A Tale of Two Sisters

When we got pregnant with Delia I was so happy for Ella. When we found out Delia was a girl I thought, "We are giving Ella the best gift ever...a sister!" However with Delia's strengthening mobility Ella has decided that this is a gift she could live without. The above pictures speak volumes. As you can see, Ella is getting to be such a big girl. She's independent and loves things like making crafts, quiet reading time and setting up imaginary play worlds (as previously blogged). Delia is mischievous, passionate, stubborn and insatiably curious-- happy all-the-while, but a handful nonetheless.

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The combination is not a good one.

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Delia comes crashing through Ella's tea parties like a tornado, never lets us finish a story in peace anymore and attempts to shred her paper-bag puppets mid puppet show. Delia is most interested in whatever Ella is holding.

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After a few tantrums and a kick to Delia's chest, we've been really emphasizing how Ella needs to show patience and kindness to the sister whom she loves. Ella is so naturally nurturing and helpful that she is now quick to bring Delia another distractionary toy or chime in with a suggestion like, "Delia wants to play with blocks while you read me the Jamberry story." I often hear "Can you please move Delia!!" resounding through my home.

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Today Ella found a new way to let out her feelings for little sister-- wrestling! She initiated a gentle Smack down that left Delia roaring with laughter. So there are lots of fun moments of play too. They DO love each other very much, we're just in that phase (I hope!).

Helping

Make dinner...

Unload the dishwasher...

Fold (unfold!) laundry...

My Roses Are Red...

...and pink and yellow and peach and white (but not blue).

Read this post

and you can appreciate them too!

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I planted 6 rose bushes when we moved in 5 years ago. They have really taken and are my favorite thing we grow, presently looking amazing. The bushes line the brick walkway to our front door and make me happy each time I come home and stroll past them. Every couple days I prune a few of the abundant blossoms and arrange them in a vase. They bring such beauty and fragrance into our home.

Doesn't This Look Like a Blast?

It must be, because each of my girls at this age has been obsessed with this game of "Yank All the Movies Off the Shelf." At least this time around Ella (with her love of order) puts them back moments after Delia takes them off!

Fairy Tale Fun

One of our recent check-outs from the library was a counting book featuring fairy tale characters. I was quickly dismayed to learn that Ella knew none of them. She was completely clueless about who Goldilocks, the 3 pigs, the Gingerbread Man and the troll under the bridge were. Even though Ella is an avid reader, she had no fairy tales in her personal library! So I began the quest to add these important books to our shelves. The ones pictured here are all recommended. I studied James Marshall (author of 3 pigs, 3 bears and Red Riding Hood) in a Children's Lit class and the board books are great, sturdy summaries that were only $5 at B&N. The Little Red Hen is actually the version I grew up with.

Thanks to our free Amazon Prime from Kyle, Ella thinks every truck, bus, street cleaner or loud car coming down our street is the UPS guy and says, "The present truck is here to bring me presents!" Yes the delivery of new books was exciting, but even more fun has been all the creative play that's come with new stories...

We can play this 100 times in a row: Ella is the 3 Billy Goats Gruff and she crosses the coffee table bridge narrowly escaping the troll hiding underneath (yep, me). She squeals as I grab her and convinces me that her brother would be a much better meal. I thought this picture was too funny-- Lily the troll (our mailman would concur that Lily does indeed sound like a monster who wants to eat him!)

We also set out porridge bowls and chairs for Ella to sample until she finds the one that is just right. A true Goldilocks.

One rousing game of "Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man!" (a glorified chase game) actually woke Delia from her nap. And we also made these 3 houses-- one has straw, one has sticks and one has bricks glued on it. Ella makes me laugh each time she reads the "No, no, no, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" line in her high little voice.

So now I no longer feel that my children will be deprived of these classics and we have so many fun new games to play and crafts to make!

Brace Yourself for Cute-O-Rama!

Pastor Bruce's son breeds and raises Bloodhounds and recently had a couple litters totalling 18 puppies. This morning our phone rang and the caller asked to speak to Ella. It was "Pa-Boo" telling her that if she met him at church, she could meet 12 of the puppies. Of course, Ella shot out the door to meet, cuddle, kiss and squeal over these adorable little guys. My sweet blue-eyed girl and a laundry basket full of squirmy puppies...can you handle the cuteness? :)

Twelve puppies (and Ella) in action...this one is actually a video you can click to watch.

New Pictures

The collage above shows off Delia's new 9 month portraits. I thought I'd just share them this way instead of sending you to the JCPenney link. Enjoy!

What Errands Look Like Around Here

Recently a routine errand trip turned into a celebration of local fare and prevalent farm life. Our strawberry stands opened last week, so we headed out to buy some of these favorite fruits. Next stop was at the feed store where we buy our locally produced honey. We've been having a crazy bad allergy season and a friend from church swears by this home remedy: take 1 tablespoon of local, raw honey each morning and night. He's never had any allergies! Isn't that interesting? Anyway, we were delighted to find that it is also baby chick season at the feed store, so we stopped for a while to admire the fuzzy peepers keeping warm in their tubs. The final stop was for our favorite Dutch Gouda cheese. At the cheese factory where we often feed the llamas, goats, sheep and bunnies, we found 4 new baby goats! These sweet little guys "maaed" and wrestled and jumped around to get our attention and food. What a fun morning-- what could have just been boring errands became a real barn-yard adventure and the souvenirs of our morning, yummy strawberries, honey and cheese, will get quickly gobbled!

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I've finally posted some new (easy) recipes. Be sure to glance at them over to the left!

What's In a Name?

For a while I've been wanting to come up with a new name for our blog and today I unveil "The VM Family Footprints" as our new blogger identity!

When I started "The Growing VM Family" blog, our family was growing-- I was newly pregnant with Delia. While individually we all continue to grow (spiritually, physically and intellectually), our family as a whole does not expect any more growth in terms of numbers. Delia's birth brought on the title "The *New and Improved* VM Family." And yes, with the addition of our youngest, we are "improved," but 9 months later we are not so "new" anymore.

I like the image of footprints because it illustrates the mark we hope to leave and the path we invite you to follow. Our blog serves to update our far-away family and friends on both the every day and the spectacularly unusual blessings in the journey of our lives (and true, most of those are centered around our girls). But I write our blog to also encourage, advise, share and testify. I hope it leaves some sort of mark on you-- on your tool bar's bookmarks and on your hearts.

The Great Outdoors

Beautiful weather and our attempts to whip the yard into shape have yielded much play time outside this week!

Ella Karina: 35 Months

To match my most recent post about Delia, I thought I post some descriptions of my funny and sweet Ella today. Each of these stories and pictures gives a glimpse into who Ella is and what daily life with her is like.

Since birth Ella has LOVED to read (Delia is too squirmy to sit through a book and still prefers to eat them). Each time Ella goes to bed we have to read 3 stories and then fill up a basket next to her bed with more stories that she can look at until she falls asleep. She has most of her books memorized, so she'll recite them, make up new stories or just study the pictures. Some days she'll skip a nap to just read for 2 hours. One night Dave went to peek at her and said, "Your 2-year old daughter is staying up until 10:30 to read books!" Ella has gotten sneaky about it too, when she's gone through all the books I leave her, she climbs out of bed and grabs more off the shelf. Don't ask me how she sleeps when there are 30 books crowding her bed!

Ella does love cooking in her kitchen and taking care of her baby, but another fun thing to pretend is "I'm going to be Daddy." She pulls up a chair, gets out her computer, phone and coffee cup and sits in her office writing sermons and calling people!

One of my favorite times of the day is during Delia's morning nap. I work hard to make sure this is 2 hours of uninterrupted quality time with Ella. It's a good time to create and craft things because Delia is not there to rip up the projects, eat the markers or make me chase her away from Lily's water bowl. Today Ella and I made and decorated gingerbread bear cookies. Earlier this week we put water in her sand box and built princess castles and birthday cakes. Some other fun projects we've done-- and feel free to steal these!-- have been our pretend picnic (after making and decorating a paper bag basket we cut out food from the sale papers and glued them onto paper plates) and a stop light (paper towel roll with 3 circles covered with red, yellow and green tissue paper squares). I love my happy, explorative Delia, but I treasure this time with just Ella every day too.

Delia Kristen is 9 Months Old

On Sunday Delia turned 9 months so this week is full of activities related to that-- doctor appointment today and portraits on Friday. The one word to best describe our 9-monther at this point in time is MOBILE. Not only can Delia quickly and easily move from one end of the house to the other, she can also chase her sister, pull up on any and everything and even stand holding onto something with just one hand. We see evidence that, like her sister, she'll be walking before her first birthday. Other than her new found freedom, Delia continues to be much the same: constantly joyous, full of smiles and laughs, affectionate, loving cuddle and dance time with family most and a good eater and sleeper. Today we learned that she weighs 19.5 pounds (only a few pounds lighter than Ella!) and is 28 inches long. She's perfectly proportioned-- both these measurements put her in the 50th percentile.

Busy Birthday Weekend

From one year old to 80, from people to pets, this weekend Ella has gotten to bust out her favorite tune, "Happy Birthday to You," multiple times as we've celebrated one birthday after another. Last night we went to the 80th birthday party of Gertie, one of our sweet grandmas from church. Dave and I loved the fellowship and delicious tri-tip dinner, Ella loved playing in the dirt with some new friends.

Today we spent a hot afternoon celebrating Brittany and her first year of life. Since it was 90 degrees here today, the kids especially loved donning their swim suits and playing with all the crazy water toys, including one of those giant inflatable water slides (above is Kirsi taking a turn). We all laughed as little Brittany literally bathed herself in the purple frosting off her cake. She was the messiest one-year-old I'd ever seen!

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So, here's the question for my advice feature, "A Little Help From Our Friends." What is your favorite birthday present to give kids? Do you have one or two you always go to? I know we do, leave me a comment and tell me yours! We gave Brittany the Nina Laden books, Peek-a-Who? and Grow Up! A favorite gift, we received it from the Girards and we've given it out 3 times now.

We also celebrated Lily and her 4 years with us (her adoption date was April 6). Nothing too fancy was planned for this party, just some candles in a banana bread and a new blue chew toy Ella helped pick out. Our silly Delia seemed to enjoy this gift just as much as the dog!

Happy birthday Lily, Brittany and Gertie!

Come Along on our Coastal Getaway!

We just returned from a great little family vacation to Monterey. Our escape to the coast really couldn't have been any better. The weather was perfect, the girls did great (especially with sleeping) and we were able to do a number of fun things. Here are some of our favorite pictures and memories (and check out the slide show over to the left-- if you double click on the box of pictures it will bring you to Picassa where you can view them larger)...

Our hotel was awesome-- with free breakfast, a boutique decor in the room, an outdoor fire pit and, best of all, located right next to the ocean. We were able to spend time there every day. Usually while Delia took her morning nap, one of us would take a long walk with Ella. We'd throw rocks in the water, write our names big in the sand, search tide pools, climb the big boulders or just watch the waves crash.

This is the Dennis the Menace Park that we knew Ella would love. Some favorites at this unique park were the swaying bridge, rock wall, zip line and garden maze. They also had a real train engine to climb and play on, but that scared her a little.



The thing we were probably most looking forward to was the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it did not disappoint! Some of our favorite moments from the vacation came from this excursion. Ella and Delia really loved the interactive children's area. Delia crawled around in a room with a water bed floor to feel waves and stood up with her hands pressed on the glass watching all the pretty fish. Ella especially loved all the touch pools. She felt starfish and petted bat rays. She also splashed in water tables, dressed up like a crab, sea horse, and fish and played in a corral reef playground. We saw the scuba diver feed the sharks and big fish in the giant tank and we all enjoyed a playful sea otter exhibit and a soothing jellyfish exhibit.



To me, this was the best part of the whole trip-- a glass room that had a huge wave crash over and into it every minute. Ella's faces of excitement and terror cracked us up for the half hour we played here!



Our hotel was also a block away from a Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, so we took a few walks over there. This place was so amazing and peaceful! While we strolled through the sun, more butterflies than I could count would float and flutter all around us. It was just a little patch of forest that was home to all these beautiful migrating Monarchs (and some deer too!).



Yesterday we went to Pt. Lobos to do some hiking. This place was super cool too. We added lots more creatures to our "Wildlife We Spotted" list: lizards, crabs, otters, a whale, seals (including a mama seal teaching her little pup to swim in a blue-green alcove, another favorite of the trip) and even mating sea-gulls! The hiking paths all ran right along the coast line, so the views were incredible and none were too strenuous or long.


This shows about 6 otters just bobbing along. One even has a baby on its tummy!