Thursday, January 21, 2010

A beautiful day!




It was really nice out today, so Ru and I bundled up and went outside to play. She mostly played in the garden, here she's (of course) showing me a cool rock she found.

She also loves playing with the "duckies" in the garden. They are resin so a bit heavy, but not so bad as stone or cement. We only let her play with the babies, and she enjoys carrying them from the garden to the porch, and then back to be with the mama and daddy ducks.


Note the baby duck on the porch behind her, she's headed back to the garden to get the other one.

Those of you that know Ruthie well at all will recognize an odd phenomenon in this set of pictures. Ru is wearing a hat! I haven't been able to get her to keep a hat on her head since last winter. I'm not sure if it was just cool enough, or if she liked the color, or if it was just because I told her how cute she was with it on about ten times, but for whatever reason she kept it on this time. We played in the van for a while and it was warm enough in there that we both took our hats off, but she didn't want to put it back on afterwards. I figured I'd take what success I could get. :)



Friday, January 1, 2010

Christmas Eve with the Maxwells



For the first time in many years, we actually got together with my family within a few days of Christmas. Actually, we got together Christmas eve. It was Ru's first big Christmas present opening celebration, and she had lots of fun tearing the paper off!
Sammy guarded the wrapping paper while Ru and I investigated her new Duplo bus set. (John's girlfriend Misty is sitting next to me)


Ru says opening presents is "fun!"

She also thinks just about anything with a lens should work like our camcorder, with a flip out view screen she can use as a "meer" to see herself. We had a hard time convincing her this particular camera doesn't have a flip out screen.

We just did finger food type stuff for dinner, which was nice because I didn't have to cook. It also helped me to not overeat, as this pregnancy I'm having more trouble with my feet and ankles swelling, and a lot of our snacks were pretty high sodium. The chocolate covered mini cream puffs from costco were pretty yummy tho! Ru enjoyed the cheese and crackers, and the grapes off the fruit tray.

We got lots of good gifts, and hopefully everyone liked the gifts we gave them, too. Ru and I did miss the Church service, But Daddy went and ran sound and said the service was nice, hopefully we can go next year. In the meantime we'll use our nativity sets and books to make sure Ru knows what the real meaning of Christmas is: God's gift of his son to mankind.

The "Big Girl Room"

In anticipation of our fourth "Cheery O" joining us, we're trying to get Ru moved out of the nursery and into a new big girl room. Since I know she's quite the girly girl, but I can't hardly stand to paint an entire room pink (I, personally, amd still not not a girly girl) I compromised and painted a mural on the wall.






Two, actually, altho the big tree isn't done yet, I haven't decided if I'm going to paint more, or do something a bit more three dimensional. Right now there are silver and hot pink glittery snowflakes hanging from the branches, altho I hadn't put them up yet when I took the pics.

I hope to eventually add some animals or something, but I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out as is. :)