Birthdays

Laina turned four yesterday and Lia turns one on Thursday. How did this happen?? So, we had a little party for them both last Saturday and Laina got to invite a few friends over. I made sparkly flower cupcakes and the girls played "pin the butterfly on the flower". It was much fun and I think both girls had a good time. Well, until Lia tried to extinguish the candle on her cupcake with her hand. Ouch. Here are some pics from the day.

Laina photographed this one all by herself!

Lia loves cupcakes! I think you can still see the tear in her eye.

Hosk's Kitchen

Catching Up

Well it seems we have some catching up to do. Was January really the last time we posted? Lia has been crawling around a ton and much to her delight is getting into all kinds of things. Today I found her with a small chocolate candy half eaten (still in the wrapper!). She found it in Laina's lunch pack.

Laina is looking more and more like a kid and less like a baby. I can't believe she is turning 4 this month. I have her signed up for preschool in the fall. She loves to dance and sing and make her sister laugh. 

Here are some pics from the last few months. Laina took two of the pictures - can you guess which ones?

Laina at the Stock Show

She's a race car driver!

Laina and I made a clock together

She loves to dance!

Lia's two teeth

Uncle Jeff brought In-N-Out hats

Bright eyes

Butting heads w/Uncle Jeff

Riding together

Laina's 1st swim lesson - she's doing great!

Lia loves to cook

School is in session!

The school in Guatemala is open for classes! An amazing team of volunteers and local guatemalan construction workers pulled off what was a pretty lofty goal - to build a school in one year! The top floor still needs to be finished out, and all the landscaping needs to be done, but since they only have pre-k through 4th grade this year, they can complete that during the school year.

Global Shore Opportunities put together this recap of that year as part of the grand opening celebration last weekend. Pretty amazing.

There are also photos of the celebration and first day of school on their flickr site (click here)

Lia Drinking

Here is a video for the grandparents and relatives who like to see Lia doing pretty boring, regular things, like drinking. I got her this new straw cup because she couldn't figure out how to suck from our old straw cups (which you have to bite on to open before sucking). I like straw cups because supposedly they are better for developing mouths than spouts. I found this one online and it seemed cool, so we got one, and here Lia is giving it a test drive. She's very happy with it :)

How to raise a roof in Guatemala

Here's a video from the group in Guatemala building the school. Pretty amazing how things are done down there

December? I barely remember...

Now that the christmas lights & decorations are long down and put away, and we're a couple weeks into January, it seems about time to post about December! Here's a mini recap:

The period from Thanksgiving through New Year's was kind of a blur, but from what I remember, we put up some lights, went out and got a real genuine Christmas tree, Jenna took Laina to see a Frosty the Snowman performance at the Parker theater, we drank some hot cocoa, went to see some lights at the Chatfield Botanical Gardens, and tried our best to teach Laina about the purpose for all the hubub: the birth of Christ - the invasion of God into the world under the lowliest and humblest of conditions, in order to restore us to him

I think Laina's starting to get it, she insisted that we bake a cake for Jesus' birthday. We brought it to our friends house for a dual family Christmas dinner. Good memories.

 

Of course the kiddos got some loot in the process, too.

 

Lia's working on standing up. She's a mean crawler now, unstoppable...

Laina taking advantage of some warm weather to try out her new skates

She LOVES her new keyboard from Great Grandma Sally. Good purchase, for sure. Lately, she's started making up songs and singing along with them. This video was taken the day after Christmas.

There was also a new year in there... so Happy New Year!