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.

I made a new disc dog video . . .

Abe and Lindsay's wedding

Abe and Lindsay had a beautiful cremony that brought the crowd to tears on several occasions. The girls and Nick were in the wedding party. The pictures don't do it justice.

Hawaii

So we had a great time in Hawaii. The kids did awesome on the plane, and slept pretty well there. There were several snorkeling and boogie board trips. We took full advantage of just hanging out in the sun. With so many helping hands around it was a little disorienting when we got home, but we're back in the normal routine. It was fun to watch Kiah warm up to everyone and Moira had a blast soliciting stories from everyone.

Way Back in April

Sherrod, Andy and the boys stayed overnight with us in April and I have finally uploaded some pictures. Moira tried desperatly to keep the twins orderly and civilized. By the end she was starting to lighten up a little . . . getting dirty can be fun too.

Busy as Bees

We're madly trying to get organized for our big trip to Hawaii. I was out front giving everything a once over and this bee was hanging around the whole time. He was just loaded with pollen so 30 pictures later I got one that was pretty cool. Oh the joys of digital photography. I'm sure I'll have loads of pictures from Hawaii upon our return.

Suki and I competed for the first time in freestyle disc and we didn't get last place! I'll try to put up the video at some point in time.

Hopefully we don't have to many issues on the flight over with the kids. Fingers crossed and we'll see everyone soon.

Busy in the backyard

Well we came up with this plan for a faux tropical garden around the gazebo. It's really shady and stays fairly wet there. We found some really great shade loving plants and even braved a few hardy fushias. The plants include : hosta, fern, day lily, calla lily, violets, columbine, bleeding heart, and oxalis. We're really looking forward to spending time outside in august when we can enjoy the fruits of our labor.

We had a good time at flower world and came home with more than we needed. In addition to being one of the largest plant nurseries I've ever been to, they also have an assortment of animals for the kids to look at: sheep, goats, peacocks, and fancy chickens and ducks. Moira really enjoyed the animals so we'll have to head out to the zoo before too long.

Gabe and Cynthia Tie the Knot

Gabe and Cynthia are officially married! Despite some wind, it was a beautiful ceremony on the beach. The love these two share is inspiring and it was great to share in this experience with them.

Kiah Turns One

We had a great day on sunday with a parade of family members and fun. Luckily the camera was around to capture a rare moment of sisterly love and cuteness.

Of course there were presents, which Kiah chose to open in a dainty fashion. Moira fond this alltogether much to slow and was quite eager to "help" Kiah.

The cake was a big hit and after a few tentative licks Kiah dove right in. The last year has been a bit of a wild ride. It's really fun to watch the girls work out their relationship and to watch Kiah go from baby to kid. They are both such wonderful little people and full of the joy and wonder of the world. I can't wait to see what the next year brings.

Baby Steps

I've read about half of a new book called Don't Shoot the Dog. It is written by the founder of clicker training and a strong proponent of training by positive reinforcement. This book is not written specifically for dog training, and in fact the majority of the examples deal with humans and the ways in which we either consciously or sub-consciously reinforce behavior in our own lives.

The author proposes that we reinforce the good rather than the bad, ie. rather than cursing our own mistakes we praise our own accomplishments. So this got me thinking about parenthood and how in my own life I often feel unfulfilled as a stay at home mom. I think the problem for me and many other moms is that the pay off or the reinforcement just isn't there. Your little sweeties are never going to look you in the eye and say good job mom I'm giving you a raise. My job, unlike most others has nothing in place to make me feel like I've really accomplished something. So my goal over the next few weeks is to take some time to think about all of the things I have gotten done in a day, rather than all of the things I couldn't get done.

Kiah is also working on some baby steps of her own. She can reliably walk about three steps and occasionally initiates some wobbly walking on her own. It's a real delight to see the pride in her face when she walks all by herself. She's at the age where she's figured out that she can indeed communicate with us and I can just see her gears turning as she tries to make sense of it all. Her favorite thing right now is to hand stuff to people, and if you are ignoring her attempts to share she will actually grab your hand, flip it over, and shove said item into it.

Moira is finally starting to outgrow the constant tantrums, and is learning some coping techniques to help calm down when they do happen. She is also starting to enjoy hanging out with Kiah and often asks if her and Kiah can go play in her room. I'm am more amazed every day at Moira and how much she has grown as a person in the last year.

All in all life is good. I started on a new medication for my arthritis and it's working better than expected. The down side is that it lowers your immune capacity. Moira is currently sick so I will soon be experiencing how difficult it is to fight off a cold while on this treatment. My arthritis had progressed to the point that I was considering a cane or walker to help me in the first half of the day and within a week of the medication I can literally run down the stairs, something I could not have done for over a year. I actually just sat down and cried the first time I walked down the stairs like a normal person, one foot in front of the other. You don't take the time to appreciate what you have until it's gone so here's to spring and a new attitude on life!

Moira the photographer

Juju got a new point and shoot camera. Moira is really in to taking pictures, she has some interesting subject matter.