A quiz

According to Colby (2.5 years old), what is going on outside?

A. Clouds

B. Our house is being painted

C. Spider Web

Great. Now how do I get all these spider webs off my house?!?

Typical

Overheard while riding in the car today:

Colby: Hey, Kyla, do you like pink?

Kyla: yeah, I love pink. Pink's my favorite color.

Colby: I like blue.

The End.

Number Girl

Kyla is definitely a numbers girl. When she is quiet, she is thinking, and when she is thinking, 7 times out of 10, she is running numbers!

This morning while chewing her waffle she was thinking. And when she spoke:

5+1 is 6. 4+2 is 6. 3+3 is 6. Isn't that so crazy!!

...

60+1 is 61. 60+2 is 62. 60+3 is 63.

Me: What is 60+10?

Kyla: ... Sixty-ten.

Me: That's not a number.

Kyla: 60+9 is 69.

Me: yeah, and 10 is one more than 9, so what is 60 plus 10?

Kyla: SEVENTY!!

Me: What is 60 plus 20?

Kyla: Eighty!

Me: What is 400+400?

K: Hmmmm, I don't know.

Me: What is 4+4?

K: 8

Me: What is 400+ 400?

K: 800!

Then she goes back to thinking. And this type of conversation is not uncommon.

It is so fun to see her grow and learn, get glimpses of the person she is becoming. I feel privileged to be the person to know her the best. Even though others see that she is left handed and say she will be creative, perhaps an artist or a musician, you know, due to her long fingers ; ) I know that there is so much more to her. And that is part of my job as her mom, to know her and then to inspire her and motivate her. I tell her that she is special and God has a plan for her, just her, because He has created her just so. My perspective on being a mom and my calling as a mom, has been changed after reading the book The Mission of Motherhood

Raising kids is so much more than crossing your fingers and hoping they graduate high school without getting into major trouble. It's about parenting with a purpose and it's about raising individuals that were made for eternity. What a huge undertaking. Sometimes even overwhelming. Funny how something so big is so often downplayed by others. As a stay at home mom, there is no other job as important as this. There are not enough hours in a day for me to not feel this way. There is no other person on earth who should know my child better than I do.

*Stepping off soapbox... Now.*

So then we made this ; )

Oh the Irony!!

Last Sunday Morning, Stephen took the kids on a walk to Starbucks and I stayed home to... Okay do you want a rabbit trail? Because I can give you a rabbit trail!

 The previous weekend we had gone up to Vail as a little this-is-our-only-'vacay'-this-summer getaway and Colby, Kyla and even Stephen wound up with a bad head cold. The kind NyQuill, Sudafed 'severe cold' and Triminic couldn't handle. There was very little sleeping and much booger sucking to be had. But guess who didn't get sick?? That's right, me! Maybe this is my reward for catching a cold every. time. my kids have in the past 4.5 years, or maybe it was the garlic. Okay, long story shorter. I started feeling like I was catching the bug, so I started eating vitamin C like candy - okay about 2-3000 mg/day (I'm not giving advice, I'm just saying what I did in my frantic state of not wanting to get sick) and each day I ate about two cloves of garlic. Raw. I used my garlic press and mixed it into about 1/4 cup applesauce, and it burned, and it tasted like I ate garlic bread AND P.F. Chang's Mongolian Beef for breakfast, but I didn't get sick! I had the 'uuhhhhg-no' I feel like I'm getting sick scratchy throat, headache and swollen glands thing for a couple days, but it never developed into the fierce head cold of congestion that it did for everyone else. Team Garlic here!! Okay, so I stayed home while Stephen took the kids on a walk, I decided to make myself some coffee and watch our Sunday morning church service live on my laptop. As I settled in I stared feeling much better, go team Garlic, team Coffee and team God!! So good that I took a picture:



I'm not sure if I've ever intentionally taken a picture of my laptop, but this was to be my last, well, last picture of my properly functioning laptop. If you were to zoom in on the pic you would notice there was only 12 minutes battery time left, and you would notice the children's book it is resting on. Can you see where this story is going? Well, I moved the laptop to the back of the other side of the couch (the side that is not up against a wall) to plug it in to the power cord, after the sermon was over there was worship music playing so I left it open to play while I got busy cleaning up and putting laundry away, all while having the nagging feeling that I should put it away. Well, sure enough, Stephen and the kids come home, Colby climbs on the couch, reaches for the book under the laptop and knocks it right off the back of the couch. Funny how even if you've never heard the sound of a laptop falling to it's death, you still know what the sound is when you hear it. Wahhh! I had a little predicament in trying to decide whether or not to fix my screen, get a new laptop or just get an iPad. Several reasons for each option but this is what I wound up with, I like to call this: The Solution, as taken from my iPad.


I can still use my laptop if need be, for photos, Word, writing contracts for the townhouse.... which I should be doing right now... etc. But for every day convenience, read: web browsing -  read: facebooking, blog reading, Pinteresting and recipe gathering, the iPad is the perfect tool for that job :) As for my start-up disk on my (almost) four-year old laptop, I need to step into 2011 and get a separate external hard drive for my photos (not just backing them up on Time Capsule), then figure out how to resize my photos (if need be) and definitely figure out what size they are importing off from my DSLR camera. Meh. But after doing that my trusty OLD (yeah, OLD, every one at Apple made sure to remind me how OLD it is and that they don't even make the white laptops anymore, blah blah. YEAH. I KNOW. You came out with the new ones FIVE days after I bought mine, almost 4 years ago!! I'm only a little bitter, this happened both times we purchased macs) ...laptop should be fine for awhile.

 Oh, even Kyla is iPad savvy. Stephen says to Kyla, "guess what? Mom got kind of like a new computer, it like a phone, but bigger."

Kyla (blankly): "Like an iPad?"

LOL! Duh, dad!  She whipped this up for me yesterday:


Fancy, huh? :)

Dazed and Confused

I'm not entirely sure what just happened today.

We went out to breakfast, walked around a farmers market, stopped by Costco, oogled at a great sectional sofa with a really great price tag, came home for naps and I whipped this up...

After getting a couple calls and an okay price offer I handed my phone off to Stephen so I could take a nap he could handle things.  Someone did call him, but said they would call back later and maybe come by to look at it.  I decided to vacuum under the cushions just in case they did stop by and while I was cleaning, they came by, no call or anything!  And they were people we knew!  I was so confused as to why these people (whom I haven't seen in a couple years!) were walking into my house, coming in as the attachment on my vacuum started to blow dust!  15 minutes later they were gone... and so were our couches!  (I should add, we got full price we were asking!)
I just keep looking at our empty living room thinking, "Uh, what the heck just happened??" and "We have no couches!!"
So much for throwing an ad up to 'see what would happen'.  Craigslist is no joke!  Actually, the funny thing is that with everything we've posted to Craigslist, it's either gone in a couple of hours, or never sells at all.
So Stephen went back to Costco to pick up the couch, and they were closed.  oops!  I guess Costco closes at 6:30 on Saturday, wow.
Since our living room re-do was put on hold we ran out to Chick-fil-A for some dinner.  After eating Colby randomly says he needs to go poo poo... on the potty.
WHAT?  (YOU didn't see that one coming either, did you ; )
So Stephen takes him to the bathroom and sure enough, he went 'poo poo on the potty'.
I am totally beside myself.

For now we moved the couch from the kitchen to the living room:

Empty!  The room feels twice as big!

Another bit-o-randomness for the day.  Kyla made a shadow in the car today using a pencil with a toy on top... wah-la!

What is that you ask?  What is that a shadow of??
Why, "a pelican going to college" of course!
Yeah, you know what, it does kinda look li---  Wait.  What the what?!?

This is officially the last day I start without coffee!

There's an App for that, literally.

I'm sure you remember a post with a similar title... No? Okay fine, here. This is different, and no children were at risk for drive by shootings, drug exposure or food poisoning. So after deciding last night that the only thing I didn't want to do sans computer was blogging, I decided to get a blogging app! So I'm giving it a whirl :) Which reminds me, I need to get all those little faces to go with it, since even I am getting tired of this :), this :( and this ; ). I think it is really going to come in handy since I take so many pictures and videos with my phone, like many, like I currently have over 800 pictures! This way I'll be able to skip the emailing photos to myself or syncing to iPhoto, especially since Facebook wouldn't let me upload mobile this week. So here's what you would have missed!


Me working on Christmas cards while watching Elf in Breckenridge.


Winter Wonderland!!


Colby walking in the snow for the first time!


And loving it


Kyla wanted to climb in the snow


And be silly :)


Super fun!! Stay tuned for more day to day blogging and emoticons too, or not, but probably :)

Quilts

Stephen's maternal grandmother is a quilter, and she's really good!  Grandma Reiman has made many, many, many quilts and has won many awards and a few of her quilts are actually worth a lot of money.  


There is a place in my heart for quilts as my mom collected quilts and even made a few, sewing often with her sisters.  My aunts made a double wedding ring quilt for Stephen and I when we were married.  And I use that quilt because I want it to be our family quilt, I want it to get warn and thin and soft, we take it to the park, outdoor events and I made a point to incorporate it in our recent family photos (taken by my sister).

Kimberly Althausen Photography

About a year ago I found out that Grandma Reiman had been working on a quilt for her great-grandaughter, Kyla!  She finished it a few weeks ago, it was in a quilt show in Washington and sent to our house right away!  It is the most darling quilt I have ever seen!

I love the wavy, wispy stitching, love.

 Kyla with her favorite rag doll

Each doll is different and so much detail was put in to each one.

 Each face is hand painted!

 This girl has great hair!

 This one has a sweet bo-peep and sheep print with tiny buttons and apron

 look at those eyes!

This is such a special gift and I know we will cherish it forever... and we'll keep it away from the park ; )

Halloween

Last night for Halloween we went over to our friends' house, the Wall's.  We had a group of 8 kids and 8 adults and went trick-or-treating just before dark for about an hour.

The kids did so well and Colby, who is 18 months old now, did a great job keeping up.  His bucket got heavy very quickly so Stephen tried to help him out but Colby would cry and say, "no no no no!" so Stephen would take the candy out of Colby's bucket and put it in his pockets and he would say, "no no no no!"  It was so funny, poor guy was really trying to protect his candy!  Kyla and Colby's hands were so cold but I don't think they noticed at all, they had such a fun time and got a hang of trick-or-treating very quickly.  Colby was always the last kid at the door, which I think is key to getting more candy!  He had WAY more candy than Kyla and they went to the same number of houses.

After trick-or-treating we went back to the Wall's house for dinner, football and hanging out with friends.

We made 'Mummy' Pizzas for the kids, they turned out really cute!

I didn't get any pictures of Kyla and Colby last night, but I did take these a few days ago of them in their costumes

Kyla with the pumpkin she made with Grandma and Aunt Laura

PlayDoh animals

Pumpkin, bat, alligator, duck and flamingo

what's that there on the pumpkin?  Oh, it's just a toothbrush.

Kyla was really sad I wasn't taking pictures of the play-doh animals with her in them, I just hadn't gotten that far yet!

and then there's Colby the Cowboy and Kyla the Peacock!

look at Hogan trying to catch leaves!  haha!

The end!