WANT A DOGGY?!?!?

I added some more pictures of her with longer hair. I grew it out a little to keep her warm in the winter.

Kaitlyn said that first picture I posted looked a little creepy. She loves to perch herself on the furniture so she can look at all the comings and goings through the front windows.

She would always look away the exact second I took the picture. But you can see her coloring better in these.

This is our dog Lady. She has been in our family since she was a puppy. She is (I think) 7 years old. She has been spayed. She is a white with tan spots shitzu. We love her and are sad to give her up, but we have just gotten to the point in our lives where we need to not have any pets. She is excellent potty trained (there are times when things come up in the day and she is left out and about in our house for up to 8 hours and she won't tinkle, not that I do that on purpose but things with kids can get pretty hectic).
She has NEVER (and I mean NEVER) shown any aggression to my kids, she knows people are her boss and if she is getting overwhelmed with kid shenanigans she will mosey on to a different room that is quieter if she needs a break. A boy I babysat was pretty high energy and in her face and she would just go and find a quiet place to camp out when he was over. She also plays really well with my kids too and chases Olivia from room to room when Olivia is feeling hyper.
We would love to give her away free to someone that would have a good home for her. She would come with all the pet gear.
-A kennel for night time and travel
-Water and food bowls
-Two harnesses with leashes (one hot pink, she is a girl after all, and one green with lady bugs...cause her name is Lady...he he he).
- Almost full bag of dog food (I just had to buy a new bag last week)
- Dog brush
-Doggy eau de cologne (girls gotta smell nice!)

So you wouldn't even have any expenses in the immediate future. She would do awesome with kids, but would also be great as a companion dog to someone who lives on their own, or anyone who wants a pet but doesn't want to have to deal with the training and set up. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell anyone and everyone you can think of that would be interested. If you have further questions you can email me at marcusvashti at verizon dot net
The sooner the better!!!

Good bye Mr. Binksie Binks

POST EDIT: I forgot about this picture from our road trip, as per Kaitlyn's request it is now added to my goodbye binkie post. And before she called them "Binkies" it was "Kinkies" for the longest time! She only started calling them Binkies with a B in the last month or so. When she would want them she would say "MOOAAAA KINKIES!!" (translation: More Kinkies) like one was never enough.

The time has come for Olivia to be a big girl and be done with her binks forever. I am writing this on here to document it, but also as a way to stick to my guns.

Since the summer time she has only had her binks for night time and nap time. We would make her relinquish it before she could get out of her crib. I should actually specify that it is not A bink, it is Bink(IES). Like FIVE of them. She was like a binky hoarder. Holder them in her hands was as comforting to her as sucking on them. It got that way because when she was little and woke up crying, I was sick of going in there and finding her binky in the blankets. So I just started tossing a couple extra in so she could always find one herself in the middle of the night if she needed it. In doing so I created a binky fanatic.

I'm all pro binky, up to a point and I think we reached that point. It really helped Olivia to be an easier sleeper and nap taker. I always just lay her down in the crib, she stays laying down and goes right to sleep. After she wakes up I would take all the confiscated binkies and put them up on the window sill. She had now learned about using chairs to get to higher up places and has been sneaking binkies out of the window sill. She would give them up when I caught her, but it started her asking for them during the day, which she never did, and throwing a fit when and not wanting to give them up in the morning.

I could see this leading down a road I did NOT want to go. Binkies weren't a big deal during the day before and I didn't want that to start happening.

So we told her last night that she was a big girl and binkies were for babies, that we were so proud of her and that her binkies were bye bye and we had to throw them away. At first she just looked at me and then on the way to her bed kept asking for "more binkies, Please?!?!" in her nicest voice ever. By the time we got to her crib she was whispering for them, she whispers please for something if she is really desperate. Then the tears started, it was heart breaking because it felt like I was watching that show intervention and that Olivia was the addict. She begged and pleaded and cried and cried and cried. We let her cry it out for a while and then I went in (after like 15-20 minutes) and sat by her bed and rubbed her head. I told her I was so proud of her, that she can do it and that she is a big girl now. She finally stayed laying down and told me she didn't need her head rubbed anymore and went to sleep.

It took about an hour total to get her calmed down. Once she was asleep she slept straight through, THANK GOODNESS!! Nap time is going to be REAL interesting!

So close

Sometimes the day goes by and I have to think to myself "Did I hold Bianca today?". A lot of times the answer is no. I mean I hold her, walking to here, walking to there, putting her in a high chair, nursing her... But just chillin' on the couch and holding her doesn't really happen. Before you call CPS let me stipulate that it isn't for my lack of trying. This girl just likes to move. I like to think of her as the incredible acrobatical baby.
If I try to sit down and hold her all of the following happens, not in any particular order:

~scissor kicks
~back arching
~body twisting
~rough arming me out of the way
~jumping off my lap
~back flips onto the cushion beside me
~all manner of body twisting/contorting/ wigging
~legs kicking and bouncing CONTINUALLY

Bath times are even more magical because she is attempting all these magnificent gymnastic things whilst in the water and whilst all slathered up with soap. I am now an expert at "death-grip-on-a-baby-so-she-doesn't-drown-in-the-tub". She will not sit still EVER!! So after an attempt to hold her I lay down a blanket, throw some toys about. Perfectly contented that she can now back flip and pirouette without the hindrance of Mommy's arms, she will continue her gymnastical acrobatics on the floor.

The reason the post is titled "so close" is because she is just about crawling. Her only problem?? She is too strong for her own good. She gets up on her hands and knees and vigorously rocks herself back and forth until she catapults forward and belly flops or face plants (most of the time face plants) on the floor. If she learned to slow down for two seconds she could figure it out, but she gets so excited to be in the crawling position that she catapults herself every time. She is getting to wear she wants to go with the aid of her favorite moves. There is her barrel roll trick, push herself backwards trick, flip herself to the side trick and pivot on her belly with her legs off the floor to change direction. That last one is a toughie, I can barely do it in my workout class (not the pivoting on my stomach thing, but being on my stomach and lifting my arms and legs off the ground thing).



I feel like there are never any picture of my Marky-Mark-Markster on here (just for the record he greatly despises it when I try to shorten his name to Mark, so sometimes I sneak it in when we are in a public area so I am safe from retaliation just to mess with him...which, come to think of it, usually ends up backfiring on me). He is such a good Daddy to play "Cheese" with Olivia over and over and over again so she can take pictures.

I'm Stylin'

Man, all these photos loaded in backwards. Oh well! So Olivia is now a big girl. She got her haircut and it looks SO GOOD! You can see Marcus in the background taking care of Bianca while I take pictures!

She is now sporting a sweet, sassy bob and it looks so great on her. The dum dum suckers they had there were perfect, she sat there happy as a clam to get pretties in her hair like Mommy.

This is at the start of the cutting off. She trimmed it up shorter and shorter a couple of times. I think Melissa (my hairdresser) didn't want to take too much off initially in case I didn't want it as short as I said I did. But I kept encouraging her to go for it and chop it off! Those shorter parts in the front are still some grow out from the baby hair. The length those already were flowed so good with the bob, she looks so chic and I don't have to deal with her ACTUALLY having bangs. Those should grow out perfectly with the rest of her hair.

This is the length is was before. Crazy and a million layers. And a big time mullet. It wouldn't look so bad if I had the front parts in a little side pony, but if I just let her wear it down then I would get some pretty intense 80's flashbacks.

This is the back before picture. It was starting to get some decent length, but those ends were so scraggly that it never looked cute. She just looked like a little hoodlum and even if I had just bathed her it tended to look stringy. Now it looks so smooth and gorgeous and full.

BEST DAY EVER. Momma and Liv got their hair done. Everyone took naps (Mommy included) then double date of dinner and a movie (THAI and Alice in Wonderland). Laughed a lot, had time away from the babies, ate a ton.

I just love days like these, so perfect!

Hair today, gone tomorrow!

Olivia is going to get her haircut, big time! I scheduled a little extra time after my hair appointment tomorrow for Olivia to get her hair cut too. My Aunt did a trim up on her a while ago, to get those scraggly ends off. Now that her hair is growing out a little bit longer she is sporting a style I like to call the "Master Mullet". It's almost always a crazy Afro mess of like 10 different lengths of hair. I tried to find a picture to do it justice, but couldn't, and didn't want to wake her up to take her picture right now.

I AM SO EXCITED!

I'm thinking short bob, like chin length. No bangs if I can help it. My hairdresser is AMAZING and I trust her judgment EXPLICITLY when it comes to hair, so if there was someone who could convince me to go with bangs it would be her. (I've been seeing her for the past 7 years, she works wonders with hair, especially curly hair). That way all her hair will be the SAME length and then I can start growing it out from there.

Olivia's hair has been a source of constant frustration with me lately with all the crazy-multiple-layered-mulletness. We will both be rockin' some stylin' hair do's tomorrow! You can bet your sweet bippy that I will be blogging about it when we get home!

Oldies but Goodies

When our first borns were just wee babes, the Holman's and ourselves decided to go on a camping adventure. Trevor is working hard at getting a fire started before it gets too dark.

The second day of camping we went to the Cultus Lake water slides to have some fun in the sun. Olivia and Blaine pretty much played around on this blanket all day. I think only Blaine got to venture in the water (hence the chic swimsuit). We had a covered table area that we camped out at for the day and even set up pack n plays and napped the girls at the waterslides.

We borrowed Kaitlyn's Mom's Expedition to get up there and we were PACKED TO THE HILT. We took this picture from the back as we were loading all the millions of camping necessities we would need for ONE NIGHT...or maybe it was two night?? So for TWO NIGHTS. The girls were wedged in around mounds of bags and boxes and suitcases.

Our two tents! This was only one of two times that we have actually used our tent. If I remember correctly we got a better nights sleep than Trevor and Kaitlyn because their air mattress deflated half way through the night.

This is in the morning after Olivia experienced her first sleep in the great outdoors.

We had planned to camp at the Provincial Park right there by the Lake, but we never thought it through enough to make any reservations. I guess when it is summer time and gorgeous and hot out there are other people besides us that like to go camping. Finding out our first location was booked solid we ended up driving up the road in search of a campsite. We ended up setting up camp at this family owned shenanigan of a campsite. The lady in charge liked to walk around and "investigate" what we were up too, at ridiculous hours of the day and then proceed to talk our ear off.

We did it up right with dinner by the campfire (tinfoil dinners!) and lots of awesome time around the fire. Little did we know that Kaitlyn was in fact pregnant on this adventure, but they somehow managed to keep it under wraps until a few weeks later.

We ate a ton of food and had a blast playing in the water. We also stopped by Bob's Burger and Brew in Sumas for Brunch on the way back home (my favorite brunch place EVER!).

I totally forgot I even had these pictures and it was so much fun to look through them again!

Going to Church Solo

Yesterday both my girls were sick. Runny noses, hacking coughs, generally feeling miserable. My calling at church is to teach sunday school to the 12-14 year olds, which kinda requires my attendance for the teaching to happen. Marcus' calling doesn't HAVE to have him doing things on Sunday. We decided that I would go to church and Marcus would stay home and run the ship solo.
Olivia put up a fight about wanting to go "bye-bye's to church with MOMMY!!". She LOVES going to church, which does make things a little less stressful because she has a ball in nursery. Singing songs, playing, learning about Jesus. They have never had to bring her to me early, and she throws a fit when we try to get her out at the end of church because she wants to stay in there forever.
What a difference it made to be able to stay seated during Sacrament meeting, not roaming the halls trying to rock Konks to sleep. It was Fast and Testimony Sunday and the people who did get up to bear their testimonies about the gospel and how it has change their lives was so inspiring. Such heartfelt declarations of the love they have for their Heavenly Father. It was so wonderful. My spiritual cup was running over at the end of that meeting.
Then my class ended up being just as perfect as Sacrament meeting. Sometimes it is hard to teach a lesson to them without it sounding too corny, but this lesson produced a lot of discussion. It was all about the power of personal prayer, the ways that Jesus taught us to pray and what things we should be praying about. A young gal even opened up about something personal things that she has been going through, with all of us providing ideas and uplifting words of encouragement to her.
I love being at church together as a family. I know we are blessed for going each Sunday no matter how hard it is to get us all out the door on time (with our sanity still intact), but on this rare occasion it was really nice to go all by myself!

Blueberries, Blueberries, Blueberries!

Someone has an addiction in our house.

And it is not me!

This crazy girl has been eating blueberries like they are going out of style. We got some at Coscto (frozen) a couple of weeks ago. I gave them to her once and she was hooked! I get her out of bed in the am and the first things she says to me is "Owie tummy" which means she is hungry, shortly followed by "blueberries, PEAS!!". She still has a hard time with her L's when talking.

So every day for her starts out with scrambled eggs and a bowl of slightly defrosted blueberries, with the eggs themselves turning purple before she is done eating because of all the blueberry juice on her hands. She does use forks and spoons but she's gotta have her berries fast and shoveling them in her mouth is her preferred form of eating.

She will ask for them every single meal/snack, but I have been trying to keep her to (at the most) twice a day indulgences. A lot of blueberries equals a lot of mess when they come out the other end.

So now I have half her clothing with blueberry stains on it, some stains that are starting to get permanent on her highchair too. I feel like I live in a blueberry crazy house, and on top of that I have to be careful anytime I take ANYTHING out of the freezer. No matter if she is in the other side of the house, playing in her room, watching something exciting on the TV, if I take anything out of the freezer SHE HEARS IT and comes running yelling "Yea!!! Blueberries!! YAY!!!". So I have to be super tricky getting anything out of our freezer.

So don't judge the next time you see my daughter with her darkly purple fingernails and fingers and occasional staining on her face. I scrub and scrub but that stuff REALLY stains!

Mom of the Year Award

We were having a salad making part with Olivia taking pictures of the event. She was coloring her Disney Princess book.

Bianca was sitting to her right, playing with some spatula's.

"Cheese Mommy, Cheese Mommy!!" She wanted me to smile for the camera as I was washing up my veggies for the salad.

Oh and what was sitting directly in front of her to her right? Oh, only my cutting board with my monjo chopping knife! I had been chopping up all the salad and veggies beside her on the counter and when I went to go spin them by the sink I left everything else right there beside her. I never even realized I had done this until I was going back and looking at all the kerbillion pictures she took. There were like 10 of Konks, 20 of her coloring, and then like 15 of me washing lettuce with this incriminating picture at the very end. Like she was showing me how long I was taking to wash the lettuce while she was within reach of a deadly weapon.

Oh yeah, I'm sure I'd get nominated for a mom of the year award. I let my toddler play up on the counter, right next to my infant, all the while within 6 inches of a chef's knife. I about crapped my pants and wanted to barf when I realized what I had done. Good thing she was so occupied taking pictures to document the event that she never had a free hand to grab anything else around her.

Letter to My Jeans

Dear Jeans,

3 1/2 years ago I lost weight. 20 extra pounds of unhealthy weight that had made me feel bogged down and yucky. I felt so good in my skin, so healthy, so light. I saw you in an outlet mall and tried you on in a whim. YOU FIT! Almost too tight but I could button you up, I felt so wonderful that day. I hadn't seen myself in this size since high school. If I lost only 5 pounds more, you would fit me perfect. I wore your sassy little self five different times.

Then I got pregnant and the number on the weigh scale kept going higher and higher. You went into my closet on a hanger in your still new condition. At first you were in the middle of my closet, but slowly and surely you got moved back in the recesses until I almost forgot you were there. I had my baby and slowly, at a near glacial rate, the numbers on the scale started going down. I would pull you out every once in a while and pull you on only to discover you barely made it past my knees.

Then I got pregnant again. At the speed of light the scale was reaching all new highs. I had my second baby. Not as much weight came off the second time around. I felt gross, like a big enormous blob. I was eating crappy and I felt crappy. I wanted to be a happy Mom, not a pencil skinny Mom, but a healthy slimmer Mom. I decided I wanted to have energy to run around with my kids, not sit on the couch and watch them run around.

I bought some veggies, stocked my fridge with healthier yummy food. I joined a fitness bootcamp. I got sore from exercising and life would stress me out and I would want cheeseburgers, fries and ice cream. I wanted to quit. Many times. I had friends that supported me. The weigh scale went down, down, down.

On Saturday I put you on. I pulled you up past my knees and thighs. You even made it over (dare I say it?) my bottom. Then I buttoned you up. I BUTTONED YOU UP!!

For three and a half years you sat in my closet. A reminder of the healthier person I wanted to be. Now you are sitting in my dirty laundry pile. I have never been happier about having dirty laundry to do in my life. Dear Jeans... Welcome back.