Do they make hip waders for kids?

After spending all Tuesday morning dragging the kids along to look at cars (see post below) they needed to have some fun! After nap we went puddle jumping! The girls both started with rubber boots on, but for some reason they don't really seem to do much good. After a matter of minutes the paints are wet and the boots come off. But they had a blast anyway!

You can kind of tell in this picture the water is several inches deep

Hannah had an absolute blast!

Boots? Who needs boots?

Do you see that grin?

Splash!

I'm not so sure about this....

reality sets in

Yesterday reality started setting in as I drove home from buy a car an hour east of us. I realized I am now 30 and drive a mini-van. No more stick shift sedan, I am now a soccer mom, how uncool is that? As we picked up the girls from Niki's house, who was VERY kind in watching them ALL afternoon and evening, I could tell reality was setting in for them as well. They were not so happy about a new car and Hannah kept calling it the rental. They wanted Mommy's car back. They've warmed up to it a little having ridden in it to and from Bible study this morning, which is good. Oh, you want the details on the car? Well, here's the long story, otherwise just scroll down for the pictures :-) After searching and search and debating between a Toyota sienna and a Honda odyssey Tuesday, after Nathan took the day off determined to buy a car, we finally decided we wanted a Honda odyssey instead of the Toyota. Which meant we didn't get a car on Tuesday, because the one odyssey we were going to look at was sold the night before. But it was good because we finally nailed down everything we were looking for and ended up with VERY specific criteria. Well we went home Tuesday excited and relieved that we finally knew exactly what we wanted and a time period in which to look and if we didn't find one by then we'd re-evaluate at that point, which was two months. I was also excited that looking wouldn't be difficult and as time consuming as it had been and I would have more time and could enjoy not having a car more, instead of feeling the stress of looking for a new car and determining what we wanted. I hopped online Tuesday to see if there were any cars that met our criteria and there was one. Not only did it meet our criteria it exceeded it. We decided to go for it, it was at a dealer an hour East of here, BJ Ford, but since we'd already driven an hour to look at several other cars we hadn't bought we figured we might as well look at this one too. Wednesday Nathan talked to the dealer in the morning and made an appointment for 3 pm. He came home at lunch, I drop the girls off and Niki's and we were off. We got there half an hour early, which was good because we spent two hours going over that car, they even put it up on the lift so Nathan could look at the underside. Let me tell you, going over every detail of a car really takes the fun an excitement out of buying a car! But finally we decided yes it was a good car and we made an offer. We got the car for $900 less than blue book trade in value :-) So if we really don't like it we can trade it in at pretty much no loss (with taxes and everything it came to just above trade in value). It's a 2006 Honda Odyssey EX-L, 8 passenger, leather, heated seats, sun roof, automatic doors, 6 CD changer, built in sun shades on the kids windows and the works. A pretty sweet ride. It did not come with key less entry, which I was kind of bummed about, but I did discover today that if you unlock the car and turn the key once, it unlocks the driver door, twice unlocks all the doors and three times unwinds all the windows! :-) Maybe I don't want key less entry after all. And yes, doing the opposite winds up all the windows.
Here are some pictures:

I never thought I'd buy a car from a Ford dealer......

That's pretty much all their inventory....lots of trucks, not much else, all on gravel

The new van, next to Nathan's car....

The sun roof can be opened completely or just titled

Steering wheel with audio controls

Front seats

middle seats, we've taken out the middle seat for the time being, I need to figure out how to stow it, it's supposed to stow in the car some how......

Back seats, which can fold into the trunk and you end up with a huge flat area

S'mores!!!

Last night we went to a smore party at a friends. They have a deck with fire pit/table/cool place to have a fire and roast marshmallows! Hannah and Evie definitely stuck around more than the other kids to roast and eat the marshmallows. Are making a bunch of smores we headed inside and got to chat while the kids played. All in all a great evening!

Hannah roasting a marshmallow with Daddy

Why are you taking a picture! I want to eat the marshmallow, not get my picture taken!
Like the outfit on Evie? Harts, poke-a-dots and stripes!

Yum!

A bit smokey, but delicious!

Are all those for me!?

Museum Fun!!!!

Nathan's Mom gave us memberships to Children's Museum and the Museum of Nature Science for Hannah's birthday. I've decided to do museum day on Friday's, with the Space Center membership as well we have three museums to go to. What fun! Today I took the girls to the Children's Museum. There is SO much to do and see there! They had a lot of fun.

Water is so much fun! Amazingly, Hannah was much more wet than Evie by the end of the day.

Driving the ambulance, it's nice when it's not Mommy's car :-)

Hannah really enjoyed using the spray bottle and "cleaning" I guess I should get her helping more around the house :-)

Evie drying off so cats after giving them a bath at the vets.

random yummy food pictures

Amazingly we didn't make tons of junk food while Debbie was here, last time I think we made something new every day. The day before she came in however we made a grasshopper pie.

Doesn't it look yummy? It was! :-)

And while Debbie was here I co-hosted a baby shower, which means I made the cake. I attempted to do a baby carriage/stroller.....

And when I asked Nathan to get me some shortening on the way home from church so I could make icing to frost the cake for the shower he came back with an 8 lb tub of frosting from Sam's Club. Which means I have a lot of frosting left......so I've had to come up with ways to use it. Like making home made oreo cookies from here.

They were so yummy!!!

If anyone else has good ideas for what I can do with my frosting let me know!

a visit with Grandparents

After Debbie left on the 12th my parents came in on the evening of the 13th and stayed until the 17th! My dad wasn't feeling well on Friday, so my mom and I took the girls to the park. We had a blast playing hide and seek with them :-) My mom and I got to go shopping while the girls napped, it was nice to have some one on one time with my mom. Saturday my Dad was doing much better and took the girls to the park in the morning. Evie is still talking about how much fun that was. My dad also fixed the holes in our dry wall from the pipe leek we had and from putting in the gas line. Thanks Dad!!! My mom helped me clean up the guest room and move the computer desk and book self up there. It looks really good. Now I just have to tackle the old office, at least there is room to move stuff around and organize it a bit now. Thank you Mom!!!

Getting tickles from Nana

Discovering the fun of going under Grandad's legs......yesterday Evie asked if I wanted to go under her legs, I told her there wasn't enough from, response "Why?" That's been her favorite word as of late.

Playing cups with Grandad, Evie LOVES stacking, unstacking and re-stacking these cups!

Listening to books with Nana. Mom, why are you taking a picture? Can't you see I'm trying to listen?

Hannah's 4th birthday

This year we had Hannah's birthday party on my birthday, my birthday is the day before hers. This was very confusing for Hannah especially when people came to the party and said happy birthday she'd reply "it's not my birthday, it's mommy's" but she had fun anyway. We kept the party small and simple. Hannah's favorite part was making home made pizza. I gave each girl a person pizza to sauce and top. She was so excited to get to pick out her own toppings and make it all by herself without mommy's help. All the kids put lots of veggies on their pizza too, the moms were impressed :-)

We had games....although here Hannah is crying because she can't get the paw in the right place without being able to see it.

Aunt Debbie was there, which makes everything more fun!

Of course there was cake, but no candles. Hannah did NOT want anything to do with candles. I did convince her that she wanted an ice cream cake though :-)

The classic keep the balloons up in the air.

A group picture :-)

Aunt Debbie's visit

Debbie came to visit us Jan 8th-12th. We had lots of fun with her, the girls of course loved having her around and it was good for Nathan and I to get some things done and start looking researching a car. While aunt Debbie was here she read lots and lots of books. The girls had received a princess book from aunt Janie, Uncle Brian and Joey for Christmas that is something like 300 pages long, aunt Debbie read them the whole thing! Thanks Aunt Debbie!!!! We also now have a recording of our Arabic book that Aunt Becca gave us when Hannah was a baby being read, so maybe the girls can learn to count to five in Arabic?

Thanks for the fun Aunt Debbie!!!!!!

catching up......

This is a post about the week after we got back from GA, sorry it was so long in coming. After getting back from Georgia on Tuesday night late we hit the ground running Wednesday, with friends from out of town coming over for the day. Very, VERY good friends I might add, who even bought us groceries! We had a great time with them and were thankful we got a chance to catch up, however short the time may have been. Thursday Nathan had to work a little bit and we had our Thursday night home group, we just ate dinner and had a fellowship night, which was much needed. And Friday the Dec. 31st we had the opportunity to get to meet more of our third family (Hannah's birth family). Hannah's birth grandmother and uncle came over for lunch. I was shocked by how well Hannah responded to them. She was much less reserved than she normally is, even wanting to go outside to greet them. It was great to meet them! We had fun chatting and learning more about Lyn from her family :-)

Hannah warms up to anyone who's willing to read her a book!

Here's Sarah (Lyn's mom) Kato (Lyn's brother) and the girls

On New Years we were able to meet more of Hannah's birth family, meeting her great grandmother and three of her great aunts and a great uncle that stopped by for a minute. Hannah was much more reserved during this visit, but her Aunt Vera definitely got her relaxed, smiling and even laughing!

Evie, unlike Hannah, was very comfortable and made herself at home!

All smiles, Pearl enjoyed getting to meet her great-granddaughter for the first time

Pearl was very thoughtful and gave both girls books! Here Vera and Linda are reading to Hannah. Hannah wasn't so sure about them yet, even with them reading a book.

We brought lots of pictures for everyone to see.

Hannah and Vera having fun with Evie

BOOM!

That was the sound we heard Friday while driving down the freeway at 70 mph. We were coming back from checking out a car and out of no where the rear driver side window shattered. It had to have been hit by a rock or something, but it was quite a shock, especially to Hannah who was sitting right next to it. We got off the highway as soon as possible, the exit happen to have an auto parts store right off it, so we stopped there and they told us their was a car wash right down the street. We vacuumed out the car, put the girls back in and were off. Hannah did amazingly well with no window all the way home and the entire experience on a whole. Nathan asked her if anything traumatized her that day, she responded "yes, the window breaking"and if you prompt her she'll tell you about it. We were fortunate able to get that car issue fixed that day! I also got a call from the insurance company confirming that yes, my car is a total loss and telling me how much they'll pay me for it (which in my opinion is way more than I could have ever gotten selling it, so I'm not going to complain!). We also have a rental car for the next week!

What month is it?

Last night we had a big storm, but today is a beautiful day. Of course with the sun shinning and the nice warm weather the girls wanted to go out and play. While I chatting with my grandparents I sent them out to have some fun. Before I knew it Evie had no clothes on because they had gotten wet and she does not like wet clothes at all. The solution? A bathing suit, once Evie had a suit on, Hannah of course wanted one as well. On this fifth day of January my girls were running around having a grand time in their swim suits. We even had a nice imaginary tea party :-)

P.S. for lots more pictures and stories from Christmas be sure to read the posts below and click the "Older Posts" link to see even more, as I just added 10 posts today!