Eric's Parents Visited

These pictures are majorly out of order, too lazy to fix them, but this is a picture of Lillie holding a shrimp that was pulled out of the gulf. We went on a little shrimping boat excursion that sounds cooler than it actually was.




We went to the swamp to check out the alligators and to get a ride on an airboat. This was the highlight of the week. Pretty stinkin' cool, I just wished the ride had been longer. Might have to go again when Eric can join us.






Spent time at the beach, of course.

The sea gulls here are very aggressive. Whenever you take food to the beach, they swarm you and swoop down at you. I've even had one dive in and grab food out of my hand. Gross.
Lillie was stuck to her grandpa like glue. I think she was having a hard time leaving him alone because her dad had been gone the entire week before. And because he's nice enough to let her climb up on his shoulders.

We had such a great time with the grandparents here. We're pretty boring people, but I hope they had fun. My kids are crazy about all of their grandparents, it kills me that we don't like closer to any of them. Eric's parents are great, we love them and miss them.

Lillie learned how to fish from a real-life pirate. Or at least he looked like it.

The Gretl Dress

A while back at the base thrift store I found a yard of lavender small wale corduroy for two dollars and thought that I might could do something with it, although I wasn't sure what. Anyway, also a little while back, I bought a PDF pattern by Ashley from Lil Blue Boo, called the paper doll dress or something like that. I thought that these two combined might make a cute little jumper. So, of course, I put this on the back burner for a month. But this week Eric has been out of town, again. I've been alone two of the last three weeks. Anyway, I made this dress to pass time the last couple evenings so that I don't get too scared or lonely. It was probably too thick of a fabric to work with for this pattern, but I think it turned out really cute! Corduroy isn't really a fabric to use for Easter dresses, but I don't care. This was a lot of work and I don't have anything else for her to wear for Easter. Ha!

Oh and I named it the Gretl dress, because it reminds me of Gretl from the Sound of Music. Love that movie!

Santa Barbara

We made a trip up to Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo when I was pregnant with Henry.  We passed Vandenberg on the way.  I distinctly remember telling Eric how I would love to be stationed there.  Here's to hoping that we were right! 

Our Next Base

We found out today that our next station will be at Vandenberg afb in California! Just 3 hours northwest of where we lived before. The area is so beautiful, it's sandwiched between Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo, an hour or so in each direction. Both awesome places. Vandenberg a small base, there will only be 3 dentists. This is what Eric wanted, to be in a more remote location where he will be able to do more things. He couldn't be more happy. The base is on the coast, so we won't have to give up the beach and sunny weather. We are both very excited. We're glad to be closer to family once again.

Weekend Wedding Trip

Eric's brother, Tyler, got married last Saturday in Seattle. We flew in late Thursday night to be there for the big day. Friday was spent playing with cousins, celebrating my father-in-law's birthday and ending the night with the rehearsal dinner. Saturday we drove through the snow and rain to get to the temple. The sealing was nice, we were glad to be there. We got to visit with the Gowen's for a couple hours before the reception that night. The Madson's traveled up to Shoreline to visit with us at the reception. Afterwards, we headed east for a 24 hour trip to see my family and play with cousins. It was a whirlwind weekend, WAY TOO SHORT. We were so glad to be able to see our families and good friends. Oh and we had an interesting trip home, but that's crazy enough to be its own post. Here are a few pictures from the weekend, not taken by me, of course, because I never think of pulling out my camera, thank goodness Lisa was on the ball.

Crocs

I know that they're generally not that cute, but for kids, I love them! Our kids had outgrown their last pairs and so we went to the Croc outlet last night for replacements. Lillie picked out a pair of flip flops and she said, "I could never dream that I could have these flip flops!" And I think she said it a couple more times before we left. Henry loves his pair so much that he insisted on wearing them to bed last night. Sometimes Henry calls them "Kroc center" which is the YMCA-like fitness center that we visit all the time. Funny kids. Life-changing shoes. Ha ha.

Astronauts

On Sunday during church, Lillie and I had this gem of a conversation:

Lil: "Is heaven in outer space?"
Me: "Uh sure, yes."
Lil: "Is Jesus an astronaut?" Ha ha.
Me: "Uh, no, but He created outer space and all the planets and stars."
Lil: "He must have been tired!"
Me: "Jesus rested on the seventh day, so he must have been."
Lil: "Was He sweaty??"
Me: (silence) "I don't know."

I'm glad she left it at that!

Mardi Gras Weekend

I know that this doesn't mean anything to most people, but it's a big deal around here. Eric has Monday and Tuesday off of work for the holiday. There are parades almost daily...or at least, there were. It's been pouring rain outside today and all the parades have been postponed or cancelled. I sure hope that the weather clears up at least one day in the next four days so that we can say we've been to a Mardi Gras parade. I'm sure it won't hold a candle to the Rose Parade, but I still want to experience it.
Another damper on the day is that Eric is on-call this week. In fact, he is off fixing someone's tooth right now. I sure hope he isn't there all day. Because of the rain, he's taken the car, and I don't know how long I can take being cooped up on a Saturday. Last time he was on-call, he was called in 4 times, I hope it's less than that this week. PLEASE!!

Trip to Baton Rouge

 

Eric and I made our first trip out to Baton Rouge last weekend to attend the temple. It's hard living two and a half hours away from the temple, and so we were overjoyed when our friends wanted to swap Saturdays so that we could go. It was wonderful, of course, and we're hoping to do it again sometime.

4 Year Well Check

At the end of last month, I took Lillie to the doctor for her well check. I can't remember any of her stats. Grrr... the military nurses don't tell you what they are, and even if they did, everything is in centimeters and kilos, so I don't know what they mean anyway. Stupid. I do remember that she was just above the 25 percentiles for height and weight. I know she weighs 30 lbs on our scale. I guess I should pull out the measuring tape to see what her height is... oh well. She was so cute to see interacting with the doctor. She was a little shy but also loved getting all the attention. One thing she did NOT like, however, were the four shots that we had to get that day. It made my heart ache to see her hurting. Lillie was mad about it for a couple days. She did get a sucker and a sticker and I took the kids to the children's museum afterwards to help lessen the blow.

Henry at 20 Months

 

Henry hit twenty months back on the fourth. It's crazy for me to think that he's closer to two years old than one. In fact, I was expecting him when Lillie was this age. Whoa, whoa, too soon. But really, he's such a delight to have in our home. Henry is starting to put a couple words together, he's saying new things all the time and is getting easier and easier. Lillie and Henry get along very well. They play together a lot: trains, cars, dolls, doesn't matter. He calls her "Wee", sometimes "Wiwee", it is so cute. He's a tall kid and weighs about 25 lbs, 5 less than Lillie. Still loves to play with cars the most, trains a close second and planes taking third place. He's still a mama's boy, wants to get in a little snuggle time everyday. Loves to read books and climb on things. He races around on our sectional at top speed, sometimes falling off, thank goodness nothing has been a serious injury so far. Henry still loves his binky, we've been trying to get him to only use it during naptime and bedtime. Sometime's he'll throw it back into the crib and sometimes we have to hide it the moment he puts it down. I love being his mom.

A new dress for Lil

 

I LOVE to sew. I really do. In fact, I want to go do it right now, but that's beside the point.
The other day I was checking a good craft/sewing blog called Homemade by Jill, when I saw an adorable little coral pink dress and thought, hey, I could make that. My friend Krista recently gave me a nightgown pattern that could be adapted to make it, so I went and got some cute linen fabric and started adjusting and cutting. Other than some extra large sleeves that had to picked out and slimmed down, it was pretty easy to make and actually turned out how I wanted it too. (That doesn't always happen, things usually turn out better when I follow an exact pattern.) She wore it on Sunday and looked so cute! She had a cream headband and a bun in her hair and a pearl necklace to finish it off. Adorable. Seeing her then, you'd never believe that this is the same girl who has been getting into trouble at preschool as of late.

Can you tell she loves being four?!?

Frankenarms

 

If you're facebook friends with Eric, you've probably already seen this picture, but Eric had 12 lipomas cut out of his forearms about a week and a half ago. They already look so much better. Most of them will hardly leave scars, which was hard for me to believe when I first saw him. He said he felt like a human pincushion, but other than that, never really complained. He'd been wanting to get them out for years, all the thanks goes to an air force surgeon, who is also our friend, for making it happen. Eric keeps getting weirded out about not feeling any bumps when he runs his hands over his forearms. A good weirded out, he's had a couple since high school. Honestly, it's one thing that I hope our kids do not inherit from him, since it's hereditary.

Rainbow Raucous

I still haven't written about Christmas, it's kind of a daunting task, so instead, I'm skipping ahead to Lillie's birthday to help motivate me to keep up this blog and not get overwhelmed about how far behind I am.

Lillie turned four on Monday, which happened to coincide with MLK Jr's bday and so Eric had that day off from work. And because of the extra long weekend, my parents decided to come visit us, so we had an EXTRA FUN time. The birthday extravaganza started on Friday with a birthday party for Lillie's friends. It was rainbow themed and our house was filled with color! The kids played, ate rainbow cupcakes, opened (Lillie TORE through them, lots of practice at Christmas) presents and took bags full of colorful candy as a party favor. It was a fun time, I had fun decorating for the party, of course, and to top it off, my parents were flying in that afternoon.







Unfortunately, in the chaos, I didn't get a photo of everyone there. Oops, this is the best I got of about half of them. Gonna have to remember next year.



We went out to eat at Back Bay that night, Lillie dined on shrimp and frog legs.

The next day, Saturday, we swam at the Kroc center all morning, Lillie's favorite place, then went to our city's visitor center in the afternoon, and finished off the day with bbq at The Shed. Man, I love their ribs.

The last day of partying was Monday, where we took my parents to New Orleans to see the city... after taking Lillie to the Waffle House for her favorite breakfast. Once we were there, we walked around the French Quarters, enjoyed local music, explored the Riverwalk, ate at Cafe du Monde, rode on a ferry across the Mississippi River, and walked around the old cemetery. It was such a perfect day to end a wonderful weekend.

I really loved having my parents here and so did my kids. Lillie loves my mom and Henry loves my dad (he wouldn't give my mom the time of day :/ ). We're so glad they came.

Monday night we had an impromptu birthday party with cake and ice cream and Lillie opened her presents. We got her an American Girl doll and I've been making it clothes the past couple months. Lillie loves it and it's a good thing because those clothes were a lot of work, but really quite fun, I kinda love sewing doll clothes, who knew?

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

I am going to have to come up with a new nickname for Lillie now that she is four years old and definitely no longer a baby. I am so lucky to be her mom, she is such a spunky little girl. We love her so much!

2012!!

Not gonna lie, I have high hopes for 2012. I want it to be my best year yet. I've decided to challenge myself and I've chosen a theme for me this year, which is "Be Strong". I feel like I could handle some major growth this year, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Usually I'm just trying to hang on-- to my sanity, to get through each day with two living children, to make dinner, etc. But they're getting older, and therefore a little easier, and I just feel like I'm in a good spot to focus a little more on me. I've gotten back into an exercising mode second half of the year and want it to continue and to see more results. I want to be more humble, to be more patient and to serve others more. I want to strengthen my knowledge of gospel doctrine. I know it won't be easy, but I'm excited to see the difference in me 12 months from now. All I gotta do is make it happen. :)