It's 2009 already somewhere in the world!

Can you believe that this is the end of 2008? I am a little disappointed because I like even years more than odd years and the number "9" is definitely not in my top ten favorite numbers, but what can you do? We had a great year this year (I even put together a little 2008 Year in Review Slide show which some of you have already seen- the rest of you will get to see it soon.)

This next week marks one year in our apartment which will soon be a new thing for me- living in a place for more than one year (Gasp!) Since I moved out at age 18 (8 years ago) I have lived in 13 different places- some for as little as a month but none for more than 12 months. I guess this means I am growing up..maybe. Unless my landlord decided to raise the rent to some ungodly amount then I will have to reconsider.

This weekend I really realized my little girl is not a baby anymore either. I mean I already knew it what with the talking back and the tennis elbow from carrying her up the stairs but just looking at her she really looks like a little girl now. She's more proportionate size wise and she puts two adjectives in a sentence to describe something. Last night she said, "Mommy, what is that thick brown ornament you have?" It was my little duck in a nest ornament from "Santa" that I got in my stocking. So articulate and her vocabulary blows me away sometimes. She was mad at me the other day and said "Mommy you are just horrible." Wow, thanks kid. I wanted to say "Well, sometimes you are horrible too." But I held my tongue. We have many years ahead of us for deciding that one.

Happy New Year all! We love you and thanks for making 2008 very special!

Merry Christmas to All

We've had a WHITE CHRISTMAS today with a few more inches of snow. We've also had a great relaxing day just hanging out and everyone playing with all their new toys...Here are some pictures from this morning.

Snow...snow...snow

We watched "White Christmas" last night. It looks like this year we might actually have a real white christmas...can you believe it?

So I am behind a whole month....

I seriously have been trying to post forever but everytime I try it ends up getting pushed further down the priority list by some more pressing issue (grocery shopping, Christmas presents, sleep...) and now with the weather pretty much holding me hostage at Dad and Di's house (sorry guys, it's true) I finally have a few spare minutes to get some pictures up...after I finally downloaded some microsoft update that literally took hours- but before then I couldn't even get on the internet (GASP!). Here are a few pictures from recent days...my beautiful girl.

The Budding Artist

I always leave Lily's art supplies out on her easel. She has pretty much any and all supplies she could possibly need from chalk to paint to stamps and stamp pads. She has crayons, pens, scissors and glue. Her favorite for quite some time now has been the watercolor paints with paint brushes. While there is usually quitet the mess on the kitchen floor (and a couple of times on the carpet, oops!) I love leaving this stuff out for her and seeing what she can come up with. We always find interesting projects to do. We cut and glue pictures from magazines and right now she is working on quite the interesting chalk drawing with her easter egg shaped colored chalk. This week though she discovered a bit of a new "art" for herself. She picked up my camera and I told her which button to push. While I can't say that she is a photography genius at the age of three or anything, I thought I would share a few of my budding photographer's very first pictures. They could very well be worth something someday. Of course all of her art is worth something to me.

Here she is also doing a bit of painting. I love how she's really concentrating on what she is doing. We may not recognize any of the shapes she makes yet as anything from reality- but who says she won't be an impressionist???

In loving memory...

Dear Grampa,

So much has changed in the last four years. I wish you could have been here. My entire life you were a constant figure. Most of the time quiet but still always there. Since you've been gone I feel like a piece is missing. Sometimes I still think you will be sitting in your chair when I come to your house. I expect the scanner noises to come on or hear your voice saying the prayer at dinner time. I remember the last words you spoke to me "Hey sweetheart" before you were too sick to recognize me and just holding your hand after that.

And then there is Lily. I wanted you to meet her. I wish you could have watched her grow like you watched your children and grandchildren grow. She is an amazing child though more of a challenge than I could ever have imagined.

We miss you.

Love always,

Sarah

Oh the horror!

So I am kind of used to Lily's off the wall comments, for the most part. I usually just laugh them off- like the other day when she said her poop looked like a hotdog. What can you even say to something like that? We had another interesting event in the dressing room yesterday while I was trying on a pair of pants. Maybe not as bad as last time when she yelled out "Mommy I can see your boobs!" but this time I think she had a little mischief on her mind. As soon as I go to try on the pants she yells, "Eww Mommy. I don't want to see your butt." Ha. Ha. One of these days I am going to get even. When she's like fifteen or something and terribly embarrassed by me I just know I'll get her back. Until then I think she's got embarassing me down to a science.

Sunshine!

Oh, thank goodness for the sunshine today (also for Lily's smiling face!) I don't know if I could have made it through another day of grey drizzly rain. I am lucky I guess that I don't live in a flood zone or anything but this time of year seriously kills me. It's a little too early to get excited about Christmas and the weather is awful and it is dark by the time I leave work : ( Very sad. Plus Lily and I don't get to walk home from school. I guess we could have today since it wasn't raining finally but its still really dark... We've had some tough times this week. When Monday morning rolled around Lily was not ready to get up. I ended up having to carry her to school in her blanket with no shirt on (she slept only in her pants) screaming all the way down the road at seven in the morning. I know my neighbors just love us!

I did have Tuesday off work though and that gave me a bit of time to work on the Christmas presents I am making (can't say what they are, don't want to spoil the surprise!). I feel good about getting those started. Then Lily and I went over to Poppa's house to play with Maddie for the afternoon. We saw Miss Maddie's new hamster Maple and had a yummy dinner that Poppa made. I am just glad tomorrow is Friday. I am looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. We are going to Poppa's for dinner again on Saturday and who knows what for the rest of our time. I am seriously looking forward to Thanksgiving coming up.... probably my favorite holiday because I love the food!!! Especially pumpkin pie.. oh and mashed potatoes and turkey and gravy and well, I guess I just love it all!

Silly Lily

This picture of Lily is the cutest ever I think. She arranged the puppy just right so he could watch the Clifford movie too. The other two are from halloween in her class. The only part of the costume she would put on was the tiara. Silly girl. She was throwing a fit because she knew there were cupcakes waiting in her classroom for her and didn't want to go to the other classroom's for the "Trick or Treat" part in case she lost her cupcake. I had to take the picture...so classic.

Halloween

Okay so here's the deal. I am not really into Halloween- I mean at all really and I haven't tried to push it with Lily (at all) but last week she came home from school and said she wanted to dress up like a princess for Halloween. What could I say? Of course she can- since she could articulate it then pretty much I caved. Wow she's spoiled!

Anyway.

Those of you who know my daughter know that she is not the "girliest girl" (neither am I!) so the whole princess thing kind of shocked me but while I was at Goodwill this weeked (yeah Goodwill!!) they had a little princess tiara for $1.50- so against my better anti-ish-Halloween judgement I bought it and showed it to her when she got back from her Dad's this weekend. Lily's thoughts on the matter? "You silly Mommy, I want to be a ghost, not a princess. You have the princess crown." Thanks, Lily. Thanks.

Little Caterpillar

Lily and I found a little caterpillar crawling in our living room it was so cute.

Miss Lily had a good week this week. She went on her first field trip with her preschool. They went to a pumpkin farm and she didn't want to come back to school!

Finally the Golden Gate Bridge

So I walked like three miles and got this close to the bridge...then I realized if I got went any further I was going to be like four or five miles away from my hotel and it would be getting dark well before I could get back. That didn't seem like the best plan so this is as far as I went. Oh well. So beautiful...though I think in the morning with the sun "in front" of it, from my perspective, it would have been even better. The orange color would have been more prominent. Anyway...I saw it...and there's proof I was there (I managed to set my camera on a timer and take a picture of me with the Bridge in the background, yeah me!)

Then I found some place to eat that had live jazz music and really great Chowder in a bread bowl. Yum. I caught the Cable Car on the way back up cause by that time it really was getting dark and my feet weren't going to live through a mile or two uphill back to the hotel. My dumb old camera though just was not taking the kind of quality pictures I wanted so I think pretty soon it is time for an upgrade. Everything kept coming out blurry and the "night scene" mode is a total joke.

Well, enough blabbering from me, on with the pictures. I'm coming home tomorrow already....wish I had one more day of exploring but oh well, I will get to see my Lilypoo- who, by the way, has hardly noticed I have been gone and is having way too much fun at Poppa's house. I don't think she is going to want to come back to boring old Mom. Good thing I bought her a present so I can bribe her! Ha ha! See you all soon.

On my walk...

More pictures from San Francisco...

More From San Fran

I went on a little exploring trip after the welcome reception for the conference. I went down to Nordstrom on Market Street and back up the hill on a cable car. Then I walked down to China Town for a couple minutes but it started to get a bit dark : ( so I decided to come back to the hotel room. I will go out again tomorrow night- hopefully I will meet someone here at the conference that wants to go explore also so I don't have to go by myself! Hi Lily! I love you and I miss you! I hope you are having a great time at poppa's house and I'll see you soon!

San Francisco

Here I am! Finally I made it. It has been a pretty long day already but I am going to do some exploring a bit before it gets dark! Here is a picture of the view out my window. Not quite the top floor (floor 5) but still fun. More later!

Pumpkin Patch

This weekend Micah, Elliot, Lily and I went to the South 47 Farm over in Redmond. It was a really windy and rainy day- but the rain mostly stopped once we got there. The kids had a great time exploring the farm and picking out pumpkins. Micah and Elliot went on the Tractor ride- Lily wasn't too sure about that so we stayed behind and jumped on the hay bales.

Elliot and Lily played well together all weekend. This is them outside Micah's house pretending the dirt and leaves were cookies.

Silly Faces

I took this first picture of Lily and told her to smile but she frowned instead. I told her that she was making a sad face and showed her the picture. This led to the next set of pictures making all the different faces we could think of. Okay, so most of them aren't really that flattering but we had fun taking each one then seeing what we looked like on the camera screen.








This picture is Lily just before school one day last week. She just looked so cute and she finally held still long enough for me to get a good picture of her actually smiling.

My Special Girl

This morning I laid back down in our bed trying to convince Lily it would be a good idea to get up and go to school. She always needs that extra cuddle time in the morning. This is our conversation.

Mommy: I love you, Lily. Do you know who the most special girl in the world is?

Lily: You are mommy!

Then she leans over and gives me a big kiss on the cheek and a big squeeze around my neck.

I just want to eat her up!

P.S. Check out this other blog I found called "Clever Girl Goes Blog". There is a link on the righthand side. Read it. You will laugh and maybe cry too...it's great.

Bad girl!

Dream weekend..??? Awesome. Phantom of the Opera is just so amazing. I even looked pretty amazing but the picture we took didn't do me justice I don't think. I am soooo not photogenic. Grr. Anyway, I have some really cute pictures to post but I just couldn't get to it this weekend. I am going to work on the text tonight then maybe get them uploaded at lunch tomorrow??? Maybe wednesday, don't complain until Thursday though.

We went to a pumpkin farm this weekend and had a lot of fun and now San Fran is only seven days away..omg : ) More later, I promise. I know you are all just dying to know..all 1 or 2 of you that actually read this thing.

Two nights away...

Lily is with her Dad this weekend...and for the first time in her life will spend two nights away from me. I think this is good practice for the three nights I will be in San Francisco next month for work (oh my goodness, I am so excited!!!) I am sure I will miss her more than she misses me but I have lots of stuff to do this weekend to keep my thoughts otherwise occupied.

First tonight, thank-you Briana for free Mariner's tickets. I know they suck this season but oh well. I love watching baseball. It'll be great but probably cold so I am going to get seriously bundled up- probably so much so Briana won't sit next to me because I will look like such a dork. Seriously, with like a winter hat and gloves plus my winter coat and don't forget my pink fleece blanket. Well, it's Lily's blanket but I am going to borrow it. So there. So if you watch on tv just look for the nerd wearing all the clothes like it is snowing out or something (even though the weather channel says its still in the upper fifties.) Anyway.

And for tomorrow I have to say thank-you in advance to Joeleen and Danielle for truly spoiling me for my special evening out with Micah. They are coming over in the early afternoon to help me with my make up (apparently Danielle is an expert, whoo hoo for me!) Then Micah is going to pick me up and whisk me away for a romantic evening at the Paramount seeing Phantom of the Opera and dinner afterwards at Canlis. I could seriously get used to this!

I don't think I will want to wake up from this dream weekend and have to come back to reality Monday morning- but I am sure I will have plenty to brag about to everyone at my office!

Oh, and last night Lily stayed up late with me and we watched Survivor together. She loved all the Jungle animals they showed and I got to watch for once. Whoo hoo. I guess she will have to be my new survivor buddy. It was fun though because we made popcorn and Lily sat in my clean laundry basket (clothes included because they were warm from the dryer). We also shared mugs of green tea. Ah my girl. I am training her well, no?

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend too.

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY, LILY!

My darling child is three years old today...at 8:56 am this morning to be exact. How quickly these last three years have gone- and how many amazing things she has learned.

In this last year she has built her vocabulary to amazing levels. She has worked really hard on Potty Training (as you all know), she can get dressed herself for the most part, and memorizes song lyrics and short stories.

She can also listen to stories way longer than those baby board books too. She makes jokes and knows when she is being silly and how to get a reaction. She loves to help me out around the house by doing dishes, helping sweep the floor, cleaning the toilet and she even helps me make pancakes some mornings. She has made new friends at school in her new Preschool class.

She's struggled with being independent and her sheer will to get exactly what she wants. She has faced her fear climbing on the toys at the park- and now does it on her own. She is working on sharing even though it is really tough and working on using her words when she's mad. She is learning empathy and wants to give me a hug when she see's I am sad.

All in all, she's my wonderful three year old girl. I am so happy to be her momma!

Lily's Birthday is coming up...

I thought I would share pictures from her other birthdays. Can you believe how much she has grown?