Finally, an afternoon without rain!

Of course, not even a minute after I took these shots, the rain started falling.....

And notice the jackets - we barely got into the 50's today. Spring, where are you????

Thanksgiving post

Better late than never.....click here

Before the blog

we had a little Nikon digital camera that we bought just before Claire was born. It pretty much lived in my purse, and therefore recorded just about every little expedition Claire and I took. (Ahhh, days of only one child and our daily photo shoots....) As she grew into a toddler, she was fascinated with this camera (probably since it had spent so much time in her face for her entire life), and I had to be more aware of where I put it down in fear of sticky fingers. Fast forward a bit to Christmas, 2007. Lots of pictures, lots of toys, lots of distraction. And the camera disappeared. The last place I remembered it was when were going through the gifts back at home (in Cypress - wow, 2 houses ago!), throwing away boxes and paper and so forth. It was there, taking pictures of C trying out her new bike seat for Mommy's bike, and then it was gone. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it was gone until after the trash was long gone. We lost all the pictures from Claire's second Christmas. I was very sad. We didn't buy a new camera for quite a while, so I was forced to use the horrible camera off of our camcorder and rely on friends for pictures. So, really, we don't have many decent shots of Claire for a lot of the beginning of 2008. But yesterday, a glorious event occurred.

In celebration of the first day of beautiful weather in a long time, we worked outside a bit in the yard yesterday afternoon. We decided to blow up the bounce house to keep the girls occupied and to make sure it was still working so we could use it for our party coming up. (Honey and H bought it for C for her first birthday, and we hadn't used it in awhile.) J plugged it in, and everything worked exactly as it should. The girls were ecstatic. And then, I saw something:
It's the little Nikon camera!!!!!!!!!!

All these years, we've blamed Claire for throwing it away. But, if you will take a look at the last few shots on the memory card, I think you will see who the true guilty party is:
Daddy!

Hahahahaha!

If you're interested, I downloaded all the pictures on the memory card and put them on walgreens. Click on the little picture of Claire below if you'd like to take a trip down memory lane. These pictures cover from just after C's first birthday to Christmas. It's truly amazing how much Madeleine looks like Claire!!!!

Our little pre-writer

During our shopping spree at Barnes and Noble today, Claire discovered the journals section and was hooked. She really wanted one with Hello Kitty on it, so we made a deal: everyday while I'm putting Moo down for a nap, she'll draw a picture and write a sentence about it. She is perfectly capable of writing and, in a manner perfectly appropriate of her 4-year-old self, spelling, but her confidence for those things is really low. I'm hoping this will get her excited about writing, and so far, so good! She was so proud of herself after writing her sentence about flowers. Any guesses as to what she wrote?

Answer: "Flowers have petals and a middle."

Fiesta Friday!

And Gramma sent some dresses!