Lily said the tree needed some loving.
Lily and Daddy were spending some quality (geek) time together.
Lily interrupted my yoga with some “need” and as soon as I stopped to get her what she “needed” she started doing yoga. It was really cute.
Lil got tired of carrying her baby so we figured out a way for her to wear the baby.
Silly face.
My favorite of all of them. She walks her baby all the time.
The other day Waldo’s sister Christy (talk about confusing when we are both together) (oh and I have a step-sister named Krisiti, she and I were born on the same day, she’s just a few years older) her husband Barclay and their son Jude visited from L.A. We all went outside to play and enjoy the wonderful weather.
I was sitting on the grass taking it all in and taking pictures.
Lily kept running to me from the ends of the backyard and jumping into my arms for a major hug.
How lucky am I?
Lil loves her Daddy
Papa was telling Lily something about the garden or grass. She is going to have so much fun helping him garden this year. We already got her some tiny tools.
I took probably 10 or 20 pictures of Lily and my Mother-in-Law Rita and this one was the absolute best. Of course Waldo and my Sis-in-law Christy were photo bombing us.
Lily was ready to go to dinner.
I’m pretty sure she was telling us to hurry up at this point.
We met up with Waldo’s brother and his family at a great local restaurant. I took the rest of the pictures with Waldo’s phone (mine was uncharacteristically just about dead).
We had a nice time and have to enjoy them while they last. Waldo’s brother is moving his family to Idaho as we speak. We’re going to miss all those rowdy boys.
A few weeks ago Waldo and I took Lily to the zoo. The weather had been so nice we had to take advantage of it, and spending time together is always a fun way to spend the day. Since both of us work from home we are literally together 24/7, you would think that we see enough of each other, but you’d be wrong, we like spending time together. So we went to the zoo, I knew this story had a point.
We packed up all of our stuff and headed south. We had a little picnic in the park before we went in to see the ANIMALS. Lily loves the animals. We really like going during the off season, because there are so few other people there and it feels like we have the whole place to ourselves. Well it’s not really that empty, but we usually don’t have to share the exhibits with anyone else.
The Australasian Avery is the fist exhibit that you see and it has these crazy big blue birds. That bird is probably more than half the size of Lily. They have other birds too, but the blue ones amaze me.
Then it’s on to the ELEPHANTS!
The orangutans are next. The two lady orangutans had babies recently. We didn’t get to see any babies though.
We stopped by and tried to see the tigers, but they were snoozing and kind of hidden. Next we saw the giraffes, then we walked over to the seals and sea lions.
Our zoo is working on building a new seal and sealion cove. I can’t wait for it to be finished.
And the flamingos were next. I love their bright color and majesty.
I can’t remember what this dude is called, but I like his bangs.
We did a few things that we hadn’t done at the zoo before. We let Lily go and visit the petting zoo and she got to feed the giraffe. Both of which were AWESOME and she loved it all.
Daddy had to pet the goat first.
The petting zoo was mostly goats and a few standoffish sheep.
The giraffe feeding took all of two seconds, but Lil really enjoyed it.
She walked around the zoo picking up sticks so she could feed other animals. Of course we didn’t let her actually feed any other animals, but I thought the idea was really sweet.
Lily walks around with her hands in her pockets all the time these days. It is so cute.
We stopped by the little hippo statue so Lil could climb and play.
We of course saw lots of other animals, but didn’t like too many of the pictures.
We have a tradition of stopping by the snack shop and sharing a ice cream cone. It is one of my favorite parts of our zoo trip.
Can you tell she’s super sleepy?
We stopped by and saw the Galapagos tortoise.
We walked back by and said “Bye” to the elephants and orangutans.
We had such a great day. I can’t wait to do it again.
I’m sitting here trying not to bump my fingers or toes because they are freshly painted. This hardly ever happens anymore and I’m trying to enjoy it.
It is a beautiful 64 degrees in early February, EARLY FEBRUARY. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and some flowers are blooming. I can hardly believe it. I bet its freezing and snowy in Montana right now.
We spent some time out in the sun this morning playing with a toy golf cart my Sister-in-law Christy left here. There was also a lot of exploring behind the shed (it’s safe), and playing around.
Oh and of course I took a ton of pictures.
She's found something
It's a flower!
Taking it somewhere
Here Daddy
Ring around the rosies
I also put my phone in my pocket and enjoyed my daughter without a lens between us.
The day is so nice that after her nap Lily went for a walk with ReRe and Papa and I sat outside painting my toes thinking about how lucky I am.
Life is good.
Following Jingle
The post was supposed to end here, but I had to add one more thing. We went outside last night after dinner (around 8pm) and it was still beautiful even though it was completely dark. It was also warmer then Montana will be in April!
Since this was our first Christmas back in Cali we had to figure out how to incorporate our love of simple quiet holidays with visiting lots of relatives and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
On December 18th we went to a party at my cousin’s house for my Dad’s side of the family.
It was a lot of fun. I spent the days before the party baking 3 different types of cookies and two kinds of rice crispy treats to give out. The cookies turned out great but the royal icing was still wet on the sugar cookies so they didn’t look quite as nice as I had planned.*
It was also really cool because our Mamaw (Grandma, Dad’s Mom) just moved back to town last month after being away for 10 years. Everyone had a lot of fun eating, visiting and wearing silly glasses.
Originally we were going to have Christmas Eve at Waldo’s brother’s house but all of his family came down with the plague the day before so we switched up plans and it worked out great. Except for the sick babies part. Waldo’s brother has 4 boys; 12, 10, 2 1/2 and 1 (I think) and I think all of them were sick. We ended up having a really nice dinner at home with Waldo’s parents and then Lily opened her gifts from them.
I spent the days leading up to Christmas baking cookies and rice crispy treats to give out.*
Waldo made us hot chocolate and his Dad (Papa) started a fire. It was so cozy.
Waldo’s Mom Rita whom Lily calls ReRe made Lily a beautiful quilt and pillow case.
ReRe and Papa got her an easel, paper and markers along with a pack of Little people to go with the house she got a few weeks ago.
Lily always asks that you draw a kitty for her and we do but none of us are very talented. After a lot of drawing and playing we went to bed with hopes of sleeping in the following morning. And what can only be called a Christmas Miracle Lily didn’t wake up until 8 on Christmas morning. YAY.
After getting ready to go Waldo, Lily and I headed over to my Memaw’s (my Mom’s mom) house for chocolate gravy. This is the thing that I have been looking forward to most of all. It is a family tradition to have Memaw’s chocolate gravy for Christmas breakfast and it didn’t disappoint. My Grandparents house was packed to the gills with family, it was very noisy and a lot of fun.
We opened gifts then took a couple of pictures.
Once we were done Waldo, Lily and I left to go visit my Dad. We didn’t get any pictures over there but Lily got a lot of nice clothes and a couple of cute dolls. Then it was home so Lily could nap and then open her gifts from us.
Waldo and I had decided long ago that we don’t really exchange gifts with each other and that we wouldn’t go crazy for our kid(s). We want the holidays to be about family and not stuff. We did pretty good this year. We got Lily 3 little gifts and one slightly bigger thing. Actually one of the smaller gifts was suppose to be for one of the nephews but he already had something very similar only way better so we gave it to Lil instead and I have already gotten rid of it.
Both of Lil’s little gifts (that we bought specifically for her) were see and says. The smaller of the two was her favorite thing ever until she opened her last and best gift.
Lily loves Yo Gabba Gabba and we weren’t 100% sure which character she loved the most but she says TooDee’s name pretty often and she looked the cuddliest so we went with her. It was a huge hit.
After opening TooDee she wanted to draw all the Gabba gang. Waldo did his best.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful and memorable Christmas and holiday season.
*I will do a separate post about the cookies.
