Nora Jane's 2nd Birthday

Nora Jane's 2nd birthday was soooo fun. I started planning it...well the cake months ago. I knew I wanted a high heel shoe on her cake, and that I wanted her Aunt Brooke to make it...as she has an amazing talent for making and working with fondant. It far exceeded my expectations for sure. I also knew I wanted to get Nora Jane dress-ups for this birthday a few months ago when we were at our friends house and she put on a dress up skirt and then grabbed both my hands and made me dance with her. She is such a girly girl and it makes me all giddy inside every time she does something girly!!

My sister, Camille, called me a couple of weeks ago and told me that target.com was having a sale on their pink kitchens. I had wanted to get this for Nora Jane for Christmas but didn't, and since it was such a great sale, I decided it would be perfect for her birthday. Then my mother-in-law wanted to know what to get her, and I thought a new table and chairs set from ikea would be perfect.

The dress-ups were a huge success....especially the cute purple tutu that her cute Aunt Annalisa sewed for her!!! Nora Jane loves putting it all on and playing around the house in them. That's the key for me...I was slightly hesitant to get into this phase, because I was worried it would be a fight to get her in real clothes to go out in public...but again this girl knows her stuff and even if she's in her dress ups, I can pull out any of her clothes and she's just as excited to put those on too.

Nora Jane, you are a lot of times what we call a "crazy diva", but truly I love your spunky personality and think you will bring years of enjoyment to our family. Love you.

Here's my new post

Kids have been sick...a lot! Daniel took me to Vegas, in January, and as my christmas present he went to Donny and Marie with me. (note the careful wording of that last sentence). We shopped, we ate, we got massages, enjoyed a break from the kids, and took not one single picture. Our house went under contract in January, and it seems we've been "going to move this weekend" ever since then. After a couple of extensions, it appears next week is the week!!! I really hope so, its time to move on with life.

Hopefully with Spring approaching, we will come out of hibernation, and have something worth blogging about again!!!

(and a new keyboard that I didn't have to manually pull up each key after touching it, due to the sprite Tucker spilled on it, would probably be motivation to blog again too.)

Merry Christmas 2009!

I finally got an electronic copy of my family christmas card from our photographer!

And so the Oly tradition continues....

This last Tuesday we went to Uncle Stuart's first Olympus High School Basketball game. The sweatshirt Tucker is wearing, is the same one Stuart wore at Daniel's Olympus High School Basketball games when he was Tucker's age. Tucker sure looks up to Stuart, and he's excited to go to his basketball games.

Grandpa somehow ended up with both kids on his lap at the game. So cute I had to take a pic. Nora Jane has this posing thing down....

Christmas Tree

Are you kidding?

This afternoon I was carefully taking the keys off my keyboard and cleaning it with q-tips after Tucker spilled pop on it last week. (didn't totally work...I think i'll be buying a new one tomorrow...it takes way too long to type, when you have to pry the keys back up after pressing them.) Anyway, Nora Jane work up from her afternoon nap...and since I wasn't quite done with my project, I decided to use Daniel's practice of not going to get her yet because she wasn't crying.

Not only was she not crying, she was laughing hysterically. So much so that I almost when to grab the camera to record the audio...because it was so funny. I don't think i've ever heard her laughing that much, when in a room all by herself.....and then it dawned on me. I realize you may have already figured it out...but that's probably because you scrolled down to see the pictures already.

Yes that is more on the wall above the outlet.

I guess we are all missing out...apparently its really fun to play with.

Tucker's Gingerbread House

Tucker saw this kit today at Costco and just had to have it...and just had to make it tonight!

He also wanted me to take another picture with his hands "like this".

Trick-or-treating!

Our little Luchador....

Halloween Preschool Style

Here they are parading in...(that's Miss Sydney in the football uniform).

This is Tucker's whole class, with Miss Sydney and Miss Celeste in the back.

This is Tucker with his two buddies in the neighborhood, Sam (the policeman) and Luke (Max, from "Where the Wild Things Are". Yes his talented mother made that costume. She is my idol, and I believe I will be hiring her in the future to make my kids costumes.)

Tucker and Miss Celeste...I think he has a preschool sized crush on her. She stopped me when I was dropping off the boys to tell me that Tucker cracks her up. She said she likes to joke with him a lot, and that he says to her, "Miss Celeste, you kill me!" She said that really he kills her!

I have no idea what song they are singing in this...in fact I'm not sure Tucker really knows what song they are singing. But, at the end what Tucker says, makes me bust up everytime! :)

Tucker's Prick Test

After having both kids diagnosed with RAD (Reactive Airway Disease), we decided it would be a good idea to take Tucker to the Allergist, and determine what allergies he might have, which could possibly be triggers. Mostly we were wanting to determine what pollens/weeds/grasses it might be, because of the times this summer when we were out playing late at night, and he would start wheezing.

He was very brave about the prick test. It was all he could talk about once we got to the doctor's office. Everything they did, check his oxygen/heart rate, get his height and weight, look in his ears, he would ask if that was the prick test. :)

He wanted me to be sure and take pictures just like I did for Nora Jane's.

So here they are. He is allergic to Horses. After all the pricks for weeds, grasses, pollens...horses was it! I sort of figured that. I'm allergic, and he's been visibly bothered when we've been around ours at Grandma and Grandpa Pace's.

No biggy. We just have to give him some preventative medications, and have the inhaler on hand. And eventually, if he wants to ride the horses with his dad more often, we can do shots to get rid of the allergy.