Clapping

Alli has recently started clapping more and more when we ask her to. Here is a short video of her clapping. I can only get her to do it once but it's still cute.

ADORABLE!

I just made these earrings for my etsy shop. They are made out of buttons!! You know you want a pair!

Newest nephew

I have always been one of those people that gets very emotionally attached to family. So it eats me up when I can't see some of them as often as I would like. This week is a prime example of that. Brittany and Jay (Ben's youngest sister) went into early labor with their first child Michael. He was born about 2.5 weeks early. Everything went fairly smooth but he was having some breathing difficulty and they were keeping a close eye on him. About 24-36hours old, they realize Michael has had a collapsed lung and had to be air lifted to the closest NICU. They are currently in Alaska and the closest NICU was a good distance. So little Michael and his dear parents have been in our thoughts and prayers as well as many others. He is doing much better and looks to be getting out of the NICU by Thursday. With all the crazy events, pictures have been few and far between. Marilyn sent us a couple the other day and Jay sent these today. I must say, Michael is a little stud!
These pictures make me want to fly out to Alaska and hold this little angel in my arms. After having Alli, and after seeing all these adorable little babies born since Alli, I can see now why people want to jump back into having another one. **Disclaimer** No this does NOT mean we will be trying again soon. I can just understand that motherly tug on your heart to fill your home with the precious gifts from God. My life has never been as blessed as it has to have had Alli. If I could provide, protect and have the energy to raise a whole house full, then I would want just that, but unfortunately this is not the case. I am so thankful to have what I do have. Anyway, I just wanted to share these sweet pictures with you all. We are very happy for Britt and Jay and hope they are able to return home soon with their bundle of joy!

9 Month Check up

Alli had her 9 month check up today. She weighs in at 17 lbs 6oz and she is 25 3/4 inches. At 6 months Alli was 15lbs and 25 1/4 in....so yes you read that right...in 3 months time she only grew 1/2 inch in length!! Doc says this can happen at this age. He said their height can do a stair step pattern. So he is expecting her to gain some length by 1 year. He said she looks great. We talked a lot about the fact that she has no desire to crawl/walk/roll..haha My baby is just lazy. She wants to move...she just doesn't want to put in the work to move herself. So Doc says to force her into tummy time and to just keep working with her. If she doesn't show signs of more mobility by her next visit then we may explore physical therapy options for her. So...Alli needs to get on the move. He doesn't mean crawl necessarily, but he would like to see her being able to move from belly to sitting up position and from sitting up to belly. We'll see what happens.

What's one more thing?

Well we had some excitement last night. I was up late making bows while Ben played XBOX with some buddies from work. We finally went to bed fairly late but Ben decided he wanted to get a drink real fast and get something from his truck. While getting a drink, he happened to notice someone walking by the house in our side yard. Ben walked around to the front door and someone was shaking our doorknob trying to get in. Ben ran upstairs and grabbed the shotgun and told me to call the cops. Needless to say he ran downstairs and scared the holy you know what our of whoever was trying to break in at 1230. The cops came and searched our neighborhood but the guy took off behind our houses where there is a fairly large forest area he could hide in. Lovely! Hopefully it was just some random occurrence and won't happen again. I'm just thankful Ben was home! Lucky for me, I have a cop as a neighbor and he gave me his personal cell to call any time!!! Love good neighbors.

Today we planned on making a nice lazy rainy day. Unfortunately, while trying to take pictures of my new bows for my etsy shop, my camera decided after 4.5 yrs that it didn't want to take any more pictures. So....what now....I need a new camera to take pictures of my bows and my darling little girl! So I spent most of the day researching. I would've loved to have gotten the camera Shannon and Ashlie both have because they just rave about it, but I really didn't want to spend that much money if I could help it. So I found the next best thing, and so far I love it. Here are a few pictures I got while playing with it.

Miss Alli reaching out for the new camera while I was trying to grab a cute shot of her! Oh yeah did I tell you guys she has 4-5 teeth coming in on top???!!!

Now here are some pictures of the storm rolling in tonight. Not bad for night shots. I've never had a camera that could take night pictures. I mean seriously!

Oh the moon...love the moon

yay....I can see moon craters! Love it! It's not a 20x zoom but 15x isn't too bad! :)

Here's to praying for a much quieter night!

Planting makes me happy

After realizing that our weeping cherry tree was dead, Ben and I have been on the lookout for something to replace it. We've been looking at all the local plant shops and finally found a deal at Lowes. We found a decent size Japanese Maple, white Azaleas, and Impatiens. The Impatiens will bush out about a foot each, the Azaleas about 3-4 ft each. I can't wait to see them get big!
I love our little Japanese Maple.
Pretty pretty

Our crazy ride

This has been a crazy start to the week! Here's what's going on in our life right now:

• Alli has figured out how to clap. It's so stinkin adorable! If I could catch her on camera I would. I haven't done it yet.
• We planted a little garden at mom's. We planted some tomatoes, onions, and peppers.
  
• Ben's email got hacked into yesterday. We apologize if any of you got crazy emails sent from his old email address. This is going to be an ongoing headache for him as he tries to retrieve his contact list and any important information he had saved in his email.
• We have been in limbo for months....MONTHS about whether or not the city would promote the fire fighters who applied for driver. We finally found out that it had been approved but didn't know who was being promoted. We continued to pray that if it was right that Ben would get this promotion. Well today we found out that Ben was once again denied the promotion. We know there is a higher purpose. We may not see it right now but God has never steered us wrong. The Lord has always blessed us beyond what we deserve. So we know there is something else Ben needs to be doing right now. He is going to continue to pursue his associates and then his bachelors (which the city is paying for). So...for now...its all good. We will see what other doors the Lord opens for us.
  
• I was recently informed that the state of TN is implementing new licensing rules for those of us who work in Sleep. It is going to be an extreme headache but I have to have my license in place before I can go back to work. I have to renew my CPR certification, pay for a TN background check, pay to have the BRPT send my test scores to the state, possibly have to pay Vol. State to send an official transcript to the state, get letters of recommendation from doctors, get the application notarized, and then finally pay for my license. This new licensure also requires a change in my continuing education credits. The national registry (brpt) requires a minimum of 5 a year as long as I have 50 over 5 years, but the state is going to require a minimum of 10 a year. So this means I have to make sure I get 10 CECs a year....which also cost $$. This is on top of all the CECs that Ben has to stay on top of for his paramedic license. Ugh...thankfully I've found some online webinars that I can take but I can only use 30 towards my 50, so I have to come up with 20 some other way. Anyway, its a lot of work to keep a license.
• Finally some good news, Ben's little sister, Brittany is currently giving birth or Michael Jay Mangum. I can't wait to meet me newest little nephew. Unfortunately, they are living in Alaska right now so it will be a while before I will get to meet him... ;( .
  

Anyway, that's the update on us. Alli is getting so big. This monday will be her 9 month check up. I can't wait to see how big she is. She has become quite the talker...she loves to scream yayayaya. haha

Etsy

My first items are up in my etsy store! Check it out.

9 months

Oh my goodness All is 9 months old today....aggh

Logo

Check out the logo Shannon helped me with.

Little Bitz Of Love

Ok...so it's decided...I'm doing it. I'm going to open an Etsy.com store to sale my clippies, bows, bow holders and any other crafts I feel so inspired to make and sale. Shannon is helping me out with a logo and the name we came up with is Little Bitz of Love. I will create another blog to show them off in addition to etsy but right now I'm going to make a bunch up so that I can get my site going. We'll see how it goes.

Aggh

So not only did we find out today that the tree is dead...but this afternoon our tv died. I JUST WATCHED TV WITH ALLI THIS MORNING....agghh anyway. So onward and upward.

Some good news though...I reposted our desk on craigslist and we FINALLY have a buyer. Then we also posted our entertainment unit on craigslist because the tv will be getting is flat screen. So we got a tv stand that it bolts to since our old unit won't work. Hope to make out even on the entertainment unit and the stand we just bought...

Unexpected job offer....

Yesterday I had an unexpected job offer. Paul (former boss at Baptist) texted me and told me that in September they would be opening a lab in Murfreesboro. For two years, Paul had been teasing me with this possibility and said he would put me on days. That was before we had Alli...of course I wanted that then. So when I put in my letter of resignation in December, he made sure to ask me if I was still interested in something on days if Murfreesboro ever opened up. I told him, make me an offer and we'll see. Well...he did. They want me to work PRN days in Murfreesboro running the MSLTs. MSLTs are day studies that follow overnight studies. They are used to further diagnose a sleep problem if the overnight PSG shows no sleep problem. That is why this job would be considered PRN. Even though they would schedule me to come in to work, if the overnight PSG showed the patient has sleep apnea, for example, then they have already diagnosed the sleep problem and the MSLT would not be needed. In that instance, I would be called off and would not go into work. Paul said he wants to run MSLTs one day a week, two at the most. I'm assuming my hours would range from 7am to 5pm roughly. While I love being a stay at home mother...and would change nothing about it...I have been thinking about ways that I could help Ben bring in some extra money to get us out of some debt. If we didn't have the debt...I wouldn't even consider the job. So Ben and I have talked about it and I think we're going to do it. I would be home before Alli goes to bed for the night and she would be staying with her Grammy Smith. Marilyn has graciously offered to watch her for us and I know it will be special bonding time for them! If ever this job begins to interfere with my role as mom, or if I feel that it isn't in Alli's best interest...then I will quit. But for now, I will use it in the effort to put us in a better position financially. Heavenly Father has always taken care of us and for that I am grateful. Ben has been so blessed to be given the amount of work to compensate for my not working. Hopefully now I can get us out of debt quicker and he can soon slack off how much he has to work. So we'll see how it goes.

Family mourning...

Our family is in mourning today....our weeping cherry tree is dead!!! oh so sad! We loved that tree....took good care of that tree...and now it is dead. Ben thinks it got root rot...or something. I don't know. Sad day. very sad.

Clip Holder

Today I made a clip holder for all of Alli's new ribbon clippies...I took a wooden plaque I found at Michaels and painted it white.Then I added her monogram lettering

I still have the paint from when I made Alli's lamp shade. It worked perfectly!

Next came the ribbon....and whala, it's done.

Clippie and Ribbon overload

I think it might be safe to say that I've been very preoccupied (obsessed) with making bows for Alli this week. I talked to Shannon about it some and once she saw how easy it was, she became very obsessed with researching them as well. She and I have downloaded so many tutorials to see what kind of fun things we can make. Below are some that I have made with a very simple bow on top of the clip. These are cute but not my favorites.These are my absolute favorites. These are bug bows!! I've made a dragonfly, butterfly, bee and lady bug. So stinking cute!
Another angle of them to see their cuteness.
Here are some more small clippies with hand tied bows. Then below them is a basic covered clip with a flower applique and a rinestone center. Cute cute.
This is my next project. Before I get much further making bows and clips for Alli, I'm going to have to make her something for them to be kept on. I could buy one of these but this will also be super easy to make. All I need is to find some kind of decorative wood piece. I will paint it white. Stencil Alli's monogram ASL and then use the left over paint I have from making her lamp shade and polka dot the wood. Then add ribbon hanging down and WHALA! So here is the next thing I'm debating. I like making them and they are super easy....so I've debated whether or not I should try making them to sale on etsy.com. The only thing is that there are probably 100s of other people doing the same thing, so I don't know if it is worth it...Also there is another girl in a neighboring ward who makes adorable big bows like you can see above in the bow holder and I don't want to compete with her locally. She does make some clippies but I think she primarily makes the bigger bows. Anyway, not sure if it's worth it. Right now its more or less to handmake things for Alli. What do you guys think?