fun moments...

Today we were getting ready to go to church, and I hear the dogs barking outside...Angel especially. So when I went out there, I saw a cat hissing at the dogs, and she was acting like she was going to jump down. The commotion lasted for about 10 minutes total. Kate did not want to leave the dogs and go to church, when we got in the car she said, "If that cat attacks Angel, I want a new dog."---poor Kate. I told her that if that cat and Angel got in a fight, I really think Angel would hurt the cat.

Kate and Ella both left their Organic Vanilla Milk laying around after breakfast.

I think this is funny....the sun FINALLY comes out for a little while yesterday, and the girls get umbrellas out to shield themselves from the bright light:

Earlier when the girls first woke up, Kate put in the movie My Neighbor Totoro, Kate and Gracie watch it together for a while. We LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie.

videos...

Gracie laughing:


Ella is ALWAYS singing...even in the bathroom:

And she now has decided that she really wants to be a singer/songwriter. I gave her a notebook yesterday just for songwriting, and she got to it right away. ;)

(In the beginning of the song she sings about not paying attention to her work...LOL)

photography....

My new photography blog has inspired me to take more good quality pictures. We ran outside to play while it wasn't raining. We are ready for some warmer temperatures.





I could photograph this baby all day...

sippy cups...

Gracie prefers the Starbucks stainless steel bottles with straws over her sippy cups. :) Maybe because she sees Kate and Ella drinking from these. I'm trying to breastfeed her less and less--and we are down to just a couple of times a day, she is not crazy about whole milk....but she's getting there. She's doing great with her food too....I'm not making baby food anymore (except for fruit to go w/her cereal)...she eats what we eat 90% of the time.

Gracie's favorite thing to do:

shoving things out the doggie door...

Today I started a new blog, just for my favorite pictures...
Check out: http://www.photographybyamyb.blogspot.com

toddler Gracie...(and more pics)

First day of me getting her hair into a pony tail, she loved it...


Hopping back on here to add a few more today. When I realized that Kate and Gracie had coordinating outfits, I had to snap a few...




Ella BEGGED me to let her wash and dry the dishes today. Funny, if I officially put that on her chore list, I know it won't be fun anymore.

What a treat....

Ella got the privilege of sleeping in Kate's room last night (on the floor). I think Kate made Ella clean her room to earn this privilege.

Here was the list of things that Ella could not do if she wanted to sleep in Kate's room. (created by Kate, obviously)

And a couple more pics to show that it can get pretty crazy over here:


(Gracie had just spilled strawberry smoothie all over her shirt, so she ran around without a shirt for most of the day yesterday.)

Congrats Ella!

She has graduated from her 'Penguin' swim class! Next is 'Otter'.

Ella's 2nd piano lesson:

The piano teacher has a spectacular garden that Kate, Gracie and I LOVED.






"Look mom, an elephant!"

For the past few weeks, Ella has been really wanting to take voice lessons. It's not something that I'm wanting to invest in right now. We'll start with the piano lessons, and think about the voice lessons later. In the meantime, I downloaded a voice lessons CD from itunes...and she's THRILLED. $9.99...I can handle that. There are several CDs in the series, so I can download another one in a couple of months--if she really does practice each day, like she says she will. :)
Here she is practicing, I haven't transferred the songs to her ipod yet:

Yesterday I went to the thrift store...and I found Gracie a ball popper toy. She LOVES it. Hours of good fun...





I had some more pics from Tracy's a while back on this camera. This is Ella's and one of Tracy's girls digging for crabs...they love low tide.

rain, sunbreak, rainbow, ice pellet storm...over and over

This day was annoying, weather-wise. Pouring down rain, a sunbreak, rainbow, ice pellet storm, sunbreak, pouring down rain....all day long. We were out and about all day...so especially annoying that the sunbreaks never happened when it was time to get the kiddos out of the car. I felt kind-of like Charlie Brown with a rain cloud over my head all day. Plus it was cold...49 degrees most of the day.


The ice pellets had been falling for a good 15 minutes or so when I took this pic. It looked like snow on the cars and rooftops.

just a few pics...

Mmmmmm....sushi (truly Scott's child, all of our girls LOVE Japanese food):

Kind of a blah week....still catching up. Let's see, here's a quick summary: lots of good conversations w/Scott the past few days, I'm all caught up on care packages to him, girls having a hard time going to bed now that it's staying light so much later, Gracie is into everything...and gets away with so much because she's so darn cute, Ella LOVES playing the piano--she told me tonight that she also wants to learn to sing better, and write her own songs. Kate is almost 100% after being so sick all last week, she'll start back up with swim team practice tomorrow. Piles and piles of clean laundry to fold, dishes in the sink. Still training for my half marathon--that's going well, I'm debating if I should attempt a full marathon in the fall...or maybe next spring....I don't think I'll be able to talk Scott into running 26.2 miles with me. He's not interested at all. :( That's all that's on my mind at the moment. Off to put Kate and Ella to bed...then I'm crashing. Gracie has been asleep for a couple of hours already.