School Girl

We have a big girl in our house now. Mirielle started preschool at the beginning of September and she loves it!

She was pretty excited about going. I was pretty excited about her going. I think we were both ready for her to start school.

Mirielle is our social butterfly. She loved the Philippines because she (almost always) loved all of the attention she got. Wherever we went she ended up with an entourage following her around stores and restaurants. She was friendly to start with but I think her early years in the PI drew out the extrovert in her all the more.

She makes friends at the McDonalds' play land or in the airport or at the grocery store. This girl is always looking for a friend. Always looking for someone to talk to!

Preschool has been such a wonderful thing for her. She loves the new friends she has made and seems to be learning lots these days. She even surprised me the other day by writing her name out all by herself (I thought that was pretty impressive considering the length of her name!).

The first day of school was easy. We loaded up her backpack with some snacks, took a few pictures and when we got her into the classroom she recognized one of the girls from church, ran over to join her playing at the doll house, posed for one more picture and then released me and never looked back. Later that day she told me, "Mom, I didn't even miss you!" What a girl!

Totally Two

happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear Kellan
happy birthday to you!

Kellan turned 2 years old on the 9th. It seemed like it was about time for him to be 2. Every time I would check him in to nursery at church the last few weeks, it just didn't seem right to write down his age as 1.

He is still our big bruiser. 10 pounds at birth and he hasn't given up much of his size since then. So glad I'm not where I was 2 years ago! He is running at full speed these days and is all boy.


I love this little man like crazy. I can't get enough of him in the mornings because he will let me sit and snuggle him on the couch for a long time while we watch cartoons together. Love that! Don't think that I will ever be ready to give that up.

Kellan is our sweet sensitive guy with his own little bull headed twist. We love watching him grow and can't wait to see more of his character develop this year. We're still waiting for more words to come out of his mouth to discover what is rolling around in that head of his. He is getting more of a chance to talk for himself now that his big sister is in preschool :-)

We love you Kellan!

Fall is Here!

This time of year takes some serious restraint on my part. I think fall might be my favorite time of year. I love the falling leaves and the cool air, but anything that has to do with pumpkin calls my name.

I love pumpkins on the steps to our front door, I LOVE pumpkin spice candles that make my house smell like I am baking a pumpkin pie (which is my favorite!) but I can hardly resist those pumpkin spice lattes!! And since they are seasonal, I feel occasionally obligated to indulge before they are gone until next year. :-)

I'd like some legos and a gun to go with that!

We love living here in Spokane. We've heard many people refer to Spokane as being the "biggest small town" around. It is, however, that small town feel that sometimes strikes us big city kids as a bit peculiar.

Yesterday we went to look for a present for Kellan's birthday next week. We went to one of the bigger hobby stores in town that we heard has great prices on toys. This 'hole in the wall' store did in fact have some good deals but shopping at the store wasn't exactly like a trip to Target or ToysRUs.

What surprised this city girl is that you enter the store through the gun department which smack dab in the front of the store. I guess I can see how the store doesn't want to drag serious hunters through aisles of toys, however, it was kind of weird walking into the store to be greeted by a wall lined with boxes of bullets in our pursuit of Thomas the Train.

Maybe that is typical of most hobby shops and I just don't know it since I usually buy most everything at Target. Sometimes though it is things like that that leave me feeling like a foreigner even around here!

What happens when you blink

We opened our dishwasher the other day to find this:



You may be thinking, "What in the world is that??"

Which is exactly what we were thinking.

We couldn't figure out what would cause such a horrible mess until we found....

the wrapper of one of those gigantic little kids crayons (you know that kind that are 3 times the size of a regular crayon?).

Yeah, fun.

Let just say that it took a lot of work to get that out of the dishwasher.

I guess when you have little kids around, crayons in the dishwasher is the kind of thing that can happen when you take the time to blink!