Mother's Day Tea

Sophia had her "WOMEN THAT WE LOVE" Tea on Saturday. It was such a beautiful day so it was set-up outside!

The Preschoolers practiced a little play and sang lots of songs. Sophia was excited to be the "Purple Poppy" all week, but when it came time for it, she was not to sure. And 5 minutes later the hand went up, then she slowly walked away from the group to sit with me. Later she tried it again sitting on one of her teacher's lap. By the way, this would have been me at her age, better yet I wouldn't of even got up there!

Sophia's guests included Grandma Brown, Nana, and GG. Yup, she's still clingy. I think she knew it was Mother's Day, haha! She was like this ALL weekend:)

Sophia worked hard on presents...She made GG a bead necklace and card and Nana got a picture of Sophia in a picture frame.

And Grandma Brown got a painted pot. What a masterpiece! Although Sophia was not the star of the show, I knew she knew the songs and I was glad to be with her and other wonderful women!!!

Husky Game at Safeco Field

Saturday was the annual Huskies baseball game at Safeco field. We love it #1 because we get to see Caleb play, #2 it's $5 a ticket and open seating, so we get to sit really close and experience Safeco minus the Mariners. Highlights from the game in no particular order:
1. Being with family...Nate's family, Christine's family, and the majority of TJ's family came. It was fun being surrounded by both sides.
2. Catching free T-shirts
3. Cheering for Caleb (even though he pretended he couldn't hear us).
4. Eating junk food
5. Getting on the big screen with Sophia
6. Watching Caleb autograph baseballs, posters, etc for the kids. Sophia wanted her cheap little blue mitt signed.
7. Watching the kids run around the bases after the game
8. Being decked out in Huskie gear
9. Huskies winning!!!
10. Not having our car broken into like last year:)

Thank You Lacey!

TJ and I have been looking for a swing set for Sophia for awhile because she loves swings and we thought with summer around the corner it would be a good idea. We were thinking of spending around $100 for a wood one so it wouldn't rust. Our criteria was a swing and a little slide, nothing fancy because our backyard does not have a ton of space. Well, after much research we found that was nearly impossible. We got really excited when we saw one on the Internet for $200. Yes, still more than we wanted to spend, but it was a wood kit that came with a bumpy slide and 2 swings. Yes, hit the jackpot! I clicked on the image, read the reviews and quickly realized that the swing-set included ONLY the swings and hardware. WHAT THE HECK? We would have to buy the wood and slide ourselves, which is another $200! That is crazy! We might settle for a metal one, but those are still more than $100. I don't know, I guess I have to feel lucky that I live very close to a cool park. We became much happier when my friend offered us this play house. She was tired of having it take up space and her boys never played with it. Inside there is a kitchen and little table. Boy are we going to have fun with this house (now bring on the sun)! Forget the swing-set, we get to play house, hehe...Thank you Lacey!!!

Isn't it cute!

Easter Day

We had an early Easter morning. Sophia had a lovely cough all night so she ended up sleeping with us (which is usually a big no, no for me)! About 6:30 she started coughing so hard that she made herself throw-up all over our bed, so then she went straight to a bath. We made it down stairs to see if the Easter bunny ate Sophia's carrots, hid her eggs, and left her anything. Sure enough he did all those things!

She loved the Easter egg hunt and got to do 3 of them. One at our house, one at my parent's house, and one at TJ's Nana's. She found one!
Found another one!

We still had time to kill before breakfast and conference, so we opened up her pizza play-dough set and had some fun. Can I tell you that I love play-doh too?!

We blew-up the air mattress, watched conference, went to my parent's house for the tradition Easter baskets, egg hunt, and yummy bunny buns. Then, we made our way to Nana's house and visited with TJ's family. Finally, we went back to my parent's for dinner and strawberry pie! Does anyone else think we need a school day off after Easter? I sure do!

Today Sophia asked if the Easter bunny could come again tomorrow! I guess she had fun :)

Easter Fun

You know me...Lover of crafts! My mom saw a similar sign at Michael's, so she copied it and I thought it was adorable, so I made one too. THANK YOU MY CRICUIT!!!

(If anyone doesn't have one and likes scrapbooking/crafts you NEED to get one...well worth the money)

It's easy to get caught up in all the festivities of Easter, which is why I made my sign say, "HE IS RISEN," so every time I walk by it, I remember the true meaning. I am so grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ and that we can live with him again because of the sacrifice he made for us!

Sophia only cracked 4 eggs in the dying process, ha! She chose pink for her egg.
Nate and Mindy had the idea of meeting at my parents house to have an egg dying party and dinner. The Uffens kids know how to decorate! There was everything from Star Wars, multi-colors, designs, and stickers eggs.

Tonight we had to get ready for the Easter Bunny, so Sophia put out her eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide and some carrots for a snack (And a snack for her too).

We also blew up the air mattress and watched "The First Easter Rabbit" movie. Can't beat snuggle time with the family:)

The Easter Bunny is all ready! I sewed the liners to our baskets. Mine is flip-flops, TJ's is baseball, and Sophia's is polka dots for now. I like have my baskets look the same, but thought it would be fun to pick material to match what we love. That way when we have more kids down the road I can make more!

TO KIM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM! WE ARE THINKING OF YOU AND HOPE YOU HAVE A VERY FUN DAY! LOVE YOU!

L-O-V-E

Sophia loves to sing and is learning this song for Mother's Tea at her preschool. Pretty darn cute! Click and enjoy!

Easter Dress

Next week is Easter, but we won't be going to our church building because it's the churches General Conference and we'll be watching it on TV (which means I won't be putting her in a fancy dress), so yesterday was the day Sophia got to wear the dress she picked out. She's not a huge fan of dresses, but she did pick this one out with Daddy at Costco about a month ago, so she was excited to wear it. It does very good twirls.

This is her striking a pose!

Good Friends

SURPRISE!!! My roommates from college, MaryAnn and Jason (from Alaska) were visiting for the weekend, so we met up with them. We went to Olive Garden for dinner and had a 30 minute wait so we hung out outside. Sophia was hanging on the hand rail when an older man asked me if she could have a "college dollar." I wasn't quite sure what he meant so I didn't know what to say, but he handed her the dollar. He explained that he likes to start kids out on saving for college, so he passes out 4-5 dollars a week and calls them "college dollars." He was a retired teacher and values education. What a neat man and neat experience!!! We are putting that dollar in her bank and definitely saving it!

After dinner we went bowling. Last time we went bowling they didn't have shoes Sophia's size, but check them out now! She thought she was pretty cool!
This was the first time Sophia met MaryAnn and took to her quite quickly.

Sophia loved her orange ball and bowled 2 games by herself. Sophia liked MaryAnn's help! Check-out our shoes!

Even though I haven't seen MaryAnn in a long time, I love it how we pick up like it was yesterday. Here I am living up to my nickname, "Midget."

Group photo...Thanks for spending time with us Jason and MaryAnn...We miss you already!

Musician in the making

TJ and I went to a friends wedding and while we were waiting the DJ had pop songs playing with only violins. We really liked it, so TJ asked the DJ who it was. The group is called "Vitamin String Quartet," so we went on ITunes and downloaded some music. It is great to have in the background, but not have all the words all the time. The other day in the car Sophia was asking for the "trumpet" song and we couldn't figure out what that was until TJ said, "The violin songs?" And sure enough that was what she meant. Enjoy her playing her violin. I love how it's only 1 arm going!!!

Caught Off Guard

I have to say that I'm pretty good at reading TJ and knowing when something is up, so it's hard to surprise me, but on Saturday he TOTALLY caught me off guard! I went to get my haircut, came home and noticed TJ's parents were at our house, which wasn't odd because we were planning on seeing them later on that night anyway. I walked in the door, saw TJ dressed up and he told me to go get dressed. In an "ahh" state, I walked up stairs and on our bed were my clothes, shoes, coat, and jewelry picked out. He also printed the E-ticket out, so at that point I knew what we were doing. Shocked, I walked back out of the room and yelled, "HUBBY!" He told me to just do it and so I did. TJ's parents watched Sophia and we were off...

And for those of you who don't know, TJ loves to match, so notice our coordinating outfits! I know we look good;)
The show started at 8pm, so we took the ferry over early to get dinner. This was definitely a first...our car DIED on the ferry! Yes, we were one of "those" people. Thank goodness we were towards the back so we didn't hold anyone up. TJ ended up leaving our lights on and because it was so sunny that day we didn't notice and neither did anyone else. After every car had gotten off the ferry, a huge tractor type thing came driving us to give us a jump. As we drove away I waved and yelled thank you to the guy who jumped us. He gave us the, "you morons wave!" hahahahaha!
TJ let me pick the restaurant. I kept it simple and plus I was really craving The Old Spaghetti Factory. We walked in and only had to wait 2 minutes and we even got to sit in the train! I felt like a kid because I got very excited! Yummy brown butter and mizithra and Italian sodas!

And here we are

Ta-da

The show was really good, pretty simple compared to other shows I've seen, but a very fun story line. GIRL POWER! Most of all I loved being on a date with TJ (even though we both missed Sophia). I told TJ that mini-golfed would have been great too. He laughed and said he wanted something different. I'm one lucky girl.

More Highlights from our evening:

- A guy asking, "where's the wash-room?" Who says that?

- 2 gay guys sitting behind us on their first day (quite the interesting conversations)

- Young girls in WAY TO SHORT dresses

- Ladies not wearing dresses their size

- Holy jeans

- Old lady boobs (tons of cleavage)

- Transvestites

CAN YOU TELL WE DID A LOT OF LAUGHING ON OUR DATE!

Hey Batter ,Batter

This picture was at the end of my blog but I accidentally deleted it. Does anyone know a trick to insert photos in a specific spot? Ahh that frustrates me! Anyway picture this picture at the end...

We spent our weekend watching TJ's brother, Caleb play baseball for UW. We wore our purple and Husky gear to show our UW pride (expect I forgot to take a picture of all of us in our shirts...Sophia was adorable)! Sophia loves the ferry boat rides and can spot the car racing games from miles away. Look at her style. Miss pimpsta driving...

The fun continued on the ferry when TJ fed our left over french fries to the seagulls. All the kids around thought that was great!

And Sophia even wanted to try it, which totally shocked me. The seagull swooped in so fast that I couldn't get a picture of her holding the fry. After she realized what happened, she ran to me and started crying, hahaha! I was proud of her for at least trying it.

Sophia is quite proud of her Uncle Caleb and cheered him on.

We actually got to wear our sunglasses for part of the game. She is starting a new fad...glasses upside anyone? She ALWAYS puts them on like this and says she's a "cool" girl!

After a long weekend and in the 7th inning, Sophia fell asleep to the sweet sound of baseball (which by the way is SOOO not like her). She fell asleep on my lap sitting up, with her sunglasses still on, but I made her more comfortable. I think my right arm got stronger for it! And TJ caught me a free shirt (thank you size M) that Sophia sported as her blanket!

She woke up just in time to say bye to her Uncle Caleb. UW lost against Fresno, but we had a good time! (Go back to the top picture...ha!)

Valentine's Day

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

I always have to make something or do something corny for TJ on Valentine's Day. We were keeping it quite simple because V-day was on a Sunday, but I still wanted to surprise him with something. So I taped this to our bedroom door (he got home late Saturday night to find it)...

Good ol' Post-Its! We have a large blank wall that we haven't done anything with in our bedroom, so I wrote things I love about him on all the post-it notes. Everything from having a nice butt, to being a fun daddy!
We also did the Valentine's Fairy with my family on Sunday. The fairy doorbell ditches and leaves V-day goodies on the porch with my dad's famous and oh so delicious heart shaped oatmeal cookies! Boy do I love traditions:)!

Will You Be My Valentine?

Sophia is having a Valentine's Day party at her school tomorrow. I wanted Sophia to be a part of making her Valentines and since she can't write she colored over all 16 cards. She also helped put the candy fish in the bags. It's so much fun having her get into holidays. It's also been "wear what you love week" at her school and her teacher said to let them be unique and creative. Every day I have asked Sophia what she loved to wear and she always said, "Jammies," so she has worn jammies to school all week. I am totally jealous!

Here are her Valentines: Simple, but cute!

Sophia's teacher, Ms. Shelby is trying really hard to eat healthy and has been staying away from sweets, so we decided to give her a healthy Valentine!

Binky?

When Sophia was a baby I pretty much decided for her that she was going to like a binky because I knew that it was easier to get rid of in the future than her thumb. The only type of binky she liked was the ugly hospital one, so we went with it (even though I really wanted the cute kind, ha!). Well...Sophia has been only getting her binky in bed for a long time now and has been fine with that until recently....She has 3 cousins who suck their thumbs and a couple of kids at her preschool and she has been smart enough to catch on to that. This is probably what she was thinking, "Why do they have their thumb in their mouth? I guess I'll try it, but I'll suck on my pointer finger instead. Ohhhh wow, that does sooth me like a binky! I'll suck on my finger now when I don't have me binky." Seriously, she's 2 and she's now sucking on her finger! Isn't that a little backwards? In the mean time I was trying to figure out what to do. I noticed that she sucked on her finger more when she was in the car and tired, so I started to give her the binky in the car because I didn't want that finger in her mouth! One day she threw her binky in the car and we forgot to bring it inside. That night TJ went to play basketball with the car and the binky. Oh great is what I thought, but Sophia didn't even really question it because she had her finger to fall back on. She has been sleeping without her binky for about 5 days and asks for it occasionally. We explain that it got lost and we can't find it and she's okay with that answer. Bye, bye binky. But in the mean time, her finger was still being sucked and it really bothered me. Over the weekend I talked with Sophia about it a lot, but not a huge change was happening. When I dropped her off at her preschool Monday I told Ms. Shelby about the binky being "lost" and about the finger (which she already knew about) so she could help remind Sophia about NO FINGER. When I went back to pick Sophia up Ms. Shelby had her tell me something. She told me, "Sleep with no binky and no finger!!!" Hallelujah! I asked Shelby her trick and she told Sophia a story about a shark with sharp teeth and that she doesn't want to put her fingers in her mouth because they might get hurt. I didn't get the full story, but if "shark teeth" works, I'm in! We are only 2 days in but there has been no binky or finger! Hopefully Sophia will continue making this an easy transition. She said she wanted a soccer ball, so we made a deal...No finger=Soccer ball! I am all about deals with this kind of stuff!!! I do have to say that I am lucky because there has been not big fight about it (so far...keep my fingers crossed)!!!