Camaraderie (and snow)!

In effort to support and encourage camaraderie between the girls, Joey and I have decided to put Ellie and Siri in the same room! We had begun to notice jealousy (mostly on Ellie's part, though some on Siri's part too) in the last few months. It seems that once Siri started really walking, things changed around here. Siri began to receive a lot more attention and Ellie began to feel the competition! Ellie even regressed slightly in some of her recent progress and development (namely potty training and sleeping in a toddler bed). So following the advice of my aunt, we decided to let them share a room together in effort to support and encourage their friendship, and hopefully help Ellie return to her normal self again. It's been a bit of a rocky start but I suppose in a good way. They have had a hard time going to sleep because they've been too busy playing together! :) After 4 days it seems they are getting the hang of it and I do feel they have a lot more fun together during play time during the day. So though we've had crabbier children, they've at least had more fun together! :)

Also, Ellie is back on track! She has only had one accident, and she has vowed that she will "never pee in her pants again!"... so far so good. As far as staying in her bed, well she gets up to give things to Siri, but otherwise stays in her room, which is a start I guess! hehe

And just like nearly the rest of the U.S., we got snow this weekend!

25 days of Christmas!

As a continuation of a tradition in Joey's family, we have decided to have an advent calendar!

Inside each door we wanted to have something that represented a part of Christmas, be it something traditional to the holiday season around the world (ex. candy cane, holly, Christmas tree etc) or something specific to the Biblical Christmas story (ex. Mary, Angel, Star etc). We decided to make ornaments out of clay to put into each box!

It's been quite the task, but so much fun! :) We've enjoyed making the ornaments together but definitely hope they will last several years! :) Joey, has also written up little explanations about the symbol along with a bible verse to go along with each ornament.

Here's to keeping the Torgerson tradition alive! :)

A new bike!

Ellie began reaping the benefits of her third birthday about a month in advance with a trip to "The Target mall" with her Baca and Lola. The trip resulted in a new bike complete with training wheels!

It took her a while (about a day) to get used to pedaling and steering, but once she got it, she was unstoppable (with the exception of going uphill)!

At first, we had to put rubber bands on her feet to keep them on the pedals!

Siri had a great time outside with her Baca and Lola too!

A happy (almost) three-year old!!

Oct. 25th: A day in history!

I suppose the biggest reason to have a blog, for me anyway, is to mark monumental events in the lives of my children and to share the joy we experience with you all! And here I've forgotten to mention that Siri can walk!! I suppose I'm only a little behind but really this should have been posted a while ago!

On Oct. 25th Siri ventured out and took her first steps alone! She walked a lot before this as long as we were holding her hand (yes, just one hand is all she needed)! But she finally realized she could do it on her own, which was very exciting to us all! She is still slow in the process of making walking her new form of transportation as she still prefers crawling, but today I caught her walking from one place to the other without any of my encouragement! She stands extremely steady on her feet, but can still only successfully walk maybe five feet by herself. But she's on her way!

Enjoy the video! :)

Neighborhood friends

Our latest source of entertainment in the afternoons while waiting for Joe to come home is playing right outside our front door with the kids that live next door and just across the way! This is somewhat of a new thing, though they would all occasionally play together during the summer. But now that the weather's getting cold, they've finally all decided to be friends! It's been nice for Ellie to have some kids to play with right out her front door. So here are some pics of the kids (mostly Ellie) playing right outside.

Ellie and Reef (notice Reef's glasses!):

Reef and her parents moved to America recently to learn English so our interaction with them consists of very little (though increasingly more!) words.

Here Ellie is riding Reef's bike, a regular occurrence as Ellie does not have one!

The kids in this picture live right next door. The girl is 5 whom Ellie gets along with and plays with the most and the boy is just 3 months younger than Ellie. They also have an older sister,7, who they play with too when she gets home from school:

Another regular form of entertainment in our household is smoothies (oh and phones)!

Disney Part 3 (Day 5 and 6)

We decided on Tuesday to go to Hollywood studios as there were many characters to see including Ariel!

Our first stop was "The Voyage of the Little Mermaid." Here we are waiting to get into the show:

We ate lunch that day at the Sci-Fi Theater! :)

Then Ellie played in the "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" play area with Lola and Siri while Tod and I did the "Rock 'N Roll Roller Coaster" and "Tower of Terror"

Then of course we did the backlot tour! :) (Ellie stayed on Tod's shoulders most of the Disney trip-Thanks, Tod!)

Here we are in line making our way through props to get to the bus:

And although there were huge explosions of fire and rushes of water, Ellie and Siri loved the tour and did not show one sign of fear the entire time, much to my surprise! It was scary!!

As we were on our way out of the park (it was getting late and we were ALL tired), we saw a small line of kids forming who were waiting to get their pictures taken with characters from Monsters Inc. We couldn't resist:

And then we decided that was it! It was a long enough day and the kids were tired! Until we saw.....BUZZ AND WOODY!

Even Ellie perked up to see these guys! :)

And now we're really leaving...

The next day we were off to Animal Kingdom! From what I remember, this park was new the last time I was at Disney so we didn't spend a lot of time there and I wasn't too interested in going back there again this time. But it was actually a lot of fun and there were plenty of kid activities! Ellie and Siri love animals (as I'm sure most kids their age do) so this was all very exciting to them!

Here's Ellie waiting for the tram:

I love all the green!!

We are bugs at the bug show! :)

We found a petting zoo!

I love this one of Ellie playing "Mancala"

Poor Siri is thirsty!

The last thing we did at the Animal Kingdom was the Kilimanjaro tour:

Then it was off to Epcot again to actually go on the Nemo ride; which was awesome, by the way!

The aquarium you see after you get off the ride was quite impressive!

They also had a lot of little fish tanks with all different kinds of fish in them. :) We ate dinner in Italy that night (AMAZING food) and then stayed around to watch the fireworks show:

Goodbye Epcot!

Disney Part 2 (Day 3 and 4)

Since the girls had officially taken a nap on Sunday we decided when Tod and my mom arrived that evening that it would be appropriate to stay out....way. too. late. But actually you probably wont' be able to tell from the pictures that it was way past their bedtime as Ellie and Siri were too excited to care!

When Tod and my mom came, we decided to go to downtown Disney and eat dinner! :) We went to T-Rex! It was a cool place with big dinosaurs and climate changes while you eat!

We ate in the "Cave" which changed colors while you were sitting there!

And here Tod and Ellie are under a huge octopus! It was really cool! :)

Then we walked around downtown disney for a bit passing by Cinderella:

And Sleeping Beauty:

And Ellie got new PJ's! :)

On Monday we decided to go to Universal Studios to get away from Disney for a while. We LOVED it and actually decided to go back as we didn't get to everything we wanted to.

Our first stop was the E.T. ride which Ellie still talks about to this day which may be because we went on it a million times in a row!

Then we saw a Curious George play area! It had a Curious George story written out on huge "books" where each station had a different page open (you couldn't turn the page as it was a statue of sorts).

Then we SAW Curious George (how appropriate)! Ellie and Siri were very excited, needless to say!

Then we saw a 4D shrek show that was so fun! The fourth dimension being jerking seats and water spraying. Siri, although scared at first actually really like it! haha! And Ellie thought it was pretty funny when Donkey's sneeze sprayed on her!

Then finally exhaustion set in and Ellie took a nap in the stroller while Tod and I ran around Hogsmeade! That was VERY cool, though most of the Harry Potter stuff was big roller coasters. They did have a shop called "Olivanders" but the line was too long for me to care enough to wait in, besides I wasn't going to spend $30 on a wand!

And since Ellie had had another nap that day and the park closed at like 6, we decided we needed to head BACK to downtown Disney as Ellie would need a halloween costume for the Mickey's-not-so-scary Halloween Party. And no, we did not buy the wig! haha!

More later! :)