New nick name for Warner

Today while I was doing some dishes downstairs, Warner and Liv were playing upstairs. They play together pretty well. And by well I mean Warner happily plays while Liv decides what he can or cannot play with, smashes him every two minutes, rolls him over, and does whatever else she wants with him. He seems happy to go along with whatever her plan is. I think he just appreciates her friendship even if it entails torturing him and bossing him around.

After awhile I came upstairs to find Warner to lay him down for his mid-morning nap. I found them in her room and both were happily playing. When I picked up Warner Liv said "Is wolfie going to sleep?"

I thought for a minute. Ah "Yes wolfie is going to sleep".

Liv- "Ok bye wolfie"

Warner- "Da da"

I think he approves of his new nickname and I definitely do to.

Wolfie and Liv

Emphasis on these two photos snapped seconds apart.

The picture says it all.

Girls just wanna have fun. . . Oh yea girls they wanna have fuuuunnn

This last one makes me laugh every time I look at it.

I've been studying my Christmas Present from Jaron tonight, the photoshop elements 7 book for digital photographers by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. Photoshop is fun. Check out the photos below. The photo of me below was so fun to do. Whiten teeth? Check! Whiten eyes? Check! Sparkle eyes? Check! Smooth skin blemishes? Check! Thin face? Check. What fun. I won't even tell you how long that took me. And now you can go and tell all the young women you know out there why they shouldn't get depressed after looking at Seventeen magazine.

BEFORE AFTER

Momma Brown in the House

Thank you Papa Brown for letting your sweet wife come out and play. We loved her dearly, missed you and the rest of the family, but we decided we might have to sabotage her getting on the plane tomorrow. We (and I speak on behalf Liv, Warner, and Jaron) don't want to give her back.

Snap Shots

This morning after asking Liv to pick up one of Warner's diapers and throw it in the trash she said:

"No mom, I can't".

"Why not Liv"?

"Because my hands are in my pockets".

Well excuse me. My bad. I should have noticed. :) I laughed pretty hard at that one.

Warner and Liv are keeping me totally busy these days. I don't know what we rush our kids into crawling and walking for, because once they've reached the point of mobility they never go back to sitting like pleasant little blobs, happy and content wherever they are ever again. From crawling to walking its constant wiggles, be it at church, at home, or at the store.
Don't get me wrong, I love the wiggly stage and exploratory stage, it just makes for a lot more work on my part. And lets be honest, I'm kinda lazy.

In fact, I'm so lazy, that rather than take the time to take another picture of my new haircut, I'm going to go ahead and post this totally blurry picture that I took instead.

It was supposed to look like this, except dark not blond of course.

I don't think my hair looks a thing like this hair cut, but I'm totally happy with it anyway.
Happy Monday!

Great House Cleaning Music

Joshua Bell Vivaldi: The Four Seasons. It's so beautiful, so motivating, and so moving.

Ok back to taking down Christmas decorations, de-junking, laundry, and making dinner. . .

Christmas Festivities To Remember

Twas the night before Christmas. . . and this was the PaxHoop nativity scene. Dancing and singing through all the scripture reading was Olivia our angel. To the right of her we had our true boy, Q-bear posing as a humble, yet jumpy and energetic shepherd. To the right of Q-bear is the lovely Brooke, another Angel, who behaved just as angels should, taking her part very seriously, and being completely peaceful and graceful through the whole reading. To the right of Brookie, is our lovely Maddie, posing as Mary, the mother of Jesus. To her right is Richie, the black ninja/donkey that so stealthily let Mary ride on his back all the way into Jerusalem. Jolly little Mathew,the one in the blue cape, was our Joseph. He made sure that no one forgot to give him a spot in the nativity scene, and did a great job keeping the crowd laughing with his jolly smiles and joyful spirit. And the little one in the Santa hat, well that's one of our baby Jesus' of course, also known as Abbey, my sweet, little niece that I wanted to steal and bring home with me. Oh and I almost forgot, to the far right holding himself up to the couch, was our little sheep Warner, who acted just as a sheep should, quietly roaming around the scene, stopping here and there to taste crumbs that had fallen on the floor, or toys that had been left out.

The disheveled Nativity scenes with all of the beloved little ones is one of my favorite traditions of Christmas, and this years nativity scene in particular was one of the best of all time.

From Left to Right here are our newest members of the Pax/Hoop family:
Warner February 25, 2009, Abigail March 22, 2009, sweet little Noelle May 9, 2009

Christmas Morning we spent with J&T, and baby Abbey, and the Parents. It was very quiet, but so wonderful. It was so fun to be with Jord and Taryn who we have never spent Christmas morning with before.

What's that Abbey? What did you say? I'm your favorite Aunt? Oh OK. Just making sure that's what you said.

To be continued. . .

Catching Up

Last May Jaron and I decided that Olivia needed a new challenge in her life. We weren't exactly sure what to do or what she needed, but we both knew that she was ready to be challenged in some way. Days at the park with friends, and play groups were great, but with her rapidly expanding brain cells we felt she needed more than just a social life.

In June, my visiting teacher told me about the Suzuki violin method, and the amazing Suzuki violin teacher, Patty, that her children were going to.

In July, I called Patty to see if there were any openings in her studio. Patty told me that she had a waiting list and that she wasn't sure when there would be an opening. For all I knew it could have been a few years.

In August, Olivia and I observed and attended private and group lessons, and I read "Nurtured by Love" by Shinichi Suzuki to learn more about the Suzuki method.

In September Patty called me and said that something had worked out so that she now had an opening on Mondays at 8:30.

On October 5, 2009 Olivia had her first violin lesson.

On December 24, 2009 Olivia and I did "Pop Goes the Weasel" on our violins together in front of my family, as a grand surprise to my Mom who had no idea that I had started Olivia on the violin.



It hasn't been an easy road. I'm glad that we prayed over the decision to start Olivia in violin and felt so guided, because it has kept us working hard at it. As you can imagine it is no easy task to get a three year old to focus for an entire 30 minutes a day to do her violin "games", but she is learning. I have taught her the famous Julie Beck phrase "I can do hard things" and she repeats it every day as she tries to learn a new task.

Sometimes she cries when I tell her it's time to play, but every time she finishes she gets a huge happy grin and says "I did it!".

I'm so happy that we can have her involved in something that is challenging and fun. When I have a little more time I will post a video of her Christmas Eve performance.


Happy New Year!

Stay tuned for many more posts!

How was your Christmas?