a morning work out

the girls and i are being supportive of our daddy while he prepares himself physically for the tough mudder, which will be taking place next month.  so last saturday we all headed to miramar lake together.  stephen ran a nice five-miler while the girls and i walked a nice quick two miler.  the day was perfect and no pre-term labor occurred...yipee!

we fed the ducks afterwards...

 

stephen and sienna sitting on the dock.

first easter party of the year

stephen's aunt peggy is just so awesome and threw her second annual kiddie easter egg hunt at her house again.  last year was a blast so the girls were really looking forward to this years.  we almost didn't make it due to scheduling issues, but luckily things panned out.  just look at peggy...she's so fun!  singing songs to get things started...

wendy's cute girls observing the invaders....

...us.

and the hunt begins.  there were tons of eggs and goodie bags filled with goodies all over the backyard.  the kids had a blast searching.  i loved the creativity in hiding places.

even some very taboo places where the kids had no chance of getting the candy (aka...on a pool toy).

peggy helps chloe out in tossing some high-riser candy down into her basket...nice shot!

hope my mother-in-law doesn't kill me, but i loved this photo of her.  very animated and awesome.  she's hilarious!

the kids also had a blast making big bubbles with peggy's cool bubble toys.  the kids made some pretty big bubbles quite a few times, especially gwen!

peggy also has this awesome tortoise.  isn't otis the cutest?  the kids loved watching him eat an apple and a cucumber.  some were willing to have their picture taken (sienna, david), others...not so much (ethan and chloe). 


it was such a fun easter egg hunt!  thanks peggy!

a typical walk

occasionally i'll muster up the energy to join stephen and the girls for a walk to felicita park.  we live just a block away, so it's nice to meander on down there.  usually stephen will run, but when the slow prego lady joins him he's nice enough to slow his pace and just walk fast.  it's fun.  i wish the girls liked sitting in a double jogging stroller when they were smaller.  i used to take them to miramar lake often and try to exercise my baby fat off, but around mile two (of five) they would start fighting or whining or crying or...whatever it was.  now they just sit there and talk and love it, but now they weigh a lot more.

loving stephen's glasses?  me too.

excuse the butt shot, but i wanted to show you a steep little incline we walk up in the park.  gets me winded and gets our booties working.  

once we reach a destination of sorts in the park (usually the "red and green playground", only this day the "yellow and blue playground"...in little girl lingo) we let the bubbles loose and play.  i think this is part of what makes the ride worth it in their eyes...they know there is usually playtime at the park somewhere in there.

daddy joins in on the fun.  yes, i pushed the three of them on it.  no, not for very long.

chloe pushing her sister on the swing.  they really do get along so well...just one more blessing to add to the list.  it's getting longer and longer.

a morning in the life of chloe

1. brush (painfully) long blonde hair....check!

2. mix genres in clothing...check!

3. put shoes on wrong feet....check!

4. bring out 1/50th of your stuffed animals into the kitchen...check!

 5. set up chairs alongside the counter to effectively play with animals on counter....check!

6. look proud of your work....check!

7.  give mom dirty looks as she photo-journals your escapade...CHECK!

 

oh chloe and her love of stuffed animals.  until this little girl arrived sienna could've cared less about the stuffed animals grandparents had bought her.  for chloe it has always been somewhat of an infatuation.  i have to admit that i love that she loves them.  sometimes i wish i could get rid of some of them...we have sooo many.  but chloe actually plays with them all, a lot.  even sienna does now, thanks to chloe's influence.  they have concerts for their animals/dolls, they play house and mommy and babysitter, they put them in time-out, they dress them up.  there's really no end to their imaginations with their animals. 

haircut number two

our lovely five-year-old has this impulsiveness about her that seriously worries me sometimes.  she does things, as if she is in some subconscious state while she's doing them, later getting into trouble for whatever it is.  when she was three and a half we had a similar occurrence, though much more tragic because of the loss of irreplaceable curls.  here's one more post about the subsequent fix.  luckily she ended up looking pretty dang cute after her haircut that time.  this time?  it was a little harder to fix surprisingly.  for some reason her new bangs just aren't cooperating or something.  she just looks like a ragamuffin.  i'll have to post a pic of that later.  i don't think i have one on hand yet.

the sad/funny thing about this time, is that her father was sitting at the same table as her while it happened.  they were both sitting at the kitchen table together, stephen reading his scriptures and sienna cutting out pictures from a primary paper she'd received that day.  lee, stephen's mom noticed it first and quietly pointed it out to stephen.  i was taking a nap at the time...good thing.  i woke up nice and calm and happy, ready to take on anything...even sienna's new hair-do.

tears were shed on her part, only because i was confused as to why she did it.

"sienna, do you want to look like a boy?  is that why you cute your hair?" (nice, sensitive mom..that's me)

(instant hysteric tears) "noooooo!!"

"then why did you cut your hair?"

"i don't know"

oh my.  at least have a good reason child.  the hair was in your face, there was food in your hair that wouldn't come out, you really do want to look like a boy, you were getting even with me for something i didn't let you do...something! 

a trip to julian

a few weekends ago we decided to get out of dodge...so we drove up a few hills and mountains and landed ourselves in the wonderful gold-mining city of julian!  yipee!  i do love living so close to it right now.  i had been craving their apple-boysenberry crumb pie.  stephen finally agreed that i must have some, so off we went!  we got there just in time to wait in a nice loooong line.  so i snapped a few photos of things i saw in line. 

mom's pies are my favorite in julian and for good reason.  they are nothing short of heavenly.  we usually also get a soup of some kind to eat before, or with, our pie.  unfortunately they had italian wedding soup which isn't my cup of tea, so we opted for the chicken pot pie.  delicious!  we had our slice of pie heated up and threw an ice cream scoop on it...oilla!

me and the hubby in line.

a cute little bug contemplating her next bite of ice cream.  she tried the pie...again...but with not much luck of liking it yet.  we'll keep trying!

the drive up was so pretty.  with how much recent rain we'd had everything was blooming and green and colorful!  there was even some snow up in julian.  we stopped alongside a road and let the girls play in some.

stephen even made a cute miniature snowman.  i especially liked the grass hair.  i know some people with hair like that.  

 

i love the above of chloe hoping not to get hit by a snowball as she just stands there.  

a fun action shot of daddy and sienna pegging each other.

yay for a cute maternity top!

as i am now getting bigger around the mid-section i'm having to wear maternity stuff finally.  luckily for me my shade shirts are still wearable, i practically live in them.  but i really liked this top that i found on duematernity.com.  surprisingly i'm not wearing any maternity pants yet.  i'm still able to stretch on my express jeans and just put a hair elastic around where the button should button (but doesn't).  i had also bought two pairs of incredibly cute pants at anthro for cheap (what you don't believe me? $40!) that i use as quasi-maternity pants.  they are SO comfortable and have a maternity-like waistband.

wanna know something shocking?  i won our ward's chili contest for "best chili - 1st place" on saturday!  that's my second time winning it, in two separate wards!  i was totally shocked.  out of around thirty people i won?  i couldn't believe it, but it was fun.  in our old ward the relief society had a chili cook-off once a year for pioneer day, so i've been slowly morphing it over the last four years.  i'm glad people like it!

i'd better get ready to go strip wallpaper and clean.  my mom is gone for a few weeks so her hubby has taken advantage of this time to de-popcorn the dining room ceiling and to strip the wallpaper.  the girls and i are there to "help" today (a pregnant lady and a four and five year-old, yeah...we're super helpful).  should be fun!

bump - 26

yes, that's right people, my so-called weekly bump updates have fallen to the wayside.  i'm apologizing mostly to myself because i truly wanted to be better this time around.  let's blame it on pregnant brain, yes, that's it!  please ignore that i'm wearing the same shirt as the last time i did this.  i honestly haven't worn it in at least a week, i swear! 

so i am now 26 weeks.  things are going smoothly.  no signs of pre-term labor thus far, so that's a huge plus!  stay in there boy.  got it?  he sure is an active critter (did i just call him a critter?), constantly kicking and doing somersaults.  it should be an interesting exit in july!  i'm feeling good though aside from heartburn at night if i eat anything after 8pm or anything with sugar after 6pm.  yup, that pretty much rules out me never having heartburn, because we all know that i can't handle that.

in other news...the girls have no school next week.  so instead of whining about it and instead of thinking about how crazy they're gonna drive me, we're planning a full week.  let's keep busy!  zoo, wild animal park (i refuse to call it the new name.  no, i won't even mention it here), strawberry picking, beach (if the weather affords it), swim lessons (new on our agenda!), stripping wallpaper possibly...it's gonna be a great week!

i'm hungry....off i go.

easter's a-comin'

thanks martha!

since most of our seasonal stuff is still in storage, and most likely will be for a while, i thought i'd buy some cheapy-fred (thanks lee for the phrase) baskets and decorate them myself.  i'm leaning much more towards the leaves basket, though i have no doubt that chloe will want the flowers.  she's such a girl.

(thanks again martha!)

i also loved this wooden basket.  where could i find one of those?  anyone?  anyone?

(martha)

how simple and sweet this is.  we actually made these last year as decor for random parts of the house.  i put the flowers in a little cup of water hiding inside the bag to keep them fresh a little longer.  didn't last too long, but was pretty.