April 2013: Easter

Gonna finally update this blog... Every time I start a new job I fall off the wagon. I'll try harder to keep up after this. Otherwise I'm gonna just have to drop the blog all together! I just love having it to look back on though! These updates are mostly going to be in slideshow format for quickness, but I'll probably pull out a few of my favorite pics too.

ANYWAY - OMG look at my kid - she is TOO tiny in these pictures... 6 months really makes a difference huh?! Our Easter was simple and awesome. I made E a Maggie Rabbit from Alicia Paulson's kit and it turned out amazing and was SO easy! Love it!

 

 

Feb 2013: Valentine's Day

 

   

 

We celebrated valentine's day in our usual fashion - pizza and a night in. 2012, 2011, 2009, and before. Edrie looked adorable (as usual) in a little valentine outfit and a few days before we tried a pinterest craft of toilet paper roll hearts. It was a shit show... i didn't think to put the dog away so she ran through the paint and tracked it all over the house... rugs, couch, toys... I'm still finding red paint months later. Edrie thought it was more fun to paint herself than the paper and then didn't understand why she had to take a bath before playing with her toys... it was a total art FAIL! i learned some good things for next time though...

2012 Christmas Card (december 2012)

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Christmas and Surrounding Festivities (december 2012)

The holidays were so awesome. My brother and his boyfriend came from San Diego and it was awesome to see them. Grant had quite a bit of time off and even though we hosted Christmas Day - we did low-key drinks and appetizers so it was really nice. I grabbed a few pictures but most of them are in the slideshow. Just too many I wanted to share. At the end of the post I'll do a quick list of what is in the slideshow. The above picture is at my Mom's Christmas Eve.

our tree before and after Santa came

Papa showing E her new balance bike! 

Christmas day watchin' Papa help her open a gift.

The chaos of opening gifts with lots of family! 

Oh man! They are mine. Lucky girl. (ps... do you love our stockings over our REAL fireplace?! This was our first Christmas in this house - very special.)

The first few pictures are from a lunch out with my brother, dad, and Efron. Had lots of fun getting grub and beer.

Christmas Eve Auntie Lindsey came over with a few special gifts for our girl.

Then we stopped by Grant's dad's house. Edrie fell asleep on the way so it was kind of lame because we couldn't all go in.

Lastly, we had dinner with my mom, step-dad, Joel, and Efron. Super delicious ham and fixings. Edrie opened her first gifts - one from us (pjs) and one from nana and grampa (blocks).

She loooved the blocks - she subsequently drug the bag all over the house.

We got home late and baby girl fell asleep on mama.

Then mama was crazy and stayed up way too late making cinnamon rolls and cake balls.

Christmas morning we slept in a bit (miracle!) then went for the stockings and gifts.

We got Edrie a balance bike (Gigi also got her this one!), baby stroller, push/pop toy, blocks, balls, rain boots, and a few clothes (i went a little overboard). Grant got me a DSLR camera which I am BEYOND excited about. CAN NOT wait to get good at using the manual settings. Edrie also got some other awesome gifts, but one of particular note is a hand knit doll with about 15 outfits from our friend Holly. It is seriously amazing. She is going to love that thing when she is good enough to take the clothes on and off. I'm very protective of it.... I just love it. She totally spoils us with handknits. Bubba got some new clothes.

After breakfast we walked to Safeway to get coffee. Edrie wore her new rainboots. I usually wouldn't buy something with a 'character' on it, but they were the only ones that were small enough to fit her tiny size 3 feet. I have to admit though -they really are too freakin' cute and she LOVES to puddle jump.

Then we started getting ready for our families to come over. We had about 15 people over. Everyone brought an appetizer and we did a few. We also did apple cider in the crockpot and had whiskey on had to spike it with. SOO GOOD. Grant got this whiskey made locally and it was so smooth! We had so much fun just mingling and eating. Eventually we had a free for all and opened gifts. This was the first year in a while we did gifts and it was really fun. Made it feel like Christmas. It really was just how I hope all our holidays are. We are working on making Thanksgiving just as low-key.

Then we took a few family pics in front of our stockings. Edrie likes to give hugs and kisses these days.

Santa (december 2012)

We took Edrie to see Santa again this year. We went to Macy's because we had such a good experience last year. I love that they don't care if you take your own pictures. And the Santa totally helps you get a good picture (at least as good as it gets when a 1 year old is very apprehensive!)

Checkin' out the reindeer. 

On the way there I taught Edrie to say "hi santa" just about the cutest thing ever. She said it over and over when he was on his lap and for the following several weeks. 

We started out with all three of us on his lap (didn't get any pictures), then I left and then G left. I think that was a great way to get her used to him! 

They kept saying "What is his name?" "What is his name?" Guess I should dress her a bit less non-descript. It was a particularly neutral day - and those shoes are very boyish, but we love them. 

She now says "cheese" and scrunches up her face when you try to take pictures. She was on the train in the santaland. She was so proud to be up on that seat! 

She LOOVED walking through downtown. She was running along. 

also liked to check out all the window displays. 

PS I love that picture at the top. 

Christmas Decorating (december 2012)

 We spent December 9th tree hunting and putting up lights. I love our tradition of getting a tree from the tree farm, even if it is always an adventure! We had a really hard time finding a tree we liked this year. We went a farm Grant knew from his childhood. It was great, but it only had noble firs left. Not o

ur fav. We did find one though - and I ended up being really glad we had a noble. Edrie didn't really get what the heck we were doing and mostly nurse-slept and was annoyed we were out in the cold and rain. And she was VERY skeptical when we first brought the tree in the house. She was very starteld and ran the other way. After a bit of an introduction she was okay with it and by the time we had lights and ornaments she was in love. We put all the non breakable ornaments on the bottom and she did great with that.

Thanksgiving (november 2012)

 We hosted thanksgiving, as we have the last several years. It was really fun to spend the day with our families. We used the same recipes we have always used, but I did make these green beans and they were SOO good. If you look at those old links... can you believe the difference in Edrie - she was so tiny last year! SO FAST they change!

Pumpkin Patch (october 2012)

 

 we took our annual trip to the pumpkin patch in early october. Edrie had a good time and the weather was amazing - I had no idea it was going to be so hot so I had totally overdressed Edrie and I! Love Sauvie's Island!

Helpin' Out in the Kitchen

This is another of our routines I wanted to document, because these babes grow and change so fast that the way you cope with them in our life is forced to change too.  This is what we do while I make dinner or eat lunch. She sits on the make-shift island in our kitchen nook while I chop and cook. I feel like I've been spending more time cooking lately because we are trying to change the way we eat. More organic, whole foods, and much less meat. I've got us down to meat just once a week or maybe twice. It really hasn't been difficult, but I've been trying lots of new recipes (loving this book). I'm interested to see how difficult the less meat thing will be once summer hits and we want to grill out every night!

Anyway, she likes to play with the measuring cups and spoons. We just laugh and talk and sing and its awesome! Most days she is in a good mood and this can work for a half hour or more! Other times, its 10 minutes and she's back in the Ergo. We take what we can get! 

Valentine's Day 2012

This year we celebrated our 7th Valentine's Day together! 2006, 2007, 2008 are chronicled here, and then... 2009, 2011. Amazingly, I didn't document 2010! I'm a bit appalled! It was Edrie's first Valentine's, but we celebrated the same as always - pizza, cuddles, and a fire!

She is already not into her parents kissing!

Aren't they too cute together? Its true that there is not much that is better than seeing your husband with your baby!

Our pizza... it tasted better than it looks!

Edrie's First Christmas

This Christmas was weird for me. I usually spend the whole month of December immersed in decorating, crafting, and celebrating. This year I've been generally distracted (by the most amazing little being) and we also spent December trying to buy a house. I didn't have any Christmas parties/festivities to attend. There was no house of ours to decorate, our ornaments are all in storage and I didn't finish Edrie's stocking until Christmas Eve. It was just weird and snuck up on me. Next year will be more relaxed - I'll have a bit more of this parent thing under my belt and we'll be in our house so hopefully we can have everyone over!

In addition to feeling like I was in La La Land we did FOUR! Christmases in TWO days. I said I'd NEVER do that, but there I was shuttling my kid who hates the car to the far corners of Portland to see our family. We had a lot of fun in each place, but it was absolutely exhausting. I'm glad Grant agrees that something has to change for next year because there is no way we can keep that act up!

Though Edrie was oblivious to what was going on, she loved seeing all her family and most of all enjoyed staring at the Christmas lights!

I started and finished a pair of Christmas Big Butt Baby Pants on the morning of Christmas Eve (seen in the first picture). I really wanted her to have them to wear that day. Apparently I tried to get them done a bit too fast because one of the butt seams came out after I washed them =(. Oh well - they were cute while they lasted!

OH! The best part of Christmas was having my brother in town - he is so much fun and so funny! And he got to meet Edrie for the first time! Of course he fell in love! He was so cute playing with her! Loved that!

Joel, Grant, Edrie and I met my dad at Henry's downtown for lunch on Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful day and the city was bustling!

She is getting so smiley these days!

After lunch we walked to Jamison Square to see the Christmas tree...

The family who took this picture may or may not have had a six month old who was smaller than Edrie... She is such a chunk!

Next up was Grant's dad... this is where Edrie started to lose it. She doesn't do as well in the car in the evening (not that she ever does THAT well). We had to pull over on the way to dinner and then again for thirty minutes on the way to a 10pm church service. Have I mentioned I haven't had a full night's sleep since September 10th?? Staying up until midnight was a true feat!

Grandparents love their pictures! This was so cute - the scene was the same with each set of grandparents...clamoring for time with the little lady and as many pictures as possible!

Christmas morning we woke up at home and had breakfast. It was a nice low-key pajama clad morning...












Edrie LOVES 'super baby'!



Christmas evening we headed to Grant's mom's for dinner. Edrie wore her reindeer onesie one last time!

We opened presents with my mom and step-dad the morning after Christmas...

Edrie was enthralled with these mini stuffed animals!

The doggies fighting over a new toy

Edrie LOVES LOVES LOVES Olive and tries to watch her every move

Later that day we took the max downtown to walk around the city and have lunch. We love taking the max places because Edrie doesn't cry like she does in the car. Its heavenly!

The next day (Tuesday) was my brothers last day in town so we headed to HopWorks with him and my dad for lunch. Edrie looked cute playing with her toys... Santa brought her that hippo from Little Sapling

She loves this ball. I went to Babies R Us a few weeks ago to search for a non-obnoxious toy that she could practice her new found grabbing abilities on. I was about to leave and spotted this. It is perfect and she loves it!

All in all a great, family filled holiday! Edrie was spoiled - both in love and gifts and we enjoyed seeing her with all her grandparents and uncle! Can't wait til next year when she will 'get' it a bit more and we'll have our house!