Washing the Car with Daddy

Our little helper girl loved washing the cars!

Heated Pool

New Can of Worms

Joie and Lexi visited this weekend and opened a new can of worms for Mia. Now she wants to have pretty toes every day!

Entertainment in Every Room

While I get ready for work in the morning, I get a little performance. Mia takes out all of the travel sized bottles from the bottom drawer and lines them up. Then she makes up names and voices and sometimes even other languages for each of them as they talk to each other. She lays them down to bed and tells me when they are crying.

Emailing Daddy

Every day when Daddy goes to work, Mia tells me that she misses "her" daddy and wants to call him. On this day, he was in a meeting, so I let her send him and email. She was very serious about the typing and her fingers were moving all around the keyboard as she told me what she was writing . . . "I love you, Daddy. I miss you." Over and over again.

When I'm Out

Whenever Daddy takes the girls, I get some interesting pictures sent to my phone. This one was titled, "Don't tell Mama, I'm eating ice cream."

We've been big Groupon fans lately, especially since most of the Groupons are locally owned places. We took a chance on Tower Dogs and used our Groupon today for dinner. Their menu is simple, but creative. There are about 10 dogs to choose from, including a vegan chili dog . . . hmmm. Mia got a kid's dog (skinned with ketchup), I got the Californian (with avocado, grilled onions, bacon, and cheddar cheese), Troy got the Pastrami Dog (ewww . . . with pastrami, mozzerella, horseradish, sauerkraut, and pickles), and Ashlee got the Chili Dog (with chili and cheese). I loved mine and so did everyone else, so we'll probably go again. Fun place and always fun to try something new.

Day 2-The Bears

Mia and Ashlee dressed up their bears to go to Pismo. They even strapped them into the back seat!

Day 1-Storytime

Every (almost every) Thursday, Mia and I go to storytime at Petunia's Place. Teacher "Cilla" (Priscilla) is so good with the kids. Each time, she introduces herself and then goes around the room asking each kid's name. Mia used to just suck her thumb and not answer, but in the last few months, she has gotten much more confident and now says her name clearly and boldly! Today, Mia brought her two baby dolls. She told me their names were Chloe and Kelly. She didn't suck her thumb during the entire storytime! She's getting to be such a "big" girl.

Project 365

We'll see how long I last, but I thought I'd give it a try. One picture a day. Yes, I'm starting in the middle of the year, in the middle of the week, but at least I'm starting. I'm hoping to document and share some of our special family moments.

This is What Happens When I'm Gone

While at Marcy's house one day, Troy sent these pictures and messages from his phone.

"Rule #1-If you leave your kids home with Daddy for the evening . . . make sure you give lots of suggestions and activities that can be done while you are away. If not, this can happen."

"Daddy falls victim. This is fun . . . ouch."

Meeting God

Last night, Mia met God. We went to church last night for the beginning of Missions Month and a group from Fresno put on a concert for us with some great singing, dancing, and acting. For one of the skits, a man was dressed in white robes and represented Jesus or God. Mia tuned in to him right away. She pointed at the stage and whispered to me in amazement, "Mama, that's God!" I hadn't told her anything about what they were acting out, so I was surprised that she caught on. Throughout the performance, Mia continued to point and say that man was God. When the performance was over, Mia asked, "Where's God?" She continued to ask as we walked from the sanctuary to The Cafe. We got some cookies and sat down, but she was still asking where God was, so I told her I would find him for her. I went over to one of the performers and told her about Mia and asked her where "God" was. She told me his name was Dominic and she would find him for me. Well, Dominic came over to the table where Mia was sitting and he is not a small man. He towered over us. He had heard the story about how Mia thought he really was God, so he played along and was really sweet. He shook her hand and asked her name and how old she was. My generally shy little girl didn't turn away at all. Normally, when someone asks her name, she hides her face, but she looked right at him and told him her name. She was so taken with him and it was just precious! When he walked away from our table, Mia looked at me with wide, serious eyes, and whispered, "Mama, that was God!" She was beyond excited! I wish I had thought to take a picture of them together! Oh, well. They'll be at church again tomorrow, I think, so maybe I'll try to get a picture then.

Noah

This year at church Mia has a really neat teacher who creates her own curriculum. The focus is on Noah, with each lesson teaching an element of the story. From August until December, Mia learned many things about Noah. So naturally, when she saw the Christmas decorations start to appear in the stores, she thought that Santa must be . . .

We were driving home from church and passed a Christmas tree lot where they had just put up a very large blow-up Santa. Mia took one look at that long white beard and said, "That's Noah! Hi, Noah!" and started waving furiously.

Well, I wasn't about to correct her because I thought it was about the cutest thing I've ever seen. So for the entire month of December, Mia continued to call Santa, Noah. She waved at him and called his "name", but like every child, she was pretty scared of him. We saw him at Cobb's when we went to get our tree, but she almost cried when he came close. Toward the end of December, Marcy took the kids down Candy Cane Lane to see the lights and managed to convince Mia to let Noah hold her for one picture. At first, Marcy had to hold her to get close enough, but after thinking about it for a while, Mia decided to let "Noah" hold her.