Room Transformation, Bubble Wrap and Writing

We've been getting things ready for the new baby. We pulled out the bassinet from the basement and a few other things to clean them up and get them ready. Josie has been having a ball putting Gretel or one of her other babies in the bassinet and pushing it all over the house. Typically, she will also tell us to be quiet because her babies are sleeping. Cute the first time, not so much the 100th :)

Here is Josie's old room with the old paint colors and the new rug.

We all worked together to turn the baby's room into a real boy's room.
Thankfully Josie's attention span was just about as long as my patience.

This is a bit of a misrepresentation. I did 90% of the work myself but of course, there are no photos of me painting. I was pretty proud of myself. I've helped a lot of people paint but I've never really tackled the whole project myself. Precision is unfortunately not my strength. Marty swooped in at the end to helped with some of the upper areas and mostly with getting the white stripes to look so straight and defined. Precision is his strength.

And VIOLA - a new room. Thanks to my friend Simone for helping pick out the new colors.

Josie has been working a lot on writing letters lately. Here she is with her name that she wrote on the backyard sidewalk. A bit of a creative spin on the "S" but very readable.

The other day we were walking to the park and Josie was running (as usual) and did a face-plant into the sidewalk. Her whole right cheek was scraped up and she got a pretty nasty cut near her lip. She took it in stride, though and was ready to do the bubble wrap dance shortly after.

Spring is Springing and Peps party

It is kind of amazing to already be seeing signs of spring. The daffodils blooming in our front yard is usually the first sign but normally we don't see this until the first or second week of March. We took these photos yesterday, February 18th!!

As I mentioned before, Josie is getting to be quite a good photographer. Here is her shot of us

To contrast, here are the past few years of first signs of spring, daffodil photos
MARCH 6th 2007


MARCH 5th 2008

I just had to put this one in too. This was such a typical pose for Josie during that entire year. Always squirming, arching her back to be set free and NEVER wanting to be tied down (in a car seat, booster, in our laps, etc., etc.)

Then last year we had the craziest weather. This is what it looked like at our house on March 14th 2009

And then the daffodils finally pop out around the 22nd of March

Back to February 2010

Josie was so excited to go to a Valentines Day party at Bryn's house this past Monday.

Here she is making Valentine's Day cards for her friends.

Bryn had made heart cookies, painted the windows with hearts and even bought special strawberries for Josie because they are her favorite. What a good friend :)
Here are most of the kids at the party

Vacation - Part V

After leaving the Grand Canyon we still had a pretty long day of driving ahead of us - about 6 hours to Las Vegas. Most of the time we were on Route 66 which isn't really all that eventful in and of itself but Marty had recently read The Grapes of Wrath and it is one of my favorite books so it was fun to try to remember cities and places that were talked about in the book as the Joad family made the trek to California along the same route.

After many hours of driving through the Mojave Desert we were ready to stop for dinner. We looked and looked all over Kingman for a decent restaurant. Marty had his GPS and we plugged in several Italian restaurants. The first one we drove to looked like it had been closed since 1981. The next one, Vito's, was closed because it was Sunday but it also looked like it had been "closed" since the early 80's. The only sign it had other than the name of the place was a big banner that said "we proudly serve Pepsi" We never go to fast food but had to make an exception. McDonalds here we come. Josie has never had fast food before and after her french fries she was done. No cheeseburger for her. After Marty and I ate we both felt sick. No more fast food for any of us. Bleeck!!

Before we left lovely Kingman, AZ, Marty was pulled over for doing 10 miles over the speed limit. The police officers first question was "Are you from Kingman?" Uh, NO!! Thankfully we were just given a warning and sent on our way. Marty's comment "he should've given me a ticket for not going fast enough to get out of this hole."

Marty's mug shot:

And Josie saying "no-no Daddy"

Before driving into Las Vegas we crossed Hoover Dam at night. It really was pretty with all the lights, etc. Even if it does look a little like a Space Port.

Josie is becoming quite the photographer. She directs us where to stand, where to put our hands - "hold hands mommy and daddy" and then aims and shoots.

We got into Las Vegas pretty late but the next day we walked all over the strip. Not really the best place to be with a three year old and a pregnant belly but we weren't really there for the whole scene. Neither of us drink or gamble but it was fun to see. I don't think I ever have to go back but am thankful to have seen it at least once.

And our little photographer strikes again.

We stayed a little outside of the main drag at the Stratosphere. It looked a lot like the Space Needle only higher. The view from the top (over 100 floors up)was amazing.

Josie practicing jumping. She must've done this for a good 30 minutes. I think she was suffering from too much time in the car and not enough running around crazy time.

Our final leg was another 6+ hour drive to San Diego. We returned our car and spent 4 nights right downtown and enjoyed walking everywhere after all of the long car trips. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera charger and our battery died.

One last road trip photo.. Josie conked out.
Overall a great family road trip!!

Vacation - Part IV

The Grand Canyon
None of us had ever seen the Grand Canyon before. All three of us were very impressed.

Here are Marty and Josie gearing up. It was cold with a lot of snow on the ground but the weather and view were both perfect.

Our first view of the canyon

It made me pretty nervous to see Josie so casually looking over the railing into the mile deep Grand Canyon.

My nervousness and over-protectiveness prompted this:

Can you still see us?

And what about now?

After Josie got soaking wet and freezing cold by playing in the snow (without boots or snow clothes) and Marty and I were fighting about how much Josie should be allowed to run crazy right next to a mile-high drop (in many places without a railing) none of us were too happy with one another. We went back to the car, re-grouped and then had a "do-over" On our "second" trip to the canyon we all got along and ended up walking about 1.5 miles around the Southern rim. It really was pretty spectacular.

Vacation - Part III

JEROME, SEDONA AND FLAGSTAFF - ARIZONA

After leaving Phoenix we stopped in a quaint little hill town called Jerome. It was really high up with a great view, tons of stairs and funky little shops. It reminded us a bit of a small East German town

And then back in the car. This was a common sight.... Josie conked out in the back seat.

Our next stop was Sedona. The red rocks and hills were gorgeous. Little did we know it was a bit of a preview of what the Grand Canyon was going to look like.

Our little climber. It didn't matter if it was a sand dune, a red hill or a bunch of snow, all she wanted to do was climb.

And then onto Flagstaff via the famous Route 66

A few days before we got there, Flagstaff was hit with 70 (!!) inches of snow. There were huge snow banks everywhere but amazingly the roads were perfectly clear.

Up next - the Grand Canyon