new little niece!

My sister Shelly and her new little daughter, Rylynn. What a sweet girl. I can't wait to meet her in a week and a half!! I'm jealous that Shelly looks so great after having the baby. I spoke to her 20 minutes after the birth, and she even sounded great too!

The little cutie waiting to go home from the hospital.

She already looks so alert and smart. I love her in pink! She is Shelly's first baby with hair. Looks like she already has more than Kiersten.

3/31/09

Kara and I made rice krispie treats for Ben the other day. When he went down to check them out, he found this mysterious bite taken from a large peice. Kara was quick to own up to it.


I went in to check on Kara watching a movie in the guest room. I found her like this, all cozy with Kiersten's newest blanky.


Our neighbor ordered some meat from a local vendor, but forgot to cancel their order. When they refused to buy the meat upon delivery, the meat guy came over to see if I would buy it. I told him I didn't think so, but he offered it to me at half price since a lot of it is stuff they don't normally get orders for and it would just be sitting around in their freezer waiting to be ordered. (it had been special ordered from thier supplier for my neighbor.) He showed me their bill for almost $800, and said I coudl get it for $400. I said that I would pay $300. So he said okay to that, but didn't give me the shrimp, since it will probably sell immediately anyway. I looked on the order, and it was just $18 for the shrimp, so I was fine with that. Now we have 2 freezers full of different cuts of steak, hamburger patties, and a bunch of different marinated chicken breasts. It will last us at least 6 months, probably longer! Here is Kiersten eating some of the chicken that Ben grilled for her. she grabbed the sweet and sour sauce out of the fridge and handed it to him, so he decided to give it a try. It actually turned out pretty tasty. Good call Kiersten.

sleepy baby after a long day at the Northwest trek.

We had to buy Kara a sweater at NW trek since Ben told her not to worry about a coat. It was rainy and cold, but they only had adult sizes. I got this one thinking I would just use it after, but she wont let me put it in my closet. It is hers, it'll just take about 10 years to grow into it. Notice the chicken nugget in her hand. I thought that was funny. All she got was one bite before she fell asleep.

how to save $$$ on your grocery bill!

So here is how I did it. I was shopping at walmart, and checking out. I seperated out my ad matches and put them at the end so it would be easier. When I told the cashier I had ad matches, she said I had to have the ad to "prove" it. I told her that I didn't have the ad and I know that I don't have to have it. (when I do bring them in, they NEVER look at them anyway!)She said she would go ask a csm. She came back and said she couldn't do the matches without my having the ads, then the csm came over and glanced at me, then asked the cashier, "did you tell her?" the cashier said yes, then the csm started walking away. So I asked, "you're not going to give me the ad match prices?" She looked at me, rolled her eyes, and said, "no" and walked off. The cashier got a smug little look on her face and started ringing up the stuff. I said, "no thankyou. If you can't ad match, I don't want to shop here." she looked at me and said, "fine". I was so mad that they would be happy to lose a $200 sale, just to save a few dollars by not ad matching. So I went to the service desk to fill out a complaint. The girl tried to tell me that they don't have anything to fill out. I told her that I needed a comment card and I know that they have them because I've used them before. She then proceeded to put away returns and dink around for over 5 minutes. then she came back and said, "I couldn't find anything." So I said, "fine, I'll just call the market manager." I went up to the poster and dialed him right there. He was of course, very apologetic and confirmed that I didn't need the ads. (wal-mart's policy) he was a bit disturbed that they just let me walk away and not purchase the groceries. He asked for my name and #, so he could follow up, and when I told him, he said, "Oh, Rebecca. I've spoken to you before." That made me feel a little silly to realize I'm THAT person! but I still felt this complaint needed to be complained. I left and was on my way to fred meyer, when the store manager, Jason called me up. He was also very apologetic and he wanted the names of the girls I had dealt with. He said he wants me to continue shopping there, and asked if I might come back. I said I was on my way to fred meyer to shop instead. (half of my ad matches were from there anyway) He said if I would come back, he would give me 10% off my entire bill, after the ad matches and coupons. So I couldn't really say no to that. So I ended up going shopping AGAIN, and then I just got to go straight to the service desk to check out and didn't have to wait in line. They paged the same CSM to come approve the discount, and she wouldn't even make eye contact with me. she just turned her key and said a few thing to the service desk guy, and went into the office to hide. I didn't know they kept track of the people calling in to complain, but I'm glad it paid off for me this time.

New couch!

Our new couch just got here! yay! Now we just need to get some throw pillows for it.

Kiersten had to try it out.

I can't have a blog entry without pictures of my cute girls...

Here they are playing patty-cakes. Well, Kara was trying to make Kiersten play with her.

Kara loves her new Elephant, Bruce.

Here are the girls last night on the old couch with their furry friends. Those are also new blankets and jammies from the Disney online outlet.

I put Kara's hair in sponge rollers last night before bed. I guess I should have used larger rollers. She ended up with a big, fluffy fro when we took them out this morning. I used large rollers on the bottom, and those curls actually turned out nice. When I've used the rollers before, I only left them in for about an hour, and we didn't have this problem. She took one look in the mirror, and said, "hey! What happened to my beautiful hair?!?" She was so mad at me, hehehe. oops!

Luckily, we made it work and she liked having "ballerina hair". Another little girl at the gym had her hair done in a similar way. When I went in to pick them up, she and the other girl were pretending to be ballerinas. The babysitter told me that they were doing it for almost the whole 2 hours in there. I keep meaning to get her into a dance class, but there are so many options, I haven't made a decision yet. I guess I'd better get on that soon.

03/16/09

Kara was practicing writing her name while I was doing dishes, and she asked me how to write Daddy. I told her that D A D would spell Dad. (I wanted to keep it simple for her, so I just told her the 3 letters.) She came running over to show me, and said, " Look! I write Daddy!" I thought it was too cute.


Here is a picture of Kiersten baby eating cake at her party on Saturday.

We were at the mall since her party was at build a bear. So we just got an ice cream cake and ate it there. It was good cake. (until Ben didn't want to take the rest home, and I didn't want it to be wasted.) I was trying to scarf down the left over cake in about 2 minutes. It didn't really agree with me after that. I realize now that was a silly thing to do. I should have just thrown it out and avoided the stomach ache and the extra 10 minutes on the eliptical I had to do the next day.

Here's Kara making the birth certificate for her batman elephant. (at least she thought she was doing it.)

you can't see Kiersten's monkey, but in front of it is Kara's elephant prior to being stuffed with fluff. She chose a batman outfit for it. The salesman was impressed that Ben was able to get the elephant into the batman suit. He said the elephant is the hardest furry friend to dress. Someone might have told us that before we let Kara choose that one. Oh well. I realize now we'll have to get pictures of their furry friends now that they are stuffed and dressed. That is the girls' friend Evan behind Ben eating his gift card. He's a sweetie.

Kiersten opening gifts at the mall. She got a cute stuffed lamb, a baby einstein movie, and a pop up pals toy.

Here we are in front of build a bear waiting for Kiersten's friends.

The girls love singing into microphones. They both love watching american idol. they sing and dance along.

Kara feeding "candy". She loves this baby doll, and Ben hates it.

Silly Kiersten licking her plate. Kara did the same thing at this age.

Kara showing Kiersten how to care for a baby. Kiersten would rather just drag it around and slam it into the wall, but Kara wants to teach her how to be a good mommy.

Happy Birthday Kiersten!

This is what Kiersten's Birthday cake looked like before Kara got to it. She ate most of the frosting around the chin/mouth area, the little stinker!
Cute birthday girl eating pancakes. She ate 2 more than Kara, and was whining for more. I didn't want to make more, so she had to settle for a banana. She is such a big eater!

Here she is sitting on the stairs. she can go up and down with no problem. When I took this picture, she was on her way down with Kara's doll, but when I said her name, she stopped and cheesed it, the little poser!

I like to set up their gifts on the table for them to see the night before. She was so interested, but I don't know that she realized they were for her. Every time she went over to check out the table, she would look over at me, as if she expected to be stopped. She loved watching me hang ballons around the livingroom. She loved it even more when the ballons came down for her to play with.

At first, she had to be coaxed into opening the presents. The first few were clothes, so she wasn't too excited about it, until Kara showed an interest in opening them. That's when she realized it must be cool to get birthday gifts.

She was pretty excited to open this new puzzle!

This was the first one that she opened entirely by herself. Kara was good at cheering her on.

little sweetie!

she loved this awesome musical zoo toy. It's totally cute.

yummy cake time! Kara and I had to help her blow out her candle.

she knew just what to do with that delicious cake!

her face was a mess! It's hard to see because of the light colored frosting, but she was a sticky, icky girl!

Disneland Pictures!

Ready for a ton of Disneyland pics??? Here ya go.. the girls with Wall-E

Tigger

hugging Elasti-girl. Kara is the only kid she stopped for. She and Mr. Incredible were in a hurry somewhere.

meeting Winnie the Pooh. He had a really short line on Tuesday.

jumping

Kiersten got an early Birthday treat at the critters breakfast. She was very interested when the staff came out to sing happy Birthday to her.

Kara meeting Dale

Kara cried and cried when we had to take Papa to the airport on Monday. She kept begging him to stay.

We took the girls to the beach on Monday instead of going to Disneyland. They absolutely loved it.

Kiersten had so much fun playing in the waves. I think she liked it even better than Kara.

walking around downtown Disney.

Kiersten wandering around in her Minnie ears.

I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but Kara made a Mickey mouse out of smarties. She was quite proud of herself.

having fun on the King Triton carousel.

I thought Jasmine was so adorable!

Kara loved meeting the princesses. We had to stand inline for over an hour, but then she got to meet Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle. She was sooo disappointed not to see Cinderella. So we went to Cinderella's show in california adventure, so she could meet her afterward, but once she saw Mickey was there too, she wanted to stand in his line instead. She had already seen him a couple of times, but I guess he's just that great.

Here I am with Kiersten on one of our many baby friendly boat rides. She slept through more than half of the rides we took her on, but she liked this one.

Kara's favorite ride was the teacups. She had been talking about them before we went, so I'm glad she wasn't disappointed with them.

Here is Kiersten's first taste of a lemon.

Mickey Mouse!

Kiersten's first cotton candy! She couldn't get enough of the stuff!

Kara and Papa riding Dumbo!

Disneyland buddies! Kerry was so good about taking turns pushing the stroller, holding the girls, diaper bag, and camera. He was also great about going on tons of kiddie rides!