One of my goals for 2012 is to take more pictures; of Lily, of our world, of all of us. To help me with this goal I’m going to take a picture of us together on the first of each month.
Tag Archives: Us
3rd birthdays are a big deal, but no too big
I have been planning in a non-planning type of way for Lily’s 3rd birthday for weeks now. Stalking Pinterest and pinning things that I think are fun ways to celebrate, making mental notes of things I want to do with her, all while not really trying to think too hard about it. Since we moved to Idaho a few months ago I knew we wouldn’t do a big birthday party because we only have Waldo’s brother and his family here, so I knew I didn’t have to go too crazy.
On Pinterest I saw a lot of great ideas for birthdays that involved balloons. Lily isn’t overly fond of balloons so I wasn’t sure I should try any of them. After much though I decided to give some of the super cute ideas a try.
I something similar to the above on Pinterest, but I took it a step further.
I had 8 balloons left so I knew it wouldn’t cover our bedroom floor (like I saw on Pinterest) so I decided to put them on the bed and started on my wake-up-by-way-of-annoying-the-daylights-out-of-her routine.
What the what…
Oh balloons, but what?
Whatever, I dig it.
After I made Lil’s breakfast I had to make her cake. Usually I would have made it the night before, but I wasn’t that organized. I frosted it while Waldo had lunch with Lil.
After she was done with lunch I wanted to take some pictures of her with her cake before everyone got here. Lily really got into the pictures.
I asked Lily to show me how old she is now.
She is having trouble getting those little fingers to stay down.
Waldo’s brother, his wife and three of their kids came over for cake and ice cream.
We sort of rushed the whole thing so Waldo could get back to work. Lil opened her presents first.
Lil’s little cousin Bryce helped with the wrapping paper a lot. It worked out great because Lily wasn’t happy with all the attention on her so she wasn’t to into ripping the paper.
Then we moved on to cake and singing.
Oh with the attention again.
Waldo blew out her candle for her because she just gave us blank stares when we tried to get her to do it.
Everyone tried on Lily’s really cool crown. This is Brock, he’s about 6 months older then Lil.
And Bryce, he just turned two a few weeks ago.
After everyone had their fill of cake they left. Overall it was a very successful birthday party, short and sweet. Lily had a great birthday even if there were a few moments of total overwhelmed-ness.
Christmas! 2011
A wolf ate Kitty for Christmas this year.
We only bought Lily a few things for Christmas, but our families went crazy so she got a ton of stuff.
Like this really nice jacket from Waldo’s parents.
And an owl cuddly backpack from my Dad.
My sister Jolene got her a million piece magnetic dress up doll collection.
My Dad also got her this really cute little Mickie Mouse snow globe that Lil just loved.
It was broke by the end of the day.
My Mom got her a really sweet little porcelain tea set.
Hmmm, apparently I didn’t take any pictures of Lily with the things we got her. Imagine her with a couple of additions to her Thomas the Tank collection. Lil and Waldo spent a lot of time building the biggest track they could. It took me forever to take it apart and get it out of the middle of the floor. 🙂
We had a really nice breakfast of french toast and eggs before we crashed played with Lily’s new toys and after nap time we spent the rest of the day with Waldo’s brother and his family. We had a great time. I really missed my family, but I spoke to them so it took some of the sting out.
I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday.
All things Halloween
I know I’m a week late, but I wanted to get my Halloween post up before I let time get away from me.
Lil painted a pumpkin last year, she loved it and I loved that I came up with something new. I had never heard of anyone painting a pumpkin. This year you can’t hit a random blog without seeing a painted pumpkin. I take full credit for it, you are so welcome.
I knew that I wanted to have Lil paint pumpkins again this year since she loves painting and I thought it would be a good tradition. She and I picked a few little pumpkins at the local grocery store and she couldn’t wait to paint them.
We knew that we were going to go to a pumpkin patch, but we went ahead and bought a couple of large pumpkins at the grocery store because they were on sale, and I can’t pass up a good sale. These pumpkins didn’t even get out of our car till the weekend before Halloween. They just sat in the back seat floorboard for weeks, going shopping with us and the library and everywhere we went like little pets. Pets we don’t have to feed or clean up after. The perfect pets really.
I read in the paper that there were three pumpkin patches around our little city and I choose the smallest sounding one for our trip. It was at a small family farm. They have an organic pick your own apple orchard. It was so quaint, I loved it.
We were the only customers there. We climbed aboard the hayride that was going to take us to the pumpkin patch. We were escorted by the 3 year old granddaughter of the farmers, she was a hoot. We were told that because there hadn’t been a frost yet the pumpkins were still on the vine, it was so neat to see them in their natural habitat.
At first Lil was scared of the hay ride, but then she spotted the turkeys and everything was good after that.
The turkeys are the white dots at the end of the pumpkin field.
See our little friend?
She was so cute. You could tell that she likes to be with the pumpkin patch people.
Her grandpa called her to help him with some un-named task after this picture.
One of our pumpkins. I decided that we needed some white pumpkins to paint.
The TURKEYS!
I loved the pumpkin patch, but I didn’t get the pumpkin photos I wanted from this place so I planned on going to one of the other more commercial patches in the area the next weekend. I’ll let you know right now that we never made it to any other patches. I don’t want to keep anyone in unnecessary suspense.
We did however go the the zoo the next day and they had just had their “Boo at the Zoo” so I was hoping to get some good pictures there.
I was shocked to see that they had mostly cleaned up all the Halloween stuff. A few hay bales, the 1 fake pumpkin display and some scattered pumpkins were all that remained.
And while I did get some great pictures, I still didn’t feel I had “The Halloween Pictures” yet.
Lily really wanted her zoo ice cream at this point.
I really wanted a few more pictures.
We went to get ice cream after this. Who can resist this face?
After we got home Waldo and I carved our pumpkins and Lily painted hers. It was so fun doing this all as a family.
I let Lily paint my pumpkin after I was done carving.
Halloween morning I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed Lily, my camera and my phone and we headed to the front porch.
I finally got “The Halloween Pictures” I wanted, I couldn’t be happier.
Of course the major fun was still to come.
I made the wand. I was quite proud of it. So of course I carried it around while we trick or treated. Isn’t that how it always works out.
Lily had been playing with her bucket all week and Halloween day I noticed it looking at me all sad and boring so I grabbed my silver sparkly glitter glue paint stuff and a couple of cotton swabs and fancied up the face. Lil loved it.
This was our first house to visit. We had been telling Lil all about how Halloween and trick or treating worked and she was pumped to say trick or treat to the neighbor. That was all in theory, because as soon as the door opened all she said was “I’m a little shy” when we encouraged her to say “trick or treat”. We went to probably a dozen houses and on the next to last house she whispered “trick or treat” and “thank you”, we were so proud.
My plan was to let Lily had a piece or two of her candy over the next few days and give the rest away to the kids that came to our door, but we didn’t really have that many trick or treaters. I totally wasn’t surprised when she played with the candy after we got home, but never asked for any of it. She was treating it like any other prop in her toy collection and we loved it. Waldo and I thought about offering her a piece that night, but we talked ourselves out of it because she is so used to not having candy that it wasn’t weird for her to not have any. We did promise her a piece the next day and we fulfilled that promise. After breakfast I let her pick from the small selection we left in her basket. She choose a long tootsie roll and I gave her about a third of it while eating the rest myself. She loved it. That was the end of halloween candy for Lily Bean and we are all fine with that.
During my twenties when people would ask me what I was doing for this holiday or that I would tell them “nothing, I don’t really DO holidays. I assume that when I have kids that will change”. It totally has. I had so much fun planning halloween for Lily and can’t wait for next year.
Dental Visit
Waldo and I haven’t been to the dentist since right before we left Montana about 17 months ago. We have dental insurance so there’s no excuse other than not knowing a dentist in California and losing track of time. Over the last couple of months we have both commented to each other that we have a tooth pain or two. Waldo’s Mom Rita found a holistic dentists in Boise and she really liked him so we got on the ball and Waldo made appointments for us. I knew that Lily needed to be eased into having a stranger probe around in her mouth so Waldo asked the receptionist if Lily could sit in the exam room while we were getting our cleaning. Of course she could.
In the days leading up to the big dentist day we talked to Lily about what was going to happen and how excited Mommy and Daddy were to be getting our teeth cleaned and how important it is to take care of your teeth. She was starting to get excited. It didn’t hurt that we also told her we’d go to the zoo after the dentist.
When we got to the dentist office the hygienists, Erlinda came out and talk to Lily for a few minutes, just trying to get on Lil’s good side. I thought it was very nice and scored a big gold star for Erlinda. Then Erlinda took Waldo back to do his x-rays and then came to get Lily and myself. We sat in a chair while Waldo got cleaned or stood over him so Lil could see into his mouth. When it was time to polish his teeth Erlisa let Lily feel the polisher and how soft it was, Lily loved this and made sure that Waldo and I got turns touching the spinning polisher.
Lil started to get bored after a while so I let her play on my phone while Waldo got finished up. Because we were still in the exam room I was able to show Lily all the different steps even if she wasn’t into it at that point. The same thing pretty much happened while I was getting my teeth cleaned only she was bored sooner. Erlinda told me I have very cute tiny teeth, and she was very impressed with how straight and perfect they were even though had never had braces. More gold stars.
After I was done Lil sat on my lap and I showed her teeth to Erlinda and then Lil got a tooth brush. she thought that was very cool. While I was getting my stuff together Lily and Waldo went to the front desk to make our six month appointments and also appointment for the work that we need right away. When they got there, the receptionist let Lily get a little toy from the treasure chest for being a good girl. We decided that when we come back for our next cleaning Lily would get more of a “cleaning”, but it will really just take a few minutes and will just be another step in the ease-in plan that we have. I think Lil’s going to do great as long as we go at her pace.
By the time we had lunch and she had a nap we got to the zoo about a hour before it closed. We were a little bummed that we didn’t get to see all of our favorite animals, but we did get our ice cream cone and had a nice time anyway.
