasted about 15 seconds. I figured that I had better go and get my phone to start actually timing them and writing them down.

7:15 (20 sec)

7:25 (15 sec)

7:38 (51 sec)

7:44 (50 sec)

7:56 (26 sec)

8:01 (57 sec)

8:06 (...I quit timing and started calling people, this is where my morning ceased being typical.)

Her very first picture

Because of our experience with Alyssa's birth (where I was in labor for a total of about 2 1/2 hours, but only in the hospital for about 31 minutes) Jon and I planned to meet each other at the hospital if we were not together when I went into labor. I am grateful for the people who were willing to be on that call list so that I was able to feel prepared. Naturally, Jon was the first person I called. I had to let him know it was time to put the aforementioned plan into action. He later told me that as he was shutting down his computer at work and closing up shop so to speak one of his co-workers made a funny comment. "I can tell this isn't your first. If it were me I'd be running around like a chicken with its head cut off."

Yup, not his first. He is a pro!

I then called Katie and asked her to come and pick up Kylie and Alyssa after she picked up Steven at 8:30 in the morning. She asked me why and I responded with a rather confident, "Because I am going to the hospital and I am NOT coming home this time." A relevant point because the Wed. night before Jon and I had gone to the hospital sure we were going to have a baby and rather disappointed to learn that you can sit dilated to 4cm for weeks. I now know what it is like to get sent home from the hospital, not fun.

Is there anything cuter than tiny toes?

Finally I called my ride to the hospital, my visiting teacher. (The one didn't call on Wed. night.) The plan was that she would drive me with Kylie and Alyssa down to the hospital in my van then return the girls to my house where Katie would be waiting to pick them up. She had to make some last minute arrangements with some painters that were scheduled to be at her house at 9AM. I told her to give me a call back soon if it wasn't going to work out for her to drive. I then went back to getting Kaelyn ready for school and dressing Alyssa. Kylie, all the while, was sound asleep on my bed.

Kaelyn made me laugh because she was with me while I was getting Alyssa dressed. During which I had another contraction. She asked in a voice that said she wasn't sure that she wanted the answer, "Mom, what is a contraction?" I kind of laughed and did my best to try and explain about contractions and why they hurt. Her response was a look on her face that said something to the effect of, "And you are okay with this?"

I am only okay with it because of the priceless end result.

8:54- Arrival at triage in the hospital

9:24- Moved out of triage to a hospital room

9:46- Checked and at 10cm

It was only 2 contractions and 7 pushes before...

9:49 AM- Our beautiful baby girl was born.

When my water broke they noticed there was a hint of meconium in it so the doctor didn't give her to me right away when she was born. That was a little hard for me, especially since I didn't have a sweet baby to hold and look at distracting me from everything that comes after the baby is delivered. However, when I did get to hold her she was beautiful. So perfect and tiny. I was glad when all of the hospital staff cleared out of the room and it was just me, Jon, and the baby. There was peace and quiet.

The only thing we were unsure of was what to call this new baby girl. After we had all eaten lunch we got on the Internet and made another list of possible names. After much discussion we settled on the name Ami. It comes from the Japanese kanji meaning "beautiful love". Adorable in meaning and unique without being out in left-field, right? So when our visitors arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon we told them that we planned to name her Ami. However, after about an hour of listening to a room full of people calling her Ami Jon and I were in agreement that was NOT going to be her name after all. It just didn't fit. It felt wrong.

Now I want to tell you about our visitors, Jon's parents, Katie, and Steven came with our other girls after picking Kaelyn up from the bus stop.

There is no way that I am going to be able to put the moment our girls met and held their new sister into words. Words don't do it justice, but the pictures come close. In my experience when my older kids meet their new sibling is the most perfect and rewarding moment of any pregnancy or delivery. There is an excitement very different from normal childhood excitement perhaps a reverent enthusiasm?.

My girls who are normally quite loud are quiet, but brimming with joy and for lack of a better word excitement. It never fails though that their eyes sparkle in a way that I have only ever noticed in those rare, special, and prefect moments when we have had our family grow. That first time when we are all together with a new little one. I cherish those memories.

By evening Jon and I had settled on Danielle as the name for our new little one. I shared it with my parents and a couple of my siblings over Skype. Jon told his family and our other girls when he went to pick Kaelyn up for the night. He joked with them that, "It'll be a rainy day in Seattle before we change her name again!"

Wouldn't you know it, when I woke up the next morning it was raining. We did end up changing her name again. This time we actually filled out the paperwork, so it was official. So it is with great joy (and a fair amount of relief that we finally figured out her name) that we announce our newest baby girl...

Aliya
8 pounds 2 ounces
19 3/4 inches long

My hospital stay was really short, just about 26 hours after delivery. That day Jon picked my mom up from the airport then came and took me home. We dressed and bundled up our new little angel and headed for home. We have been here a week and are excited to be starting on life's next great adventure.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. There are just so many cute and fun ways to celebrate. This year was especially exciting since it was our first one in our new home. We had an a"door"able monster come to visit for the month of October.

I was also thrilled to use my standby Halloween recipes as well as some new ones when we threw our Halloween Housewarming party on Oct 27th. That was so much fun to have friends and family over to show them our new home and just have a party again. I love throwing parties.

The Spooktacular Spread

Deviled Eggs with Olive Spiders

Nutter Butter Ghosts

Candy Corn Vegetable Tray

Dead Man's Dip (Can you see the skeleton in a casket?)

Dracula Dentures

Kaelyn with her friend Emily

Jon was actually out of town on a business trip the week of Halloween so had to fly solo for a bunch of the Halloween festivities. So for FHE that week the girls and decorated their pumpkins. For some reason this year they wanted to paint them instead of carving them. That was less work for me anyway so I was all for it.

Kylie + paint = bliss

Kylie and Kaelyn were both very intent on their pumpkins

Me and my girls at the school carnival

On Halloween night itself my in laws came over to hand out candy so that I could take the girls trick or treating around our neighborhood. Just when I was starting to think it had been a rather disappointing outing (few people were actually handing out candy) Kaelyn exclaimed quite happily, "This is the best Halloween EVER!!!" Proof that we should never tell kids how to feel. They know how to find their own joy, we could all stand to learn a lot from them. It made my night for sure.