*birth-month

Lucky Vera gets to celebrate her birthday pretty much over a whole month. A couple weeks ago Tia, who missed the first party, threw a little bday dinner for Vera and Graham [his is the 21st - I can't believe they are 3 and 4 years old!!!]. It was such a fun evening - she made them both feel so special and loved! What would we do without our amazing neighbors???

**I'm getting behind - lots to catch up on! Lots to get done around here too and I am finding how efficient I can be when I limit my internet time....**

*wings

I forgot, she also really sincerely thinks she can fly if she's wearing tinkerbell wings. She thinks she just needs to jump the right way or maybe get some real pixie dust. Ben has a scar above his eyebrow from thinking he could fly at about the same age. Flew right into a glass coffee table, I think. So we try to tell her to be really really careful and not jump off things. "But I didn't jump! I flied!!"

*4 años

It is so amazing to see how a child develops in 4 short years!! We enjoy Vera so incredibly much - it is so fun to see her still-sweet innocence and naivety, her joy, her curiosity, her silliness and her eagerness to learn. She can now swing all by herself, sound out 3 letter words [they have to be small: she tried to sound out the l-a-d-d-e-r phonics flashcard, gave up and guessed "window"!], get the stuff out and make a pbj, write Bunny, Mommy, Daddy, Edie and Vera, add small numbers [really small] ..... it's all truly amazing and so much fun.

She spends much of her time "making a stage," dressing up, making tents and forts, reading books, coloring and making things for her friends, playing in her sandbox, making a picnic, pretending it's Bunny's birthday, looking in Edie's toes for toe jam [yes that is gross], tickling Edie and trying to hug her.

Here she was dressed up, dressing up all her stuffed animals so they could get in a train to go to ballet class where she would be the teacher.

Here she was at UNO DOS and TRES años. It just took me like an hour to look up those links -it's so easy to get diverted reading back on the blog! I love it. I really really need to get it printed out somehow in case the internet collapses.

*

Edie was looking so cute after our walk on Sunday in her Aunt Liz screen-printed t-shirt - I had to take pictures:

Her little bottom is pretty cute too:

Liz screen-printed my shirt too! She should sell them!

Poor baby had her first fever yesterday and today. She did have a tooth break through this morning - hopefully that's all it was :( So sad to see her a tad miserable. This morning she wouldn't let me put her down and just snuggled into my chest. Sweet thing, we all love her so much!

*caminata

We went for a nice little walk up in Park City on Sunday - a thousand feet up is at least several degrees cooler! I wish I could say Vera is a good little hiker, but she just prefers to be in the stroller :) ... and Edie preferred to be held! Anyway, it's so pretty up there.

It's so weird to live somewhere that if I wear a t-shirt and a long skirt I can't help but feel self-conscious that everyone is going to think I'm mormon! Is that terrible?

You should ask Vera to tell the story of when we saw the little snake and Daddy got scared :)

*el hambre

I just posted a bunch of pictures of new dress up clothes for my 2 healthy, happy, sweet girls. As I uploaded the pictures, we were watching the evening news. I often stress about having too many clothes and toys, and we were hearing about 37THOUSAND children dying of hunger in the last months [I didn't catch the exact time frame.] One mom walked 3 months toward food, losing 2 children on the way. It just makes my heart break - it is so incomprehensible, and makes me feel silly attempting to put such tragedy into words. I mean we're meeting at our neighbor's tonight for burgers and beer and birthday cake. I really hope that I would "pray without ceasing" for these hungry families, for grace and mercy and food. As broke as we are, we can still afford to donate something! Here's where we do.

*dress-up

Rosie always gets the most fun dress up clothes! Here was an attempt to get a photo of Edie in the adorable baby rice hat Rosie and Jessie found in Hawaii. As you can tell, she thinks it's really fun too:

Vera wearing her super-fun new belly dancing skirt. She was making a "surprise dinner" for me here:

I love this picture:

This one was from Auntie Carol. I rarely let Vera wear dress up clothes out and about, but she really really wanted to wear this to the store the other day so I let her. She feels sooo special in it:

*dos videos

1) Edie loved Gegi. Most or all babies/kids do! Everytime Edie saw her she would growl or laugh like they had a private joke going.

2)I haven't had a good video of Vera dancing in a long time. You probably can't detect the subtlety [I had to google that spelling!] of her little moves, but it was pretty cute. Especially the trying-not-to-smile-smile. Also George and Ben, pretty cool!

*in short

We had a really really wonderful time!

*angora lakes

I've made the yearly hike up to Angora Lakes since I was a kid. The first time I did it as an adult I realized it's not much of a hike - more like a little walk. It's so beautiful up there, quaint and old timey feeling. We got fresh lemonade and lemonade popsicles and sat on the beach just hanging out while the older cousins went across the lake to jump off the cliffs.

I asked why she poses like this and she said it's to look beautiful:

Edie was supercute that day laughing and laughing and making tracks in the sand with her funny little crawl.

*the lake

A *few* more pictures from Tahoe....

Edie's first time on the sand. I was worried she would eat big mouthfuls, but she mostly picked it up and held it high, watching it fall, ran her hands through it. I did have to watch closely [I only actually laid down or closed my eyes on the beach like twice] or she'd eat a rock, feather, pinecone or piece of trash.

Vera and Marie are exactly 3 years apart:

Dad/Papa Sam/SamWard:

my handsome husband:

poor thing couldn't move:

on the way to Emerald Bay [saying that just got the M.S. Dixie song in my head]:

my Grandma Kay came up for the day, it was so nice to see her with all the great-grandchildren:

Vera and Eliot. They had a LOT of fun together - playing [and bickering :( ] like brother and sister. Ay, every year she learns a few new bad habits.

Liz and Sarah:

on our 7th anniversary - the little bday party for Vera and Marie. We're hoping to go out somewhere fancy this week or next...

the two biggest cousins - they were so sweet with both Vera and Edie!

Vera loved blowing up the inner tubes. The first day she blew it up all by herself and was so so so excited to float on her own. "Look I'm floating!!" over and over and over. I then went up to the house while Sarah watched her - they came up about 30 minutes later with Vera wailing because she'd "sunk." It was pretty cute listening to her story of how it happened :)

Cute mom+daughter:

cutie patootie. I loved looking at her cute little diaperless bottom in her swimsuit :)

We had a no TV policy and so Spitfire and Speed became the games of the day:

Dana, Tim, Ellie, baby Edie (barely 3 weeks! Dana is amazing) and Maiga came to visit for a day which was so great! Maiga came up for another day the next week - so fun to see her. I hope we can go visit someday - she lives in Hamburg just a 4 hour drive [according to google] from Stella in Holland ... maybe we can arrange it. If everyone reading this sends me $25.

cookies! Olivia was so kind and patient with a very eager helper:

*bebita y perrito

Rooney is George's new beagle puppy. How cute are they together?! Over the 2 weeks Edie really started noticing/loving the dogs. She would even always seem to say "bah" when she wanted to see them and makes an attempt at "woof" when you ask what a doggie says. Vera, on the other hand, was scared of Rooney like he was a little monster or something. The first day Gegi had told her to be careful because he likes to jump and bite - Vera wouldn't take a step out the door after that :)