Busy Bees

We have had a busy couple of weeks, thus the lack of posting.  Here are a few of the things we've been up to.

I have made some good friends here in Glendora who I occasionally get to have Girls Night Outs with.  For this latest one we went to a little massage place in Korea Town and had the most amazing massages.  (It's the first and only professional one I've ever had, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it felt so nice.)  Then we had a quick late-night snack at a Mexican restaurant after and had fun chatting the night away.  Here I am with Shannon H., Tenicka, Shannon S., and Lucia.  I'm so lucky to have a husband who stays home with the girls even after a busy day at work so that I can go do these occasionally.  Thanks, hub!

One of Sophie's favorite places is the park, and you can find us there just about any day of the week.

Since we can't go to the beach quite that often Sophie makes do with taking her shovel and pail to fill with wood chips instead of sand.  She makes me all kinds of food that I obediently gobble up for her.

She is such a fun girl right now with quite the developing imagination that's fun to see.  We often have to re-enact scenes from Cinderella and other stories she loves.  I'm usually the prince because she is, of course, always the princess. :)

March Madness hit our home with a vengeance this year just as it does every year.  Joseph's been able to see quite a few games on his big screen (the reason he bought it, really) and has been reveling in "the most wonderful time of the year" (his words).  Too bad his bracket stunk it up this year, though!

We enjoy making a big, master bracket to put on the wall.  Sophie and Avery had their own brackets in my family's challenge, and Avery just might pull off the win there!  (I picked Avery's, but Sophie picked all her own.  She was determined from the very start that Oklahoma would win it all, so it will be highly amusing if they do.  Too bad the rest of her picks were so bad that she can't win!)

I am actually currently at the top of Joseph's family challenge.  1st out of 46 ain't too bad I'd say!  But my pick to win it all, Louisville, lost already, so I only have a small chance of winning the whole thing still.  At least I had a small moment in the sun.  (And check out Avery's mad ball-handling skillz already.  Joseph's feeling very encouraged.)

We went to a little St. Patrick's Day party in our green.  Sophie thought the whole pinching-people-who-aren't-wearing-green thing was the funnest idea ever.  But we sadly didn't ever see anyone she could get all day.

I did tell her that this was her holiday since she's got the Irish red hair (though there's not really Irish in our genes) and she thought that was pretty cool, too.

Joseph's brother Willis and his family came from Flagstaff to visit us for a week.  Here are 4 of the cutest kids ever: Sadie, Clarissa, Susannah, and Aaron.  

We had fun with them at Disneyland for half a day, going to Toon Town and on It's a Small World for Sophie's first time since it just reopened.  They stayed the other half of the day and definitely got their fill and had a great time.

I wanted to get a picture of the girls with Mickey while we were in Toon Town, but Sophie is so scared of any character if she gets too close, and she screamed the entire time.  Oh well, we tried.

We also took them to the La Brea Tar Pits so we could check out the fossils that were trapped there for a few million years but have been reassembled to their original forms, like this mammoth elephant.

Aaron especially was in heaven looking at all the cool stuff there.

This entire wall is made up of the 400 or so wolf skulls they have found.

Sophie checked those out for a while.  It's neat because outside the museum there are still tar pits everywhere, closed off by gates of course, right in the middle of Los Angeles.  Somehow Joseph and Willis still managed to come home and find some tar in their shoes!  Weird!

This was outside the museum of Contemporary Art that's next door to the tar pits.  I won't even try to guess what it was, but Sophie liked it.  I will fully admit that I do not understand nor enjoy modern art, but I'm glad some people do I guess.

These were cool, though.  I felt like we'd stumbled into Narnia, but instead of just one lamp post we found dozens all stacked in neat rows.

The kids had fun chasing each other around and playing hide and seek in them.

One of the things the Jensens really wanted to do on their trip was go to the beach.  They had touched the Atlantic Ocean once but it was too cold to play in, so they've never really been to the beach before.  So we went even though it was cold and windy there.  Not exactly ideal conditions for playing in the cold ocean, but they still seemed to have a good time.  This is the one picture we got the entire trip with all of us together.  We had a great time with them here and Sophie still misses her cousins.

The last thing I'll mention is our most recent ward activity that we heard about for weeks beforehand because it's the favorite.  It's called Potato Racing.  Each family is given a potato to carve and then stick wheels into, then the potatoes are raced down a pinewood derby track in heats much like the March Madness tournament.  My brother Peter and his family were here for it, so Joseph did the initial carving and then Peter did more fine tuning until we ran out of time and were forced to have it ready.

We won the first round race but in the second round we went up against the potato that eventually took 2nd place overall, so we lost to them.  But it was tons of fun and we learned a lot that we'll use to hopefully win it all next year (if we're even still here).  Great idea and lots of fun.  So that's the last few weeks in a nutshell.  If you made it all the way to the end I'm impressed.

" Eye Love U"

Sophie loves that she can read this book word for word. Well, technically she can do that with other books that she's memorized, too, but she's got this one down pat. The reason? It's a rebus poem with pictures instead of a lot of the words, so it's easy for a 2-year old to read. Enjoy.

All About Avery

Avery is at the age where she does something new or something more every day.  It's so fun to try guessing what each day will bring.

Currently she's pulling herself up onto anything that will hold her (and sometimes things that won't) and then letting go with one hand because it's so much more fun to live on the wild side.

This is about the longest she'll ever stay still these days.

She loves holding our hands and walking a little.  I know she'll be standing on her own in no time.

It took 8 months but Avery finally got a tooth!  It's between those two shiny spots of spit if you care to look close enough to see it.

And just to prove that she's teething, she's constantly sporting this lovely runny nose.  Mom's favorite.  I think we're single-handedly keeping Costco in business with our Kleenex purchases.

Another current past time is pulling all the videos off the bottom two shelves.  I've already put them all back twice today, and I'm looking at them right now and realizing that I get to do it once more before going to bed.

 Here she's sporting the rosy cheeks she frequently has.  They're usually bright red.

Although both girls have loved to be standing almost from birth, neither one has liked using the Jonny Jump-Up to jump in.  Both have used it to twirl around in for a few minutes, but that's all.

I wish she loved to play for hours in here so I always knew she was staying out of trouble, but I guess it's my lot in life to chase little girls around all day, and that's okay.  I love it.

Wordless Wednesday: Flexible!

Pillow Gets a Facelift

Many of you know about Sophie's pillow.  It's become such a member of the family that it really is Pillow.  Sophie became attached to it at the same time she found her thumb at about 5 months old.  They've been pretty inseparable ever since.  It's her absolute comfort in life and I don't know what she'd do if she ever lost it.  It started out a creamish-white color that has slowly turned more and more gray despite weekly and sometimes bi-weekly washings.  It also used to have fringe all the way around it but the fringe on the long sides became worn off by Sophie's constant twisting and stroking of it.  Holes developed that turned into long tears and are now gaping cracks that have almost caused the cover to fall off completely.  So you can see that it needed some definite help or Pillow as we know it would be gone.  (I would've been so okay with that, but not Sophie--not yet.)

 I knew that if I tried to mend the current cover it wouldn't last long, so we decided that the only way to really fix it would be to give Pillow new "clothes" entirely.  Sophie helped me pick out the fabric and of course it was pink (bright pink!), her favorite color.  It turned into quite the ordeal because I attempted to make the new cover while Joseph took Sophie to the hot tub, but my sewing machine wouldn't work (of course--thus the reason I hate sewing...something ALWAYS goes wrong.)  So I ended up hand stitching it, and Sophie caught me in the act and started going into hysterics because she could see the old pillow inside and wanted it out.  Her bedtime quickly passed and I still wasn't done, but she couldn't go to sleep without it because she's never slept without her pillow.  So once I was finally done it was way late and Sophie was still traumatized over her pillow looking so different, even though it's what she'd said she wanted (but we all know that reasoning with a 2-year old is impossible).  Going to sleep was much harder and more tear-filled than usual.

Before

After

Today she's doing much better with it and seems to accept that this is the new Pillow.  I just hope this cover will either last into the eternities or that she'll get weaned off it soon because I'm not making another one!  (I also thought it was interesting that Pillow used to be a "he" but when I asked Sophie last night while I was sewing this whether it was a he or a she, she responded it was definitely a "she".  So apparently Pillow also went through a sex change in this process. ;D)

Check Me Out

Not only am I the cutest baby on the planet with the prettiest blue eyes (or so they tell me)...

...and an incredible roller (been doing it for months now and I can get going pretty far pretty fast)

but I've now also added to my resume the skill of crawling. I'm not going to lie and tell you that I picked it up in one day, because I didn't. But it didn't take too many days of inchworming and army crawling before I had the real deal down.

I am a crawling machine these days. Just watch the video below if you don't believe me. When there's something I see that I like, I am a determined woman and nothing and nobody can get in my way. Look out all tiny pieces of whatever on the carpet! I will find you!

(They think putting me in dresses will slow me down. Boy are they wrong!)

This is what happens to my Daddy when he tries to stop me. The hair pull trick works every time.

Too bad he always knows how to weaken my defenses with a few raspberries to the tummy.

I am a sucker for getting tickled, especially on my thighs.

I admit, I really do love it.

And lest you think I'm too narcissistic (I am a baby after all), I thought I'd also post a picture of my sister. This is her idea of stopping long enough for Mom to take a picture. Hmmm, I might have to try that from now on.