Soccer Season

Rachel and Lincoln played on the same soccer team this year.  Rachel really took off and especially did well on defense.  For a while we had trouble getting Lincoln to not lay down on the field, but he definitely improved and seemed to enjoy the snack part especially.

I turned thirty!

It was a month ago but what can you do.  For my present Joe and I are combining presents from birthday and Christmas to get a laptop, but the kids gave me some pretty awesome presents.  Who could want more then several pictures, a coupon book, and a button.

Joe and the kids did a good job making my birthday special.  The Friday before Joe also threw a surprise party for me.  My friend helped him a lot putting it together.  I was very impressed and totally surprised.

The Code of the Ninjas

Lincoln spends a lot of the day telling me about ninjas.  He has no idea about what ninjas look like or do, but he will tell me fact upon fact that he makes up.  Joe and I were excited to find a ninja outfit at Goodwill on Friday.  We surprised Lincoln this morning after washing it.  He loves it.

Code of the Ninjas(as dictated by Lincoln):

Ninjas are naked

Only nice ninjas have moms

There are blue, red, and green ninjas

Ninjas don't wear shoes

Ninjas don't drink green smoothies

...

Rachel's Room is Finished!

Here's Rachel's room that I've been working on decorating for a long time.  It's fun for me to try to decorate cheaply and customize the decor just how I want it.  This might be less exciting to some readers but you'll have to humor my obsession...

The drawers and night stand were both originally different shades of brown and the night stand didn't have matching pulls.  Joe was very nice to do the painting and I found pulls that were similar.  We got oil based paint not realizing the clean-up that would take so Joe gets extra bonus points for painting.

I made matching picture boards for Rachel and Hannah.  I just covered a cheap bulletin board with batting and fabric and then stapled the ribbon and material down.  I made covered buttons where the ribbons intersect and appliqued on their initials.

I found the lamp at a garage sale and made the doily underneath it.

The butterflies on the wall I bought off of ebay from our good neighbors in Hong Kong.  No hand craft there but I really like them.  They were a good deal too.

My friends

Hannah is finally old enough to play with the big kids.  I let them all go outside and play in the sprinkler and it was so fun to watch them play together.  I had to take pictures.

Happy Second Birthday Hannah!

For Hannah's birthday we had friends over and ate her favorite dinner-pizza.  She eats as much pizza as a grown man.

We had the usual 2nd birthday dog cake.  It works out that Hannah likes dogs too.  This is as close as she'll ever get to having her own dog.

Hannah figured out opening presents and loved it.

She got two baby dolls and a art easel.  We're very grateful that people gave her baby dolls because she only had one she would sleep with and if we couldn't find it, putting her to bed was rough.

This was the first year where Hannah really understood her birthday so it was a lot of fun.  Hannah is such a sweet girl and brings joy to our family.

It's a...

girl!

We were surprised.  We were guessing a boy and in the past we've been 3 for 3 on guessing. The kids were a little disappointed but they're excited about a girl now.  They went to the ultra sound with us and when we asked Rachel what girl name she liked she said, "Louie."  Somehow that evolved to Lily so I think that's what we're going to go with.