Mischief

My friend Kristy was over with her kids. We were all playing outside and then the kids went in to the play room. Kristy and I decided to stay outside for a few minutes and enjoy the quiet and nice weather. We were only out there for 5 minutes or so when I heard something. I went in to find Mary sitting on top of the kitchen table reaching into our glasses, pulling out the ice and eating it.

Now Mary says "ice" really well. It is one of her favorite snacks to have, crushed and in her highchair :)

Happy Birthday Murray!

Murray celebrated his 26th Birthday on Tuesday! Mary and I put a special note in his lunch, we went to dinner and had his favorite BBQ chicken pizza (I don't know what it is with pizza and this month!) and we came home for dessert and presents.

Murray is a great husband and father! Mary adores her daddy! He is so good at spending time with her playing and teaching her new things. Mary runs to the door when daddy gets home! She kisses his picture on my cell phone throughout the day too!

Murray is my absolute best friend! I love him soooooooooooooo much!

Happy Birthday Murr!

Thank you Heather for the delicious boston cream pie and cool candles!

Making Pizza

This week we went with our Moms' group to the Memphis Pizza Cafe to make pizza! They were so nice to let the kids make a cheese pizza and even a calzone! The kids went into the kitchen (past the giant hot stove that scared me to death) to wash their hands. Then they all took turns making the pizza. Mary thought it was pretty cool.

Helping make the pizza.
Watching with friends.
Eating! Yum Yum!

Video of Mary at 19 Months

Here's a video of Mary showing off how smart and fun and cute she is. Some of the highlights include: walking backwards, laughing, running around, playing ring-around-the-rosies, saying words ("Mary", "Dada", "Mama", "funny", "again", "where are you", "hooray", "baby"), making animal sounds, doing the actions to children's songs, pointing to body parts, spinning, and being cute.

We love the video, so I had to post it even though it is 10 minutes long. I'm sure the grandparents will love it since they live 1800 miles away and don't get to see Mary very often. Enjoy!!

Twinkies

Murray got Mary dressed the other day. He tried to prepare me by telling me from the other room that Mary's outfit looked a little funny. When I came to take a look we all couldn't stop laughing. I ran to our room and put on the same thing! We had to take pictures! Mary and I look pretty similiar these days with round tummies and chubby bodies.

Toes

It was another late night for Mary and I. I pulled out some crayons and paper for her while I worked on labeling her toy bins. Mary took the crayons and put them in her toes! Funny girl!

This week Mary has said "Bye you guys" to her friends when we were leaving the park and "Daddy where are you" when we got in the van to start our day (he left before she woke up). I love witnessing her first words and sentences, it is so exciting!

Apple Picking

I started a Moms group in our ward and last week was our first week of activities. We went to visit a new park and tried story time at a library. They were both a lot of fun. Then we got brave and ventured 45 minutes away to an orchard to pick apples. When we got there the apples we intended to pick were already gone and the apples we could pick were pretty tastless and not ripe anyway. We decided to pick peaches. It was the most humid day I have experienced while here as you can tell in our pictures. Mary had fun running around the orchard with her friend Jacob. I found them sitting in some tall grass together eating peaches. It was so sweet!

Spinach Anyone?

I have been trying out recipes in a cookbook that purees vegetables and puts them in the recipes. I feed Mary vegetables that are visible but this was something I wanted to try. I have had pizza with spinach before and it was yummy. I saw this recipe for pizza with a layer of spinach and it was so easy. Murr and I liked it and Mary gobbled it up too!

These are whole wheat pitas with the spinach on top.
Then a layer of pizza sauce.
Say "cheese"
10 minutes in the oven and "ta da"
She loves it!

Ben & Carolyn

Ben and Carolyn Johnston are our wonderful neighbors across the street. Mary loves to point across the way and say "Ben, see Ben" at least a few times every day and sometimes more. These past two weeks they were in Russia and we would tell Mary "Ben is in Russia." When they came home Mary was excited to see them. As soon as we stepped inside their house Mary pulled me over to this cabinet Carolyn filled with bubushca nesting dolls just for her. I was amazed Mary remembered where it was after two weeks and only after playing in it twice.

Mary loves wearing this hat!
This is Mary with Ben and Carolyn. They brought her back a set of her very own Bubushca dolls from Russia. They are so thoughtful and nice!

Goodbye Silvia! Hello Ruby!

We sold one of our cars last week. It really was my car and I was pretty sad to sell it because I can be sentimental and I started to think of how we brought Mary home from the hospital in it etc. But I cheered up a few days later when we bought our new van. It is a 2005 Toyota Sienna. I love it and Mary loves it too! Yes, we name our cars and I know it's a little dorky.

August 2008 Slideshow

Go to August 2008 Pictures

Silliness!

Murray had some late nights at school last week because it was his first week back. So just the girls were home and things got a little silly. Mary pulled these shorts out of her drawer and wore them on her head for at least an hour around the house while we played. She cracks me up!

The lamb she is about to kiss was in my room all my life! My Mom's name is Mary and she received the lamb as a present at a baby shower she had while expecting me! "Mary had a little lamb". Mary calls it "baaa".

Last day of Summer!

We celebrated or last day of summer together as a family and it was great! We finished up some last minute projects like finishing the kitchen chairs (yea Murr), working in the garage (yikes), finishing a shelf in the toy room and adding a shelf in our closet (which is amazing). These things make me so happy.


We tried to balance out the day and had our friends the Fishers over for dinner and fun! We had a great BBQ meal and ice cream cones, which the kids really enjoyed and to be honest the adults too :)

My Little Cutie Pie

Here are a few reasons why Mary is so cute (and some pictures to prove it):



A couple of months ago we taught Mary how to "honk" a nose. She learned quickly and would pinch our noses and say "honk". Well, lately we have been teaching her animal sounds and using a picture book with all kinds of animals. When we got to the goose, I told her that the goose says "honk" and she immediately understood. She pinched the nose of the goose and said honk and then started pinching all the animals noses and saying honk. I am still working on explaining that only the goose says honk and you don't have to pinch it's nose.

I also taught Mary the classic name rhyming song that goes: "Mary Mary bow-berry, banana-fanna fo-ferry..." Mary loves it and will say "Mama" or "Dada" because she wants us to do our names too. So we go through and sing it for everybody's name. Well, when we taught her the song "Mary had a little lamb" she recognized her name in the song and thought it was the same kind of game. She wanted us to put our names in the song so Mama and Dada could have a little lamb also.

Mary has recently learned to love kisses. Whenever I give Margaret a kiss, Mary insists I give her a kiss as well. And when I hug Margaret, Mary usually joins in and makes it a family group hug. Here is a picture of Mary giving a tender kiss to her baby doll. What a sweetheart!

Mary is great because she loves to put her toys away after she plays with them. She also insists after every meal that she give her plate to Mama to be washed (She won't give it to me for some reason). She also loves to throw trash away in the garbage can. She even likes to get her own diaper when she needs to be changed. And perhaps cutest of all, when it is time to go somewhere, she will search the house to find my shoes and bring them to me, find Margaret's shoes and give them to her, and then find her own shoes. We think Mary is a great helper and a perfect little girl. I hope our next baby is as sweet and precious as Mary.

"We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo..."(Raffi song)

This week has been so great because Murray took the week off work so we could take a family vacation, at home! He starts school tomorrow and we wanted to spend time together and get things done. We made a list of good things to accomplish around the house and fun things to do as a family. It has been really great :)



One of our fun activities was going to the zoo. Memphis has a really nice zoo! We had the greatest time!

A chicken was wandering around in the farm area and walked right up to Mary. Mary didn't like that and told the chicken "no, no, no" and ran to Mom for protection. It was really cute.

Mary and Daddy in front of the elephants. Murray made his famous elephant sound and it was so authentic the people around us thought it was the elephants!

Mary loved when we let her out of her stroller so she could walk around and look at whatever she wanted to.

Mary and Mama on a nice cow. This was one animal Mary was willing to get close to.

The lioness was so close we could have touched it through the bars, but we didn't.

We were just in time to see a new zoo animal hatch. It's definitely the cutest animal around.