poor baby!

Bad news everyone. Ben is on his way to the hospital again for his throat. He called to tell me that he got food stuck in his throat at lunch. So we are waiting for him to call us to come pick him up. It always seems to happen on his first bite of meat. (which he said was cut really small) but then he ends up missing his meal, and not being able to swallow anything for several hours. He's been at the hospital for at least an hour now. I was really hoping they would be able to just give him muscle relaxers to get it down, but I think he'd have called by now if that were the case. so he is probably going to have to have it removed surgically. I guess we should have learned our lesson on christmas and gotten his throat enlarged again. I'm sure he'll definitely be needing the procedure now. Hopefully we he can be okay to wait until we come back from Idaho. He was telling me how he really needed to work late every day this week, so I don't think he can miss any more work. especially after missing half a day today. :(

artwork

I thought today would be a good day to show off some of Kara's recent art. she said this picture was her and Mickey Mouse. This is my favorite one. She even started writing his name, but I guess "M" is all she knew of it.
She said that is her in the middle, and to the left is her doll Shaka, and to the right is Kiersten.
this is the sun and "a bunch of flowers"
this is another picture of her and Kiersten. If you notice to the right, she has written her name. kinda funny, but it's there.
K R
A A
she said this was a lady bug.

I think she said this was a picture of dad and the moon.

I love this "flower monster"

here is a lovely picture she drew of me! yes, it is drawn on a piece of mail.

This is her alphabet. She had a few problems with some of those letters, but I thought she did a pretty good job.

Here is some of Kiersten's work. If you can't tell, this is on the wall! thank goodness for mr. clean magic erasers!

here's some more, kinda hard to see in the pic, but in person, it just jumps right off the wall at you. no more crayons for Kiersten for a while. I had to do an all over hunt through the house to make sure I got all the crayons and pencils picked up and out of her reach, the little stinker. She even figured out to look in the diaper bag for them, so no more keeping crayons in there.

6/16/09

Last week i had a $10 off coupon to use at kohl's, which happens to be right by Ben's new office. The girls were so excited to go up and visit Daddy. Here's a couple pictures of them getting ready to leave.

both girls love story time. they do sometimes fight over the books though.

We let Kiersten spend a few nights in Kara's room. We are thinking about moving her in there, and we wanted to see how it would work out for them. They both started out excited about it, but both nights, Kiersten woke up crying.

ready to fall asleep watching a movie together.

Ben gave the girls a bath on saturday. I am usually the one who does it, but they were sure excited to have daddy in there with them. after the baths, we went to a birthday party for Kara's friend Evan. It was about an hour drive to get there. We all had a pretty fun time. Of course Kara acted a bit crazy the whole time we were there. Kiersten fell on some stairs and got a sad little owie on her head. Ben thought it was hilarious, I'm still not sure why.

this picture really shows how much Kiersten is thinning out. It's a combination of her starting to eat a little less and this crazy growth spurt she's having. she has gotten so tall. she can reach things off the counter so easily, and even reach door knobs.

she loves playing with Daisy. the poor thing is always trying to get away from her, but Kiersten seems to be finding her more easily lately. Luckily for Daisy, Kiersten is finally learning to pet nice instead of just pulling fur.

We worked a lot in the yard on sunday. I'll have to take a picture of the backyard. Ben built the girls a play area back there for the slide and toys. he filled it up with rubber mulch, and they both think it is just the neatest thing. I cut down the dying tulips in our front flower bed, and we added more soil and I planted some new flowers. Our lilys are sooo tall this year. It actually looks a little strange right now, because they are so much higher than everything else. I don't remember them being so large last year. But I do remember that they only bloomed for a few weeks, so it wont look wierd for too long, I guess. we also made a little stone border around our shrubs on the sides of the garage. it turned out kinda cute. we still have a few things to do, especially in the back, but hopefully it'll all be done soon and we can just enjoy being out there and not having to work so hard.

girls girls girls!

I wanted to update with some recent pictures of the girls.

Kiersten pouting at the movies because we wouldn't let her run around.

Kara using the big kid swing!

Kiersten trying on Kara's helmet.

Kara enjoying a cupcake. It's very rare these days to see Kara with a messy face.

but we get to see Kiersten's messy face several times a day! This girl LOVES eating. she is always so excited to get up in her highchair!

the girls are always playing with the kitchen together. Kara is funny, always taking imaginary orders and fixing krabby patties and other delicious things for all of us. she'll say, "what can I get for you, sir?" it's so silly.

goodbye stuff!

Last weekend I sold our black leather couch on craigslist. It went to a college kid at PLU. it was a pretty good deal, I think. Here is a picture of Ben watching football with the girls on our old couch.

This was on the superbowl this year. We were sore from being in a car wreck, and we all just curled up on the couch all day. This was before I lost the baby weight.


this is the picture I put on craigslist. I wanted to take a pic of it leaving, but I forgot.


this weekend I sold our 56" tv on craigslist. When Ben got his new 72-incher, we moved this into the guestroom, but the convergence chip went out on it, so Ben decided that was a good time to furnish the guest room and Kara's room with new ones. it's been in the garage ever since.

here it is leaving in the truck of the young couple who bought it. they got an awesome deal. (even though they do have to get that chip fixed) I was thinking about how excited Ben was when we first bought that thing a few months after we got married. When our apartment was on fire, all he could think about was that tv. he kept trying to talk the firemen into letting him go back in for it, ha!

it's a little weird to sell stuff we actually really loved at some point and got years of use out of. It's wierd that other people just have them now. yesterday we cleaned and organized our garage, so that was nice to have room in there finally. I even went through all of the different baby boxes and got them organized and nicely stored. I have to say it was kinda fun to open a box of newborn clothes and see all those tiny shoes and things! you just forget how small they start out! I brought a lot of 18 month clothes inside for Kiersten to wear. Kara didn't fit into 18 month clothes until she was almost 2, and here Keirsten is big enough for them at just 14 months! crazy! We still have 2 tvs in there that are both going to idaho with us in a few weeks to live with family members, then I found several more items to sell, and soon we'll have a nice, clean garage that isn't housing a bunch of old, unwanted furniture and tvs!

Kara's dance class

Kara's class practicing their dance! Kara is the one in a pink leotard and no skirt. Sorry about the sound from Kiersten drinking a capri sun.

Here they are practicing gallops. of course Kara is the one acting like a spaz. On yo gabba gabba, they do a dance game, and when you freeze you're supposed to do a silly pose. Kara kept doing her yo gabba gabba poses instead of her dance poses that I swear, she knows how to do. She's showed me so many times! I guess she was a bit confused.

they also got to show off with a freestyle dance. I love how Kara tattles to the teacher when she gets bumped by another girl.

Here is the dance that the girls have been learning. some of them are really good at following the teacher. Others, like Kara, are a bit distracted with having an audience watching. The teacher made them perform the dance 3 or 4 times because someone messed up each time. after that, she finally gave up and called it good enough. My favorite one, which I unfortunately didn't get on camera, was when Kara announced in the middle of the dance that she got new roller skates. A bunch of the other girls got excited and started telling about their skates and bikes, and they had to start over.