Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  We got to enjoy some quiet time at home all together.  Logan was able to take a bit of time off work, which is a rarer thing these days.  (He has been helping his boss build a house after hours for the last several months.)  I was able to try out the embroidery functions on my new sewing machine, and make our girl a Christmas dress, that I totally love and am way excited for all the cute options modern sewing technology offers.  Of course my girl was upset that I had chosen the options for this dress, but once she tried it on, she agreed that it was a good swirling dress and has asked to wear it almost every week.  Hooray!!!

Then it was my birthday.  It is advantageous that in the year my girl turned four, I also had a birthday with a four in the number.  So this next year, since she turned 5, I will also turn an age with a 5.  This is convenient because we can use the same candle for my birthday that we have used for hers earlier in the year.  The fun story from this year is that Logan took my girl to the store and had her help figure out some fun gifts.  My girl picked some interesting pairs of fuzzy socks, which of course she wants to borrow (the funniest are the knee high red and white stripes).  And she decided that I really needed a notebook and pencils for drawing.  She had me unwrap them, and of course wanted to immediately sit down and draw together.  She even offered to let me borrow her notebook and pencils for drawing.  And of course if I was using hers, she would go ahead and borrow mine, so they were both getting used.  Then everyday she asked if I wanted to draw in our notebooks, or if I wanted to let her draw me a picture in my notebook.  What a great friend she is!!!

And I finally got a picture of my girl wearing the cowboy costume my mom made for her.  Back in April of last year, my mom and sister got me a skirt and suit coat for an Easter surprise.  The skirt was black with brownish flowers and the suit coat was a way soft brown.  When I pulled it out of the box and put it on, my girl exclaimed excitedly, "Mama!  You're a cowboy!!!!  You have a cowboy costume!"  I had not foreseen that response to this particular outfit.  So, my mom decided to make my girl her own cowboy outfit, of course in brown.  She has now gotten quite a collection of costumes and accessories in our dress up box, and I don't always remember to get pictures of her as she sometimes changes costumes quite quickly.  Nevertheless, she makes a great cowgirl!

And the holiday was loads of fun!  Merry Christmas to everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

  

These were our November activities, which we are belatedly sharing.  We got pumpkins and painted them after the October rush was over.  Our girl always loves painting projects.  

Then I made a jumper for our girl, which she decided was a wonderful twirling outfit and loves to wear.  She is at an interesting stage where she wants to decide all the fabric and trimming choices, but we don't always agree on those choices.  This was fabric Grandma Parker had sent and we found worked perfectly for a great jumper.  Our girl sure is a cutie and so grown up in this! 

And then we had a bit of snow, and our girl was always ready to run outside and play in it, even if Mama is more of an indoor girl.  Se loves to dig in the snow and do some tracking as well.

And at the end of the month, of course, we got to pick our tree!  Our girl is so excited for picking a tree and helping put lights and ornaments on it.  What a great helper!!!  We have so much to be thankful for, and really enjoyed having some quiet time at home just the three of us.  Logan made some great turkey, and then used the left overs to make the most awesome turkey noodle soup ever.  We've ended up making it several times since then because it was so good!  We sure love Logan's cooking!

Happy Halloween

We know it is way past, but we hope your Halloween was full of dress up fun!  We went to the Glacier visitor center for their fun activities, and then for Halloween night we took some pumpkin roll to different friends houses and had our girl 'trick or treat', in the traditional Underwood way (where you take a treat to someone and say, "trick or treat, here's your treat").  She had a great time!!!!

Hacked Email

Hey there everyone!  My email was hacked, and since I have no idea who all is receiving random emails, thought I'd post it on here so you would all know that I know, and that you should just delete the emails, don't open or respond to them, and just get rid of them. I'm working on changing the security info for my account, so hopefully that solves the problem.  Thanks for all the people who let me know so quickly!  And hopefully this gets figured out soon and won't be any further issue!

Where The Fun Starts

Despite it being a couple months later, I am going to try to get updates from our trip up here with pictures, so here goes!

My girl and I started our adventurous trip on August 29.  My girl really loves the airport.  Our airport has so many things to look at and fun things to do like riding escalators, that we sometimes take a trip to walk around the airport, even when we aren't flying anywhere.  However, when the time comes to actually get on a real airplane, my girl is tremendously excited!  Standing in the security line, she kept saying, "This adventure is so exciting!" and "I am so excited!"  She did great getting through security and then wanted to walk all around the inside area, where we don't usually get to go.  The hard part about this was, since we were just the two of us, that meant I had to carry all the carry on luggage by myself.  She had her little backpack, and she did a great job pulling it around, but I don't think she realized how challenging it was to maneuver the rest of the luggage, especially when we needed the special seat and there wasn't another person to leave the stuff with!  So it was an adventure just getting around the airport!  But we made it on to our first flight, where I surprised my girl by pulling out a bag of her favorite dinosaurs.  She loves playing with her dinosaurs.  She had them give a concert on the first flight, where they sang numerous songs, mostly from the Dinosaur Train TV show, but at one point one of them sang the 8th Article of Faith, and did so very loudly.  It was pretty fun!  I was a bit worried, since she tends to get a bit motion sick, but she did great!  It gets easier to fly with a small friend, the older the small friend gets.  We got to our first airport, where we walked around and found some food.....again, I hadn't really forseen the challenge of holding a hand, all the baggage, and trying to carry food as well......Fortunately I had brought the leash, but unfortunately my girl thought it was hilarious to go out to the end of the leash and pull on it, and then spin in to get all wrapped up in it, and have lots of fun with it.....this added to the challenge, but somehow we found a table and got to have our lunch.  My girl thought it was a special tea party for some reason, and was just as happy as a clam and seemed to be filled with excitement the entire time.  She had a bit of a cough and at one point asked me for a coffee cup.  I was very surprised, and told her she doesn't drink coffee so she didn't need a coffee cup.  She informed me that she needed a drink so her throat could feel better for her cough.  So, I held up my drink for her, and she coughed all over the straw.....So it turned out she wanted a cough-ee cup!  I had a pretty good, much needed laugh over that!

After lunch we found a seat closer to our gate and pulled out pillow and blanket for a bit of quiet time.  I had brought ipod with some tv shows on it, and some books to read to her, and she settled in for some quiet (as quiet as it gets in the Seattle airport!).

Then we had our second flight, and we discovered how wonderful it is when there are only two flights to get that close to our destination rather than three.  The day seems to go faster that way.  So it was a small plane, and my girl got to sit by the window, which she loved!  

As we traveled through the day, my girl kept telling me that she missed Daddy, and that next time we travel, we should go with her choice and bring him with us, instead of going without him.  I tried to explain that he had to stay for work, but she knows it would be more fun if he came with us (and I most heartily agree!!!!).  So, again my girl did great on this flight as well, even though she was a bit concerned about walking up and down the stairs on from the outside of the plane, since it was so loud and windy, but we did it, and when we landed we found Grandma Sue and Papa!!!!!  My girl remembered them, and was willing to give hugs and be friendly, and to stay with Grandma Sue while Papa and I tried to make it to air cargo before they closed, which was an adventure of itself.  After driving around trying to locate it, we discovered that it was closed up tight, earlier than their posted closing time, with not a sight of anyone to ask for help.  We went back to the terminal, and there weren't even any Alaska Airlines agents to ask for help either.....so we got our bags, with the realization that we would have to drive the 2 hour drive back at some point to get our cargo item....but we made it safely and all our bags!  And we got to have some Carl's Jr for dinner!  All in all, it was a success, and we made the drive back to Logan's folks' house, and got snuggled into beds safe and sound!

That is the start of our adventure, and I will do my best to get some more fun stories up here with pictures of the fun soon!!!

Huge Adventure Trip

My girl and I spent the last month on a huge multi-state adventure trip while Logan stayed home and did a huge amount of work in lots of different areas.  We made it home yesterday, and are super glad to be back together as a family!  We will try to be posting pictures and describing some of our adventures soon....well, after we unpack and figure out where everything goes!  Hooray for adventures and for being together with loved ones!

The Lesson Backfires....

We get to teach the Sunbeam class for our church, which is the group of kids turning 4 this calendar year. This means we teach the class with our girl in it. While some of the lessons are incredibly fun (like the one about animals where we made balloon animals for the kids), there are others that are a bit challenging, and don't necessarily have the effect we would like. The ones on family, and being nice to your brothers and sisters were a bit challenging for our girl, since she's the only kid in the class with no siblings, and felt sad about it. A couple weeks ago we had a lesson on obedience. We talked with the kids about how we live in families who love us and take care of us. We talked about how parents love their kids and how the kids need to obey their parents. We talked about small things like obeying when your mom asks you to clean up your toys, and big things like when your mom requests that you stay with her at the grocery store. Some things parents ask us to do are for our safety, and others are things they ask us to obey to help our families run smoothly. It was a great lesson, and we played Simon Says to practice obeying, and learned the song "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey". When we got home, I knew my girl had payed attention during the lesson, because she came and asked me to do something for her, like get her an ice cream cone. I told her no, that we weren't doing that right now. She gave me an interesting look, and said, "Mama, you have to apologize because you didn't obey me. When someone asks you to do something you are supposed to obey like we talked about in class. When I ask you that you are supposed to say, 'yes' and obey quickly. Now, let's try again" and proceeded to make her request a second time. I again told her no, and tried to explain that in the lesson we talked about obeying your parents. There is a difference between being an adult and being a child in the family. Unfortunately, my girl does not get this. I don't remember expecting my mom to obey me, but I think that was partly because there were a lot of us kids, and one mom, and we knew we had to obey her. As one of the older ones, we also got to 'boss' around the younger kids, so I guess we had a place in the hierarchy of the family, and it was easier because we weren't alone and outnumbered on the bottom.....So, we've been struggling with this. There are times where I try to be an example and say, "Yes, I will" when my girl asks me to do something, but there are also times when it just is a parenting thing, and she really needs to obey quickly. In thinking about it, I think this is another of those things that is a challenge for an only child, which I was not initially aware of. We spend so much time being on the same level, being friends doing things together. It is hard for my girl to understand that at times the Mom/daughter thing comes into play, and that I am the parent and she is the child. She loves to pretend that she is the mom and I am the child, but still is struggling with the 'quickly I'll obey' part of normal life. I think part of that is normal for kids to figure out, and it sure is funny when she tries to use the lesson I taught her in class to explain why she should get to stay up late, watch movies, and do all kinds of other things she asks to do because she asked nicely and said please. So, I guess that lesson didn't really work the way I thought it would, and we'll have to keep figuring out how to teach 'obey your parents' as we go!