Preschool Freeze Dance

Lily and her little cousins Audrey and Aujinay rocking to the Freeze Dance at preschool this week.



Quite a change from Lily's first experience in preschool class last year! A clip - Lily is sitting on the sidelines holding a puppet. She refused to touch a pom pom or participate in the freeze dance for the longest time! Of course, she is older. Now she is just all particular about what color she gets.

I love when Audrey picks up her pom pom and assumes her freeze pose. So cute!

A different kind of feast

I still haven't posted any pictures from Halloween. So I thought I'd start with these creative ways Lily used her Halloween candy this year. I can take no credit here. I found Lily laying out this spread the day after:

She was having so much fun playing with it and wasn't even trying to gorge on it, so I just let her play.

It's kind of funny showing pictures of Lily's Halloween candy, because she didn't really get to eat all that much of it. One night she got the idea to make a gingerbread house with it - her creative way to get the bag down out of the closet. We were doling out just a little each day, and only if she kept her panties dry all day... I was working on something, so she and her Dad looked around the house for graham crackers or something they could use. It ended up being crumbly club crackers. But hey, they did the job!

Her Dad let Lily put as much candy on the house as she wanted to, even sprinkling pink pixie dust snow all over it, just to use it all up. (He's the one who convinced her to get the giant pixie stick at the school carnival in the first place.)

Well, they had a lot of fun. Lily ate some candy while they were doing it, and picked off a few pieces the after, but after that it ended up in the trash. Sneaky dad -spends quality time, and gets rid of the candy!

Real Halloween pictures to come...sometime soon! Life has been a little extra busy. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nothing says Thanksgiving like a hand-print Turkey. And homemade rolls, and for us Boston cream pie - this year I'm trying it with a marble cake - Lindt chocolate and a little cocoa to make the chocolate swirls. Mmm...it smells so good! Got to go see if it's cool enough for the filling, and put the finishing touches on the turkey hunt for the kids... It's going to be a fun day! My heart is filled with gratitude for my many blessings! Hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving!

Oh, how they grow

Earlier this week my sister and I spent a lovely day at the park with these fun kiddos: 

Mostly feeding the ducks. 

As we sat there I couldn't help but think back to the last time we all sat on that dock by the water together.

August 2009

It's so fun watching these little cousins grow and play together!

November 2011

Lily's doesn't call them her cousins, she calls them her best friends. I'm so grateful they can be such a big part of each others' lives. They are such good kids and I love them, love them, love them!

The Thankful Tree

This year I decided it would be fun to make a thankful tree and add new things we are thankful for every day. Mostly just Lily and I have been doing it, but it's been fun to see what my dad and Mike sometimes add, and to ask Lily's cousins to join in when they come by. We put it on the back of the front door so we see it every time we go out. It's been fun and made a nice fall decoration - I think we'll have to make it a yearly tradition. Thanksgiving is possibly my favorite holiday, and of course I want Lily to have happy Thanksgiving memories too - and develop a spirit of gratitude for all the blessings Heavenly Father has given us!

 Some photos of our tree:

(Devoid of gratitude)

Putting up leaves

(Waiting for our ride to preschool)

Our tree getting closer to Thanksgiving

Some close-ups:

Lily can write her name now, except for the Y - so she uses Q.

Can't remember what this says, but it's not 'Lily -' it's something she was grateful for.
Lily is often determined to be the one to write it!

I risked her getting upset for writing on her leaf and added the translation on the side of this one.
"I'm thankful for the kitchen set I got back."
(She lost it for a week for not helping clean up and throwing a toy at me.)

I helped with the Y's but just told her how to spell it otherwise.
She's learning her letters - we are grateful for Starfall.com :)

Oh the things kids are grateful for! 

I think I'll have to keep this one :)

Just some of the other things we are grateful for:

I'm thankful for...


"...all the cups I got."
"...for the lovely family I have...my Mommy, and my Daddy, and my Grandma, and my Grandpa, and Alex!"
"...for the Thankful Tree mom and I made together."
"...for all the lovely leaves I picked at the park."
"...for my lovely family (again)."
"...for church."
"...for Lamby."
"...for the living room." (Sometimes it's obvious she's just looking around the room for ideas)
"...Grandma and Grandpa."
"...for my friends Evie, Aujinay, Isaac, and Audrey, and Auntie Becca."
"...for my new bed."
"...that Christmas is coming!"
"...for my piggy bank with my money in it."
     --Lily


"...for my wonderful family."
"...for hot running water and warm showers."
"...for sunshine."
"...for my happy childhood (and the parents who gave it to me)."
"...for sweet kisses from my little daughter." (She has the cutest way of giving kisses these days. She says: "I think something belongs to you..." and comes over and gives you soft kisses and hugs. So grateful for my sweet little girl!)
"...for Mike and the strength he is to me."
"...for naps!"
"...for holidays and reasons to celebrate throughout the year."
"...for yummy leftovers so I don't have to make dinner."
"...for prayer."
     --Lissy

"...for Lissy and Lily."
"...for my new sketchbook."
"...for having some jobs."
"...for dancing with Lily."
     --Mike


"...for Kathy and for everything and everyone she has brought into this beautiful family."
     --Grandpa Larry

Just for fun - Some Pilgrims and Indians at preschool:

Only 6 more days 'til Thanksgving. We are officially big enough to have a kids table this year. It's so fun watching these little ones grow! Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!!!

I'm grateful for naps

Sleep is the reason I haven't been posting very frequently on my blog. Since I've been pregnant I've seemed to need quite a lot of it! It's funny I didn't realize I was pregnant - like immediately, because looking back there were a couple of days before I'd even missed my period (I remember because it was before our vacation) that I totally crashed on the couch in the morning while Lily was playing - for like 2 hours! I never do that. I do not generally like to take naps in the day because I just feel crummy and groggy afterward rather than refreshed (except when I'm recovering from labor or up all night with a newborn of course). Anyway, sleep has been a greater priority to me lately than almost anything else. And it's been harder to get a good night's sleep than I would have anticipated it being so early on. It's not like I had a big belly or should even have been able to even feel the baby as early as it became uncomfortable for me... But some kind of hormones are kicking in and doing a number on my lower back or something. Plus pregnancy brings me loads of crazy dreams!

Well, the belly is getting bigger, though I can still sleep on my stomach so far, but I was sorting through maternity clothes today thinking I'm probably about ready for them, and I think for the most part they'll have to wait... Feeling a little bit happy that I'm not growing, growing out of control...because everybody tells you with your second pregnancy that you get bigger so much faster 'Now that your body knows what to do it will just be like - boing!' I think it is faster, but not crazily so. :)

We've already started making some changes to make room for our new baby. Since we are still living with my parents we are pretty tight on space, but luckily we've always been pretty good at making do and thinking outside the box! That phrase always makes me roll my eyes a little. Lily now has her own room, and we sort of do... We decided to try our luck with veteran's day sales to buy some new mattresses. I didn't want to wait too long to make all these changes so Lily would have time to adjust before the baby is born. That will be change enough to deal with, I'm sure!

Lily having fun hugging huge stuffed animals as we tested out beds:

We bought a day bed and a trundle for our downstairs room and passed our king size bed on to my parents. If you think about it it's still kind of like we have a king size bed...it's just retractable. It's ridiculously high because we had to raise it up a bit to make room for our plush mattresses - we were not about to buy the scrawny 8-inch ones that typically fit on day beds. I'm pregnant for heaven's sake! - I need a decent mattress. So this is what our double-decker bed looks like downstairs.

I still need to figure out a daytime cover and pillows to make it double as an insanely high couch...but check it - when you pull out the trundle it's kind of like stadium seating!

We could fit 6 adults on this to watch movies! - if the frame is sturdy enough that that wouldn't make it collapse...doubtful. We don't have that many friends over anyway. Maybe we'll just make do with what we've got - it looks like a big ivory cloud as it is, so inviting :)

I am super excited that Lily finally has her own room! With her own big girl bed with trundle too. She was totally getting too big for her toddler bed. On this she looks little again! It's so nice to have all the extra floor space for her to play. She's been excited enough about her cute new bed and darling owl sheets that she hasn't gotten too bummed about the change yet. She still sometimes tells me she doesn't like all our changes downstairs - I think mostly because the hard floor isn't as comfortable to sit and play on (but it sure is a dream for messes!), but she's also just a bit resistant to change. So far so good, we haven't been pushy about where she sleeps and she's choosing the new bed on her own, and getting to the original topic of this post...

Though Lily doesn't always nap every day now - I'm so grateful she naps as much as she does! Hopefully it will continue until some time after we get adjusted to another baby! Today I got totally sleepy while Lily was watching a show after eating lunch. The classical music in Little Einsteins was making me think about pulling out the trundle bed downstairs and just laying down for a minute. I couldn't resist - it was calling me! An hour later, after I finally dragged myself out of my sleep state, I went out to the living room and discovered this:

Lily pulled out this blanket and made herself a bed on the floor and put herself down for a nap! -This from the girl who has always claimed to be incapable of pulling up her own covers. How nice it was to get a little nap myself and wake up and to no nap-time battle and some time to myself! A hot shower, a little time to just sit alone and think, a little blogging - bliss! I'm so grateful for naps!