Valentine's Day Scavenger Hunt

For Valentine's Day, Janel and I created a scavenger hunt for the girls, complete with loving affirmations along with the clues to find the next clue ... until the final surprise gift at the end. It was fun!

Faith & Julia's New Year's Resolutions

Faith and Julia decided to make a video to share with everyone their New Year's Resolutions for 2010. Enjoy!

Julia is 1!

I can't believe it has been a year since I birthed my sweet little Julianna Ruth. She has been such a joy to our lives. I remember thinking...how can I possibly love any child as much as I love Faith? Well, it is possible and amazing to see how deep love can just multiply. I love my two little girls with all my heart and am so thankful for both of them.

We had a party for Julia when my parents were in town. Uncle Aaron was and my parents were there, and Granddaddy and Nonna checked in on Skype. We had a delightful dinner and I was happy to see that she dug in to the super duper healthy cake I made for her, topped with kiwi and strawberries (some of her favorite foods).

Nonnie and Papa and the grand girls.



Birthday party crafts--making placemats


Julia and her cake


Here is some video footage of the happy 1 year old at her party. Disclaimer: My singing is meant for sillyness and Julia is perfectly fine after the "incident."



For Julia's actual birthday (1 day later), after work, Jason and I took the girls on a bike ride on the Boise Greenbelt. They loved it. I think they liked being able to go fast!


To finish up the evening of Julia's birthday, we all went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. It was a fun few days and I hope to remember it all! We love you Julia!

Faith singing baby Julia to sleep

We went on vacation last week to the great state of California. I am going to blog about it later, but wanted to put this video up of Faith singing to Julia. Julia was having a hard time on our hike. She was really tired and wouldn't stop crying. So, I stopped on the side of the trail and started rocking her. Faith started singing this song on her own. Sweet sisters!

Sweet times

I am writing this to keep some of these memories alive because they are so precious and because they may be forgotten over time. A few Sundays ago, I was helping lead worship at our church, the Boise Vineyard. While I was up there singing, Jason was holding Julia out in the congregation, and she saw me and started signing the sign for "milk". So sweet that she was able to see that her mama was up there and that she wanted me. After the service, Jason went to pick Faith up from Sunday school. I was singing at the end of the service too and right when it was over, Faith ran up on stage with the biggest smile on her face, saying, "Mommy, I want to sing with you!" Times like these bring me such joy and remind me of how impressionable these little girls that were given to me are! Sometimes it is really hard being a Mommy, but it is good to keep things in perspective and good to be reminded that I have the ABSOLUTE best job in the world! I love being a Mommy and love my little girls so much.

Our Garden

Ok, this is the year of the garden. Last year, while great with child (Julia) and after giving birth to her, I had my first garden, consisting of tomatoes and basil. And I would say it did pretty well. I had so many tomatoes that we had pizza sauce for the next 6 months! This year, I decided I had a little more time and energy to more stuff. I planted 12 strawberry plants and have prepared a bed for some herbs. And the biggest thing is my square foot garden! I have already started mesclun lettuce, bibb lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, and onions in it. Broccoli, tomatoes, basil, and peppers that I have started inside are waiting until the last frost date to be planted outside! In addition to the above, I plan on growing swiss chard, zucchini and possibly sugar peas.

Here are a few pics of what we have been up to with our garden! Here Faith is raking the area we are going to put the raised beds that Jason built.



And here, Faith is initiating the beautiful 4 x 4 boxes Jason built for our garden.



Me, mixing the soil to put in the beds...



Mixing more dirt



The finished product



Faith and Julia working in the garden






over a week later...sprouts...!

Faith's first snowman

Have we mentioned that we LOVE it here in Boise? Even though I (Janel) love warmth, I can't complain too much, because we have had a pretty mild fall and winter so far. The sun pretty much shines every day, and I have never experienced so much sun anywhere else I have lived. It rocks! And now that it is getting colder, we have some snow! How fun! Here Faith is building her first snowman.





What is cute is that today, when Faith and I went to get the mail, we discovered that the snowman's rock eye had fallen out. I told Faith we could put it back on. So, as I tried to put it back on, the snowman's head fell off. You should have seen the look of horror on Faith's face. She was so sad and frightened about it. It was cute. I had to hug her and tell her that I could fix the snowman. So I put his head back on, and everything was much better:)