Proposal

Last week, Pauline sent me these adorable pictures from her phone while I was at school. She was at Bi-Lo with Alina and Josiah, and they were being absolutely too cute! These two are such good friends. When I went to pick her up, Pauline told me what Josiah had said while they were at Bi-Lo..."I'm gonna marry her" and "She said yes." We did not realize that we would be dealing with these things so early, but we can't help and think that it was cute:)

Apparently, Alina had her arm around Josiah first and then he put his arm around her. We've known that she was a flirt for some time now, but this is pushing it a little. All kidding aside, it is so sweet that they enjoy each other so much. It is great to know that Alina is having fun playing with her friend while I am at work. Thank you Jo-Jo for being such a good friend to Alina!

Oh how I miss bluebonnets!

Texas bluebonnets are one of the best things to let us know spring is here. They line the highways and roads all over the great state of Texas (yes my SC friends, this is aimed to you, my TX friends are well aware of this). You can regularly see people stopped on the side of the road, plopping their children in the middle of this patch of wildflowers and snapping away pictures. My sister, Irina and I did just that today. It was a beautiful day and on the way to my mom's house we noticed a few patches of bluebonnets on a road nearby. We decided to get the girls ready and take them on a walk to get their pictures made. They loved it! Alina really like the flowers and Lily seemed to enjoy herself as well. We took tons of pictures, and I really limited myself by only posting a few. Click here to read the Legend of the Texas Bluebonnet and enjoy!

He is risen!

He is risen indeed! We had a wonderful day celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. The weather was beautiful, the church service was wonderful, and we enjoyed fellowship with some of our friends. Here are some pictures from our Easter day.

At the foot of the cross

Our beautiful blessing!

I had fun making personalized egg holders for our guests with Pauline's Cricut!

Ready for an egg hunt! Alina and Patrick had their first Easter egg hunt, the hunting wasn't too hard, but once they saw what to do they both had fun.

We love hosting Easter lunch so we invited as many as would could fit here's our guest list (from left to right around the table):
Jessica and Patrick, Matt, Tim, Valerie, Caleb, Josh, Kathryn, Robbie, Kim and Justin

We enjoyed a full Romanian style meal for Easter, here is what we had:
1st Course: Dyed eggs, Eggplant salad, cheese plate
2nd Course: Chicken noodle soup (Romanian style)
3rd Course: Sarmale (cabbage rolls)
4th Course: Roast, potatoes, green beans, tomato/cucumber salad
5th Course: Strawberry Layered Dessert and White Cake (courtesy of Josh and Kathryn)

We hope that you were able to reflect on the amazing gift God gave us through the death and resurrection of His son. We pray that we will seek to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever!

Things Alina loves to do

Here are some things Alina loves to do recently:

Play outside, especially blowing bubbles!

Bang on the front door until someone takes her outside:)

Watch daddy grill outside:)

Play with mommy's makeup

Try to put on make-up herself, she is such a girly-girl! Today after make-up, I was putting on earrings and she started pretending to put on earrings too. I gave her a hoop earring to play with and she thought that was great!

She is more and more fun each day, I can't wait until summer when we can play all day!

"aggy"

Alina loves dogs, especially her doggies, Major and Macy. Whenever we get home, or really anytime they come where she is and she hasn't seem them in a while she waves at them and says "aggy" (trust me, its doggy). She loves dogs! She gets excited when she sees pictures of dogs. At Pauline's she sees a picture of a dog at the changing table and gets excited. The other day, we were at the grocery store and she started pointing at the treats and saying "aggy" and smiling really big. She has some puzzle pieces that you match the color/texture to the thing that has that color/texture. One of them is a dalamatian. She brings the box to me to open it and then looks through the cards until she gets the "aggy" and then carries it around. In these pictures you can see she carried it to the TV and played with it there. It is so cute to see how much she loves dogs!

Tea Party

For Christmas Gigi (Justin's mom) gave Alina a cute little teapot set that sings and makes noises. I love to sit on the floor and have little tea parties with my sweet little girl. She likes to pretend we are both drinking tea and she even will use the teapot to pour me more tea. The other day when she picked up her teacup she had her little pinky sticking up as she was drinking her tea, what a proper young lady I have! It was too quick to take a picture, but here are some pics of us having tea and cakes. Alina has also figured out what a circle is. She will pick up the circle cake and put it in the correct shape. She also likes to put the circle shapes in her other toys that teach shapes (toolbox and hippo). Sometimes she takes the other shapes and tries to put them through the circle because she knows that one works. We'll see what shape she gets next:)

I can't wait to have tea parties with real tea and cakes! Having a little girl is so much fun, I get to play all those fun games all over again!

Babysitting and Headbanging

Last night we did a babysitting switch with the Rogers. We watched their kids so they could go out and next Saturday, they'll watch Alina and we'll go out. Its fun to hang out with these kids, they are so good and so much fun. Alina loves playing with them! Here are Riley and Alina dancing. Check out the headbanging part at the bottom:)

Watching Yo Gabba Gabba

Time to make funny faces

Jo-Jo's funny face

Alina loves Joel, that's his funny face:)

Here you can see our future rock star! She loves dancing to music, and she just got down last night. There are so many silly songs on Yo Gabba Gabba to dance to and Alina loves all of them, I guess last night's songs were meant for headbanging!

Daddy's Trip

Last week Justin went to DC to do some research for his dissertation. He has often been gone for several days in a row, and I usually manage just fine. For some reason this week was a little rougher, maybe because I was super busy each night, but in any case, we survived. Needless to say, I was so happy when Justin got back, but maybe not as excited as Alina. She loves her daddy very much and you could really tell that she missed him. When he came home, she went to him and if tried to get her back she just shook her head no, basically I've seen you for the past five days and I'm bored with you, I want to play with Daddy! This made Justin very happy, and me of course, it is such a joy to see the two people I love most love each other so much. Justin brought us back matching t-shirts and a little soft soccer ball for Alina to play with. She loves it. Here's some pictures and a short video of her playing with the soccer ball. (The video may or may not work everytime, I'm not tech guru, sorry:)

She likes to throw the ball on her Tigger chair, cause he giggles and talks when she throws the ball at him:)

Ski Trip

This past weekend Justin and I went with some of our friends from church on a ski trip to Winterplace, West Virginia. We had such a great time! The snow conditions were perfect. On Friday, the lift lines were basically empty and even Saturday wasn't too crowded. We had a lot of fun and hope to do this again soon. My mom came in and stayed with Alina so we could go and have fun. Thanks Nina, we know you two also had a great time!

Our group:)

The Waters and the Clarks on the lift

Me going down a black, there were only three or four, but still pretty tough

Jessica and I, aren't we cute?

Jason and Leslie

Justin, Matt and Jessica taking a break

My cute snowboarding man:)

Daddy's Little Helper

So Alina loves to follow us around everywhere we go! She loves to know what we are doing and wants to be right in the middle of it all. Last weekend, Justin was installing all the child lock/safety stuff in the house and Alina wanted to be right there next to him helping. She is such a big girl!

Don't worry, Justin didn't actually let her handle the drill!