Wedding rehearsal

We have been in Washington this weekend for my cousin's wedding!

Here are some shots my dad took, from Friday, the day of Alison and Tyler's wedding rehearsal and dinner.




The top photos are of the scenery outside the cabin where Patty's family stayed. Beautiful!





Cora had fun playing with the flower girl and ring bearer.





The flower girl wore Cora's dress from Casey and Bradley's wedding; it was nice to contribute and see the dress in action again.




Stace worked Friday on a slide show of photos of Alison and Tyler growing up. He did a great job.

Our girl

Cora, Cora, Cora.

How your Daddy and I do love you! Your zeal for life, your laugh, your silly dancing, your love for us and for your sister. And, these days, for that orange plastic fish.

A few details from Cora's first month of being 4...

She was looking through one of her High Five magazines (the younger version of Highlights) and spotted a recipe for a silly apple smile, using apple slices for the lips and mini marshmallows for the teeth, held in with cream cheese.

She had such fun helping make them. She loves working in the kitchen, and I really enjoy having her help.

She likes to have our attention as she does "amazing" things, like jumping and spinning at the same time: "Look! Watch! I can do a cool trick!"

Cora also loves Play-Doh and coloring. In recent months, her coloring has transitioned from scribbling to actually coloring, choosing the colors and staying within the lines.

The picture with the flowered chair struck me and Stace - it's only maybe 2 1/2 inches high, so she was pretty detail-oriented to use a different color for the roses. She made the shamrock/heart project in Terrific Tots yesterday, and I was in class to help out. Most of the kids still colored very hard, but Cora was coloring gently, trying to color the hearts nicely and evenly.

She loves rainbows, and they are a frequent subject for her art projects. At Stroller Strides recently, we were on one end of the long line of moms and babies, and Cora noticed all the bright solid color shirts the moms were wearing: "Look! You all look like a rainbow!"
Cora also is more interested in letters and their sounds, and I know she will be reading sometime this year. She can sound out some simple words, with help.

She likes to sing, especially the songs on a CD by Jess Penner, a young songstress who performed on a Friday night at our church coffeehouse. It's happy, upbeat pop music, and we're happy to hear Cora singing along. I've got to get some video of it!
Cora's voice is still young and cute. She says "valilla" for vanilla, "naplin" for napkin, and "Nemo Finding" for "Finding Nemo."

Speaking of Nemo, Cora is well into a bandaid phase these days, and yesterday Nemo needed a bandaid for his fin, because he was hurt, too. And about those bandaids - Cora seems to hurt herself 10 times a day, and usually uses the words "straight into" when she describes what happened. ("I banged my arm straight into the chair!" I knocked my head straight into the corner!") I'm working with her on only complaining/CRYING when she's actually hurt...

And we have noticed that when she's in trouble, and we're disciplining her, she suddenly winds up banging her elbow, or stubbing her toe, etc. She'll also start crying, "I want Mummy! I want Mummy!" when I'm the one upset with her, or "I want Daddy!" when Stace is not happy with her. I think she wants us to hug her and forget about what she did or didn't do!
And over the last few days, she's said to us, "I'm scared of you!" when we're disciplining her. As if that will make us give up and allow her to misbehave.

Lastly, we've had to have a few talks with Cora about not rolling her eyes. The worst example came the day our cabinets arrived. Stace encouraged Cora to come into the garage to see them, and help him with sorting out the boxes. When she opened the garage door, Stace said something happy to her about the cabinets. Not impressed, Cora actually rolled her eyes at him. Whoa. Stace came down on her hard for that one, appropriately hard. We haven't had eye-rolling since.

All that said, Cora's been very good the past couple of days. Fun, funny, imaginative, helpful. As I said, we love her and are so thankful God saw us fit to parent her! He will never give us more than we can handle, right?!

Kitchen Update 4

Following Stace's weekend work, the kitchen is one sink and one set of drawers away from being completely devoid of cabinetry!

I'm appreciating our sink now. Soon enough, it will be gone too.

Just to make things easier for me, Stace kept the old broken dishwasher in place as a dish drying rack, with a cabinet door on top as a coffee station. Thanks, Babe!

Stace was able to remove the pantry and upper cabinets so that we can use them in the interim.

We also have bags of food in the bedroom and boxes of kitchen stuff in the living room.

Besides the demolition work, Stace redid the wiring on that wall and put in the new switches and plugs.

For the first time since we've lived here, I can flip a switch on the wall, and the garbage disposer comes on! Amazing. (I've been going under the sink to plug in, and then unplug, the disposer each time.)

The last few photos are from the demo. We finally got to use a sledgehammer! Ha! That was fun. Especially since I've really hated our countertops for the 2 1/2 years we've lived here.

I never have to wipe them down again, all the while feeling as if I'm just moving crumbs into the space between the tiles where the grout is missing.

Tidbits

Last weekend we went to see Melanie debut in her new children's theater show, The Ugly Duckling. She plays the title role, and it's very cute. She gets to sing a bit more, and I always love hearing her beautiful voice.
Maya, Natalia and Juliana made it as well, and Maya and Cora both had a great time. Cora, as she's getting older, was laughing hard at many of the jokes and funny scenes. It seems her sense of humor is getting better. Any of my local readers with kids, go see the show!

On Saturday night, Stace and I took Violet out to dinner and a walk around the mall. We stopped into Sears and did our dishwasher shopping, and then got tea samples at the new tea shop. Violet just had to have a drink too, so the guy working there pointed us to an herbal berry tea. As you can see, Violet isn't too skilled at open cups. Thankfully after a few different laundry treatments, you no longer can see the stain.

Violet has been doing pretty well in nursery lately, at church and at MOPS. The other day when we picked her up, we could hear her calling out as she stood at the gate. It was so cute! Moira, the very nice lady standing with her, used to care for Cora when she was in nursery.

It's great that it's staying light a bit later, and the clocks go forward this weekend. We took a short after-nap, before-dinner trip to our park yesterday. Both girls enjoyed the swings...
...and at least one girl enjoyed the slide.

Kitchen Update 3

Our kitchen cabinets arrived Wednesday!!!

After all of Stacey's hard work so far, it was a nice shot in the arm to see and touch these beauties.

Cora helped him inventory the 30-plus boxes, and then after careful inspection, he set up the cabinets in the garage similar to how they will look in the house.

The pantry unit is huge! At 30 inches wide, it's only six inches bigger than our current pantry cabinet, but it looks so much bigger to me.

All the shelves in the lower half - from which Stace is peeking - are the roll-out trays. (Can you see my big grin as I think about that?)

We also bought a new dishwasher this week. Sears was having a great sale when we did some looking over the weekend, so we took the plunge on a Kitchenaid.

It's waiting for pickup, so no photos, but you can click the above link if you want to see what we selected.

And we have pretty much made our decision on the backsplash tile. I went to a local tile store in Newhall - whoa, what a selection - if you can't find something you like there, it doesn't exist! I was able to take home four options, and we think we'll go with the 1x4-inch green/cream/brown mosaic in the bottom left sample. You can see it closer up by clicking here.

Money plays a role here, of course - I love the option on the bottom right, but it costs 3 times the one we're leaning towards! Since we need about 20 linear feet of backsplash, that makes a big difference.

As I type, Stace is preparing to install more drywall. Over the weekend, Keith came by to help him solder the copper pipes for the refrigerator. Stace also moved the gas pipe for the stove a couple of inches.

Sisters

Some more photos that have been hanging around in the computer, begging for public viewing.

Cora and Violet were having a great time playing the other afternoon, with Cora's pom pom from the dress-up set from Auntie Linda and Uncle John and their girls.

Next photo shows Cora playing with bubbles outside, with little sis enjoying the view.

And next, a great set of memories for me - Cora playing in her drawer at 12 months.

Violet now also loves playing in the drawer, where I keep all the kids' plates/cups/colorful plastic STUFF.

Violet is 9 1/2 months in these photos.

Now, really. Have you ever seen two baby girls as cute as these?

Come on.

Really.

Speaking of sisters, I'm tackling their clothes this week. I got out the bag of 12-18 month clothing, and found lots of treasures, including the outfit Cora is wearing in the drawer photos.

I got them organized in Violet's drawers yesterday, and today will organize her outgrown clothing into boxes.

Then, onto organizing the 2T and 3T bags from Cora that are also in Violet's closet.

I think it's a spring thing - I have this inner desire for much more organization.
(Those who know me best are sighing with relief to hear that, I know.)

A great week

What a nice week we've had!

Though we have our daily moments of frustration, in general my little family is in a nice groove. We are so blessed!

On Monday, Juliana and her girls came up, and we went to Kabuki for lunch.

Both girls enjoyed their (free) birthday lunch, and I especially enjoyed the large portions. No cooking for me, that night!

Cora did amazingly well with her chopsticks, on her first time using them. She didn't ask for or need a fork!

Violet also mastered taking food from the sticks.

We then walked over to the Undergrounds coffee house at our church, where coffee and pastries made for a nice dessert.

Undergrounds is a donation-only establishment, with some of the funds raised going to a local nonprofit.
All of our girls did great and had a nice time together.

Besides the chopsticks, Cora did something else that amazed me: When I was ordering our drinks, Cora was counting us, and counting the number of chairs at a table she wanted us to sit at.

It's a little thing, but such a grownup little thing to have done, and she did it all on her own.

On Tuesday, we had a MOPS leadership meeting, followed by school for Cora. Wednesday we went to a MOPS mom's house for a pizza-making playdate, followed by storytime at Castaic library.

On Thursday, Cora and I made muffins before she went to class; during class, Violet and I got my car's smog check completed. Violet was a sweetheart, affectionate and playful while we waited.

Today, Friday, after Stroller Strides the instructor brought a parachute for the kids. Cora was running around shrieking with laughter, and Violet was almost equally enthusiastic. We then met our friend Jaimie and her two, Mackenzie (pictured) and Luke, at a park for a picnic play date.

Good times! The kind we want to remember.

10 months

Violet is now 10 months old, and such a fun and affectionate addition to our home.

She loves us very much, and is pretty quick to give us her open-mouth kisses.

Her personality is generally happy, easy-going, upbeat. If every baby was this joyful, I'd love to have five more!

When she does something she shouldn't do - like touching the DVD player - and we firmly tell her "no," she is unhappy, but no tantrums yet. She definitely doesn't have the same strong-willed personality that Cora has. (Phew! I reread the blog and was writing about Cora's screaming fits at 9 and 10 months...)

Yet again, one negative (but kind of funny) thing I should note: I was out front with Genia and our kids, and handed Violet to her for a moment. Violet immediately started fussing, waved her arms at Genia's face, and then reached for me. The arm-waving looked a lot like hitting!

Violet pulls to standing easily, and climbs up on things like low storage boxes that slide under the bed.

She likes to put things in her mouth - everything she can reach! Still no teeth other than the bottom two, and her teething symptoms have lessened.

She generally goes to bed between 8 and 8:30, and sleeps until 7:30. She's still taking two naps, though the morning nap has shifted to 9:30ish instead of 9.

In the bottom photo, Violet had woken up at 6 and was so unhappy. I changed her diaper to find a lot of mess, which was making her bum very red and painful. No wonder! By 8:30, when she was having her breakfast, she was done!

Speaking of breakfast, Violet normally has oatmeal in the mornings, and whatever we're having for dinner, in the evenings. She especially likes yogurt, chicken, peas, corn and carrots, along with quesadillas and French toast. She ate an entire piece of French toast for lunch the other day, and the next night she nearly finished a chicken-and-cheese quesadilla by herself!
She also nurses four times a day - in the morning, upon waking from her naps, and before bed.

We also have a couple of other cute photos from the past few weeks. In the third one, she found my lipstick and knew just what to do with it. And next, she was very pleased with herself after pulling down onto herself a box of fun things.

Past the Point of No Return

An Open Letter

Dear Genia and John,

We love being your neighbors.

We love exchanging meals every other week and having that dependable friend from whom to borrow eggs, a ladder, or a weed whacker.

We love how our kids get so excited to play together. We love our quiet cul-de-sac where they all can ride their scooters/trikes/bikes together.

We love our little park we can quickly walk to for an easy picnic playdate.

It was fun having dinner and watching the Oscars with you!

We love how Ave is such a good friend to Cora, even though she's two years older and goes to the big school now. We love how Owen and Violet giggle at each other.

And we love how Johnny and Cora play together.

The other day, when Johnny asked me if he could have a date with Cora, I laughed inside, but also secretly hoped that these kids will grow up together, and reach dating age together.

So, from our family to yours, please don't ever move.
Sincerely,
Stace and Lisa

Editors' note: I asked Johnny what he meant when he asked me if he could have a date with Cora, and he said that she could come to his house and they could play. So I think he was meaning a "play date." And, for those of you wondering, "dating age" would be 23.