Here?

I am physically here, sometimes mentally, I just don't have anything to post about. Maybe it will warm up for more than one day and I can take Lena outside for some pictures.

Family

This is picture of my whole family, including my Mom and Dad, brothers, sister, their spouses, and all my nieces and nephews. This was taken at Thanksgiving 2008.

Lena quotes

Since Lena has turned 3, she has had some quotes and conversations that make us laugh, or at least put a smile on our faces.

Last week:

April: I have to clean up this room (living room where all her toys are spread out).
Lena: No you don't. That's not a good idea.
April: Yes, I do need to clean because we have people coming to our house for Christmas next week.
Lena: (looks around) Yes you do need to clean. That is a good idea.

Sunday morning:
Lena: I have to get dressed so I can go to church and share Jesus and God!

Sunday afternoon:
James: (puts on his toboggan) Do you like my hat?
Lena: No. It's broken. Here, let me use my tools and fisk (fix) it.
James: What are you going to fix it with?
Lena: A hammer. (James hands her the hat, she uses a pretend hammer on hat)
Lena: There, good as new.
James: Thank you for fixing my hat.
Lena: Wait, I forgot to use my screwdriver. Let me see it. (Uses pretend screwdriver)
Lena: There, now good as new.

Sunday night:
James: What do you want for Christmas?
Lena: Penguins and a clean house.
*a few nights before, Lena asked Mommy what she wanted for Christmas. Mommy said she wanted a clean house.

Sunday night:
*in the car
Lena: Do you want to ride on my camel?
April: That sounds like fun.
James: Do you have a camel?
Lena: Yes, I do. He's over there in the grass at the zoo.
April: Okay, well how about we ride him in the daytime so we can have light to see.
*I knew kids could have an imaginary friend at this age, I just never thought it would be a camel. Of course, mine was a miniature mouse that lived in my left ear and whispered secrets to me.

Lena turns 3!

Okay, so her birthday was actually on Dec. 8, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. James' parents (aka Granna and Papa) came to town and celebrated with us. We took her to Texas Land and Cattle for dinner. (She loves steak) and she had a bowl of ice cream for desert. Sadly, I didn't bring a candle for her to blow out, so no pictures of that. Since Granna and Papa's hotel was down south (they were also in town for training for work), we went down south to eat and then to their hotel to open presents.

Lena loved her card that Papa and Granna gave her. It was a musical one, her favorite kind. She danced and danced to the music. Here she is showing off her birthday presents; a bracelet, Veggie Tales Lord of the Beans, and her first ever bank card with money to spend.

O Christmas Tree...

A couple of weeks ago, Lena and I put up our tree and decorated it. Of course we've added some more ornaments since these pictures. The third picture shows Lena's part of the tree that she decorated. Every once in awhile, she goes over to the tree and rearranges some of the ornaments. She really loved decorating the tree, and is really getting into Christmas this year. This morning, she heard a noise and said, "Who's on the roof? Maybe it's Santa Claus." Cute girl!

Blog lag

I have gotten behind on posting pictures. My computer decided not to work, so I couldn't download pictures from my camera for a while. I have just about caught up with a few posts. Sadly, I haven't posted pictures since Halloween. I will post soon about tree decorating and Lena's birthday.

Lena makes a pumpkin pie

At Thanksgiving, Lena helped me make a pumpkin pie. Here are all the pictures from that fun event (in two posts). The really fun part came when my Dad was eating the pie, and told me he won the prize because he found a penny in his piece of pie. I had wondered where Lena had dropped her penny.

Halloween

Here is Lena trick-or-treating on Halloween. She was a cute little ladybug. Once again, I made her costume. We decided on a ladybug because for a while, she was always pretending to be a bug.

Why?

Well, it's come at last. Monday night, Lena started asking the "Why?" question. She varies it up with "But why?" and "Why not?" I'm starting to run out of answers. I knew it would come some day, and probably with a vengeance, seeing as I was relentless with the why questions when I was little. I know she's curious, but sometimes I just don't know what to say.

Christmas

My sister-in-law had this link on her blog. Makes you really re-evaluate things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU

New Recipe

Here is a new recipe I tried last night. James and I really like it.


Green Chile Fiesta Casserole----Serves 8

1 lb. ground beef
1 can diced tomatoes, not drained
1 small can kernel corn
1 jalapeno pepper (optional)
12 corn tortillas
1 red bell pepper (yellow or orange will work)
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups Green Chile Stew (Got it at HEB)
Chopped Cilantro & Sour Cream (optional)

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Chop all peppers. You can deseed the jalapeno to make it not hot. Brown meat and chopped peppers in a large skillet; stir in salt, Green Chile Stew mix, tomatoes and corn; bring to a boil.
2) Spoon 1 cup of meat mixture onto bottom of a 9x13" baking dish. Top with 6 corn totillas, overlapping as necessary. Spoon half of the remaining meat mixture over the tortillas; top with 3/4 cup of cheese. Place the remaining 6 corn tortillas on top, then the remaining meat mixture and cheese. Cover with foil.
3) Bake for 25 min. or until heated through. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and a dollop of sour cream (optional).

Christmas Giveaway

Check out what's going on at 5 Minutes for Mom. They are having a huge Christmas Giveaway! Click on the button on the right to check it out!

Lena in the Pumpkin Patch

This past weekend, we were in Brownwood, and while there we found a pumpkin patch and thought it would be fun to take pictures of Lena with the pumpkins. It also seemed appropriate since her Papa (James' Dad) calls her his punkin'.

Lena and the Bunnies

A couple of weeks ago, Fry's Fun Farm came to Lena's preschool. She absolutely loved playing with the bunnies. Some of these pictures are out of order, but oh well. There were other animals there, but she didn't seem to care about them. I love the second picture. I had just told her it was time to go, because her class was leaving to go inside. Her look says, "But Mommy, I just caught the baby bunny!" All in all, she had a lot of fun. For the next several days of school, she kept asking if she was going to play with the animals at school.

Tagged By Elizabeth

Here are the rules:Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions. Do not dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Tag five other people to do the same.

From "The Messies Manual" by Sandra Felton

"What good does it do to have lived if our thoughts and actions are not conserved in memory or concrete form? These bits and pieces of stuff prove that we have lived full lives. Because of the passion with which we regard these belongings, it hurts us even to think about discarding them. We save for the future."

This just happened to be right there on my nightstand. I keep hoping that by putting it there, I might actually have a few minutes to try and read it one day.

I tag my sister Trisha, Tiffany, Hilary, Amanda, and Shea Amaro

Pay It Forward

This is a fun game that I played on Whitney's blog, and won. now it's my turn to "pay it forward!

"This is copied from: http://www.thelumpkinsfamily.blogspot.com/


THE RULES: The main focus is doing an act of kindness without expecting anything in return other than that the recipient will, in their turn, pass the kindness along and pay it forward.I will send a small, fun gift to the first 3 bloggers who post a comment on this entry. In turn, those three will post this information and pick 3 people they want to send something to and then the game will continue!!If you are interested in participating, be one of the first 3 bloggers to leave a comment!! The little something you send can be something you made, bought, were given or found, anything you want!! Just a gift that will make the person's day!!You have to promise that you will then post about this on your blog, link back to me, and then send something to the first three people who sign up to play along through your blog. Doesn't this sound like fun!!??