Halloween recap

It so fun to go through Holidays with the girls now that they are getting older. They don't normally get candy so Halloween this year was a very special treat and they were looking forward to it. Maja of course wanted to be a princes so I managed a "fairy" outfit for her to wear for her school party and a Queen costume for the rest of the festivities. Isla was a spider... she was really into it given The Itsy Bitsy Spider is one of her favorite songs right now

here a picture of Maja's class with everyone dressed up. Aren't they all adorable?

In the afternoon we had a party with our playgroup friends at a local party and the girls bags got filled with lots of goodies. These aren't my pictures and I haven't gotten to mine yet but here's they are borrowed from a friend:

Here's Maja thinking hard about what her next treat will be

On Saturday we went to a costume birthday party at the gym.

The actual Halloween day was pretty busy. We started out with trick or treating at a local outdoor mall, had a little donut break and moved on to a walk through our neighborhood. After Isla got majorly freaked out by a neighbor's house, we came back and waited for Daddy to join us for the rest of the evening.

Nesting big time

As usual, pregnancy gives me the urge to redecorate my house. I've been meaning to do something to our master bedroom for a while and after spending a few weeks gathering ideas I set of to find all the little pieces and put them together. I think it turned out pretty well and here is the progress:

here's what we started with:

this is what it became after I got the bedding and curtains but it took forever to find the right wall color:

11 samples later the right color went on the walls... I painted it all by myself at 39 weeks pregnant and it still didn't send me into labor :)

And she is back...

Sometimes life gets a little spooky. For weeks now I have been randomly remembering our kitty Rigby who we gave away to friends 2.5 years ago. I kept thinking about how the girls love cats and how they would love having her around. We had no interest in getting another cat but both Jeff and I wished she was still here.

Well, what do you know, I get a random call from a vet in Atlanta out of all places saying they've been contacted by the Humane Society in Green Bay where a cat had been found and her microchip had their info. They got my number and called me (thank goodness I haven't changed my number in all the years we've lived in different places). Obviously it was "our" cat and when we contacted the people who had her, they said she had gotten out month earlier and never came back. They since replaced her and didn't want her back.
We felt so bad for Rigby and I felt guilty as well so we took the leap and decided to bring her back home. The problem was that we were now 2000 miles away from her so that proved to be quite the challenge. I've hit several road blocks through out the process and we only had a few days that the Humane Society was willing to give us but with the help of two wonderful friends we made it work.
One picked her up in Green Bay and put her on a plane to Portland Oregon where another friend picked her up and kept her overnight before I could drive out and get her. I did it the next day (3.5 hrs each way... yikes for an overly pregnant gal!) and finally got her home.

Rigby totally remembers us and even the Kosmo knows who she is. It's amazing to see how quickly she realized she was "home". The girls are beyond excited to have her and so are we. Definitely worth the $450 expense in the process

Early Birthday party

Baby Zoey is set to arrive right around Isla's actual birthday so we decided to have her party a few weeks early. It was a great time and she loved her cake and opening presents :)

Her birthday outfit... Octopus #2

Yummy cake:

Baby Zoey update

At 37 weeks she is more active than her big sisters have ever been and has hiccups ALL the time. It drives me a bit nuts, it's the weirdest feeling ever.

Once again I set up my tripod and remote control and decided to play with some off-camera flash. I'm pretty happy with the results of these self portraits. What do you think?

The latest picture of the girlies together

They will now happily work for candy :)

Young love

Maja and Mr Bunny met on her first Easter back in 2009. Daddy picked him out especially for her

Little ballerina

Maja loves dancing... and dress up and all things girly. We are planning on putting her in actual ballet class early next year after we get adjusted to 3 kids and the Holidays are over. I think she will LOVE it!!

And so it begins

the love affair with Disney that is.

We've been pretty consistent on keeping the girls away from Character type toys but recently we decided to let them watch the Disney classics we've been collecting. Isla doesn't care much about tv and while Maja likes it, she had no interest in those movies... that is until her 3rd birthday party. Her friends gave her a Snow White doll and Disney princess dress up clothes and it all snowballed from there... she is hooked! Oh well, we have been thinking about a trip to Disney in a couple of years when the girls are old enough so I guess it was bound to happen

First day of school!

Maja did great today! she didn't cry or get upset when I left her there this morning.

After I picked her up she said she had a good time. She danced and sat on the "bicycle spot" for circle time. And she said she wants to go back so that's always a plus :)

Decorating the school bag

Maja is starting preschool this year and she got a new bag for her projects and other things. Since the school provided the bags and all the kids have the same ones (although some are red and some are blue), they ask that we help the kids decorate them so they can tell them apart while at school (they do each have their names on but most of these little ones can't quite recognize their names yet)

So we took her to Hobby Lobby and stocked up on random things. She really enjoyed it and I think the bag turned out cute:

Some maternity pictures

The other day I decided to take the family out and document the belly. I set the camera up for Jeff and told him exactly what to do. I've very happy with the results :)

Zoey is getting big

I'm not nearly as diligent as I should about taking belly shots and in fact these are all I have of the entire pregnancy so far but hey, something is better then nothing right? I'll make it up to her by rocking her newborn photos :)

14 weeks... not a whole lot there. It looks more like I just had a big dinner :)

18.5 and 25.5 weeks. Kinda neat to see given I was wearing the same shirt and took them in the same spot

and the most recent one at 27.5 weeks

Finally a summer with no humidity or mosquitos!

After spending the last 5 years in Georgia and Wisconsin I started dreading summer. It was just impossible to go enjoy your evening without having to take a bath in stinky bug spray ahead of time and the humidity... oh boy! it sucked, especially when pregnant!

So I had been looking forward to our first "real" summer in a long time (even longer then the 5 years given that neither Portland or Seattle are particularly "summery" places)

I think the girls enjoyed it as well. The one thing I'm bummed about is not having taken them to the pool much. Turns out they love water!! I took them once and to my surprise they were very into it... even jumping all by themselves from the edge and I didn't even have to catch them... they'd go under water and back up all on their own :).

We did hit the sprayground several times though

But mostly we just spent a lot of time in our backyard and just had friends over :)

and almost 4 months later

A lot has happened in the last few months so I'll slowly catch up but I'll start with the most important thing...

Zoey Evangeline <3

We didn't plan on finding out. But we decided to have the gender written on a card like we did with Isla. We never opened it with her :).
When we got to the ultrasound place, the tech refused to write it down. She said she could tell us what the baby was, print us a picture but she couldn't write it and seal the envelope. Stupid, right? so we told her to just start the ultrasound and get her measurements and we could decide later.
At some point she left the room for about 5 mins and during that time Jeff and I decided to just go ahead and find out and thank goodness we did because when the tech came back, she didn't say a word and just continued the scan. All of the sudden she zooms in on an area, freezes the screen and asks "so, did you decide if you want to know the gender?". Stupid again!! I looked at Jeff before she even finished the sentence and he just yelled out "it's a girl!!"
Come on lady! we have girls, we know what they look like on an ultrasound! why in the world would she pull up the "money shot" BEFORE making sure we wanted to see it. It didn't matter at that point. Even if we had decided to not find out we would have anyway :(

Oh well, 3 girls it is for us :)

Happy 3rd birthday to Maja!!!

Time sure does fly. She is such a big girl now

Family vacation

We love road trips around here so when Daddy's fishing trip came up, the girls and I decided to meet him out by the coast and spend a few days there. This was the first time the girls were at the beach and they had a blast.

We started out with a pit stop at the Seattle Zoo and continued over to Ocean Shores to meet Daddy and spend the night. It was all very last minute as it was decided just the night before when Jeff left so while he was fishing the next days after we arrived from Seattle, we found a hotel and decided to check out the beach. After a brief hiccup (Mommy got the car stuck in the sand) the girls had their first taste of the ocean:

The next day we decided to move to Seaside in Oregon. They loved building sandcastles but the weather was definitely more windy:

Then we remembered Grandma and Grandma were spending the weekend in Bend, OR and since we hadn't seen our friends Chris and Sara who live there in a long time, we decided to spend another night there on our way back home.

4 days, 2 States. 4 towns and 1025 miles on a whim.. fun times! We have to do it again next year although this time around Daddy will NOT be on his motorcycle alongside us but in the car with us :)