chris and jessica

i can't believe that i also forgot to mention that chris has been here for the last week visiting with her husband jon from Louisiana. it's been nice to visit again cause it's been several years (???) since we've seen her. and she even stayed with the kids for a bit while i went grocery shopping all by my very own self. and last night chris brought jessica over who i know from camp and haven't seen in quite a long time even though we've tried to get together and it just hasn't happened. so chris came across the country and got us together and we had a nice peaceful couple of hours at a local coffee shop trying not to listen to the hideously bad singer/guitar player guy who was trying to cover nirvana, but just couldn't seem to make it happen. jessica also has a nose piercing just like i want and she's promised to take me to the best piercing lady in town, so stayed tuned for the photo.

ikea!!!!!

i just started looking through anne's 1000 picture cd from our georgia trip and i can't believe i forgot to mention that we actually got to go to ikea while we were there! definitely a highlight. have i mentioned that i miss ikea terribly? but good news! last night my friend jessica told me that we are getting our very own ikea in 2007 or maybe 2008 but its official and i'm excited out of my mind. wood with our super cool double stroller

zoo

it was a nice 50 degree drizzly day today so we decided to take the kids to the zoo. it was kinda nice cause it was pretty empty and only cold when we were walking from exhibit to exhibit. and we got a chance to use our new super front-swivel-wheel-double-jogger stroller. very exciting. the elephants were a big hit as were the giraffe and the bats. unfortunately the batteries in my camera pooped out at the elephant exhibit so you'll just have to take my word for the rest.

our latest craftings

i'm especially proud of this giraffe. and ellen is especially proud of this one.

ellen and especially isaiah absolutely love bathtime

isaiah can be dead tired, crying, throwing himself around desperate to go to bed or eat food or anything and you take him in the bathroom and turn on that water and he's the happiest kid in the world.

pajama dancing

ellen and elmo and isaiah and i dance around in pajamas to everybody needs love by seven day jesus

and a nickel drops into ellen's therapy jar

i've been known to tell ellen that if she's going to be cranky and cry-y then she's going to need to go to bed because she must be tired. today she was having a breakdown (she did not sleep well last night at all) and i said okay lets go take a nap. she immediately stopped crying (but was still sniffling) and said i'm happy. i'm happy. i don't want to take a nap. poor thing i'm teaching her to fake it already. sheesh.

oops i forgot a good one

ellen; "whatcha doin mom?" me: "cleaning up a little bit" ellen: "somebody's coming over?" i admit it, i'm a horrible housekeeper.

things ellen said today that made me smile

*i was tickling and teasing her and pretending i was going to lick her stomach and she said, "no mom. licking is just for dogs." * we were going to play candyland and so she came into the kitchen and said come on mom. i took a bit longer than she liked and she came back and said "mom, you're not obeying." *i tell her i love her and she's a good kid when i put her to bed and she nods and whispers "thanks mom" isn't she so cute?? on another note, i'm not sure if it's because we got rid of the tv or because ellen is now officially two and a half, but during the last week or so she seems to be coming out of her i'm two funk. it's quite fun.

isaiah's first real injury

not that he looks worse for the wear, but isaiah had his first blood drawing injury last night. he was playing the piano and lost his footing or something (i'm afraid i wasn't watching) and bonked his face on the table. poor little kid. you can just make out his fat cut up lip. ellen was kinda freaked by the blood. i don't think she's ever seen it before.

georgia christmas cont'd

ellen and bopp did some serious dancing to the jingle bells snowmen christmas morning was filled with presents and playing (somehow i managed to miss getting a picture of isaiah in his christmas outfit. i'm sure i'll find one on anne's disk of 1000 pictures, so i'll post that later) reading of new woodworking books... cooking... pipe smoking... watching... and eating

georgia con'td

dave's play-doh skills came in handy yet again

georgia christmas cont'd

dave and ellen got some magnet faces and dave had a great time with some alter egos. i did too if truth be told

georgia christmas continued

we let the kids open a present or two every day to sorta spread out the excitement and let them actually play with the presents

georgia

we spent our christmas vacation in georgia this year visiting mom and wood and bryan and kim and seeing their houses and where they live and hanging out with anne and mark. we went to a new park and fed geese (which is something that has always required an extra dose of courage for me. i thought i was just a wimp, but anne told me that she and i were attacked by geese as small children, so now i feel vindicated) and ellen and dave got to go to the races...

more snow

all the neighbors were outside taking pictures and playing

its snowing at our house!

i was going to take a picture of this earlier this week and say what sorry folks we were for not taking the pool down. but now it's even better. there's about three inches of ice on top and now snow too! these pictures were taken in about the first 10 minutes of snowing - so maybe in the next hour or so we'll have some really good ones.

candyland

we opened more presents last night and ellen was gifted with candyland. she loves it. she's a natural it seems. that's her yellow guy winning quite handily while dave came in second and my poor blue guy never got very far at all. i'm so terribly bad at board games - it's really quite discouraging. there's dave pretending to be me feeling sorry for myself

the news

ellen and dave made graham cracker states today. apparently ellen took a bite of one and said "look daddy! oregon!" so they made washington and california too. dave and i are trying valiently not to stifle our dear daughter's ideas/creativity. even when it comes to eating crazy weird things that we think are nasty (like vegetables for instance.) tonight we had eggs with ham and cheese for dinner and ellen asked for her usual two dips - ranch and ketchup in which she dips just about everything. but it's not just that she dips things, she drags whatever it is through the ranch first, then ketchup. and half the time she leaves out the dipping food and just uses her fingers. apparently this is a great delicacy for her. she also discovered salt and pepper tonight so she added that to the routine. in other news, isaiah is getting huge. i think last night when i went to get him in the middle of the night i picked him up and thought "holy moly, this kid is heavy." i think he gained at least ten pounds between dinner and his midnight snack. my back has actually been hurting from holding him the last few days. I'm either gonna have to start working out or he's going to have to learn to walk. and that may not be too far away since we discovered tonight that he absolutely loves to play piano - and will stand up to do it. so i guess he's going to be a huge 6'8" linebacker/concert pianist.