Back from my hiatus

Alright, I finally found some time to sit down and get caught up on the blog.  We’ve been keeping pretty busy these past couple of weeks.  Before I begin, I have to put this picture of Tommy in first.  Peyton wanted Tommy to play with her one day…

Princess Tommy

 So, I went for my weekend Walk To Emmaus!  I can’t really share too many details with you about what happened there.  It was definitely an awesome experience and I would do it again if I could.  I can’t wait to be able to sponsor somebody to go and to also serve on a Walk.  I will share a couple of things that I got from the walk.  The first thing that I realized was that I had never really forgiven myself and accepted God’s grace for the past.  That was a big thing for me, and I feel a ton lighter these days now that I’ve dealt with it   I also finally learned what true agape love is (since I was pretty clueless about it before my walk).  The last thing that I learned was that Josh is quite capable of handling both girls for a weekend  

Like I said, we’ve been keeping pretty busy.  Amanda’s daughter, Abbie, had her first tee ball game a couple of weeks ago.  Here are a couple of pictures that I got of the girls.

Hanging out

 

Playing Catch with Brent

We decided to celebrate Lily’s birthday with Amanda and Dan, the Sunday before it actually happened.  We didn’t do too much.  I made a cake and we went over to their house for dinner and had some cake and ice cream afterwards.  Here are some pictures.

The Birthday Girl

 

 

hmm...this isn't my cake

I’m not exactly sure when this one was taken… I think some people (Daddy) were being pretty sneaky with the frosting.

Being sneaky...

Here is a picture of the cake.

Here is the before picture:

Waiting patiently...

The strategic move:

The aftermath:

That was yummy!

Then on her real birthday, I made some cupcakes to have after dinner.

I know what to do with this

Here is Lily enjoying her birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa Bound:

I think that pretty much brings everybody up to speed on what we’ve been up to lately.  Now that things are getting back to normal around here, I should be updating the blog more regularly. 

Easter 2009

Alright, so maybe not Easter 2009…but we pretended it was since the girls were sick a week ago on the real Easter.  Here are some pictures that we got of the girls in their dresses before church.

Lily and her Easter bonnet

 

Here is the best one we could get of the girls together.

Take a picture...quick!

 

Here is Peyton smiling pretty in her Easter dress.

 

Okay, I was determined to get the girls into their Easter sweaters.  It was a good thing it was a little chilly that morning   One thing I learned (among many things) is that you should always measure the person’s arm and not rely on the pattern…enough said.

 

Here is Lily in her’s…yes she fell asleep before we got her to church  

Happy Spring!

Woohoo!  Spring is finally here!  Yet here I am inside blogging   Oh well…in my defense it’s quiet time here   Last Saturday, Josh and I decided to take the girls to the Sciencenter in Ithaca.  We had heard it was a really neat place for kids and that it had a lot of hand-on things for the kids to play and experiment with.  It was pretty awesome.  We can’t wait to take the girls again when they get another year older or so.  Here are some pictures we got of the girls while we were there.  There were two sections to the Sciencenter.  The outside had a giant wooden ramp with a variety of things to play with.

I think I can...

 

 I can with Daddy’s help!

Thank you Daddy!

 

 For those of you that are aware of Family Game Night that we have on the weekends with Dan with Amanda, we use to be “addicted” to Clue.  However, we have evolved…and now we are into Rock Band 2 with wii.  We have our own band!  It’s very exciting.  I should take some pictures of us all.  There is nothing better than a bunch of 30 year olds getting together to rock on!  Amanda is our singer, Dan plays the lead guitar, Josh plays bass, and that leaves me to be the awesome drummer!  Why am I telling you this?  I decided to take the opportunity while at the Sciencenter to train Peyton to be my lil drummer.

I look like Mommy!

 

Here is good picture of Daddy having some fun.

 

Poor Lily   Next time we come you’ll be able to get out and play the drums also.

When do I get a turn?

 

 Here are Daddy and Peyton playing the xylophones.

 

Then we went inside and did some exploring.  Here is Peyton learning about dams and what the result would be if she launches that big ball into the pool of water…

 

Our next stop was the vacuums.  They had a bunch of different vacuums that the kids could play around with and experiment with picking up styrofoam pieces.  So, I may have a little too excited about teaching Peyton how to vacuum…

 

Here is Peyton playing with the vacuums.

 

Sunday was Easter!  I was able to finish both of the girl’s sweaters in time for the big day!  Peyton had other plans for the day though   She woke up with the stomach flu.  Josh ended up staying home with both girls while I went in and braved our early 2 year old class solo.  I’m going to put the girls in their outfits this coming Sunday, so you can look forward to those pictures in the future.  We still had a little fun though, even though Peyton wasn’t feeling too well.  It was the first Easter that she was able to look for an Easter basket.  She found her basket and then went and helped Lily find hers

I found my Easter basket!

 

Here is a picture I snagged of one of those rare moments:

zzz...

This last picture is of Lily at church in the nursery.  She has become the “poster child”, and a bit spoiled by everyone.  Everytime we go into the nursery or walk by, somebody is playing with her   They took this picture of her and hung it up in the hall.

Catching Up

We’ve been keeping pretty busy the past couple of weeks here.  Josh has been successful at keeping Emmaus a secret.  I am looking forward to going in a couple of weeks, but at the same time, I’m a little hesitant.  I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to handle being away from the girls.  We are still trying to figure out what is going on with the laptop and why it isn’t recognizing the disk drive   I think I just have to bite the bullet and install the software onto the desktop, so I can upload the videos.  I’ve taken a lot of pictures of things that we’ve been doing lately.

Doing our yeast experiment.

Our edible bird nests

Last weekend, we went up to Rochester to spend the day with Chris, Tiff, and Claire (who is now 2 years old).  We walked to the park that is near their house and let the kids play at the playground for a bit.  Here are some pics of them:

Wheee!!!

 Here is Peyton:

I want to go Super High!

 Here is a cute picture of Claire with her mommy

Say Cheese Claire and Tiff!

After playtime in the park, we headed back to Chris and Tiff’s house.  We let the girls play outside for a bit and we got some really cute pictures of the girls   Aww…I wish we lived closer.

Hold my hand

 Peyton is talking up storm:

You know what I mean?

 What do you hear?

Claire! I think I can hear them growing!

 Let’s go this way:

 

 It was a fun day together.  We were blessed with nice weather too   I wish we were able to get together more often.  The girls had a blast. 

This past Saturday, we were invited to go to an Easter egg hunt at the local Methodist church.  The girls had a lot of fun.  They had a band that played some music for the kids and put together a little children’s sermon before the hunt began.  The lady that is holding Lily is Mrs. Hurd.  Her husband, Dick,  is the pastor at this church.  He married Josh and me, and Mrs. Hurd (who was my department chair back in the day) walked me down the aisle.  I’m not sure who enjoyed the Easter egg hunt more…Mrs. Hurd or the girls.  I do know she loved spoiling the girls and introducing Lily to the wonderful world of Jello jigglers!  Now all of us girls here are addicted to jigglers!

Okay Lily, we're going to show you how to go Easter egg hunting!

 Here’s another one of Lily:

Go ahead and pick it up Lily!

 Here are Peyton and Daddy looking for some eggs also:

Let's put the egg in your bag Peyton.

Yesterday afternoon, we were able to get the girls outside in the back yard to go on the swing set while Daddy did some yardwork.  Here is a picture of Daddy pushing Peyton before I was able to get Lily outside also.  But, both girls had a blast on the swings yesterday.  

 

I need to get a video of Lily on the swings so you all can hear her giggle up a storm.  She really really likes swings

I finally was able to finish Lily’s Easter sweater!  Yay!!!  I’ve already begun to work on Peyton’s sweater.  Peyton’s sweater will look the same, only it will be a pistachio color.  I have no worries about being able to finish hers on time.  Here is a picture of Lily’s sweater.  The arms are suppose to be big.  It looks really cute on her in a dopey kind of way   I can’t wait to get pictures of the girls in their Easter outfits with matching sweaters. 

Lily's Easter sweater

I’m thinking of trying to teach myself how to knit.  I found a lot of really nice patterns that are free online:  http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/en/kategori_oversikt.php.  These look like something you would find in a store!  It would be really neat if I got good enough to knit my own clothes

Well, I think I’ve covered everything that we’ve been up to for the past 2 weeks.  This Tuesday night, we are suppose to go over to Dan and Amanda’s to continue the Knaisch-Jamison tradition of coloring eggs!

The Newest Video

I finally got a new video uploaded of Lily crawling   You can find it here http://www.vimeo.com/3548098 .  As you can see, she is able to get around pretty good now.  She is still getting over her ear infection, but is improving every day. 

Peyton is doing well also.  We are continuing our baking unit through this week   We got a little behind last week and had to take a couple of days off to help Amanda prepare for Abbie’s birthday party.  But, that is one of the nice things about homeschooling, it is very flexible.  This past Saturday, Abbie (Amanda’s daughter) celebrated turning 5.  She decided on going with a Tinkerbell theme.  Instead of getting Abbie a present, I thought it would be neat to make the girls flower crowns and the boys – Peter Pan hats.  Thursday night, Josh and I sat down in the living room and we made the crowns for the girls   I wish I had gotten a picture of Josh making his crowns.  Friday night, we went over to Dan and Amanda’s so I could help her go to the store and pick up everything else that she would need and also, so she could teach me how to sew…so I would be able to make the Peter Pan hats.  (I know…I may have been a little over ambitious here…taking on a project that required sewing).  Amanda taught me, and we figured out how to make the hats.  Saturday morning came, and I still had a lot of work to do before the party started that afternoon.  I got up and decided to get right to work on the Peter Pan hats.  Well, part of this project requires you to sew a feather onto the side of the hat.  I took the scissors and tried to poke a hole throught the fabric for the feather…something you should never ever do…and I almost cut my finger off!  Seriously!  Of course…chaos results…Josh made a homemade gauze thing for me to wrap around my finger to try to get it to stop bleeding…since we didn’t have a firstaid kit (we do now though!)  It took us over an hour to get the bleeding to slow down enough so we could put a bandage on it.  During that time, Josh ran to the store and picked up a first aid kit.  Unfortunately, I lost quite a bit of time that morning with my injury.  I know you’re all thinking…what about the hats!?  Not to worry, Josh came to the rescue.  He picked up the needle and thread and he finished all of the hats by himself!  They came out pretty good also.  Here are some pictures of the kids wearing the crowns and hats.

I see you!

This morning, Josh has a meeting at work which will hopefully shed some light on when the meetings are going to be later this month.

I’ve finally decided what my next project is going to be, now that I’m not working crazy hours tutoring.  I had already picked up the girl’s matching Easter outfits last year when everything went on clearance.  They are just little jumpers, nothing poofy this year.  I’ve decided I would try to crochet them matching pink sweaters to wear over them…it should be interesting to see how they turn out…if they turn out at all…  Anyway, I hope everybody is enjoying the beginning of March and staying dry

Cuddle Time in the Jamison Household

How can you not love Tommy???  Who says he isn’t capable of being a calm and loving puppy dog?

Cuddle Time with Tommy

We also had a good day yesterday in the potty training world…it was Peyton’s first whole day of no accidents!!!  Woohoo!!!  It was also her first day of discovering how easy it is to flush a toilet

PB&J Day!

We are still continuing the potty training process   It is going much better this time around.  Peyton is having a lot more successes than she was a couple of months ago, which has made it a lot less frustrating for both of us. 

I ended up taking Lily to the doctor’s on Monday.  She had gotten a cold from Peyton last Thursday.  Sunday night, Lily had a really hard time sleeping because she kept coughing and she was really congested.  She was extremely cranky yesterday, especially in the waiting room   She wouldn’t stop crying, so the one receptionist went back to see if we could get right in…and we did   Once we got into the room, she was fine.  It turns out she has a double ear infection in her right ear.  The doctor asked me when she had had her last ear infection.  I looked at him and said that Lily has never had one and Peyton had never had one either.  He didn’t believe me!  I grabbed her charts and looked at them and said “You’re right”…”let me check her ears again”.  We both had a good laugh over it.  He put her on an antibiotic to take care of it.  Hopefully, her appetite will come back soon.  She hasn’t been interested in eating since Monday, only nursing. 

Peyton was able to give the doctor her thank you card that she made for him last week.  She painted a picture for him, and I gave him a picture of her wearing her “doctor hat” that is here on the blog   She was really excited about giving it to him.  He seemed happy about getting it   Hopefully it brightened his day a little, I know they have been really busy…tis the season.

I’m going to ask that you keep us in your prayers for the next couple of weeks.  Corning Inc.  is going to go through another round of layoffs here this month.  We aren’t sure if Josh’s job is secure.  So…who knows what will happen…  For some reason, I’m not concerned about it.  I know God has a plan for us and He will provide for us.  Maybe this will be our cue to move

This week, we are focusing on baking!  How fun is that?  Yesterday, we made chocolate chip muffins…which Peyton kept stealing when I wasn’t looking…good thing we only made 6.  Here are a couple of pictures of Peyton making them.  Notice the cute baker’s hat we made and how big Peyton’s flowers are getting (they in the bottom right of the pictures) 

Today, we will be making zee muffins

Combine everything into the bowl, and mix!

I think that just about sums up everything that we’ve been up to this past week…  I’ve cut my tutoring hours back.  Now, I am just tutoring 7-9pm Monday through Thursday.  It was getting to be too much for me.  I’ve been enjoying the hour reduction quite a bit.  Now, I am able to work a little and to also spend some time with Josh at night.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important part…today is PB&J day in Georgia!!!  Woohoo!!!  It’s time to revert back to your childhood and break out the peanut butter and grape (yes, I said grape…who doesn’t like grape) jelly, slab them on the bread…don’t forget to cut off the crusts   Enjoy!

Poop Down!!!

This past fall, Peyton and I began the potty training process for a couple of months before deciding she wasn’t ready for it yet   We decided to try it again beginning this past Monday.  I feel like I’m housetraining a puppy all over again.  I’ve been runnig around the house trying to not let her out of my sight, knowing that as soon as she does, she’ll go in her undies.  I caught her yesterday afternoon trying to go poopie in her bedroom and immediately rushed her to the bathroom.  I was so excited, I called Josh at work, who was in the middle of his Tuesday afternoon bible study.  He was so excited, that he shared it with his bible study group at work   However, today was pretty frustrating for me.  I would sit Peyton on the potty, for what seemed like forever, only to have her go in her undies within 5 minutes of getting off of the potty   She did go poopy in the big girl potty this afternoon though, when Daddy was home for lunch   To make things easier with the potty training process, me and the girls went to store this afternoon and I had Peyton pick out another potty to keep in the living room area.  I wasn’t the least bit surprised in the potty she chose   We no sooner got it home, and she wanted to sit on it and try to go potty. 

I’m also trying out something different from last time.  I took an idea from Amanda, that she uses for chores with her kids and adapted it to the potty training process with Peyton.  Josh and I made a giant tree out of felt and everytime Peyton goes potty, she gets a felt apple to put on her tree!  No more giving her M&M’s or anything when she goes…of course I did give her some dark chocolate for going poopy   She gets very excited about being able to put an apple on her tree.  I picked up some books that were only $1 each from Target to give to her as prizes when she gets so many apples on her tree in one day.  Here are a couple of pictures.

Ribbit ribbit

Peyton’s Apple Tree

Doctors and Rainbows

I figured I would sit down and do the “weekly update”   My brother-in-law came home from the hospital this past Wednesday and he is doing good.  This week, we focused on Doctors and Rainbows…I know it’s an odd combination   Peyton doesn’t seem to mind it though.  She enjoyed making/finding rainbows.  She turned a DVD over one day and got all excited because she discovered she could see a rainbow whenever she tilted the DVD.  During out week on doctors, we made a doctor hat for Peyton to wear.

Dr. Peyton reporting...

 

Is this how it goes?

This week we also started getting Lily use to using a sippy cup with her meals. 

Is this the right end?

I wasn’t able to get a video made of the girls from this past week.  Mostly because I didn’t know how to change the video discs in the camera   Josh changed them for me, so I’m hoping to get one made of Lily crawling and pulling herself up.

Peyton caught a bad cold from Sunday School last week.  She woke up Saturday morning with a small fever and a runny nose.  Unfortunately, it turned into the croup Saturday night   She still has a small fever, but she seems to be doing alright this morning…energy-wise.

I suppose I should end this and get things going with Peyton for the day   I heard the cardinal singing the other day…Spring is just around the corner

Family Night at the Ice Skating Rink

Last night was family night at the ice skating rink. Our church was sponsoring it. I spent the entire day building it up for Peyton, how she was going to ice skating with Daddy and get hot cocoa and a cookie. She was so excited! It turned out to a really cold night though. We all went to the skating rink together, but Lily and I went over to the library to get our books for next week while Daddy and Peyton hit the ice! I did manage to make it back to the skating rink to get a couple of pics though

Daddy and Peyton skating

Whee!

Both Daddy and Peyton had a blast!  They made it through the night without falling!  I think Daddy got a little more of a workout than he was expecting though