Here's our Christmas picture! (We sure missed you.)
Rich's mom took about 15 successive shots with my camera, and yet the first one she took was the best. Guess we could've stopped there!
And for some reason, I just really love the before-the-shot shot.
Lastly, here's our little family. Thanks to Aunt Debbie for taking it!
My sisters and I (and their mama, too) gathered to celebrate Debbie and her big day. Michelle & I wanted to do something special for Debbie's 40th birthday, so we put out the call for help to make a little tribute album. It was so fun to watch notes and pictures come in from all over the place. Debbie loved how it included people she's known her whole life, to people she's just starting to develop relationships with.
Debbie couldn't read the notes there at the table because she didn't want to cry, but I hope she enjoyed reading them at home later that evening.
We ate dinner at Matador, which may be my new favorite restaurant. I love "Tex-Mex" and my favorite in Seattle was the Cactus, and in Bellingham was Pepper Sisters. It was great that Debbie suggested this downtown Tacoma spot, and the happy hour deals were amazing. And they have the best tasting Sangria I've had yet.
I'm glad we were able to celebrate Debbie apart from Christmas. I know it must be hard to have a December birthday and Deb made a special point to thank us for making her birthday a special point. No problem, sis, you are a pretty special gal.
Dani's stocking arrived in the mail and I love seeing them all lined up this way.
My Grandma made stockings for all my cousins and aunts/uncles with our names and year of birth. My mom has found someone who knit the other three for Darin and the girls as they joined our family. Definitely heirlooms. (Although funny to see how much smaller mine is!)
Gran sent Daisy two little Christmas books and a sweet note. Like most kids, she loves getting mail. (I'll save the note for the album, too.)
Ran some errands to finish our Christmas shopping and get evelopes for our cards. Taken with the cell phone, Daisy pushing this little cart was too adorable!
Christmas decorations have begun to emerge and Daisy found my teeny-tiny nativity set. The story I explained went something like this:
"Mary and Joseph are Jesus' parents. When Jesus was born he didn't have a crib so they put him in a bed called a trough (where the animals got their food). The angels told the shepherds about baby Jesus so they came to visit them. And some other guys came to visit Jesus and bring him some presents."
Not too shabby for a two-year-old explanation.
My two favorites while she was playing:
I was feeling a bit nostalgic about how fast my baby is growing, so I attempted to freeze time a little with the help of my camera.
Darin helped Daisy hang the first ornament on the tree (the baby shoe she received her first Christmas in 2007), and she consequently lost interest in the project.
(ps: Most of our activities are happening in the evening, and the lighting in my house is terrible. Consequently, lots of these pictures are likely to be blurry and grainy. Oh well, still capturing memories.)
This evening we made a quick trip to the library. I love that they have all their Christmas books out on top of the shelf. We picked up a few couple ones to enjoy over the next few weeks.
We setup my birthday present (a photo backdrop) for the first time on Thanksgiving. I have this crazy idea for a game for Daisy that involves pictures of each family member so I finagled them all into sitting for me and my camera for a few minutes. And now I'm re-learning how to install actions into photoshop (lost 'em all when the old computer died) and am editing like mad. (Well, at least in between loads of laundry and play time with two adorable kiddos.)
But the picture that I want to share today totally caught my eye. Here we all are getting into position. Darin's directing, Trevor's playing with Tiffany's hair, Skylar is warming up his smile, Caleb wants to nurse, Daisy's bossing him around, Madison's trying to figure out what is up with this crazy family, and me? I'm behind the camera of course capturing all this madness. The posed shots are nice, but this one is reality folks.
Here's another stellar example.
But we did finally all get arranged, most of us managed to smile and look at the camera, and with not too much work here's the lovely family. (Note: I didn't watermark this photo so if you're in it & you want a copy, go ahead and save one.)
Yup, we clean up nice.
I wore the black dress. And I loved it!
And I never got a full-length shot of me in it, so you'll have to take my word for it that I was workin' that dress.
What fun to have an excuse to get all dressed up and have somone take a family shot for my Christmas card. (This isn't it.) Oh, how I love my sweet family.
More wedding photos and stories to come...
...go trick or treating.
(Sorry for the blog absence. No excuses. Please don't leave.)
After naps on Halloween we loaded up our kiddos and drove the 45 minutes to my sister's house in Spanaway. Even though I still miss Bellingham, I am thankful to be living closer to my sisters again because of days like this. We invited Darin's sister and her little guy to join us for some fun, and my other sister showed up too! It was a real party.
We had a delicious dinner (thanks again, Jason) and then prepared for the fun of trick-or-treating in Michelle's development neighborhood.
Thank goodness for warm baby costumes!
Dani wasn't so thrilled with the stroller, so I promptly handed off the camera and carried her in the front-pack for a while. Problem? My sister had told me her camera battery was dead, and I didn't get ANY pictures of her kiddos in costume. Maybe we'll have to do a staged photoshoot sometime this month?
Here are a few pictures I think Darin took.
(Hey, it looks like we've got some blurry cousins in these next few shots!)
Maya and Macey did a great job at helping Daisy up the steps to the houses for about the first 20 or so houses. And then the novelty of waiting for a two-year-old wore off. I was proud they lasted as long as they did. So Michelle, Darin & I took turns helping her up to houses and we hit a few more. But by then it was getting really dark, and Daisy was getting freaked out when groups of kids would come running up behind her. She also wasn't such a huge fan of the scary costumes and after a big meltdown we decided to call it a night.
Looks like these two were done as well.
Daisy kept talking about the "scary stuff" as Darin carried her all the way home, but was sure excited to dump out her candy once we arrived! And now she wants Halloween every day.
Darin took a little video of the trick-or-treating action as well. Really cool to contrast with last year.
Check back tomorrow for Halloween Part 2: Molly & Lexie vs. Mike Myers.
Last weekend my niece Molly came over to help watch Daisy. I was busy speaking at camp (4 talks, which went well, thanks for asking) and Daisy LOVED having her cousin's full attention.
I only took 1 picture during the weekend, a Saturday afternoon snack at Daisy's table.
(And Daisy really loves playing with her beans. Lately it's all about pretend cooking. Two weeks ago we got a steal of a play kitchen on Craigslist and I can't wait to give it to her and her sister for Christmas. You can add play food or dishes to your Christmas list if you're the gift-buying-for-Daisy-type readers here.)
On Saturday morning of our vacation day (after a delicious breakfast including Dad's famous Huckleberry Pancakes) we headed into the town of Quincy for their annual Farmer Consumer Awareness Day celebration.
First was the parade with lots of big tractors! (Daisy was not a fan of ANYONE in costume, especially the large french fry that came strolling down the street in front of her.)
Note to self: CHECK THE WHITE BALANCE SETTINGS!
I could probably fix the parade photo in photoshop, but I'm too busy to figure it out so right now you get to enjoy a blue picture.
After the parade we headed over to the field to prepare for the main event. I opted out of playing volleyball this year, and instead got to hang out in the tents with the kiddos and lots of family (including my parents who stuck around for the day).
Cousin Quentin loved poking Dani in the nose. (Ah, isn't the lack of blue nicer?)
A mariachi band came by to serenade us.
It was really hot out that afternoon!
I was too hot to venture away from the shade in order to take volleyball pics. But Darin managed to capture a few of the championship match.
This one's my favorite.
At one point, as play was winding down, Daisy asked us to go for a walk. So Gran with Dani, Daisy with baby China (oh, that is a post in itself), and me with no baby took a walk around the field.
We tagged along with my parents to their "old" church in Ephrata and watched the "pass the baby" game that occured with Miss Dani and her adoring fans during the fellowship time.
We needed a new family photo for the Miracle Ranch page, so I asked Dad to take one outside church. I'm pretty happy how it turned out.
And one of the grandparents too.
After church we ventured to lunch with Mom, Dad, and some friends of theirs where we were all highly entertained.
Daisy & Dani fell asleep on the way back to Crescent bar, which was great because we were able to get back and get our stuff packed up while they were snoozing.
We had to take in one last swimming trip before heading home.
Daisy's been learning to swim by herself using a noodle. It's pretty impressive.
And that's it. Time to head home and back to work.
During the first week of September we had the opportunity to take a little family vacation. We combined it with Darin's family's annual "Rally In the Valley" volleyball tournament in Quincy, and a chance to see my parents one more time before they headed east and then south for the winter. My parents added us to their 1000 trails park membership, so we were able to camp in a great little park in Crescent Bar.
I wasn't quite up for the idea of tent camping yet, so we rented a little "park-model" trailer that was a great place to eat breakfast,
play with toys,
check in with work,
and take pictures of cute babies.
Yeah, and it also had some lovely air conditioning!
We were told the trailer had bunk-beds, but this triple bed was even better! Especially because Daisy "fell out" at least twice while we were there. She thought the bed was pretty cool though.
One morning we enjoyed a walk down to the Crescent Bar resort beach.
(what a difference a few months makes:
Daisy had some goldfish snacks on the grass.
And Gram entertained the little one.
This is the view from my parents' campsite that we enjoyed very much.
Daisy received a set of "color wonder" markers for her birthday, and we set them aside for just a time as this. She enjoyed lots of coloring time on Gram & Gramp's picnic table.
While stopping by Darin's Aunt's house, Daisy got her first taste of trampoline fun. She was really nervous when the two boys were jumping, but when they paused and gave her a chance to go by herself, she LOVED it.
It's really hard to take decent jumping pictures, but Darin tried. At least you get a sense of her joy.
My mom was set to have a birthday in a few days, so we went out to celebrate with some yummy Mexican food. Here's dad holding Miss Dani, who always manages to decide she's hungry right as the food is arriving.
That's enough recap for tonight. Will try to be back tomorrow with some more!
LOTS of things have been keeping me from this blog lately. Problem is, the more I do the more stuff I have to blog about and the less time I have to blog.
Some of the crew, pausing for a picture break:
Oh yeah, and typepad takes FOREVER to load photos. That doesn't help this lack-of-blogging thing either!
Alrighty, Mr. Gemmer, I've got a beef with you. We go to introduce our new daughter to her great-grandmother for the first time. You take one shot of the two of them together? And it's blurry?!
And then you take like 15 pictures of Daisy and great-grandma. And come up with gems like this one:
I love you, but you are so fired. (And I think your second-born may start getting a complex if we don't get better at this!)
Camp was pretty slow one week during my parent's stay. So slow in fact that the wranglers were organizing staff trail rides one afternoon. I asked Darin about the possibility of getting a ride for my parents, and they were welcomed to join the crew.
Daisy and I went up to the barn for orientation so we could take some pictures for my Dad and before they left we passed Daisy on up so she wouldn't be too sad for missing out on the trail ride. (Soon enough, kiddo, soon enough.)
They look like naturals.
And then a few days ago my Dad emailed me the picture below. Yup, that young good-looking guy is my dad, and the adorable girl in pink is me.
Two generations of girls on horseback.
Pretty cool.
My parents loaded up their house and pulled out of our yard last Friday. Even though we got two extra days (they were supposed to leave on Wednesday, but my dad got really sick), it was still hard to see them go.
Not only did they watch Daisy for us while we were in the hospital, Mom did so much laundry and cooking and cleaning when we came home that I think I forgot how to work my washing machine or load my dishwasher. In fact, the other day the dryer made a noise that caught Daisy's attention and she called it "Grandma's dryer". Clearly, my mother has been the only one doing laundry around here for weeks.
Oh yeah, they were also really good at baby holding and toddler entertaining. They even babysat one night so I could escape to a staff worship event. And Mom is the best grocery store/library/park/anywhere companion as I worked to learn getting out and about with two kiddos. I'm glad we'll get to see them again in Eastern Wa in a few weeks, but for now they are really missed.
Friday was made a little bit easier by a short visit from our best Bellingham friends, the Dvoracheks. We miss these guys a lot and even though they only stayed a few hours, it was wonderful to have them here.
Here's to hoping we can see them again next weekend in B'ham!
This morning I woke up with the idea to take my best girls and my Mom on a little picnic playdate. One of my favorite parks around here is about 15 minutes up the road in a town called Home. They have an awesome play area and lots of shade.
Here's my Momma, cuddling the baby so I can play with Daisy.
And Miss Daisy, fearless on the big slides today.
We even brought CC along to guard our chairs.
Wish this one wasn't so blurry.
My picnic buddies.
And, lastly, my favorite shot of the day.
