It's a New Year!!

2009 came in with lots of fun for us this year. We all went out to eat for Pam's birthday and then headed back to our house for a little party. We had every intention of letting Lilly stay up late but at about 9:00 she came to Daddy and said "bed?" My daughter is a very good sleeper and quites enjoys going to bed at night. Of course then she is a morning person while Logan and I are NOT. So that can be quite interesting. At 7 in the morning she is all yak yak yak and we can barely keep our eyes open to crawl to the chair to "supervise" (aka snore) in the living room. 

Anyway, Daddy got Guitar Hero for Christmas and our whole family is addicted. Lilly loves putting the guitar on and pretending to play. She is very into the

 games that we have and will probably one of those 4 year olds who beat everyone. So here is a picture of her playing the guitar. (Notice the new entertainment center in the background!) 

Christmas 2009

So Christmas this year was a blast. Lilly was soooo into everything. I think the "elf" made the biggest impact. See, everyday we were "visited" by the elf who left a present behind. So she got to open a present everyday in Decemeber before Christmas. She still talks about the elf and how it left her presents. Early on in the Christmas season we took Lilly to Toy R Us to see what she was interested in. I was thinking of a tricycle but she didnt seem interested at all. We finally decided on some Fisher Price Little People's castle and princess set. So Black Friday I found the stuff on sale and got it and was so excited that my shopping was done for Lilly. About 2-3 weeks later we all ended up at Toy R Us again to shop for some toys for the Angel Tree kids we took. Lilly spent at least 45 minutes riding a tricycle and ends up telling us that she is going to ask Santa Clause for a bicycle. Over and over again she tells us she wants a bicycle for Christmas. Well we cant very well not get her the gift she asked Santa for the very first year she understands who Santa is and what he does! So she ended up getting a bicycle from Santa and got very spoiled this year. I dont think she minded a bit. 

All of Lilly's loot. She was too excited to sit there and take a picture. Lol.

On Christmas Eve, Lilly totally knew what was going on. Every Christmas Eve the elf brings us new Christmas pjs. When she got hers and we put them on, she was so excited and kept running around yelling "Whoohooo!!" She would run up and down the hall and then get to the livingroom and roll around on the ground. We tried to catch some of it on video. I truly enjoyed Christmas this year. We also had my mom here and her parents came to visit over Christmas as well. So it was a full fun house. I really enjoyed my grandparents visiting. I hadnt spent time with them since early highschool. Lilly enjoyed everyone here as well but she didnt handle the goodbyes very well. My grandma Betty and Uncle Jerry were also in town staying with Pam and Brian. She really enjoyed their visit as well and was sad to see them go. So here are some pictures. I hope you enjoy them!

  

Lilly asleep before we woke her up Christmas morning. 

Lilly and Mommy got new aprons from the elf. Now Lilly always wants to bake but she calls everything cake! 

Lilly saying thank you to Grandpa Gene and Lois for thier present.

Lilly reading Grandpa Jim's present! 

Lilly's new castle!

Christmas with the Freemans! 

All of us dressed up on Christmas Sunday. Lilly absolutely loved her dress.

Yes I'm 2!

I'm sorry it's been so long! Life has just been so crazy! I should be able to blog more than I have a laptop in the main living area. But we'll see... :) So Lilly continues to surprise me and frustrate me and crack me up and drive me nuts all within a span of a few minutes. She is so independent that it is hard to handle sometimes. One day she'll be perfectly fine if I put her in her car seat and then the next time I do it and she starts to cry and will climb out of the car, shut the door, open it again, climb into the car and into her carseat all by herself. It's very time consuming and can be quite frustrating. She does not bend on anything that she puts her mind too. She is very confident too. I know that these things will hopefully be good characteristics later in life but man right now I just wish she would let Mommy and Daddy help her a little bit!

Right now Lilly is off with Grandma. Every Tuesday or Wednesday is "Grandma Day." My mom has been living with us for the past month or so and Lilly has loved every minute of it! You would  think Grandma is better than any piece of candy...well actually to Lilly she is. Lilly has gone hiking and to the park and today she is going to the desert museum (a wildlife zoo). 

Well, there has been a ton going on so I'll just leave you with some pictures to explain the rest. Enjoy!

While in MO Lilly and Vance got their pictures taken together. Arent they adorable?!

All ready for church, just waiting to leave...

I took the daycare to a trip to the zoo. We had a blast and saw a lot of active animals.

Lilly was Tinkerbell for Halloween. She loves Tinkerbell right now. Daddy was Hook and I was Wendy. Every time we see a picture of Tink Lilly yells "Tinkerbell!!" and wants to go and look at whatever it is.

While we were in MO Lilly got to visit Great Grandma Betty. She loved playing with her cousin Vance and brushing Aunt Penny's hair.
 While in MO we went to a very neat pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins. Lilly had more fun playing with the kittens than she did getting a pumpkin.

The looks I get already...isn't she too little for those?!                                                                                                 At least they turn into this. :)

I'm a Big Girl Now!

Lilly is just getting to be more and more a big girl every day. She now has a big girl bed. She absolutely loves it! When we first got it she was so excited and jumped on the bed. Mommy and Daddy were a little worried about it causing sleep issues and since we had already been dealing with nap time issues we ewre scared to do it. But there have been no problems at all! She actually stays in her bed in the morning too and waits for one of us to come get her. I'm sure that won't always be that way but it sure is enjoyable right now.

For Labor Day weekend we took a short vacation to San Diego and jam packed it full of things. We went to the both the zoo and Sea World and one day at the beach. Lilly enjoyed everything very much and behaved very well for not getting naps the whole time, except for the tiny one she had in Logan's arms. I think she enjoyed the zoo more and the beach most. 

As I've mentioned before, we've been trying to work on potty training a

nd she just hasn't been interested. We've been occasionally putting her in underwear but she hadn't actually gone in the potty until last Friday. On Friday it was like a switch turned on and all of a sudden she was interested in underwear and actually went peepee in her potty. We all celebrated like parents can only do when their two year old goes in the potty. Since, she has been wearing underwear everyday and had no peepee accidents yesterday or today. She's still unsure about going poopoo in the potty but I think that will come too. I'm very proud. We didn't really do anything. Just like anything else, Lilly has to decide to do it and when she does decide soemthing she does it all the way. She's very headstrong and independent. Sometimes it can be quite frustrating for us. But I appreciate those qualities as well. :)

New Post!! -it's a doozy

I'm home! I know you all know that but it feels like I'm just now feeling like I"m home. I feel like I came home to a completely different little girl. Man she has grown! She is talking in complete sentences and just doesn't know how to shut up! Sometimes it's a lot of fun and other times I have to remind myself of the times I thought it was fun. Her favorite phrase is still "What happened?" Shortly after I came home, she asked me "What happened?" and I had no clue what she was talking about so I said "I don't know." and she then replies "Why not?" I had to laugh at that. I also replied "well mommies don't know everything." I think she then gave up on the discussion. And as you can see from the picture above, we got a new addition, kinda like a welcome home present. :) Lilly named her Piggy and plays with her almost everyday.She's also very interested in Mommy's makeup recently. Whenever I put any on I have to sneak in to do it otherwise she gets very upset and wants to put some on too. Last Friday Daddy took his girls on a date so I putt a little bit of shadow and lip gloss on her. She was so excited. Daddy took us to IHop and to go see Walle. The night started out a little cranky but she ended up having a BLAST. Getting yogurt (her favorite food) at supper was a bonus.

I swear she is too smart for her own good. Nothing gets by her. Daddy plays this game where he pertends to run into the wall and then holds eye saying "owwww" and she used to run over to make sure he's ok. She stills enjoys the game and will laugh at him but the other day I saw her teaching one of my daycare kids to do it. They were running into the wall and hitting it with their hands and then saying "owwww." And here is a picture of Lilly wearing one of her new outfits from Aunt Penny and the princess crown (that she takes everywhere with her) that Grandma sent:She has been kinda cranky recently but I think it's just normal two year old stuff. It mostly happens when we have to do something different than normal. We made our yearly trip to the orchard and she had a blast. The peaches were tiny compared to last years trip but I don't think she noticed. She loves peaches! Hmmm...reminds me of someone else I know... I think she ate 5 or 6 while we were there. We had a good time even though it was incredilbly muggy for Arizona!
For those of you who have read this from the beginning, there was a very simliar picture taken about a year ago that was posted on this blog. You should go back and check it out!

Lilly also had her first sleep over last week. Her friend Jada who goes to my daycare came over Tuesday night and spent the night. Jada's mom was a little worried about it so we took them to Chuck E Cheese to make sure they were plenty worn out. They had a blast! They both loved the rides and games. Chuck E Cheese has tubes hanging from the ceiling so the girls had a good time running around above us. That is until Lilly went full speed into one of the bars and knocked her feet out from under her and then couldn't find her way out. I felt so helpless looking up at her while she was screaming "Mommy!" Finally after about 20 minutes two girls helped her find the slide to come down. It was pretty heart wrenching but I don't think it traumatized her to bad considering she was back on the floor running around wanting more "money" to play more games.

Gotta love summer...

Gotta love summer... Baseball, Swimming, 100 degree weather.... everytime we tell Lilly we're going somewhere she say 1 of three things: "shopping?!" "Walmart!!" or "It's too hot." LOL. Notice that two of those mean shopping. I seriously think I've turned my daughter into a shopaholic. She loves to go shopping. It's one of her favorite things to do. We went to eat the other night for a church function and it was pretty late and we get into the car and Lilly says "Walmart?" I laughed and said "you want to Walmart right now?" Of course she nods her head and repeats back "Go to Walmart right now." I actually did have some things to get so we did go to Walmart that night. And I wonder where she gets it from... :)

So Logan and I have friends who own a timeshare and they were able to get a weekend stay there and invited us to come. We all had a blast. Lilly loved being in the condo. She ran around pretty much the whole time. The pool area was really nice and had a pool just her size. Saturday morning/afternoon was spent in the pool. She throughly enjoyed herself and the mini vacation.

On Monday nights Logan has been playing softball with our church. Lilly loves to go to the games and sadly most of his games have been past her bedtime but there have been a few that we've been able to go to. Our friends Makyla and Brandon have joined us for most of them. If Brandon is there Lilly knows he will bring sunflower seeds and will stand there waiting for him to open some seeds so she can have some. It's pretty funny. When we first started going Lilly had a hard time understanding that she couldn't go out and play with Daddy. She kept saying I want to play too.

Well, for those of you who haven't heard, I will be traveling to Russia soon with my aunt and uncle and their son. It's been a much awaited trip and I'm very much looking forward to it. I just know that I will miss my hubby and daughter very much. Please pray for us as we go and for it to go fast so I can get home to see them. Pam and Brian are adopting two little girls so also pray for the court to go well over there. I am not sure if I have time in the next two weeks before I leave to post again, so if I don't you will see a new post after the end of July!