Welcome to our World

Before I attack the Christmas posts, I wanted to add some pictures from random days in December. Above: A tribute to how patient Meigou is with her little sister. We watched Marley & Me while in Utah and I missed my lab so much! No, I don't think you understand what I mean. I missed her so much I called my parents to ask to "talk" to her over the phone. My dad graciously gave me a play-by-play of everything Meigou had done since we left town. If you read the book (like I did last year) or watch the movie, just remember to insert Dan & Sarah for John & Jenny and you'll have the general jist of our married lives thus far. Meigou the great entertainer. She likes to drop the ball from the balcony to the family room & have you throw it back for her to catch. This variation on the game was given a point system: if Meigou caught the ball, the children got a point. If she didn't catch the ball, I (who was doing the throwing) DID NOT get a poi...

With Kaelah outgrowing her 12-18 moths pjs, she was left with only pink & one set of red pjs. Danny is usually the one to put Kaelah to sleep at night, and really hated putting her in something pink all the time. So, my parents & I set out on a hunt for NOT pink pajamas. Here are some pictures of her in her new Curious George jammies Gma & Gpa bought enjoying her bedtime stories and milk.  I also got a pair of light blue pjs that were wintery but very girly at the same time.  So now night time is a bit happier for everyone.  (: "stars" in the baby signs book "toothbrush" "shhh" bunny is sleeping (from Pat the Bunny) "feel Daddy's scratchy face" just turning the page, but I thought it was cute

After realizing some of our friends had the same tradition of adding a special ornament to the tree each year, we decided we should take pictures of ours and share them with you. 2003: Our first Christmas as a married couple 2004: Our first Christmas in Colorado (This was actually the 2nd one I bought b/c 9-month-old Meigou ate the first one.) 2005: A ferry saying "Bainbridge Island" from our trip to WA & BC 2006: The Empire State Building commemorating our trip to NYC 2007: Kaelah's 1st Christmas 2008: A trolley from our day in San Francisco (the ones in Hawaii were 4x the price & not as cute) So I guess we get ornaments from our big trips, except for years we don't vacation. What are your special ornaments from?

A little bit of exciting news this evening.   My (Dan's) parents just received their mission call to ... They were called to the Buenos Aires West Mission they report in March.  My father served his mission in Argentina so I'm sure he can't wait to remove all the rust from his Spanish.  My mother, on the other hand, is in for an adventure.  They will be wonderful missionaries, congratulations Mom & Dad.    

While we had the house turned up-side-down, we figured we would had the photo collage we had been talking about for ages. And the fact that Hobby Lobby had frames 50% didn't hurt either. We walked out only spending $15! Talk about cheap makeovers for a wall! Here is a glimpse of where the frame pictured below used to hang. We also decided the orange slip cover we have been eying would go sooo well with the hard wood floors.... And now there are pictures above the sofa where a wooden screen of my grandmother's had been. That wood did not go sooo well with the new flooring. Here's Kaelah showing off the new carpet & how it looks next to the wood. It was our 3rd choice in carpet. We were limited to whatever had been discontinued since allergy friendly carpet is more expensive. Sure, stick it to the people who already don't feel good! We'll see in the spring if any of this helped Kaelah out after all. I'm thinking it will due to the picture found here:...

Kaelah finds her swimming pool much more enjoyable now that there is no water involved. Well, at least I know I didn't waste money on her big birthday present after all. See how she sticks her tongue out when she is concentrating? Dan does too. Climb climb climb. Kaelah love to climb. Kaelah loves to climb anything. Climb climb climb. I really wish I had gotten a picture of her reading one of her scrapbooks in the middle of our counter-top height dinning room table... with yogurt left over from breakfast all over her hands. I have a feeling our little girl will soon be climbing out of her crib! Dan got out the ladder to put up our Christmas lights and that proved to be fun to climb on too. And yes, I let her climb a ladder at 16-months-old. The farthest she ever made it up was the first rung, so I wasn't too worried. At least I pretended not to be. Here's proof 美狗 already knows which human will be most likely to throw the ball when we are doing something like yard...

The mystery of what will happen now that Kaelah can walk in the snow is now solved. She will fake cry because she can't move her hands very well in the attached mittens of her snowsuit (mine when I was a little girl). Meanwhile, 美狗 did what she has always done in the snow -- running around in giant circles as fast as she can! My girls are very different in nature, yes? Kaelah continued to simply watch 美狗 have fun until we went inside. (:

I love living in Colorado. Just last week -- December 2nd -- the weather was so beautiful my parents & I took Kaelah & 美狗 to our favorite lake & had a grand ol' time. Kaelah tried her hardest to hike while my dad & I jogged and the dog swam & ran. Going down hill she held my dad's hand, but eventually and ask to be carried back to where my mom was with the stroller. I was so proud of her for trying! I had to add this picture of 美狗 with her rear off the ground as she runs with the ball. lol.

We had so much fun picking out our Christmas tree. Nothing special like going up in the mountains, but we know we got just the right one for us. Don't you just love the smell of fresh pine in your home? Below Kaelah & Meigou & I in front of the tree after we got the lights on. Kaelah helping Danny with the ornaments. She's taken some of the ornaments off this week, but mostly she's content to carry around the jingle bell ornament my mother bought that says "Baby's 1st Christmas 2007." We have been careful to not to let her see there is water under there, though. We've seen what she can do with the dog's water, & even though we have wonderful new hardwood floors, we don't want to start water play in the living room too. (:

Since we moved out of our first floor right before the holiday, the first order of the day was to put the dinning room table back together. Kaelah "helped" by placing as many nuts as possible in the table while it was up-side-down. She got pretty frustrated when she tried to carry them around in her cart because they kept falling through. The trash can worked well, though. Kaelah & my favorite part of our Thanksgiving dinner was the cranberry apple sauce Barb taught us how to make while we stayed at her house. Anyone have a food mill they don't want? My parents were kind enough to bring over a great Thanksgiving dinner from Boston Market. This made it the most relaxing Thanksgiving I've ever experienced! No traveling, no cooking, and only one load of dishes to worry about. After lunch while Kaelah was sleeping we played Ticket to Ride Europe & then after dinner we played Killer Bunnies. Good times with family: Something to be truly grateful for!

Here are our girls modeling the new hardwood floors! I think you can tell in this picture that it is not a perfect match between the old & new, but it is much harder to see that when you are on the first floor. Anyone have caption ideas for what Meigou is thinking in this shot? Kaelah decided to join me from where I was taking pictures. She was happy to be home! Of course, right after opening up windows we left again and she was happy about that too. (: I couldn't leave out a picture of the stairs between our living room/kitchen & the family room/laundry room. I am absolutely delighted that I will never have to look at that chunk of carpet again. We could never get it clean -- and you should have seen the carpet after it was taken off those stairs! I was threatening to put hardwood in the entire house after seeing that! Alas, I just can't imagine bedrooms without carpeting. BUT... we've already had a couple milk spills & a vomit where there used to be carpet ...