Christmas Eve and Christmas pics

I can't figure out how to embed someone elses's album so you'll have to click the link

http://picasaweb.google.com/jn4now/Christmas2009#5419593560989808914

Princess dresses from auntie Nicola

The princess dresses were a big hit with the girls, Moira has worn hers for atleast a little while every day.

Toddler craziness

Moira and Kiah were really hyper after lunch. Moira's dancin' away in the front, but keep your eye on kiah.

A visit to downtown

We took the kids downtown to enjoy some Christmas activities and make a visit to santa. If I can get our arcane scanner to talk to our snazzy new computer I'll add a pic of santa. Both girls managed to make it onto his lap, and Moira was brave enough to blurt out a few of the things she really would like for Christmas.

This is the teddy bear room, one of the swanky hotels downtown has a different decorator come in each year and fill a suite with teddy bears, it was a big hit.

next it was off to the carousel

Bellevue Botanical Gardens

The Bellevue botanical gardens does an awesome light display every year. Here are some pics from our visit

2009-12-19

Christmas pics . . . take 1

Our first attempt at christmas pics was less than successful. The girls were not at all interested in sitting together to get their picture taken, but we had fun anyway. Perhaps we'll try again in a couple of days.

Kiah 18 Months

the fairy princess and her sister

I made a fire this evening and Moira ended up "reading books" to Kiah for an hour. It was really, really, really cute.

Yesterday we added fairy wings, a crown, and a magic wand to Moira's costume it really improved it immensly.

Halloween Party

Kiah working hard to get everything tidied up for the party

Moira chose to be a princess, and despite it coming out a little large, I think it turned out pretty good. Kiah made use of Moira's old pirate costume, which was just to cute to not use again.

Checking out our friends costumes

Little Henry was a big fan of the goldfish crackers

Afterwards the girls played in the dark with their glow bracelets. Kiah has the dark purple one and Moira was sporting the green and pink. This was followed by a rousing game of find daddy in the dark before he jumps out and scares you. There was lots of giggling and laughing and it was a fun end to a good weekend.

Life rolls along

Not much happening at the Ericson household. Moira continues to enjoy school, but's a little luke warm on the dancing classes. Her first set of ballet clothes have completely disappeared so we had to purchase another set. The real question is did I put them somewhere so Moira wouldn't get in to them or did Moira get in to them and then stick them somewhere that only makes sense to a 3 year old.

Kiah is now the source of constant jabber. She actually knows an astonishing number of words to mommies trained ear. Her favorite word right now is apple. She seems to think that it means I want that. Moira is hard at work informing her which things are not in fact apples.

Here are some pictures of our most recent reward cupcakes

Moira's been taking lessons from dad and proceeded to shove the better part of this cupcake into her mouth in one bite

Banana Splits and Ballerinas

We started a chart on the wal for Moira, we have 4 main house rules and if she can follow all of the rules she can earn up to 4 stickers a day. Once she hits 15 stickers she gets to pick something fun to do. Last time it was make cupcakes, last night it was banana splits and a movie. Here's Kiah reaping the benefits of her sisters good behavior.

Here's Moira enjoying ballet class. The parents must wait outside the room, but I poked my head in for a quick shot. Moira is one in from the left. As a reward for listening and being allowed to continue ballet class Moira got to pick out a proper ballet outfit.

Moira got a haircut

Here's one last shot of my little girl before her first real haircut. We really didn't want to cut off all of her curls, but it was starting to get a bit straggly. The haircut went great and turned out good, see first day of pre-school pics for the sfter shot.

First Day of Preschool

Moira wasn't about to sit still long enough for a more traditional first day of school picture. Fingers crossed that today goes well. For those of you that haven't heard Moira's first day of ballet/tap class didn't go very well. To her credit she was VERY excited about dancin' class and was perhaps just a bit to exuberant for ballet. She was dismissed from class after she convinced all the over the kids it was more fun to run around and scream with her than to listen to the teacher. She gets one more chance before she's expelled.

We're enjoying fall and looking forward to good times ahead.

Flowers and princesses

Weekend fun

We went up to Bellingham this weekend to celebrate Keron's birthday. We also spent a day with Addie, Cary, and Conan. It was fun to see everyone and to let the kids play around. The dogs had a great time charging around in the country, and everyone slept good last night.

The boys created a track for the dirtbike and quad so it was some good ol' redneck fun at grandmas.

Moira went out with Addie and picked flowers to give Grandma for her birthday, the bouquet ended up as big as her.

Zoned out on the couch with uncle Abe after a long day.

Painting

Moira gets to do art projects with mommy as a special treat when Kiah is asleep. On this particular day their naps were a bit off and while I was laying Moira down Kiah discovered that I'd left out the paints. What fun . . . I guess I'll have to figure out some little art projects for miss Kiah.

More summer fun

We went to a renessance fair on sunday and the girls had a great time. Moira was really into it and whooped and hollered at all of the acts and danced her little buns off. I even managed to whip up some fairy princess skirts sat night. Moira was really into the pirate booth, which had a collection of swords for the kids to play with. She was quick to go for the killing blow.

yeah for August

July was a busy, busy month. So I'm very happy that August has arrived. My little frisbee dog contest somehow balloned into a massive canine festival. It was very stressful and way to much work for free. In the end I was happy when I looked up and saw it was a success, but I will only be managing the frisbee aspect of the event in future years and leave the rest to the city and the local off-leash dog group. We ended up with around 1000 people at the event and made the front page of the local paper.

Suki took third place in the novice division of the Disc competition, which was quite an improvement over our finish in 2008, dead last. It's a little embarassing when the event host comes in last. In addition to that Suki and Kess finished 1st and 2nd respectively in the clean your plate dog food eating contest, and Kess has the 3rd best tail wag in Kirkland. All of our contest winnings added up to some new dog toys and $50 worth of gift certificates at the local pet store. I was so busy that I took almost no pictures, but you can see a few here, plus a video put together by another club member.

All that's left is to put together notes for who ever handles the event in 2010 and a quick presentation for city council, where we hand over the check for the fundraising effort. I don't have the total, but it's somewhere around 5k.

fddo2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcoo1moSY3A

Garden pics

I was having a great time checking out the garden while doing some watering today so I grabbed the camera and got some nice shots. The honey bees have given way to swarms of bumble bees.

Oregon Country Fair

We had a great time at the country fair this year. My mom volunteered to watch Kiah which was great. Moira had a great time and was quite the button saleswoman. The only bad part was that it poured rain on sunday resulting in huge puddles throughout the fair. The mud was almost impassable in places, but everyone made the best of things and we stayed dry in the booth.

Broken Computer and Kiah Cuteness

Our computer died unexpectedly a few weeks ago and we finally got the new one. It's still not up to speed so I've commandeered Nick's work laptop. It's been a busy July for us with the country fair last weekend and my big dog festival next weekend. I ended up in way over my head in terms of the amount of time I wanted to donate to the dog festival, but it looks like it's going to be a very successful 1st Go Dog, Go! festival with expected attendance in the thousands. It has however been the source of a ridiculous amount of stress so I've already let them know I wont be helping next year.

Kiah found this hat Grandpa Will gave her for Christmas and wore it for a couple of hours. It was pretty cute so of course I had to get some pictures.

CUTENESS WARNING

I got these for the country fair, but we broke them out early for the solstice parade.

Help!!

So I was upstairs putting away clothes and heard Kiah start fussing. This was promptly followed by the sound of Moira running. I figured she'd knocked Kiah over and was running off to avoid blame. Then she darted up the stairs to exclaim "Mama Kiah's stuck in the drum and she's really upset!" Since the camera was right there I couldn't resist.