Our Birthday Girl

If you ask Cora how old she is, she'll say "two!" She likes to look at her birthday cards from family and say to herself "happy birthday".

We celebrated Tuesday night with Grandma and Grandpa Bierma.

Part of birthday traditions (at least for two years so far) is to measure how tall Cora is. She grew about 4 inches this year!

Cora was pretty excited to open this birthday/Christmas gift from mommy and daddy.


She was also fascinated with the new little people toys.

We had a chocolate teddy bear cake...he was kinda scary looking but he tasted good!

Cora couldn't quite figure out how to get two fingers up in the air to show us how old she is. That's OK: she'll get it right for next year.

A birthday hug from Grandma before going to bed.

On Wednesday morning we had our MOMS Club playgroup over to celebrate Cora's birthday. They enjoyed eating the ice cream cone cup cakes which was a great idea from Mom Bierma. Next time I serve toddlers cupcakes I will definitely NOT use chocolate frosting: what a mess! White frosting doesn't stain like chocolate!


We feel so blessed to have our little girl in our lives! We praise God for Cora and for her health every day and look forward to the day when she knows and accepts Christ as her savior - our ultimate prayer for her!

Did You Know...?

Cora turned two on Wednesday! Happy birthday to our favorite little girl!

Cora potty trained last weekend and is doing very well during the day-time! (May I recommend www.3daypottytraining.com. It's an e-book that we followed and it was great.)

Cora has attached herself to three of her numerous stuffed toys: they are lovingly named "baby", "dolly" (dow-ly) and "bear". She often holds all three on her lap while reading stories, takes them to bed with her (if one is missing she asks for it), places each one face down in bed (because that's how she sleeps) and makes sure they get under her blanket (or sometimes she lays right on top of bear - he's the softest) and she often requests that I kiss one or each of them good-night. She's even tried to tell me, as I'm leaving the room so she can sleep, that baby has to go potty. She's only 2 and she's already learned the art of procrastination!

Cora pulls her legs and arms up under her tummy to sleep, like a little ball.

She loves to blow her nose, even if it's not runny. It has become another procrastination technique before going to bed lately.

When choosing books to read before nap-time (she always gets to choose two from her bookshelf) she'll stand there and scan the bindings, pull one out to look at the cover and say "no" and put it back to look for another. It cracks me up, except for when I'm feeling impatient.

She loves to read her "Read-With-Me-Bible" from her Great-Grandma after meal times. It has great pictures and just the right amount of words on each page.

When we sing "God is so good" she chimes in with "Dod" and "dood", and she tries really hard to sing "Amen" with us. We love it.

Cora watched some ice skating on tv a few days ago and since then will occassionally put one hand in the air and the other one out the side and twirl around in circles. We think she's tring to dance like a skater! I'm always too slow to get it on video though.

Holidays, In review

We didn't send out a Christmas card or letter this year, but if you've been reading this blog then you haven't missed a thing! We had a nice time over Christmas and New Year's with Brad's parents and his sister, Marcia, who came from San Diego. We got a lot of snow and had fun playing in it. We found out that our mellow dog is really a snow-lover. Gidget got out in the snow and started bounding around and rolling in it, acting like a puppy! It was such a blast to watch. Brad took her up on the Mesa recently and she did great trucking through the deep snow with him. It's good to know she likes it! Too bad we don't get more snow around here...I'm sure our Michigan and Alaskan relatives would happily send us some!

Cora loves her new sled! The weather shield is fabulous because it keeps snow from piling over the side into her lap. She loved playing "out-hide" in the "whoa" (snow). I think one morning we were out for two hours and she only went inside because we offered her hot chocolate! If anyone has an idea for how to rig the sled up like one of those nifty, expensive Bob trailers that you can cross-country ski with, let us know!
Here are a few pictures from Christmas. We put up our Christmas tree after Thanksgiving and the first few mornings that Cora woke up and saw the tree she exclaimed "Wowee! Pretty!" Then she got used to it.
One of our new addictions has been the library. Cora has always been a book fan and now that she sits through whole story books reading has become so much more fun. We borrowed a number of Christmas/holiday themed books from the library to read this year. A couple of her favorites were: Robert's Snow and A Pussy Cat's Christmas. Through reading books and Christmas decorations Cora learned who the two central characters (depending on who you ask) are for Christmas: Baby Jesus and Santa. We don't make a big deal about Santa in any way, shape or form, so I found it surprising, and almost disappointing, when Cora saw a lawn decoration we drove by and yelled out "Santa!" At least she also knows Baby Jesus, and wanted to take Jesus from our nativity scene to bed with her one night!
Our friends came to spend Christmas day with us in Montrose and we enjoyed cross-country skiing for the afternoon together. The trails we went on are a girl scout camp in the summer and they leave a little warming cabin open for skiers to rest and make a fire in.
Here is Cora with her Grandma and Grandpa Bierma on Christmas Day.
For New Year's Eve Brad, Marcia and I went out to see "Valkyrie" with some friends, then everyone came back to our place for food and games. "Wits and Wagers" is a new game we picked up. It's a mix between Trivial Pursuit and Craps, except no real money is involved. The great thing is that for those of us who don't keep trivial details in our heads very well you still have a chance to win, and you learn some interesting facts although they'll soon be forgotten anyway. Most memorable question of the night: How much more is Judge Judy's salary than all of the Supreme Court Judges' salaries combined? What's your guess?