Happy 4th Birthday to Lilia!

My posts got a little out of order. I forgot for a split second that Lilia's b-day comes before Ila's. Oh well.  She's 4, going on something a lot older.  She's a sass, that's for sure. We all love her.  She was 32 pounds at her 4 year check up. Up a whopping 2 pounds from her 3 year, if I remember correctly.

Lilia and I get to spend some quality time together in the mornings, with Eva and Colby at school, and Ila napping.  I love my time with Lilia.

She started a little dance class about a month ago and loves it.  She is a fan of dancing.  She and Eva have started turning the music on on the computer and rocking out.  It is hilarious. See for yourself! For her birthday her aunt Melissa gave her a Disney Princess CD, that thing is on constant rotation.



She has the most infectious laugh.  She has the greatest smile. She can't wait to be in preschool. Her favorite thing in the world is to have a play date, whether it's a friend her age or playing with Eva's friends when they come over. Ila is her biggest fan.  Ila has started screaming as loud and as high pitched as possible whenever someone is doing something to her that she doesn't like.  So, I always think Lilia picking her up, or taking something from her, or moving her, anything that usually makes her scream, will get the same reaction, but Lilia somehow gets away with it. She's been dressing herself lately, in all kinds of crazy get-ups. (I try really hard not to let them annoy me.) There have been no hair cutting incidents since the beginning of last summer. Although when her hair had grown out to a long enough length I went and had the whole thing cut to be the same length and Eva was very upset when she got home from school and saw her.  She likes Lilia with long hair, I guess.

Lilia can be so sweet and make you feel so special when you're on her good side. Which is getting to be a more often than not.  (Yay!)

Happy Birthday Lil. I love you!

                   

                   She's a lefty, just like her grandmas.

                                                                                                                         

Valentine's Day   

 Dressing herself...urg.

Birthday Girl!

Dance class with her friend, Allie. And here's that beautiful smile!

 With her cousins, Maggie and Naomi

This picture just cracks me up.

                                               Eva took this one.

Happy 1st Birthday to our baby Ila Jo

 (I'm trying to figure out the new picture uploader on blogger)

It's so hard to believe a year came and went as fast as it did.  Ila continues to grow.  She hadn't started walking by her birthday.  That came a couple of weeks later.  She started walking and was off.  There was no learning period for her.  She took some steps then it seemed like she was running. We all love her and she is so vital to who our family is. She still doesn't say mama, but says dada all the time.  She says "hello" (cutest thing ever) but it's more like, "eh-O" and puts her hand up to her ear.  She gets really excited and grunts a lot when she wants something.  She loves our dog, says "dah," when Quin is around. She still doesn't laugh much, but it hasn't changed that when she does laugh it is for Colby, Eva, or Lilia. They seem to have the magic touch. She has figured out drinking out of a sippy cup, so hopefully before too long we'll say bye-bye to the bottle.
After Christmas, sometime...I can't remember exactly when, we took away the binkie because Lilia was still stealing it.  It seemed the only solution to the problem.  But after a couple of semi-difficult nights she was totally fine.  I'm convinced it's the easiest way to get rid of it.  It was an adjustment for me not to be able to give her the binkie in the morning so she'd go back to sleep for awhile, but we all survived the death of the bink.
She is a one-woman-tornado.  No drawer or cupboard is safe. Or bookshelf.  I don't remember any other kids being like this.  But she's so sweet and gives the best hugs and gets so excited whenever daddy gets home.  Jason thinks she says, "Hi dad," but it comes out, "I-da." He could be right.  We'll never know. But we love her. She is a ray of sunshine.

December 2011

I am thankful for pictures, because I forgot pretty much everything that happened in December before I looked back at the pictures.

Colby lost two teeth. He lost one at school. It was in his cubby in an envelope and he got it out to look at it and dropped it.  So when I picked him up he told me he lost it. We went back in to his classroom and found it.  Lucky boy, because I'm not sure if tooth fairy comes when there isn't a tooth under your pillow!


Jason got to go on a spur of the minute trip to the Boise State bowl game with his parents and some people from work.  But before that was the finger-slicing fiasco.  Jason was helping out at the tailgate his work puts on before every home game.  He was trying to separate frozen hamburger patties with a knife, and woosh...right through the burger and into his finger.  Someone drove him the less than 1 mile to the ER. I was going to pick him up and make him come home, but oh no, he'd have none of that.  He was going to walk back to the tailgate, but his parents picked him up and drove him back. Crazy guy.

This is a picture before the stitches were taken out. The pictures right after the accident are a little more gory.


We had a couple of family nights with the Heinrichs.  We went to a live nativity.  It really helped me to feel the Christmas spirit.  It's a tradition I hope to keep up.  We also had fun making gingerbread houses! The kids loved that one.

Jason's beast of a gingerbread house. Sadly it never got finished and ended up in the garbage after sitting on top of our fridge for a good month.


Shanah, one of my bestest friends since 8th grade and my one and only college roommate-not counting Jason, and her family came to Idaho for Christmas break and I got to finally meet her adorable babes.  I realized I hadn't seen her in close to 4 years. 4 years and 4 kids between us, way too long! That is another benefit of being back in Idaho, otherwise it would have been even more years before I saw her again. We went downtown to this model train exhibit and got to see Santa! It was fun because it wasn't crazy busy, like the mall would have been.


We spent Christmas in Boise with the Delgadillos.  It was a nice, relaxing, laid back holiday.  My mom sent a bag of supplies to each of the Croshaw kids to have Christmas themed Family Home Evenings for the month of December.  And for Christmas Eve she sent simple costumes for the kids to dress up and act out the nativity. Christmas day Patty, Ernie, and Melissa came over to open presents.  We had church at 8:30, so we just played with our Santa presents and stockings before. The present opening had to wait until after church.  Patience is a lesson we all must learn.
We surprised Melissa at the airport when she came in to town.

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning

Melissa took the kids for awhile one day to have a party with them.  She is the greatest aunt. She took this picture. I love it more than pretty much any picture ever.


I remembered one last thing.  My amazingly talented friend Tina had a quick little session with us by the river in Eagle in our Christmas duds.  The picture of the kids at the top is from then. And here is the family picture.  I love it!!