Lizzie prayed her sinner's prayer on March 2nd and got baptized on Resurrection Sunday! Praise God! She was so brave even though she is terrified to go under water. I am so proud of her!

This is how we spent our New Year's. mwa-ha-ha to those of you in the snow!

Happy Holidays from us to you!

(and thanks to Seamus the cat for getting Tori to smile for the picture!)

My eldest daughter has made it her goal for the past three Halloweens to choose costumes that do not exist in any store and, therefore, must be special ordered, well in advance, to ensure delivery before the aforementioned holiday.
First, it was the fairy princess costume which I undertook to make to save money. HA! I could have purchased three or four decent fairy costumes for the cost of that venture, but NO ONE ELSE looked like her on Halloween! Oh, the tulle, the flowers, the ribbons - clouds of PINK! Ballerinas at the Joffrey Ballet would have envied this costume! I think we are still paying off the debts to JoAnn's and Hancock's.
Then, last year - she had to be The Statue of Liberty. Ah, my little historian in the making. I had to oblige so noble a request. I ordered the costume rather than attempting to sew it. The plain olive green robe arrived with a battery-powered little torch and pointy foam headdress (albeit a little crushed and bent). Alas, no tablet! In fear of her disappointment, I wisely reminded her that she only had two hands and could not also hold the tablet. So, for the most part, she was thrilled with her costume and skipped along with her Disney princess trick or treat bag in one hand and that torch in the other. The only problem was that after she announced, "Trick or Treat!" most of the people felt an incredible need to sing "God Bless America" to her. It impeded her speedy progress through the neighborhood to acquire enormous amounts of candy. So much for patriotism. It's all about the candy.
Now this year, she had to be Princess Leia. Of course, we're in Hawaii and we just don't have the luxury of shopping that the Mainland does. You have to take what you get here. Sure, I could have made a white robe and replicated the cool belt. But, hey, I have a toddler and a baby! I would rather spend money and very little effort! So, I searched and searched the web to find a costume that WASN'T the slave girl bikini and DIDN'T cost more to ship here than the costume is worth. Thankfully, I accomplished that. Whew!
Now, my middle daughter has some kind of angel/fairy costume that Dad picked out (because she really doesn't care yet!) but please note that she is holding her toothbrush. This child must brush her teeth 60 times per day. She climbs onto the bathroom sink to suck out all the toothpaste and play with floss. So I figure, the costume has wings...
VOILA! She's the tooth fairy!
Now, the youngest doesn't know anything about all these things yet...so on the saga continues...

Here's one of the daily rainbows over our house.

Here we are at the Hale Koa beach at sunset! We LOVE it here!

Happy 4th to everyone! We're off to Hawaii soon! Yay!

Here's Daddy with his 3 girls!

Here's our newest addition: Katherine! She was born Friday and was a whopping 10 pounds, 9.8 ounces! Big sisters are happy and proud!

Here's one of the critters attacking our parsley! We have oodles of black swallowtail caterpillars! It's really neat though!

Here's our garden now. We've had so much rain that the herbs are growing like crazy! We have so many squash blossoms and they'll probably be ripe at the same time! Unfortunately, we have little red bugs (aphids? mites?) all over our lettuce. We've eaten the first harvest of squash and beans and peas. YUM! We're still waiting for the carrots to grow big enough to pull. The broccoli didn't make it. Oh, well!

Here's Lizzie standing next to her garden. The peas are getting really tall and the green beans have purple flowers! The lettuce, squash and carrots are happy with all the rain we've had recently. It's sunny and warm the next few days, so we'll see what happens.

Here are the girls in their Easter dresses. It's been a rainy spring so far...hopefully it will clear up and get warm soon!

Posted in Liz-isms

Liz mentioned the other day when it was really windy out: "The wind is God breathing on us, Mama!" I just love the thought of that.

Here's Tori in her caterpillar birthday T-shirt!
Here's the caterpillar cake. So yummy! Tori didn't even eat any!

Here's Lizzie planting peas for our itty bitty Texas garden. We hope to have carrots, peas, green beans, yellow squash, lettuce, and broccoli soon! Yum!

Well, Liz has become very stubborn when it comes to doing her math work. It's not that it's at all difficult for her, but she claims she hates it and doesn't want to do it. She procrastinates and whines and cries and I don't understand all the fuss. We went through some of this last year with writing practice, so I figure she'll get over it like she eventually got over that. I just hope she straightens up, and quick! It wears me out! I guess she's just testing her boundaries...

Here's Lizzie at our church Christmas pageant as an angel. She did so well! We're so proud of her!

We were so excited that Tori didn't cry! She was so good even though it was naptime and she was so tired. Lizzie made sure that Santa knew what everyone in the family wanted. It was a great day!

Here are my little darlings on Halloween! Liz decided that she would be The Statue of Liberty on November 1st LAST YEAR! I was happy that Tori stayed awake to hand out candy with Dad. It was fun. Liz certainly stood out among all the princesses and fairies!

We're having another baby, due on Mother's Day!
Tori is 7 months old now and Liz will turn 6 next week.

We're doing well with school. At the rate we're going, we'll finish this year's curricula by March!

Then what?! I suppose we'll take long a spring break...and take it easy over the summer!