My Silly Girl

It's been a little while since we've had a "Kaylin's Fashion Corner" post. Wait no longer.

Here's what happens when your 2 year old picks out her own outfit. As in, she opened her drawers and took out what she wanted to wear. Normally I just let her pick between 2 shirts or 2 pairs of pants or what color socks she wants to wear. Lately the attire has mostly been only a diaper since it's 86 degrees INSIDE OUR HOUSE right now.

Here we have the lovely nearly too small swimsuit with swimsuit bottom hat.

One hat is not always enough. Stacking hats is quite in right now.

One should always wear closed toe shoes while cooking (or at least that was the rule in Home-Ec class).

On another note, one of Kaylin's four dolls has somehow become "the chosen one". She pretty much goes everywhere with us. Her name is Baby. I know, very creative. I need to figure out a good way to clean her because I am sure she is disgustingly dirty. She sleeps with Kaylin, rides in the car, goes to church (and sits in the trunk while Kaylin is in nursery, shhhhh... don't tell), goes to the store, goes to friends' houses, goes to my doctor appointments and even gets her own chair in the waiting room when she's lucky. One day she was lucky enough to go to the park.

Kaylin and Baby both love the slide. Kaylin would say, "Baby's turn." Then Baby would go down. Then she would say, "Kaylin's turn" and she would go down. It was even "Mommy's turn" a couple of times, lucky me. I looked pretty awesome going down the little kid slide.

Mt. Rainier

I've lived in Washington for basically my whole life and I've never been to Mt. Rainier. Eric has lived even closer to the mountain than I did and he hadn't been there either. We made a list of things we want to do and going to Mt. Rainier was high up. So when our friends, the Heals, planned a hike we had to go.

We went on one of the free National Park days, so it didn't cost us anything to get into the park. Yea! We went to Mowich Lake. I'm not sure if I'll ever go there again. There was a long, bumpy, windy, gravel and dirt road for something like 20 miles. It took forever to get to the lake. But the lake was beautiful and there were a lot of cool little streams and waterfalls around too. Kaylin's favorite parts were the frog we saw by the lake (she is still talking about it) and holding hands with her friend Kimball (she has stopped talking about that).

On a trail by Lake Mowich

We didn't last long on that trail because it was covered in snow. In the middle of July. And it was warm outside.

Mt. Rainier, part 2

Blogger is only letting me post 5 pictures, so this is part 2 of my Mt. Rainier post.

Kaylin and Kimball are sitting on a picnic table surrounded by snow. It was hard to believe there could be so much snow when it was warm and sunny outside.

Kimball got his picture taken on these rocks and so Kaylin decided that she had to also.

Bye!

My (soon to be) new camera!!!!

It's the moment you've all been waiting for! Okay, maybe not, but it's the moment I have been waiting for. Here is my new camera (to be delivered on or before next Wednesday).
It is the Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS.

I took all of your advice--thank you again! Consumer Reports magazine happened to have cameras in the July issue and my friend Brandon let me borrow it. Lucky me! I researched my options and then waited for my camera to officially die. Yesterday afternoon all of my pictures turned out really bright, like the sun was shining right at me. I thought it was because I was outside, but it did the same thing inside. And then the display stopped working again. So last night I went on my official hunt. I went to a couple of stores today to look at what was in stock, since I want the camera asap, but ended up buying it online from Dell. I used PriceGrabber.com and the price it found me from Dell was $33 less than what I could get it for in stores (including tax). Plus, it can be here in about a week which isn't too bad. Yea for Price Grabber!

I probably won't have any pictures of Renton River Days this year (don't be too upset ;-)) unless my camera decides to work again.

All I can say is I'm really glad I didn't spend all of my babysitting money from MONTHS ago. Otherwise I'd probably be a very unhappy cameraless person. Yea for not being a big spender (some might call me cheap...).

Carly's baby shower presents

I made Eric's sister, Carly, two newborn gowns from her husband's old t-shirts using this tutorial. Don't worry, I told them that the shirts would not be returned in wearable (for them) form. It worked out that both t-shirts they gave me were football teams since the baby will be born during football season. He is going to look so awesome while watching games with his dad.

It pained me to make this one. Seahawks fans will understand.

Parker grew up near Boise and attended BSU for awhile.

Carly picked out some cute fabric for me to make her a nursing blanket with. I of course couldn't just make her a nursing blanket, I had to make her a whole bunch of other stuff too. This is my sister-in-law we're talking about.

Burp cloth, pacifier pouch, diaper and wipes pouch (my latest and greatest version, hopefully the FINAL version).

Nursing blanket

Changing pad

Packaged up. The basket is meant to stay downstairs with the changing pad for a diaper changing station.

We are so excited to meet our new (and FIRST) little nephew!

**Pictures of the shower will be posted after I buy my new camera. I didn't get a shot of the invitation before my camera officially bit the dust yesterday.**

My future sister-in-law

My brother's fiance, Shaunna, flew in from California last week for a visit. We were lucky enough to get to hang out with them for the evening and have them spend the night before they headed up to my parents'. After dinner at XXX Burger in Issaquah we went to Snoqualmie Falls.

Aren't they so cute?

To the right of the falls you can see a faint rainbow.

Kaylin had a lot of fun with Christopher and Shaunna. She would barely eat anything because she was afraid she would miss something.

Pretend napping.

We had so much fun with Christopher and Shaunna. The next time we will see them will be at their wedding!! Augh!

Birthday Party!

This past Saturday we went to a friend's 2-year birthday party. Kaylin had a great time. They had the BEST food (in the mind of a 2-year old), Kaylin was so excited she didn't know which food to eat first. She had to have some of everything on her plate and even had a couple of refills.

Kaylin and friends enjoying the feast.

Oops. Kaylin dropped her cupcake in the pool.

The frosting was still good, even on top of a water-logged cupcake.

Kaylin's favorite game--ring-around-the-rosy!

This is as close as Kaylin got to going down the slip and slide.

Bubbles!!

Thanks for the great party!

4th of July Weekend

For our ward's monthly potluck we met at the local high school and played softball.

Check out that form ;-)

Bat relay

As a "tie breaker" (in quotes because I'm pretty sure no one kept a real score), a few guys from each team spun around a bat 10 times and then ran to either 1st or 3rd base and back.

Eric didn't do too well after all the spinning and he has big gashes to prove it.

On Saturday we went to Eric's parents' ward's party at their church building across town. The parking lot has a view of Lake Washington and we were able to see the fireworks at Coulon Park.

Kaylin and Carter enjoyed the sidewalk chalk.

Brandon, Carter, and Kaylin enjoying the fireworks.

Kaylin LOVED the fireworks. She kept saying, "Pop! Pop!" and asked for fireworks the entire drive home and for days afterwards.

Dangerous Discovery

I have been craving this:

for the past 2 months. Today my craving was satisfied (and will be again in a few minutes for my dinner when I heat up the leftovers).

The above picture is what some of us like to call "Haggenese", aka Chinese food from Haggen's, a local grocery store in Bellingham with a few other locations in very NW Washington. I ALWAYS get the rice bowl with pork fried rice and double sweet and sour chicken. The bowl comes with 2 entrees, but when the sweet and sour chicken is THAT good, I can't even think about getting two different ones.

Here's how my dream came to be... I heard awhile back that Haggen's is a Top Foods grocery store. A week ago Eric and I drove around the back of Crossroads in Bellevue where his office is located, and lo and behold there was a Top Foods hiding there! Who knew? And it looked exactly like a Haggen. And it said "Marketplace" on the side with a little eating area exactly like Haggen. I was so upset that I had just eaten lunch because I really wanted to go inside. But then again, if I hadn't just finished eating lunch then we wouldn't have been driving around that side of the mall. So today, under the guise of needing to run other errands in the Crossroads area, I got my Haggenese. And it was wonderful. Kaylin didn't appreciate it. I let her try a bite and she spit it out. Normal behavior for her. I sat in the marketplace, eating my beloved Haggenese, drinking my favorite Pepsi, and chatted intellectually with my 2 year old (okay, so it wasn't quite intellectual for me). It was perfect.

And now I know that Haggenese is only 20 minutes away instead of an hour away in Marysville as I previously thought. Eric does not like this.

It's a...

GIRL

The final poll was 11 votes for boy and 8 for girl. If you count a few votes from Eric's office, the total was 13 boy (57%) and 10 girl (43%). Sorry, the majority was incorrect. Apparently the Chinese calendar was WRONG and my sister-in-law was right. In case you're wondering, for her method you take the age of the mother at conception and add the number of the month the baby was conceived (as in 1 for January, 2 for February, etc). If you get an even number you're having a boy. If you get an odd number you're having a girl.

Kaylin came with us to the ultrasound today. She loved looking at the baby on the screen. She's starting to understand that "there is a baby in Mommy's tummy". Although she probably thinks it's a funny looking black and white baby.

We're excited to be having another girl!!

The next Supermodelquin?

In my quest to find a suitable maternity dress for my brother's wedding next month (I'm assuming I'll need maternity clothes by then at 5 1/2 months pregnant), we stopped at Old Navy. While I looked for clothes, Kaylin hung out here:

She fit right in since she was wearing an Old Navy t-shirt and capris. She didn't want to leave her new friends and was quite upset when it was time to go.