Maddy

Most of you remember that there have been a few posts about the Hess family and Ryan's fight with cancer.. I have mentioned that if you are a government employee that you could donate vacation time to him to help the family. I'm not sure how many of you have been following their story since then but for those of you who have and for those of you that haven't as well...

Ryan was recently given approximately two weeks and has started hospice.

I have struggled with the right words to say regarding all of this but I wanted to just ask that you all keep Ryan and his beautiful family in your prayers.

They are so amazingly strong and inspiring. Take a moment to go to their blog to be inspired by these very special people.

teamryanhess.blogspot.com

Girls night

So, it's been a long time since the days when Taylor, Emily, and I used to host a girls night every month here at our house... I miss those.

I was thinking about them the other day- the wedding themed one where we all looked at wedding pictures, the high school themed one where we all brought our yearbooks, the Twilight movie night. They were so much fun.

Who's up for another one? I'm thinking this week or next we should have a girls game night or something... anyone with me?

Playing with Maddy

Abi and I were going through all the baby toys and handing them to Maddy to "try out".

It was so fun to watch her get excited about each new toy presented to her.

Hanging with her baby....

shaking the monkey toy...

She already likes being a princess!

New toy

I don't know if you can tell that the colors are a little bit more vibrant...

a little sharper...

a lot less blurry...

I have..

YAY!

Happy Penguin Day!

Yesterday we all wore black and white to church for penguin day. Abi asked to wear one of my headbands so she was feeling pretty grown up.

I neglected to get a picture of both girls together so these are the best I got..

Abi in the back seat as we left for church enjoying one of her new favorite snacks. They are actually baby food but she loves them too.

It's about the only 'organic' thing I buy.

I know to most people organic= healthy but to me organic = more bugs.

I got the shot of Maddy in the primary class I was subbing while we were waiting for the kids to come in.

Saying Goodbye to Grandma

Saturday was the dreaded day of Mom's departure.... she and I left the girls at home with Doug and went to Panera bread for breakfast for some girl time.

We then came home and she said her goodbyes to Doug, we packed up the girls and headed over to the shuttle bus pickup.

Maddy and Grandma

While we waited for the bus Abi came up to the front to sit on Grandmas lap and get in some last minute cuddle time..

We were trying to get a 'sweet' picture of her with her hands under her chin because she does that sometimes but it's hard to get a picture of it...

this was the closest we got

but it was only after many of these...

these....

some of these...

the sweet but mischievous...

and these...

She needed to give Grandma a big hug and whisper to her for the millionth time that Grandma could sneak her into her suitcase before Grandma got on the bus.

We were so sad to see you go but so happy you came out!

Disney Family Movie Night: Meet the Robinsons

I think we all forget how much we like this movie until we watch it and then we remember how great it is!

We did it friday night this week so that my mom could be a part of one more movie night before leaving.

I made two kinds of homemade pizza for dinner.. one pepperoni and one BBQ chicken with pineapple to resemble Lewis' hair. We pretended that it was Uncle Art's delivery pizza.

(Uncle Art is one of the characters and delivers pizzas.)

After dinner we 'invented' our own ice cream sundaes.

Abi fell asleep during about the last ten minutes.

Happy Jelly Bean Day!

We chose to not celebrate Earth Day this year. We figured that planting the bushes and flowers in the yard on Saturday counted as an Earth day activity!

Instead we celebrated Jelly Bean Day by going to the Jelly Belly factory.

It was Maddy's first time and thank goodness they changed the video again so it was actually interesting again.

This was the first time that Abi actually watched the videos and was interested in how they make them. That made it more fun.

Maddy was just wondering what in the world was going on.

Downtown Day

Tuesday we decided to have a downtown day .... but not Chicago this time. Abi really wanted to have a tea party so we packed a tea party picnic and went to the lake.

Unfortunately, it was quite cold... but at least it was sunny.

We got these teeny tiny cupcakes that Abi was so excited about.

Maddy wasn't having as much fun and begin crying soon after this picture. We think she was just getting cold.

When we were done with the tea party we walked along the water which was much needed and fun!

Then we rode the trolley for the first time ever. It wasn't that exciting but Abi loved it. I thought , for some reason, that they might tell you a little about the town or something but it's basically just a fast ride around a few blocks.

Glasses check up

Abi had her follow up appointment with the eye doctor on Monday. I had a lot of questions for the doctor after talking to someone I know that has a son with the same eye condition. Her son is doing vision therapy and has already seen improvement. I wanted to ask her about that and make sure that Abi's prescription was correct because she has kept saying that she can't see things when her glasses are on.

The doctor was pretty much on edge right from the start and kind of rude. She kept telling Abi, "Oh you can see it." That was annoying. Basically she said that Abi needs to wear them all the time and that once she is used to them she will stop complaining which is probably true so we have been doing that. She also was very negative about the vision therapy saying that it's just one more thing for people to charge you for. It kind of reminded me of how some doctors talk about chiropractors and vice versa.

So, basically I am keeping my own opinion and we will probably try vision therapy with Abi sometime in the next few years. Until then we will just focus on having her wear her glasses as much as possible.

I thought it was funny watching Abi play in the waiting room. She gets so serious about building things and following the 'instructions' on the box. She was slightly frustrated because some pieces were missing.

We ran into a friend from church here and she asked, "Mimi would you like to play with me?"

I felt bad for Mimi as she agreed but then was subjected to watching Abi painstakingly lay out all the pieces the way they were on the box before they could begin.

Cuddle Time

The girls just loved having Grandma to cuddle with!!!

Disney Family Movie Night: Beauty and the Beast

I was really excited for this one for two reasons: it's my favorite Disney princess movie and my mom got to join in!

I chose to go with a French theme for dinner for obvious reasons. I made chicken salad on croissants, little grapes and cheese sticks, and eclairs.

It was a rousing success!

When we were done eating we had a 'spa' activity while we watched the rest of the movie. We did hair and nails. We tried to talk Doug into getting his nails polished but it didn't work.

Grandma doing her nails...

Abi really wanted to brush her own hair...

and did a great job!

She then wanted me to braid it for her so it would be curly the next day.

I painted her fingernails and toenails pink.

Then she painted my toenails red. That was pretty interesting... but she loved it!