Monday, June 21, 2010

father's day

I think Ben enjoyed his father's day this year. We woke up early to go to the morning showing of Toy Story 3. The girls were both so good, and sat through the whole thing without acting up at all. After the movie, we went to Ben's favorite mexican restaurant for lunch. It was yummy, but we got in and out of there pretty fast. i guess we were all full of popcorn from the movie. When we came home, the girls were excited to give Ben their gifts. Kara also made up a short father's day song for him. Kiersten picked out his Elmo card for him, and Kara got to pick out the envelope for it.
I let the girls wrap their own gifts. They did a pretty decent job, though it was hard for me not to jump in and do it "right". but I controlled myself, and let them do it. I got Ben what he wanted for father's day, but I also took the girls to the store, and let them each pick out something special they wanted to get for him. Kara got him a Mariner's hat.
Kiersten got him a Mr. Goodbar. as soon as I told them they got to pick out a gift, she started saying she wanted to get him candy. She actually picked out a regular hershey bar, but I got her to switch to the mr. goodbar by saying, "let's pick one with a pretty color. How about the yellow one?" She totally went for that, so I was glad he could get something he would like to eat.
I just thought this was a cute picture of Kiersten. After bath time, I got her dressed, and she said, "where's the camera?" I told her it was put away, and she said, "you take my picture pweeeze, mommy?" so of course I couldn't say no to that.

Monday, June 14, 2010

last day of school

First, I just liked this picture of Kiersten. She asked if she could take her nap on my bed the other day. I set her on top of the pillows with her own blanket, and when I came in to check if she'd fallen asleep, I found that she had unmade one side of the bed and gotten in. She looked so cute. Kara on her last day of school. She made a card for her teacher. That's the paper that she's holding.

She has grown 2 inches since she started school, and only gained 1 pound.

posing in front of her school. She has been saying the last few days that she was glad to be done with school. We tried to explain that she wont see her friends and teacher, so she needed to have lots of fun on her last day. She just insisted that she wasn't going to be sad or miss anyone. But when I picked her up from school, she started crying and didn't want to leave. She begged me to let her go to summer school, and insisted that all the other kids are going to summer school. I just explained that we are going to be having the new baby arrive soon, so we need to take a break from school until the fall. She seems to be okay with it now, although she has brought it up several times today that she no longer gets to go to school or ballet.
Kiersten got this bug sprinkler for her birthday in march. It was finally sunny enough that we let them try it out on saturday after we got home from a birthday party. Ben counted at least 7 pregnant women at the birthday party, so I was in good company, and also got to see some Seattle friends we haven't seen in quite a while.
This morning I woke up to find Kiersten getting into my makeup in the bathroom. I sent her down to play with Kara while I cleaned it all up. (you can see some still on her face). When I came down, I had every intention of lecturing her about getting into things, but I forgot when I saw the two of them cuddled together on the couch like this.

36 weeks along in the pregnancy now! I am having my first dr. appt. to get "checked" tomorrow. So not looking too forward to that, but definitely looking forward to the baby coming soon.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

woodland park zoo

One day last week the girls wanted to make hats. So I helped them make these "princess" hats. Ben thought they were supposed to be dunce hats.

We haven't been to the woodland park zoo in Seattle for 3 years, since the Tacoma zoo is so much closer, and we have a membership. On sunday we decided to take the girls up to woodland park, so they could see the african animals that we don't have at our zoo. The lions were one of the animals they were excited to see.

I forgot how big this zoo is, and we ended up spending over 4 hours there. I was pretty sore by the end of it.

While we were inside one of the buildings, this squirrel opened a compartment on our stroller, got into the girl's snack cup, and stole their goldfish crackers. Some ravens decided to help themselves too. The girls sure thought he was a sneaky and naughty squirrel.

The girls loved seeing this little bird eat seeds off a stick. It was really hot in there, though, so my camera lense kept fogging up. I have some really cute ones of Kara, but they are all foggy.





The gorillas were a big highlight of our visit. The girls especially loved this little baby that rode around on it's mom. This gorilla family had a dad, mom, big sister, and baby sister. Kara was excited that their family was like ours.

After seeing the gorillas, they wanted to play around on the gorilla statues for quite a while.

playing in the "zoonasium"

On monday, when we got back from grocery shopping, Kiersten got to throw away all of her binkys. She hasn't been using them for 2 weeks now. I figured we may as well just get rid of them so we (by we, I mean Ben) can't be tempted to give in and let her have them when she's crying.

She was a little hesitant about throwing them all away, but she loved all the praise and big girl comments she got for doing it.