HE DID IT!!!!!

Introducing Dr. Ahlstrom....

Daddy officially graduated last Friday! We're so proud! He'll continue to work in his lab at UCDavis getting his work ready for publication until the funding is in place for him to start a postdoc at the U of U sometime in the spring. Congrats Daddy - we love you!!!

So to celebrate Daddy (of course) wanted a fried dinner so he had shrimp poppers, curly french fries, mozzarella cheese sticks, corn dogs and fish sticks (and his cholesterol is lower than mine...it's maddening!!)



And we finally got to open our wii!!! We decided last February that his graduation present would be a Wii. We had played it at my parents house and loved how family friendly it was and since Daddy loves electronics and games he can play with others it was the perfect present. The girls surprised him with the Disney princess game and my parents surprised him with extra controllers and Mario Kart (our favorite game). We had a great day!!!

Guess who got a strike!!

Yea Mg!!!

E beat both Mg and I at bowling :)
Poor Mary got to play a few rounds before she got sick to her stomach but we have all had lots of fun playing together. And yes, Daddy likes the princess game (all things considered). He likes multi player games where you work together towards an objective. Granted, he doesn't like dressing up the princesses as much as the girls do but he does like working with them to save the princess kingdoms (isn't using your magic wand to turn bogs into butterflys the same as using Indiana Jones's whip?!) and they've had a good time together. Hooray for graduation and thanks everyone!!!

Merry Christmas from the Ahlstrom Family!

Here's a quick Christmas letter done last minute before we left...it didn't get mailed out to anyone except our Grandparents so you'll have to click on the letter to get your copy :)We love you all and wish you a VERY Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!

You can click on the picture to enlarge it :) Thanks to my little bro for taking the great pictures!!! I"ve been having lots osf fun with Photoshop Elements...enjoy :) I have lots to catch up on and a Christmas letter to post so keep checking back!!

Please Drive Safe!!!!

I was on my way home from picking Mg up at preschool...the light turned green (I was on Covell crossing Pole Line for those of you around here), the car in front of me entered the intersection and got absolutely nailed by someone who ran a red light. I was grateful there wasn't anyone in the passenger seat of the car in front of me that got hit because they probably would have been injured. Scary. I was grateful it wasn't me. I was really impressed with how quickly 3 police cars got there, dealt with the cars and the traffic (it happened in the middle of the intersection), took my information and one other one since we were witnesses and we were on our way! Mistakes happen so fast especially this time of year when everyone is so busy so please drive safely!!! Merry Christmas! I promise pictures are coming - hopefully tonight! I've got lots of catching up to do!!!

Friday nights

We love our Friday nights. We trade off each week - one night is game night and the next Friday night is movie night. As soon as dinner is done the girls run upstairs to get their pajamas on and grab a stuffy, pillow and blanket while Mommy cleans up dinner and Daddy makes his special popcorn in his movie popcorn machine.
A few weeks ago the movie was short and we ended up playing "Simon Says" afterwards...it was highly entertaining! Little A loves to join in - especially when it involved clapping, dancing or (her favorite) turning around in circles!!!

Somehow the final action for Simon Says was "Simon Says to tickle Daddy!"

When that was complete and Daddy had tickled each of them their new game started "Neiner Niener Nierner" complete with arms waving in the air. You'll have to click on this picture so you can see the looks in the girls faces - complete excitement but also terrified because I happened to catch it just as Daddy started to take off to get them!!!
And of course to wind the night down Daddy read "Pirates Don't Change Diapers" Argh. Horray for Daddy!

Family fun time

We love the "after dinner is cleaned up and before the bedtime routine begins" time in the evening.

Horray for books! (and kitties)

Hooray for Daddy! Daddy does push ups in the morning and the girls felt he needed a little more resistance so they climb on his back to be helpful. :) They love it at night when Daddy lays down on the floor - the climb on and urge the horsey forward. Even little A has discovered the fun!

I love it when the horse decides to get rid of his load :) Time to get off!!

Catch up

So last night I was too tired to do anything so I wasted time on the computer and ended up with a REALLY long post - sorry!! Here are some pictures to make up for it from our Thanksgiving visit with Grandma and Grandpa...

We love to read!

Grandma brought M&M's and Skittles - so of course they had to be sorted and counted!!

Tickle time!!! First Daddy got them, Mommy came from behind and a surprise attack from the side from Grandpa - Daddy had warned the girls that Grandpa was a good tickler but they forgot and got too close!! It was great to hear them and their surprise!!

So happy together! We decorated the house for Christmas and watched Christmas movies together! Thanks for visiting!!! We love you!

A week in review

Monday: Impromptu trip to San Jose - had a wonderful time with my Grandparents and little bro (almost missed the exit to get home...the fog was so bad I couldn't see the sign!!) (dispersing 4 kids amongst friends was an interesting task - THANK YOU everyone who helped!!!)

Tuesday: Teach Mg's preschool (actually got them to act out the story of the birth of Christ!)

Wed: M's birthday. Had a very lovely tea party birthday party with several of her friends.

Thursday: Sing along rehearsal. Afterwards begin creche festival set-up - stay at church way too late, drive home in horrible fog but man the chapel looked great!!!

Friday: Mg's birthday party. Successfully turned 6 ladies into fairies (it's all in the pixie dust!!). Creche festival sing-along rehearsals until late.

Saturday: Mg's birthday. Got up way too early, enjoyed presents and then spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon setting up for the creche festival. Dealt with several problems - such as fried circuit boards on the back of the organ, musicians pulling out at the last minute, and pizza for dinner / and or lunch for 4 days in a a row since I've been gone so much!! Came home, went on a REALLY cold bike ride for Mg's birthday and had a fun evening together, then worked on the sing-along

Sunday: church - substituted conducting music in sacrament meeting, substituted conducting music in primary. MY ARM HURTS after almost 2 hours of rehearsals a day the last 5 days!!! Came home, changed clothes, told everyone to leave me alone while I actually make myself look presentable (haven't done that in a LONG time - flat irons are amazing!!) and went to re-set up for the creche festival (microphones had to be locked up, etc overnight so there were a few things to do this afternoon). Played the piano, hosted musicians, ran the sing along....

...it just occured to me that you may be asking yourself what a "creche festival" is. I didn't know until I became involved - every year they change our church's multi-purpose room into a beautiful display room for nativity scenes. We had over 250 nativity scenes this year and they do a graet job. For the last several years I have been in charge of arranging for live music during the festival from 3-8pm Saturday and Sunday. In the past it has not been a big deal but I wanted to include community groups this year. Sounds easy but it took much more work than ancitipated tracking down which groups I wanted, finding their contact info, scheduling, etc. And since prop 8 was thrown into this time frame it was crazy. Several of the groups were excited but will have to do it next year since we weren't able to schedule far enough in advance (understandable). It's going to be awesome next year - when I'm not here!!!! Grr!!! Oh well, I've done good work and I'm happy and we had a few great community groups this year. Anyways, on top of all that I was encouraged to do a Christmas Carol Sing-along. Sounds like fun - a project right up my alley!!! It was wonderful and I had THE most INCREDIBLE group of musicians you could ask for to work with. But it was a lot of work :)

Anyways, back to my story I was in uncomfortable heels all day (the pains we suffer to look good!) but hosted musicians and then directed the sing-along. It was fun! We had piano/organ duet accompaniments, a flute player, a cello player, a vocal descant group, an amazing organist and another organist who played the Halleujiah chorus from Handel's Messiah. It was fun! My arm hurts but people seemed to enjoy being there and I had a good time and I am SO grateful to all the people (especially Adrian!!) who put in so much time practicing! I think people really enjoyed it. This was the first year we've really done it and I think word will get out for next year...when I'm not here!!! Oh well. I had fun, and I have to say one of my favorite moments was looking out and seeing my girls sing along :) Special moments.

Anyays, it is all over. I'm kindof sad - I LOVED all the events of this week, I'm just sad they all had to happen in one chaotic week!!! Now it is time to go back to cleaning, cooking dinner, taking care of kids and an AMAZING husband who has been so patient with me being crazy this last week! It was fun but I'm grateful to be done and go back to being mom. My husband has truly been amazing and I'm so grateful for his support!!! He brought the kids to sing with me at the sing-along (THANK YOU Chrisana and Amber for sitting with him and helping!) and afterwards they helped me clean up. They were all getting in the car when I caught up to them and the family was SO excited that I was coming home with them!!! It was a great feeling :) And sweet little A was exausted and falling apart when we got home...Daddy changed her diaper and I came to see if I could help and she just snuggled in my arms and quieted down and was so happy to have me hold her. I love those moments!!! I love my life!!! Thanks again everyone who helped!!!

And I'll have pictures soon of our crazy week!

Thankful...

Thanksgiving keeps going! Our maintenance person was here this morning to check out our "flood." Apparently he has a new emergency maintenance phone number but it's not on our office answering machine! :) He looked around and said we did a great job drying the carpets and he'll need to repaint a small section of the wall but that's easy to do and he'll get to it sometime. I asked if this had happened before in our apartment and he smiled and said all of the apartments here have flooded at least once and we did a great job and no harm done! He told us not to worry about anything and he'll repaint the wall soon and retape the crack in the ceiling when we move out. We feel SO blessed! THANKS Grandma and Grandpa for all your help and advice!! I'll post some pictures of the fun we had with them in a few days!

(PS Grandma - you left your brush here!)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Doesn't this look nice! We're just getting ready to add the final touches and food to the table. What a nice, relaxing and wonderful dinner I put on...or so it seems. What you can't see in the picture is THIS...
That the kitchen table is on the carpet because if it was in it's usual place we would be getting wet. How many of YOU were serenaded be the sound of dripping water coming from your ceiling while you ate your Thanksgiving feast? We had such a treat.

We went on a bike ride just before dinner and I got into the house first and could hear running water and looked all around and found it coming from the ceiling!!! A nice waterfall (I love waterfalls but this was a little too much!!). A little one in our house went to the upstairs bathroom and washed her hands before leaving on our trip and used the sink that is always plugged up and left the water on (full blast). So we came home to a wet mess. Luckily it all puddled in one spot in the ceiling and so there wasn't water in the whole house just at this one little crack in the ceiling (where Grandpa is cleaning up - THANK YOU!!!). Thankfully none of our stuff was wet and Safeway was open and had a carpet cleaner we could use to get the water out of the carpet and so far the water damage seems minimal, all things considered.
It took awhile for the water to finally stop dripping but I decided the turkey was ready, the rolls were ready to be baked, kids were hungry and dinner must go on! It was a busy house with Daddy using the carpet cleaner, Grandpa mopping up, Grandma entertaining kids, me trying to empty bookshelves so we could move them out of the way so we could dry the carpet and all of us working on dinner. We forgot to make the stuffing and made a last minute decision to use instant potatoes to save time on a chaotic night but we survived, had a nice meal, things are drying and we'll all be happy to go to bed tonight (oh yea, and my wedding ring flew off my finger into the sink (I recovered it), the gas stove wouldn't light (Grandpa lit it), the light bulb blew out in the bathroom, my dessert didn't work but I'm going to bed and hope it's all good tomorrow).

As a side note - we don't think this is the first time it's happened! That sink has never worked (we now wished we had just shut off the water and we wish it had an overflow outlet!!!) and the bathtub has also always had drainage problems (they have to come fix it every few months - these problems have been happening since we first moved in). Where all the water was creating the waterfall there has always been a crack in the ceiling since we moved in and the paint on the wall looks a little funny. Now that the ceiling is wet we see evidence that the ceiling has been patched at the same part....I'm not surprised!!!)

Bike ride!

This is what we were doing when the house flooded....

We borrowed bikes from our neighbors for Grandma and Grandpa and off we went to "Emma's park"

Aren't they adorable!!!

Spin me faster Daddy!

Woohoo!

She LOVES going down the slides now!! She also loves that she can get up and walk to the stairs and go down the slide all by herself, as many times as she wants :)

And Mg can go UP the slide!!!

We had a great time! A lot of work (and shock!) when we came back but we're grateful it wasn't any worse :) Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Uncle Scott Photography

I'm telling you - it's wonderful to have a photographer in the family (and a hairdresser and a cook and a fix everything man - maybe one day I'll figure out what I contribute to the family besides being bossy!). While Uncle Scott was here celebrating his birthday and taking pictures for our family he got some fun shots in, too ("Take my picture Uncle Scott!!!")...Enjoy!!!!

These are her precious "bunnies"...like all good bunnies they multiply - I think we have about 6 in the house (literally!!!)This most definitely captures my little girl!!!

I'm all grown up and I like to do my own hair now :)All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!

This is her favorite cat that has been around for a REALLY long time but is still the favorite!!("Don't try to make me SIT on this chair for a picture!!!!")

Rain!

Doesn't Uncle Scott take fabulous pictures!!!! And this is in the rain!! When they came up for his birthday and to take pictures we had a REALLY rainy day (which meant no outside family pictures :( ) but it meant for some happy girls!!! It was the first big rain of the year and we dug out everyone's boots and they have a wonderful time! Thanks Uncle Scott for braving the rain!!

(you can click on the picture to blow it up if you want)

This child LOVES water!!!! Baths, pools, and puddles...she is so completely happy and carefree in the water! It was so much fun to watch her see how big a splash she could make and to have so much fun!!!Why bother with an umbrella!Now this has got to be one of the coolest pictures ever! Nice job little bro! (you've got to click on this one to blow it up!)

"I'm going to get into this puddle....you better stop me...I'm really going in...here I go...are you going to stop me?" This would be my littlest imps new attitude - life is a game and it's so funny to see if I can get you to come chase me!! (but she's SO cute when she does it!)"I'm in now - are you going to get me!!??"

"This is SO much fun!!!!" I could not believe how much fun she had - it was a giggle and squeal fest as she actually got to play in the puddle. We were shocked that she didn't care about how cold it was or that it was raining and she was getting soaked, although she did look up quite a bit to check out the rain :) We had to force her in because she was shivering and soaked, but ever so happy!!!

Of course this child had to put on her sister's boots - I don't remember any of my other girls being THIS obsessed over clothes and especially shoes!

Of course they were way to big and she couldn't even stand in them, but thanks dad for putting them on so she could try!!

"I'm cold and wet, I think it's time to go inside"

Thanks again Scott for a great day and for great pictures! We love you!