Learning to Dress All Alone

In Hailey's quest to be a "big girl" she is learning all kinds of things, such as lyrics to songs, nursery rhymes, opposites, and in this case how to dress herself. Hailey decided to put her jammies on all by herself. She actually did a really great job. She didn't really know how to put her 2nd leg into her jammie pants all alone. She actually did get the shirt on all by herself, but I didn't have the camera just yet. I was just so shocked that she could get dressed all alone. Here are a few pictures of our big girl doing it "all by myself"

And to finish it off an extra story with mom for big girl stuff--raise your hand if you remember the story Love You Forever

"I'll love you forever,

I'll like you for always,

As long as I'm living,

My baby you'll be"

4 Generations

We were fortunate enough to have my grandma (my "gumun") come visit us here in Oregon. She is 82 years old, and still as feisty as ever. And best of all, she adores my little girl, and Hailey adores her right back. It is so neat to have all 4 generations together, especially 4 generations of girls! Here are the pictures we have of our 4 living generations. Hailey always needs to see the pictures after we've taken them, that's what the last picture is all about.

The Scuzzy's & Gumun on Vacation

Here are some pictures of my parent's vacation. They left in the motorhome with my grandma on August 16th. They are traveling to all kinds of places. Tonight they will be in Illinois to visit with my dad's family. Then they head to Michigan to visit with my dad's old Marine buddy from Vietnam. After that they are off to Lexington, Kentucky to visit with Trevor's mom and step dad, while Trevor, Hailey and I are vacationing there for a week. Then they head back toward California for a little while. Oh what fun they must be having on their travels. Here are some pictures from emails that they sent out, if you haven't seen them yet, they are beautiful!



Here is a little sample of our vacation. We are having a great time, we took lots of pictures. First in Glacier National park, so pretty. Then of Mt. Rushmore & Crazy Horse........

Here are some pictures from our visit to Bear Country USA. It's like Lion Country Safari was. It's been twenty five years since we went there, Tina was two years old, about Hailey's age now. The animals just roam free...

Our New and Improving Backyard

Our backyard has come a long way. When we moved to this house, we were excited just to have a fenced yard, but a year later we've realized that we want more for our family than just a yard with a fence. We want a place to spend time and enjoy. We found an online company http://www.directgardening.com and http://www.michiganbulb.com. We only have one nursery here and Wal-Mart to help us with our landscaping needs. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart hires anyone who applies in their nursery department, so they have little or no knowledge of plants. The other nursery charges way too much money for what they offer. So we turned to the Internet. Turns out they have the same plants for a LOT less. Your plants come to you in small sticks or twigs, but with a little love, water and time they will grow into big beautiful plants. Just to give you an idea, we went to our local nursery and were quoted $100 for 4 plants. We went to direct gardening we got:

2 - lilacs
2 - burning bushes
2 - royal empress trees
6 - honeysuckles
1 - lavender
1 - butterfly bush
3 - festuca (a ground cover)
and a couple random flowers

We paid $45.00, which included shipping. Anyway check out our before and after pictures. They will get better and bigger as time goes on. I'll have to update our front yard pictures later on.

Before

After

These Hostas were there when we moved in, but no one had watered them, so they were dead. Beautiful and big this year. We created a new boarder with bricks this year for them.

Do you have an elbow on your leg???

This is such a cute story, I just had to share.

Hailey learned all of her body parts when she was a year old (eyes, nose, hands, feet... etc). She has since learned a more detailed list of her body parts (fingers, toes, eyebrows, dimples, mustache, etc.) Apparently there was one body part we failed to teach her, and we didn't even realize it.

The other night Hailey was in bed, and she called for me. I reluctantly went into her room, normally we don't go into her room after the night time routine is finished, it's bed time and that is that. This night I just decided it would be better to go in and see what was going on. The following dialog took place:

Me - "What's going on?"
Hailey - "I have an owie"
Me - big sigh "Where's your owie?"
Hailey.... wait for it......

"On my elbow on my leg"

So, we apparently forgot to teach Hailey that her elbow on her leg is not called any elbow, it's called a knee. I tried so hard not to laugh. I kissed her knee and it took every part of me not to bust out in laughter. I closed the door, and bust into laughter. I tried for about 2 minutes to tell Trevor the adorable story, but I just couldn't stop laughing.

Now the debate is whether we teach her that it's called her knee, or leave it to be "my elbow on my leg" because that is so stinkin' cute!

P.S. she also calls her big toe the mama one, and the other toes are the little ones... cute kid!

Give me an 'A'

In our quest to rid our house of clutter, we decided to have a yard sale. As most of you know, when you are getting rid of stuff, and finding crap to sell at a yard sale, things turn up that you forgot you where storing. In this case, when it was snowing outside, I failed to take some wrapping paper back out to the garage, and it found it's way to our living room while I was searching for yard sale things. Hailey, of course, found these new "toys" and started tinkering with them. On a side note, Hailey has been learning her letters. She played with them for about 5 minutes before she called to me to "look at this". I hadn't been paying attention, then I looked down, and she said "Look, an A" What a funny girl to take 3 wrapping paper rolls, randomly sat aside, and create a letter she had been learning! Clever kid.

Chores

I'm back from my blog-cation, and with an adorable story:

I know my kid is only two years old. I don't expect a lot out of her when it comes to helping around the house, but she loves to help. And I would be a dummy not to let her. Things don't always get done my way, but they get done. I grew up having chores, I had to earn my keep, and I don't see anything wrong with Hailey helping me and learning responsibility. And let's face it, when she's helping me with chores, she's not getting into trouble, that is priceless!

This particular day, I had a LOT of things to get done, and Hailey was eager to help me out. She attempted to help me empty the dishwasher, which quickly proved to be a bad idea. After a small dish was shattered all over my floor, and made sure my reactions were not out of control, I decided that perhaps a different chore was more suitable for my 2-year-old. So I assigned her the laundry. The task was simple, "can you help mama by getting all the clothes out of here and putting them into the blue basket?" Now, normally she puts her arms in, gets whatever is within arms range, before I know it, she's off on another task, and my laundry is only partially pulled out of the dryer. Which is fine, I want her to learn that helping mommy is a good thing, but she doesn't need real chores just yet. While I finished emptying the dishwasher, I realized Hailey was not about to let her little arms and the giant dryer get the best of her today. Today would be the day that she finished the chore that mama had assigned her. Today she would get ALL of the clothes. My tiny girl, climbed into the dryer and got every last piece of laundry. I laughed to myself, and asked calmly, "do you need mama's help?" A very quick "NO!!!" came back at me. When she is finished, she will not allow me to even help her take the laundry to the living room, another defiant "NO!!!" came my way. Okay.... I thought to myself, get the camera and make it a part of your blog... quickly!!! So here ya go, the pictures of Hailey helping mama with laundry: