Animal Life

Well, we are in the final countdown on baby girl #3.  My due date is not quite 2 weeks away, but both of the other girls were early, so I am hoping for sometime this week.  (Actually I was hoping for today as both of the other girls were born on Sunday, but I don't know if that will happen.)  Kyle took the day off on Friday so that I could work and I wrapped up what I need to do yesterday, so now I am ready and getting antsy.  I didn't really have this with either of the other girls as they both came earlier than I had expected.  Also, I was not nearly as uncomfortable with either of them - at least not that I remember anyways.

Well, to continue on with some of our past photos, I took the girls on a couple morning trips in March & April to get out of the house.

I was going a little stir crazy during busy season, so I called up my mom & sister and we met at the local zoo that we have been to many times before (admission is only $2). 

Watching the bear. (Isn't Katelyn getting sooooo tall?)

Me & My girls :-)

Brooklyn & cousin Micah brushing the goats.  These two are good buddies.

Katelyn petting the goats.

Feeding the ducks at the pond after the zoo.

Feeding ducks with Grandma.

My cousin Flora also called me up and mentioned that she was taking her 3 boys to a farm close to my house with a home-schooling group that she is part of, so we tagged along.  It is an educational farm that gives tours and is pretty much right around the corner from my house, but we had never been there before.

Each of the kids was going to be a 'farmer' by the end of the day, and Katelyn still talks about how she became a farmer.  They children were able to pick some items out of the garden to feed to the goats, ducks and chickens.  They also saw many other animals.  Brooklyn milked a cow (twice!), but I was helping her out, so I didn't get a picture of that.  Katelyn was not quite adventurous enough to milk the cow.

Taking the food they picked from the garden to the other animals.

Listening to them talk about this huge cow.

Waiting their turn to milk a cow.

After the tour, we ate a picnic lunch with my cousin and her kids.

Katelyn hanging out with her 2nd cousin Ethan (4 months apart in age).

On a side note, it appears that Katelyn is wearing the same shirt on both trips.  She absolutely loves the color orange, so she wears it any chance she gets.  Brooklyn would probably choose purple everyday, even though she will tell you her favorite color is blue.

The Big Girl Room

While we are now pretty ready for our new baby girl to arrive (due date is about 2 1/2 weeks away), this is a recent development.  We had a lot of things, at least in my mind, that needed to get done.

We have 3 bedrooms upstairs, our bedroom and then each of the girls had a room.  So, we needed to combine Katelyn and Brooklyn into one bedroom and leave the nursery for the new baby.  The bedrooms are fairly small, so the only way to fit two twin size beds was to get a set of bunk beds.  The girls both went from toddler size beds to twin size.

Katelyn's Bedroom before (toddler bed)

Bedroom before

Kyle cleaning after the bed was gone

By the time the bed was down, there wasn't enough time to make the entire bed frame before bed time that night, so Katelyn slept on the floor.

Daddy's helpers.

Climbing up into the new bed.

The final product!

I bought the bedspreads for them a while back when I saw that they were being clearanced as this was the theme that we had used when Katelyn was moved into the bedroom with toddler bedding.  I still love the bedroom theme.

Overall, I would say the girls like sharing a room, but it took SEVERAL weeks for them to get adjusted at bed time and nap time.  They would just talk and play and for a few weeks Katelyn took no naps and Brooklyn rarely napped.  Brooklyn would get out of bed like 4 times everytime I put her down (which was not at all like her before).  I was going crazy and they were pretty cranky too.  I think they have finally adjusted and Katelyn napped several times this week.  I think it was also just bad timing with her age and the fact that she doesn't need as much sleep.  So on days when they have napped, we are now letting them stay up quite a bit later than ever before, which has both good and bad points.


In addition to the beds, there were a couple of other improvements that I made.  One was buying a large toy box from IKEA for the girls' dress-up clothes.  They love to play dress-up and they had a large box in Katelyn's room and one in the hallway full of clothing that is now combined into one container.  It looks way better, although it doesn't slide open as easily as I would like on the carpet.

Before - Dress-up box in the bedroom

Before - Dress-up box in the hallway shelving unit

After  - All the dress-up clothes now fit in the this new box by their bed (and it gives us a seat in their room)

We also had a stuffed animal issue.  They were mainly just piled into a corner in Katelyn's bedroom.  I picked up a cute trashcan from IKEA and now they stay much more contained.

Before - All the animals in the corner

After

Kyle also had to build an additional shelf and rod in the closet to accomodate Brooklyn's clothing.  We generally have only used one side of the closet for hanging items and then I have shelving on the other side for clothes that are too big that I have bought at consignment sales, etc.  Getting the clothes for both girls to fit in one room (the dresser is pretty small) has been a little bit of an issue.

Before (Kyle added the top shelf a while back)

After

I would still like to get some cute curtains up and we will need to do some moving around of photos/wall decor, but other than that, it is pretty much done.  A new dresser will be needed when their clothing gets bigger, but for now, we are trying to make it work.


The baby nursery didn't need a ton of work, except that we remodeled our master bedroom closet the same week we moved Brooklyn and so our entire master closet was in baby room for about a month, which was really stressing me out.  (More to come on the master closet in another post.)  Kyle also had to convert the crib back to a crib as we had taken off the side and it was being used as a toddler bedding.  We did a thorough cleaning of the entire room and unloaded several boxes of baby items that were being stored in the rafters of the garage.  It is now ready and I am much relieved.

Winter 2013 - Randomness

This week marked the official end of Kyle's busy season!  YEAH!!!! He has been home for dinner for the last 2 nights and it has been wonderful.  Tomorrow will be the first Saturday he has not had to work this year.  So we have lots of plans to get things ready for having a new baby in the house. 

Below are a bunch of random photos from the past winter.   Enjoy!
 

Brookie is our little cuddlebug.  Here she has climbed into Daddy & Mommy's bed.  She loves her 'mankie' (blankie) and she usually sucks on her 2 fingers when she has it.  I think she has sucked on those same 2 fingers since the day she was born.

 Katelyn is the fashionable dresser with her pj's, rain boots and a magnifying glass in the rain boots.  They make me smile.

 Here is a pic Kyle sent me from breakfast.  He & Katelyn go out to breakfast once a month.  She LOVES it.  (You can tell that mommy was not up yet to do her hair before they left.)

 Boxes make fun toys and the girls often (although not always) play well together.

That's right.  In California, we rake leaves while wearing short sleeves in JANUARY.

 We often have to wait for Daddy on Sundays after morning service (He is a Deacon.).  The girls like to get books from the library and then sit outside the room where Daddy is.

The girls made ice cream, cookies, and pancakes for Daddy with play-dough.  I really need to work on getting less blurry pics from my phone.  GRRR.

 Reading with Grandpa.

 Up to no good.

 Waiting for shots at the Dr.  The girls usually do really well at the dr's office.  This time though they both had small fevers and we had to come back a second time for the shots. Of course, they never get sick otherwise.

 Doesn't everyone watch tv like this?  Silly Brooke (there's that mankie again).

We enjoy riding bikes and scooters in the front yard on a regular basis.  We also take some walks through the field by our house.

 Here are the girls at the park with their 2 cousins.

A day of celebrating love for family

Well, I am guessing that if you watch the news tonight you will hear about the wind and fire we are having nearby.  The wind has been horrible starting yesterday morning and this morning there was a fire that started in Rancho Cucamonga, which is about 20-30 minutes from here.  We are in the direct path of the smoke, so that is not cool.  Supposedly it has been in the 90's, but we wouldn't really know because it is so windy we haven't really ventured outside.  We are starting to go a little stir crazy.  It was a good thing we had Bible Study at church this morning.

I am going to make an attempt to catch up on life before the baby comes, so even though it is now 2.5 months later, I still want to do a post of Valentine's day.  We make a pretty big deal about holidays around our house as Katelyn gets extremely excited for them and it fun to do some new things.

As I mentioned previously, we did a preschool unit on Valentine's day the week leading up to Valentine's Day.

During the week, the girls each made necklaces & wreaths.  Here they are making the wreaths.  I must have forgotten to take a picture of them with their necklaces.

 

On Thursday the girls made cards (one for Daddy & one for GG - Great Grandma).  They said "We love you to pieces."

Then on Friday (Valentine's Day) morning we went and visited my grandma (GG).  I guess the girls are wearing their necklaces here.

In the afternoon we took a stab a finger painting.  I had made a couple things to be heart shaped, but the girls kind of did their own thing.  Not going to lie, finger painting was really not my thing (or Katelyn's).  Not sure how often that is going to happen again.

Then on Friday night we had a nice dinner at home as a family.  This is what we always do for actual Valentine's Day as Kyle and I hate fighting the crowds anyways.  We got a babysitter the following night and headed out for a rare date to Cheesecake Factory - MMMMMMM - so good.

Here are the girls in their new Valentine's shirts (which have become favorites even still), which were sent from Kyle's parents.

Our table all ready for a nice dinner.  Kyle brought home the flowers.  Some of the jell-o is cut into hearts, but is hard to see.

It is so fun to celebrate holidays with young kids.  Katelyn was waiting for this day for weeks.