Tenley’s First Ski!

On Saturday, we headed up to Squaw Valley to get Hannah Gray on her skis and asked Tenley if she wanted to try. She was very excited and talked about it the whole way up to Tahoe. We let Hannah Gray go first as Tenley watched from the bottom and made “sand castles” out of the loose snow by the magic carpet. Then it was her turn! She belly laughed the whole way down and wanted to go faster. I held onto her coat by the nape of her neck and ran down the hill with her. Definitely not the best way to do it. We saw another dad teaching his young kids and he had a long pvc pole that they could hang onto, like a boom for water skiing. It was brilliant. We will definitely try this next time!

Hannah Gray retained a lot from last season and enjoyed it just as much as ever, maybe even more as she stayed out for most of the afternoon. Yay for little skiers!!

our budding artist

Lately, Hannah Gray asks me to draw any assortment of animals about 10x a day and then she colors it. I just can't keep up with the level of her requests. So I started letting her use my iPad to look at pictures we look up together and then she draws them. We started this about 4 days ago and her observation skills, attention to detail and confidence in her artwork has gone through the roof.

Today, she asked for her Clifford dog and set it on the table and this is what she did. She is learning depth perception today as she added hind legs to Clifford today. She is growing up so fast and seeing her interests grow and develop is so much fun. She is one cool kid.

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Funny Tenley story

For the last month or so Tenley will often interrupt you while reading with her and just start asking/saying, “Jesus in your heart? Jesus in Daddy’s heart? Jesus in sister’s heart?” and the list will go on to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the babysitter, people on tv, Tuk, cartoon characters, etc. Then usually during some quiet moments, she will say, “I want Jesus in my heart” and we’ll talk about what that means and explain that there will be a time when she’ll understand What Jesus did for us. A couple weeks ago during lunch, she started crying and I had no idea why despite the fact I was sitting right next to her. I asked what was wrong and she was trying to tell me but I just was not getting it. Hannah Gray quickly piped in, “She doesn’t want Jesus to take her heart and is worried about him taking her stomach”. Somehow she had missed concept of Jesus living in her heart and confused it with him stealing it. Hannah Gray and I worked together to try to explain it a little better to a two year old heart and mind.

Fast forward to tonight. Ethan and I took the girls to see a live drive through nativity on the other side of town. We had a packed dinner in the car while we were waiting in line and it was finally our turn. The amount of questions that were packed into that 15 minutes of driving through the scenes was absolutely flabbergasting. The scenes actually ended up including Jesus as an adult, the cross and the empty tomb. So the conversation naturally went back to answering the question, “Why did Jesus die when he could have saved himself?”. After talking about this for most of the ride home with Hannah Gray, Tenley finally had questions of her own. We had a MASSIVE, I mean MASSIVE temper tantrum that added a good 15 minutes onto our drive and as Hannah Gray sat in hot tears and heavy breathing, Tenley’s quiet voice piped up. “I want to ask Jesus to live in my heart”. “Tenley, you do? Why do you want to do that?”. “I just do. I want him live in my heart”. I quickly tried to formulate some type of simple question that would not be leading but give her a chance to explain why she wanted to do that and give a glimpse of her level of understanding. Hannah Gray asked Jesus to come live in her heart last December 16th after we talked about our advent calendar and having a choice of receiving a gift and that gift being Jesus. So there I was thinking that our Christmas traditions are actually bestowing a sense of wonder and awareness of who Jesus is and why he came. This is fantastic! Then Tenley says, “Yeah, I want Jesus and Mickey Mouse to hold me. Where Mickey Mouse live? (Ethan and I bust out laughing after the intense time of dealing with Thing 1’s tantrum) “Well, Tenley, I think Mickey lives at Disney World and Disney Land”. “Yes, I want Jesus and Mickey to hold me. I go there, they hold me.” Ah, the understanding and innocence of a 2 year old!!!

Hannah Gray and Tenley actively and intently watching the live Nativity.

Tenley’s little announcement…

We had a fun day over at the Petro’s today… we all headed out for a little field trip,

So there you have it! I am just over 15 weeks along and doing well. Still feeling like not many foods sound very good (and the best husband of the year award goes to Ethan Petro for currently being out on a Chinese food run for me!!!), but my energy is returning and I am still doing CrossFit which has been amazing. I feel so good afterwards and it helps my queasiness tremendously.

The girls are beyond excited (we all are) and cannot wait to “hold baby” as Tenley says. Hannah Gray has just grinned ear to ear about it and has been such an amazing helper to me when I haven’t been feeling well. The morning after we shared the news with them, Hannah Gray woke me up with her little face in mine and said, “Mommy, I am sooo excited to have a baby!!!! I am going to show the baby everything and I promise to be a good helper to you!!”. So, so sweet. We are blessed and love the idea of having a trio of girls or rounding out testosterone levels in the house with a boy. So we will find out come the end of May!!!

oh Christmas Tree!!

So this year, our tree is SO much better!!! Our Charlie Brown tree from last year had it’s own “charm” I suppose, but at least this one looks real and we actually have room to spread our ornaments out instead of lining them up several deep on the same branch. But we have to admit, we tree lot-ed it this year… After our wonderful, but exhausting weekend at Tahoe the day before, we kept it simple and we had a good time and still have enough time left for the girls to help decorate it. Mission accomplished!

Tenley discovering the ornaments and then finding “ASLAN!!!”.

welcome Christmas season!!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed up to the Resort at Squaw Creek for their annual Winter Wonderland festivities. We went last year and had a great time so we decided to head back and stay for the night. We started the night off by welcoming Santa and Ms. Claus arrive on a fire truck, then headed to go meet him in person. Tenley did exactly what Hannah Gray did last year… waited excitedly and then started to freak out when it was her turn. Hannah Gray hoped right up on Santa’s lap this year so Ms. Claus held Tenley just like she did for Hannah Gray last year. Tenley did speak to Santa and told him she wanted “lip balm and nail polish” for Christmas. Hannah Gray will rotate providing a few different items off a list of several, so I am not sure which ones she gave him. Then we headed outside for a sleigh ride drawn by a beautiful Clydesdale horse. We ended our night with a quick visit to the gingerbread visit and then out to the ice skating rink where we kept our princesses out WAY past their bedtime. I think we had them out on the ice until they closed at 10. Hannah Gray recently fell in love with ice skating in San Francisco so she was super excited to go out again and do it on her own. Tenley couldn’t get out on the ice fast enough and would “skate” for 5 minutes or so, then want to sit and play in all the “sand” or the ice shavings that had built up. She loved it, even in her helmet that wouldn’t stay above her eyes.

The next day, we had a slow and easy morning and headed down for breakfast and as we were being seated, we walked right past Santa!!! Apparently, he had spent the night as well and we had no idea he would be there. The girls walked by in astounded star-struck trance and giggled about seeing him again as we sat down. When they looked up they saw that Santa was coming their way!!! He sat with us at our table for several minutes and remember seeing the girls the night before and remembered what Hannah Gray had asked for. The girls we beyond ecstatic!!! What a perfect surprise for all of us! Then to cap off a great two days, we headed outside to swim in the beautiful, crisp morning with perfectly blue skies in a very comfortably warm pool. It was fantastic! We had a great time and had some super fun pics from the weekend.

Thanksgiving

We decided to do something a little different this year for Thanksgiving. Last year, we headed to downtown Sac to cheer Ethan on as he ran in the Thanksgiving Day run. But as the girls are older now, we decided we wanted to start serving with them to try and get them to think beyond themselves. We tried to find a church or shelter that served a meal that we could help with, but they had age restrictions that we didn't qualify for. Then at church the weekend before Thanksgiving, they had an announcement that the Salvation Army was doing meals at a Roseville church and needed drivers to help deliver food to those that couldn't make it in for a meal. We thought this sounded like a perfect thing for our family! We can totally put the kids in the car for a couple hours and drive around delivering meals. So we prepped Hannah Gray about not being shy, that some of the older people might really enjoy having little visitors and then a last minute prep to tell her she might notice that some people have injuries or oxygen or something else "wrong with them" that might give her a lot of questions. She just nodded and I hoped that we wouldn't end up in some horribly awkward situation where she was starring asking, "what's wrong with her?!". The girls were super excited, but especially Hannah Gray, who began drawing pictures ("66 of them") of turkeys and Christmas trees to take with her to give to the people too. Then she even drew some Hannah-Doggie pictures (pictures of her BELOVED stuffed dog that goes everywhere, think of Flat Stanley).

Thanksgiving morning came and Ethan wrapped our Angel Tree presents with the girls. We loaded up, picked up meals from the church and headed out to a condo complex of elderly people to deliver a total of 10 meals. Hannah Gray was not shy, excitedly handed them her pictures, chatted with them, wished them a Happy Thanksgiving and skipped between houses and back to our car each time. She loved it! AND, we did eventually hit the home where it could have been me shoving my hand in her mouth to try and stop a little tongue from saying anything recognizable. We were invited into a home of a sweet woman who had an amputated leg just below the knee with no covering or dressing over it. She was in a wheelchair, so her leg was right about Hannah Gray's height. And she said NOTHING. She chatted with her, handed her a picture of her Hannah Doggie, talked about being an artist, wished her a Happy Thanksgiving and that was it. She skipped out with us to the car and as I was loading Tenley, Hannah Gray looked at Ethan and I said, "Can I ask you a private question now?". "Sure thing kiddo." Ethan and I looked at each other because we had forgotten about what we asked her earlier and realized what we coming. "What happened to her leg, where was it?". We could not have been more proud of her.

We came home and got started on our Thanksgiving Day meal and Hannah Gray's highlight? Giving her pictures out. :) That, and the pie eating contest...

a sampling of two of the three kinds of pictures she handed out

overhead...

Hannah Gray and Tenley were playing with The Little People Nativity set this am and I heard HG explaining, "this is Mary, but not like "marry"..."

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happy thanksgiving!

On Friday, we all got to join Hannah Gray in her preschool class for a harvest potluck. The little pilgrims greeted us with some songs and nursery rhymes then we all enjoyed a little party. Tenley was so excited to be invited to join big sister at her school and Hannah Gray was thrilled to have little sister with her and took her under her wing. Now we ate in Thanksgiving break and anxious to begin our season if thankfulness.

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"I love you more than..."

This is the new favorite game amongst the girls. They are silly and sincere all at the same time. This was yesterday morning as they were snuggling in our bed while I was getting ready. They are so sweet!

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Truckee, Monterey, Roseville and San Francisco...

My parents were in town this last week and we saw most major attractions in NorCA. They arrived Sat afternoon and on Sunday we headed up to explore Truckee and enjoy the weather. Monday, we headed to Monterey to see the aquarium and Carmel. We returned Tuesday and stayed in Riseville until Friday when we joined my dad in San Francisco (he had a conference to go to while we were back home). Our time in San Francisco included Hannah Gray ice skating for the first time at Union Square, "modeling" at Saks, a break in into our car, a ferry ride to Saulsilito, and HG doing the big trampoline jump where she's in a harness. She figured it out right away and amazed everyone with flip after flip after flip. The Jr high girls before her couldn't do it so the workers let Hannah Gray keep going once she figured it out. It was hilarious, she was so proud of herself.  We left after getting our car fixed to come home late Sat night. We had a great time and I will post more pictures soon. My camera was being repaired so our pics are scattered between cell phones.

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After ice skating! 

 Waiting in line to do her bungee trampoline jump

killing it. this is before all the consecutive flips started

Carmel

pumpkin patch #1

Last weekend, we decided to head to a pumpkin patch we had heard a good bit about to check it out. We heard that there was a petting area with farm animals and that pretty much sold us. The girls have been wanting to see cows and horses for awhile now so we figured this was a great opportunity to go.

The girls (all three of us) loved these two Bernese Mountain Dogs. Check out the size of Tenley’s hand compared to the size of the dog’s head…

Hannah Gray finding one that was just about her size.

 

Tenley picked a pumpkin, sister helped her with it and then…

oops! Oh well, off to find another one!