Pumpkins and Chocolate Covered Strawberries!

In preparation for Halloween, Adalei and I went to Michael's for the kid's craft one Saturday! Adalei designed and made this pumpkin with my help! It was a total cost of $5 so it was a great deal! We both had a lot of fun!















Compliments of Charity's birthday gift to me - I received a surprising second box of chocolate covered strawberries from Shari's Berries! The berries were delicious! Adalei was enjoying her strawberry so much that I couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures. It was really fun. On Saturdays when Nate works, I have a great time with Misty and the girls! I'm glad the box arrived so I could share it while the strawberries were at their best.

Introducing Adalei's work......

Adalei just loves my camera. I'm amazed that at 3 years old she has figured out how to take pictures and then view them. When I went back to delete her shots, I was surprised to see a couple of great pictures of my downstairs - here they are! Adalei's first photo session!

Adalei's 3rd Birthday Party at Grandma's 10/4/08

Adalei celebrated her 3rd birthday with her family in California and made her first visit to Disneyland. The weekend after she got home I had a little birthday party for her. I thought the table was cute all decorated.


In case you can't tell, the birthday cake is a little puppy with chocolate cake and chocolate icing. Adalei loves chocolate!










The pictures below show Adalei with her birthday cake and learning how to blow out the candles. Misty and Nate were very patient in teaching her how to blow out the candles.































































































Grandma and Adalei with her birthday pajamas! They are so soft and warm.

Here's a picture of Adalei with her birthday presents!

The birthday cake was really good and Adalei shared quite well. Nate always says her favorite ice cream is cookies and cream. I got her death by chocolate also since that's my favorite and she wanted some of both so I guess she has two favorite ice cream flavors.

Little Brielle will patty-cake when you say the words. She is so cute too. After the birthday party, we watched the second session of conference.









Adalei was having fun with the couch cushions while she thought her mom and dad were sleeping. It was such a fun day for me.

Portland Airport with Ashley and Paisley for Dinner 9/29/08

It was so fun to have Ashley and Paisley meet me at the airport during their 2 hour lay-over in Portland. They were on their way from Boise to Sacramento. I was so excited to see them and have dinner before they were back on their way. I thought the food was super and not your regular airport food. Maybe it was the wonderful company I had that made it so good!

I love this picture of Ashley and Paisley. A loving mother with her sweet daughter........


Paisley is adorable! Everywhere we went, people were watching her and commenting on how cute she is. She is pretty in pink.


I got to hold Paisley and put her to sleep. I hope she slept through her flight to Sacramento as she was really tired.

This was the best! It really made my day! Thanks Ashley and Jason for thinking of me and giving me a chance to see Paisley for a couple of hours!

Misty's 31st Birthday Party

Misty, me and Adalei just waiting to see Misty's birthday gifts! This picture is to show what a great job I did with wrapping the gifts. (I'm not much of a gift wrapper for those that don't know me.)










I made this picture to match the shower curtain in Misty's house. (It was Charity's great idea. I loved the picture so much I made one for myself too.)
















This is a picture of Misty with all her gifts - high speed internet modem from Nate, picture from me (matching card), Peter Pan DVD, babysitting for a year, and massage for "dummies." Nate made the delicious cake and Misty had her favorite ice cream - Umpqua's cookie dough ice cream.
Adalei took this picture of me and Brielle so I'm including it since Brielle went to bed before the other pictures were taken.


After Adalei took a picture of us, she wanted one of her taken. This little girl loves my camera. I have to admit, she's getting better with her picture taking. She sure knows how to work my camera too! You know a grandma loves a little girl when she lets her use an expensive camera!

"Learn in Thy Youth ", and a random grandma shot

This is a picture of Nate, Misty, and Adalei doing their daily family scripture reading of the Book of Mormon. Brielle fell asleep early or she would have been in this picture. I am so impressed that Nate and Misty are teaching Adalei and including her. She loves reading her Book of Mormon. They help her say one verse each night. In this picture, she is showing me her favorite page in the Book of Mormon. While watching October conference this month, Adalei picked up on the speakers talking about the Book of Mormon. It just reminds me of the scripture of the importance of learning while in your youth. Adalei doesn't like me to leave in the evening until scriptures are over. She is so good about the daily scripture reading.
This is just a random shot...... This is the cute little blanket I made for Paisley. Jason always loved soccer and I think Paisley will be an excellent soccer player especially considering how fast she can move from one side of the room to the other already. She has her dad's speed it seems! (I don't know how Ashley was as a child but if she was fast like Jason, then that explains why Paisley is super fast!)

It's just wonderful to be a grandmother!

Birthday #51! (9/16/08)

Misty and Nate were so nice to invite me over for dinner on my birthday! Misty made me an Hawaiian birthday cake and it was delicious! My only regret is that I didn't get any to take home for later!

(My first birthday gift arrived early from Jason
and Ashley! They sent me a wireless router so I
can have a wireless computer! What would I ever
do without a computer engineer in the family! I
bought myself my first laptop for my birthday
gift. I'm excited to receive it this week and start
using wireless! It will be great!) I need to take a
picture of it too!

On my birthday, we ate cake, chocolate ice cream, and Japanese pancakes in that order for dinner! Misty had a meeting to go to so we had dessert while dinner was finishing. It was Misty's first time making Japanese pancakes and she did super! Just as good as Nate! I was very impressed.

Look out the window behind Nate to see the
garden doing so well. I had beans and zucchini
to eat! So good - fresh from the garden!



Look at the cute wrapping on my birthday gifts from Nate, Misty, Adalei and Brielle! A little Japanese wrapping paper to go along with dinner!

I received the following birthday gifts:
*Sunday dinner on fast Sunday every month
for 12 months. Yeah!
*A community education class on "Dream
Analysis" that I'm really excited to take on
November 13th.
* Birthday card with sweet messages that
remind me how blessed I am.

Adalei was so cute helping me open my birthday gifts! I was too slow for her. It doesn't seem that long ago that we were teaching her how to open gifts and she's learned that quite well!


My special little girls! I just love to hold them and play with them. This is a picture after dinner and right before bed!


What a wonderful birthday!
I came home from dinner on my birthday to find this awesome package on my doorstep! Charity had chocolate covered strawberries delivered! What a special treat! I hate to say that I ate them so fast that I forgot to take a picture for my blog so here's a picture from the pamphlet with the box.

When I worked at Deloitte in Sacramento, there Shari's Berries was in our building. I used to walk by it every day at lunch time but never bought any resisting the urge! (Back in those days the money was going to raise kids and now my wonderful daughter bought me some - just like a dream come true!)

My friend Sheila from PacifiCorp talked me into going with her to the beach on Saturday after my birthday! So, I called it my birthday trip. It was a beautiful day - perfect sweatshirt weather! I had a fabulous time walking on the beach, having lunch, Tillamook ice cream and then stopping at Camp 18 on the way home for a warm bowl of chili with fresh cornbread. I'm so glad I went!

We went to Cannon Beach, Oregon, so I took some pictures of Haystack Rock, the seagulls....





It was an overcast day with the clouds almost down to the ocean waves!




When the sun was setting, it was so beautiful!








Here's a picture of my dream house on the beach! Wouldn't that be wonderful to live on the beach?








A final picture before we returned home and back to reality!








My friend Katie surprised me with these beautiful yellow flowers that look super in front of my house.


These beautiful flowers were left on my porch on my birthday by Maddy. She is in my primary class and a really special girl. I was so happy to get this great gift. My flower bed looks so much better now!

Spending the Night with Grandma!

I was so excited to have Adalei spend the night with me the Friday night before my birthday! This was her 2nd time and she went to sleep much earlier than the first time she spent the night.

However, she woke up quite early and just couldn't go back to sleep. So, we had a little snack in the wee hours of the morning. Mo had brought some biscotti for us so we had them with some hot chocolate. Adalei just loves chocolate like I do! It was a wonderful morning! It was so fun to have someone there when I woke up too!

Ashley made some beautiful headbands for little girls/babies. This one is really for Adalei's birthday but I couldn't wait and had to try it on her. She wore it all day and I'm going to let her take it home when we celebrate her birthday at my house next Saturday! The headband is so cute on this pretty little girl.



































From getting up early, Adalei took a really good nap that afternoon. She had been playing with toys and quickly fell asleep when I held her.







When we got up so early that Saturday morning, I made this little blanket for Brielle! This is the 4th blanket I've made. I thought this one turned out great and Brielle is adorable!!!! Being a grandma is the very best!!!