Photoshoot

Thanks to the help of a friend of mine, today we were able to do a photoshoot of my daughters and my niece. It was such a blast! Afterwards, she took the copies to to some photoshopping at home, and I used my iPhotos on my computer to tweak them. I was please with the results after playing with a few pictures, and I was able to upload them all to my Facebook. Here are some of my favorites.

videos.

Been meaning to upload some videos. This was Evan in the Nicu when she was born. Dec. 4th 2010.

Evan's first meal back in May I think...

Mele's 4th birthday, she got a killer bike :-)

Random update.

Mele, my ever helpful daughter. My girlie girl who wears dress up clothes, and plays in the mud. My girlie tomboy. 

It's been two ish months since I updated. We have moved across the country and settled in, finally! We have a killer house in an old military housing community from - get this - 1947. It's amazing. We have original wood flooring from then, and a WALL of windows. The wall is the length of 3 sliding glass doors. It's so cool. There are also windows above, so it really makes you feel like you're in a bigger space just because you can see the backyard, which isn't huge, but it still tricks to mind. LOVE it.

Me and my babies. <3

We acquired a few really cool things from craigslist. Love it forever! Scored on some sweet rugs for 80 bucks, one is HUGE, it covers the entire living room! I painted a wall "Tibetan Orange" one day when I was bored. This place is cool. They don't care as long as you paint it white once you move out.

Colin got a sweet desk for free for his studies. He began his classes last month and is thriving under his new professors. He loves them, and they really like him. We figured out that finishing his MDIV will take about a year longer than we anticipated. We don't care, however, because we met some really amazing people through our new church and we fit like a glove with them. I haven't been so filled in a long time. I am grateful for the support group they make, and how I can text them at a moment's notice when I need prayer. I am thanking God everyday for providing friends to us so quickly here.

I'm still stay at home supermom (thus supersamuls domain name. WHAT UP.) I've tried my hand at lasagna. TWICE. It has been a success both times. I has happy tummy. I just clean up after the kids, play with my babies, and do mom-ish things all the time. I lurv it. There is nothing sweeter to me than being able to stay at home with my kids and know they're being well cared for.

Colin is working his butt off to provide for us so I can be home with the girls, and for this I am also very grateful. God is revealing to me everyday how blessed I am to be with him. I could never have asked for more. He is a wonderful father to my girls, and leader to me.

This is what happens when we run, kids.

Mele is 4 years 4 months now. How time flies. She had an accident recently. She fell square on her mouth at Chipotle grill..apparently they don't know what non slip rugs do in front of garbage cans, or they would have had them *shakes fist* Mele knocked her tooth out of place (not out!) and it bled everywhere, and we had to rush her to the ER. Thankfully we were out with friends for lunch after church, so I was able to leave Evan with my friend whose baby is the same age as her, and know she would be well cared for. Mele didn't end up losing her tooth, nothing terrible came of it, in fact we found out she just bit really hard into her lip and pushed her tooth in like a centimeter. The ligament that was pulled loose retightened itself and pulled the tooth back into almost perfect place. I'm so glad that she's okay, and that she didn't lose her tooth.

Mele all ready for her first ballet lesson!

Mele is picking up Ballet lessons. She started last week and LOVED it. She did really well for her first time, and enjoyed being in a group of her peers. She's always either hung out with children way older than her, or way younger than her. So I think she really enjoyed being with them.

My niece, Akashia is with us for a week. My sister in law was hard pressed to find a sitter in lieu of some family stuff, so I have her for the week. The kids are getting along pretty well...and being super naughty..playing in the toilet, peeling paint off of poles...muddying themselves up, screaming fights over who pinched who, but at the end of the day, glorious joy! They go to sleep together and look like matching cherubs passed out from a hard day of play. Really though, I do love watching them run in circles all over the house and giggle incessantly. Another longing in my heart for my child being fulfilled. I was the first to have kids in my family, and I'm happy to announce that my brother married a great girl who has a beautiful daughter who just turned three! So I am excited for Mele to have a cousin close in age to herself. Mele is such a tattletale though..my word.

Evan and Ali. Born 11 days apart :-)

Mele makes a great babysitter. She loves my friend Becca's house, and it's not the largest house by any means, but we love going over there, so to get away from the ruckus, we will go outside to talk and let the kids play inside and watch movies. Mele watches the babies, all of a sudden, the door opens, and Mele goes,"your baby is crying!" or "your baby is hungry" "your baby pulled my HAIR!" it's hilarious. She is my big helper.

Evan is 10 months old now..holy crap man! She can stand up on her own for 15 seconds. I can't believe how massively huge she has gotten. She has such a stinker face too. She knows when she is being naughty and just grins over it.

She was so proud. First day standing.

Evan has a total of 6 teeth now. two on bottom. four on top...and they HURT. She may even be teething for two more bottom ones right now. woooo.

She still wakes up in the middle of the night for a bottle...or two, but she is a good sleeper otherwise. Her and Mele share a room now and their beds are in an L shape, Evan will crawl into the corner near Mele's head and sleep as close to her sissy as she can get. It's so precious. Evan is not a huge cuddlier..she pushes you away if you try to hug her. She's little miss independent. I love that about her, she is self entertaining and will just disappear into her room to play with her toys and suddenly, I realize she's not in the room anymore, and she'll be sitting on the floor in her room just blabbering away and banging her toys on the ground. YAY!

Evan crawls like a boss. She has gotten so fast, it's ridiculous, if there was a way to run with crawling, she figured it out. She gets from point a to point b so quickly, it's ridiculous.

Evan recently discovered the toilet, and the joys of splashing water everywhere. I have to close the door, but she's so excited to discover new things.

Evan's happy face, just missing a nose wrinkle.

Decidedly, her favorite word is "dada" she says it all day everyday with hardly any variations, but she knows who daddy is. One day she bonked her head, and just cries out in this pathetic voice,"Da-DEEEEEEEEEE" and bawls. It was precious and sad at the same time.

Evan loves bath time.

Evan is not a huge laugher. She giggles and has this old man laugh that I don't get. There are no gleeful giggles and belly laughs. They are rare at best. I'm still trying to figure that one out. She's happy, no doubt about it, and comfortable anywhere she goes. She's my little cabbage patch baby. I love her fat cheeks. She inherited some lovely dimples too. I guess a good contribution was in order to make up for the ears LOL. When Evan was born my sister said,"that child's ears were born to be gauged!" I died laughing.

Evan loves to eat. She eats a ton of real food now, and demands it once she's had a bite of adult food. She screams at me if I don't give it to her fast enough. She weighs in at about 20 pounds now. Mele didn't hit that til she was over a year old. Mele is my bean pole, and Evan is my little chunk. She's got this long torso that is totally fat, and these little stubby legs.

OH. Her eyes are decidedly Hazel. They're like a cloudy storm over the ocean...kinda greenish brownish blueish grayish. They're ISH colored. hehe.

Evan is also very photogenic, and our friends at church love taking pictures of her and tweaking them. I love this one. :-)

Evan

Evan is officially 8 months old, and has crossed the United States twice already! She did amazing on our trip, what a little trooper! I wound up sitting in the back with the kids to keep them entertained and that kept them happier.

Evan cut her first tooth the last day of our trip, which was Monday Aug. 1st. Her second tooth soon followed on Aug 5th. YAY! She makes funny new faces that have to do with her teeth. She likes to run her tongue on them, and looks like an old man when she sucks her gums together. It's hilarious. She looks like a chipmunk with nuts in her cheeks!

Evan is still learning to crawl, she still army crawls and does a few crawls regular but is just a bit lazy.

Yesterday I said hi to Evan, and my sister had her and she went,"MAMA! mmmm, maaa!" haha it was so cute. She was looking right at me. I know she did it on purpose and I have heard her a few times today saying it.

Evan loves to stand up, don't you dare put her on her butt unless you want to hear her throw a tantrum. I can't believe how big she's gotten. She can pull herself to standing on her own now, and is quite proud of herself. I wouldn't be surprised if she was walking before her first birthday.

Evan is still a little fish in water. She loves to swim and splash. She gets so excited everytime she sees a big body of water, I just can't stand it! TOO cute! Today we went to the Marina in Sparks and Evan sat in about 3 inches of water and had a blast. The water was too cold for me, and it stank a bit..haha. but Evan loved it, and she had her first mud pie, to my dismay. She cried when I would splash water on her hands and wash the mud away. Pill. Already exerting her will.


We went out for sushi, and Colin's dad was holding this for her. LOL... We're trying to wean her off the bottle. ;-)

Mele

Mele is 4 years, 1 month old now. She has been doing school for two weeks. I found some cool little textbooks at target of all places, along with flash cards with sight words, and a white board for tracing letters and numbers on, and writing stories and drawing pictures. It's so much fun, and Mele is eager to learn and excelling with it all. She was tracing her letters A-L for two weeks and copying them, and the third day she put a line through the guide arrow where it shows her where to start, and she told Colin that she couldn't do it because it was "locked". He couldn't argue her logic, so she got out of tracing her letters for the day. Hysterical.
Today, Mele had a test and had to write the letters next to the words without tracing them..well, she did it, and I discovered that she was tracing the letters and then erasing them after writing her own. HA! This kid is so smart, I tell ya. She is doing her sight word test right now, and aced it, and is using the words in sentences, and she's actually singing.. Colin said,"homeschool: the musical!" It's awesome.
I feel really good about Mele being home and learning. I have control over what goes into her brain, and what doesn't. Children as young as kindergarten now have to learn about "gay history" in California and that irritates me. Why give them a sex education at such a young age? Do they learn about straight history? Are the sexual orientations of every person in history now going to be listed so there is no confusion? WHO CARES!? it's a sexual preference that is irrelevant to learning. I have a huge problem with this because I don't think it's anyone's business but mine to tell my child about sexuality, and in it's biblical context at that. No one will be throwing condoms out at my child and telling her to practice safe sex. Kids don't need a license to be stupid, they need guidance and rules. BAH! K, end rant. Public school systems are corroded with crap that doesn't need to be in my child's head. This is my opinion and right for my family, if yours is different, very well then, but I'm not interested.

Okay....oops, anyway, Mele is ever singing about everything she sees, or learns. She is into a "like mommy" phase right now where whenever I fix my hair, she wants hers the same as mine, which is so cute. I love it.

We saw baby raccoons outside the other day while Mele was on the phone with my dad, and she was so distracted by them. There were two and their mother was nowhere in site and Mele swore up and down that they had escaped from the Dora zoo. She is so funny, it never ceases to amaze me.

Mele likes to talk about how big she is. She thinks she can do anything now. The other day she said,"mommy, look how long my legs are! I'm really big!" Everything big suits her. She's growing up so fast. What happened to my chubby little baby?


She's been helping me clean the house and do the laundry, folding it and putting it away, she helps me measure out ingredients for food. She is getting a rounded education and nothing feels more satisfying to me at this moment.


I still can't get over how good a sister Mele is to Evan. I've heard of kids having issues after being an only child for years, but this girl took to being a big sister like water, and I constantly rejoice in their two faces playing so well together despite their age gap. They lay on the floor close to each other and watch tv, or play with toys, and talk to each other. Mele crawls around her to show her how to crawl. It fills my heart with joy at her beautiful spirit.


Not only is Mele a good sister, but she is very sweet with other children and makes friends quickly and age never matters to her, like Miss Olivia from a pizza night a couple nights ago! She is gentle and comes to me first before trying to handle something that upsets her herself. I have no idea how she came to be so sweet, but I am thankful that she has good manners and a sweet spirit. She's a sinner, for sure with her tantrums every now and then, but totally great otherwise.


I love to hear Mele praying at night. She doesn't quite grasp it, but her prayers are just so simple and pure. She talks about Jesus and God, and learns her catechism, and loves to read the bible with Colin at night.

Life is good, and Mele is a wonderful child that I am so blessed to have as my firstborn. She has a very special place in my heart for all that we went through together, and has thrived in spite of it all.

Evan

Evan looks just like baby Tarzan.

Well, miss Evan is 7 months old now. As of the 4th of July.

We spent the weekend up at the cottage in Tawas with Colin's parents. We had such a blast! Evan was so cute while we were there, entertaining us with her attempts at crawling, and rolling all over the place, and being a happy baby who is the apple of everyone's eye. She was super adorably dressed at the parade on the 4th too..hehe. she's giving a salute!



She began sitting up on Mele's 4th birthday, and has been quite impressed with herself ever since.

Evan is currently cutting her two bottom teeth, and I'm thinking they'll come in just in time for us to move, or while we are traveling. Pray that it's before if you can, I can't imagine driving 3000 miles with a teething baby!

Evan can do the caterpillar! She sticks her behind in the air, and pulls her knees up, goes down on her face and pushes forward! It's so funny to watch! She army crawls a little bit and is getting better and better at her attempts everyday. She is quite mobile.


She is also my water baby! I wish I had pictures of this, but the water at the pool has been about 80-85 and it's perfect for babies to swim in! Evan enjoys kicking around in the water and having us all play together, the smile on her face just makes me all warm and giddy. I think we have a swimmer on our hands! We also went to the beach at the cottage on the fourth of July and Evan got to stick her feet in the sand, and swim in the waves with me. The water was a bid colder, but she enjoyed it nevertheless. I couldn't believe how well she does in water. I have her go under every now and then to get a sense of holding her breath by blowing on her face. She's never under more than half a second, but she handles it well most of the time.

Evan does this mannish grunting thing like she's yelling at you when you take something from her or she's entertained by something, It's hysterical.. She has found her voice. I swear she has the most obnoxious cry I have ever heard. Mele's was just all cute and sweet, but when Evan cries I want to cut my ears off. BLAH!


Yesterday while I was in the kitchen, Mele and Evan were playing in the living room, I moved the ottoman by the slider so they have a big play space in the living room now, it's awesome, can't believe I didn't do it before now! Anyway, I hear Mele teasing Evan and coaxing her somehow, and suddenly both her and Evan were giggling and laughing at each other and squealing. I love hearing them laugh together. They will for sure have a bond even though their age difference is pretty substantial I think.

We are back to cloth diapering, and while I do like it, I feel like Evan is just too chunky for them already! So weird! She must weigh 18 pounds by now, and is a little plump thing. So maybe I need to figure out how to make them work, she's soaking through them at an alarming rate.

Evan is my little sweetheart who loves a good snuggle, as long as nothing else is going on, she is so curious!

Mele's 4th birthday!

I am so terrible at posting monthly updates in a timely fashion! I have an excuse, however. We are running ourselves ragged every weekend to Detroit, or Canton Ohio and the Cottage to squeeze in as much visiting time as possible!

Mele's birthday week (yes that's right. Week.) started with my Papa and Grammie sending Mele birthday money, I allowed her to open the card. She had birthday money from them, so we decided to go dress shopping for Mele. Mele has all these winter dresses that she wears to death and I decided she needed to wear more summer appropriate dresses and so off to Wal-Mart we went (I needed to feel like I was out west again, I guess) and Mele has been having a purple kick so everything seh purchased was purple. She was a happy girl. She also bought Gnomeo and Juliet. CUTEST movie ever! Happy camper.

On Saturday we were going to drive up to Detroit to commence the birthday activities at Colin's parents house, and Mele wanted a frog cake desperately for her birthday, so I spent most of the day baking cakes. Why did it take all day you might ask? Well, because I only had one cake pan, and I needed to bake four cakes. It took about 3 1/2 hours in all, and one cake was destroyed in the process.



When we got to Detroit, Ann had Mele's new bike at the ready for Mele. It was in the shed and we had made a plan to do a scavenger hunt to find it. There is a 5 minute video that I need to upload. She had a blast doing that, and was very excited to get her new bike! It's a tinkerbell bike as you can see, with a matching helmet with a button to push so it twinkles, and the bike makes "sparkle" noises (if sparkles ever had a noise this would be it!)

Ann and I spent HOURS decorating the frog cake, I got a bee in my bonnet about making a cake with jello for a pond and decided it must be done! This is why I had wanted so many cakes, in case I screwed them up. The cake ended up being three layers, one with a hole carved into most of it and the jelly, half set up in the mixing bowl poured into it later, with frosting as a barrier.

On Sunday we went to Ann's mom and dad's house for father's day, as well as a party for Mele, and she made out like the cute little bandit she is. She had stars in her eyes over her birthday cake and we wound up singing to her and she made a wish..I asked her what her wish was and she responded with, " I wished that everyone would sing to me again!" haha so sweet, so we lit the candles and sang one more time. She made another wish and I think it was that she wanted to be able to celebrate everyone's birthdays with them. I love this child. She also decided to sing some lovely made up songs about everything you threw her way and entertained us all for the better part of the afternoon!

Sunday night when we got home, Mele got to open up her present from my Aunt Kelli and her family, as there were jammies (I assume the ladybug outfit was jammies?) so I could coax her to go to bed since we were going to the zoo in the morning! Oh hooray she was so excited for the zoo!

Monday morning, the actual birthday (see why it's birthday week?) Mele got to open up all the rest of her presents. It was so good that she got to open presents up over 3 days, there were so many I think she was overwhelmed. Lots of pool toys..a slip n slide, a frog aquarium from my mom, a LOT of dresses (she's so happy!) and of course money.

Mele wore a frog outfit to the zoo from my aunt, and we had such a blast there.

Mele was so excited to see a hippo! She bought some pink binoculars from a souvenir shop there and was able to check things out at a distance. there were some electric dinosaur things, an exhibit and she was terrified of them and screaming. It was funny..to me...the crazy mean mom. lol. She whined all day about wanting to take the train ride, which we didn't do until the end and I was so thankful that we walked to the back of the park and could ride back to the front..we were exhausted at the end. Mele also got her face painted into a giraffe while we waited for the next train to show up..she there she is on the train!

The butterfly exhibit was so neat, Mele got to host a butterfly on her arm for a minute that had just come out of the "hatchery room" as I have dubbed it, not knowing officially what it's called. I also put it on Evan's head. hehe...


Mele ended the day playing on the slip n slide in the light rainy evening, and had a complete blast for her 4th birthday. It was very nice overall.

Mele is currently learning ABC's on flash cards and making the sounds that go with it, and plays a matching game since there's two of each letter..it's pretty cool. She's getting the hang of it. I think the next step will be writing things, and then putting sounds together and learning those rules..and finally, READING! YAY!