Ruby Love...

Ruby is such a fun girl to have in the family! She is goofy lots of the time, but sensitive and sweet the rest of the time. She loves to be told she has rosy cheeks (I think in one of her bedtime story books, a princess is described as having rosy cheeks), she thrives on recognition of her good choices and she tries her very best to be the best sister she can be to Alice. Lately, when she is sad, she says, "I want Nana". Nana is Chris' grandma, and Ruby has always really loved her, even when she was really young and timid. It seems a little odd given that young children aren't usually around elderly people, and we only see Nana maybe once a year at best. Anyway, they must have a special bond because out of nowhere about two months ago, Ruby started asking for her.

Another person she asks for on a regular basis is my mom, "Oma." So last night when she had stubbed her toe and had been crying, I was comforting her and she said, "I want Oma." So we called her on the phone. While they phone was ringing, Ruby was saying, "Hi Oma!" in an enthusiastic voice. I said, "She's not there yet," and she said, "I'm just cheering up my whining voice!" I thought that was a nice idea. I have never coached her to do so, and I wasn't really considering her voice as whining because she was hurt, but it was nice to see her make that choice. Still, as soon as she had Oma on the phone, it was an all sad voice to get as much love and sympathy from Oma as possible.

Keith Urban Concert

For Sommer's birthday, a friend and I went in on her ticket to see Keith Urban in concert. I bought the accompanying ticket and we went on Saturday night after my fun day of shopping (See post below). We hit The Melting Pot for appetizers and dessert and got to the concert in good time. It was a very good show. The Wreckers, Michelle Branch's new band opened and they were good. Keith was amazingly talented, he never sang without playing an instrument at the same time. A true musician. Sommer and I had fun. We were in good company with people in their sixties and youngsters alike. We were representing the mommies.

Jenn and Bret's Wedding

Chris and Jenn heading to Jr. Prom in 1994.

We just had such a great weekend. My friend of almost 20 years, Jenn, who was also Chris' friend in High School (they went to Jr. Prom together) was married to her sweetheart Bret this weekend. It was a special time for us to see they exchange vows and enjoy such a romantic evening that they planned for a long time. Their wedding was at the Edgewater Hotel, the only waterfront hotel in Seattle. It was gorgeous. You can see in the pictures what I mean. Anyway, we got to leave our girls with my parents and enjoy the wedding and following reception and then we went downstairs and stayed at the hotel! My friend Sandy hooked us up through someone she knows with an amazing rate, so we had to stay! Our room was so fancy, on the water with beautiful views of the Puget Sound. Our friends, Kelly and Danny and their baby Aksel stayed in a neighboring room, so we had breakfast in the morning before we checked out at noon. Chris went to get the girls and head home to Puyallup and I went shopping for the afternoon before meeting my friend Sommer for the fun that is listed in my next post! (I have pictures of us there and of Jenn, but I haven't gotten them off the camera yet.)

The Edgewater Hotel



That isn't Jenn, I got this off of the web, but that is the room where she was married, it was really gorgeous.

Ruby's First Day of Preschool

After much too much consideration and too many tours and ideas and plans, I finally settled on Ruby's preschool. It will remain nameless for the sake of protecting the kids from predators, but it is a Montessori and she went today for the first time! There are about 15 kids in the class ranging from 3-6 in age. There are about 5 in each age group. Anyway, it was the closest thing with openings to what I wanted for her, and she like the first day.

Love the sibling pic. Ruby gets closer and Alice uses her head to push Ruby away. Oh well.

She goes in the afternoons, which is nice because Alice hates it when Ruby isn't around and she goes on and on with the "Ah Wah Wooby" until she sees her again. With this schedule, we drop Ruby off and head home for naptime. Then I grab Alice up from her nap and we go get Ruby 2 hours and 45 minutes later. It is a great time of the day!

Camping at Scenic Beach

Eden, confident as can be walking down this hill.

Wyatt smiles!

Mimi and Jensen
Happy as can be waiting for treats!

Birthday treats for all the kids!

Kesley digging in.

Alice is very expressive when she talks. She gets her eyebrows going along with some really puckered lips for emphasis. When she's really serious, she bobs her head from side to side with each changing syllable...hard work! Here I think she is asking for another treat "TEET".
It is funny to me that although my kids have me at their beck and call and they rarely have a need or want that goes unanswered, everytime they ask me for anything, they approach me as if I am going to say no! Here is Alice with her most classic of requests, "Ah wah wadoo" and even though she is like one foot from me and she has my full attention AND she is holding the "wadoo" in question, she attacks me with the assumption that I am going to ignore her. It is so funny. Ruby does it too...if Alice asks for pretzels and I go to give her some, Ruby will be like, "I WANT some too!", using that voice that suggests I'm going to give some to Alice and not her. Maybe it will sink in someday.

Alice liked getting her head wet.

I don't know if I have ever documented Alice's preferred stance. She loves to squat like this. It is more common for her to squat than sit. She can do it for a long time, just playing on the floor.

Ellie and Mimi

" Crab City"

Ryan, Greg and Owen heading for a cool dip in the Puget Sound.

Alice loves cuddles...so does daddy!

Sitting around the fire.

Ruby and Kiley, friends since infancy!

We took Labor Day weekend and went on our second annual camping trip with a bunch of our friends. There were approximately 20 adults and maybe 25 kids. It was a little overcast and sprinkly the day we arrived, but never did the sprinkles turn into bonafide rain...then the clouds disappeared and we were able to enjoy the beach the following day. We reserved a really private group camping site, and the kids ran wild and the adults enjoyed relaxing and laughing. The kids enjoyed catching little crabs at the beach, and they made "crab city" on a paper plate for all their crabs to safely play together. Some even ventured into the cold Puget Sound water. We also celebrated Jensen's Birthday! His mom was so organized that she brought cupcakes from home and frosted them for everyone.

Pet Frog!

I was out watering my annual planters and I could see that there was a frog hiding in my plant! I was able to catch him, and he was our pet for a week or so before we let him go back to his family. We took him out every evening and let him hop around and eat bugs. It was fun squealing with the girls as every hop was a surprise to us all.

We all were lucky enough to have Uncle Doug, Chris' little brother come and stay with us for a couple of weeks. He worked at Trident and helped a lot around the house.

AUCTION SUCCESS! Raised $35,000

Our Committee with Colleen: Top: Colleen, Mimi. Middle:

Rachel, Mindy, Sheri, Lisa. Front: me and Leah. Candice and Charlie aren't pictured.

It is funny to me that I never posted about the auction until I finally finished with the auction catalog. I have been contacting local businesses for donations and I took on the responsibility of creating our auciton catalog, where every item that we auctioned off (122 silent items and 21 live items) were all described with thanks to their sponsors. It had advertisments in it, a letter from Mimi, the founder, and information about the cause.

The night could have gone better with regards to the food, which was cold and looked like it came from the freezer, then the micrwoave...but it was a perfect night otherwise. Really. It was so awesome to see so many people gather together to support a family that is so special to so many.

John Curley, the auctioneer and a local TV celebrity was so amazing in his role. He'd only done one other non-alchoholic auction, and it definitely forces him to perform and be more entertaining. He had lots of jokes up his sleeve. He was very interested in Colleen, the woman we did the event for and they had a lengthy conversation about ways he can help. He is jumping on board with some of her causes, and I feel the even aside from the $40k we raised ($35k last night, but about $5k more over the last six months with all our efforts and after the cost of the evening). He gave this lady his paddle at the beginning of the night and told her that when he kicked his leg, she had to raise his paddle and bid for him. This really got the crowd going and seemed to bid people up a few different times. He said it was illegal, but it was all in the spirit of a good cause, right?! He may have been joking, I'm not sure. When there were items that weren't selling well or that he thought we going to be hard to sell, he'd throw in stuff. He threw in a night at the Westin in Seattle, dinner for two at El Gaucho, and he even threw in a VASTECTOMY! RANDOM! That was the funniest part of the night because he was teasing this guy whose wife was expecting and trying to get him to bid. Anyway, someone did bid high on that...it is a useful procedure, after all! There was one time when he won an item at $700 and so he asked the lady who donated it (it was a muralist who offered to do decorative painting all over the walls of one child's bedroom) if she'd do two if they both sold for $700. She said yes, so he bought both of them and gave one to the family that he outbid...so we did ding his credit card the $1400.

We had a very talented friend sing "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban and during that we played a slideshow of Colleen at her various stages of recovery and treatment. It was emotional and effective for helping to get everyone there thinking of the bigger picture. Colleen herself got up to speak and she was full of gratitude and said really nice things.

Anyway, it is OVER and it was worth it, but I know that it is not the best thing for my kiddos to have me so consumed by something like this. Working full-time is definitely hard with kids underfoot. I think today, I am going to do what we used to do everyday and haven't done for months...we are going to spend all day in the toy room playing with toys! Maybe we'll go for a walk or to the park as well! It will be fun, Alice might not even remember the good old times when we used to do that!

THE AUCTION

I know I haven't mentioned this yet, but evidence is found in the lack of posts over the past few months. A good friend of mine started an organization to raise money for a local family that is in our ward. We originally thought we'd like to do a silent auction at the YMCA, and it was going to be low-key and simple. About two months into our effort, I contacted a local news show called Evening Magazine. Their host, John Curley, wound up volunteering ($4,000 savings) to be our auctioneer. He does over 50 a year and is the best auctioneer for getting people to donate and bid high. Anyway, when we had him come on board, we postponed our auction and went headfirst into the process of a fancier silent auction/live auction/dinner event for 200 people. Though I wasn't planning to be overly involved, it just isn't like me to be on the sidelines. Anyway, I have had a lot of fun with the preparation and it has been a lot of work. I am thrilled that in 48 hours, it will all be over! I'll definitely be posting about our success.

McCall...

Ruby, Emma and Alice playing in the sand.
Hailey, Ruby and Emma had fun in this little boat.

McCall Trip

Ruby is a cuddler. Here she is wrapped up in a blanket with McCall (yes, named for the city where we were...where the family all gathers every year), my cousin.

We got to go to McCall for a whole week and the weekends on both ends. It was a nice break to relax, get some sun and play in the water. The highlight for our family was Ruby learning how to swim on her own! She's been in the process of this, but it was the daily water time that pushed her to swimming independence. She will jump off the wall of a pool and swim underwater, come up for air and head back under for more swimming. It is thrilling as her parent to see her make this progress...I don't know why, it just is. Here she is playing with my cousin's daughter, Paige.

Here she is jumping off of the dock. The first time she did it, she wanted me to jump in first, so I did. It was early in the morning and cold out still, and I expected to be there coaching her and encouraging here for a while, but she just jumped right in as soon as I was watching. It is deep water and the dock is a good 2.5 feet off the water. WAY TO GO RUBY!

All Things Alice

Every morning when I get Alice out of her crib, she has this collection of stuff she insists on carrying out with her. Sometimes it is visibly stressful for her to manage all the different things, but she always finds away. It is best if I can distract her quickly from this fixation, because it is unrealistic for her to tote these things around for very long. Anyway, it is an Alice favorite.

Alice has such a fun personality. She is at that age now where it is almost painful to love her so much with all her new discoveries and precious conversation contributions. "Wook ad me!", "I wah wadah", "wayas wooby"...she said her first prayer about a week ago and as it goes with most kids, Chris would say, "thank you for our food" and she'd chime in, "food", with a big "AMEN!" at the end. She is just full of energy and spunk. I feel like a broken record, "Alice, we don't hit", "Just a minute, Alice", "no touchies, Alice"...I feel like I need to write my own, "No, David" book (a household favorite). She loves to say goodbye and goodnight to just about everything. When leaving the car, "Bye bye taw...bye bye seat...bye bye pop-coh-see (popcicle)" as she passes the freezer. At bedtime, she will say, "nite nite" to everyone in the house as well as many people who aren't. She does so with such enthusiasm. Here are a few pictures that capture some of her personality.

This is classic Alice...the excited, scrunched up face, with sand

and mischief stuck all over her face. I haven't caught

it on camera yet, but often she'll put both of her hands over

her mouth when she is really excited.

"Dooty" she says, showing me her sand covered hand.

Cooperative Subjects

Ruby is a really good sport when it comes to posing for pictures. Occasionally she'll suggest that I take a picture or two of some of her toys, and they are cooperative too. Alice on the other hand not only doesn't sit for a second to take a picture, but she also isn't photogenic, so pictures that I do take of her tend not to look like her. The last time I tried to get a shot of Alice, she decided I should take a shot of her lovey, Lion. Lion was very cooperative! Alice was very proud of her idea and was thrilled everytime I clicked away on my camera. P.S. I was planning on headshots, that is why she isn't dressed. Well, it's not why she isn't dressed, but it explains why I didn't get her dressed for pictures.

Lexi the Lion poses very patiently.

Belle and Cinderella love posing for pictures.