It's been awhile I know but it doesn't mean I haven't taken pictures. Here are a couple that I have taken. My brother hooked me up with Lightroom for my birthday and I am still learning how to use it. Three of the four are of my Eva and the fourth is of my Sister in law Shiara. She's actually been on here a lot lately, partly because she is family but also because she is so willing to drive from Salem to visit us. Hope you don't mind I posted your picture Shiara but I like how it turned out. You can also see Eva's pigtails. Matthew and I are still learning how to do them and how not to hurt her little head but the barrettes are a hit! You've seen the first picture before but I posted it because I played around with it and Eva gave the picture to her "icky," (her uncle Ricky) who she loves for her birthday. Let me know what you think and whether or not the colors bother your eyes (especially on the third picture). Be honest!

This Easter we spent it with Matthew's family in Sisters. Uncle Steve did it again making it difficult to find all of his eggs. I think it took us about two hours with the last egg being one of the most difficult to find. Eva had her little egg find herself. I carefully stuffed her eggs with one, two, or three jelly beans( weren't too many of the three combo) and the rest with teddy bear and animal crackers. However, when she realized that some of the eggs had jelly beans, she quickly went for those and not so much for the crackers. I know, I am trying to be healthy and it didn't work. The second picture, is a new trick she learned a while back. She likes to place things over her ears and listen to the sounds. Here she is doing it with the plastic eggs. I am happy to report that for Easter Eva received a hair stuff theme basket filled with barrettes, head bands and even a brush. Later I will show you pictures of our big girl Eva with her new hair-do.

So, I better start blogging all these pictures before I leave people disappointed. Last weekend Nathan and Shiara took us to a Blazer game. We had a good time there. I spent most of the time feeling Shiara's baby, people watching and talking to her while the boys talked about the game. Matthew was pretty excited to be able to see the Blazers this season and to see them win. He really wanted me to get a picture of Greg Oden but I didn't have the right lens to get a good picture of him. Oh, well. Maybe next year when he is actually playing. The good thing was I was able to leave Eva for once past her bedtime and spend some time with some pretty neat people.

As Matthew so kindly pointed out I am now closer to 30 than I am 20 and I am only 26! Crazy how that happens. I have come to realize that birthdays aren't what they once used to be with the little kiddo. But, I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Just wanted to show you the beautiful cake Matthew made me with yummy homeade frosting. Spent the day with the fam this year, and it was just right!

On Saturday, Nathan and Shiara came to good old Hillsboro and spent the day with us. We love that they are so willing to travel and spend money to see us. Well, this time around we decided to check out the Pittock Mansion with them in Portland. When Eva was little Matthew and I hiked up to the mansion but we never actually went inside. We probably should have then beacuse this time around it was hard to go in with a more hyper than usual child. She was quite the handful but we had fun. I think Eva's favorite place was outside. She had lots of place to run. It was fun to catch all these pictures with my camera. Since she's been born I haven't really had the chance to practice in good lighting how to capture a moving baby. It was FUN! These were some of my favorites. I know I didn't get any pictures of the mansion, silly me, but there are some of the view in our picasa family page if you want to check those out. Maybe Shiara will post her pics on her blog and if not you can see the cute couple on our picasa page.
On a side note, classes for this term were over today for me and I couldn't be more excited. I think I am done for now working on my 31 page research paper. For now anyways because by next term I will have two more sections to write about. They joys of grad school!

These were taken moments after the tantrum she had below. I had to post them seperately because my pictures are so big I couldn't put them all together. On the bottom one she is responding to my direction of "Toca tu nariz, Eva." She's are smart, little, bilingual baby!

I thought it would be fun to show you the progression of Eva's temper. She makes us laugh. Who does this remind you of, family?

Verenice