Lilja’s birthday and Halloween

Is she 9 already !! Where does the time go . Lilja has had kind of an up and down year this year. Lots of challenges and triumphs and traveling and stay home days . She is a very determined young lady who works hard on finding self confidence during her horseback riding . I can say lilja is probably the silliest girl I know , she has her own humor and a very good one !! She is very smart , loves to read , loves her friends and adores her family . I am so proud of this girlie girl.

I set up a Halloween party with two of my friends this year . So much fun to see her in her classroom with all her friends around her .

The pictures are not in order but this was one of her special birthday gifts. Her own pocket knife !! Here she is cutting through the paper to see how sharp it is !

Birthday dinner !! Such a big girl !

september already!!

So I am having a hard time doing my blog now that I have an Iphone.. it does not seem compatible anymore.. that's why the blogs have been half, no captions on some photos and just backwards. so I apologize for this. I am now on our computer again and see if I can do nay better. September was Lilja's first month f school ...3rd grade!! she loves her teacher, has two of her best friends in class and has a little crush on a cute boy.. This year is going to be exciting!!So I looked at my phone and checked which pictures I can share right now of this month.. ( they seem to take a while to show up on the blog photo spot) .. so here we go again : We love living in a little town and see the scheep coming down our little downtown Bayfield. We have done this every year and every year it is just so cute!! This month we also made sure we went camping with Aran .. we feel we just need soe unplugged time and it was gorgeous.. Aran would leave at 4 am to go hunt and Lilja and I would hang at the campsite.. Mind you , we did buy a new tent.. so we are glamping ( glamour camping ) 

glamping at vallecito .. behind aran's bum is supposed to be our lake that at this point is no more.. No rain, no snow.. we are scared for this next year!!

Our last photo until we unplugged for the weekend/ we ended up playing scabble, uno and had tickle fights.. heaven!!

we got a new apple orchard in our neighborhood. I have never seen so many apples in my life on one tree/ I was fun to try the different varieties and chose our favorites. .. Honeycrisp it is!!!

Oh yes violet has a popsicle from our icecream lady at 8 am in the morning!!!

here come the sheep!!

this is what happens when you give your daughter the phone.. selfies!!! with violet :)

Cousin Tae came to visit

My sister in law Margaret and Tae came to visit this month . What a treat !! You really see what a huge value lilja places on family . There was an instant connection like they had seen each other yesterday ( it had been a year ) I just love how much she loves Tae !!

Lilja wanted to take Tae to the glass place to make a  glass square .. this is her favorite place in the whole wide world .. I was not sure if Tae would like it , but he enjoyed using all the equipment and working with glass .. the squares turned out really cute !!

The ladies that own the place are great helpers and show them the right way to use certain equipment .. here she shows how to make a circle out of a glass piece 

Holland !!

This year we were lucky enough to all three go to Holland . Lilja and I. Went a week ahead of Aran and then he joined us for almost two weeks . My parents moved to an apartment which was not feasible for us all to stay with them so they got us a vacation home right at the beach . We had such an amazing time and made many more memories . Unfortunately this blog is not letting me show all the photos and is very temperamental so I will try to share as many photos and stories as possible .

Lilja is a complete water girl .. we had to go to the beach every day to keep that smile on her face all the time 

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We got to borrow this scooter from a friend of ours which was the biggest lifesaver . Walking to the beach was a breeze 

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Bear dance 2018

This year lilja did the bear dance again . Aran and Lilja practiced a month before just so lilja would know how to “ break”. This “ women empowerment “ dance has the women ask the men to dance and they can not refuse !! If it seems they dance well together in two rows .. they then get to dance together by them selves . In the video I see lilja dancing with the boy in the green shirt and Aran is in the white one . She was so excited that she got to break this year and danced all three days . So fun to see my daughter being empowered .

Color run

Finally something different than horseback riding .. This weekend our school had a fundraiser and it was a color run which meant that everybody goes running 1K or 5K and gets thrown color chalk at them .... this the white T-shirt’s :) Unfortunately I was not able to go with them as I am still hurt but Lilja  and Aran started out doing the 1K but in the confusion actually ended up doing the 5K even finished running all the way through .  This was our first color run fundraiser for our school and I know they’ll be many more . It was a very fun event and they had a blast! The pictures are backwards as this blogger is giving me hardship ., but you can at least see how much fun it was

Going going through the station 

Aran had not expected to run almost the whole time .. he will be sore :) lilja was tired !!