When The Pool Closes...

bring it inside.

This One's For My Mamma

Thanks to my dear friend, Tiffanie Player, we have a more lively, more entertaining, and all round happier birthday song and dance in our family. And it's a lot funnier when the lady doing it is nine months pregnant (Clara was born not even a week after this was shot). I've sung it at the MTC with Tiffanie, on my mission in Alaska, at a Macaroni Grill for Tiffanie's birthday (I was pregnant then too. And it was the first time that Ben joined in), and various nieces' and nephews' birthdays, and even at a restaurant in Disneyland for my mom's 50th birthday (again, pregnant, and all of the waiters were jealous of my mad skills).  

So my Grandma Sunny's 70th birthday is coming up and since we can't be there, I figured the least we could do is post this highly entertaining rendition of "The Birthday Dance."

Just FYI, we were at the Shobuen Garden that is near our house here in Japan.  It's famous for its "shobu"-irises. And the little old Japanese people there that morning must be thoroughly convinced that we Americans are nuts. And I don't know how to fix the fact that it's all stretched out.

Smiles

Clara is a very smiley baby.  Give her a little grin and she'll give back a thousand-watt smile. Neither Ben or I remember Ellie smiling so freely.  Today she even laughed at me as we were playing this smile-tag game of hers.

Notice that even her bellybutton is smiling at you.

Sleepy Heads

Sleeping babies are my favorite.

I was upstairs nursing Clara when I realized it was very quiet downstairs.  Clearly Eleanor was very tired.

Two Months

I can't believe it's already been two months since sweet Clara joined our family.  She's pretty easy going and even if she gets upset and calms down almost instantly if we hold her.  She's sleeping 5-6 hours at night pretty regularly, which makes me unbelievably happy. She's got a big grin and loves to share smiles back and forth. And she tolerates Eleanor's love quite well, since Ellie gets really excited and sometimes not to soft with her.  But she loves to give Clara hugs and kisses and tell her she loves her.  It's sweet.

The Girls sing Their ABC's

I've got a much better video of Ellie doing this, but I can't find the adapter for the video camera. Curses.  But this is pretty funny still.

A Pink Bike

Ben and I are frugal, bordering on stingy. So the last several months we've looking for a used tricycle to buy Ellie, because we just couldn't bring ourselves to pay for a new one. But after a long and fruitless search, we decided it was worth it to buy it new.  Plus we had just picked up a sused bike helmet at the thrift store the day before.

We've got ourselves a lovely budget, and it has really blessed our lives in so many ways.  At any rate, in our "miscellaneous" category for last paycheck we had some money left over and decided to get the bike.  We were at the NEX (the on base "department" store...) and behold, there were some Radio Flyer tricycles.  We we let Ellie pick between a pink or a red (knowing that either way it will get good use in our house).  She choose pink and couldn't stop talking about it on the way home.  Until she fell asleep.  So while she napped Ben and I put it together.

She can't quite reach both peddles simultaneously (maybe that's why it says for 2 1/2 to 5 years old...), but who cares! She loves it.

Life is just too exciting around here!