Lana's 4th Birthday Party

Lana turned 4 on Dec. 14 and we had all the local family as well as our friends the Warnekes over to celebrate. We had a pizza dinner, then opened presents (thank you everyone!). Lana stained her mouth with sauce before any pictures were taken, oops! Then we moved on to cupcakes from Costco, which are enormous!

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Pizza and cupcakes sounds simple....

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There were 11 children under the age of 5, all were well behaved and had fun. Then Lana had an idea..........

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And Ellie was soon to follow! Notice what is missing in Ellie's smile. Can anyone guess what Ellie wants for Christmas?

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More soon!

Crazy Week 11-14-08

This has been a crazy week! It started when Ellie lost her tooth. The other top one is loose too so more pictures will be coming soon no doubt.

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Next Lana broke her arm. With all of the stunts she has pulled that should have damaged her before now, this one takes the cake. She stuck her arm out at the last second as Evan was sitting down.............and he sat on it. Here she is. It doesn't seem to be bothering her anymore.

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I took Lana to a last minute orthopaedic appt. on Monday. After we checked in, the fire alarms went off and we were sent outside to stand in the parking lot for 20 minutes (a lifetime while holding a squirming Alyse in the freezing cold). It was a false alarm so we went back in to get Lana x-rayed and casted. She did not sleep well at all the next 2 nights.

On Wednesday, I skipped BSF and decided to stay home for the day to rest. At 8:30 the nurse at Ellie's school called and said that Ellie had a "unique" problem. Apparently she had found something on the carpet in her classroom at circle time (reading time on the carpet) and stuck it in her nose "just a little bit to get the boogies out of my nose". When she tried to get it out, it went up farther and farther until it was out of sight. Her eyes and nose were watering like faucets. The nurse had her blow a lot, but it did not come out, so I was advised to take her to the doctor for an emergency nasal extraction. I tried to get her to blow again but she only gave a few wimpy ones and said it hurt too bad. Off to the doctor we went! No fire alarms this time, but Ellie sounded like the alarm after taking one look at the nasal extraction instruments. The doctor said OK lets try blowing one more time first. This time Ellie put some power to it and out flew a soggy blob of something, we still don't know what. Yes, we paid a doctor a lot of $ to hold a tissue for us. Lovely.

Here she is with her sucker from her traumatic appt. Isn't she just an Angel? ...

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See Y'all later!

New Activities for Alyse

Alyse has decided that she must try (and climb on) everything. She is very smiley and has some very goofy grins as well. She likes noise, piano, pots 'n' pans, banging cupboards, etc.

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Look familiar anyone? ...

One of Alyse's favorite new activities (she thinks it is a great joke) is to hit herself repeatedly in the head and say "owee" then laugh a lot. Ellie and Lana think that copying her is a great game as well and think it is just as funny as Alyse does! Alyse also thinks she needs to feed herself (with her hands of course). Here we have a combination of the two activities. Sweet potatoes make great mousse! Who knew?!

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Here are some of her new dance moves!

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Fall 2008

Here are our tough girls out playing hard at the Cabin.

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Here is one of Alyse's winter outerwear bodysuits.

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Here we are getting ready to go out for Halloween. The girls tried to match Evan's teeth for a moment, but couldn't keep them in for very long. ...

... We went to the Pumpkin Patch Party at church for Halloween this year. Here is little red riding hood and the wolf.

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Here is our redneck in his long underwear holding our little pirate. Alyse turned out to be a real pirate, stealing any candy bags, water bottles, etc. that anyone happened to set down.

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State Fair

Here we are at the Minnesota State Fair at the end of August 2008. As you can see below, Ellie is still not a big fan of animals. Both girls love rides though and were very disappointed that they were not tall enough for most of the "cool" rides (as they called them).

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Ellie was a little tired on the way home and fell asleep with her happy meal box on her head. How or why, I do not know, but it was hilarious! Her head bobbed for a full hour in the back seat! She even snuck her hand, carefully, up under the box to scratch her nose and then pushed the box back down to make sure it didn't fall off! We have a video of it below, but it may be too dark, we'll see!

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Playing Outside

. Here is our backyard swingset that Evan constructed with really tall swings for the girls (including me!). Ellie and Lana had two of their friends over to play who are about the same age. Ellie and Joslyn are doing what they call the spider because there are so many arms and legs sticking off the swing. Alexis and Alyse are sharing some swinging time as well. My friend Jessamine is holding Justin (her third child) who is only 3 wks older than Alyse.

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This is Alyse's new trick. You can see that she is absolutely delighted that she can remove her diaper all by herself! Oh the joy of it.

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She also found a plant to tip over and play with/eat the dirt. She is so proud of her accomplishments as you can see by the expression on her face. Look what I did mom!!!

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We're going to the fair soon, so stay tuned!

Oregon

I returned to OR when my mom passed away on July 23, 2008. I was there with just my sisters and my dad at first. We all dealt with it as well as could be expected (and in a way that my mom would have liked). We enjoyed one another and our time together. We took a rafting trip as you can see below. We also went to get a spa treatment (fancy massages). We felt closer than we have in a long time. My mom brought us all together yet again!

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Evan arrived with Alyse for much needed support during the burial and memorial. We also took one of the first swims in the Koi pond! Alyse wasn't so sure about the lack of movement allowed on an air mattress.

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It was a hard trip, but a good one under the circumstances.

Cabin Time!

Back at the cabin in early July 2008 we went fishing with Matt and Carla and their kids who really love to fish.

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We love being out on the pontoon. Lana and Ellie swim alone and jump off the boat (with life jackets of course) and Alyse goes out with Evan and I. Lana wants to learn to drive the boat!

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Grandpa gets teased quite often but tolerates it well!

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Catch ya later!