Mama vs. Poultry

Yesterday I came home and Jonathan informed me that Juliana's new phrase of the day was "I like it." He told me that he had given her chicken stir fry for lunch and that she said, "MMMmmm I like it." After hearing this, I turned to Juliana quite proud and said, "Oh, sweetie did you say, "I like it?" Juliana replied... "I like chicken." So I said, "Yay! You like chicken. Good job. Can you say... I love Mama?" and Juliana responded, "I loooove.... chicken."

That, my friends is why you should never ever try to coax small toddlers to say anything.

Denver Zoo

Never fear, Denver zoo pictures are here.... and in a slideshow no less. You thought I forgot, didn't you?

I have to say, it was quite a fabulous zoo trip with several up close encounters of the animal kind. It was so much fun to be able to go with Grandma and Grandpa Whisler (Jonathan's parents) as well as Aunt Lindsay and baby Ethan. You'll see in the slideshow that Ethan throughly enjoyed his first zoo trip ;) Gabriella was a whole lot more excited than she was on her last zoo trip. She didn't even ask if anything was going to eat her. Juliana was totally in her element. That girly LOVES animals. Loves them. Be sure to note the picture of her little check firmly pressed up against the glass and the one of her starting endlessly at the lemur that she fell in love with. That sums up the trip nicely.

The best thing about Grandmas....

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves :)

I'm pretty back logged on my personal photo editing. I have whole days of pictures from the Colorado trip that I haven't even touched! Our summer is off to a great start, but it just seems to be whizzing by. Gabriella and Juliana seem to have fallen into a groove of getting to bed late (probably a combination of staying light longer and us being busier in the evenings etc...) and then sleeping in. Jonathan, who is home with the girls in the mornings now, doesn't mind the sleeping in so much, but the later bedtime means less time for grownups to have to themselves in the evenings. While their bedtime has moved back, my bedtime has moved up. I'm up at 6-6:30am to get to work these days and I'm a need my 8+ hours of sleep kinda girl.

Speaking of sleep, I'm off to bed.

Italics

I love the inherent drama in almost everything Gabriella says. Today I bought Gabriella an American Girls book at the consignment store. We already had a few "Kirstin" American Girl books from Goodwill and today we happened across one we didn't have so I bought it for $1.50.

When we went to read the new book for a bedtime story Gabriella said to me, "Mommy, I'm so very glad we got this book because the old Kirstin books we have are just great, but this one is going to be wonderful! So, thank you. Thank you Mommy, for getting this book for me.

You are so very welcome, my dear

Gabriella and Ethan

Gabriella looooves her new cousin Ethan.




and I have to admit, after watching her carefully hold him and pat him and reflecting on what a great big sister she is... I got a small twinge. I mean, Gabriella really is a great big sister. Maybe, just maybe, someday, in the future... she should have another baby sibling to help love on. Or maybe not, because that would involve me having to actually be pregnant again. And have morning sickness again. And I'm pretty sure I would never make it out of the house with three children to get ready. Either way, we are definately good for now. I'm content to hold other people's small babies. Ones I don't have to be responsible for at 3am.



Ethan seemed to be pretty fond of Gabriella too. He loved watching her and as you can see, she was able to put him right to sleep.

So what did Juliana think of this small cousin? Lets leave it at the fact that she wasn't much impressed. Sure, she liked to pat him and say "niiiiiiiice," but when it came down to it she was not so thrilled with the attention that he pulled away from her small cute self. Especially when he pulled away her Mom and Dad's attention. And especially when her Dad dared to call him by our family pet name for babies..."bubba." Indeed, Juliana was quite ready to remind us that she is still our Bubba.

We're Back!

We're back from Colorado. Did you miss me? Ok, now certainly someone will feel the need to point out that we have in fact been "back" from Colorado for nearly two weeks. Details, details. Anyhow, we enjoyed a great week long stay at Jonathan's parents' home. While we were there we hit up the Denver zoo, Garden of the Gods, climbed up part of Castle Rock, did some shopping and I took some rockin pictures of Jonathan's little sister and her new little guy Ethan. Oh and somewhere in all of that I did a lot of new baby holding. You know me, I never pass up a chance to hold a new baby.

I could give a lot of reason's for my two week post-trip blog haitus like... the start of my summer programs at work, trying to get the kids out of the house and into the sunshine,
all the editing I've been doing on Ethan's pictures... but I suppose that really isn't necessary. Instead, I'll just offer one lone picture of the girls at the Garden of the Gods.

I promise they weren't really perched precariously on a really big rock only inches away from a steep chasm. It just appears that way. Or maybe they really were... It was two and a half weeks ago after all, I can't really remember.

I'll probably have lots more Colorado pictures up in the next week or so. Unless of course I drop off of the face of the earth again.

Bright & Cheerful

Thank goodness I have such a great husband. About a week ago he agreed to my whim of stopping by a little spot that I thought might be a fun photo location for a super quick photo shoot. He helped me wrangle the children a bit, making it possible to actually get a few pictures of... wait for it... both of them together. The time of day wasn't quite great for lighting, but we made do and for such a short impromptu shoot, I thought the results were pretty darn cute. I love the bright colors. These just shout "summer" to me.

Some chubby baby thighs for Aunt Amy....

Gabriella was in quite the silly mood. Here she is pretending to eat Juliana's hair.

Gabriella was also in a very affectionate mood...

LOVE this one...