happy hump day....

Every morning, I wake up to these sweet faces and everyday I am so amazed that God gave us these awesome gifts!
We love you forever baby girls!
Love, Mommy & Daddy

Gardening

Even out here in the desert, you can grow a garden. In fact, if you are my husband and have his interest & background in farming, you MUST garden. Andrew takes a lot of pride and effort to make our garden successful. As a result, Isabelle and I are happy to pick and eat fresh tomatoes on a daily basis. Tomatoes seem to always flourish. This year, our peppers are doing well too. Everything else has either been attacked by little gray bugs (Andrew finally killed with soap) or has not been able to withstand our ridiculously hot sun.
Yesterday, I took Isabelle & her girlfriend Layna out to get some tomatoes. They enjoyed picking all of them, no discrimination here: red, yellow and green tomatoes were all up for grabs....
Thank you Andrew (aka Daddy) for all of our hard work so we can enjoy yummy veggies!
Love, I&K

8 Months Old

I am proud to report that Andrew reminded me that Adelaide was 8 months old today. Not because I forgot, but because Andrew remembered. We are both so in love with our sweet little Adelaide and she is developing quite a fun personality. She is silly, loves to giggle, watch the dogs, play with her sister, stand with help, snuggle, eat everything and sleep. Adelaide has started saying "Babbababab" and "MOMOMOMAMOAMOM". We love our sweet Adelaide and it is so much fun to watched Isabelle & she interact. They love each other dearly already and Isabelle constantly reminds me of this by saying "sisser luv me". Yes, Isabelle, sister loves you so very much!
I can already tell that Adelaide has a spunky opinionated personality, much like her sister. I am not looking forward to the fights, but I can tell Sweet Adelaide and Miss Isabelle are going to get along quite splendidly and have a lot in common.
We cannot wait to see what the future holds for you Adelaide!
Love, Mommy & Daddy

Isabelle's First Swim Lesson

This morning was Isabelle's first swim lesson. We decided that doing "mommy and me" classes was as easy and mommy taking Isabelle to the pool for free, so we held out for the teacher/student classes. This summer has been a bit rough with Isabelle getting acclamated back with the water. Last year, Isabelle would dive under the water to swim to us, but this year she has been a bit afraid to spend too much time swimming. She loves being in a pool were she can touch the ground and have her head above water, so I imagine that she has just learned to be fearful. Last year, there was never a thought in her mind that she may actually get stuck underwater. This year, she can think through things a bit more, thus the fear.
So off to swim lessons we went. As soon as I heard that Isabelle was assigned to "Jake", I knew there would be an issue. Isabelle loves everyone FEMALE and is generally a bit fearful of men she has never met. She remains shy in front of men, so when I attempted to leave her with "Jake" the waterworks came. Isabelle broke down. Insited she had to go to the bathroom (,although she had just gone), screamed for mommy and daddy (who were both present and watching her from afar). This lasted for about 15-20 minutes. Another female instructor/assistant came to her rescue and calmed her down enough to return her to "Jake". Isabelle finally realized that we were not leaving or coming to her rescue and no one had attempted to drowned her yet, so she gave in to "Jake" and went swimming with him. It was so nice that she finally found out swim class could be fun. Too bad she only got to enjoy it for 5-10 minutes. We'll see how tomorrow goes, but I'm hopeful that "Jake" has in fact won her over. We'll see......
Love, AKI&A
At the Pool with "Jake" - why do I keep putting his name in quotations?

Adelaide enjoyed swim lessons too....she had a nice little snooze

Memorial Day Weekend 2012

We spent our Memorial Day weekend together as a family. We enjoyed good eats & treats with friends, but mainly just had a nice time being together. However, Daddy spent Memorial Day endured the flu. He was the last to get it in the house and we thought that he had just gotten lucky. No such luck, so daddy felt blessed that he was home with his family on Memorial Day than away at work.
Thank you to all of those individuals, past and present, who have served this country so we can be together as a family. It is on Memorial Day that we can remember as a family what you do for us, because of the simple fact that we are together.
Love, AKI&A
A few quick snapshots from the weekend:

The Easter Bunny Came!!!

Easter morning last year was quite a surprise when Isabelle had a blast finding eggs around our backyard (empty eggs). So we were prepared for a pretty exciting easter morning this year. The Easter Bunny (aka Daddy) went outside and hid the eggs just before Isabelle came out into the leaving room in the morning. Mommy looked over Isabelle's shoulder into the backyard and squinted at something. Isabelle walked over to the window to check out what mommy was looking at and turned around to exclaim in excitement that the easter bunny had left her eggs. We ran and got Isabelle's bear easter basket and headed outside. Isabelle was all business and went to work right away. It seemed like there were about a 100 eggs for her to find, but she found them all and with quite a bit of enthusiam. We all loved it and followed up the hunt by opening up presents from her GG Patty & GG Charlie and Grandma & Grandpa.
Isabelle loved all of it, so following all the excitement we headed to outdoor mass at church. It was beautiful and we got some pretty great seats right up front. The girls did great (as they always try to do well in church) and we got a few photographs afterward.
We tried a Mexican Easter lunch after church, but Andrew & I agreed it was an epic fail. Isabelle was ready for her nap and so were we, so we headed home to relax for the rest of the day. We are so blessed to have such wonderful little girls! We spent the afternoon with some of our Playgroup friends: we had a few margaritas & beer, watched the girls run through the sprinkler and enjoyed some adult converstation. It was a wonderful Easter day with our beautiful girls and some wonderful friends. Thank you Nate & Frances (and Lizzie, Ally & Zac) for having us! Happy Easter!
Love, AKI&A