Need a vacation

If you are sick of the cold (it was 32 degrees in FLORIDA last week!), take a peek at Travis' travel website. His company is giving away one vacation every month. This month, it is to a resort in the Bahamas. Just go to his website: http://www.ichoose2travel.com/ and click on the Trip of a Lifetime sweepstakes in the lower right corner. The trip includes airfare and spending money. How cool would it be if a Bumgardner family friend won this month. Good luck!

Aisle 19

We love the convenience of shopping online. I think our neighbors think we are strange because we seem to get a delivery of some sort about once a week. We are excited to share a new way to shop online in which we get cash back for our purchases. It's called Aisle 19 and there are about 600 different stores where you can shop and get cash back on your purchases. You can watch this 3 minute video that explains the concept http://www.aisle19.com/Video.aspx?ReferralRepID=905916 and then Click on this link https://registration.escapeintl.com/default.aspx?ReferralSiteID=2&ReferralRepID=905916 to get your own account.

Happy shopping!

Little Laugher

Amaris is at the age where she is smiling for real...not just gas. She smiles best when her daddy makes faces at her. Check out this little compilation video:

It's a pinto

One of Sheinah's favorite movies is the "horsey movie" also known as Moondance Alexander. Sheinah often likes for us to search for pictures of horses on the computer (we do a google image search and let her choose which pictures she wants to look at). Tonight, she asked to see a pony like the one in Moondance Alexander. The only problem was that Melissa drew a blank on the kind of pony it was. Melissa said outloud that she would have to ask Travis if he remembered what kind of pony it was when Sheinah said "Mommy, it's a PINTO." Of course, she was right! Kids have an amazing memory...it helps that she has seen the movie probably twenty or thirty times...but she remembered the kind of pony and her mommy didn't!

Happy Birthday Daddy

Today Travis turned 38! Daddy requested a chocolate cake. After much debate, we decided to go with a recipe from one of Melissa's friends from work. This cake is not for the weak-hearted...literally...it's got enough cholesterol/fat in it to clog your arteries! Check out the recipe.

Sheinah likes to taste everything when we are cooking so when she asked to taste the sour cream, Melissa figured she would take one taste and be done. She was wrong! Sheinah licked the measuring cup clean.

This was the first time Sheinah had ever seen a bundt pan (we bought it special for daddy's cake). She is a big fan of sprinkles and didn't quite understand that what she thought was the top of the cake was actually the bottom. We let her put the sprinkles anyway.

Pee-er?

Tonight we went to dinner at a friends house. The "boys" that live there apparently are not trained to put the toilet seat down after the use the bathroom (this is likely because the guys are single so there is no wife to enforce this important rule). Anyway, when Melissa took Sheinah to go potty, the toilet seat was up and Sheinah asked why it was up. Melissa told her that God gave boys different equipment than girls. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Sheinah: Daddy and Samson are boys (Samson is our dog)

Melissa: yes, they are

Sheinah: Boys have pee-ers

Melissa: What?

Sheinah: Boys have pee-ers

Melissa: What did you say?

Sheinah: (sticking out her chin, speaking loudly, and trying to enunciate) Boys have PEE-ERS

Melissa: Yes, they do don't they. If boys have pee-ers, what do girls have?

Sheinah: Not pee-ers

Melissa: (Trying hard not to laugh)

Sheinah: Samson's pee-er is on his belly in the middle of his fur. (goes on to say something about the boys at preschool that Melissa couldn't understand)

So now we at least have a name to call boy parts! After telling this story to our friend, Adam, who is the parent of Sheinah's friend, Eva...Adam informed us that Eva just says "boy parts" and "girl parts." We kind of like the term pee-er. At least it accurately describes the function of the part! :)

No Boogers

Travis was reading Sheinah one of her older baby books called "Who Says Woof." On each page, the book asks which animal says a certain sound and then the child gets to say which animal makes that sound. Travis always makes the sounds rather than saying the words. For example, the book says that a horse says NEIGH and Travis actually makes a semi-authentic horsey sound. Then, we always ask Sheinah to make the animal sound. Tonight, when he got to the OINK of a pig, he made a snorting sound with his nose. When he asked Sheinah to do it, she told him "I can't make that sound because I don't have boogers in my nose...I just say oink." How cute is that.

Sheinah's Haircut

Sheinah's hair has gotten really long, but it is still all different lengths from when we grew her bangs out. This isn't a big deal except when Melissa braids her hair....when she gets to the end, lots of little pieces stick out. The other issue is that Sheinah often doesn't want to have her hair done so it ends up getting in her eyes. With the extreme cold weather in Duluth comes static electricity which also makes Sheinah's hair go all over the place. Thus, we decided it was time for her to get her hair cut such that the back was more even. We had meant to have her Opa cut her hair and then we forgot all about it...bummer!

Anyway, we took her to a little tiny shop by her dance studio thinking that it would be more fun for her to get personalized attention. She did enjoy herself immensely. The only problem is that the stylist did a HORRIBLE job!! Sheinah's hair basically looks like one of us cut it...it's all uneven and very choppy (check out the picture of her in the purple shirt).

We ended up taking her into another place the next day to get it fixed. The stylist there said that he thought the first stylist cut it so uneven because she was lazy...she pulled the hair down instead of cutting it while it was hanging free. He had to take off another inch or so to get it even so it is now a little shorter than we expected. In any case, the second stylist cut her hair with it parted so now it actually stays out of her face a little better.

Sheinah's Beauty Shop

With Melissa often occupied feeding Amaris, Travis has had the opportunity to play a little more with Sheinah. Those of you who know her know that she is a very "girly" girl. Today, she decided to do Daddy's hair. Travis had to help her with the blue clips, but she put all the rest in herself. She took her time too...they must have spent a good 30 minutes at the "salon."