We work with what we've got

I haven't posted in a while because I've been sorta burned out on picture taking and blogging. But I thought I'd post Macie's latest accomplishment--she's grown some hair. I can finally put it up in a little teeny tiny water spout pony tail (without it falling out). She gets compliments galore from friends and strangers. I've never thought that she looks like a boy but this extra hair definitely helps her look a little more girly. Her resolution for 2009 is to grow even more and to not yank out the bows I put in.

Ryan's latest accomplishment is learning the "words" to Feliz Navidad. This morning on the way to church he sang, "Police on my dod, police on my dod, police on my dod, puedo anyo and policeee dod". We're thinking he may have the gift of tongues.

Merriness and Scariness

Ryan and Macie got a visit from Santa at our church's Christmas Party. I was so excited for pictures since my awesome photog friend, Meghan MacAskill was taking the pictures. She did a great job but check out Santa. I was even afraid of him:). I think he put his finger in an electric socket right after his sleigh landed. Poor Macie was terrified but Ryan loved him. Santa made up for his scariness by being really jolly with the kids.

Ryan's Happy 4th Birthday

On Tuesday Ryan turned 4. He had a most fun birthday party this year. We, along with 3 other families in our ward, rented out a big inflatables warehouse place and had such a fun time jumping on things, going down slides, eating cake, and just hanging out with friends. For a brief moment in time I felt like the PERFECT mom:). Anyways, that was a month ago and I never got around to blogging about it. You can tell I'm in the low to no effort mood lately. Anyways for his actual birthday, Ryan insisted that he didn't want a birthday cake but he wanted birthday flowers from Costco. I was disappointed. I wanted the Cheesecake Factory sampler. We got him the flowers anyway. So, on Sunday we celebrated his birthday at my parents' house. I couldn't stand not having some kind of dessert so we made brownies from a box. Ryan decorated his brownie all by himself. And you can see he licked the bowl. I did, too.


Here he is blowing out the candles. And the little person in the middle of the brownie is Strawberry Shortcake. He has no clue who she is but grandma happened to have her.


Opening his presents.


And heeeeeeeeeere's Terence the Tractor. This kid has been praying for him for months now. Now that he has him he almost doesn't know what to pray for anymore. Happy birthday Ryan:).

3-year old prayers

So, Ryan's totally into Thomas the Tank Engine and has been praying for Terrance the Tractor for quite a while now. I told him that maybe Santa would bring him Terrance for Christmas. . .Anyways, this morning he was playing with the Thomas brochure that shows all the various, overpriced Thomas accessories. When it came time to say our morning prayer Ryan insisted on doing it. He started the prayer by asking for more money to buy more trains and than paused. Then he walks over to the Thomas brochure, points out to Heavenly Father the next train he'd like to get (Edward) and then resumes the prayer. We find ourselves silently, and not so silently, cracking up during so many prayers lately. Considering how much these trains cost he'll be praying for a while to get Edward:).

Isn't it funny?

How different 2 kids from the same family can be? I've been thinking about this more lately with my kiddos. Ryan is all personality and says the funniest things (he's been calling Rich "Hon" for a good 6 months now). He's also a complete chatterbox, has been since a few weeks old. Macie's much more reserved but she's also more confident and has been able to do most things sooner than Ryan (with the exception of talking). Even though she sticks to my side in public when we're at home she's always off on her own entertaining herself. Ryan was the opposite. In public he was off getting into as much trouble as he could. And at home he was stuck to my side wanting attention and entertainment. Anyways, we can't help but love them and get driven nuts by them at the same time. It will be fun to see what the next one is like.

Check out the little surprise we got. . .

Due June 1st.

Balanced dinner

Last night I was making stir fry for dinner (hence the chopsticks) and Ryan asked if he could have a Halloween treat after dinner. I said sure. When I put dinner on the table, this is what I found. He seriously thought this was a reasonable amount of candy to have for dessert. And he even organized it in this perfect wreath all by himself. This kid cracks us up every day.

Candy Candy Candy and more Candy

The kids were pretty happy about trick or treating. Macie didn't know what she was excited about, but she was sure excited. As you can see Ryan was a fire fighter and Macie was a little duck.


We went trick or treating with lots of neighborhood kids (this picture shows only a few). It was so cute to see them all knocking on the doors at the same time. And their costumes were all so fun.


Here's Macie checking out her loot. And no, I didn't let her eat the Dots.

Disneyland

We met up with my sister's family at Disneyland and had loads of fun. Here's some of what happened.

It didn't take long for us to hit the candy stand.

Here's my sister with her new baby girl, Briar.

 

My sister Renae, her baby Briar, her husband Mark, and kids Jensen, Makell, Davis, and Riley. And a giant Mickey Pumpkin in the background.

Rich, Macie and Goofy. Ryan refused to be in the picture. He would ONLY take a picture with Mickey.

The ONLY way you can take a picture with Mickey is by going into his house, waiting in a LONG line, and then you're taken into this awkward, dark room with hardly any space and you take a picture with him. It totally sucked. This was my picture and I don't like how it turned out. But it turned out waaaaay better than the "professional" picture they took. You would think they'd have this set up better considering the long line we had to wait in.

Makes it all worth it:)

Who says that things can't bring us happiness?

A thirsty man's gotta do what a thirsty man's gotta do.

Ryan loved all the rides, even the Matterhorn. We love having a pretty brave kid. His favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean.

She's so adorable. And Macie's pretty ok, too. Kidding.

That's Disneyland. We thought it was a pretty good success until Ryan said that he liked Golfland better and asked if we could go there the next day. Good grief.

Off to Woodland Hills

We visited Rich's sister's fam in Woodland Hills. They spoiled us rotten and entertained the kids a lot. Here are some of the highlights:


The first day of our visit was filled with smoke. There was a wildfire about 20 miles away but it looked (and smelled) like it was just blocks away. Ryan loved watching all the firetrucks heading to the fire.


We headed to Hollywood since Rich had never really visited (we drove through once but never got out of the car). Here he is next to his most favorite guy in the whole world's star (Donald Trump). I might be exaggerating just a little.


Our kids really loved Aunt Caroline. It may have something to do with all the toys she bought them:). Or it may have something to do with all the love and attention she gave them.


This is pretty much what Rich did on our whole vacation. Just kidding, he was so great taking care of the kids a lot so I could chill.


Ryan and Macie could have lived in Aunt Caroline's backyard filled with gravel and an old-school Tonka truck.


We found this giant cricket (according to Ryan) in Caroline's front yard. Since Ryan's a bug fanatic this was pretty exciting for him. So, that's Woodland Hills for ya. Next stop is Disneyland.

Family Trip

So, I'd call this a family vacation but I decided that traveling for hours in the car with 2 little kids isn't really a vacation--it's more like work. On wheels. Ok, so actually it was really fun, too. Ok, here goes. First we went to Clovis, Ca. to visit my brother Dan's family. . .



I think most of us moms know how hard it can be to go shopping with kids. So, my sis in law, Becky, and I hit some stores without the kids and it was awesome. I should have bought something for myself but I bought a cute outfit for Macie. Most of you know that I'm totally cheap and pretty much only buy clearance stuff for my kids. Due to the totally evil influence of Becky I bought this outfit for Macie. It cost a whopping $34 which was, like, totally crazy of me. But I think it's pretty darn worth it. While in Clovis we also went to a movie, got pizza, and hung out around the house. It really was relaxing since my niece and nephews pretty much occupied my kids the whole time. On Sunday, Dan made a great breakfast and Becky made a yummy dinner. It was a great start to our vacation.





This was a highlight for Ryan. He loved wrestling with his cousins, Jeremy and Austin.

Macie's 1st Birthday

Time has flown by and Macie turned 1 yesterday. We had a tiny party at Grandma and Grandpa's house with dinner and a cake. As you can see she loved her cake. Ryan enjoyed opening her presents. Macie's such a sweet and cute little girl. We feel blessed to have her in our family. Happy Birthday Macie!

Before. . .

After:)

Swimming in September

I've been meaning to blog about how we get to and from the pool. Well, really how Macie and Ryan get to and from the pool. Last summer, when I was a very large pregnant lady, I bought this super cheapo wagon so that Ryan could haul all of our stuff to the pool. I went easy on the slave driver's whip (except for when he lagged behind). Anyhoo, now that Macie is with us I make Ryan haul all our stuff AND Macie to the pool. Man, my life is cush. Except for the three flights of stairs I have to haul our stuff up and down. Every single day.

Preschool and the New Arm

Today was Ryan's first day of preschool. I was honestly more excited for him than for myself, although having a 3 hour break was pretty nice. He was so great. I walked him in and he said, "Mom, I just want you to stay for ONE minute." So I did. When I got up to leave he said, "Ok mom, but REMEMBER. You need to come back and get me." And he let me go. I was so proud of my awesome little guy as I walked past the wailing kids.


Getting ready to head into preschool.



Macie was sad for about a minute--til she realized she'd get all the toys to herself.


And then she got really happy when she realized that she suddenly had a new arm--we took her cast off. She kept waving and staring at her newly functional arm and appeared to think, "Hmmm, where'd this thing come from?" Here she is waving her new arm and sprinting away.

Our newest roommies

So, I totally hate spiders. Totally. In recent years we've been getting the most atrocious spiders in our apartment. They've driven me crazy because I had never seen them in my whole life and then all of a sudden we were getting lots of them. My arms and legs get all goose bumpy just thinking about them. After much Googling I discovered they're called Zoropsis spiders. They're harmless but horrid. Our summer has been blissfully spider free until this week. And then Whamo! 3 in just a few days. So, yeah. I made Rich tape a quarter next to the most recent visitor so that you could tell how big it was. We'd consider this one medium-sized. If you look carefully you can see the reflection of some of the eight, yes eight, eyes along its back.

Wunderlich the Wonderland

For Labor Day we went on a hike. This is a rare event since we're inherently lazy people. Ok, at least I am. However, we thought it would be something new-ish for us. We went to Wunderlich Park which was beautiful, shady, and free to park at (which almost mattered more than the beautiful part). Ryan was so funny. He kept saying, "Come on guys, we're ALMOST there!" Little did he know that there was still 2 miles away. Macie enjoyed the ride on my back and Ryan walked most of the way with the occasional piggy back ride from Rich. Here are some of the highlights:


Ryan's currently obsessed with 3 things: tractors, trains, and snails so when we saw this bulldozer he was over the moon.


There was a fun tree with a hole right through the trunk. Ryan was born again.


Proof I was there.


Here's a redwood. This lens isn't very fancy and doesn't have a wide angle so there's not much tree in the picture. But imagine bigness.


I'll probably get the Bad Mother of the Year Award but Macie looked really funny "hiking" around.


Come on, who couldn't laugh at that?


Ryan pooped out on the way back to the car.


Speaking of poop there was a lot of it there and Ryan was kind enough to point it out to us every time he saw some. Rich couldn't stop cracking up. Someday we're going to have to grow up and be mature about this kind of stuff. Someday. . .

Life continues to get interesting around here. . .

Before



After


Fractured her wrist from falling off the step stool and learned how to walk all in the same day. Now she's relearning how to walk with a heavy cast on her arm. It's the saddest, cutest thing I've ever seen.

More gross things from the Bonditas

I feel like I blog a lot about gross things. Well, what can I say. . .kids do gross things. Well at least mine do:) And doctors do gross things to my bellybutton. So, yeah, to continue with my little legacy today I found Macie blissfully sucking on a foaming snail. I quickly flicked it out of her mouth and grabbed the camera (doesn't everyone think 'Kodak Moment' when they see their kids sucking on snails?). As I'm trying to take a picture of her slimed lips Macie caught glimpse of the snail and lunged towards it with an apparent ravenous appetite for raw escargot. Is my cooking really that bad?