We're Listed!!!

Some of you may have been wondering where the heck am I? Well we have been so busy getting our house "showable," as I call it (de-cluttering, cleaning, scrubbing, organizing for a garage sale), and giving our yard a makeover, and adding a rediculously large flower bed, that I have had noooo time to blog, email or make phone calls. I've never in the history of my email had more than 1 page of emails in my inbox...over the last couple weeks, I think I've gone on to page 3!! Augh!? But we're here, we've listed!! Soooo now here is where you can help...check out the link, look at our pictures and pass the word, pass the word, pass the word! In this small world you never know who has a connection to someone's second cousin's step sister's mom who is looking to move to the gorgeous state of Washington!!!
Click here to view Our Listing:

Here's a tribute to our home and all the work we did on the yard:
Here's the beginning of our flowerbed project (we had 3!! dump trucks of dirt brought in!):
Will had so much fun at the nursery when we were buying all the flowers:Will didn't understand that this was work...he LOVED shoveling all the mulch!!

The finished product:

Molly Sofia turns 8 Months and She's Movin'!

Molly turned 8 months old yesterday...and she's moving all over the place, she started crawling around 7 1/2 months. I looked up when Will started crawling b/c I thought he started a lot earlier than Molly but it turns out they were within 10 days of each other!! Also, we've been waiting and waiting for these darn teeth to pop up for Molly and I swore Will had a whole mouth full of teeth by 8 months, but he got his first two at 7 1/2 months, so she's not really that far behind. This is such a fun age, I find it hilarious how different it is with a second child. I'm already noticing it since Molly started crawling, she's all over the house and half the time I'm wandering around saying, "Where's Molly? Molly?" And Will is saying, she's over there, or over here...she's into EVERYTHING too, she's getting in to stuff Will never even had an ounce of interest in. For example: drawers, the fireplace, and wires. Always in to the wires. Another funny difference, we barricaded Will in to the living room, then as he got a little older, he was stuck in the living room and kitchen. He didn't have free range of the house until he was like 1 1/2 years...Molly's already climbing the first stair, the stools, the chairs, in to Lady's dog dish and wandering around underneath the dining room table. Molly's personality is coming out too...she's such a snuggler. She'll crawl up to you and just lay her head on you, if you're holding her, she'll look at you and then lay her forehead against your forehead. She's got more gusto than Will did too. She's already playing little teasing games with us. Especially with the fireplace (see video below). She'll head towards the fireplace and we'll say, "Moooolly, no no no..." She'll talk back, do a bouncey thing, then stop crawling, sit down, turn around and smile HUGE at you, then continue on her way toward the fireplace. Then repeat...she'll do it over and over and thinks it's the funniest little game. She responds to her name too, I love that milestone. It's wonderful when you say "Molly..." and she turns to look at you. She loves Lady too...she gets absolutely NO reinforcement though, she'll crawl through the whole house to get to Lady and Lady will up and walk away instantly. Poor Molly will watch with a kind of "hey! what's the big idea?!" kind of look and then crawl all the way over to Lady again, just to have Lady get up and walk away again. Molly's a studier...she'll pick up whatever and look at it with her lips pursed, she turns it over and over, switches it from hand to hand, plops it down and picks up the next thing. Here's my favorite: She's starting to clasp her hands together and is taking a huge interest in trying to clap. I love love love it. She'll sit down and clasp her sweet hands under her chin. Or she will pick up a toy in each hand and bang them together. And she always looks so proud of her accomplishment! She'll watch you all day long with a big ole smile on her face, if you'll just sit there in front of her clapping and saying, "clap clap clap." oh! and she's finally getting hair! Here's some sweet photo's and a fun video of her crawling (one of the very first times, you can tell she's just discovered how to do it).


Our lil' Cougar (see the hair "blowing in the wind" :-) ).
Molly's first experience with grass, wasn't so sure about it, was okay for a bit, but then felt "stuck" and wouldn't crawl off the blanket.
Thought this was so funny. Lady feels very put out by the kiddo's, while I was putting Molly down for her nap, Lady reclaimed her territory. (See the new flower bed in the background? There will be a post about that soon, talk about a project.)Will convinced me to get the drum and symbols out "b/c Molly's awake, and I'll do it in the bathroom so it's not too loud." Ha!! He was born a salesman.
See, there she is under the table...we didn't take the gate down for Will to even get to this table until he was much older.
Molly Sofia: 8 Months

My Heart has been Touched

I know there are a thousand, a million stories out there in our world about children, babies and how strong and resilient and miraculous they are...but this one has touched me like I can not believe. I discovered their blog tonight while reading another friend's blog...I only wish I had been touched sooner....

Happy Mother's Day!

I had a wonderful, beautiful Mother's Day with my Hubby, Sweetie Pie and Punkin. The day before, I received a gorgeous bouquet of roses from UPS from Molly and Will, I LOVE getting roses on our front porch! :-) Sunday morning, I woke up to Will crawling next to me in our bed and saying, "Happy Mudders Day, Mom!" and he gave me a big kiss on the cheek, followed by Jeremy bringing me coffee and breakfast in bed....yummy egg sandwich and a bowl full of banana's and strawberries....this is my most loved treat, coffee AND breakfast in bed! :-)

After breakfast, we played in our yard thanks to the gorgeous sunshine and then went to a yummy brunch at the BluWater in downtown Kirkland, they gave us a window seat and Will had a great time watching all the boats on the water, and I got free Mimosa's! They gave Will some Wikki sticks, so much more fun than crayons, we had to spell out Mom and all my kids names. :-) We came home for naps, then headed out for a picnic and walk/bike ride on a trail in Woodinville. Will hasn't had a chance to test out his bike on the big open road, it's always been going in little circles on our back patio. He had sooooooooo much fun, he would go faster and faster, didn't care about using the breaks. Molly was perfectly content holding on for dear life in the stroller. She grips it sooo tight, cracks me up. She won't just lay back and relax. Later, after our dinner Will played on the playground, this playground had "suggested ages" for each part, "5-8," "8-10," and "8-12." Will walked right up to the "8-12" and climbed all the way to the top...no fear....

Thanks to my family for a most perfect Mother's Day, you are all so precious to me and I love you so much.

William's 3rd Birthday

Will started talking about having a Little Einstein's birthday or "Rocket party" months and months before his birthday was actually going to happen. And all on his own, I never mentioned it. So that's what he got and I think he was very happy with it! :-) He had a fantastic 3rd birthday filled with lots of fun times and loving friends and family. He had a wonderful morning celebration with us and his Nana and Papa, and an amazing birthday party later in the day.

Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate, we always love having each and every one of you, we love having a house filled with family and friends. It always means a lot to us that you choose to spend your days with our family.

A little side note: Will was born at 5:02am, and yes, I was up at 5:02am...Molly woke me up b/c she was feeling a little hungry and it was so close to the time when Will was born that I couldn't go back to sleep! I was very tempted to go in to his room just to look at him, but I thought better of it b/c I did not want HIM up at 5 in the morning.

Will blowing out his 3 candles in his birthday cinnamon roll from Maltby Cafe.
The presents begin (actually his blue cooshee seat you see him sitting on was his first present).

Cute video of Will opening the star of the show present, listen carefully and you'll hear him say what it is and then say, "This is so cool." Is he turning 3 or 10!!?
I think he likes his present from Nana and Papa.

Will's cake and decorations (I couldn't BELIEVE I found a card for a 3 year old that was ALSO Little Einsteins!)
All the kiddo's (Will, Ellie, Ava, Drew) get ready to watch the "Will movie." This is a slideshow that Jeremy puts together of Will and all his fun activities over the last year.

Happy Birthday dear Will...Happy Birthday to you.

A Special Place in My Heart

Cinco de Mayo does...this day has a special place in my heart. It was my due date when I was pregnant with Will, he was a bit early though...I kept the couple of cute decorations Kate and Jaclyn used for my baby shower, still use them every year. What better way to start a post about Will's birthday than to start from the very beginning, his baby shower...way back when. March 18th, 2006. There he is...in my big ole tummy...

So Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone, and check back for Will's THIRD birthday celebration (his preschool celebration is the post below)...can't believe it...from that tummy to today, 3 years already.

The Birthday Circle

In the Montessori tradition, the birthday child carries a globe around the circle for each year of their life representing the path of earth around sun. There is a candle burning in the middle, representing the sun. As the child carries the globe a special song is sung by the teachers, students and family: "The earth goes 'round the sun, the sun, the earth goes 'round the sun. It takes 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days." At the end of each trip around the sun, the child shares a picture of themselves for each year of their life to show how much they've grown and changed and you discuss the child's achievements for that year. The ceremony ends with the class singing Happy Birthday and the child blows out the candle.

William was lucky enough to be able to participate in this wonderful tradition at his Montessori preschool...it was a strange day for him, although, strange may not be the right word b/c his behavior was actually normal. As soon as we walked in to the classroom with his goodies, he smiled, said, "Mommy!" and promptly burst in to tears and ran to me. Then refused to leave my side. He wouldn't walk around the circle with the globe but instead chose his friend Cody to "be him" and walk the circle. Cody is the sweetest boy around, Will talks about him all the time, he's one of his best friends. And I can always see why. On this day, Cody would bend down and lean in real close to Will and say, "It's okay, Will. You can do it. Here hold my hand. We can do it together." Eventually Will did walk the circle with the globe and the pictures (with a tight grip on me). This is pretty typical for Will, he gets extremely anxious and "shuts down" sort of when something exciting or different is about to happen. He was perfectly fine setting up the circle and talking about it with his teacher and friends, but as soon as Mommy and Daddy walked in, it was out of his routine and he was freaked. It all turned out though, we showed our pictures and talked about his acheivements (swimming, walking, soccer, writing, knowing numbers/letters). They sang Happy Birthday and Will picked 3 friends to get high fives from. And then we shared our snack with his class and Will was VERY excited about it, a HUGE chocolate chip cookie that said Happy Birthday William on it.Will's birthday circle with his teacher, me and classmates.

Will's friend Cody walking the circle holding Will's picture.Will deciding to take charge of his own birthday circle.Every day before the kids can eat lunch, they sit with their hands folded and wait for everyone to have their food. Here's Will doing it before they even ask them to. I was so proud. I think he looks unbelievably sweet in this picture.Will's gigantic cookie.

I love this picture of Will, he's genuinely happy and smiling, not a forced smile just b/c there's a camera.Lining up so nicely to go outside and run off all that sugar I just brought them! :-)