More pictures of the Julia....

Last week was "two year old" picture day at JC Penney's. I was amazed...the photographer lady spent ten minutes with us and got some pretty impressive results. I can barely get Julia to look at the camera when we're at home. Miss Julia was really good for the first five minutes. She smiled and sat...model child. We had picked up a bouquet of fake flowers at a craft store before pictures and Julia was willing to hold them for us....until after she spotted a shabby stuffed Elmo in the back of the portrait studio. Instantly, Julia went from being the sweet little girl in the yellow dress to a little rat with pigtails...demanding ELMO!!!!! We had a little nuclear meltdown, complete with tears and pulling of the pigtails, until she was allowed to hold Elmo IN the pictures. (I could have chosen this time to enact some discipline, however, I confess that my chief mission was to Please The Toddler until the photo shoot was done....) Needless to say, Elmo got a few shots himself. At least Julia was willing to smirk out a smile after that. I guess when you have a two year old, you learn to roll with the punches.

Happy Birthday, Julia

We're TWO! Julia had a little birthday bash last weekend at the Edge, a hotel in town that has a waterpark inside. Both sets of grandparents made the trip, plus some of Mike's extended family, and a few of Julia's friends were there. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we were having too much fun in the water park to take any pictures. (Mommy was scared for the vitality of the digital camera....) We did snap a few during the gift opening. Julia was showered with fun presents by her relatives and friends. All had a good time. Her favorite part was watching the huge bucket of water dump out on unsuspecting swimmers in the water playground. It was hilarious. She was fascinated and terrified at the same time.

Gardening

Mike is making me go to bed (good husbands make their exhausted wives go to be early....) so, I bargained for one picture. More to follow tomorrow night. This is Miss Julia at the lake last weekend, perplexed with her gardening gloves. "How can mittens have so many weird appendages? What the heck?" Today, I learned that I will probably be doing most of my spring gardening through Mike, who is still able to bend over at the waist.

Hope you enjoyed the beautiful day!

Changes

Julia will be two come next week, and I was looking through some old pictures. It amazes me how a person can change SO much in just a year. Even if she is bigger, more verbal, and in a different diaper size, some things about Julia have not changed.

She still loves to be naked..... (or almost) (I feel weird putting completely naked pictures of our daughter on the internet....)She still likes to tell us what to do and where to go....
She still loves dumping out her socks

Snow day

Hi Friends!

Well, the blizzard of 2008 has come and gone. Everybody around us seemed to be "in a tizzy" about some gigantic blizzard that hit us last Friday. It was nuts! I stopped to buy gas on Thursday afternoon and the pump was empty! I have never had that happen. I had to go to the gas station down the street that was a penny more. Darnit. Well, despite all the terror, we loved our blizzard! It wasn't near the three and a half foot blizzard of last year....it dumped a measly 15 inches on us. HOWEVER, somebody at the weather service was scared of the seventy mile an hour winds or something, so EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED last Friday. Yup....including the University ( =MIKE OFF) and the CLINIC (= Sarah OFF)!!!! We spent the day at home making homemade chocolate pudding, popcorn, cookies, pot roast, you name it. The three of us braved the winds to let our friends' dog out and Julia did just fine in her sled (I don't have pictures of that...)

Anyways, we had a great weekend doing nothing but a little shopping, a little snow play, and a bunch of house-ish things. This has been the greatest blizzard event. I wish I could plan another one in a couple of weeks. Mike didn't even shovel since it's supposed to be forty degrees outside tomorrow.

I have had several people request details of the latest coming Sprengeler:
We are DUE on Memorial Day. That makes me 34 weeks.
We don't know what kind of Sprengeler we will be having.
So far, baby is fine, mom is fine, no issues other than my being sick at odd hours and ready to go to bed at 8pm with Julia.....
The baby bump makes a great place to put a root beer.
Julia says, "cut it out, mama!" (Ohhhh.....My little surgeon.....)
We have this old fashioned popcorn popper. Julia and I made some yesterday. She loved to crank the seeds around inside. She was displeased when I made her shut the cover during the popping. Remember when you were little and you wondered what would happen if *you* left the cover off the popcorn on the stove??? Ha! I knew you thought about that.
This is the pre-blizzard snow. We went for a puddle walk with our galoshes. For the current picture, just add a foot or so of snow. And take out the pine tree in the background. The storm blew over several trees in our neighborhood. (We didn't lose our gigantic white pine, thank goodness!)
Julia and her cool new shades. She is ready for bed, armed with Nukker and Snuggly.

Cape!

Mike made Julia a red and yellow cape for Christmas, and at the time, she didn't get what to do with it. Well, today, she took it out of the toy box, put around her shoulders, and exclaimed, "cape!" So we put it on her and she took it for a "spin" in the living room. It was hilarious.....

Tater tots

Well, the highlight of last weekend in the Sprengeler household consisted of none other than the first ever tater tot party. We had our friends Dan and Jessi come over to bring "some refreshments," and they showed up with six pounds of tater tots and five dipping sauces for them. Well, we fired up the oven and "totted" the night away. I also mixed up a pitcher of fuzzy navels that three out of four of us could enjoy (I had me a diet Root Beeer.....) Then it was playing cards and mixing salty potato-ey goodness (insert: toddler in bed now) with a pitcher or two (or was it three?) for the rest of the evening. What a fun time we had. Somebody even remembered to snap a few pictures!

The TotsMike
Jessi
Me (I am fully clothed and wearing a very unsightly but fun apron that Jessi brought me back from her trip to Miami beach). Notice that I was nestled between the water pitcher and a can of root beer......
Miss Julia, who had the privilege of tasting the rest of the strawberry pie that Annie left in our fridge. She also had some tots and then was promptly put to bed before the fuzzy navels came out....