Wednesday, December 24, 2008

These are a few of her favorite things...

One of Belle's favorite things to do these days is to read her little Bible to her animals. Red Bear (on the left side) is ALWAYS in attendance, as well as any other animals she can find and bring out and pile on the couch beside her. Sometimes she will even put a blanket over them to keep them warm. What a sweetheart. Then she will open up her Bible and say, "Now where were we?," because that is what we say when we read to her. She will then start at the beginning and flip all the way through the book and point out things that she knows, such as little girls, frogs, baby, water, etc. It is a precious site to watch.

One of Annabelle's other favorite things to do is to get a hold of my camera and take a bunch of pictures. This is her classic foot shot! I think I found about 15 or so pictures on this picture-taking-extravaganza. Some were of just carpet, others had her feet in the shot and a few had a blurry finger over the lens. Haha! I think she is really trying to improve her technique!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Thanksgiving for 26 please

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year at my parent's house in Tacoma. There were 26 of us total!!! It was the biggest group I have enjoyed Thanksgiving with and it was wonderful. The party included almost all of my bonus dad's family... his siblings, him mom, his kids and his grandkids. We even had a kids table where 8 kids ate their scrumptious turkey dinner. Annabelle was a big hit with her cousins and you can tell that she absolutely LOVED hanging out with all the kids. She was running around with them and letting them carry her. For some reason, all her cousins wanted to hold her. She didn't seem to mind at all. What a trooper. The above picture is all the kids with Grandma Loretta. It was so great to see Loretta!

The only mishap was that my parent's fridge stopped working... it ceased keeping things cool! Perfect timing, eh? John and I emptied the fridge and the ice from the ice maker at about midnight and John even headed out to the store for some bags of ice. We didn't get to bed until about 1 am or so.

We are so thankful for all of our wonderful family. Praise the Lord for giving us such loving families.

AB and her cousins Hannah and Stella.

Belle apparently needed some quiet time from all the running around with her cousins. At one point in the night we found her in the back room sitting with this guitar and singing. She would strum once and then sing either "Holy, Holy, Holy" or "Alleluia". I will try and post a video of it. It was pretty darn sweet to watch and listen too.

Annabelle has successfully used the toilet twice now! We haven't spent much time training her. Every now and then I'll remember to have her try and use the bathroom. The first time she went was just after she had taken a bath. I finished drying her off and she walked over to the toilet and said, "Tinkle." I set her up on her special seat and gave her some books to read. She read books for about 4 minutes and then said, "Here it comes. Here it comes." I thought that was pretty funny, even though nothing happened. About a minute after that she actually went "tinkle", as she likes to say. We both looked at each other and got really excited!! I think she was most excited that she was able to use the toilet paper, since that is usually off limits. She was also excited to flush the toilet! Oh, the small things in life. She has gone one other time since then, but mostly she is content just sitting on the toilet reading her books and not actually going to the bathroom.

Daddy's Hat

Fashion show with Daddy's hat. Go Cards!

I love this one!

Hodge Podge

AB and Lizzie having some bonding time.

AB helped unload the groceries and organized them on the floor for me.

Such a sad face!

AB and her buddy Levi.

The Mrs. Potato Head glasses are still around! It looks like they have become reading glasses.

Oh what a wonderful weekend

Trev and I were blessed to spend a weekend alone in Vancouver while Oma and Opa watched Belle. Opa has been working in Vancouver a lot lately, so his company has provided him with a condo to stay at when he is up there. They said we could stay at the condo for a weekend and they would watch Annabelle. Hmmmm... a free place to stay and free babysitting. Count us in!! We had such a delightful time in Vancouver. We parked our car and didn't get back into it until it was time to leave. We could walk everywhere! It was so fun to be able to walk around instead of always getting in the car. We found a creperie a few blocks away, which had the most delicious crepes! We went there both days. We couldn't help it. It was just so good! We walked a lot, watched movies, read books and spent lots of time just hanging out and talking. We had such a great time and hope to do it again.

Here is a shot from Stanley Park, across the harbor from where we stayed.

Here is the building that we stayed in. 19th floor! We were vacationing in style!

Trev using his majorly huge biceps to lift a tree.

Me performing a victory dance for my strong hubby that uprooted a tree. ;)

Bowling

A few weeks ago Trev and I had a fun date night! Yes, I know it was a few weeks ago and I am finally getting around to blogging about it. That is how far behind on blogging I am. But I am determined to catch up! Anyhoo, our dear friend Missy watched Belle and we went to dinner and then bowling. We had not been bowling in a LONG time and felt like doing something active rather than passive on our date. While we were waiting for a lane to open we played two games of air hockey, both of which I lost (insert sad face here). We bowled our first game and I lost again. I didn't even get above 100, which I was not happy about. My goal for the next game was to at least get above 100 and if I beat Trev then that would be a bonus. He was ahead of me for most of the game but I bowled numerous spares in the home stretch and ended up winning by 2 points! I was really excited! Trev was pretty bummed that I beat him. I kept reminding him that he beat me at 3 out of the 4 games we played that night, but it was a hard loss to endure. However, he will have his chance at a rematch this weekend. My work party is this weekend and this year we are setting aside the normal formal dinner and going bowling instead. Here's to strikes and spares!!

Here is the proof. Trevy likes to call me Beauty.