I'm a Twi-hard

It's true. I love the Twilight Saga. But I also love some of the parodies and funny jokes about it. Like this one.

Spookerific

Halloween was so fun. We went to a great Halloween party for church and one of the games was a cupcake walk. I offered to make some of the cupcakes that would be prizes. My sister Meggie and my Darling Daffodil helped me decorate them. I really was not excited about doing it, but it was really fun to do with the company I had. Meggie and Daphne are both much better at decorating than I am. So if you see a stupid cupcake, it's probably mine. Megan definitely got into this! She even started critiquing my cupcakes and encouraging me to do better!







In this next picture, on the top left, is one that Daphne did. She stuck the candy corn in backwards so it looks like it's sticking its tongue out. I thought that was hilarious.



Sophie's favorite thing at the party was the cupcake walk. She danced around that circle all night long. Here's a shot of her going around the circle.



And enjoying her spoils.



Sophie switched from a princess to Cheer Bear for trick-or-treating because it was so cold here. Daphne decided to brave the cold in her original costume as a witch.



The girls had tons of fun getting candy. It looks as though Chloe had the most fun... seriously, she has a look of pure enjoyment on her face here! She was a darling Mulan and Phoebe was Cleopatra.





I wish I had video of the girls that night. I don't know why it still surprises me how excited they get. There were a couple houses where the people handing out candy really got into it and even scared the girls a little. One house that Sophie went to, she snatched the candy from the lady's hand and then turned around, grabbed my hand and said, "Run Momma!"

Googley Eyed

I like Google. Yes I do. I like Google and the things it can do. Try it out, you might like it too. My friend J-Mo told me about this great thing that Google offers called Google Reader. You can go here and you can subscribe to blogs that you like and it tells you when they've been updated. I only have to look to one page to see what all (3) of my military friends are up to! If you like more than one blog but get sick of checking it to see if it's been updated only to find that it hasn't... then this is the tool for you. Google Reader, hurray! Thanks again J-Mo. (and PS, I miss you!)

I Wanna Be a Cowboy

Any of you who know Daffodil, know that she is obsessed with horses. She always wants to ride them. And really, she does at every opportunity. Every opportunity so far has mostly been pony rides at fairs and farms. But this last weekend, she finally got to ride a horse. ALL BY HERSELF!! She was thrilled. Sophie and I shared a horse. I'm not really sure what I expected... maybe a longer saddle with a seat belt or something... but it wasn't what I thought. Sophie just sat on my saddle in front of me so I had to try to control the horse and keep myself on the horse and keep Sophie on the horse too! I was terrified, Sophie was thrilled, and Daphne was just totally cool because this is where she's meant to be. We had such a good time. Here are a few photos.

The Little Darlings waiting for the horses to get ready.



Here's Daphne on her horse Jester. This child had no problemo with riding the horse at all! The guy riding behind me even asked if this is something she does all the time because she's so good at it. As we were walking a thin trail through a swampy area, Jester decided to walk into the swamp. Did that bother Daphne? Not a bit. She just chilled there while Jester got a drink and blew bubbles with his nose under water! (I know the pictures are not of the best quality but seriously, it's kind of hard to take pictures while you're steering a horse, holding a baby, and hoping you don't fall off!)





And here I am with Sophie. I prayed in earnest for the first ten minutes and also tried to plot how I would get Sophie safely to the ground if my horse freaked out on me. Luckily, he didn't freak out. But he sure stopped to eat a lot. And he was a little snotty. I'm pretty sure it was purposeful when he walked too close to every tree so my knees kept getting whacked. A lot of our trek was far back in the woods where you couldn't hear anything but woodsy noises. It was great. But Sophie started whispering to me; "Monsters? Monsters get me?" I assured her they wouldn't. "Lions?" No. "Tigers?" No. "Giraffe?" No. "Horses?" Well, yes honey, we're riding horses!

Random Happenings

I think I'm mostly caught up with the exciting (and the not so) stuff. Here are just a few other moments we enjoyed.

Grandpa B. bought Sophie her first hunting apparel!



Daphne had her first season of soccer (Sophie thinks she did too!)



Grandma M. introduced us to Rescue Pets and the Mars Cheese Castle, where they have the best squeaky cheese (I'm kind of ashamed that I've never been there).





Daphne and I milked a cow. Green Meadows Farm is an excellent place to let kids touch just about every kind of farm animal you can imagine.





Grandma M. made a pipe cleaner farm with Daphne.



Sophie wanted her hair curled.



And voila, I'm as caught up as I'll ever probably be!

Our Little Graduate

Daphne graduated Kindergarten. Her favorite subject was art. But she likes everything. You'll notice she has flowers. After the recital, it was required that flowers be at any big occasion.

Sophie Loves Her Birthday

I know I've said it over and over, but I just cannot believe how my babies are getting bigger.

Sophie is 2 now. Instead of going to see the mouse, we stayed home and had our family over for dinner and cake. Sophie loved her cake! To be honest, everyone loved her cake. It was a fabulous buttermilk cake with Swiss meringue buttercream frosting... to die for!



Here are all four of the cutie patooties.

Dance Your Pants Off

Daphne had her first recital in June. It was a LONG day. But Daphne was thrilled and she did a wonderful job dancing her dance and behaving when she wasn't dancing.

She was very excited and felt very sophisticated when she received flowers to take on stage for the finale.

It was fun to see some of her church friends do their darling dances too. Watch out world; Lidercas, Abi, and Daphne are a dance force to be reckoned with!

Happy Birthday Daffodil

It seems like every year we go to Chuck E. Cheese's every month for 4 months straight. Oh yeah, that's right, we do. Why? Because April-July is the time period when each of the girls (my 2 and my sister's 2) has their birthday; one each month.

Here are some of the celebrations from Daphne's 6th Birthday. How did she ever turn 6? Have I been here the whole time? It doesn't seem possible. Although, sometimes you'd think she's at least 14!

Here's Phoebe on her favorite ride.



Here are the men doing their favorite thing.



Sophie split her time between the ski ball and the horse.





Daphne and Chloe recently became obsessed with this thing that takes your picture and then prints out an id card with your photo on it. The cards are different... I think we have a professional soccer player, a princess, a diva, an animal rescuer... I can't even remember them all!



The funniest part of the party for me was when Chuck E. himself came over to visit the birthday girl.

We see here Chuck E. with Chloe, Phoebe, Sophie, and Grandpa.



Where IS the birthday girl?



She's under the table, hiding from that freaky mouse!

Hot Potato

Sophie is quite the pretender. I love it.

I would like to introduce you to Sophie Potato Head.





She got a Mrs. Potato Head for Christmas and she just up and decided that she would also like to have removable and exchangable parts. Here she is using her reading glasses!

Tooth or Dare

A very exciting thing happened in December. My Daffodil lost her first tooth! This is such a funny picture of her. The new tooth was already waiting and ready when the baby tooth fell out. Daphne had been sitting on her couch on my floor watching tv and then she jumped up and said, "I just ripped my tooth out!"



She lost her other middle bottom tooth and then her top tooth started to get wiggly. For a little while, she was Snaggle-Tooth Daphne. I'm sure there's something wrong with giving your kid a nickname like that but sadly enough, that is what we called her for about a week.



Then, all of a sudden, both her top teeth were gone.



All in all, Daphne has lost 5 teeth now and the 6th one is going to be gone any day. And a crazy thing happened yesterday. Daphne realized the tooth fairy has been stashing her teeth in my jewelry box. What kind of a tooth fairy does that? I'm not sure. I guess tooth fairies don't learn about other people's privacy. Daphne knows it's because that silly fairy is living in my jewelry box but we never see her because she hides in the basement when we're awake. We've decided to wrap the teeth in a pretty little sachet so the fairy gets the idea to move out.

Then Daphne and I had a talk about never going in my jewelry box again.

Where Has My Baby Gone?

It's crazy that I've skipped blogging for a few months and all of a sudden my kids are grown up. So this is a reminder that Sophie was so little last year (because I forgot!).

This is a picture of her just being cuddly and cute.



This is Sophie hanging out in the salad bar stool. And drooling. With NO TEETH. Still, I can't believe that was such a short time ago. I don't know why, but she loved to get under the stool. Every time though she would get stuck and scream for help.



This is her being so proud of herself for pooping... ah, I miss those days. If only it were so easy now! She'll kill me when she's older for this so maybe I'll delete it. Later. Maybe.



Here's my little Snow Pea 'helping' me do the dishes.



Here she is looking out the window... she loves to see what's going on outside. She can't actually do that anymore because we moved the couch.



I love this picture. This was taken shortly after Sophie got big enough to move into a forward facing seat. She still loved her baby seat. One day while I was busy (playing on the computer) she crawled into her baby seat and took a nap. I thought it was so cute and a little sad.



I'll probably add more pictures of her in following posts because she's grown a ton and done lots of silly things. I just got side tracked looking over old photos and thought I'd share my sweet little baby. Who is now a toddler.

Winter Wonderland

It snowed last winter and we made a snowman... I know, not necessarily blog-worthy but we had a lot of fun and it was Daphne's first snowman, at our first house. She really handled the winter better than I thought she would. And better than I did!