Lisa, Gracie, Anna and Tim

Well, we've officially moved out of Rock Springs WY! We now live in Billings MT. For the next 6 weeks or so we will be living in an efficiency suite at an extended stay hotel. We've decided that efficiency suite is fancy talk for regular hotel room with a kitchen thrown in! The girls and I are quickly figuring out how to make our days go by.

So far we've decorated the sidewalk outside with beautiful chalk drawings, gone mall walking- visited daddy's 'new work', shopped at Target (we have a target minutes away, not hours!), have walked laps around the hotel just to enjoy the beautiful weather we are having, and we ride the 'elagator' (Gracie talk for elevator) many times a day!

Gracie and Anna are doing very well. Thanks to Tim's ingenuity Gracie has her own sectioned off portion of the room. This makes all the difference at bedtime because she can't see us. Yet another perk of photography equipment :) I am looking forward to getting to know the town better, I know there are lots of things to do here and I can't wait to find out what they are!

Alas, there aren't any pictures with this post due to the fact that we have no memory card...somehow both of the memory cards got packed and are buried in a box hidden in the depths of a storage unit. I have the camera so when I remember to buy another card, we'll be in good shape :)

Yesterday was Anna's blessing. It was a neat day for our family and we got to share it with my sister and her family as well as my grandparents. We were so glad they could make it and loved the time we had with them!

I love blessing days and dressing my special baby in a beautiful white gown with sweet little white shoes was wonderful! Earlier this week I realized Anna didn't have a nice blanket for Sunday...sooo...I made one out of white satin and pink minky. I think it completed the blessing outfit ensemble!

Anna with her great grandparents Nana and Papa before church

Our little family at church

Anna in her blessing dress on her new blanket (she isn't thrilled that I insisted on taking pictures before feeding her!)

Well, Gracie is 2- as of April 3rd (life has been a little crazy lately so this is a bit delayed)!! It is amazing how fast those years can go. I remember taking her home from the hospital and marveling at all the cute faces she made in her sleep.

Now I marvel at how big she is getting and how sweet she is in her toddler bed, all the fun things she can do, and how many silly things she does each day that make me laugh out loud! Some of the fun things she is doing include: starting to count- 7,8,9- are her favorite, seeing her name written and saying the letters, playing with her dolls and changing their diapers, wrestling with her daddy (as well as stuffed animals), and dancing & jumping (which strangely look the same :)! She loves nursery, story time at the library, and eating the crunch berries out of Captain Crunch! She is the life blood of our home and we love her so much!!

We started the festivities with a little Easter egg hunt- Gracie and her little cousin weren't as interested in finding the eggs as they were opening the eggs and collecting the candy :)
Here they are on the stairs with their assorted egg collecting bags

My sister and 2 of her kiddos came to help us celebrate this fun occasion and we loved having them there

Here is Gracie's cake, thank heavens for store made cakes when life is a little out of hand!

And this is the birthday banner her older cousin made, I love it and so did Gracie!

By the time we got to eating cake, Gracie was a little tired and suprisingly she wasn't overly interested in eating it...This is Gracie decorated with the frosting, a little help from her cousin and she looked great!

So I've been sitting here looking at friends blogs when I realized that it's dinner time! I ask Gracie (who is happily dressing her dolls on the floor next to me) if she's hungry. Her response? "All Done!" I asked her what she's all done with, and she replies-" all done food!" Just to make sure, I asked, "are you all done with food?" She says, with a grin on her face, "yeah!" Silly girl doesn't want to eat and I'm sure it is due to the fact that she is too busy playing :)

Family, originally uploaded by eyenology.

Perks of being a former owner of a portrait studio: the ability to do family photos in your garage any time you want.

Well, Anna Marie arrived, a little early, but she's doing GREAT!! She came on February 25th 7:43 pm 5.5 lbs 19 in long. It took us a few days to name her, and the name fits!

Gracie is loving her (for the most part), when we finally got home today she looked at the car seat and says "Anna!" with a cute grin on her face. Already she likes to hold her and give her kisses.

We spent 5 days in the hospital...the hospital gets boring really quickly I found! After 5 days of nothing to do, I'm feeling incredibly recovered from the delivery, a good side effect of the long term stay. They wanted to keep Anna a little longer for her bili ruban level and make sure she can maintain weight. She lived in a little tent thing with the bili lights on her for 24 hours and got to wear these funny infant sunglasses. The glasses were too big so the nurses held them on with some gauze- see the pics. We're all home and happy to be here :) Grandma is here for a couple of weeks, I don't know who is more happy about this- Gracie or me!

-Lisa

I have been feeling really unready for the coming of our new baby. The first step we took to be prepared was getting Gracie out of her crib and into a toddler bed. Well, she LOVED her new bed and hasn't gone back to her crib to sleep since we set the bed up!

Gracie and daddy reading her favorite bedtime story

After that, nothing happened for weeks. Then all of a sudden I got a wild hair about painting and we talked about the possibility for a few days before I left town :( When I left, so did the hope of painting the girls' room...oh well. When I got back home, I had Tim's mom with me and mentioned my wild hair to her (she is a wonderful grandma who is ready to help in any project!) and she set it in motion. We talked about how to rearrange the room, what colors to paint, and went to the store! Needless to say, thanks to Grandma Robison, the room is adorable! She spent her last days with us painting, and left us with a beautiful room :)

Before

After

Gracie was an absolute angel during the painting. She was content to play in the crib with some toys for hours on end for the 3 days we painted!

I'm not a decorator, but here are the few things we have on the walls...

I had this picture in my room from the time I was a little girl

Tim's mom gave the plate to me when I had Gracie, someone gave it to her in hopes that she would have a little girl...well she had 7 boys

A dear friend in Rexburg made these blocks for Gracie, they are so cute!

And here is a new favorite feature of the room- Gracie's toy corner! She has her kitchen to play with and the toys in the closet.

Unrelated to the new room, Gracie loves to play peek-a-boo in her closet. It makes me laugh every time she goes in one side and pops out the other saying "BOOO!"

Peek

a-BOO

With the painting done and everything back in the room I have been able to begin getting ready for the baby...Gracie came at 37 1/2 weeks. If this baby follows suit I could have a new born in 4 WEEKS!! It's a good thing nesting has set in, I'm going to need the motivation to clean and put my house together :)

Today was a day of resolve. I took Gracie's binky away for good. She has had it only for sleeping for a while now, but today I decided to get rid of it for good! After her nap we said good bye to the binky and it disappeared.

All was well until bed time when she was requesting it as usual...

She still snuggled up to me while we sang and rocked, but there was a lot of chatter where silence usually reigned. Then I put her in bed and instead of laying right down, she held her head up as she felt around the crib for the missing binky- so sad. At first she just talked and played with her stuffed animals and pj's. Then she started to whine and whimper a little. I went in to lay her back down and she again requested her binky and started feeling around for it. The whimpering continued...she usually lays right down and falls to sleep immediately...it was heart breaking to listen to this sad change of behavior!

She did fall asleep eventually.

When Tim and I checked on her later, she stirred and began to feel around her crib (in her sleep) for her binky. Yep, this was harder on me than I realized it would be.

Early Christmas! Thanks Randy! We put together this smoker, called and "Ugly Drum Smoker" over Thanksgiving. Doing the first smoke today. Can't wait.

So today I was trimming Gracie's fingernails and toenails and got a wild hair to try something new...painting her toes! The first things to figure out were how to get her to sit still and where to paint. Thank heavens for Halloween candy- a sucker was just the thing to keep her sitting still and towel covered ottomans were the perfect painting station. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the process as I was mostly concerned with not getting fingernail polish anywhere but her toes...

It was a success!! She sat still (drooling a LOT) watching as her toes turned a pretty red with pinkish sparkles. She even sat through the after process of blowing on them till I thought they were dry enough to walk around with.

What ADORABLE toes she has!!! I think this will be something she requests in the future :)