Daddy is the Hero Today

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day here. As they said on the news today, April can be kind of funny. It is supposed to be 80 degrees today and there's chance of snow by the weekend.



I saw this tutorial for making a kite the other day and wanted to try it with Hannah. Her contribution was to decorate the paper before I turned it into a kite. It was very simple and I already had all of the stuff around the house. I was able to keep it up in the air better than Hannah is in this picture but I'm sure the several feet height difference that I have on her makes a difference.

When we moved here there was a swing set in the yard. We spent a year or so mowing around it and then decided to move it out since we didn't have kids. We were given a little kid swing so I took Hannah "out back" to the swing set several times this winter and spring. She noticed her swing the other day when we were feeding and has been asking for it ever since.

She managed to talk Daddy into bringing it back into the yard for her. I would have to say that she has one of the tallest swing sets in the area. I think that her Grandpa used to swing on this set so it's been around for awhile and I don't think it's going anywhere soon. Maybe she'll be able to talk her Daddy into attaching a slide to the side of it some day.

Once the swing set was in the yard my kite was long forgotten. I did eventually figure out to put her swing at a height where she can get herself in and out so I don't have to run over there every minute while I'm feeding Helena.

She doesn't know to give anyone a "thumbs up" but I think she's giving her Daddy her approval for a job well done.

A Belated Happy Easter

We hope you all had a Happy Easter! Ours turned out to be a pretty full day. Hannah and Helena slept in while I stayed home with them and Daddy went to the sunrise service. I would have liked to have gone but I knew the girls needed their sleep if the rest of the day was going to be bearable. When Daddy got home Hannah got to dig into her Easter basket. Not long after that we had breakfast with Papa Randy, Lynn, Uncle Jared and Cousin Wyatt. We were lucky enough to get to go to some friend's house for a community egg hunt. It was Hannah's first year hunting and she was very serious. I think she was a little bit unsure of all of the people and then once we got going she took her hunting job very seriously.

Here she is opening the egg that she found. It took about a half a dozen eggs before I could convince her to toss the egg in and go look for the next one. She was apparently more concerned about the quality of the items inside and I thought she needed to be worried about quantity. We would have been hunting all day if I hadn't convinced her of the latter.

Whooho! Hannah found a gold egg with some money in it. I guess it pays to hunt the perimeter of the area.

I think she really just enjoyed sitting on the 4-wheeler. Uncle Jared and Papa Randy had been taking her for rides so she thought she needed to go after the egg hunt.

Helena got to go too but she spent most of her time sleeping in her car seat next to Daddy.

I really did try to dress her up for Easter. I figured there was no point taking her dressed up the the egg hunt because she would just get dirty. I was right. By the end she was sitting in the driveway playing with rocks with her cousin. When we got home I put her in her Easter dress for lunch. That lasted for about 20 minutes and then she was running around saying "dress off, dress off!" Oh well, I got one picture before the dress came off and her hair was wrecked.

We spent the rest of the day eating lunch with our family and visiting. The guys went out shooting and the gals played with the kids.

A Little Work & Some Easter Fun

It is a beautiful day here today. It is expected to be in the high 60s. OK, for here that's warm and the fact that it was only breezy and the wind wasn't blowing tons of dust around was a welcome change. Our alfalfa field is on the edge of the Basin, and not out in the middle of the old lake bed. One of the joys of having a field on the edge is you get to pick rocks after it has been harrowed. We took the opportunity to get out of the house and went and helped Daddy.

Hannah loved picking up the rocks. Daddy had made some piles in the field and Hannah immediately caught on to picking them up and putting them in the back of the Gator. I guess we should enjoy her willingness while it lasts because picking rocks is not one of the most desired jobs around. You can see the excitement on her face in the second picture as she takes her rock back to the Gator.

We came back inside for a little Easter egg dyeing. We made the same recipe last year and they turned out completely different. I think I like them better this year. Hannah helped put the eggs in the dye. I couldn't seem to get her to put them into a different color once they had been in one color. I had to finish them by putting them in other colors. Her favorite color these days is yellow and most of the eggs seemed to end up there.

Hannah discovered that the shell cracks when you bang the egg against your head. She then found that the shell peels off and there's stuff inside. Needless to say we had one casualty that we didn't get to dye. I did however find out that I did a good job of getting them hard boiled.

Here's the recipe for the eggs.

1 c. hot water

1 Tbs. oil

1 tsp. vinegar

1 tsp. food coloring (I added food coloring paste until I like the color because that's what I had)

Make the above mixture for each color that you want to use. Dip the egg in the dye for a few seconds, remove, and pat lightly with paper towels. Repeat until you like the effect.

Precious Girls

Two Weeks Old (Tomorrow)

Helena had her two week check-up today. She will officially be two weeks old tomorrow. Wow, time really flies when you have two to take care of! Her appointment went well. She weighs 8 pounds 13 ounces and is 22 inches long. It looks like she grew 1.5 inches in two weeks. This is not very likely but is still possible. Someone probably measured wrong somewhere along the way. One doctor walked by when she was on the scale and commented that she's a big 2 week old baby. I guess I'm getting to see the flip side of things. Hannah is petite and Helena seems to have gotten some of the bigger genes. She seems to be happy and doing well.

A Little Over a Week

Helena is a little over a week old. Here are a few pictures that we have taken since we have been home. Things are going well here. Hannah loves her new little sister. She is working on patiently waiting for something when Mommy can't get it right now. Otherwise we have been having lots of good company coming around to visit.

Elusive

Helena has definitely been a sleeper. I think that Ben and I are the only ones that have seen her eyes. She was awake this morning so I snapped some pictures. She definitely isn't as alert as Hannah was at this age, but the extra sleep is OK with me. She is about the same size as Hannah was but is more filled out by about 1.5 pounds. Hopefully the cookies and candy I ate right at the end went straight to her and didn't pack themselves around me!

She's Here!

I guess all it took was to post something on the blog. That night after the post I went into labor. On March 19th at 4:58 am we had Heléna Lee DuVal. She weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces and was 21 inches long. Sorry there's no picture with this post but you can click here to go to the hospital website and see her.

Everyone is doing well. So far Hannah seems to like her new little sister. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get to it.

Still Pregnant

Just in case you are wondering I'm still here and I'm still pregnant. When we do have the little lady we will get something up on the blog as soon as we can. In the meantime we are all doing well. I'm impatiently awaiting the little lady's arrival and Hannah is having a hard time finding a place to sit on Mommy's "lap". Daddy's work has been picking up as spring is starting to show its face. Hannah and I have been trying to enjoy some of the nice days while we wait for the last few calves to be born. I hope things are going well for you where you are.

A Little Trip

Last Monday (over a week ago) Hannah and I went with Daddy to Sacramento for some California Farm Bureau meetings. Click here to read about our trip last year. Hannah and I got to do some looking around that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Tuesday morning we hit the Sacramento Zoo. It was a beautiful day and we got there not long after it opened. I felt like we had it mostly to ourselves for the better part of the couple hours that we were there. Hannah seemed to really like the zoo. She knew some of the animals and tried to say the names of the others. I wasn't sure if she knew that they were real animals but she had fun anyway. After the zoo we had lunch and then went IKEA. I really enjoy IKEA but you need a game plan when you go there. They have so much stuff it is easy to get overwhelmed. I as far as I had gotten was to read through a catalog before going. I knew of some of the things I wanted but would have loved to have taken more home. After about an hour Hannah was approaching meltdown and my pregnant body couldn't go on much more so we got a few things and headed back to the hotel. Hannah and I "rested" in the hotel room until Daddy got out of his meetings.

Hannah enjoying watching the lions.

Orangutan

Hannah riding a salt water crocodile. She calls it an alligator and I couldn't convince her otherwise. They didn't have much in the way of large reptiles at this zoo.

Flamingos

We made a quick trip across the freeway to Sears and then headed for Daddy's Grandparent's house for dinner. We had a delicious dinner prepared by Daddy's Grandma and Aunt. Without a nap that day Hannah proved to be a bit challenging. She refused to eat dinner and just wanted to play with tractors all evening and pour water from one cup to the other. We really enjoyed our visit and look forward to seeing them all again soon.

Wednesday Hannah and I went to Costco to stock up before the baby comes. We got everything that we needed and headed back to the hotel to wait for Daddy's meeting to finish up. When I got back I realized that somewhere between the check stand at Costco and the two miles to the hotel I lost my debit card. Oh joy! Thankfully we have nice gals that work at our bank who took care of me. It's just a hassle that I wasn't planning on. We checked out of the hotel but still had a little bit of time to kill so we ran over to the mall. After a little over an hour of shopping and a lot of walking we had had enough. We were loading up in the pickup when Daddy called and said that he was done. Thank goodness! We were ready to head back home!