Another Year Older

Talk about backtracking. I entered my twenty-fifth year of age (remember, that means I turned twenty-four) a month ago, and yet here it is, cropping up on my little blog. It's not even that important of an age (though it does feel nice and round, doesn't it? A whole slew of numbers fit into it. Nerdy facts like that appeal to me.), but I feel the need to brag. Why? Because I happen to be married to possibly the most fantastic "other half" available on this planet, and that bears documenting.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the dinner that Patrick make for me. He made Brazilian chicken stroganoff, the most delicious Brazilian Cheese Puffs (Pao de Queijo), and a chocolate cake recipe that he got from Brazil. It was AMAZING.

For my present, he gave me with one more piece of furniture for our home. He started with a $10 goodwill table.

The color is distorted, but I tried to make it easier to read the names. Thank you JP, Donna, Roy, and Jason from 1994 for letting us use your table!

The table is now a much more palatable color, and I'm very eager to decorate a living room with it included.

Because this is a bragging post, I might as well show you some of the other things my husband has created--and yes, I'll confirm in advance that he does rock.

Creation in progress...

Adorable!

Dinner in progress (no recipe)...

Deliciousness! (and loads of vitamin C--always a plus)

Both the clean child and the hair-do are his doing. But they aren't complete yet...

I don't think this one even needs a caption.

So yes, though there are a lot of people that helped to make my birthday wonderful, I think my number one present (and thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving day) is that I get to spend night and day hanging out with one of the most fantastic people I know...for the rest of our lives and beyond. How sweet it is. :-)

Peoples and Truck-made Treats

Sometimes I feel dwarfed by the magnitude of Cambrie's imagination. I never thought it would come full-force so early on; I kinda figured that as a three-to-five-year-old it would really blossom. But oh, no. Her still-early-two-year-old-self imagines like crazy.

(It could be normal, but I've been a slacker mom and haven't kept up with reading what is normal at what age or not. I kinda like it that way--when she gets things, I'm excited, and if she takes a little longer, I'm totally not stressed about it.)

(As a disclaimer, all the pics in this post are from our phone, so
 they're even lower quality than normal. Enjoy anyways!)

A typical Cambrie meal ends with a veritable puppet show. This girl has been known to turn a green bean into Cambrie, warn a Daddy fork not to fall over, and have a Mommy sippy cup hold said green been Cambrie and put her in a bath of vegetable soup. All this is narrated, of course.

As you might imagine, a show of this character usually leads to real Mommy or Daddy removing green beans, forks, sippy cups, and bowls of soup from Cambrie's tray. But she will not be thwarted. Inevitably, she brings out her "peoples" (her fingers, each of which is a little person), who then chatter, slip, and slide, having a grand ol' time all over her little tray.

By the time dinner is over and we clean her up in the sink, I'll hear, "Mommy! My peoples are getting wet! A-raining on my peoples! 'Ahh! a-wet!' [that was some of the "peoples" yelling out] Mommy, a-peoples need dry off. [commence drying with the towel] All dry, peoples!"

Another impromptu stage for Cambrie's creativity is Grandpa's truck bed. She likes to get up and play in it, but it was hilarious when, with no prompting from us, she started making cookies. (Okay, the first thing she said she was making was baking powder, so I suggested cookies as an alternative. Can you tell we cook together a lot?)

The back corner where she is standing is the oven. The front left corner is the counter where she mixes. The rest of the truck includes a living room and a bed, so I think her house layout need a little work. Still, when she lays down on her "bed," she does declare it "comfy", so she must be doing something right.

Here she is opening the oven door to remove the cookies. She has also been known to bake raisins and candy.

Here she is showing the goods to the camera. Yummy, yummy!

I love to watch her play. I love that I can follow her mind a little better now that she can talk. She can create whole worlds, just for herself! I think I used to have a pretty active imagination as well, but it's certainly been dulled down a lot by the partypoopers of age and experience. It's as though, if I stand close enough to Cambrie, if I watch her hard enough, I'll be able to benefit a little from those pure shots of creative, pressure-free fun.

"Daddy! A-do a picture a-mommy a-Cambrie ina GRASS!!"

I certainly hope I'll be able to give that raging imagination sufficient outlet as she gets older.

The One With the Halloween Pictures

Well, I guess I'm back. This has been a totally unintentional blogging sabbatical, but it's been nice trying to squeeze one less thing into my life. I hope, though, it's a sign of how much I do enjoy writing that I am back--not out of guilt, mind you, but because I'm eager to get back to keeping a semi-regular record of life as we know it. This whole blogging thing does take time, but it's also just plain fun.

 

Sooooo since I'm back the week after all the Halloween festivities, I figured I'd indulge in a little of the spooky holiday's spirit. I'm not typically a huge Halloween person, but I did actually go one step further than costuming-up my little one. Check out this Pinterest-inspired basket of adorableness. (What? No squiggly red line? "Adorableness" is actually a word? Sweet!)

My main reason for going the extra...uh.. few inches?... this Halloween go-around was that now I have nine piano students. What are cute and creative ideas for, if not to shower upon unsuspecting pupils? The orange/pumpkins were irresistible. I do need to warn you, however, that they are not quite as easy as they seem. I thought they were a simple Sharpie-it-and-go kind of project, but both Sharpie and Sharpie paint-pen failed in the face of the little oils that are in the orange skin. It was really frustrating, but luckily I had some black acrylic paint on hand.

Now to the part you all really care about--the Cambrie.

You can see her here, alongside her cowboy daddy, in full ballerina get-up (minus the ever-elusive hair clip). This was a fun costume to make because a) it was easy, and b) she loved it so there was no trying to force her into anything.

For the tutu I used this tutorial, dark and light pink tulle, and little black flowers for accent.

I was super excited to find a matching hair bow that she did manage to keep in about, oh, 60% of the time. Not too shabby, little girl!

Please ignore that pained half-smile on her face. It was the best picture I had with the bow.

She had a blast at our Ward Halloween Party (our church congregation's function), where she was able to stare at all the people in their crazy get-ups, steal costume jewelry and fairy wings off the other dressed up kids (I know! Who could resist?!), and discover that, for the trunk-or-treat portion at least, people give you free candy when you tell them a silly phrase! Sounds like kiddo heaven to me.

Since this is the first year she's remembering what things are all about, it'll be even more fun next year, since she'll already have an idea what's going on. Maybe we can take a different spin on her costume, too, and do something a little less girly (doing this year over I would have done a little less pink), but still very Cambrie. Like, I dunno, a piece of cheese? An important piece of paper with crayon scribbles on it? Chapstick? Man, that girl loves chapstick. 

Eh, I'll keep brainstorming.Until then, Happy Post-Halloween Candy Binges!