Wilton...

...is a little slice of heaven on earth. It also happens to be where my sister's family has recently moved. It is a smallish "country"-style farming community southeast of Sacramento. To give you a sampling of the kind of animal life that exists in their neighboring ranches/pastures, we have seen cows, horses, lamas, goats, donkeys, a zebra, some camels, and zillions of hawks. Their home is large, spacious and waiting for them to spend years and years growing into it. Their lot of land is also amply roomy, and at this point it's more a matter of "taming the wild" because there is just so much grass everywhere! Since their move in December, they have invested tons into this house, and I can tell you they have succeeded in making it feel like home. It is a comfortable and happy place. I am so happy for them and so proud of their efforts.

Anyway, we've been staying with them for the past several days, and it has felt like some of the happiest, most pleasant and carefree days of my life. The kids have played gloriously well together - watching them interact and enjoy each other is reason enough alone to be having the time of my life. Not to mention Larisa and I have had nonstop talking time - we both have noticed our phones have been strangely silent since our arrival - and even our spouses have been having a grand time. Do I really have to go home and face reality in a couple of days?

The only thing that I wish I could change would be the distance from our home to theirs - I wish it was more like a walk around the corner instead of a 9 hour car ride.

Will post adorable photos once we're home. :)

Gratitude Attitude

I am grateful for opposable thumbs. I am grateful that mine have worked perfectly for the past 32.5 years of my life. I am grateful that my right thumb was functional for most of today.

I am grateful for my amazing sister. She gave me a bunch of spa gift certificates for my birthday, which was back in November, but which I finally redeemed today. It was heavenly. I had a fantastic massage and a rejuvenating pedicure, for which my disgusting feet were exceedingly grateful.

I am grateful for lots of other things too, but those things have been on my brain, and I wanted to publicly share them with the world. Right thumb, you are great, hang in there! Larisa, thanks for the best birthday present ever, I love you tons!

tender mercies

So it's 7:41 am and my almost 10-month-old has not yet woken up for the day. Strange! She is up around 6:30 am like clockwork every morning. We've even been in and our of the garage several times already this morning - me to the gym, Nate to work. I feel like I have so much to get done today...Could this be a tender mercy frm the Lord, allowing me 5 minutes to shower before the day really hits? Better not waste it at the computer!

As a quick side note/follow up from my last post, middle child is making great strides in "growing up" a little more these days. And yes, I am using a dry-erase marker chart on the fridge with occasional candy incentives. :)

Not all incenctives/threats are considered equal...

...among children. For example, our middle daughter is so wonderful. So happy, so loving, so sweet. Except when she's not (like most children).

Anyway, back to the point of this post, there comes a point in a parent's life when you suddenly realize out of nowhere, "Whoa, my child is not a little baby or toddler or whatever anymore - they need to do a little growing up." So this has happened with me and our middle daughter lately.

One of the things I realized she wasn't doing entirely on her own, which thing I know she is entirely capable of doing, is getting dressed. She can do it, she just prefers someone else to do it for her. So this morning she was feeling extra lazy and I was feeling extra stubborn, and I told her she couldn't come out of her room until she dressed herself. She has not screamed, not banged on the door, not yelled, not cried...she has just been dinking around in her room contentedly for the past hour and 15 minutes.

Now if this had been her older sister, a huge fit would have been pitched, but after about 10 minutes of horrific solitutde, she'd have been dressed and out the door. Now with this lovely middle child, I'm sure things like incentice charts with stickers would work great. But the problem is, I just don't feel like going to "all that effort." (I know, probably not such a big deal.) I would really rather that she just realize it is her duty as a big girl to dress herself and do it from now on, every day for the rest of her life.

Anyway, there are several other areas - which I will not disclose because I feel they would reflect poorly on me as a parent ;) - in which our lovely daughter #2 needs to "grow up" some more, so I probably will have to resort to some sort of responsibility chart with stickers and rewards and all that. Sigh! In the meantime, I should probably rethink a strategy for getting her to dress herself today.

The Level Just Below Disgusting

Me: What do you want in your lunch today, a juice box or chocolate milk?
S: Chocolate milk.
Me: Pringles or Teddy Grahams?
S: Pringles.
And so on. Until we got to the Gogurt element.
Me: So did the ice pack help the Gogurt stay frozen yesterday?
S: No, not really. It was disgusting.
Me: (Pause) So, the Gogurt was disgusting?
S: Well, it was the level just below disgusting.

Nice. Especially since that is about the 50th time she's taken a frozen Gogurt to school. So either she's been ditching her Gogurts every time I send them, or else I've been subjecting my child to practically disgusting food over and over again. Honestly!

* * * * *

And here's a quick anecdote to show how well (or poorly) teenage-girls can multi-task these days:

Last night at the gym, I saw a high-school aged girl wearing volleyball booty spanx. She was about as tall as a gazelle and probably twice as skinny, so she attracted quite a lot of attention wherever she was, but it was impossible not to notice her once she started galloping into the bathroom, clearly in dire need to use the facilities. She stated quite loudly: "It is so hard to pee and text at the same time!" and I thought, "Never mind about working out. That is why you're at the gym, right?" So disturbing on so many levels!

Holly turns 4!!

Oh, our little Holly! I can hardly believe she's already 4. All I can say about her is that she is an absolute delight. We love her so much.

I make birthday posters for everyone's birthday, and this year hers reads: "ALL ABOUT HOLLY: Happy - bOok-lover - Lots of love - bLueberry eyes - Yellow-haired Likes: vanilla ice cream, pizza, the colors red & pink, bananas, books, nail polish, snuggles, her family and friends". She wanted a blue cake with pink frosting, and Nate would eat nothing less than a homemade cake, so I made a homemade white chocolate cake with buttercream frosting - and dyed the inside blue and the frosting pink. She also wanted the cake decorated with M&M's, which came in handy. I think it turned out rather well, despite all the specific requests.

I had planned a playdate party in the park, which I was super excited about and sounded like a great idea beforehand. However, what it turned into was a blustery nightmare that was pretty much the exact opposite of what I had invisioned; luckily, we have some wonderful friends and family who came to play with Holly, ignored the wretched wind and my flustered mess-of-an-attempt at a party, and had a good time. Lesson learned: I will never, ever plan any kind of party at the park again. However, the most important thing was accomplished: Holly got to play with all her friends on her birthday!

We finished her day at Metro, where she ate pizza and drank root beer. A happy end to a happy birthday!

Valentine's Day

We have a lot of love around our house when it gets to be mid-February - we have Valentine's Day, our anniversary the next day, and Holly's birthday the day after that.

So this year for Valentine's Day, we started a couple of new traditions: Daddy-daughter dates and heart-attacked doors. Nate took Holly out for ice cream and a carousel ride, and later he took Sydney to a UNLV basketball game and dinner at a local greasy spoon, which turned out to be quite a little gem of a place. I decorated their door, and we called it good! It was a fun day.

Oh, and Emily was adorably chewing on little books all day. Well, maybe not all day, but I had to include this cute picture of her.