afternoon sun photo shoot

Stella is busy getting into things these days. She hasn't started to crawl yet but she can scoot around anywhere on her bum. She is loving to empty things and puts everything in her mouth.

Last week I think she cut 3, yes 3 new teeth. Poor girl. Her teeth are totally lopsided. she has 2 on top, the middle one and the one to the left of it and 3 teeth on the bottom, the center two and the one to the right.

She is such a joy to our family. Her and Sydney giggle and laugh at each other, she sends the sweetest smiles across the room and is just learning to wave those cute chubby fingers.

Sydney is taking her first Ballet class. She loves it. She loves wearing her Tutu and flying around the room.

Floridia

Great memories from our trip to Florida:

- Celebrating my Aunt Judy's life on earth and rejoicing for her new life with the Father

- Seeing Cousins after 10 + years

- Skim boarding

- Watching Nate surf

- Seeing my grandparents with their 7 great grandchildren

- watching the sun set

- seeing Sydney swim in the pool by herself with her arm floaties on

- Having afternoon margaritas

- Remembering great past family memories

- Being at the beach

Prayers

To say Sydney loves the Berenstain Bears would be an understatement. She LOVES them. She has almost every book about them. For Christmas she got 'The Berenstain Bears say their prayers". It talks about why we say prayers and show Brother and Sister Bear saying their prayers before bed. Brother and sister bear both kneel down beside their beds and pray with their eyes closed and their heads bowed. So of course Sydney needs to try out how Brother and Sister bear pray. So for the last few nights she has been kneeling by her bed praying. She bows her head and tightly closes her eyes. She tries so hard to sit still but she is fidgeting and squirming all while she is thanking God for the 'flowers and books and everything". But the one thing that has me covering my mouth so not to laugh is that she has ended each prayer lately with, "precious Jesus' and a huge smile.

Christmas

This Christmas was a little different than we had planned ( I think I started last Christmas's blog the same way....?). We had planned on going to Idaho to visit Nate's extended side of the family for Christmas, but with the huge storm that hit Portland, it really wasn't safe/sane to think about doing the drive. So we stayed home and enjoyed the winter wonderland.
The Monday before Christmas we were at home enjoying the beginning of the evening when the power went off. Sydney loved it. She was running around the house turning on every switch to see if it might work. After some debate we decided to pack up the car and go to Nate's parents house in Gresham till Christmas.
We had a great Christmas at their house. We did lots of baking and cooking, lots of puzzles. Sydney now has moved to the 100 piece puzzles. Yes 100. We played in the snow, sat by the fire and enjoyed being with family. We are so blessed by all the love we have from family and friends near and far and feel so thankful for all of God's provisions for our family. It was a great time of Celebrating the birth of our Savior and the blessing of family.

Let it SNOW!!

Well we have been having quite the winter wonderland here in Portland. It has been really fun . We have played in the snow a lot, stayed in our PJ's till lunch, got a lot of house projects done and lots of fun christmas crafts.

moooommmm...what are you doing to me??
This still is not fun for me.

Some rosey red cheeks from the cold.

Nate took a ski on our street to the Spring Water trail. This really is a lot of snow.

We made some salt dough ornaments. Sydney loved it. She wanted to roll them and paint them all day!

Stella

One of the many joys that Stella brings to my life are when we are getting ready for bed. When I put Stella on the changing table and start to get her into her jammies, she starts to get the giggles. They aren't just the 'that tickles' giggles. it is more the I am so giddy and excited to got to bed giggles. i love it! She really just loves getting ready for bed.

On a side note...the night time has not been so easy for us lately. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but since Stella was about a month old I have not been able to eat any dairy products. Evey time I eat dairy Stella has horrible gas and adominal pain. So For the past 5 months I have avoided dairy except eggs and butter. It has been a great discovery because it was so miserable for all o fus when she was in so much pain and crying all the time.

Well, Stell is now 6 1/2 months and I thought it was time to see if she was still having the same issues with dairy. I really didn't want to have to think about if there was dairy in what I ate during the holidays. So I had a couple of days of almost dairy bliss. I ate cheese. Lots of cheese. I had yogurt. Pancakes with milk in the mix, desserts with milk in the batter, sour cream and cheese on my tacos. But low and behold 3 days into my cheese fest, Stella was showing the same symptoms again. So now I am back to a life without dairy. I will have to wait to have my latte or my cookie dough ice cream. I am so thankful Stella is such a wonderful, funny, sweet, beautiful child. She's what makes giving those things up a piece of cake. Oh cake!

The Amazing Race

So Nate had a hollywood debut last night. He was on The Amazing Race. Synergo operates the challenge course at Tilikum that is owned by George Fox University. The amazing race had the challenge course in the finale of the show and Nate was seen during the episode. I tried to get teh link to the epidode. If it doens't work you can go to www/cbs.com and then go to shows and you can see the last Amazing race show. And you will see Nate!

GO NATE!

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race/video/video.php?cid=827787788&pid=jc4Fgay1x60JdU0pKS1hlEHtzFdMpRTg&play=true&cc=30

A-So Syndey what songs did you sing at Church today?

S-Somting 'bout bringin' a door to him

A- about doors?

S- yeah a door to him

A- you mean 'Come let us adore him' ?

S- yeah a door to him

oh christmas tree

I love this time of year. I love the air getting crisp, the leaves all over the ground and the holidays. One of my favorite traditions we have started as a family is getting our Christmas tree the weekend of thanksgiving.

This year we stuck with the tradition and it was just like every other year. Getting the tree home. Trying to find the Christmas decorations, not sure where the ligths are at or if they even work and how in the world did they get so tangled. Then comes possibly the most humorous event, and it is only humorous after the fact. The putting the tree in the Christmas stand, It usually looks like Nate lying on the ground with branches in his face grunting about me not holding the tree straight. Nate asking me if the tree is straight and me not being able to know cause I am stuck holding the tree. It is very hard to tell if the tree is straight if you are holding it. Then I tell him if the tree isn't straight it is because he cut the trunk crooked. Then I get the most annoying comment of ' Oh brother, calm down. This then sends me off the deep end.

This badgering goes on about 3 or 4 times until we decide that it is as straight as it is going to get. Now straight has looked different through out the years. We have done many different tactics to get the tree straight. One year we actually tied string to the tree trunk and closed the string in the window to keep the tree straight and to keep it from falling over. Yes this is really true.

After all is said and down Nate and I end up laughing at each other, once again, getting all worked up over the tree and then sit and stare at the tree and express how much fun the day was.

Stella now can play in the extrasaucer. She loves it. She ahd a graet time playing in it in the backyard when we were doing yard work. She is such a great baby. Full of smiles and pure happy baby sounds.

It was pretty nice out a couple days ago, so we took advantage of it and raked leaves and played on the playhouse that is now finished!

Sydney was so excited that it was now done. She asked me the ohter day if all playhouses take so long to make. I think that lit the fire for Nate to finish it up. It looks so great and the slide is really fun.

Overheard a conversation of Sydney and Nates while I was nursing Stella.

S- Daddy, I miss you when you are at work.
N- you do? How come?
S- Because I really like you daddy.

soo sweet.

Disneyland!

We went to Disneyland!!! It was such a great trip. One of those trips that you think about for weeks in advance and when it is over it was a great as you expected it to be. My mom and Ken so graciously treated Sydney and us with a trip to Disney for Sydney's Birthday. It was so generous of them. Thank you guys again for everything.

Sydney loved Disneyland. She was excited about everything. From the benches outside the park with Mickey Mouse on them to her face lighting up when she got to see Mickey and Minnie. She was a real trooper we went full blast and she didn't nap pretty much the whole trip. Which did lead to a melt down on the day back to Portland.

Here are some pictures. There is just too much to tell. One funny thing is that Sydney went on Pirates of the Caribean but wouldn't go on peter pan. go figure???