We haven’t had much snow here this winter and I’m surprised to say that I’m a bit sad, but I’m sad for Lil so it’s not so surprising. She had so much fun playing in the snow in Montana and she keeps asking me when we’re going to get to do it again that I just feel bad that we haven’t had a day or two more then we have had. So the last time she asked I told her that we’d drive up to the mountains and find her some snow. Waldo told her the same thing later that day or the next day so we figured we’d better really do this.

Waldo’s brother gave us an idea of a good place to go that was about 45 minutes away. We got as ready as we were going to get and we were off. The drive was closer to 90 minutes, but we got to Idaho City and just past the tiny town they have a whole hill and play area for sledding. I guess the people of Idaho City take their sledding pretty seriously, all 450 of them. There were port-a-potties and dogs, lots of dogs. A few people had set up camp fires and had chairs set up around them. We thought that was pretty weird, but I guess they probably thought we were the weird ones. In our canvas shoes and jeans, Waldo and I anyway. Lily had jeans and rain boots on. We figured out really quickly that we are city people, small cities, but cities non the less. We are not made for hanging out in the snow.

After finding a parking place and getting Lil’s jacket and all of our gloves on we surveyed the sledding area and decided on a area out past the majority of people because there was a very gradual hill there and we thought Lil would have more fun there. There was a reason that all of the seasoned sledders weren’t playing over there and we figured it out quickly. On our way to our chosen spot we wondered off of the trampled path for a bit and ended up in snow up to our knees. Once we worked our way the edge of the wonder-hill’s area it became so hard to walk, because just about every step your feet would break though the snow and you’d end up to your ankles if we were lucky, our knees if we were and then have to try to take another step. Even thought I know that snow had many different characteristics on any given day I always assume that it’s light and fluffy. Not this snow, it was too frozen, hard, it had sharp edges and wouldn’t stick together for anything. Lil really wanted to make a snow cat, but this snow would have none of that. When we finally got to wonder-hill Waldo loaded Lil on the sled and took her up the little incline and let her go.

She loved it.

They went up and down a dozen or so times and I took pictures.

After a bit Waldo was tired of pulling his legs our of the snow and Lil was tried of being cold so we started the trek back to the car.

At this point Waldo realizes his jacket is still hanging out on a tree and I’m closer (but not by much) so I turn around and go back for it. This was so miserable. Every time my foot would break thought the snow I felt little razors on my leg and my shoe was full of ice, it just wasn’t fun. After I got back to him and gave him his jacket I took a look at my leg and it was bleeding a little bit from the sharp edges of the snow. Let me repeat myself, the sharp edges of the SNOW. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t shave so I wouldn’t have shown it to anyone anyway.

After trudging past the majority of sledders I offered Lil a little bit of free play in the snow before we left. She didn’t want to do that, but while she was thinking about it Waldo and I decided to give sledding another try at a spot where the snow looked shallower. It was a lie, it was just as deep, but we could get there from the parking lot a lot easier. So we let Lil have some more sledding time.

She didn’t even really mind falling off the sled.  She just got back on that horse sled and told Daddy to “do it again, but this time don’t fall me off.”

This was easily the best part of the day and made the whole thing worth our while. Lily had so much fun sledding and can’t wait to do it again.

Just to prove what city folk we truly are, none of us had extra socks when we got back to the car. The diaper bag, thankfully had extra pants and underwear for Lil, but somehow even that held no socks. We had to drive to the tiny local grocery store (if you can really call it that) and buy socks. Of course they had no kiddo socks so I had to buy her women’s socks and we called them tights. She didn’t fall for it and hated them, but they warmed her feet so she left them on. When we got home she told me to take them back to the store and when I told her we couldn’t and I would just use them she told me to take a picture of them. So I did.

I am trying hard to stick with my one goal for this year of taking a family picture on the first of each month.  Woot, two months in a row.  Today is extra special because it’s Waldo’s birthday.  Happy birthday Honey!  We were on our way out the door for his birthday dinner and I had his Mom take this picture.

I was watching a clip from youtube working on my computer while Lil was playing with her Potato Heads in the floor.  The speech that Lil gave me is one that happens in various forms pretty often and I think is adorable.

“Mama this potato head needs the bow.”

“Ok, I think it will look great on him, go ahead and put it on him.”

“I can’t. It’s hard for Lily Beans so I can’t.  It’s not hard for Mamas though so I need you to do it because it’s hard for Lily Beans”

“Well if it’s hard for Lily Beans I’ll do it.”

I think the bow tie was the perfect touch for that potato head.

We are still completely obsessed with the zoo and go as often as possible. Since we go so often I don’t take many pictures anymore, but I can’t help myself and take a few.

We pretty much had to wrestle Lily into her new jacket. I don’t understand why she didn’t want to wear it because she looks so cute in it and it’s her favorite color and once she was in it she liked it.

I love that she feeds the goats by herself now and looks forward to it.  It’s very gross and I can’t stand it, but she likes it.

In all of the times that we’ve been to this zoo we have never seen the red panda before.  I thought it was very exciting, I think I was the only one.

This is a Bald Cypress tree. It isn’t from our region, but the zoo has like 2 of them for conservation.  The little things sticking up at the base of the tree are it’s roots or something.  Waldo said it looked like chipmunks bowing down to their god.  Because of his comment I had to take a picture.

The zoo has this cute jeep in the Africa area and Lily loves it.  She likes to “drive” Waldo (who is usually in the car with her).

We got a close up visit with the big male lion this time.  We’ve been up close with the lioness before, but the male usually hangs out in middle of the yard.  This was a real treat.

We went to the park the other evening.  Lily was feeling very spunky.

I was standing at the bottom of the slide not paying much attention to Lil’s position on the slide, I was just getting ready to take pictures. I got this picture:

Then the next thing I knew this was happening:

She didn’t get hurt, just a little scared and decided spunky was overrated, she went back to clingy and loving.

These were all taken with my phone and the lighting wasn’t great. Sorry.

On Wednesday a few weeks ago our boss emailed Waldo and offered to fly us all to Montana for the weekend so we could attend the office Christmas party. He offered last year but we couldn’t accept because the party was the same weekend as Lily’s birthday party and I had worked too hard on that party to give it up. This year we had no reason not to take Fred up on his offer and we also couldn’t turn down a chance to see our friends.  Lily hadn’t flown before so I was a little concerned about how she’d do on the plane. Neither Waldo or I were excited about the security crap at the airport, but we have missed the little family we made for ourselves in Montana so we put our fears aside and took the leap. We had a free place to stay, free airfare and we found a good price on a rental car, we were set.

Thursday night we worked like mad getting ready. I made sure that I had a lot of snacks for Lily, luckily I had just dehydrated a bunch of apples, pears and bananas the day before so we were set. We ran to Target and got Lily a little travel drawing thing to keep her occupied and we made sure her netbook was packed with her favorite movies and tv shows.

I laminated a free internet coloring page and she used her dry erase crayons on it and had a blast. I wish I would have thought of doing this before we bought the $10 travel dry erase board. I would have just bought the $4.00 dry erase crayons and been done with it.

I had her look out the window when we were above the clouds once. She thought it was neat, but wasn’t nearly as excited as I had expected her to be.  This was pretty much the first and last time she looked out the window.

We got off the plane and Lil was still in a wonderful mood even without a nap.  Waldo called the rental car guy and he drove over to pick us up and take us back to his office.  When Lil saw us putting her car seat into a strange car, with a strange man driving, she lost it.  She just melted into a puddle of sad Lilyness right there in the snow she had been so excited about.  We had to force her into her seat and after a while she fell asleep while we drove to the rental office. I felt bad for the rental car guy, but he said that he has a 3 year old so his ears are used to the high pitch scream.

When we got to the place we were staying Lil woke up and the meltdown continued. For a little while we weren’t sure if I’d be able to go to the office Christmas party, which was the whole reason we were flown to Montana.   We tried everything we could think of, but nothing worked until I used my magic bullet.  I nursed her for about 5 minutes and she calmed right down.  Lil wasn’t completely over it, if we said the wrong thing or tried too hard to get her to do something she would melt a little again, but we were able to calm her.  Once she was mostly calm we all got ready and somehow got her back in her car seat and off to the party we went.  It was at a restaurant that we weren’t familiar with so we got a little lost.  That was embarrassing, but we got there eventually and it just became a joke pretty soon.  Lily was great at the party, her normal shy, but super cute self.  We kept her up way too late, but even on the drive back to the house we were staying at she did great.

The next morning we got down to the real business of why Waldo and I wanted to go back so badly.  We went to breakfast with our chosen family.  We picked Jack and Becky up at their house and drove to the Buffalo Cafe, our favorite place to eat in Whitefish.  Some of our other friends met us there for breakfast: Malcolm, Gil, and Gil’s new girlfriend Rachael.

While I was getting Lily’s bib and highchair cover out of the trunk Becky asked Lil if she could pick her up.  Lil said yes and Becky carried her most of the way to the restaurant.  This is huge for our reserved, shy girl.  She never lets anyone pick her up, but Lily and Becky go way back and even if we haven’t seen Becky for a year and a half, we talk about her all the time.  Becky is my best friend and it’s perfect that she’s dating Waldo’s best friend (and hetero life mate) Jack.

I had to grab a picture of downtown Whitefish.  A better version of this picture is on postcards all over the place.  It’s so beautiful; the boughs and bells, Big Mountain in the background.  This is one of the thing that is so nice about living in a tourist heavy city, the city really makes an effort to be beautiful.

Lily was the star of the show at breakfast, and she ate just about everybody’s orange slices.

Gil tried on Lil’s sunglasses.  It was really, really bright in that corner.

We have sat at this table before in any number of combinations of these people and it was just as wonderful as I remembered and had expected it to be. It was so nice to get to be ourselves with these people who love us for just who we are.  We don’t have to wear any masks.  Even Rachel who I met minutes earlier got to see more of me then anyone in California or Idaho has with the exception of Waldo of course.  Rachael and I chatted and made small-talk over scrambled eggs, I hate small-talk normally, but it was pretty easy with Rachael.  With everyone else it was like being home again.  The conversations flowed just like they have for the last 14 or so years.  Jack, Malcolm and Becky were on the left of Lily and I; reminiscing about the previous nights laughs and shenanigans.  Waldo, Gil and Rachael on the right of Lily and me, talking about servers and end users suckage and I chatted with this group or that.  Everyones conversations overlapping, a friend tossing more info in the other conversation and then back to your own.  It was great. It was home.

A little tid-bit of knowledge: I lived in the apartment above the store on Becky’s right (that you can’t see) for 8 years when we first moved to Montana.

After breakfast Lily, Waldo, Jack, Becky and I went back to Jack and Becky’s house.  Lily dropped her sunglasses in the snow and wasn’t at all happy with the snow on her glasses and shirt.

Lil is still reserved around Jack and he was trying hard to get her on his side.  I can’t describe how much this picture melts my heart.  Jack may be Waldo’s hetero life mate, but Jack and I have a great friendship ourselves and seeing this rather sweet moment just makes me so happy.

A different view of Big Mountain.

Lily really, really, really wanted to play in the snow so I took her outside and Becky came out, but didn’t plan on staying.  Lily asked her to play and she couldn’t turn her down of course.  I took the chance to take a ton of pictures.

Lily made a couple of snow angles.  The snow angles even had the puff balls from her hat, they were so cute.  Unfortunately the pictures without Lil didn’t turn out great.

Becky was helping Lil make a little snowman.

After a while Waldo, Lily and I made a quick trip to visit one of my former co-workers and friend Starr.  When we got back Jack, Becky, Waldo, Lily and I all went to lunch and had a great time just being together.

Jack doesn’t like getting his picture taken.  Honestly Becky doesn’t either, but I like the pictures I have of them.  Since we only get to see them once in a great while I like having the reminders of what their hats faces look like.

I had Becky take a picture of us. I don’t like just about any picture I’m in either, but I try to get over it so there’s a few pictures of me with Lil or our whole family together.

Becky has a thing for Legos.  And by thing I mean full-blown obsession.  Here’s Lil with Becky’s Lego-man lantern.  Sorry about the weird picture, the light wasn’t great in the house and my phone doesn’t take very good low light pictures.

We finally made ourselves leave Becky and Jack’s much later then we had planned, but we just couldn’t pull ourselves away any sooner.

The next morning we had breakfast with our friends Anthony, Maggie and their 2 1/2 year old Conrad, and Jesse, Jamison and their 9 month old daughter Teagen. We all had a great breakfast at a place that Waldo and I had never been to, but I can tell you that we will visit that place again.  Jesse and Jamison had plans for the day so they left after breakfast and the rest of us went back to Anthony and Maggie’s.  It was really nice, we hung out and caught up on old times.  I can’t believe that I didn’t get a single picture.  Later that afternoon we headed back to the airport.  Lily had just as good a flight on the way home as she did on the way to Montana.  I really couldn’t have asked for more.

I have to say that we had a great time and I miss all of our fiends in Montana, but I was so glad to get home and back to our bed.  Hopefully we will get to see them all again sooner rather then later.

One of my goals for 2012 is to take more pictures; of Lily, of our world, of all of us.  To help me with this goal I’m going to take a picture of us together on the first of each month.

I have been planning in a non-planning type of way for Lily’s 3rd birthday for weeks now. Stalking Pinterest and pinning things that I think are fun ways to celebrate, making mental notes of things I want to do with her, all while not really trying to think too hard about it. Since we moved to Idaho a few months ago I knew we wouldn’t do a big birthday party because we only have Waldo’s brother and his family here, so I knew I didn’t have to go too crazy.

On Pinterest I saw a lot of great ideas for birthdays that involved balloons. Lily isn’t overly fond of balloons so I wasn’t sure I should try any of them. After much though I decided to give some of the super cute ideas a try.

I something similar to the above on Pinterest, but I took it a step further.

I had 8 balloons left so I knew it wouldn’t cover our bedroom floor (like I saw on Pinterest) so I decided to put them on the bed and started on my wake-up-by-way-of-annoying-the-daylights-out-of-her routine.

What the what…

Oh balloons, but what?

Whatever, I dig it.

After I made Lil’s breakfast I had to make her cake. Usually I would have made it the night before, but I wasn’t that organized. I frosted it while Waldo had lunch with Lil.

After she was done with lunch I wanted to take some pictures of her with her cake before everyone got here. Lily really got into the pictures.

I asked Lily to show me how old she is now.

She is having trouble getting those little fingers to stay down.

Waldo’s brother, his wife and three of their kids came over for cake and ice cream.

We sort of rushed the whole thing so Waldo could get back to work. Lil opened her presents first.

Lil’s little cousin Bryce helped with the wrapping paper a lot. It worked out great because Lily wasn’t happy with all the attention on her so she wasn’t to into ripping the paper.

Then we moved on to cake and singing.

Oh with the attention again.

Waldo blew out her candle for her because she just gave us blank stares when we tried to get her to do it.

Everyone tried on Lily’s really cool crown. This is Brock, he’s about 6 months older then Lil.

And Bryce, he just turned two a few weeks ago.

After everyone had their fill of cake they left. Overall it was a very successful birthday party, short and sweet. Lily had a great birthday even if there were a few moments of total overwhelmed-ness.

A wolf ate Kitty for Christmas this year.

We only bought Lily a few things for Christmas, but our families went crazy so she got a ton of stuff.
Like this really nice jacket from Waldo’s parents.

And an owl cuddly backpack from my Dad.

My sister Jolene got her a million piece magnetic dress up doll collection.

My Dad also got her this really cute little Mickie Mouse snow globe that Lil just loved.

It was broke by the end of the day.

My Mom got her a really sweet little porcelain tea set.

Hmmm, apparently I didn’t take any pictures of Lily with the things we got her. Imagine her with a couple of additions to her Thomas the Tank collection. Lil and Waldo spent a lot of time building the biggest track they could. It took me forever to take it apart and get it out of the middle of the floor.

We had a really nice breakfast of french toast and eggs before we crashed played with Lily’s new toys and after nap time we spent the rest of the day with Waldo’s brother and his family. We had a great time. I really missed my family, but I spoke to them so it took some of the sting out.

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday.

I know I’m a week late, but I wanted to get my Halloween post up before I let time get away from me.

Lil painted a pumpkin last year, she loved it and I loved that I came up with something new. I had never heard of anyone painting a pumpkin. This year you can’t hit a random blog without seeing a painted pumpkin. I take full credit for it, you are so welcome.

I knew that I wanted to have Lil paint pumpkins again this year since she loves painting and I thought it would be a good tradition. She and I picked a few little pumpkins at the local grocery store and she couldn’t wait to paint them.

We knew that we were going to go to a pumpkin patch, but we went ahead and bought a couple of large pumpkins at the grocery store because they were on sale, and I can’t pass up a good sale. These pumpkins didn’t even get out of our car till the weekend before Halloween. They just sat in the back seat floorboard for weeks, going shopping with us and the library and everywhere we went like little pets. Pets we don’t have to feed or clean up after. The perfect pets really.

I read in the paper that there were three pumpkin patches around our little city and I choose the smallest sounding one for our trip. It was at a small family farm. They have an organic pick your own apple orchard. It was so quaint, I loved it.

We were the only customers there. We climbed aboard the hayride that was going to take us to the pumpkin patch. We were escorted by the 3 year old granddaughter of the farmers, she was a hoot. We were told that because there hadn’t been a frost yet the pumpkins were still on the vine, it was so neat to see them in their natural habitat.

At first Lil was scared of the hay ride, but then she spotted the turkeys and everything was good after that.

The turkeys are the white dots at the end of the pumpkin field.

See our little friend?

She was so cute. You could tell that she likes to be with the pumpkin patch people.

Her grandpa called her to help him with some un-named task after this picture.

One of our pumpkins. I decided that we needed some white pumpkins to paint.

The TURKEYS!

I loved the pumpkin patch, but I didn’t get the pumpkin photos I wanted from this place so I planned on going to one of the other more commercial patches in the area the next weekend.  I’ll let you know right now that we never made it to any other patches.  I don’t want to keep anyone in unnecessary suspense.

We did however go the the zoo the next day and they had just had their “Boo at the Zoo” so I was hoping to get some good pictures there.

I was shocked to see that they had mostly cleaned up all the Halloween stuff.  A few hay bales, the 1 fake pumpkin display and some scattered pumpkins were all that remained.

And while I did get some great pictures, I still didn’t feel I had “The Halloween Pictures” yet.

Lily really wanted her zoo ice cream at this point.

I really wanted a few more pictures.

We went to get ice cream after this. Who can resist this face?

After we got home Waldo and I carved our pumpkins and Lily painted hers.  It was so fun doing this all as a family.

I let Lily paint my pumpkin after I was done carving.

Halloween morning I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed Lily, my camera and my phone and we headed to the front porch.

I finally got “The Halloween Pictures” I wanted, I couldn’t be happier.

Of course the major fun was still to come.

I made the wand. I was quite proud of it. So of course I carried it around while we trick or treated. Isn’t that how it always works out.

Lily had been playing with her bucket all week and Halloween day I noticed it looking at me all sad and boring so I grabbed my silver sparkly glitter glue paint stuff and a couple of cotton swabs and fancied up the face. Lil loved it.

This was our first house to visit. We had been telling Lil all about how Halloween and trick or treating worked and she was pumped to say trick or treat to the neighbor. That was all in theory, because as soon as the door opened all she said was “I’m a little shy” when we encouraged her to say “trick or treat”. We went to probably a dozen houses and on the next to last house she whispered “trick or treat” and “thank you”, we were so proud.

My plan was to let Lily had a piece or two of her candy over the next few days and give the rest away to the kids that came to our door, but we didn’t really have that many trick or treaters. I totally wasn’t surprised when she played with the candy after we got home, but never asked for any of it. She was treating it like any other prop in her toy collection and we loved it. Waldo and I thought about offering her a piece that night, but we talked ourselves out of it because she is so used to not having candy that it wasn’t weird for her to not have any. We did promise her a piece the next day and we fulfilled that promise. After breakfast I let her pick from the small selection we left in her basket. She choose a long tootsie roll and I gave her about a third of it while eating the rest myself. She loved it.  That was the end of halloween candy for Lily Bean and we are all fine with that.

During my twenties when people would ask me what I was doing for this holiday or that I would tell them “nothing, I don’t really DO holidays. I assume that when I have kids that will change”.  It totally has. I had so much fun planning halloween for Lily and can’t wait for next year.