Baller or Ballerina?

I will just start out by saying, I am not a nut (well, I guess that is debatable), in fact if it was up to me Lucy, would probably just wear her pajamas all day, but she loves dressing up in different outfits ( really...she picks out funny outfits or dresses and wants me to put them on her), and since she has a dance session every morning and we happen to have ballet slippers and a leotard, why not put them to use and start Saturday morning off right?After a sweet morning dance, Lucy sort of complied with a quick photo sesh.I call this next one "The Who" or "hoo" or I don't know how to spell it, but sometimes her nick name when her hair is in a pony is "Lucy Lu Hoo," as in the "whoos" of Dr. Suess.Full action shot!What comes to your mind when you see this next shot? I think of a line from one of my favorite movies "Little Rascals" ... "Got a burger to go with that shake?" and boy does Lucy have a little shake...she has no trouble strutting her stuff with her hips, that's for sure! Okay I will stop trying to describe her dance moves, and once again try my hand at video uploading so you can get a taste for her latest dance moves (I had the worst luck uploading videos a couple months ago. I would spend hours trying to upload something and then it wouldn't work in the end and I finally just completely quit, but it's been long enough that my wounds have healed and I can try again).
After Lucy's morning workout (she usually dances every morning) we decided to go watch my little sister's young women basketball game and, of course, Lucy had to be dressed for the occasion, she couldn't show up in her tutu! So we changed her quick into her new way too adorable basketball outfit Aunt Lani got her for Christmas.
And we played some ball, Lucy's other favorite thing to do besides dance (but I'm pretty sure dancing is her favorite). We hold her up so she can throw it at the basket and she chases after it dilligently.

The girls barely won there game. They were behind the entire time until some sweet shots in the last few minutes! Lucy got to be the mascot as the girls celebrated their victory!
This is silly, but sometimes I worry Lucy is going to be one of those annoying "know it all" kids. Hear me out on this one. The picture below is a serious demonstration of Lucy trying to show Heidi how her ipod works. Lucy asked for some music after the game was over, so Heidi went to go turn some on. She was having technical difficulties getting it to play, so after waiting for about 2 minutes Lucy came over and showed Heidi where the play button was. This kid is seriously going to know more about technology than me in before she even gets to kindergarten! I kid you not, if the computer is left on she already knows how to move the mouse to what she wants, click and log on, I guess it is time to activate a password!

I will just finish this post by saying, I wouldn't want to meet this thug in nursury if I was her age!
So what do you think, does Lucy make a better ballerina or baller? Feel free to express your opinion via our poll at the top of this page!

Baby Oh Baby

Lucy likes to do things that her babies do. Sometimes I convince her to get her diaper changed by putting a diaper on her baby. This time she was not so convinced and after getting her diaper changed she insisted on having another one on, on the outside of course, just like her baby! Then she brought both of her babies and her bear, put them to sleep on the bed and joined them. (It would have been cool if she had actually just gone to sleep with them, but it was still cute).

(Yes this is Lucy's real bed on the ground. After sleeping on the ground in Korea, we liked it so much it stuck!)

I told her that if she was going to go to sleep with her babies, she had to close her eyes, so she manually closed one of them. Guess she forgot how to do it without her hands. Usually when I tell her to close her eyes she just squints, so she can still see. Funny girl! I really can't get enough of her personality these days. I think she is hilarious and laugh really hard at least once every day, usually more. There's things like how I don't read her a certain book we have at certain times because it talks about the baby talking a bath, and she will run to the bath tub and say "ba, ba" until she gets one, which is great sometimes, but not right after she has taken one and it is time for bed. Or take yesterday for example, I asked her to go get the tissue and wipe her nose. I was really just trying to distract her because I was tired and wanted to sit on the couch, I didn't think she would actually do it, but she came back with the tissue and did a pretty decent job of wiping her nose. I didn't even know where I had put her tissue, but she just disappeared to the other room and found it somehow. I was impressed and laughed quite a bit all at the same time! Does this mean I don't have to wipe her nose for her anymore?

Wild Animal Park Mania!

Well, we were officially spoiled this Christmas! Santa Clause got us Zoo/Wild Animal Park season passes for the year! Thank you Thank you Thank you Santa Clause! We didn't even send him a list, but he knew the perfect present for this family. Lucy is just at the age now where she can make just about every animal noise and goes crazy when she sees them, and Dave, well he can never pass up a classic animal national geographic! The good news for you is we got 4 guest passes, so if you come visit us we will treat you to a day with the animals!

Here was our first excursion using our new pass at the wild animal park. We didn't get there until noon, and after letting Lucy spend as much time as she wanted at the petting zoo, she only got to see gorillas and then she passed out for her afternoon nap. As much as I was excited to show her the animals, It was really luxurious touring the rest of the park just me and my hubby. Hey minus the stroller we were pushing, this practically counted as a date!

Anyway, here is the ever anticipated cute shots of Lucy with the animals:

Does this picture melt anyone else's heart, or am I just an overly mushy mom?

We got soooooo close to this bird. I bet Lucy could have touched him if I wasn't so worried about her getting pecked.Do you think these guys are cute or just downright scary? Here's what Lucy thinks:

She wanted to stay as far away from these guys as possible. "Mom please, I'm too close!" When Dave bent down to talk to Lucy about the animals, she bent down too. She is such a copy cat right now, and I thought it was pretty cute. She just wants to be like her Daddy!

Expect more animal pictures to follow in the coming months. This place is seriously going to be our new hang.

Mine Mine Mine

(The title is an allusion to "Little Nemo" see if you can figure it out!)

We took Lani on a double date before she headed off on her London Study abroad (talk about jeoulous older sister, okay I won't talk about it!) Lucy was her date. We did the ultimate Southern California date...In n' Out drive thru, then picnic on the beach! Sound to good to be true in January? Anything is possible, however there was one small drawback that we overlooked in our plans...Seagulls !!!! They really wanted our lunch and since Lucy was trying to feed them hers, they were getting way too close. An especially nasty one wrapped up in some kind of string was getting way to close for comfort.

When we were done with our lunch and finally ready to actually feed them, I got the camera out, ready to catch some really cute moments of Dave and Lucy feeding the birds, but all I got was this...

Dave turned on me and threw all the food at me, so I aimed and took a shot while on the run! I thought that was funny and had no problem taking the joke, even though I did run for my life! This picture is just so you get an idea how close and vicious they were. Tell me that is not a little bit scary?
Even Dave is afraid as you can see... (Yes this post is going somewhere, I just gotta build it up!)



And so I decided to get all artistic and lay down so I could just get Dave and Lucy, the sky and the birds flying overhead. Dave really should have realized that he had already had enough fun teasing me, but he still suffers from years of not growing up with a girl to tease and I fear he will never get it out of his system. While I was on my back, under a bunch of nasty ravenous birds all screaming "Mine Mine Mine" Dave once again through all the crumbs on top of me. The earlier episode I could take in stride, I had my feet under me and I could run, and the food really only got within a few feet from me, but this, this!!!!! I was on my back in the sand, for crying out loud! That is more like cruel and unusual punishment than a funny joke. I ran to the car in tears and cooled off for a minute and then after Dave kept pleading for me to come back, I rejoined him with probably my most vicious display of affection I have shown throughout our entire marriage (Dave and I really aren't yellers in any way, so this yelling vicious session only consisted of me pretty much just saying "You are such a Jerk! Why did you do that to me?" in a loud enough voice that people within a 20 ft. radius could hear me.) The funny thing is he didn't even know what I was talking about. He seriously had know idea why I had gotten mad. Well, of course I forgave him after about 1 minute, because Dave is seriously the most loveable guy on the planet! I mean that with my entire heart and soul, even though at times he would throw his wife to the seagulls, he really is the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. He is defintely a blessing that was bestowed to me based on things that I didn't do in this life! The moral of the story I guess is that sometimes husbands can be really imature, but they are totally worth it!

And the day wasn't a tragedy after all! We all made up and came away with this little beauty! Thanks for taking the family pics Lani! I love it! I feel like it is truly symbolic of our Southern California Winter! Ah yeah! You really can't stay mad too long when the sun is shining and you're at the beach!

A Happy New Year

New Years Day was quite eventful at our house. The party went on all day, from the scrumptious sit down breakfast my Mom prepared to a British celebration after dinner. We had some crackers, which are British party favors that keep the party interesting, I guess. Are you wondering about us? My Dad served his mission in London and Lani is now on a study abroad program there, and I guess a lot of our ancestors came from there so we just decided to celebrate that way for fun! I don't really know why we did this, but one thing is for sure, when my family get's together it is never boring and every day is 100% different than the next.

So, crackers are supposed to "pop" when you open them, but none of ours did. We must be lame Americans that don't really know how to do British things (let's just say I'm sure if British people were watching us they would have really gotten a kick out of it). Inside your cracker you get a lovely paper hat, which breaks any party awkwardness that might be felt (not that my family ever needs awkwardness breakers, we definitely are the ones making everything awkward for other people at parties), you also get a really corny British humor joke (I would say a few steps up from the jokes you find on popsicle sticks), and you get a party game(puzzle, magic trick, or noise maker). Do they still sound weird? Here I will give you an example:


My joke was "Why did the teacher wear sunglasses? Because her students were too bright" that one isn't so bad, but there were ones that were definitely not American humor like "What is green and sits in the corner? A naughty frog." The puzzles were magic tricks or little puzzles that you had to figure out, for example to king ring like things that you had to get apart. Anyway, what a fun and very different New Year Celebration!
No post would be complete without a Lucy pic, so here she is at the New Year's festivites (okay really I just posted this one because I absolutely can't get enough of her darling curls and it just happened to be on New Years! I would just like to take this moment to thank Dave for her curls! Thank You! Thank You, for contributing your oh so wonderous curly genes!)

I have about 100 New Year's Resolutions, but I will just let you in on my top 3 since once you go public it is way easier to keep your resolutions and I always love to hear people's goals:

(1)Be happy more often... live in the moment (which really just means take more naps)

(2)Procrastinate the things that aren't really important in life, and make more time for the things that are (thus my very very late blog posting I am happy to report is because I have been spending more time with my child. Way to go! I know!)

(3)Make a friend who I can share the gospel with (this ought to be interesting considering I only hang out with my Mom and sisters. Maybe I should take it one step at a time and just try to make a friend. Hahaha! No, I always say shoot for the stars, so I will go big on this one!)

Anyway...wish me luck...and I will wish you luck too. I hope you accomplish your dreams and do something to make your life just a little bit better this year!

Channy's Wedding

How did I spend my New Year's eve? On the dance floor of course! We celebrated my cousin Channy's wedding on New Year's eve. I couldn't have felt more honored than to be one of her bridesmaids (plus I have always wanted to wear a formal dress to a New Year's Eve party...Wish Granted!). She is a few years older than me and I have always looked up to her way more than she could ever imagine, and I am pretty sure most people that meet her do. She married an absolutely fantastic person, Sean, who I am so excited is part of my extended family now.

It was quite the exciting night for me. I was the emcee and sang a song ("So this is Love" from Cinderella), which was an absolute blast for me. My Dad sang "As time Goes By" and my brother sang "This is Your Song." They were both wonderful and I loved every minute! I haven't done anything like this since before Lucy was born and now all I can talk about is how I am going to run a wedding planning company and be the emcee at every wedding possible. Of course, you probably already know that I change my career path every month, which is funny because I don't really have a career right now, and most likely won't until I raise a couple of kids, but I still change my plan every month. Maybe in 20 years when I am actually ready to start a career I will be able to stick with something for more than a month!

Lucy loved rocking out on the dance floor! She now insists that we hold hands when she dances, just like all the other couples. She even wants to do spins and dips (which she completely bends and puts her head back for). It cracks me up and I wonder if behavior at this age can predict very much about the future...if so, we're going to have to start saving so we can build a dance studio in our house. Honestly, she wakes up every morning, begs me to put one of her frilly dresses on, then asks me to turn the player piano on and then she rocks 'til she drops (usually at least a half hour). At least I get a workout every morning. I love having a buddy who is always ready to rock out with me (not that Dave doesn't succumb every once in a while, even he can't resist jumping in there when his baby girl asks him for a dance)!

Here's a good family shot! It was a lovely wedding and perfect night to be remembered!

Ode to Blogging

Okay, so obviously one of my New Years resolutions wasn't to blog more. I have pretty much been out of the blogging world, in fact, email, computers, technology, etc. has been out the window for me the last few weeks. Seriously, have you ever tried to vacation from technology...I am now drowning whenever I sign in to my email, and wondering how "Inbox (100)" got to be my life (guess I am must be really popular because everyone wants to send me really useful advertising), and then usually procrastinate the checking thereof just one more day! Oh bah! Let's just say email is a pretty reliable way to get a hold of me if you are in absolutely no sort of hurry.

So back to the blogging thing, I am going to share with you an original and truly inspiring quote by me (okay, I guess it's not a quote yet, but by time you share my brilliancy with others it will be):

"If you have lots of time to blog, you are probably bored and have nothing to blog about. If you don't have time to blog, you probably have a list a mile long of all the exciting posts you could write, but are just too busy doing more exciting things."

How true is that? Can you not agree? I guess I should apologize to any of you blogoholics out there, and beg please don't take offense. I mean that in the most light hearted way possible. I mean for sure my most interesting posts have definitely been inspired by having nothing to blog about. If I have nothing to blog about that usually inspires strange outfits, audacious poetry, or inspiring and way too lengthy advice columns. You know it's bad when you start doing things just so you can blog about them...lol! No but really, I never have time to blog when my life would actually be thrilling to read about and then the cool stuff I did just becomes a jumbled catch up post with millions of pictures and short captions of me trying to be funny enough for someone to care to read, even though I am really just documenting for my own personal history how cool I am because I took my child to do cool things (I challenge you to use the word cool more times than I just did, all in one sentence).

I am so curious and I guess, now while discussing the deepest of blogging issues would be a great time to ask my burning question: WHY DO YOU BLOG? Is it your Online Journal. Does it make you feel cool people care about your life and comment. Does your family bug your for more pictures and emails and you found this the easiest way to keep them off your back. Do you just want to be heard. Is it your creative outlet? I am dying to know so if you have time leave comments and explain your burning desire. I am really not joking about how curious I am, I would love to know. For me, it's all of the above I guess. It's definitely the only journal I have ever kept regularly (other than my high school diary that really only ever mentions the boy I had a crush on and whenever he talked to me and is completely lame), plus family gets to see pictures and hear about Lucy as much as they want, plus anyone can see how we are doing if they want to without being forced to get emails that are basically just me bragging about my child (you really never know who wants to hear those kind of details, some people are into it, some people aren't, before blogging you just had to take a risk). And then there are those days when you just must be heard, so now instead of obnoxiously bugging someone about all of your annoyances, you can write about it on your blog and pretend people are reading, and people don't have to read it to be nice (as they might have to on the phone or in person). Last, but not least, we all really want to be creative deep down inside and for me blogging definitely pushes that out of me. I will just conclude this discussion by saying thank you to my blog...you have been a good friend and therapist to me. You have made me a better friend, wife and mother. Without you I don't know where I would be...I only hope I can continue to improve you the way you have improved me! (If you could only imagine the sweet tears of love streaming down my face at this moment)

Don't worry, I really haven't cracked, but I do like blogging and have missed the absence of it in my life this month. So, anyway, here goes another catch up attempt! So far I have only finished the Spokane trip, and will keep working on our latest adventures in 2009. Wish me Luck and remember to scroll thoroughly or else you might miss one of the amazing moments in the life of Lucy, and your life will most surely never be complete!

Snow Play

Lucy really fell in love with the snow in Spokane. She would have stayed out in it all day if I let her. The entire 2 weeks we were there I think I only remember one day that it didn't snow. I had never seen so much snow in my life and was totally in heaven (other than seriously wishing I had my trustee snowboard).

Here's some of the snow play in action (thanks to Renee for the pictures...I always forget my camera right when the perfect photo op happens):

Cooper Daines

Funny moment: we were planning to get together with the (Steve and Cassie) Daines family Friday night and then we ended up cancelling. We then went out to eat with Dave's family at Cafe Chulos and guess who was right behind us in line? Yes, the Daines family, of course! We were thrilled to see them. I guess sometimes you are just meant to hang out with someone and there is no getting out of it!

Anyway here's our kids at the restaurant, meet one of the most adorable babies ever, Cooper Daines. He smiles every time he hears the camera click, so I couldn't resist taking a million pictures, but Lucy only looked good in these ones.


Lucy is very subtly flirting here with a classic move, leaning.

I guess she was over the subtle thing and just went for a big hug, darn those highchairs couldn't get any closer!


Anyway, they are pretty much betrothed, so i wanted to start early on the wedding slide show. These will be classic shots someday when they are married!

Christmas + Cousins

Christmas Morning 2008

Nana and Papa's house

Lucy giving some love to her baby that kisses and says I love you, me looking like this is way too early to be up (even though it was probably around 9:00 a.m. and there was really no excuse)
Dominic, Lucy's cousin, totally rocking out with his new guitar!
Such a little girl just talking away on her new phone



Later Christmas Day

Not in the best of moods here, but we were trying desperately to take advantage of Dave's Aunt Dana's house who is the best decorator I have ever seen ( I mean check that adorable rocking, antique looking, motorcycle, wooden sled, and you can't even see, but the tree has to be 15 feet high!):


Well we did get a half smile out of them:


Could Dominic be any cuter?

NO

Ahhhhh, it's been so long since my little Lucy posed for a super sweet shot
Second cousin Ryan jumped in for a cute picture:


And here's the whole gang (minus 2 2nd cousins, this is Dale and Betty Pendergrass with all their Great Grandkids) Ryan, Gage, Landon, Lucy, Dominic
What a good looking bunch!

...and a perfect (totally white might I add) Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve - Lots of partying and hugs at the Pendergrass home (mainly by Lucy and Dominic, although most the extended family was there, I really only got pics of the little cuties).


Wish I would have taken more pictures of Lucy with her grandparents, but sometimes I just feel like I am starting to annoy everybody with the camera, so this is really all I got the whole trip.

Lucy is so in love with her Papa...she really just doesn't stop giggling when he is around.
They are spinning around here, so Mark looks a little funny, but I had to post it because of the sheer joy on Lucy's face! That seems to be about how she feels every time he walks in the room.
We know how to wrap up a party around here:
Put the little ones to work and this house will be shining in no time! I couldn't stop laughing when I walked in the kitchen and found these two like this, all of their own accord. Some kids tend to get into trouble more with certain kids, but Lucy and Dominic really bring out the best in each other. He is the first little kid Lucy has really followed around and played with, and lets just say if cleaning and hugging are the result, I'll be shipping my nephew down whenever I get the chance!