My Lucy Lady

Lucy is seriously the most lovely and hilarious little lady on the planet.  I love her to pieces.  She makes me laugh constantly with her comments.  I've finally started to write them down.  Here are the recent ones

1. "oh look!  It's the sun. It's kind of yellow"
2. "I need some fresh air." then she opened her mouth wide to let the air in
3.  We were about to read a book and she said "Sammy the seal or dr Seuss, what do you prefer?"  I am trying to give her choices at every turn, so it must be sinking in! :)
4.  While waving her pretend magic wand, she said, "I am turning you into Ariel and me into Cinderella"
5. "You are the most cutest thing ever mom" 
6. "Mom this marker made sad choices, so I am going to color with him and then put him in time out"...talking to the marker "I am so sorry you made sad choices. Next time you will make a sweet choice".  She is saying exactly what I say!  Hahaha!
7. "I most certainly and most pleasantly want to hike over here where the foxes won't find us"
8. "She was watching me do leg kicks and said "You should do the other one too. If you shake it all about, it will turn into a princess"
9. I was ordering Eli's ranitidine prescription and Lucy started singing "ranitidine, ranitidine" to the tune of Old MacDonald.  The pharmacist could hear her over the phone and loved it.
10. "This bleeding heart has a lot to tell me" referring to the bleeding heart bush we have in the back yard.
11.  "Mommy, your jeans look soooo cute!"  Nothing like your 3 year old to make you feel fashionable!
12.  "My monkey (stuffed animal) is praying for auntie Jai" I think that we must do a decent amount of praying for Jai and little Allistaire...it's catching on. :)
13.  This one came from Pat..."Daddy, will you marry me?".  I'm sure he said yes!
14.  Lucy started the first part of this phrase is a normal voice and then turned silly sweet for the second half.  "Mimi (my new nick name), can I watch....Mimi, I love you so so so much! Can I watch Cat in the Hat?"

Lucy also loves to sing and sing.  We do a LOT of singing every day.  It would be horribly embarrassing if anyone were to be able to look in on me, but I can't help myself...I do love to sing with her.



Lucy and I went to our little friend Asher's birthday party a few weeks back.  Lucy was pretty excited about the cupcake that she scored....she even allowed food debris on her face!

Lucy loves to play outside, which I love of course!  Here she is helping with the gardening.  Check out her feet...

Hardcore Lucy showing her muscles

Here we are while on a walk with the whole family

Lucy and I dyed rice a few different colors and she has played with this pile of rice for hours!  Best investment ever.  It was silent for so long that I even recorded the silence. :)

Easter

Ok, coming up on a month after Easter, here are the Easter day pictures. Time has a way of getting away from me for sure. So, we had a bit of a whirlwind Easter but it was lovely. Solveig was with us, which made the girly glee and loveliness on Easter morning that much more fun! Here they are with their little baskets

And now with some Easter paraphernalia on their heads
Instead of getting up at 4am to get ourselves ready, three kids ready, drive our 30 minutes to church arriving 1 hour early to find a seat, we decided to forgo the morning service and hit the evening service instead. So the first outing was to Children's Hospital where we met up with the Anderson and Murphy family. The SCCA unit put on a little egg hunt which was pretty cute and we were all able to be together for the first time in what seems like forever!

We all hung out for a bit, had super tasty take out lunch from a restaurant nearby, and then Eli promptly lost it.  He does so well napping but somehow he wasn't up for napping in a tiny room with 8 other people, no place to lie down, and bright lights.  So, I took him up to a nursing room in another wing of the hospital and rocked him while he slept and slept.  I think that he would have gone for hours but I woke him just in time to make the evening service.

I took perhaps 100 pictures of the three girlies together and they are all crazy...I suppose reflecting the joyful little girl spirits.  It was pretty fun to watch them spaz out.

Sten and the two older girls sorting their goods
I will miss seeing these two faces together!  Bubs looks angry. :)
Lucia with her sweet auntie
Lucia and Allistaire reading a giant "Little Engine Who Could"
Nana and Lu with her crazy "smile" 
I, of course, had grand plans of taking lovely family photos with all four of us outside in the evening sun, in our Sunday finery, next to a cherry tree or something.  Ha!  Such silly plans I have!  Here is what I got. ;)

Our Little Man at 6 months

I can't believe that Elijah is 6 months already! I love this age so much. There are so many fun and sweet things that he is doing now. He is so interactive and definitely wants to engage all the time. He is at that perfect baby cuteness stage too. He is bald, soft, and perfectly pudgy. His voice is sweet and soft...or quite loud when he wants something.  :)  He still does his baby bald eagle sound too!

Here are some of the great things that he is doing these days.

1. When he is happy, he throws his feet up in the air and grabs his feet or he arches his back and sticks his belly up in the air.
2. He waits in anticipation for you to look at him and talk with him.  He is way more interested in talking and interacting than playing with toys
4. The most random things made him laugh, so we work like idiots trying everything to get him to chuckle
5. He loves to rough house with Dad. He has a total Dad crush.

Playing with Dad


6. When I feed him, he will pop his head back and give me the biggest smiles. He'll talk to me with the sweetest little man voice. I love watching his tiny mouth form the words.
7. He has started to make more complex sounds and has "dada" pretty well figured out!



8. When you rock him or I am feeding him, his free hand waves all over the place grabbing at my hair, shirt or face. He does not keep that hand still at all.
9. He will sit in the jumperoo or the play saucer and seems to like them both though he doesn't want to sit in there for too long by himself. He prefers the interaction. :)

Sweet face in the play saucer


10. He seems to love being outside! He gets super smiley the few times that we have been able to sit out in the yard so far this year. He has also loved walk to the neighborhood slide with big sister.

outside on a blanket in the grass
11. He has been watching Lucia intently for a while but now she can totally make him belly laugh. He just waits for her to look at him and talk with him. It is so cute.

The video quality is terrible but I was trying to film him, hold him, and not interrupt the fun


12.  When you are holding him, he always takes one of his free hands, and flaps his fingers around like he is scratching his knee over and over again.  It is funny and cute.

I can't believe that Elijah has only been on the earth for 6 months yet, at the same time, it has flown by.  He is so much a part of our family and I can't imagine a day without him. I love my tiny man with every fiber of my being!

Somehow we made it from here...

To here...

Pre-Easter Bananza

I realized this year how much I love Easter! There are so many things that remind me of being a kid and then, of course, I think that it is the most significant day as someone who believes in the risen Christ!

My mom made a big deal of Easter when I was a kid. I remember lots of frilly dresses and amazing/ hideous matching outfits. I love it! We always did Easter egg hunts at my Grandma and Grandpa's house out on the patio and my mom would buy up half the eggs in the grocery store for us to color, dye, and beautify! I have lots of great childhood memories that involve Easter and I realized how important it was to me to continue the tradition. So, this year, we did a lot of fun and hilarious things. Here are our activities on Saturday before the actual Easter celebration.

First, we went to the local egg "hunt". I have never seen anything like it. They spread 16,000 plastic eggs in a football field and let 100s of kids loose. I am not kidding, those eggs were gone in less than 2 minutes. It was amazing. Here are Lucy with Daddy after the "hunt"
After lunch, we did our own little hunt in the backyard. I loved this. It was so sunny and warm that afternoon. Lucy had a great time hunting and Pat did the hiding. Thankfully Pat only put one small candy in each egg because Lucy ate them as she found them. ;)



Eli got in on some of the fun too with Dad!


I was so excited that Kaitlyn came over to join the Easter Egg coloring action. It is a good thing that she did because it would have been a huge mess without her. She pretty much lead the charge.
Kaitlyn helping with the creative process
Solveig stayed with us for a few days and it was even more fun to have two little girlies coloring! Here are the cutie cousins
WOW...look at all of that color. I love it
You know how you always catch the tail end of great moments on video? Well, this laugh attack had already been underway for quite a while before I busted out the camera. Those kiddies are crazy!

Family Love

We were able to hang out with all four Anderson's at their house a few weeks back!!! It was so wonderful to spend some good time with both of the nieces, Jai and Sten! It was our last meal together and hang out time at their house before their move. I am opting not to think too much about the loss of having them move so far away and choosing instead to think about those sweet little girlie faces and how much I love them.

It has been a sweet phase of life to have Jai and Sten so close. We bought our first houses here, we had our four kiddos here, and have spend many many wonderful days together. It is strange to think about how life continues to march forward with so many changes. It is encouraging to know that the Lord is in control of both of our families lives and that we have a strong bond keep us close. We will miss them so much but look forward to lots of visits to Montana where we will build new memories together.

Pat doing what he does best...chasing the kids around and making them scream with glee.
One of the best friends that the Lord has given me. I respect and love Jai very much. I am so grateful that we get to share life together as family.
My sweet lady nieces

All four of the fam watching a video of Eli belly laughing

Springtime Loveliness

Spring is definitely here! I absolutely LOVE spring in the Northwest. The trees start to bust out their tiny greenery and there are flowers everywhere. I've had a lot of fun talking with Lucy about all of the growth and how God designs things and makes them grow. It's also fun to give the little man texture lessons as we feel the different flowers and leaves. There is so much to soak in during the spring, most of all, the lovely sun!

It means nature walks with sticks...


and "helping" daddy trim back plants in the yard on Saturday morning.

One of our favorite outings during the spring is heading north to see the tulips. It is the perfect place to see amazing colors, get away from concrete and strip malls, enjoy the big blue sky, and of course get ridiculously muddy! I love driving through the farming area and soaking in all the green. I think that it is theraputic for all of us.

Our first trip to the tulips this year was this past week with my friend Rylee and her son Jackson. We went together last year too, and the kiddos are great buddies as you can see from the pictures. They got completely mud soaked and had an awesome time with it.

Who wouldn't love to spend the afternoon here!!!
My sweet people!




Jackson and Lucia playing...and hugging. SO CUTE

Pat Turns 34!

We celebrated Pat's 34th birthday...er...over a month ago while my family was in town! Time flies by... How we are in our 30th with 2 kids is a total mystery. Somehow I still feel like we are in our early 20th and just married. Ah...that makes me smile. We've had so many great years together. I loved our early married years with the freedom and fun and I love our married life with the hilarious kids who keep us laughing and will most certainly give us gray hair. ;)

Anyway, here we are on Pat's birthday.
Present time with the kiddos. It is a fun dynamic with Lucy waiting to "help" Pat open presents.
Pat reading his home-made card from Lucy. She dictated what she wanted to say as we wrote out the card together. I think our favorite line was "You are scotch bear, dad"

We were lucky enough to have Lindsey here a bit early, so she babysat while Pat and I were able to go on a DATE!! What's that, a date? Yes, a date! I love our times away just the two of us. Sometimes I feel like we have a years worth of talking to do in order to catch up. So much "life" has been packed into this year and we need each other to work through it all. I'm so grateful that I trust and respect my husband and that we can talk through all of the challenges and joys together.