Monterey trip

I am little behind on my blogging, so I am going to go ahead an post in non chonological order a bunch of stuff.

First of all, I thought January was supposed to be a calm, get caught up on life month, and of course, it wasn't. Especially towards then end of the month, with our trip up north. We like to try to go to my grandpa's on the last weekend of the month. We have that routine down pretty well. This month, however, we also added a day trip to Monterey. The extra 6 hours of driving and the extra packing was a little exhausting, but well worth it.

We got to meet our sweet little great niece Madeline. She is quite the little doll and both my girls really enjoyed hanging out with her. We also got to see a lot of Grace's "big cousins" as she calls them, which is always fun, plus two aunts and an uncle! It was a packed afternoon. We even managed to squeeze in a walk to the park.

I love all three of these pictures of the girls. I love how Ellie and Maddy are holding hands in the first one.



We looked down and Elizabeth was giving Maddy a back rub. Too cute!
Both my girls love babies so much, but it isn't surprising. Both Gunnar and I are baby lovers. We both enjoyed getting to hold Madeline probably as much as the girls did.
At the park there weren't too many baby swings, so we had the two little one share. Grace and her friend Lilah used to do this as a baby and I think it is so funny.



Grace was excited to walk one of Steph's dogs back to the house. It was the perfect size for her.
Lastly, Elizabeth enjoyed ridding on the little rocking horse. I love how expressive her little face is and it is the perfect way to end the post about a fun day. How can you not smile at a face like that?

Wild Animal Park

Can I just say, before I start with how cute my children are, that I really hate it when places change names. Like Christmas on the Prado, when they started calling December Nights? Lame! The newest victim has been the Wild Animal Park, which is now something involving the word Safari. Super lame. So let the record show, that I will be sticking with calling it the Wild Animal Park.

We went there last week. To the Wild Animal Park. We met up with our friends Maegan and Conrad. Conrad is only 6 months (or so) older than Ellie. He is one of the cutest little kids you will ever see. Even if he is unsure about Ellie hugging him.
We spent the day walking around, playing at the play ground, and having a fun time together.
We even caught the bird show, which I haven't done since Grace was a baby. It was fun though.
I got to use my new stroller. Although it works so much better than my old stroller, it still gave me a pretty good work out.
All in all, it still a fun place to take the kids (as long as it isn't summer). And I guess I will continue to support them, even if they are messing with my head with the whole name changing thing. :)

Sisters here and sisters there, sisters everywhere!

I started a new project to try to improve my photography skills. It is called project 356 and basically the goal is to take a picture every day for a year. Hopefully it will help me capture more random pictures of everyday life. I figure I do this more or less anyways, but this is helping me be more disciplined about it. I have made it the first 16 days of the year strong, so hopefully I can keep it up.

Here are a few days from last week.

The girls enjoying their sandwiches after grocery shopping in the car. It is one of our favorite "treats."
Grace has been plugging away at her Kindergarten work. Ellie wants to keep up with her sister, so she enjoys coloring while Grace works.
The girls heading out to church. Ellie is sporting her new Christmas clothes. It is adorable now that she is walking well. She looks like a little doll. The best part is her personality is as sweet as she looks.

Soaked feet

Out with the old, in with the new

As anyone who knows Grace knows, she LOVES to color. We go through a lot of crayons. I am fairly picky about the crayons we use (becuase when Crayola says they are washable it actually means they are, and with Elizabeth in the house, that is important). I hate wasting money and I always felt bad about the mass amount of old, broken crayons I was constantly throwing away.

I found this idea online and Grace and I did it. It was really fun and now we have new crayons! They are perfect for Ellie's little hands, are pretty, and the girls can't break them. Win-Win-Win.
I had read online that if you do a lot of colors together sometimes they end up being an ugly brown color. So we sorted them into basic groups.
After baking them until they melted, and then we waited for them to dry.
It was a little like watching paint dry. So we eventually put them in the fridge to hurry up the process. Once they were cold, we popped them out. They color pretty well. I cut them in half to make them a little easier to use. But all in all, a fun and productive afternoon.

Sisterly Love

Ballet days

After the Christmas break, Grace was excited to get back to ballet. I took a few pictures of her first day back. She was so excited to wear her new outfit, too. Thanks, Grandpa Dick. :)


During ballet Elizabeth and I hang out. Her favorite pastimes include going through my purse and pretending to talk on my phone.