One Lucky Granddaughter

My parents have been in Hawaii for the past ten days having a wonderful time. Apparently, sometime before they left, Emma told them to take pictures of real leis, because she's never seen one. They did better than that! This box was delivered today - addressed to Emma.
She was pretty excited when she got home from school! Thanks Grammy and Gappy!


Be warned, rumor has it they got Lila a pink ukulele!

Fun at the Rink

Emma had a roller skating party to go to over the weekend, so we decided to all go. Lila's never been on skates, but she had fun. She went around twice (which actually took quite a while) before she told us she couldn't skate because she wasn't big yet. Emma loves to roller skate and is pretty good at it. That's her on the back of the birthday-skating-train. Notice that Mommy left her shoes on, but Daddy skated for a little while and impressed his daughters.

Family Movie Night

We had Family Movie Night last weekend. Emma got the book and the movie Because of Winn Dixie for Christmas. She finished the book, so we watched the movie together. We made Jiffy Pop, which they had never seen before. We decided that it was a very exciting snack. Emma told me that the new "historical" American Girl has popcorn "just like this"! Yeah - she's from the 1970's - "historical!?!?"

Our New Baby Doll

Trudy actually gets in this bed by herself. She loves it, and Lila loves to cover her up. She'd better enjoy it now - she's not going to fit for much longer! -Getter bigger every day!

Where's Trudy?

New Entertainment

We got a new washer and dryer on Wednesday. It's front-loading and stackable, so Ryan built a storage closet next to it (where the dryer used to be). This is all very exciting to me, considering how much of my life is spent in the laundry room.

Lila and Trudy really like it!

Life With Trudy

Trudy is adjusting quite well. She is an adorable little bundle of puppy trouble! The girls can't get enough of her .... until she starts tryng to chew on their ears! Emma's getting better, but there were tears involved with every nip in the beginning. Lila, the toughest kid in the world, is doing fine. We've not had any tears from her. A few times a day I hear her muffled voice saying, "I need help!". I usually find her with Trudy sitting on her head chewing her hair. When I pick Lila up to rescue her, she says, "Whew! she was biting me all over!". And that's it - she's never upset about it!
Trudy loves to be in the middle of everything. She follows us all over the house. She loves to tuck the girls into bed then come downstairs and play hard with Ryan. Here are some pictures of life with Trudy:

The Obsession Continues

So yesterday we were in the car. Lila was chattering and I was not quite listening to her. So finally I said, "What are you talking about, honey?"
"Trudy and Max are going to be friends."
"That's nice, who's Max?"
"..The Grinch's dog! We'll go to his cave and Trudy and Max are going to be friends."

AHHHHH!

Lila's Favorite Argument

For those of you tat don't know, Lila became obsessed with The Grinch over Christmas. It started with the cartoon and book, but eventually moved over to Jim Carey as well. For the past four days, she has been asking us if she can use the camera to go to the Grinch's cave and take a picture of him. The conversation goes something like this:

L: Daddy can I use your camera?
D: What for, honey?
L: I want to go to Grinch's cave and take a picture.
M: Lila, the grinch isn't real, it's just a movie.
L: Yes he is.
M: No, he's just pretend.
L: No he isn't
D: How do we find him?
L: You go up a tall, tall mountain to his cave.
M: Isn't he mean? Will you be scared?
L: No, his heart grew 3 sizes. He's nice now. He gave Cindy Lou Who her tree back and now he's nice.

...quite an exasperating conversation. Emma's no help. She just cracks up and encourages it.

Trudy's Story

We've been thinking about getting another dog. We thought maybe March would be a good time to start looking and thinking about it. We've been going back and forth on whether we should adopt/rescue a dog or find a breeder. We knew we wanted a puppy, but weren't even sure what breed.
So, Thursday night, Becca and Chris stopped by and out of boredom, we looked at petfinder.com. There are so many dogs that need adopting - it's depressing. Anyway, we were just looking and most of them were already at least 4 - 8 months old. The "labs" weren't as cute as our Lu was, so I was being kind of snobby about it. Then we saw Trudy, or "Yuri" and she was called. She seemed so perfect, but we weren't looking for a dog now.
I put it out of my mind until Friday. When I checked to see if she was still there - she was. I filled out the 6 page application knowing that it was a complete long shot. They "don't adopt out puppies younger than 6 months to homes with children under the age of 7". And that's before they've even met Lila! I finished the application and made sure Ryan was ready, just in case it happened. The foster mom emailed me Friday night and said she just had to talk to my vet in the morning and then we were approved! Wow! We were really getting a puppy - on Sunday!!!

The agency we got her from rescues pregnant dogs from kill shelters, puts them in foster homes to have their litters, then adopts them out. Trudy's mom (a beautiful chocolate lab) was only 8 months old. She was owned by a man in GA who also had an older male chocolate lab. He apparently used the dogs for hunting. When the female got pregnant by (we assume) his other dog, he dropped her off at the shelter. She would have been euthanized in 3 days, but the Delaware Maryland Puppy Rescue people found her and put her in a home in MD. There she had 9 puppies, weaned them, and was adopted by a vet tech who fell in love with her. There were over 80 applications for the litter and 1 family was taking 2 - until last week, when they decided to just take the male. That left Trudy while all the other applicants had already gotten dogs. We found her at the perfect time!
She is adorable! She's learning the ropes around here pretty quickly. She loves the girls and they, of course, love her! She's a pretty lucky girl to end up here, I must say. And we were lucky to find another beautiful lab, like our Luey, that was also a rescue. As Hannah Montana would say, "We got the best of both worlds!" (Lila's been singing that all day!)

Trudy!

We got a puppy! I'll share the whole story soon, but now I'd like you to meet Trudy. She's almost 9 weeks old and the sweetest thing ever!

New Camera

Yeah! We just got new camera! Ours has not been acting right for a while, and was pretty temperamental while we were away, so Ryan came home with a new one on Wednesday. It's a Canon, and it's pretty little compared to our old one. Here are some pictures from the first day.

Washington Trip

We had a great time visiting everyone in WA over the holidays. Here are some highlights and pictures. It was very hard to narrow them down!

The view was breathtaking!

We had a second Christmas morning where Emma got a parka for her doll, and Lila pretended she WAS a doll.

...A wonderful family Holiday Dinner...

All four grandkids got a drum set to keep at Papa's house. It was quite a hit - no pun intended.

We relaxed in the house...

(That's our nephews Logan and Michael - 4 cousins = lots of fun!)

... and played out of the house.

We had an early surprise party for Papa's 70th Birthday!

New year's Eve, we went night sledding at Uncle Erne's steep hill.

Of course, some snowmen.

We had an absolutely beautiful vacation!
Thank you Gramma and Papa!

Christmas

Here's how we celebrated our Savior's birth:

Christmas Eve, Ryan (sound guy) and Emma (children's choir) both had to be at church at 10. Lila and I went up around 12 to see Emma practice and save seats for some neighbors that were coming. The service was beautiful! My dad led music and the kids sang so sweetly. Marty's message reminded us that for many people, church on 12/24 is just one of the many stops for the holiday before you're on to the next activity. The church service should BE our focus for the holiday. Coming to worship our King and celebrate His birth - that IS the whole point. I've always loved Christmas Eve church, and that's why. I get lost in the festivities once I'm home and the kids are opening gifts, but at church I can focus on the magnitude of God's gift to us and worship.

I brought Emma home with me after she sang at the 3:00 service. Ryan called around 4:30 to tell me that he was at church without a car.There had been some miscommunication in my family about who was riding home with whom. So, Bec and Chris picked him up since they're the closest to church.

We went to Mom and Dad's for dinner - delicious! The girls got to open their presents from my family after dinner to save some chaos in the morning. Everyone got new jammies thanks to Mom. The girls were excited about Santa, so we hurried home and set out cookies and a carrot for the reindeer. Lila slept with Emma because she scared of Santa being in the house while she was asleep - understandable. Emma drove us crazy waking us several times in the middle of the night to tell us she couldn't go back to sleep. I remember doing the same thing!

We had a wonderful morning staring at 7:30. Family came over, we had breakfast, opened presents, and enjoyed our time together. Lila got books, a princess "laptop", "big, big, big Cinnerella", Mr. Potato Head, and a beautiful doll that she wants nothing to do with. Emma got American Girl stuff, games, books, Little House on the Prairie DVD (I'm reliving my youth), and a kid's digital camera.

Ryan and I sat back, took a brief deep breath and enjoyed our children.

Then we frantically finished packing, fought with Lila about taking a nap, and tried to fit new fun stuff in the carry ons. We left around 2:30 for the airport to go visit Ryan's family WA.

Flying on Christmas Day is actually pretty nice. No lines or crowds, extra seats in our row, Burger King for Christmas lunch. There was, however a bit of snow in Minneapolis that slowed us down for a couple of hours, but we landed in Spokane minutes before midnight local time (that's 3 am NJ time, mind you). The girls were sleepy, but so excited to see Gramma and Papa! We made it to their snowy gorgeous home and slept for a few hours before we got up and had Christmas morning all over again - this time with cousins Logan and Michael too!

What a great Christmas!

Lila's Third Birthday

Well, it was almost a month ago, but I thought I'd better document it anyway. Why did I have a baby the week before Christmas - it's just too crazy! - clearly not MY timing. We managed to make it special and non-Christmassy for her, but have time to blog about it - forget it!

A few days after the Doggy Party was Lila Ann's third birthday. I can't believe she is three, although I'm hoping that means she's out of the terrible two's. She is so funny and smart and grown up. She thinks she is 8 like her sister. When Emma was 3 she loved Dora and Veggie Tales and Raffi music. Lila prefers High School Musical and dancing to Radio Disney.

Let's see, her favorite things are: warm chocolate milk, Emma, DisneyWorld music CD, The Polar Express, The Grinch (both the cartoon and Jim Carey's version - unfortunately), play dough, broccoli, cheese and crackers, soup (any kind), bread and butter, and, of course, white blankie and bear.

We had Grammy, Aunt Becca and Uncle Chris, Aunt Meg and Uncle Rob, over for dinner and "Monkey George Cake" on her birthday. She got princess dolls, Only Hearts Dolls in the mail from WA, stuffed Donald Duck, and a "new" bigger kitchen set for the basement.

We never forget what a gift Lila is to us. We waited so long for her and couldn't love her more! She drives us all crazy with her impish ideas, but she's so sweet and fun and happy. She's worth every gray hair she's given me in the last three years - and that's alot!