Happy Late Birthday Sophie

Sophie turned 2 on Saturday and we had a little party for her that day, Monday, and we'll have another one this Sunday. We like to spread birthdays out around here. Honestly, she had a pretty crappy birthday on Saturday because I had to work ALL day. (I really mean all day.)

She really loved getting new toys and having all the attention focused on her for her party. She even did her VERY best to blow out the two candles on her cake. I think she might have had a little help, but don't most kids get help from all their friends and siblings that are close enough to blow?


Sophie is a wonderful blessing in my life. She is so sweet and caring sometimes, and other times she'll glare at you and give you her best stink eye. She's hilarious. She has just started giving me impromptu kisses and hugs. I love it when she shows me she loves me. Neither of my children started out particularly cuddly - just too independent - so it's nice when they have gotten older and actually show they need me.

I think Sophie is turning into a pretty typical two year old already. (Honestly, she started that phase pretty early.) She fake cries all the time, she throws herself on the floor when she's been offended. She takes off her diaper at night. She even backtalks when I chastise her. She's fabulous! I'm so glad I've been blessed to care for this wonderful little spirit. I think she's really smart and funny. She tells knock-knock jokes without end and is talking so much. She loves to take care of her babies - it helps her lay down at night if she thinks she's putting her babies to bed too. I love my little Sophie!

Disaster Area Part 2

I broke up my disaster posts for the weak-hearted. Or maybe for those that don't like to read long things. I hope it helped. My next disaster area is more out of my way - but MUCH larger. Here are some pictures. And, yes, that is a sledgehammer sticking out of the wall.

I'm excited that Tom is finally taking some action on the garage conversion. I'm tired of having a useless room in my garage when I could be parking there. It's just a gigantic mess and I'm not sure how quickly it will get cleaned up. We found someone that wanted a bunch of the old insulation, so that was nice, but nobody seems to want our busted up drywall . . .

The girls (mostly Abby) decided to have a picnic outside while Tom worked on the garage. Who wants a picnic when it's 40 degrees outside????? At least it made for a fun picture. After a few minutes I made them come in. Sophie was getting into the construction - not a great place for a curious toddler.


I'm hoping I can get another post really soon out of the *fixed* version of our disasters. (It may, however, end up being a post of the snow covering our disaster instead . . . )

Disaster Area Part 1

So, I haven't posted for a while. I couldn't think of anything particularly noteworthy. I thought of something big today, though. We've been making some home improvements. Or at least that is what they are intended to be in the end. We had AJ and JoAnna come over and paint the girls rooms. Tom and I don't particularly enjoy painting, so the only way we figured it would get done would be to pay somebody to do it for us. AJ and JoAnna were the willing suckers.

Here is a before picture from Sophie's room:



It was a really cool castle room with matching heavy drapes and all the fixin's. However, we don't have any boy children. So, we painted over the castle and now it's glass green. It looks kind of minty, but you can't really tell from the picture. I still need to hang things on the walls and figure out some sort of window thingy, but I'm excited to put

Here is an after picture, it's much brighter and will be a lot more hospitable to a new baby:


Abby's room, however is not finished yet. The paint is all done and brightened it up in there a bunch too. It was a fairly dark purple before and I got kind of annoyed with it after a year. Here's what her room looks like now. It's all pink, so I didn't bother trying to capture a panorama.


The problem here, is that we are getting new carpet some time soon. So, this is what the living room looks like as I'm typing:

I'm hoping to get my living room back sometime this week, but it kind of depends on us finding time to go pick out carpet and get the installers to come. Wish me luck! There won't be any Christmas at our house until we can get all this stuff put away.

Tagged by Laura

So, Laura tagged me 3 weeks ago. I guess I'll finally post my version - I hope it isn't too painful. I am going to try to list 6 unspectacular quirks about myself.

1. Most days I don't bother fixing my hair. If I use a brush before putting my hair up, then I feel like I've accomplished something. You know I'm going all out if my hair looks like I used the hair dryer on it. It sure is a good thing I wasn't born with totally nappy hair!

2. I don't like to call people on the phone. I'm always afraid they don't really want to hear from me. This tends to include the pizza guy, the utility company, people at work, and the people I'm supposed to be visiting teaching . . . I wouldn't recommend this quirk to anybody

3. I ask too many questions. Those of you that know me have probably already figured this out. I wonder about a lot of different things. I suppose I should just travel around with an encyclopedia so I can look things up instead of asking whoever is around me. At least the encyclopedia won't get mad at me.

4. I've been wearing the same CTR ring since the 8th grade. It's been pretty bent out of shape, but I still wear it daily.

5. I don't like to play with dolls. This mostly includes Barbies, but just about any doll is no good. They are okay for dressing up on occasion, but I really just don't enjoy dolls. I never did as a kid (ask my sister) and I still don't (ask my daughter).

6. I'm a total spazz when it comes to playing basketball. I wasn't ever any good as a kid. I just always watched the clock and waited for the buzzer to go off. (Not to mention the part where I don't get the ball into the basket.) During college I developed an amazing game plan where I run all over the court. I didn't really contribute that much, but at least I was doing something. I still play like this and I'm still completely awful. You know my ward YW basketball program is bad when you hear that I was the coach last year.

I'm not really into tagging people, cause that might make them feel like they are obligated to post something. So, if you like this one, go ahead and pretend like you were tagged. Sorry to make you read all this stuff about me. It was pretty random. :)

More Pictures

I don't have much to say today, but I've got some fun pictures to share. Sophie really wanted to play with this completely flat ball. I thought it was kind of funny. Sophie has also been REALLY enjoying the Halloween candy we acquired last week. She especially likes suckers - as you can tell from her blue mouth. I get some good chances to take silly pictures of Sophie when Abby is at preschool.

Fall Colors

We had a nice day on Monday and the girls went out to play in the leaves. Sophie is decent for pictures, but getting the girls together is a nightmare! I don't know how the professionals do it. In the 2nd picture, Abby decided to start posing, and Sophie was trying to get me to fill up her juice. Kids are nuts.

It snowed last night and I took a few pictures of the girls, hopefully I can find a decent picture with both girls looking in the same direction.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is always a lot of fun for me. I REALLY like candy, so that's a big part of it. I also like costumes and dressing up. I didn't dress up, but the rest of my family did.

This is how I sent Tom to work yesterday:


He was the lunch lady - you know from the Chris Farley & Adam Sandler skit. He looked pretty ridiculous. I even worked the night before (with his enforced aid) to make him a large man skirt. He bought himself a lady blouse and a wig and voila! Tom actually won the most creative costume category at work, so he got a $25 gift card to Chili's/Macaroni Grill. I suppose that helps pay for the outfit, right? (I'm thinking he won't get a lot of future use out of the blouse and skirt . . . )


I brought the girls to Tom's work for some workplace trick-or-treating. Abby just wanted to keep going after that and start in on the neighborhood, but I had to hold her back. She really likes this novel way of getting bags of candy!

I didn't get a whole lot of fabulous pictures of the girls. I can't generally get one of the two of them looking in the same direction at the same time. But here you go:

They were Mariposa and Tinkerbell. Abby gladly told just about everybody who opened their front door their names and who they were dressed up as. She sure is friendly! After trick-or-treating we visited with both sets of grandparents and got even more candy and treats. We ended the late night getting the kids in bed around 10:30. They never would have made it that long if it weren't for all the candy . . .