Art by Holiday Rose Anderson

From left to right:

Mommy, Holiday, Daddy and Johnny

This is the kind of drawings Holly does these days.  You got grass, sky and sunshine.  We all are in different colors, please note that the colors are not assigned to the individuals, I well may be the one who ends up pink next time.  You may further note that Daddy is not only carrying Johnny, but is also holding Holiday's hand.  Holiday always puts 'IHO' above herself.  She knows her name starts with 'HO' but for some reason she's been putting the 'I' in front of it.  David asked what the 'I' stood for.  She proudly stated that 'I' was for 'Iguana'.  So it does, Miss Holiday, so it does. :)  I also have to mention that she was really excited that the first 'O' turned out to be in the shape of a heart, she was very proud of that.

First dance class of the year

Holiday had her first dance lesson of the new school year on Saturday.  It sounded like all the girls had a blast in there.  At least half of the girls from last year are in the class along with several new girls.  Since her teacher (also the previous owner) retired last year, Holiday gets a new teacher this year, Miss Alyssa.  She's probably in her twenties but she knows how to manage 4 year olds which is terrific.  She runs her class much differently but the girls are responding well.  They might extend the class from 45 minutes to a whole hour because there's so many students.  They shortened it because the younger ones have a shorter attention span and they were trying to circumvent any potential melt downs.  We went to Grandma and Grandpa Blessing's house after that and had a nice visit.  Johnny liked roaming around and Holly liked the tricycle.  We went to Spanaway Lake for a walk and to play on the playground which everyone had fun doing.  For dinner we went to Denny's, Johnny really likes pancakes by the way.

Mommy News

Everyone is over our colds now, so that's good news.  I've also stopped breastfeeding Johnny and he seems to be doing fine without it.  I've been enjoying wearing regular bras and not having to wear nursing clothes anymore.  I bought some new jeans just because I haven't lost enough of the baby weight to get into my pre-pregnancy clothes yet.  I finally received my splint in the mail to rehab my diastasis recti (tummy issue).  I had been doing the exercises for my abs while I was waiting for it.  The 'gap' down the middle of my abs is measured by fingertip widths, probably because you can literally feel it.  My gap before I got started was about 6 fingertip widths.  That probably sounds awful and I assure you it was weird to feel it there but let me continue to the good part.  I actually reduced the gap to 4 fingertips before I even got the splint on Tuesday.  So Tuesday night I got set up on the splint, you have to wear it at night too.  You lose a lot of your flexibility and I did feel pretty stiff the next morning.  The thought is to think of it like wearing a cast.  You wouldn't take your cast off to go to bed, would you?  I'm going to have excellent posture when this is all done.  On Thursday night I took off the splint to change my clothes and took the opportunity to check the gap again.  IT WAS COMPLETELY CLOSED!  Two days of wearing a splint (mind blown).  The program I'm on takes 6 weeks to complete so I'm taking it all the way through to the end to make sure the abs go where they're supposed to go and they stay there.  To add to my little dance of joy here, because my abs are now moving in the right direction I've lost 2 inches off my waist in a week. HAHAHA!  Take THAT diastasis recti.

Peppers and Hot Sauce and Colds (yup...again)

Time for harvesting Mommy's peppers...

...Holiday is armed with some scissors for clipping the peppers off...

...and now she sets to work.

At the end of the planter with the peppers are some grape vines.  You can see all the planters down the yard.  Next over is the herb garden, then zucchini/artichoke, then all the flower beds.  You can see the dahlias from here.

This pepper plant was bigger than Holiday, that's pretty huge and to think that all that came from planting seeds in the greenhouse.

Daddy and Holiday with the score.

She is very proud of being able to help make something grow.

So we have pablano, anaheim, serrano and cayenne in there.

Holiday is outfitted.

You can see Johnny sleeping on my lap in the background.

Daddy and Holiday, slow to rise after a nap.

Now this is what all the peppers were made into the very next day.  David made some hot sauce.  He hasn't made any for a couple of years but he says it tastes like it did last time.  He bought special bottles and made labels for them.  I told them that label might scare people off if they think they might be reduced to a pile of ash with eyeballs sitting on top (thinking about the WB cartoons).

Well the Anderson family has got colds again.  It started with Holiday so I'm pretty sure it's her being introduced into a new set of germs at Pre-K that thus infected the rest of us.  I was the last to get it, but I'm starting to feel better today.  I sound real bad but that usually seems to happen to me, that if I sound terrible I'm feeling better. Weird, I know.  She's still adjusting to school.  She hates being dropped off but then proceeds to have a good time at school.  I think part of it is that she's not used to so much of her day structured.  They finally have been able to get her to take naps, but it's hardly the 2 1/2 hour naps she's used to, so she's still pretty tired.  I think because she's so tired is why she's been having more accidents at night lately.  I think she just needs time to adjust.  We have her all geared up for dance class to start on Saturday.  She has a new pink leotard and new ballet slippers.  She had outgrown her previous set.  The weather has certainly changed quite a bit lately so autumn is pretty much here.  Always my favorite time of year.  I love all the holidays, activities, colors and even the weather associated with autumn.

Pictures of Bumbershoot and other stuff

Johnny coloring...

playing trains on the window sill...

smiling...

being a blankie boy...

and just playing around in general.

It's a basket full of babies.

Making funny faces.

Daddy and Holiday eating lunch at Bumbershoot.

Johnny playing with bells in the kids area at Bumbershoot.

Lego time.

This just makes me laugh.

Johnny's so cute.

More funny faces.

Holiday playing with the bubble machine.

Riding a ladybug.

Johnny sleeping through a Bumbershoot concert.

Daddy watching "The Animals".

Holiday wasn't interested much in "The Animals".

"The Animals"

Mommy at Bumbershoot.

This was the Bob Mould set.

There hasn't been too much excitement lately, just trying to establish the new routine with Holiday going to full time school now.  They haven't been able to get Holiday to take a nap yet, so by the time she gets picked up she's just draggin'.  Last weekend we just were trying to get caught up on chores, errands and sleep.  Probably more of that this coming weekend.  We registered Holiday for dance class last night, her first class will be on Sept. 21st.  She will be in the Pre-Ballet class since they won't be having combo ballet/tap class till age 5 now.  There's new management so there's been a big overhaul of their current system.  That's okay...I think she liked ballet better anyways.  

Bumbershoot, Pax and Holiday's first day of school

It's been busy so I haven't posted for a while.  Last week the daycare was closed for vacation so Ellie and Anna babysat the kids for us.  They did a great job.  The kids were exhausted they played so hard.  Johnny falls asleep in the car regularly but if Holly does it, that's for sure tired right there.  On Sunday we went to Bumbershoot and we had a great time.  The kids especially liked the kids area (naturally).  David and I got to do grown up stuff too, like check out the art, flatstock, vendors and live music.  That's pretty good.  Johnny hated being inside Key Arena so that's when I took him strolling through the vendors instead, he was much happier.  After David and Holiday left that particular show they came looking for Johnny and I and that's when a Seattle Times photographer took this picture:

http://seattletimes.com/html/photogalleries/localnews2021738028/11.html

If you know Seattle Center, we were obviously by the fountain.  On Monday, David went to Pax and I stayed home with the kids.  David got play a little in a Ticket to Ride tournament and do a lot of demos and even picked up a couple games.  I guess he was so excited that he forgot to note where he parked in the Convention Center Garage.  Let's just say he got his exercise that day.  Tuesday all the daycares were closed still so I stayed home with the kids and did a bunch of catching up on chores because the weekend was so busy.  Tuesday night was the orientation for Holly's Pre-K class where we got to meet teachers, ask questions and get a good look at Holly's classroom and where her cubby is, where to put her lunch bag and all that.  Holly and Johnny just wanted to play outside the whole time.  We were the first family there and the last family to leave the kids liked it there so much.  They were really upset when it was time to leave and get dinner.  So Wednesday was Holly's first day of school.  I'm the last one to get picked up and Holly was already out like a light by then.  So I had to wait till we got home and she woke up enough to tell me about her day.  She mentioned art, writing her name on a small rectangle, having her lunch, NOT getting her nap, liking her teacher and her friends, but most of all...playing outside.  Holiday also refers to it as the Big School.  She has really been into artsy stuff lately, check out her latest work:

 She says it's her and her baby going up a slide.  Next to the slide is a park bench.and a stone path.  She's quite creative.  She did color a lot with Anna but her drawings didn't look like this.  Holly made this picture at Playland at the Fred Meyer on Saturday so it was like a switch flipped and this is what she wanted to draw.  Before it mostly was scribbles and you had to pretend it was what she said it was.  Now we see the picture and get the grass and the sun and the sky as well as the slide, bench and stone path.  A-MAZ-ING!