Fun at the playground!

The last couple of weekends we've had beautiful weather here in Fresno and we've had weekend playground adventures with long walks and picnics.Ryan with his girly-girls. Daddy is the best!
Sofia dressed her doll "Lovisa" this morning with a pink shirt, jean dress and striped tights. We managed to dress Sofia and Kajsa to match "Lovisa", how fun! Don't they look cute!
Kajsa proudly carried her sandwich through the grocery store, all by herself! She really wants to be a big girl like her big sister ;-)
Wheeee! Swinging is so much fun! Hopefully no braces for those beautiful straight pearly whites.
Another recent favorite game: playing in daddy's car. Quite tricky when they're done though as there are lots of sticky fingerprints afterwards and last weekend we had to jump start it the next day because the dome light had been turned on!!! Oooppss!

Cutey Sofia!

Sofia is getting to be such a big girl! You've got to love that mischievous grin ;-)

A visit from VIFs (Very Important Friends)!

Tina and baby Cerridwen have been here to visit for almost a whole week and we've had tons of fun! It was awesome getting to know Cerridwen and she is an amazing content and happy baby. We entertained Tina by touring local community gardens and botanical gardens and we entertained Cerridwen just by being us - 3 crazy girls and a slightly neurotic dog :-)
Cerridwen tried out our back pack carrier, she approved and napped nicely!

Kajsa and Cerridwen playing in the office.
Peekabo!

Making an artistic mess is fun!

Today I made up our own fingerpaints and it was a gooey, fun and artistic mess :-)
You mix together flour and water to a paint like consistency and then color it with drops of food coloring. I'm not sure if the girls liked the painting part more or the pouring ridiculous amounts of the "finger paint" out onto the paper and then feeling it squish between their fingers and then repeatedly slapping the paper so that the paint went flying everywhere!!! I thought I had a whole afternoon project planned out but the paint was gone in 10 minutes, yikes :-) It was 10 minutes of perfect happiness though.

This was the first time I've ever used food coloring and Sofia was enthralled by the power of putting drops into stuff and seeing the colors change, so for a few days after she wanted to color everything - the gluten-free muffins I baked ended up a moldy green!!!

Snuggle nest and Chef Sofia

Sofia and Kajsa collaboratively carried and dumped pretty much every loose pillow, blanket and available stuffed animal into our office and made a little snuggle nest on the floor this morning. Drake apparently liked it, because he snuggled right in!

Sofia and I made a Play-doh pizza, complete with shredded cheese, olives and sausage. Sofia's favorite combination :-)

Where's Waldo, er I mean Drake?

There's a new game in the Kalmbach household, hide underneath the mountains of stuffed animals we have! Today it was Drake and Sofia that got to hide.

Loggers!

The past two weekends we've been in the logging business, well sort of! We were forced to cut down a tree on our front lawn because the roots grew very shallowly (sp?) and was growing underneath our house and cottage foundation. The first weekend we felled the tree with some expert advice from my dad and the second weekend we chipped up all the branches. Thank you so much to the Brummels for lending their wood chipper :-)
Check out the UPS Logger sweatshirt - very appropriate!!!

Happy Valentine's day!

The girls love unloading all the shoes from our shoe "ottoman" and then it becomes a really cool boat, bus, hideout! Aren't they cute in their red and pink outfits :-)
Kajsa is having one of the Valentine muffins that Sofia and I made.
I put on the frosting and then Sofia decorated them all by herself with sprinkles galore!

Favorite Things!

Here are some pictures of current favorites:
Drake has found a new snuggle friend, Sofia's Lion pillow, aaww what a snuggley couple :-)
Sofia's favorite, always, is CHOCOLATE!!!
And M & M's, they of course contain the all-important ingredient - CHOCOLATE!
Kajsa is digging her new CAT Dump Truck, thanks Gramma and Grampa :-)
Kajsa didn't fall far from the tree either and is definitely a budding CHOCO-HOLIC too!!!

Christmas and Fun in the Sun

We had a wonderful 2 week holiday in the Bahamas with my parents. The weather was beautiful and the girls loved boating, the beach and all the adventures that we had everyday :-)

Here's a collage for you to enjoy!
(double click to see a bigger version)

Birthday Marathon!

All in the same week Kajsa turned 1, Ryan turned 31 and Sofia turned 3! Lots of 3's and 1's there. We started the week with Elton Brown's Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, then had homemade German Chocolate cake with coconut frosting, and finished off the week with a Gramma created Little Girl cake! Wowey, that was a lot of cake.

Cutey Kajsa

Here is our blue eyed cutey girl, Kajsa! She was so proud of having put on the headband all by herself.

Truckee Summer Fun!

I'm trying to instill my love of horses into Sofia and it seems to be working. Last year Sofia wasn't too sure about sitting on the horse, but this year she got on right away and we did 3 laps on the trail! What a cowgirl :-)
Here is another of Sofia's own pictures - she's quite artistic when she's yielding the camera.
We went on a "nature hike" trail with Gramma. This was a very fun adventure until an escaped Husky started following us and picking a fight with Drake. We called the owner's number on the collar but he didn't care.
The husky kept bugging us and when we sat down to have our picnic snack he came right up to us and stole Sofia's lion right out of the back pack on my back! This was Sofia's very special lion that she put to bed every night and who sat in the pocket of her apron when she was baking, took baths with her and was her little special friend. Needless to say it was VERY traumatic to see a dog run off with her lion and not come back. Gramma went to hunt down the dog but to no avail, the dog that wouldn't leave us alone was nowhere to be found!
Here is Sofia's lion 15 minutes prior to THE ABDUCTION! We visited the local children's thrift store and got a little kitten stuffed animal. He wasn't so special at first, but we can happily report that "Kitty" is now a very cherished Sofia friend who even wears cloth diapers that mom has sewn for him!

4th of July!

This year marked the first year for the Annual Kalmbach Family 4th of July Parade! We created a very cool float by making a giant Uncle Sam hat out of chicken wire and tissue paper.

Camping in the Sierras

Last weekend we went camping at Dinkey Creek above Shaver Lake. It was Kajsa's premiere camping trip and everything went great so now there will be more trips coming :-)

 

 

 

 

Sweden trip 2008 Slide show

Click on the slide show to see it bigger!

3 Girls in Sweden!

Sofia, Kajsa and Emma went to Sweden for 3 weeks in June. We had a wonderful time visiting friends and family. First we stayed with Helena, Jonas and Lovisa, where we got to attend Lovisa's christening, then we headed to Helsingborg in southern Sweden for 3 days to visit my grandmother (Momutti) so that she could meet her second great-granddaughter, Kajsa. Once back up in Stockholm we stayed with Johanna and Lars-Goran where Sofia and Kajsa had tons of fun making friends with Andre and Alexander. The last week we stayed on my parents sailboat in Vasahamnen right smack in the middle of Stockholm.Traveling to Helsingborg on the X-2000 high speed train. Sofia was pretty excited about going on a super fast train and she thought the coolest part was using the potty on the train!

Momutti with Kajsa at the breakfast table.Kajsa and Sofia in the "karamell stolen". Two little beauties!

Fun with Pippi! (Longstocking, that is)

The past week had a little bit of a Pippi Longstocking theme.
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Sofia's neighborhood friend, Kaleb, came by to have some fun in the backyard and they ended up soaking each other with the garden hose and so needed dry clothes. Don't they look like 2 little rascals in matching Pippi shirts and jeans :-)Later in the week Sofia let me do her hair in Pippi braids. I managed to do it real quick while she was sitting still coloring, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten near her hair!Here's my two little cutie girls on our new living room couch that we got from http://www.freecycle.org/. Love, love, love, freecycle and love, love, love this new comfy couch! What a great way to re-purpose things and pass it through the community. Sofia's photo skills are being honed everyday! She loves telling us all to smile and say "cheese".Kajsa is ready for baby yoga! She loves chewing on her toes. I didn't whip the camera out quick enough, as a second earlier she had both toes in her mouth!!! :-)