She is One Year Old!!

 Elizabeth is one year old! What a party we had! Grammy and Grampy came up for the occasion and we all enjoyed her favorite cake--strawberry short cake.

I know everybody always says "I can't believe it's been a year!" well, I really can't believe it. I really can't believe it. We love Elizabeth more than I can say. She is sweet in every sense of the word. Her little smile it the best thing ever.

A couple weeks before her birthday she had no teeth. She now has seven teeth. They took their time but showed up in full force ready for birthday fun! Once we can get her sleeping again at night we will all be a little happier.

I imagined this to be a gloriously adorable photo with all the colorful balloons but I could not for the life of me get her to look at me. Baby photography is serious business!

Her favorite toys are balls. She LOVES balls. Big, little, smooth, rough. If there is a ball within a mile she will crawl (with one little leg pushing) as fast as you ever saw a baby on all three move to get it.

Some of her skills right now include backing down the stairs--for which Mommy is very grateful. Also she is remarkably good at somehow stealing anything from Ethan in the car. Unfortunately I can't see how she does it because I am driving, but somehow she ALWAYS ends up with whatever Ethan is holding. She also loves to irritate Ethan. She will steel his toy, crawl as fast as she can with it to our bed and throw it behind the head board so he can't get it. She thinks she is hilarious. She also loves to wrestle with Ethan. She is only 5 pounds high junior so they make a fairly good match and they are hilarious to watch tumble around.

Elizabeth also loves music. Sometimes I turn up the radio and we all have a dance party. (Sometimes I forget to shut the blinds so if you drive by you might be in for a show) Elizabeth loves its. She bounces, waves her arms, yells along. I can't wait to enroll her in her first dance class.

There are so many things about this little girl I wish I could write down. I hope she knows how much we love her. How beautiful she is. How much her Heavenly Father loves her and expects of her. She is my little princess, and in truth a perfect daughter of God.

Happy Halloween!

 Ethan decided he wanted to be old McDonald for Halloween. The crazy thing is Elizabeth said she wanted to be a prize winning piglet! So they went great together:) They both played their roles like they were born for it. You can't see in the picture but Ethan has a cute beard we drew on and Elizabeth has a curly pig tail. They were adorable. They raked in the candy, and now we just have to plan what we can dress up for next year!

Of course he hated getting his hands dirty!

Happy Easter

We had a wonderful Easter. The Easter Bunny came during nap time and brought lots of fun goodies. We even had an Easter egg hunt in our back yard. Here are some pictures of the kids in their matching outfits. Mommy made them in the midst of moving (I always seem to pick the most inconvenient time to finish projects--I think Craig wanted to donate my sewing machine to goodwill that day...)

Can you believe these kids were actually just born that cute?! No photo shop, no makeup--just pure God given, natural beauty. I love them. Oh I love them.

Funny Kids

I want to share these little stories so I never forget how adorable my children are. (Sometimes when Ethan screams all day that he just wants to watch movies or when Elizabeth just won't sleep I sit down and read this to remember just how much I love them:)

The other day I left Elizabeth on the floor while I was in the other room helping Ethan. She has just started wiggling around a little to get things she wants and she had been squirming quite a bit for something when I put her down. When I cam back I realized what she had wanted--Ethan had left his peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the floor close enough to tease her. When I came back in the room she had bread, jelly, and peanut butter all over her face and clothes--even a piece of bread sitting on her forehead. She just giggled when I picked her up. Apparently peanut butter is actually not that bad for kids under a year...oops. I just wish I had gotten pictures because she was clearly pleased with herself.

Ethan has been quite the little character lately also. We were having dinner with some friends in the ward the other night when he disappeared. I could hear yelling upstairs so went up to investigate. We found him in the master bedroom, in the bed, under the covers with both hands up behind his head like he was lounging on the beach thoroughly enjoying himself. Then he jumped out of the bed wearing nothing but a diaper and t-shirt and started telling to us how comfy he was in that bed! We found his pants on the other side of the room. Our little Goldie Locks had found a bed just right.

Our New Home!

We are now proud owners of our own single family home! I just kind of giggle inside when I say that because I am still go giddy with excitement about the whole matter. Blessings untold is all I can say. To pull into my own garage, walk leisurely through my door (while staying dry of course), and then kicking my shoes off to enjoy my own four walls is a pleasure I have yearned for! I love not running the mile up a hill with two babies in tow and then up all the stairs to get into my apartment then only to listen to the neighbors yell at each other through the paper thin walls. The yelling I hear now is from my two year old who has recently discovered his vocal chords:) Somehow it's just different when it's your own kid though.

I am thrilled to say we love the neighborhood. People have been so friendly! For the first week we were here we had more bread brought over than we could eat! The ward is also wonderful. Ethan went to nursery with no difficulty whatsoever and has continued to do well. Our backyard is full of weeds right now, but they are our weeds! We love running around the yard finding all the birds nests--three so far, chasing the bunny rabbits that live under our deck and planting a beautiful garden. There are so many reasons we are happy to be in this beautiful home. We have been blessed so much for some reason I can't quite figure out. With bidding wars going on like crazy here and prices through the roof, somehow we were able to find a better than perfect house for us. Sometimes I look at my beautiful children, my sweet, hardworking husband and wonder why I am so blessed. But then I think I shouldn't ask why--but just be grateful as can be and share whenever possible.

Pictures of the house to come soon:)...still gotta pick up some boxes....

Welcome Spring!

 Cherry trees are big here. Craig loves it since it was a pretty big deal in Japan also. The blossoms are beautiful but what I think really makes it phenomenal is the grouping of so many! Our Sunday afternoon walk was spent in a magical grove of falling flowers. When we brought the stroller back in we had to knock gobs of flower petals off the wheels.

A visit from Grandpa

We had a visit from Grandpa last weekend and it was a blast! We got to see the beginnings of the cherry blossom festival down town which was beautiful, visit frying pan farm park, fly a kite, enjoy the beautiful spring weather northern Virginia affords this time of year, and take Dad to see our new home (I can call it that right? we are closing in 6 days!) We even got to finish out a great weekend with dinner at Bob Evens!

I can't get over how cute this little guy is!

Elizabeth was perfectly happy to let Grandpa hold her lots!

It was sad to say goodbye but we had a lot of fun and I was so glad to see Ethan get to really meet his Grandpa. The next day he kept saying "Gapa all gone" and he was so sad. It was also neat for Grandpa to meet Elizabeth for the first time. We sure wish they were closer!

An Artistic Beginning

I am sure I am not the first mom to have this idea--but I still felt pretty ingenious when the idea occurred to me. Ethan loves to paint but I hate to clean up messes...pretty much in any form, so he paints with water and all my old art brushes on colored construction paper. It's just like painting to him and when it spills, it's only water! When he tries to paint the table, walls, and himself--it's only water! He says over and over "I painting me Mama" and I say-- "go for it!" it's actually just a bath.

We had been outlining his hand and when I left him alone for a minute he started doing this. He said he was "drawing my head".

This would be the outcome of his simplified silhouette. Is he a genius or what?

He has a display on one wall where he gets to hang up his art. He was very excited to add his paintings to the wall but was sad when he went back an hour later and the paintings had disappeared--so we go to do it all again. This has kept him occupied for days now.

Valentines Sweetheart

 It would just be wrong to not share these. Doesn't she look festive in her heart headband and leg-warmers?

I could eat this girl with a spoon.

Everything about her is a miracle to me.

Blessed with rice

Here is Ethan enjoying one of our pastries

Good stuff!
He was not happy when he realized he had to share.

Tonight we made a special trip to the 'Lotte Mart' --a popular Korean store around here--for some rice and our favorite Asian pastries. With the plan to increase our food storage we opted to buy a forty pound bag of rice. Food storage has been one of my recent topics of study since we will soon have more room. As we made our way through the store with forty pounds of rice hefted on Craig's back, we were stopped and asked to participate in a survey on Korean soup spices. As a girl who worked for several years in high school doing phone surveys I am usually willing to participate--I was thrilled to learn with this survey I would be given a $10 certificate! When Craig realized the survey was five pages it took some convincing, but in the end we both took the survey, tried the soups in question, signed away our lives and came home with a nearly free forty pounds of rice.

We are being blessed already for our food storage efforts! And we will probably forever laugh at the English translation of the survey asking if we thought hot sauce or Korean pepper powder was more 'curious'.