Bad picture-taker...bad!

I've been bad this week and haven't even snapped one photo of the girls...gotta get back on that before the hate-mail arrives from the Grandma's...

We've been busy with the house being on the market and just all the rest of general life. Dave had his annual Engineer's Conference with MNDOT in St. Cloud on Monday and Tuesday and then he had hockey games on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday so the girls and I spent lots and lots of alone time together without Daddy...Whew, I'm glad I made it through. We had showings on Wednesday night so we went over to a friends house for dinner.

We've had a lot of showings so far but no offers yet. We're crossing our fingers that something will happen soon but if it doesn't, I figure it wasn't meant to be and that's ok too. Actually, just as long as I don't have to keep my house looking like this for much longer would be good. Lily keeps asking about some of her toys that have been packed away into storage and that's hard to explain to a 3-year old. She wants to move to the new house right now so she can get her toys out of the boxes!

Bridget is pulling up on everything and everybody now and uses furniture, people, or the dog to get where she wants to walk. She can let go briefly and stand on her own now too so won't be too long before she's walking. I was thinking she might do it by her birthday on the 17th but we'll see.

We had a crazy splash-fest in the bathtub tonight. I pulled the curtain in and let the girls go nuts with the splashing - they had a ball. Bridget loves to splash and pays no attention to all the water in her face. Lily likes to splash but doesn't like the water getting in her eyes so she looks up at the ceiling, closes her eyes, and then splashes like mad. It was funny to watch them go at it. Those two are like peas and carrots sometimes...

Easter Bunny

The Easter bunny visited our house and left the girls some goodies in their Easter baskets. I did get Bridget to wear her ears for a little bit while I snapped a couple of quick pictures. The Easter bunny had forgotten to fill the baskets until about 5:30 that morning but whew, got it done in time! Lily ate all her jelly beans right away and then ate her chocolate bunny after lunch time. She wanted to eat Bridget's stuff too but we had to draw the line there.

Lily's gymnastics has been going well, she did better listening to the teacher this Saturday. If you ask her, she says 'I didn't listen to the teacher very much.' But she is getting better and getting into the hang of being part of a class so that's been good practice.

Our house is officially on the market. We didn't have any showings the first couple of days and now in the last few days, we've had 4 showings with one scheduled tomorrow too. We're hoping that something good comes out of all that activity! Cross your fingers for us. It's tough to keep the house clean and to get out of the house when people want to come see it for a showing so I'm hoping we don't have to do that for too long.

Cleaning like crazy....

Sorry I've been bad about posting lately. We are getting our house ready to go on the market, in fact, it went up today so we spent all weekend long cleaning and de-cluttering the house. It doesn't even look like anyone lives here anymore, it's so darn clean!! Now, the key will be keeping it this way for any length of time.

Had gymnastics again for Lily on Saturday. She did a little bit better with the whole listening-to-the-teacher thing. I only had to go over once and try to get her to go back with her class.

Bridget is 'cruising' everywhere now, always pulling up on things and trying to get to the next spot. She has also discovered the steps and she's really good at getting up the steps. I don't think she has any idea how to get back down though. She likes to chase after Lily and is getting to be pretty quick. She also has started to show a little jealous streak - she doesn't like it when I hold someone else or when her daycare lady Inez holds someone else. Only Bridget.

The next Mary Lou Retton??

We had Lily's first ever Gymnastics class today. We went last week to sign her up and the teacher offered to let her jump on the big trampoline a bit and she was not buying that for one minute. So all week, I kept telling her that she was going to get to jump on the big tramp when she went to gymnastics. And she'd say 'I'm going to jump on the big trampoline when I'm big Mom. When I'm three, I can jump on the big trampoline'. Then we'd remind her that she is 3 and she'd insist she was 2 and too little for the big trampoline. So Saturday arrives and we go to class, she sees on the other kids out there doing stuff and can't get her shoes off fast enough. She has a class of about 6/7 other little girls and she did great with trying everything but not quite so good at the listening to the teacher part...The teacher had to go retrieve her several times from different parts of the gym and take her back to the rest of the class. She gets a little distracted by anything else going on and goes over to investigate that...I had flash forwards into school conferences as I was sitting there watching this...So, she likes the gymnastics but we've got to work on the whole staying-with-the-class thing and the listening-when-the-teacher-says-to-come-back thing too...uffda.

Other than that, we have been looking at possibly building a different house so we are still looking at it but getting more serious. We're planning to put our house up on the market probably the 17th of March and see what happens. If we sold and moved, we will still be in Shakopee, just a little further west than we are now. So, we'll see what happens.

Bridget is pulling up on things now and standing. She hasn't really started to take steps along things yet but I'm sure that won't be far behind now. I'm starting to gather some things for her birthday in April but I haven't gotten very far yet...I don't know what I do with all my spare time! ;-)

Back in the frozen north...

So, we're back from California. Although it wasn't all that sunny when we were there, it was still warmer than MN in February so that was a nice break. The girls (especially Lily) had fun in CA and Lily loved playing with her cousins Tess and Libby. I predict there will be some serious fun had with that whole bunch over the next ten years!

We went to San Diego Zoo, Laguna Beach, and the Oceanside Beach (plus Ruby's at the Pier) when we were in CA. Between and rain and just getting the girls back to the house for naptime, we didn't have a lot of free time to do too much. But we did get to do some fun things plus got to spend lots of time with G&G Herzog and Dave's brother John and his wife June and of course, Tess and Libby. The girls put on a special show with Lily too and did some gymnastics moves and it was really cute. I was wishing I had brought my video recorder to capture that!

Took us a few days to readjust to the Central time zone from being out on the Pacific time zone for almost a week. Dave and I are still staying up late, just doesn't feel like it's as late as it is here! Bridget is mostly readjusted and Lily is getting there too.

Lily got a sliver in her hand when we were at Laguna Beach and when she told me about it later, she said she had a 'lizard' in her hand. After I finally figured out what she was talking about, I tried to convince her it was actually called a sliver but she was having none of that. So we had to put a band-aid on her lizard so it would feel better. It took me until last night to finally talk her into letting me take the band-aid off and get the sliver out.

Lily liked the beach, when we went to Laguna beach and she put her toes in the sand, her face just lit up. Then she kept asking - where's the sandbox??? I told her this is one big sandbox! She was scared to go out by the water but I finally got her to go with me and stick her toes in a bit. The water was pretty chilly. Then she let it get a little further up and ended up falling right into the wet sand so thank goodness Aunt June had thought to throw in some extra clothes because Lily needed them!

It has warmed up a little this weekend, in the 30's today and tomorrow and I am anxious for spring...guess I better not hold my breath quite yet though...