Heroine's Club...

Jennifer Jarrett, or if you grew up in Mill Creek like I did, Jennifer Bradbury did a homeschool book club for girls called "Heroine's Club" for the 2011/12 school year. It was all the way in Mill Creek (a 75 minute drive) by my folks' house and was held every other Friday. Friday. Worst traffic day. 2:30-4:00...Yes...nap time. Friday at nap time 75 minutes from home. Thankfully, it was Ruby and Alice's favorite thing we did with groups this year. They loooooved it. (If you are reading this thinking, "no they didn't" it is probably because you are either my mom or my sister-in-law, Heather. Once Heather's cute family relocated from E. WA and moved temporarily in with my folks, it was like separating mama bear from her cubs...my kids would rather stare at a blank wall with their cousins than go to Disneyland with their friends. Okay, probably not quite that dramatic...but they really, really love their cousins.)

Jennifer did a great job of planning fun activities for the kids. Each month was a different book...
October: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, November: Little House in the Big Woods, January: Charlotte’s Web, February: Heidi, March: A Little Princess, April: The Wizard of Oz, May: The Blue Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang (Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks, and Snow White and Rose-red). The meetings started with the girls bringing a "focus item" that reminded them of the book or correlated somehow. They would share their item and talk about how it tied in with the book and then they would have a narration (report) given by one girl (Ruby did hers on Little House in the Big Woods" and Alice was on "Wizard of Oz". After that they would discuss a little more and then do an activity. They learned to finger knit, they made bread, they embroidered, visited an assisted living home with valentine's in hand, had a tea party, etc.

At the end of the year, the girls were in a play based on one of the fairy tales we read, "Twelve Dancing Princesses". It was cute and short and sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved reading with my girls and reading books with such interesting and inspiring heroines!

Cell Phone Randomness...

Chris takes so many interesting (not so much) pictures of things on his cell phone. I had to include this one.  

I travelled twice to UT for my good friend Monica's wedding. I ditched my driver's license in the Seattle airport and they sent it home. I didn't have my ID still when I was flying home...guess what a big deal that was? Not an issue at all. They didn't even care. I told them, "they told me to show you my Costco card" and they didn't ask who "they" were (SEATAC housekeeping lady)...they just glanced at it and sent me through. What if I were plotting something terrible!?
 

My friends and I gave Kelly a little shower for her third baby boy! We did a moustache theme and it was a lot of fun. We started at a spa for pedis and some got manis or massages...then to a good restaurant for delicious food and fun conversation. I was in charge of the decorations/theme with Kel's sister in law and we were happy how it came together.
 

 

 

I love my "sissies". That's what we call them...the "sissies." 

Shopping with Betsey can be kind of hard if she finds something she wants. Here she is hoarding some webkinz at Justice. That was fun.

Betsey got $5 from her Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Hamm for her birthday. She spent it all on the rides at our local mall. It was super cute and she was thrilled and it may have ruined her forever...I'll never let her do that many rides in one trip! :) She is lucky to have such wonderful great grandparents!

Sleeping with the enemy...

If I had a scale of 1-10 where 1 is enemy and 10 is bff...Betsey would fluctuate between 1 and 10 all day, sometimes even extreme enough to achieve enemy or bff status. Right before naptime, she is my enemy. Especially beause she won't walk her own body upstairs, she won't sleep in her crib and I have to give my free time to her nap. I have to say, sleeping with your kid is such a chance for them to redeem themselves! I just love how she wants to hold my hand while we fall asleep! I love watching her sleep and I love it when we wake up and chat together and play for a bit before joining the real world again. If we didn't share the same naptime, I'm pretty sure she'd never fully be able to redeem herself from enemy status.

 

 

Fieldtrip to the Post Office...

We started out on the city bus...it was something that Alice was asking me about, and she thought it sounded like great fun to ride a bus with friends like the public school children. She wouldn't ride a bus until High School if she did go to public school because we live so close to the schools. Anyway, I used to ride the bus home with my friend, Russ Brown in elementary school and I told her how special and fun that was. We decided to do it as a co-op one day on our way to a fieldtrip to the Post Office!

Mattie Guthrie, Ruby and Mikaili

In preparation for the trip the kids wrote letters to each other to mail from the post office.

You can see one of the co-op letters there with the child's writing on the envelope. So cute!

Our tour was lengthy (maybe too much so for our ages) and thorough. The guide was easy on the eyes to boot. :) 

Pigtails...

Spa Day in the Family Room. Ruby's idea...

My kids are not small thinkers when it comes to filling up an afternoon. It is exhausting to tow the line between letting them create and explore and mess make and just plain wishing I could flip on the TV and have a clean house. One of today's messes...a spa in our already messy family room.

Anyone think a tub full of water with a 2 year old splashing in it is a good idea for your carpeted family room? Anyone?

Apples work in a pinch if you don't have cucumbers (in this case, we had three cucumbers but they weren't consulting me!).

The only way we talked Betsey away from the foot soak was to promise her a massage on her own towel. Here she is awaiting her apple eye treatment.

Once Betsey's massage began, there was no moving onto Alice's massage...immediate squaking would result. 

 

Betsey is TWO!!!

My baby Bets turned two on March 18th. Today is July 13th, and I have had these pics uploaded for ages but no text...and now of course I can't remember that much about Betsey four months ago...I mean, she seems the same to me now, I just know that four months really have held a lot of change. FAMILY LETTER TO THE RESCUE!!! What is the family letter? It is a monthly summary written by Chris or I for the Pierce (Porter) side of the family. Chris has a smallish family. On his dad's side of the family he has only one uncle, one deceased aunt and one aunt that we haven't met yet but has married into the family more recently. That's it. On his mom's side of the family there is just one Uncle, one aunt and four cousins. Anyway, we all write into the newsletter hopefully every month and it is really helpful at times like these if I was detailed enough in my account to the family (I really don't know if anyone really reads the family letter very carefully, but I write for my own journaling and for the grandparents and Nana at the very least. Wow, this is quite a tangent. Anyway, thanks to the family letter, there is a lot recorded by me about Betsey right at 2!!

Here it is... Wow, I just looked through the calendar and saw that the only big deal news from March is that Betsey turned TWO! She's been perfecting two for some time now, but it is now official. She's actually gotten a bit nicer recently now that we finally realized she isn't a baby and it's time to teach her what is right and what is wrong. :) She is talking a ton, I feel like every time she opens her mouth she is saying something I didn't know she could say. I love it. Even though her language development is typical, I have to write a list of her words here for record keeping sake...
Hodjou=hold you (hold me)
Hep you-help you (let me do it)
Mommy okay?=due to the miscarriage, my mom was taking care of me and the kids for a day and Betsey must have asked her this question 10 dozen times before lunch. So sweet.
pano=piano
pay=play
puzzle
baf=bath (she wants one at least three times per day)
nie nite=yes, she actually asks to go to bed when she's ready. It's amazing and she's accurate on her timing. meow meow, kitta, cat, kitty=she is obsessed with cats and these are the various names.

She isn't interested in television unless there are live animals on the show. She likes "Dogs with Jobs" and other animal shows. Right now, she is screeching "Meow meow" at the computer screen while a youtube video called "The Funniest Cat Video!" plays for the third time since I started this letter. She is very active when watching these videos, she talks to the cats and consoles them and laughs at them and imitates them. Right now, she has one hand pointing at the screen and the other is covering her mouth like she's surprised. Oh wait, it ended...and now the screaching is starting. She looooooooooooves cats.

Here's a list of words: slide, swing, sissy, Ruby, Alice "Aye Aye", cheese, cracker, fishy, bread, sandwich, cookie, candy, treat, please, thank you (which she likes to repeat over and over again), water, milk, bottle, bath, shower, wash, hair, eye, nose, mouth, teeth, hand, foot, shoe, boot, go, daddy work, Stone, dog, yeah, no, nope, button, colors, markers, brush, pretty, owie, better, fall down, bed, Betsey, kiss, hug, hat, hot, cold, cereal, potty, pooh pooh, diaper, wipes, yucky, mess, say it...and so much more, I just can't get it all down and I can't imagine even Betsey will care in 20 years to read more. :)

Betsey loves babies. Sometimes I wonder if she needs a break from all the carrying, blanketing, feeding and caring for her babies that goes on. She seriously doesn't give herself much of a break...sometimes she juggles as many as four babies all at one time. Guess who gets to dress them and undress them all day long? Me! :) She is very nurturing and sweet. She isn't very aware that Ruby, Alice and I have different roles in her life. She is with us all day every day and she sheds as many tears when they leave her as when I do. She often prefers one of them for comfort, which they love. Often Ruby will get Betsey out of bed in the morning while I take a shower, and she'll be happily fed and her diaper changed by the time I come downstairs.

We were so happy to have Oma and Opa, Robb and Heather and Braden and Amanda and their families down for Betsey's little family birthday party. Opa's birthday is just six days before Betsey's so we celebrated both of them together.

 

 

Somehow, Alice (helping Betsey) opened one of my dad's gifts on accident and was clearly disappointed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daddy Daughter Valentine's Day Dance...

For Christmas, the girls gave Chris a ticket to a Daddy Daughter Valentine's Dance. The big evening arrived, stressed and over-scheduled and short on time as EVER...but we managed to get them dressed and all fancy in the few minutes we had and off they went. Betsey and I stayed home. The girls want to wear make up every day, so for limited special occasions, I let them wear a little extra something. They were super loving that! All reports were positive, they learned to dance the YMCA dance and others and there were good treats and they even came home with some horrible, massive stuffed something or other that I will donate to a local thrift store as soon as possible. :)

They doubled with our friends, the Stafford's. Aaron and Chris are work friends and because Aaron has three little girls, we've become family friends now too. I wish I had pics of them all together, but they live in Enumclaw.

Wow, don't I take so much pride in taking wonderful pics for our casual family use? Yowza. Notice we painted our house practically black. Now I just need to update the house numbers and the door knocker and door handle and I'll be in love with the exterior of the house!

 

 

 

 

Winter Getaway with the Reynolds...

We had a great time with the Reynolds family one weekend in February at Camp Zarahemla. The camp is owned by our church and so it was only $35 per night to stay in a quaint little cabin. We had two cabins between us and I didn't get pics of the bigger one with the kitchen that in which we spent the most time. We were there a few weeks after all the snow fell, but we were close to White Pass and still in a winter wonderland once we got there. The kids loved sledding, and it was quick sledding because everything was solid ICE. The first night we arrived, I went down on the ice so fast and hard and really hit my head...hard. Chris was next to fall in the same exact place a few minutes later. I was so paranoid after that, I shuffled around like a 90 year old woman the rest of the weekend.

It was gorgeous there. It is on Clear Lake and the sun was out, so the ice partially melted off of the lake while we were there. So pretty!

 Ruby, Eden, Wyatt, Kelsey and Talmage posing on a pile of snow on our of our loops around the camp looking for the best sledding opps.

 Ruby and Wyatt...

 Alice, Ruby, Wyatt, Kesley and Eden

 T had to use the snow potty...

 Playing on the ropes course.

 Ruby loves to strike a mean pose.

 Ru and Wyatt sledding.

 I got a kick out of Kesley's juice face. It's a good thing she wasn't sneaking juice because I have a feeling she would have gotten caught!

 Eden

 Alice

 Chris had to hold Betsey a LOT. She didn't want me (yay) and she wanted to be outside, so he had to cart her around quite a bit...here they are by the lake...

 More landscape pics.

 The main cabin, where Sommer and Ben's fam slept.

 Alice with her sled...

 The cabin where we slept...