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)!!!

SOLD!

TJ's cheesecake sold for $50!!!! Oh yeah!

And here it is...

I know I've already bragged about my hubby, but I have to add on to my story. The dessert was done at 11:00pm, but little did I know that it had to cool for an hour or more. TJ stayed up later than me (1am) to make sure the cheesecake got in the fridge and woke up this morning to put it all together.

WA-LA....WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE (with dark chocolate topping) ALA TJ!

Fancy huh?! Looks beautiful. I think it will go for millions at the auction:)!

Why I love my hubby

I came home last week and told TJ that I signed up to make a dessert for an auction at my school to support 5th grade camp. I basically just told him so he could help me remember, but little did I know that he was totally going to do it for me. He said he wanted to look up something fancy since it's for an auction and we want our dessert to go for lots of mula! We remembered on Friday night but he still didn't know what he wanted to make, so we said we'll do it on Saturday. Well, Saturday came and went and Sunday came and went and the dessert topic never came into our conversations. So here we are Monday night at 10:55pm waiting for the dessert to finish baking. TJ ended up making a white chocolate cheesecake (every thing from scratch-so not how I bake, ha!) and hand dipped chocolate strawberries to place on top and around it. Going once, going twice, SOLD!!! That is just another reason why I love my hubby. He supports me and my school, he was eager to help, and still hasn't ditched me for bed (11:00pm). I am one LUCKY girl!!!

Little Einstein Party!

"We're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship, zoomin through the skies, Little Einsteins!!!"

Sophia chose her birthday theme this year. When giving ideas about her party theme she would respond with "no" until I said, "Do you want a Little Einstein party?" YAH! This is the only movie she will sit and watch...

I made her cake (got the idea online) and am quite proud of how it turned out!

This year we only invited her cousins and had 9 of them come. They decorated rockets that they used to help them with a mission at the end of the party. The mission was to find Sophia's party bags using the clues given. They followed the clues and found the party bags in Sophia's bed...MISSION COMPLETE!
The gangs all here (except Jackson is sitting by himself at the little table). Lunch time- The menu was a classic kid choice: Hot dogs, macaroni and cheese (homemade), and veggies.

After lunch was presents. I love watching kids open presents. The kids who were watching kept creeping closer and closer to Sophia and the presents. Isn't that a classic kid for ya? TJ thought of a good idea....Get one of those huge baby gates, make a circle with it, and stick the person opening the presents inside so no one else can help them, ha! Sophia didn't mind the help though:)

Sophia liked the happy birthday singing, but then turned her head when it was time to blow out her candles. She had too much attention on her (which by the way was so like me as a kid) so she got some help from Daddy.

I also made cupcakes...yummy!This girl has had a week full of celebrating...Until next year!

More Birthday...

Birthday Fun...

I knew if I went to work on Sophia's birthday, then I would be grumpy and wishing I was with her on her day, so TJ and I took off the day to spend it with the birthday girl!

Her day started with:

Waking up to balloons covering the floor in her room, which she thought was pretty cool.

Then, we went downstairs to open presents. We got her a basketball hoop (and yes it's in our family room, which is not my favorite...come summer, it's outside).

And her baby was even spoiled! We have now been "baby-fied!"

It's amazing how naturally it comes for little girls...Such a good mama!

Then,

We went to the Children's Museum in Tacoma. I was hoping they changed their theme since the summer, but they didn't. Sophia didn't remember though and still had fun. I think her favorite was the market with all the fruit, veggies, and food.

What a multi-tasker: Making food, answering the phone, and dealing with money in the cash register.

Time to pick apples

We traveled to the Native American area. Sophia caught a fish!

Hiding with Daddy in a cave

Painting time. She would paint with each color for about 3 seconds and then say, "All done!" That's the attention span of a 2 year old:)

Next,

We ate lunch at a little cafe near the Children's Museum.

Finally,

We met some of our family at Red Robin for dinner. We can't pass up the FREE birthday meal! Sophia sees arcades and asks for quarters now. Good thing Gamma was there. Sophia put her quarters in the stuffed animal/candy machine...No Animal, but got some candy. TJ had to try it too! $1.00 later, he won a doggie! So lucky on Sophia's birthday!!!

Here's the gang that joined us for dinner!

I was not sure how she would react with the LOUD "Happy, Happy Birthday" song from Red Robin, but she actually enjoyed it (whereas last year, not so much). For some crazy reason she didn't want her ice cream, so her 2 cousins enjoyed it! Ahhh look at her...So big!

One Last Thing:

After we got home, got on our jammies, we sang, "Happy Birthday" to end the night! (You'll see her nicer cake for her party).

More fun is to come at her family birthday party!!!