My First Attempt

Those of you who know me know my daughter is allergic to milk. Normally she copes with this quite well. The only thing she repetitively laments over is her denial of ice cream.....but she loves sorbet.

So being the incredibly wonderful mother that I am (hey I can exagerate, it's my blog) I decided to make her some apple sorbet... quite a lot of it, infact. How do you like THAT run-on sentence!?

Here's mine.

Here are the kids "enjoying" it. I asked Lucy to smile, cause guess what? She's the kid that didn't like it. Fail. Blah.

But hey, I liked it.

Teeth

I remember when Clyde's front teeth came in. And all the silliness that happened...like Mommy doing a dance when she saw that toothy grin. I remember how much pain it caused my poor baby boy. I remember calling everyone in our family to share the news. And many family members came over to see my baby's mouth.

On Sunday Clyde lost his first tooth...he's adorable, but it made me sad. Our tradition is that the "tooth fairy" brings our kids a book and puts it under their pillow. He was afraid he'd get a fairy book like Lucy. Whew! It was a Spiderman book. Boy, was that a relief.

Then on Tuesday, he lost his second tooth....as you can see, his big boy teeth had already been growing behind his loose baby teeth. They've been loose a LONG time and caused him more headache than his sister ever had. This time he got a Superman book.

And here are those teeth I remember growing in not so very long ago. And of course, when he lost each one, Mommy did a little dance when she saw that toothy grin. I endured all the pain they caused my poor baby boy, trying to fall out. I called everyone in our family to share the news. And family members came over to see my baby's mouth.

My Sweetie Made A Plan

It is basically unheard of for Stephen to plan ahead and surprise me for any occasion. I love him dearly and he has MANY, MANY lovely qualities, but being spontaneous or romantic were not doled out to his sweet soul the day God did the doling.

BUT this year, he did plan ahead. And he would have surprised me too, but he couldn't stand keeping it to himself and he let the cat out of the bag. He made reservations to one of my favorite restaurants and hired a WONDERFUL babysitter (we have never hired a babysitter before). The kids were almost more excited than us....ALMOST.
Oh my goodness....I got a orange pomegranate martini and it was.....it was just...delectable.

We ordered the same thing!!! This never happens! Here is our tomato basil soup. Mmmmmmm


Oh the steak! Oh how tender and juicy and flavorful! And those mashed potatoes were better than any mashed potatoes I've had in my life...I can still taste them. And the sauteed sugar snap peas....scrumptious!


Okay, so desert, we did different things. I do love chocolate, but I ADORE bread pudding. So I got this......


And Stephen got this......


YUM! You guys shoulda been there....but that would have maybe spoiled the valentineyness.

My Little Seamstress

This is Lucy's first "real" sewing project. By "real", I think she means, I didn't help her much and she had to do a lot of work. First she washed the fabric, picked out her project and design. Here she is doing her own ironing. She sort of burnt herself twice :( But she was very brave and kept going....this is monumental folks, cause she's my wimpy kid when it comes to pain! And just so everyone knows how much patience this poor girl has with her procrastinating momma, the day that she cut and pieced this project was back in MAY!



Next, she told me for whom this project was intended...she decided this herself and told me she was NOT keeping it herself. Then she cut all the pieces out herself and started marking the seam allowances.



I demonstrated how to thread the machine, then I meanly pulled it all out and left her to do it herself. Here she is piecing her squares together.



Nine months later....her Mommy finally pulls the pieced square out for her to complete. Now for the fun part!.....the hand work! Just so everyone knows, I think Lucy's sewing kit is the cutest in the world!


Okay, okay....I did pin her project together and tie her knots, but that's truly all I did and I didn't tie very good knots. So here's a close up of one of her sweet-baby-girl-hand-stitches.







This was all very frustrating at first, but she persevered. See that face, her frustrated face crackers me up.



All of that hand quilting was nothing to the time-consuming binding which she did the next day. But here she is with her finished product. Oh the joys of finishing a piece of hard work.



And the final stage....giving it to Miss Emily, whom it was intended to go to for nine months! Yay!

Valentine's Stuff :)

Lucy starts making her valentines by cutting 3 hearts per valentine....she's making 30 so....well you can do the math....and that doesn't count the circles and leaves. :) Here's a close up of one completed Valentine.and here's the whole bouquet!Here are Iris' valentines...she glued princesses onto paper and traced her name on the back. Some how I didn't get a picture of her doing this :(But the REALLY bizarre valentines to create were Clyde's, which required 30 Clyde heads cut out of wallet sized pictures. Kinda freaky looking, huh?Here's Clyde with a completed Valentine.Here's a shot of all the Clyde-aliens drying.Cupcakes for the homeschool group Valentine's party.ummmm....a close up of CHOCOLATEthe kiddos making boxesthere are the boxes....just waiting! here are the kids trying to deposit their valentines. Fun was had by all, I hope!!! Sorry about all the pics and words that I accidently typed as links! :) It's late and I'm not fixing it.

Iris' Little Mermaid Party

My baby turned four Jan. 30 and we FINALLY had her party! Here she is with her cake.
Here all the girls are playing. They were really very good. At least for the first 45 minutes, it was the quietest kid birthday party ever. I mean, they had fun, but they were eerily quiet.
Here's the birthday girl with her party guests!
She is modeling her Ariel outfit, Ariel tiara and Ariel bubble necklace. We had a lot of Ariels in this party. I really should have counted them all.
After the party was over, I set the timer and took a family pic. (Clyde was at his grandparents)

Rissa's Birthday Dinner

This was the first year Iris got a birthday dinner. You may have read about our "birthday dinners" in my previous blog. Once the kids are old enough to ask for their own dinner, Mom and Paul take us all out to that child's choice of restaurant for their b-day. Iris' pick was Logan's. She calls it the "peanut restaurant". Here you see why she is our silliest child.
After dinner we went to my Mom's and had cookies....with LOTS of icing. Here we are kissing our new four year old.
Here she is hamming it up while big bro and sis show their affection. She's not usually this sweet when they do this, but she knew the sooner she cooperated the sooner she'd eat that cookie ;)
Mom and Sherry kiss the four year old ham.
Just general cuteness. Afterwards, she opened gifts. My favorites are always what her brother and sister buy her with their own money. Clyde bought her a microwave and Lucy bought her some kiddie eye shadow. But I think her favorite was this....
Her aunt Sherry got her some shoes with "diamonds". She wears them constantly, even on the COOOOLD days. Kinda like fingernail polish...I don't know where she got that love for shoes!