Precious Pictures

 Marjorie turned eight months old yesterday. Where does time go?! She is such a cute little baby that it is all I can do sometimes to keep from eating her up! I really understand that expression because I really do get the urge sometimes to just take a bite out of her when she's being particulary adorable. For those of you who don't understand that urge, don't be alarmed. I can restrain myself.
This girl has got to win the prize for smiliest baby in the world. She has been so relaxed, content, and happy all her life with only a few exeptions (whenever her unpredictable older sister is too close, and this week with a cold and cutting a tooth).
Marjorie gave up the army crawl a couple weeks ago and has since mastered mobility on hands and knees. She has been having fun exploring the new territory that crawling opens for her. 

3 weeks

4 weeks

5 weeks

6 weeks

2 months

3 months



5 months

7 months

Mowgli Costume

This week, Kilynn and I have been talking a lot about what she wants to be for Halloween. Today I was having a hard time convincing her to get dressed. She is an independent dresser these days and doesn't like me to help at all! She got as far as taking her pajamas off, but has been running around in her underwear for the last hour or so saying she is Mobley (off of "The Jungle Book"). She doesn't normally get to run around without clothes, but she is just being so imaginative pretending to be Mobley- singing the Bare Necessities and eating a banana etc. I finally told her she needed to get her clothes on so we could go grocery shopping. She said, "I can wear a Mobley costume to the store!"

She actually looks a lot like this picture. Ridiculously skinny in her underpants.

Funny Sayings

A couple funny things Kilynn has said in the last two days:

Me: Kilynn come put your boots on now!
Kilynn: Mom just take a deep breath ok? I have to read this book!

and...

She just walked out of her room where she was supposed to be taking a "quiet time", sighs heavily and says, "Mom taking a quiet time is just too hard work!"

Strawberry Adventures 2012

The last two Saturdays found us at the Strawberry farm! Our first attempt was cut a little short due to some toddler issues, but we managed to get 25 lbs. The next week Joseph did almost all of the picking while I played with the girls and came away with 30 lbs. With 55 lbs of strawberries we made a double batch of freezer jam (8 pints), a double batch of cooked jam (11 pints) and froze 26 quart bags of whole strawberries.


Longing. Drooling.

Heaven knows how many pounds this girl stored away!

This hazelnut orchard is right next to the strawberry patch. This is where we played while Joseph slaved away in the hot sun 

mmmm!

The color was much more stunning in real life!

On Monday, Joseph's Mom and his niece Mariah came to get some strawberries. We drove to the coast one evening since Mariah had never seen the ocean. It was pretty nice weather... for the Oregon Coast, and we found all sorts of little shells and sand dollars.

And I have too include this picture of the cute crown Grandma braided out daisies for Kilynn. Such a fun Grandma!

We love it when people come visit! Who will be next? Strawberries are still on!

Sugar

Since I've been married I have almost never bought meat at the store other than what comes from chicken or pig. Joseph always keeps us well supplied with hamburger, steaks, roasts and even fish now. Last fall, however, was the first year since he was 12 that he did not fill his tags for deer or elk. Joseph began watching for other ways to get our meat supply in and found a grand deal on craigslist for a steer about six months ago. When he went to look at it he found that it was still on the young side and would need to be fattened up some more before it could go in our freezer. He talked to an older couple in our ward that has some unused pasture area and they said we could keep a cow there. We went ahead and got the calf and have been fattening him up feeding him grain every day. We are currently "finishing him off" with corn feed because he's going to have to be made into meat before we leave for vacation in July.

Picture taken beginning of March

Right after picking up the calf, Joseph asked Kilynn what we should name it. Her confident answer was, "Sugar!" I have no idea how she came up with that, but she never forgot it.

Even though Sugar has such a sweet name, it's still not enough to convince Kilynn that she can be put down anywhere near him. I hope to get her a little more used to being around different animals when we go visit both Grandpa's farms this summer.

On Sunday we stopped by to feed Sugar on our way home from church as we always do. I happened to think of taking pictures since we were all dressed up and it was beautiful outside and I happened to have my camera.

It was almost perfect. I found the perfect fence rail to put the camera on and set the timer. If only Kilynn could look at the camera and smile! It only got worse from here. Full out crying followed. Three hours of church is hard on a little girl!

Bzzzz

We got Bees! We are so very excited about this! Joseph has always been into self sufficiency/live off the land stuff so I'm always getting him books with titles like "Five Acres and Independence" and "Back to the Basics" and "Primitive Skills." The books always talk about having Bees, but we never thought it would work for us right now since we have a small backyard and live too close to other people. Recently, however, we were inspired by some good friends of ours who got bees and also live in town and have a small yard. Last year was the first year they've had bees and their hive produced two gallons! A healthy hive should produce around five gallons, but you're not supposed to expect much of anything the first year. I'd be happy with two gallons! It has been so interesting watching these bees and learning about them. We put them in the corner of the garden and they are no nuisance at all to us or the neighbors. The picture below shows them the busiest I've ever seen them. Usually I see a lot less buzzing around outside the hive.

This is the brood box that Joseph is getting into

He located the queen bee. Can you see her?

How 'bout now? She's the one in the middle with the long rear end. Her name is Eve. She's the mother of all that's living in that hive...or at least eventually she will be!

The bees are busy establishing their brood boxes where they store eggs and nurture young ones. Soon we will be able to add some more boxes on top that they can fill with honey. I'm excited about the honey! I'm excited about our new pets!

Obsession

I've been meaning to post about Kilynn's obsession for a while now so that I can have a record of this thing that is a part of who she is now. It started back in early fall during canning season. I needed a "babysitter" every now and then so I could get that last batch of this or that in the canner. The babysitter I found was Whinney the Pooh! Pooh Bear did an amazing job of holding her rapt attention via youtube. When canning season was over, the TV (computer) was largely turned off and that's when I started noticing the deep interest Kilynn had taken in the show. I watched her in her play as she began to assign existing stuffed animals to different pooh bear rolls. We already by chance had a Piglet and a Tigger, and she added the elephant on the left as Lumpy the Heffalump, the Care bear as Pooh Bear, and the little finger puppet (which I think is supposed to be a bear) as Roo.

During The October General Conference, Kilynn saw me doodling on a paper and asked me to draw a picture of Pooh Bear. I whipped out the Pooh you see below which led to the drawing of Piglet etc...

 I did have to look at something to draw all the others after those two, but I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself for drawing these. I'm not an artist and this probably constitutes my best art achievement ever! At least Kilynn was pleased. We drew them throughout General Conference and she was giggling the whole time I drew. I colored them, cut them out and glued them to pieces of cardboard. She then played with them and didn't stop playing with them for several months! They literally etertained her from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night for just about three months. Her favorite characters by far were these:

Good thing I had this picture because now Kanga is headless and Roo is lost. Kilynn loved how Roo could go in Kanga's pouch and she loved pretending the mother and child relationship between them. For Christmas we bought the Kanga and Roo stuffed animals. That is when she stopped playing with my homemade paper ones so much. She has become almost inseperable from her Kanga and Roo. After opening her gifts on Christmas morning, that was the only gift that she cared about and she didn't let them out of her sight and really didn't let go of them at all for three days. She is still very attached to them. She plays with them every day and sleeps with them at night. They go on lots of pretend adventures. She comes up to me at least once a week and says, "Thank you for my Christmas present Mom!" Apparently she doesn't believe Santa gave them to her. She's a grateful girl though!