Pictures from Laurens birthday party. Lauren was a monkey and Amelia (if you couldn't tell) is a princess. The two boys were also celebrating their first birthday.

Lauren's exercise machine. She does this everyday and thinks it is just the best toy. Little does she know that it is the telescope stand. Good thing too, because I can just imagine if we left the telescope on the stand exposed to Amelia and Lauren. Amelia would most likely take chapstick and rub it all over the lense as she did the camera. Thank goodness our camera can be cleaned easily.

Princess Lauren.

Lauren the Bear.

This is Amelia's recital video. I will post the others as well.

Amelia's Birthday Party! Listen for what she wishes for. What a great girl!

A friend pointed out that you can load videos now and I thought that this one is cool.

This was the Australian Sway Pole performance that was at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this year.

Lauren really likes dolls. She hugs them and drags them around with her. It is so interesting how she and Amelia are quite different in this regard. However they both love bread as can be seen below. Go wheat bread!

It has taken me a year and 1/2, but I was finally able to bring myself to make Jiaozi. We had the young men over to help roll them out and stuff them. Everyone tried, but they didn't think they did a very good job. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture until the very end and these were ones that I did. Amelia's favorite part was the skin and Lauren liked it all. After I ate a couple I declared that it was still too soon for me and will happily wait until Chinese new year to make them again. They were good though so I don't understand why I get so nauseated still.

Here are some photos from Amelia's Birthday party.

As you can see Lauren also enjoyed the cake. I posted the picture that is on top because I thought is was remarkable how much Lauren and Amelia look alike when they are both making the same face. The chin of course helps since they both have clefts like me.

We had the best time today (July 8th) at the Cherry Creek Arts festival. Amelia created and we saw a lot of art. Amelia also got to report the weather. Too funny. She happened to be wearing a hat the same color as the green screen so parts of her head in the pic of the tv are missing or are actually the clouds of the tornado that she is reporting on. It was funny she said..."There's a tornado Mike. Run away".

Our other fav of the festival were the Australian sway pole artists.

The first picture is of Lauren at Congress Park swimming pool.
Here we are at the Children's Museum. Soooo much stuff to do. Quite possibly now one of my most favorite places to go.

We went to the Denver Zoo and they had a little class on the food chain. Amelia decided to go for the mall hair...I mean Bison.

Blast from the past. Circa 1982 stylish attire my mother gave to me and I now made Amelia wear, but only in the house. Luckily for Amelia she was in China and this jumper was in the US during the time where she actually could wear it comfortably.

Amelia proudly displays her tea set that she earned by filling her flower through doing good things.

A long time ago in a land far far away called China. Amelia gave birth to the term "Girlo". Actually someone somewhere probably has said it before, however it was new to us. Since that time (when she just turned 2) she has said it. I think my brothers and their wives thought it was funny. My sister-in-law, Christine, who is very talented and a natural at setting trends through her designs at Target and now as a private consultant, bridged the gap between 'funny word' and fashion. She made shirts with "Girlo" on them. Now all of the grandgirls have them and my other sister-in-law wears one (I'm actually jealous and would like to subtley suggest that maybe that could be a birthday gift for me...). I would not be surprised if this became the next 'must have', because they are so cute.

Wow we are pretty pathetic posters. Here are some new pics. And officially we will be moving into our new apartment on June 5th in Denver. Chris is already there and we will follow at the end of May. The pictures are of Amelia and Lauren of course, but the one with Amelia in the park is with her cousin, Wesley.

Amelia and I made a snowman and then she wanted him to have hair so we put sticks in there for hair. Then she wanted to make him a dog so we quickly put together a dog who walks with stick legs and a stick leash. Then 6 days later the snowman developed a really bad case of bending hinges (Amelia and I decided that that was the best way to describe the problem). A couple of days later his body fell apart and unfortunately I don't have a pic of Amelia jumping on the balls of snow, but conceptually it was funny and I'm glad she wasn't sad that he was melting.

Then the next of the pic is of our Valentine's Day dinner with a heart-shaped Papa Murphey's pizza, which Amelia loved! The pics after that are at her preschool Valentine's Day party. Her cousin Wesley is the boy next to her in the above right picture. They sure had a great time.

Here are some new pics. Lauren is nearly 5 months in the picture above. Amelia is playing around in her Grandpa Archibald's boots. And lastly Amelia is sledding in the back yard. I have so much fun watching her because if she's not careful she'll run into the trees and I know that it isn't really nice, but it looks hilarious when you see the sled smack the tree trunk. Of course she is not hurt at all since she's far enough back on the sled. Anyway is that some sort of sadistic ideology or what? What kind of mom am I that I think that's hilarious? I guess I don't feel bad enough that I still think it's funny.

Grandma Archibald and Lauren on New Years Day...she's three months old (on Dec. 25th).

Interesting tidbit...at Lauren's 2 month appt she weighed a pound more than Amelia did at her 2 month appt. Proof of what we had suspected that Lauren is indeed chunkier in still a good, non-Maury Povich show, way.

Amelia received a baking kit (which included a recipe, two aprons, and cookie cutters) for Christmas from her Uncle Kent and Aunt Christine. So we made cookies with the recipe and wore our matching aprons that came in the kit. Amelia had a lot of fun. Then we had a party and drank sparkling apple cider with our cookies.

Christmas Eve at The Willfords

Amelia and her cousins Wesley (sitting next to her) and Timmy to the right.

Grandma Willford's game of "Don't Eat Santa" where the kids picked a color while a person was absent and then allowed to come back in and they had to eat the m & m's until they found the color that we had picked. Of course the grandkids loved this game best of all.

Christmas Time Pics:

Is it Amelia or Santa? She loved that.

The next pic is of Grandma A holding Lauren at the church Christmas Party.

The last pic is of Amelia singing in the sing along at the same party. She found herself right at home next to Grandpa A (the emcee for the night) up at the mic.