Hazy Pullman and Sleeping Girl

There have been lots of forest fires in Idaho recently, and we here in Pullman are seeing some of the effects of that. It's been hazy here. Real hazy. It is as if there is a perpetual fog blanket on Pullman. The sun came up blood red today. Isn't that nice? I snapped a few pictures of it this morning.

This is the best picture of the sun's color this morning.

And this is the best picture of what all the smoke looks like.

It definitely smells like smoke too. So that's what we've been having fun with the past few days.

In other news, Peri is still sleeping in her big girl bed, and she loves it. When it comes close to time for her to wake up (or after Gary leaves and stops being so noisy) I open her room door a crack so she can come out whenever she wakes up. So far it has made a really happy little girl. It is so nice to watch her walking into the living room with a big smile on her face and no crying fits in the morning.

She is also really good at her bedtime routine. We tell her, " Peri, it's time to brush your teeth!" at about 7:30 every night, and she just drops what she's doing to go and get her toothbrush. She loves having her teeth brushed and then chewing on the toothbrush afterward. I think it is her favorite thing of the night.
Then she puts her toothbrush away when we ask her too, and goes to her room to get pajama'd all up. Then either Gary or I (we take turns) read a book to her while she plays. Currently the books are more for us than her; right now we're on the 7th book of the Artemis Fowl series (which is really good and unique and well-written, so you should all go read it. It's about a teenage criminal mastermind. What's not to like?) We had to read through all of them so Gary could catch up before I got to read the 8th and final installment.

Anyways, when we stop reading, it's time for family and Peri's personal prayers. Sometimes Peri even volunteers for prayer by folding her arms. It is the cutest thing she does. Since she doesn't talk yet, we help her with her personal prayers. After that we go back to the living room so I can feed her one last time before she goes to bed. Sometimes that puts her to sleep and it's easy-going, but sometimes it doesn't and I put her back on her feet and she walks all the way to her bedroom climbs into bed all by herself, where she lays down and doesn't get back up or play around or anything. She just lays there until she falls asleep while Mom or Dad sing bedtime and Primary songs to her.

We haven't have a crying fit bedtime for ages! And it's mostly because I have the sweetest, smartest, cutest, bestest little girl in the world. (Which all moms say, and it's always true)

I am so excited!

I have finally made an Etsy store! I finally got my first listing on it today! Sadly, there is only the one, but that's okay because soon there will be more! Hopefully. And hopefully other people will like them just as much as I do.

Here is what I listed! Except the paper in her tummy has yet to be cut out in this picture. I really like the way it turned out and I hope other people do too!

I still have some work I need to do on the listing to make it more searchable, but that is neither here nor there. Bottom line is that I'm excited!

I do have some ideas in the works for photo frames that aren't sonogram-related, so we'll see how that goes!

A Big Kid Bed for Peri

Peri's never been too keen on her crib, ever since she could stand up and climb on things. So the other day we were rearranging our house, and decided to convert Peri's crib into a toddler bed.

See?

She had lots of fun last night climbing in and out of it. We put a rolled up blanket along the edge so she wouldn't roll out of it in the middle of the night, even though she tends not to move around a lot.
We had a pretty good night, and she was so happy to be able to get out of bed by herself this morning.

See how happy she is? 

Peri's First Birthday Party! (a month late)

So, Peri celebrated her first birthday on July 23, a day after her real birthday, and it was a lot of fun and we have some good pictures, but I just realized that I totally forgot to make a blog post for all of our friends and family that didn't get to come! So finally, here is what we did!

First of all, Peri's birthday party was supposed to be My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic themed. We didn't get to do all the decorating that we wanted to, mostly because it was windy. We wanted to make the party look like one that Pinky Pie would throw for one of her friends. It did not turn out that way, but oh well.

Peri got to wear her pretty pink tutu from her grandma, and a cute rainbow shirt I found on clearance the day before. She was so cute all decked out in pink!

We made themed food, but forgot to take a picture of it before we all dug in. There were little sandwiches cut into star shapes (my mother and sister helped, and they put all the leftovers in bags so that they wouldn't go to waste. There were a lot of leftovers. Gary and I ended up making savory bread pudding out of them. It was soooo good!) We cut up lots of fruits and put them into rainbows with mini marshmallows for clouds. I saw the idea on pinterest! But we had too much fruit and our pans weren't big enough to make them rainbow shaped. So they just kind of sat there in colors instead. They still tasted just as good though! For drinks we made my favorite sherbert 7up drink! I remember having this all the time as a kid.

We had cake too! I went to a lot of trouble to make ice cream cone cupcakes, but on the way they all fell over in Gary's truck and got all over the floor, so Gary had to hurry to Dissmore's and buy a cake from there. The only ones they had were frozen though, so it was hard to cut the pieces. And I didn't have a knife, since we were supposed to be eating cupcakes. Oh well. We put the cake toppers we'd made for the cupcakes on the cake instead. The rest we put in a basket, and the children all had fun playing with them.

Peri got good and messy with her cake. She must think frozen cake is yummy :D

My nephew Kinton is such a silly kid, he asked if he could pose for the camera, and this is how he chose to do it! Pretty much the best pose ever!

Gary made a beanbag toss, which I painted with Pinkie Pie on it. I also made beanbags that looked like a cake, a cupcake, and an ice cream cone! The kids liked it I think. We still have it if anyone wants to come play!

We played Pin the Tail on the Pony, but forgot to take a picture of the rarity poster that I printed out. Afterward some of the girls taped the tails to their hind quarters. Sarah had a lot of tails!

Gary made the pinata! It is a dragon, for those of you who can't make it out. I had something else in mind, but Gary's vision came out waaaay better than mine. We were going to make a wooden sword to fight it with, but we didn't get around to it in time.

So we used a hurley instead. This is Peri taking a good chunk out of his wing with the help of her aunt Katrina.

And this is Sarah (a child of one of Gary's coworkers) giving the fatal blow!

The kids went crazy over the tootsie roll treats inside. Who doesn't like tootsie rolls? There were flavored ones for those who don't, for some inexplicable reason, like the chocolate flavored ones. Which are the best by the way.

Peri opened presents too. She really really loved these leopard print pants given to her by our downstairs neighbors. She couldn't wait to try them on! Peri loved all of her other presents too, and wears/plays with them all the time! Thanks everyone who came (and some who weren't able to) for making Peri's first birthday a special one!