Weebles and Church

I really don't know what the fascination is with Weebles but Virginia really likes hers.  They are a toy that she goes to on a regular basis to play with.  I've found all her Weebles sets at garage sales.  She had 2 sets and got another one for Christmas and it has been just as big a hit as the other 2. 

Church
Last night Virginia set all the Weebles out and put 1 Weeble up on one of the Weeble buildings and said that they were at church.  You can just catch her saying church at the very beginning of the video.  Then she names a bunch of animals.  Then she tells me to put down the video camera. 
I hate that she's like that because after I put the video camera down she handed me several of her stuffed animals and told me to sing and she "conducted."  She moved her arms the way a conductor does and I sang Away In A Manger.  It was hilarious because she was so serious about conducting.  I suppose I need to figure out some secret way to video tape her. 

Here are some more Christmas videos.  They aren't super exciting.  But I thought Chris would enjoy seeing some of Christmas morning. 
*The dollhouse is Pottery Barn and I found at a yard sale for less than $5 and it is in brand new condition.  And  Virginia uses it to park her cars!
And I couldn't leave out Bootsie and her Christmas toy. 

Pillow Pet

Just one of the MANY presents that has been a HUGE hit.  I would not have thought a pillow pet would be so popular. 

I am going to be the mean Mommy and drag Virginia away from her toys and get out of the house today!  We haven't gone anywhere since last Friday and I'm going crazy. 

I'm slow with getting the christmas pictures edited but they are coming!

Christmas Videos

Here are a few Christmas videos.  For some reason I thought putting a recorder in Virginia's stocking would be cute.  I forgot that she has a slight obsession with Little Einsteins and they have music and musical instruments in their videos.  So "late" last night we were in the bed and she was watching Little Einstein's and tooting that dang recorder along with the video and telling me all about it.  I was trying not to laugh!!  She calls it her trumpet and sometimes her flute.  In this video she is asking to hear another song she likes called cows, cows, cows. 

I've got several of her talking with her cars.  So this will be the first of several.  I haven't uploaded the others yet.  Time to try and get the house put back together!  It's mess of wrapping paper and packaging!

Merry Christmas Part 2

Virginia and I have truly had a great Christmas so far.  We still have to open presents with Grandma and Grandpa so the fun isn't over yet!  Virginia has played non stop today with her new toys.  I've taken a ton of pictures so get ready for picture overload.
We'll start with church yesterday.  Here are some more of Virginia in the program.  At First Pres. they do a children's Christmas Eve service where they put out costumes and the children can be an angel or shepherd.  Well Virginia freaked out a bit when she saw the costumes and pretty much started crying before we even got into the sanctuary.  But she knew that at some point she was supposed to go up on the "stage."  We got there a tad early and there were other kids up on stage looking at the manger scene.  Once the program started she decided she wanted to dance and wander up and down the center aisle of the church.  nice....so finally we got to go up on stage which she did fine with UNTIL it was time to get off the stage.  Then she started crying, loudly.  All that was left was a prayer and the benediction and she did all she could to escape me and get back up on the stage.  I didn't get many really good pictures because it's hard to wrangle her and take pictures too. 

Merry Christmas

Here are 2 pictures that a friend of mine took today after church.  I'll write more later but Virginia wasn't exactly on her best behavior for church.

Then this afternoon she opened a few gifts from Chris and I.  She got some more of the Cars cars.  She was so excited. 

And you can see in the last picture she is gathering up her stash and heading upstairs to where the rest of her cars are to play.  :) 

No Worries

Those 2 words describe how I feel right now.  No worries.  And it is so very nice.  The Christmas shopping has been done for months now.  Well until Virginia just recently became obsessed with Tinkerbell and The Great Fairy Rescue.  A few things that were originally on the "list" have now been moved to the birthday "list."  Which is okay.  I can't wait to see her face Christmas morning when she sees all the fairies and even Lizzy, the little English girl from the movie, the doll.  She's not into dolls per se as little people you feed and rock but into character dolls that she can act out things with.  I can't tell you how much I've "been" Tinkerbell over the past week.  She comes to me and hands me the doll and says, "Talk to me."  And I become Tinkerbell.  Don't worry she is still obsessed with her cars too.  Those are her 2 main interests right now.  Cars and Tinkerbell! 
Oh back to no worries.  That's it.  We have nothing going on and nothing that has to be done.  Whatever is done is all "extra" and very special.  There isn't anything that has to be done so we are just going along and enjoying the joy of the season.  Virginia and I made special treats for her teachers and the extras we handed out to random people at the church yesterday.  Today we are making some more treats to take to the valet guys at the hospital tomorrow after the early children's Christmas Eve service.  It is so nice to not have to worry about a big dinner or last minute gifts or any of the other things people stress over at Christmas.  Don't worry I do miss being with family and the big dinner and all the stresses but with Chris gone it is nice to just be here with Virginia and have my biggest worry being capturing all the special moments on camera for Chris to see.  This is the right year to have a no worry Christmas and I am excited.  So don't worry about us, we'll be watching Tinkerbell I'm sure and eating all the extra yummies we make!

Also please excuse Virginia's dirty face again!

Merry Christmas!

Packages have been arriving almost daily for a while now.  Chris kept telling me that once they all got there I should go ahead and open them.  I don't like to open my presents BEFORE Christmas but he kept insisting.  So yesterday morning before Virginia got up I opened our Christmas present.  I say "ours" because it's really for both of us.  It's a new digital SLR camera.  Chris loves to take pictures as much as I do and he even said yesterday that he can't wait to get home and use our new camera at the ZOO! 
So you will definitely be getting an overload of pictures now!!  I have only just taken it out of the box and put 1 of the 2 lenses on it that Chris got us.  I haven't even opened the manual yet to begin learning all about this camera.  I've been using the Auto mode but I am excited about learning how to shoot in manual mode too! 
I took a bunch of pictures last night of Virginia but she isn't a very "still" subject and well if I hold Bootsie's ball she is so you'll have to bear with me as I take a gazzillion pictures of Bootsie because she sits still. 

The top one was straight out of the camera and the bottom one was the same one only edited in photo shop. 

Sorry for only putting up 2.  I have several more but Virginia is wanting me to play downstairs!  I promise more later! 

Insta Snow!

So far this winter in Colorado has been lacking snow.  I know we will get plenty in the new year.  It has been odd to hear about all the winter weather the east coast is getting and we are averaging upper 60's here and running around in short sleeves!  The warm weather has been nice. 

Since MOPS is on break until January I've been able to spend lots of quality time with Virginia and pull out some things that we didn't have time to when we were on the go every day.  Back in the fall at the fall festival at the nearby elementary school I bought something that I thought was so COOL!  INSTA SNOW!
I knew this would fascinate Virginia and help to pass the time inside if the weather outside was less than appealing. 

So since we haven't had alot going on Virginia has been sleeping late in the morning and not taking a nap and going to bed early.  She still has a "rest time" in the afternoon (more for me than her) where she watches a show either in her crib or my bed.  So Wednesday after Moms Morning Out I had the idea to head over to our Goodwill store and see what cheap Christmasy things they had that Virginia could use.  She was all excited about going.  I knew I had the Insta Snow at home and I thought some of those Christmas village houses would look nice in the "snow" and Virginia could have a little imaginary village.  Sure enough there were plenty of the little houses and Virginia was very excited about getting them.  She also found this little porcelain dog with a santa hat that she insisted we get.  We picked out several things for our village and then headed over to the book section.  They have a great book area and the books are almost all $0.29!  Virginia sat on the floor reading while I looked through the books.  Then we went and sat at the little cafe they have and Virginia had a cookie (they have free coffee and cookies, well donations welcome).  We left the Goodwill and came home to set up our village.

I did my research on the Insta Snow to make sure it was what it said it was.  It is environmentally safe, non-toxic, and it is actually used (maybe on a larger scale) for irrigation in drought regions.  Alot of indoor snowboarding parks are using it as their fake snow.    I won't bore you with all the scientific details.  It comes as a powder and you simply add water and it expands into "snow."  Over time the water will evaporate and it will return to it's powder form where you can simply add water again and it will return to snow!  I know neat huh.  I will say that I wouldn't use this with a child who tends to put things in their mouth.  The age listed starts at 4 but Virginia is not one that puts things in her mouth and I stayed with her while she played to make sure she wasn't tempted. 
Virginia had a great time driving her cars through the snow.  Then when it was time to put the snow up she asked if she could have the houses in her room so I dusted the snow off them and she lined them up.  Then the horse and eagle had an argument over whose house was whose. 
We both have a little cold (nothing major) and are staying in our jammies today snuggling.  Our 70 degree temps have disappeared and it's cold outside! 

*A funny virginia saying.  I've discovered that threatening to take away Virginia's cars is a motivator for her.  I don't have to use it often.  The other night she looked at me and asked me, "Do you want me to take your cars away?"  **not sure what I had done that she thought I needed my cars taken away!

Dance Party

Last night Virginia wanted to dance!

My friend Valerie (who owns a dance studio and teaches dance in Sylva, NC) gave Virginia this costume when she came and sang at June's funeral.  The music is from Sandra Boynton, a children's author and she has also published several books with music CD's. 
I also got some pretty funny still pictures of Virginia dancing that I'll try and post later today.  I'm still having trouble figuring out how to best post videos here.  I'm not sure that posting this way will give you the option of making it full screen which I know some of you would like.  I'll keep working on it.

Read More Carefully

Grandma and Grandpa sent a box of Christmas presents last week.  Inside the box was this really cool plush Christmas tree shaped advent calendar.  Virginia was so excited!  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for including something that wasn't wrapped and she could have right then.  Her little face was all sad when she saw that everything was wrapped and I had to tell her we couldn't open them yet.  So when she got to the tree she was so excited!  And she wanted to have her picture made.  The problem this time though was at first she would cover her face with the calendar.  Then she would "force" a smile and it would look all weird.  So I was trying to convince a 2 year old to, "No just smile naturally Virginia."  She looked more like she was in pain than smiling.  But I was able to get some cute ones and some with Bootsie in front of the tree.  Again I couldn't get Virginia to understand to come and sit next to Bootsie, she kept scootching in behind her.

So the "read more carefully" title.  I was all proud of myself the other night.  I was actually going to "fix" supper and not just "heat" something up.  I had found a recipe for cider glazed chicken with brown buttered pecan rice.  yummy right?  I had forgotten the cold apple cider at the store so we just had some of that pre-cooked chicken from the store.  I was most excited about the rice!  I had left over pecans from thanksgiving and who wouldn't love brown buttered rice?  I had bought the super fast 90 second cooking rice in a bag in the microwave so this meal was going to come together super fast!  I was excited.  And virginia normally likes chicken and rice.  So I read the recipe, several times in fact, and i thought it called for 5 tablespoons of butter to be melted and browned then add the pecans for a minute then toss with the rice.  I thought that was alot of butter especially since i was using more rice than the recipe called for.  so i made it and BOY WAS IT BUTTERY.  It was really good but really buttery and I felt like i was just eating a stick of butter with some pecans in it.  very rich.

well it just kept bothering me that it was so buttery.  a few days later I was re-reading the recipe and realized it called for 5 TEASPOONS of butter NOT 5 tablespoons.  I was so mad!  Not necessarily as myself but at the magazine who published the recipe.  I've never thought of butter in terms of teaspoons in recipes.  it's always been tablespoons or the cup equivalent or ounces even NOT TEASPOONS.  It was a popular cooking magazine I got the recipe from.  I should have read more carefully!  I think someone said that 3 teaspoons make 1 tablespoon so i used alot more butter than it called for!  I'm gonna try it again this coming week with the correct amount of butter!