Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Katrina!! Yesterday Katrina invited her friends to celebrate her golden birthday with her. We had a great time, a little chaos and lots of love!

Katrina had her friends help her open gifts!
They also helped decorate goodie bags.

and of course eat cake, or cupcakes in most cases.

I made an attempt at my first homemade birthday cake. I had a bit of help with the sugar design, but the piping was all me!!! There is hope for future years!

Big Bed

Thursday Katrina got her "big bed". Really, it is just her mattress on the floor. The first night sleeping in the big bed I went in to check on her after about 30 minutes and she had managed to pull her bin of shoes off of the nightstand and into bed with her. She had shoes scattered all over her bed and her arm around the bin. Needless to say the gate shown here has been replaced with a slightly taller and wider gate to prevent more shoes from sneaking into bed with her.

Last night, I crawled into bed, just got comfy, and I here Katrina's sleepy voice from her side of the room saying "Mama" to which I roll my eyes thinking it is not time for her to get up obviously, and say "Yes, Katrina" and she replies " night night" MY HEART MELTED! I wanted to just go grab her up and cuddle with her, but, I didn't and she went back to sleep! What a sweetheart!

Leah's bracelet

Leah's friend Liz makes amazing jewelry! For Christmas Leah recruited her to make each of her sister and mom a necklace that represents important parts of our lives. SO, for her birthday we asked Liz to make Leah a bracelet.

The face says it all!!

Ethan always the perfect gentleman, helps mom put on her new jewels!ah'

Making Cookies

A few weeks ago I had a hankering for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Katrina was gracious enough to indulge me.....Despite all the work it took!!!

After geting out her stool and moving it back and forth between the pantry and the counter with each ingredient she finally gathered all that was needed.
She measured out all the flour, sugar, and dry ingredients while I cracked eggs.

Then she dropped them carefully onto the stone insisting that actualy touching the dough was out of the question!

While the cookies were baking she washed,

and dried her dishes.

When the kitchen was clean she sat beside the oven knock and listening to hear if the cokies were done yet. Apparently finished cookies talk or something because she was insistant that they weren't done yet when there was no response.

Exhausted, she sat down to enjoy the fruits of her labor!

Tube time

Katrina loves when I pull out her tube set. It takes over the entire living room and she crawls around like crazy!

A soothing voice

This afternoon Katrina was crying and begging and pleading with everything her little heart could muster up. She was convinced I was being mean and with holding BROCCOLI (????) from her.

Lucky for me I happen to have just called my mom and the chance to talk on the phone was a perfect distraction! and yes, we did make a special trip to the grocery store to get more broccoli. For dinner she ate a few parsnips, rejected the meatloaf, and ate about a good cup of the beloved broccoli. What a goofy girl!

Kat colors

Katrina took advantage of her new art supplies and experiments with colored pencils.

She loved dumping the pencils and flipping through the coloring book to see all the pictures.

Finally, she gets down to business and discovers what fun happens when the pencil touches the paper and she was hooked!

Double Trouble or Twice as Nice? you be the judge....

Last Friday I had the privledge of spending the day with Katrina and Avery. While Leah and Ethan went on a big school field trip full of adventure the girls taught me what NOT to do!

Lesson number 1..... MAKE YOUR PRESENSE KNOWN

Tackle those you love, sit on them and escape using brute force to throw the offender off of you.

Lesson 2....TURN ABOUT IS FAIR PLAY

retaliate and take prisoners.

Lesson 3.... DIVIDE AND CONQUER,

run to the bathroom at once to see how much water you can waste in 30 seconds.

Lesson 4.... TABLE MANNERS ARE FOR ADULTS ONLY
no silverware, no proper posture

Lesson 5.... DESTROY ALL THAT YOU SEE

this is a view after mom was out of the house for 1 hour!

All in all it was a great day and we had alot of fun!

Some things never change....... or do they?

Katrina last fall
Katrina Jan 6, 2009

Katrina Jan. 9, 2009

Finally, a clean face, dry bib, and beautiful smile, after 2 bowls of soup!

Now there is a face that is "kissably clean"! Here Katrina proves she is capable of eating without a huge mess, it is the same meal she had on the previous picture soup and peanut butter crackers.

"Snow Mama, Snow"

When the snow started falling just before Christmas, Katrina was battling an asthma attack and as we found out a few days later pnemonia. Due to her sensitivity to cold air she was not allowed to go play in the snow. For days she ran to the window, looked outside and yelled, whined, or exclaimed depending ont he mood, "Snow, Mama, Snow". This is the first big snow day and her first glimpses....

UH MOM? What happened?
Not sure if she should laugh or scream she did a combination!

It was so cool she had to show Baby

Christmas with the Cottons

This year was our second Christmas with the Cotton's! Although the snow, and illness kept us from celebrating Christmas until this past week (Jan. 8) we dressed in our Christmas best (jammies) dined on the highest class breakfast delicacies we could make (pigs in a blanket and Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns). Played, exchanged gifts and rejoiced in having such great friends!

3 peas in a pod!

It is great to have friends to share shoes with.....

Don't tell me what to do, I know how to unwrap gifts mom!

All the festivites led to one sleepy and worn out girl! At least she is still smiling from all the fun, even in sleep she is a joyous one.

Random Kat photos

Lately, Katrina can't seem to get enough of her baby doll. The doll is very high maintenance! She is constantly needing to be wrapped, but takes her blanket of as soon as it is on her, she wants to be rocked and is always looking for a bottle. Katrina does a great job caring for her, now if only she would learn how to wrap the baby I may get a break.

Rock a bye baby......

Sometimes katrina even sits down to sing to her as she rocks. It is so cute!


Who could resist that face?????

Even while riding her car baby has to be with her... (baby rides under the seat)

Katrina loves crawling into tight places and "hiding" a new skill she has learned from the boys at work. She was getting frustrated here because she couldn't fit in and I apparently didn't count long enough for her to hide better.

Tis the Season

Christmas is coming so fast so I thought I should post a few of our pictures before we miss it. Katrina is really enjoying the festivities this year. She drops her jaw in awe as we pass houses all lit up. She giggles and starts dancing when she hears the Christmas music and has decided she is quite fond of the cookies of the season. So, far her favorite seems to be the sugar cookies that are covered in green sprinkles!
Last weekend we took advantage of the warm December night and went out to Redmond Lights with Auntie Laura. The city of Redmond does a big tree lighting at one end of town and set up some light displays along a bike trail lit with luminaries through town to the mall. Throughout the walk were varying musicians and Katrina enjoyed listening to them all. Especially the hand bell choir. This was one of the better light displays, it's a train, Katrina's picture was taken and it may appear in the Redmond newspaper.

When I started decorating the apartment Katrina had to be involved. I would hand her a non breakable decoration and she decided where it went. Here she is putting a little nativity in the bathroom. Apparently she felt I was not decorating an important room or something because she was adament that it had to go in there!

She also enjoyed these wooden carolers. They were so cool that they had to go on top of her toy shelf.

She couldn't make up her mind if they should stand together or on opposite sides of the shelf. here she is trying to tell me that the carolers don't close there eyes. She was a bit confused by this and kept touching the eyes to see if they would close.

Happy Thanksgiving! ....

For Thanksgiving our plan was to go to Auntie Laura's and have a fabulous Turkey dinner for 3. Laura and I picked out all new recipes to try and did the grocery shopping. However, on Tuesday before Thanksgiving Katrina decided it would be a better idea to hitch a ride to the hospital with the ambulance. So, we got to spend Thanksgiving in Children's Hospital in Seattle. We had some great friends come to visit us and Laura being the trooper she is made ALL of the new recipes, and turkey by herself and brought Kat and I a home cooked Thansgiving meal.

Katrina really enjoyed the squash (not sure how it made it on the menu since I hate it!) and was so pleased to have some of the monitors disconnected so she could sit with me and read books.

We were so grateful for the real food after 3 days of little to no hospital food. Katrina was trying to convince auntie Laura to feed her the last bites on her plate.

This was not the Thanksgiving we had planned but it could have been much worse! We are hoping that the list of Holidays we have spent in the hospital is now complete and we can enjoy the rest with our friends and family!