Watching the Garcia Girls Grow

On Tuesday Elisa started taking piano lessons.  I’ve been waiting and wanting her to start taking lessons.  The girls love music!  Elisa can tell you what song is on the radio just by listening to the first few notes.  She really has a dramatic flair, too.  After her first lesson, she was wondering why lessons aren’t every day. 

Here’s a short video of Elisa practicing at home on our new keyboard on Wednesday.  She’s so cute and picking it up quickly!

Last weekend I purchased the ingredients to make Monster Cookies but we never got around to making them. This morning I made it my mission to clean the kitchen so that we could make the cookies after nap time. I moved the toy kitchen into the kitchen so that Ana could play next to me. The girls played in the kitchen, watched a VeggieTales video, and then I broke out the playdoh to make it through the morning. I was able to get a lot done!

A few minutes before I woke Elisa up from her nap I measured out most of the ingredients so that she basically just dumped them into the bowl. Side note: Ana slept just over 3 hours and Elisa slept almost 2 hours! Elisa may have needed a little more time because she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Once she started making the cookies, things got better.

Elisa was very careful adding the ingredients to the bowl.

Elisa is getting much better at mixing things. We’ve had to work on gentle because she’s spilled almost half the ingredients.

She couldn’t wait to add the peanut butter!

She also couldn’t wait to add the M&Ms. She said her favorite M&Ms are the green ones.

At this point she’s getting pretty tired. The ingredients were thick and she asked me to help her. It’s a good thing Ana was entertaining herself in the toy kitchen in the kitchen while eating graham crackers. Elisa was ready to eat her snack, peanut butter.

As soon as she saw me dropping cookies on the cookie sheet, she regained her interest in cookies. She helped with the first dozen and then cleaned up to eat her snack.

The recipe resulted in almost four dozen cookies. They are delicious! Next time I’ll purchase a bigger bag of M&Ms, hopefully the miniature kind.

I subscribe to a WordPress blog and today’s post, Pink for October Plugin, caught my eye. It’s a simple plugin that communicates support for Breast Cancer Awareness. It was very easy to install the plugin.

Here it is in the corner peaking through.

Here it is when you hover over the ribbon causing the corner to turn down even more.

When you click on the ribbon, it will take you to the Komen Houston Race pledge page for a friend from church who is currently battling breast cancer.

Meet Lucy, Ana’s doll. Ana has a doll! To be honest, I’ve been eyeing this doll for months! We have plenty of dolls in our house, but not one specifically Ana’s. I paid about 50% of retail for the doll at Carter’s. I just couldn’t pass it up! This doll is perfect for Ana. It’s a fairy with wings and has curly brown hair. How appropriate for our curly haired little girl!

Taking a decent picture of Ana and her doll was difficult! I’ve tried for 3 nights in a row. Ana has been cranky for a week and sadly not sleeping through the night. I had been attributing the night wakings to the newest tooth she cut on Sunday. Today I had to pick her up at 11 am from daycare because she was running a fever. A quick visit to Dr. F revealed another ear infection. This is the best I could do. Don’t they look cute together??

I’ve been sewing quite a bit this last month. I’ve enjoyed having the time to sew!

I made this set for a friend from work in late August. At the time, she didn’t know the gender of the baby. I thought this fabric would work for both a boy or a girl. I had a hunch the baby was a girl. I love this fabric. I have some left and can’t wait to make something for the girls.

I volunteered to make a keepsake memory quilt for a friend at work that is retiring at the end of this month. I figured it would be easy. The thing is I had never completed a quilt before. I started a quilt top for Ana’s quilt a year ago. I figured I’d better make sure I knew what I was doing!

I finished this over Labor Day weekend. I started working on it Saturday afternoon. I appliqued Ana’s name, my first time appliqueing. I love it! I finished sewing the homemade binding on Monday morning. When I finished it, I couldn’t believe I had made the entire thing myself. I think it is beautiful! I know she’ll treasure it for years to come. Ana uses it in her crib every day. Elisa keeps asking me when her quilt will be ready. I can’t wait to start working on hers!

It took me a week to complete the keepsake quilt from start to finish. I appliqued hearts on the quilt and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

I’m hoping to try my hand at making aprons and embellishing little kid bath towels. I enjoy sewing so much I can’t wait to tackle new projects! I’m a little on the slow side when it comes to getting things done, but I enjoy it nevertheless.

Wow! Nearly three months since my last post! I guess we now know what has been neglected in our very busy lives! Even though Job was home for the summer, I didn’t manage to get more things done. Oops! I’m going to try to catch up on some things that happened this summer, like our staycation. In the meantime, please enjoy photos of our girls taken today.

I stayed home today because the girls’ day care was closed. They close once a year for a professional development day for the entire staff. Not knowing whether Job would be home all day to take care of the girls, I decided to play it safe and take the day off. We needed to go shoe shopping for Elisa. She’s growing like a weed and had worn her only dress shoes down. It was time to replace them plus she’s been using her sandals on Sunday. Soon, that won’t be an option. At least I’m hoping that soon the weather will be cool enough that they won’t be an option.

I decided Ana needed to wear her camouflage pants for our outing. This lead to trying on a pair of pink work boots to see if they fit. They looked huge on her but she wasn’t really going to be walking. We have them in two sizes. Elisa wore the bigger size last year (It seems like it has been more than a year, but the blog doesn’t lie).

Isn’t she the cutest little girl??

Elisa was playing this morning. She had her baby in the backpack carrier. She had Marisol inside her dress because she wanted leche (milk). I only nursed Ana a handful of times while carrying her in a sling, it was apparently enough for Elisa to want to mimic me almost a year later! My baby wearing baby. Also, twins??

We made it to the annual Garcia Family Reunion this weekend. We arrived at the park early which made the heat bearable. The girls had fun with their cousins.

Elisa loved giving baby sister Ana pushes on the swing.

Love the pig tails!

Our smiling princesses!

The kids had a blast with the grasshopper they found.

Cousin Myah holding Ana. Elisa loved for cousin Myah to carry her when she was younger. It seems that Ana also loves to hang out with cousin Myah. She’s a cool cousin.

We loved catching up with the Garcias!

We arrived in Corpus just after noon on Friday. Ana decided to explore Mima’s house. While Mima and I were getting dinner together, Ana started taking 4-5 steps. Not too long after, she was walking clear across the room. I guess she took the whole independence day thing to heart.

The day care kids were part of the July 4th celebration at school today. Elisa and her friends took part in a short parade around campus. The kids worked really hard on decorations and dressed in red, white, and blue. They stayed around to partake of some of the festivities which included eating some refreshing snow cones! It was another HOT day! Ana couldn’t go to school today because of the fever she had yesterday.

Try saying that three times fast!

Yesterday I had to pick the girls up 45 minutes early from school. Ana had a fever of 101.7. Job took her to see Dr. F. today and she is fine.

Ana wore pig tails to school yesterday. I took them out shortly after we arrived at home. Ha ha ha! Poor baby had a funky do post pig tails! I have no shame in sharing these pictures of our sweet little girl. Ana not feeling well did not stop the mamarazzi attack!