The Smiths

Shock n Awe

2012-02-11T18:38:00.000-08:00

Alli is quickly creeping up on 3 years old. We've talked about potty training a lot with her. She has never shown any interest. Every time we mention it or ask if she wants to try to go, she just shakes her head and says no. Alli has always been on her own schedule and so we've never pushed her. As much as I would love to have her out of diapers before Ethan gets here...I KNEW that would never happen.

So tonight we had a small shock and awe moment. I was getting Alli ready for bed and while changing her diaper I realize she is pushing like she might try to poop. So I asked her if she needed to go. She just kept saying poopy and would answer my question. So I just got her diaper on and went back to our bedtime routine. After getting her teeth brushed we normally let her do something fun for a few minutes. I asked her if she wanted to do that and she says to me "Go Poopy". I jokingly said to her, "Yeah I wish" and asked her where she wanted to go poopy. So lo and behold she runs into the bathroom and points to the toilet. So as much as I was disbelieving that she would even stay on the seat for a couple seconds, I went ahead with it. To my surprise again, after getting her on the seat she actually starts trying to push. She had never even tried before. She would usually just sit there so I was stoked that she actually tried. Then, to my surprise I actually hear her passing gas. Now...to Alli, this is also going poopy. So she was excited. She thought she was going poopy in the toilet. I kept encouraging her and telling her to keep trying. She stayed on a lot longer than I thought she would and really gave it a good effort. I was so excited that she tried and got so close that we had to call daddy to share the good news. So we get daddy on the phone and she told daddy she went poopy. Simple pleasures in life and we are so proud of her for finally trying with real effort! Way to go Alli!

Time for change

2012-02-02T23:27:00.000-08:00

Remember this nice beautiful red color we have in our kitchen???....
Yeah...well, time for that color to go. We loved the red, but in our skinny galley kitchen that red color just makes you feel boxed in. It always seems so dark downstairs. We have so many windows on the backside of the house that it quickly heats up during the afternoon, so we normally leave the blinds closed. This causes our downstairs to stay dark, but I've gotten used to it and don't mind. We recently decided though that we are ready to do some updates in our house and the kitchen is due for some TLC. We wanted to upgrade our sink and put in a back splash. We've debated colors for back splash and appliances and finally settled on keeping it bright and light. So we decided to carry the cream color in that we used in the rest of the downstairs. We also took down the curtains and added some faux wood blinds. We love how it turned out. Now even when we come downstairs in the morning and all the blinds and curtains are closed, it still has a lot of light and feels so inviting!
Next up....tile back splash!

Curtains

2012-01-30T20:30:00.001-08:00

I'm so excited with how these projects are turning out. I've taken on so many projects in this room that are out of my comfort zone. The curtains were absolutely one of these projects. I just love how they turned out!
Ben suggested doing curtains for each shelf instead of one big curtain like I had initially envisioned. I think he was right!

Halfway there...

2012-01-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

So I have finished some of the projects for Ethan's room. Below is the newly recovered lamp shade. I found an awesome tutorial AFTER THE FACT to do a slip cover instead of the gluing I did...OH WELL! Anyway, because it's glued...and because it was my first time trying this, there is an unfinished, uneven edge on the inside of the lamp that obviously shows once the light is on. So as a result I need/want to put some kind of border on to help hide that when the light is on.
This was where I got the original idea for recovering this lamp. I loved the border but wasn't planning on doing it for Ethan's lamp. Now I'm reconsidering and thinking of using a hemmed piece of one of the other matching fabrics to create the border. What do you guys think? It has to be gathered like this in order to lay flat around the circle...is it to feminine or do you think being another cotton fabric will help masculine it up in comparison to the satin ribbon she used in the tutorial? I have 1 vote FEM 1 vote MASCULINE as it stands now...I need ideas!
I also finished the bed skirt last night. I'm really pleased with how it turned out considering all this was new to me. I added a single pleat in the center of the front panel. It's hard to tell detail here as it sits behind the crib railing but hey...still looks decent!
Chair pillow is complete as well. This took way more stuffing than I thought it would but I'm happy with it...just don't look too close. One corner stretches out further than the others :)

Ethan's Room/Projects

2012-01-21T20:30:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to blog about this for a while but my pictures wouldn't load. So now that I finally have everything loaded...here we go.

I really didn't "plan" what I wanted for Ethan's room for the longest time. I really had no desire to do anything special. I realize that he won't know or remember the things we do in his room but I realized that if I was going to be in and out of this room all the time, that I wanted to walk into his room and be able to enjoy the space that we created. Before I get to the room though, here is a sneak at the canopy I made for his carrier to help keep the nosy shoppers out of his face :)
I wanted to have some elements of fire department themes in this room but I didn't want it to dominate in a cheesy way. So the colors for his room are red, blue and grey ( I just love grey and wanted it in somehow)...the wall will be a neutral cream to match the wall in the hallway. I wanted something on the wall but again, nothing cheesy. So I got letters to spell Ethan's name and modge podged scrapbook papers on top to help tie all the colors in together.
As planning progressed, I came up with a lot of DIY projects. We were given so many wonderful blankets for Alli that I decided not to buy a bedding set and let the blankets given to us be his bedding set. So a wonderful friend of the family will be making Ethan's quilt out of these fabrics we found.I'm going to incorporate some other projects in the room out of the same prints to help tie it all together.
close ups just so you can see them better

The fire print and the grey are going to be turned into a square pillow for my rocking recliner

I'm going to take this print and make a curtain hanging from a tension rod for this bookcase. We have more books that space in our house and this bookcase has no other room that it can go into. So I thought I would hide some of it's mess by making nice curtains for it. I might tie in the blue fabric with this print as well by adding a 1-2in trim on the bottom of the curtains.
Blue print will be used to recover this lamp shade...
I will also be using this blue print to make my own crib skirt since I don't have a traditional bedding set that came with one. I don't want the springs and stuff showing and the skirt is simple enough to make so...soon...I hope to get started on all these projects this weekend and hope to have some finished pictures to show soon. I can't wait to see it all come together. We've GOT to get these walls painted...maybe saturday...maybe...

A kiss, A hug, Night Night

2012-01-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

I just had to share a sweet Alli moment that happened today. Alli loves to run outside lately. One of her favorite things is to run circles around my car in the driveway. I took her outside to be able to run and Ben was inside stuck on a phone call. So Alli was running back and forth between the both of us. The first time she decided to run back into the house, she comes up to me and says "A kiss" and puckers up to me for a kiss. So I kiss her and put her back down. Then she says, "a hug", and we hug. Then she looks at me and says, "night night" and runs off into the house to go find daddy. It made me laugh but it was so sweet. She's a funny little girl. She came back and did this one more time. As a parent you just love little moments like this. I had to write it in here so I wouldn't forget it!

Christmas 2011

2011-12-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

December flew by...didn't it? Christmas has come and gone and I completely forgot to post the one thing that has made me the happiest this holiday season. I found out the week of Christmas that I was NOT gestationally diabetic with this pregnancy. I'm thankful that I won't have to have all the extra tests and ultrasounds. This saves us money and headache with scheduling and being stuck at the doctor for hours on end. I'm also super stoked I don't have to drink the larger fluid for the 3 hour test they would have me do if my results had been positive for diabetes! Hallelujah!

We celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve with Ben's parents. Then Sunday we celebrated again with our Ben's family away from home at the fire hall. The crew that he works with right now has been my favorite by far. They embody the term family. These guys look out for one another, serve one another and all try to be understanding of one another's idiosyncrasies. The shift is being moved around AGAIN come the first of the year and I'm going to truly miss Ben working with this crew. It was nice to have one last big hoorrah with the crew before it changes in January. We even found out later that day that of all the crews working on Christmas day, Ben's station was the only crew that organized a dinner and family get together. It just really shows the kind of crew these guys are. Anyway...then we went to visit and celebrate with my family. It was a wonderful weekend and Alli loved EVERYTHING everyone got for her. She got so much in fact that she can't possibly play with it all. I need to organize her room and donate some older items to make room for her new toys.

Hope the new year is bright for all!

Santa's Little Helper

2011-12-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

I hope Shannon doesn't mind me posting this but I had so much fun helping her make this that I wanted to share with my extended family. Shannon wanted to make this adorable playhouse for her girls for Christmas and I helped her sew it. I hate the idea of cutting all this out but maybe one of these will be in the future for our kids...It will have to wait though. I have too many things I need to sew first before the baby gets here and I want some time to think of things to go on the play house that would be interesting for both a girl and a boy.

Doorway with mailbox that opens and closes.

Apple tree where the girls can pick the apples and put them in the basket.

Dog house with a door to crawl through...I think the dog is adorable.

And finally, the window with curtains and flowers

Once I finished it, Ben thought it looked really neat and said Alli would love one. So maybe I'll get creative in a few months after Ethan (yes we decided on the name Ethan...Ethan Gabriel Smith) is born and figure out how I want to do one of these. Hope everyone is looking forward to the upcoming holidays. I've made a few of the kids gifts, so I hope that they like them. Merry Christmas!

"Pupper" love

2011-11-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Alli loves "Pupper". Pepper is very tolerant to Alli rolling all over her and today was no different.

Dining Room Changes

2011-11-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

Our dining room/breakfast nook has always been a forgotten area in the house. The official dining room (according to the builder) is technically the front room when you walk in from the front door. We don't like that as a dining room so we've always used the breakfast nook. We've always wanted to do something to set it apart as the "dining room" but don't have a traditional room to do a lot of the nice things you can do in other house. So we thought it would be a nice touch to do a faux board and batten like what we did in our 1/2 bath. Eventually we will do crown molding in the whole downstairs but for now we thought this was a cheap and quick fix that would help set the eating area apart.

BEFORE

FRAMING the board and batten look

AFTER
We really like how it turned out. I don't have it pictured here but we also did this to the mini sections of drywall to each side of the pantry door. So now this has totally sectioned off our "dining area".

Next on our to do list is the Kitchen Remodel:
Tile back splash
New sink
New Faucet
Install garbage disposal (house came pre-wired for disposal but didn't have one installed)
Replace awful overhead light
One day down the road switch out our white appliances for black/stainless look to match the dishwasher we got on a super deal last spring.

Focusing on being thankful

2011-11-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

I'll start this with a few pictures from our fun today. Ben found this play tent at Burlington while I was shopping for maternity clothes today. We had a feeling Alli would love it and we were right.

The blanket we put in for padding turned into Alli's blanket for "night night".

The final two smiles sum up the focus of this post. We've had quite a few things going on this week that could cause distractions, be taxing or bring us down but we've made a point to focus on the positive and be thankful. One of the most taxing things on me lately is that Alli has officially become the 2 year old that I hear most mothers complaining about. Alli's always been a good sleeper...she's 99% of the time well behaved and I'm so thankful for that. I posted back on Monday about Alli realizing she can now get out of her bed and open her door. This new found freedom has switched some thought process in her brain in regards to her sleep and the routine we "used" to have. This is where I have grown frustrated.

For the last 4-5 nights we've done our normal routine which usually put Alli in the mindset of bedtime and even though she might not want to go to bed, she was ok with it. Now this routine means nothing. As soon as Alli knows we're getting her ready for bed, the waterworks begin. Alli becomes extremely emotional and wants nothing to do with it. As soon as we say goodnight and shut the door, Alli gets out of bed and tries to come downstairs. We played this game the first night but the second night we had to lock her in her room to get her to realize bedtime is bedtime. She gets mad for about 5 minutes but then settles in and goes to bed. I don't like locking her in. So that second night I went back and unlocked her door after she went to sleep. Well this only resulted in Alli coming into my room in the middle of the night thinking it was time to get up. I had to snuggle with her for a minute and then get her back to bed. My sleep is broken enough as it is pregnant that I can't handle it. So we've had to leave it locked all night. Between the battle at bedtime and Alli's broken sleep, we've had an abnormally cranky toddler to deal with. Today was by far the worst. Alli whined all day long and I knew it was a result of no sleep so I couldn't be mad at her. It was so nice and refreshing to see her smile and laugh when she played in her tent. It made me smile and be thankful for such a wonderful little girl. She is a blessing and no matter how cranky she or I can get going through this stage, I'm trying to remember this and handle this stage with patience.

"ok, night night, bye bye"

2011-11-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Today was a day for a few firsts for Alli. Ever since being in her toddler bed, Alli has remained in bed until we come get her. This holds true even if she has been lying awake in bed for 30 minutes playing with her stuffed animals. Ben has been home the last three days and it has been wonderful. I think it played with Alli's mind though and she expected daddy to be home again today. I heard Alli wake up around 7:15 and got out of bed. I went to the bathroom to get my contacts. While in the bathroom, I hear a loud bang. The dogs didn't bark so I just chalked it up as a strange noise and went on. Shortly after I hear my bedroom door slam closed. Now this can happen if the door isn't shut all the way and the A/C or heat kicks on. But I knew that door was closed because I hadn't opened it yet. So as I'm thinking "who in the world is coming into my bedroom", in pops Alli's little head. I was shocked (yet relieved at the same time). So I told her good morning. She then asks me, "daddy?" I told her, "No baby, daddy is at work today. You are home with me today." She then says, "ok, night night, bye bye" and shuts the bathroom door. I couldn't help but laugh to myself. Then I called out to her and she opened the door back up. I asked her if she wanted to stay up. She then said no and tried to shut the door again. I followed her out and she ran down to her bedroom. When we got to her bedroom, she shut me out and went to lay on her bed. I turned on her monitor to watch her for a minute. She tucked herself back in bed and laid there for a few minutes. I guess she decided mommy was enough for today and got back out of bed asking to play. Ben and I both got a good laugh out of this this morning and we thought we would share. I told Ben that the days of Alli staying in bed were over. She did well going down for a nap so we'll see what she does when she wakes up.

Another first for Alli today was finding more independence. We spend a lot of time downstairs and therefore don't get to play much in her room. This morning I told Alli, instead of bringing some of her toys downstairs, why don't we go and get breakfast, then come back upstairs to play. She liked this idea and when we came back upstairs she immediately went for her toys. I turned her bedroom light on so she wouldn't be afraid to go in and out. I went to get a shower and to my shock, she pretty much left me alone the whole time and played in the her room or in my bedroom. I'm glad to see her achieving independence. It would be nice to be able to work on some crafts in my bedroom while Alli plays in her room.....yay!

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

Alli borrowed this fun red/white tutu from Shannon for Halloween this year. I tried wings on her in the store and she didn't like them on her back so we just let her go with the tutu and just have some fun. Here she is below with some new foam toys we got at the dollar bin at Target. She loves to rough house with these! Watch out puppies! (Seriously considered letting her go as "Alli warrior princess"
Alli really seemed to enjoy getting candy from all of our neighbors. We walked with a huge group of people from our street. It was a fun night!

Happy Halloween!

Boy vs. Girl

2011-10-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Well first I will start with the ultrasound pictures. There were only a couple good ones so here they are.

Face and hand....although hard to see when he was buried away from the ultrasound.

Face

And...the money shot.

I'm not sure how to express my feelings on us having a boy other than I was a little surprised. I'm not sure why. I've had an inkling that this baby was going to be a boy just because of some of the differences with this pregnancy. We are happy either way and it will be nice to have a boy and a girl. As I mentioned this pregnancy has had some differences. I think for my own personal record, I'll post the comparison.

Alli:

Sick 4-6 weeks (24/7 nausea)
Gained 17 lbs total
Normal appetite except when I was sick
No noticeable food cravings other than milk...couldn't get enough milk
Allergies weren't bad and didn't get bad sinus headaches

Baby Boy

Sick 1.5 weeks (wasn't 24/7 nausea but just an occasional feeling)
I'm 19 weeks and already gained 11 lbs
Hungry all the flipping time!!!
Craving meat a lot - especially burgers...
Allergies are HORRIBLE and have terrible sinus/migraine headaches that last 2-3 days. All I can take is tylenol and that just doesn't cut it.

The pregnancies also share some similarities:

Both babies were stubborn and buried so deep during the 19 week ultrasound that I have had to return for a second ultrasound for further review. Alli stayed low the entire pregnancy. Not sure if this one will too
Constant fatigue. They say you lose energy during 1st and 3rd trimester but the 2nd you should feel great...yeah...NOT SO MUCH! I think my Achilles heel is my allergy/sinus problem. I can't be on my normal allergy medicine while pregnant and what I can take just isn't strong enough. The end of summer and fall has killed me in regards to the dry dust and wind blowing around whatever is blooming.

Anyway, so there's the scoop. We are contemplating the name Gabrial. Normally this name is seen spelled Gabriel but in our family history the ancestors name was spelled with an A...so who knows. Anyway we haven't figured out a middle name that works with Gabrial yet. Also, I've determined the middle name cannot start with an A. We don't need our child having the initials "GAS". So there ya go. :)

Bedtime Fun

2011-10-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

We love it when daddy is home and a typical bedtime routine for us always includes some fun. The most recent addition to the routine appeared one night when Ben was checking out his sleeping bags in the closet. Ben has a wild idea which looks painful to me but Alli LOVES it. Enjoy!

One of my favorite things at night is sitting with Alli and reading through some of her books. Recently she started reading with me on one particular book "Moo Baa LaLaLa". Alli loves the books by this author and this one might be her favorite. The first time she read along with me just made me laugh so much. So I hope you guys enjoy it too.

Final note...we find out the gender on baby 2 tomorrow...stay tuned. :)

Come on fall!

2011-10-10T19:15:00.001-07:00

Our family is so ready for Fall!!! I've loved the days that I can dress in long sleeves. A week ago we were visiting the fire hall and Ben showed us their newest resident. A stray kitten had made its way to the fire hall and had been hanging around for 4 days. Alli became infatuated with this kitten. Ben saw the way Alli was playing with this kitten and immediately fear struck in...haha "oh no...I foresee her wanting a cat when she's older." He's enjoyed not having cats and a litter box around the house :) I love kittens though, so it was nice to have 30 minutes or so to play with a cute cuddly kitten. The funniest part of this story was that while the guys were gone on a call, some off duty fire fighters showed up to man the station. During this time the kitten climbed into one of the guy's truck. No one knew this had happened and he unknowingly took the kitten home with him! haha. He called the firehall and told them hey I got your cat. He asked if they wanted him to bring it back and they said....hah no its your cat now. :) Hopefully he called PAWS in Murfreesboro and found it a good home.

Here is a cute snapshot Ben was able to get of Alli playing in the backyard on one of the cooler nights we had a week or so ago.

Conference Weekend

2011-10-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

As I get older, I really look forward to General Conference. This weekend was no different. Friday we were running a bunch of errands around town and the check engine light came on in my car. Ben got an appointment at Mazda and they set to work on figuring out what was wrong with it. We have an extended warranty on the car and figured anything that was wrong would be covered minus our deductible. They determined that the actuator motor went out (now forgive me here as I'm not a mechanic and I may not remember all the terminology or details specifically to the T). Anyway, this thing controls a lot of stuff and absolutely had to be fixed but it is on the underside of the engine so there would be a lot of labor involved to get to it. They said we were lucky that it didn't run the timing belt when it went out. So they called the warranty company to make sure we got everything covered and the warranty company decided to be a pain. They didn't think we had enough routine maintenance records and work done on the vehicle. So they wanted Mazda to strip down the engine enough to get to what needs to be fixed and take a picture. If there was "sludge buildup" then they weren't going to cover the repairs under warranty. So we were potentially facing $2500 in repairs....if there was sludge... This unfortunately is where we were left hanging Friday afternoon. It wouldn't be until Monday that they could have the car stripped down and get back on the phone with the warranty company.

I prayed all weekend that the Lord would help us. I was in a fog all Friday evening stressing over the impending costs that could lay ahead of us. I NEEDED conference. I needed the uplifting words and spirit that only the Prophet and Apostles could bring. It was so refreshing to sit down Saturday and Sunday and be so inspired by their encouragement, their laughter, their faith and their love.

I was anxious today to hear about the car. We finally got tired of waiting around and called the dealership around 2 pm. They gave us an update on the car and said yeah they are replacing the timing belt now....Our jaws dropped...WHAT!?! We hadn't been told the timing belt was ruined. So Ben asked the obvious question in our minds. "So I'm assuming the warranty came through and we are approved for all these repairs since you are replacing the timing belt without having called us first?" The guy on the phone said..."oh yeah I spoke with your warranty group this morning and it was approved. Once we got everything taken apart we realized that the timing belt had been ruined and needed replacing."

So needless to say, after that phone conversation where we realized the $2500 in repairs quickly jumped much higher....I was saying many prayers of thanks! Hopefully I will have my car back on Wednesday and it will be good as new! Ugh...repairs! Some days I hate being an adult!

Day 2 and Slaying the Dragon

2011-09-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

Much to our surprise and amazement Alli slept the whole night in her new bed. At one point as we were getting ready for bed, we realized she had her legs hanging off the bed. This woke her up and it took her a good minute to adjust her body to where she wasn't falling off and then she went back to sleep. I was fully expecting her to cry out and need us to go in to her bedroom. She is so used to not being able to get out of bed due to being in a crib for 2 years and never climbing out, that she doesn't get out of bed even after waking up in the morning! Nap time went well too and she didn't cry very long at all before settling in and going to sleep. So far tonight she is doing even better and had quit crying before I'd made it half way down the stairs! We're so incredibly proud of her!

Tonight we went to visit daddy at work. One of his co-workers had been working on a mock wall with a window hole in it. Fire week is coming up and they do a huge open house for the community to bring awareness to fire prevention. Anyway, this mock wall has fake flames made out of wood and set up on hinges so that the kids can spray the fire and be just like the fire fighters. It is a really cute set up and he had just finished it while we were there. Being like big kids, they had to test it out. Alli go her chance to slay the dragon (a term sometimes used in fire fighting) too.

Night 1

2011-09-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

We ran out of time yesterday to move Alli's room around and did the switch this afternoon. Alli loves her bed which is helpful but this summer has been disastrous for her sleep schedule. We haven't had a consistent bed time for at least 2 months. So the last few weeks putting Alli to bed in the crib have involved a lot of crying and us having to walk out of the room to let her soothe herself. I knew that the new bed would add an extra level of emotion for her.

We continued out regular routine but as soon as we got close to getting her in bed where we sing songs she lost it and cried. We sang anyway and told her we loved her. We told her to go lay in her bed and we left the room. It was so hard to leave her unhappy but I can't rock her to sleep. Alli has never been a child who liked rocking. We watched her on the monitor and although she isn't happy, she went straight to her bed and hasn't moved. I'm sure it won't always be this way but we hope she will eventually find peace and comfort with the new situation and enjoy bedtime. I don't think it's easy for any toddler.

So here are some pictures of her new room layout.

Here is the other room/nursery. I'm so excited to be able to fit the rocker/recliner in with the baby room!! Once we know the gender, then we can paint and finish decorating. I still need to move all of Alli's things out of the changer table but I'm not immediately worried about that.

Transition Time

2011-09-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

As many of you already know, I've been debating for a long time which bed would be the best for our space and for Alli to transition to. After going through numerous ideas (transitioning Alli's crib to a day bed/bed, buying a twin bed or day bed/trundle) we finally settled on keeping Alli in her room but reusing the crib for the new baby. So we are going to move the crib and the changer table/dresser to the other room. Alli will keep her tall dresser and we will get her a new bed. We initially decided against a toddler bed because it uses the crib mattress and Alli would grow out of it quickly, but after looking at costs of beds and potentially not finding one to match her cherry dresser, we found a toddler bed at Walmart that was pretty and cherry. It was SUPER affordable and once we got it home, we realized the cherry matched her dresser perfectly! We are hoping this bed will work for Alli until the next baby is ready to use it and then we will upgrade Alli to a bigger bed.

Last night Alli helped her daddy build her bed. She hasn't understood what getting a new bed really meant but I think as the process went a long in building it, she realized what was happening.
Alli built with her blocks while daddy built the bed.

Headboard/footboard

Alli wanted to help put the screws in

The finished look

As soon as the mattress was on the bed, Alli grabbed her pacifier and blankets and hopped onto the bed.

We didn't let her sleep on it last night because it isn't in her room yet. We still have to move the crib out but it was so late by the time we finished the bed that we needed to get Alli in bed. We will try the new bed out on Saturday when Ben is off to help me move the crib out and get her room situated. I'm excited that Alli loves the bed. We hope this will help the transition be smoother.

Sisters in town

2011-09-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

Ben's sisters and brother in law Don were in town this week and we were able to go visit twice in Winchester while they were in. The weather was beautiful and we spent a lot of time outside. The kids all loved the bubbles. Alli was practically running the entire time we were there in Winchester. I love the wide open space of the farm. Every time we visit we realize how much we miss the peace and quiet serenity of the farm and country life.
Showing a little love for big ole Moroni!
My favorite new picture. This just captures her fun spirit and beauty.
Like I said, this girl practically ran the entire time. Grammy and Papa took all three little ones on a mile walk right before we came home Sunday night. They said Alli ran 3/4 of the way. She didn't seem tired at all once she made it back to us at the house. I want an OUNCE of that energy!
Special time with daddy...
On a side note having nothing to do with this post...I just bought an apple corer/slicer...It's my new favorite gadget! Alli doesn't like apple peels and therefore didn't want to eat apples. So I got this bad boy for a decent price and it makes life oh so simple. Now I don't spend 10 minutes peeling an apple and wasting parts....plus Alli loves it! This things makes it so quick and easy that I want to try making an apple pie or cobbler soon. I used it the other night for fried apples and it seriously saved me 30 minutes. That is so worth the $18!

Driving miss Diva

2011-09-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

Today we went for a quick trip into town and told Alli we would put the windows down since it was a beautiful day out. Ben noticed as we were pulling out that the sun was in her face. I recalled that her sunglasses were still in the truck, so I reached behind and gave them to her. Now normally her sunglasses only last a moment on her face and then she is pulling them up into her hair like I do once I walk inside and don't need them on my face any more. I've never seen her wear the glasses for any length of time. She realized today the benefit of the glasses keeping the sun out of her face. She thought it was funny that all three of us had sunglasses on and she kept them on all the way to Walmart....she then wore them into walmart for 5-10 minutes. haha. Here are some funny Diva-ish pictures.

Teaching Bear

2011-09-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight we were getting Alli ready for bed and going through our normal routine. We brush teeth, have some brief play time, read scriptures and then say prayers. When we told Alli it was time for prayers, she ran to get her bear. She then knelt on the floor with me and took bears arms and folded them. It was so cute. We couldn't get a picture quick enough before one of the dogs barked downstairs and scared her into Ben's lap. So we asked her again to show bear how to pray and snapped a quick photo. Too cute.

This is an older photo that I forgot about. We put Alli's hair up in pig tails to keep her cool in all this ridiculous heat!

Random

2011-09-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

I walked into the living room the other night to find this....I thought it was funny that she was walking around in my shoes and had actually placed them on the right feet.

Tonight I made Veal steak, Macaroni and one of the steamfresh lightly seasoned Asian Medley veggies bag. I knew Alli would eat the macaroni and possibly the veal steak. I get Alli's plate ready without the veggies and then she started shouting and pointing at the bag of veggies. So I pull out a carrot and give it to her. Now she hasn't eaten carrots since I fed her from baby food jars. I've tried steamed carrots and raw carrots. She's had no interest in any of it. Tonight she devoured them. She also ate some sugar snap peas and a few bites of broccoli. Alli has NEVER touched either of the last two foods. We steam broccoli all the time and she NEVER wants it. Tonight was a miracle! I'm so glad to see her starting to branch out in her interests. We've really made some headway lately by letting her see us eating veggies without offering them to her...and then she wants them because we are eating them and she doesn't have any on her plate. Last week the same thing happened when we grilled some veggies. Ben was eating some of the veggies and Alli showed interest. So he offered them to her and she ate nothing but grilled zucchini and grilled mushrooms for about 5 minutes. I'm hoping this phase lasts. Here are some pictures of her being goofy at dinner.
Alli eating veggies and veal steak and totally ignoring the Mac n' cheese...Total Win!

Chatty Alli

2011-09-02T21:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was getting Alli ready for bed and before we said good night, she decided that she wanted to call her daddy to say good night. So we called Ben and put him on speaker phone. Before he could even get hello out of his mouth Alli began chatting him up. It was at that moment I wished I had had the video camera running. Alli was cracking us both up. She talked non-stop for a good 5 minutes telling Ben all about something! We understood very little but that didn't matter. It was so fun to see her have that long of a conversation with her daddy. I just wish I had a copy of it to share with everyone...I'll be more prepared next time!

For Example....

2011-08-29T06:07:00.000-07:00

I sometimes find it hard (maybe bothersome is a better word) when it comes to reporting things to authorities (namely calling cops when I'm irritated by something a neighbor is doing or things we see on the road). Sometimes I just don't want to be bothered with it or just don't have the time...This weekend we had a perfect example of why it is good to act when you see things that just don't seem right.

We were headed to Winchester to visit with family. We had just gotten of the AEDC exit and turned onto HWY 127. We were following behind a beat up Ford Explorer with plastic sheeting covering where the back window should've been. When this person turned onto 127, they had a hard time staying in their lane. This seemed odd to be but I didn't think too much of it. As we continued down this road for 15-20 minutes we continued to notice this driver having an ever increasing amount of difficulty remaining between the lines. 3 times they almost hit oncoming traffic and one time they almost took themselves out in a guard rail.

We had finally had enough and I told Ben to call the cops. He called the Sherriff's Dept (thankfully still had the number in his phone). The dispatcher was someone Ben knew very well from when he worked in the county and they asked us if we could safely follow the car to help them keep up with them until the cops could pull them over. We ended up getting into Decherd city before the cops had any cars close. An undercover vehicle swooped in front of us and turned their lights on. It took a good 3-4 minutes for the driver to even realize a cop was behind him with flashing lights and almost just as long to get off the road.

We got stuck at a red light shortly after their pulled him over and Ben noticed in his rear view mirror that after the cop open the door, the driver was quickly pulled out of the driver's seat and placed at the car being handcuffed. Ben was like "dang their arresting him!"

We got to the farm and figured we'd call later to see what had happened. Instead Aaron (the dispatcher) called us to let us know that the driver had a mobile meth lab in his car!!! They were so thankful we had called and so are we. One less idiot on the road and hopefully some lives were saved from an inevitable wreck waiting to happen!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend :)

Good news

2011-08-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Dr R called today to let me know that Ben's blood work came back and he is not a carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene. So this is good news. The only thing that could happen would be my carrier trait being passed on.

The Crock-Pot just makes life easier!!

2011-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't decided if following certain blogs makes my life easier or causes one more uneeded obsession :) One such blog posts their weekly menu with plans to do some freezer cooking at the bottom. I pay particular attention to the freezer cooking area because I like to make more than we'll eat and freeze it for later when we are in need of a quick meal. As I was browsing last week I saw a meal that just by the name peaked my interest. Taco Chicken Bowls. I followed the link she had posted to another lady's website where the recipe was posted. What I found there only fueled my recipe addiction! Not only did the recipe for Taco Chicken Bowls look super simple, cheap and require little effort, but there were numerous recipes that peaked my interest and the blog was immediately marked as a favorite....I need to join a recipe hunters anonymous program...:)

The best part about the Taco Chicken Bowls was that most of the ingredients are always in stock at our house....and the crockpot gets to do ALL the cooking. LOVE IT! See...juxtaposition of addiction versus life made simpler :).

Enjoy the Yumminess!

The Lord will Provide

2011-08-19T11:23:00.001-07:00

It's a wonderful thing to be able to watch the Lord's blessings unfold right in front of your eyes. I've not been getting many shifts at work lately, and the few that I did get canceled or didn't qualify. Ben's been getting a great deal of shifts this month which has been wonderful. We have Daniel and Meagan coming in town with their family next week so Ben didn't take any ambulance shifts for a 4-6 day period. Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal but Ben is also about to go through some additional schooling and had to not take any extra shifts on later in September too. It's nice to see his shifts evenly spread out so you know there is that extra money coming in a some money can still go to savings without being paycheck to paycheck....So it's been so reassuring to see the last two weeks as my shifts for August went from none to 4. The downside is that at least one of these shifts will fall while Daniel and Meagan are here. Hopefully it won't hinder us from visiting.

All is well...I'm 10 weeks today. I was reading over some blog entries from back when I was pregnant with Alli and it was funny to read about some of the dreams I had. I had a dream last week that wasn't very funny but it didn't shake me up. I was at the Dr. office for a check up and we were going over some blood work. Dr. R was telling me that some number should be closer to 400 and I was at 1 so I should be miscarrying any day. I told him, no I think that's wrong because I feel fine. We argued about it but he was very matter of fact and the appointment was over. I then try to find an ultrasound tech to do an ultrasound on me to check on the baby and the heart beat. No one will do an ultrasound...

That was pretty much the dream. I woke up thinking that was weird, and went back to sleep. We then two days later, I get a phone call from Dr. R wanting to talk about some of my blood work...after having had that dream so recently, my heart immediately sank. Then when he started telling me about the blood work I realized it wasn't anything to worry about yet. When we got the blood work done, I asked what all they were testing for. One of the things we tested for was whether I was a Cystic Fibrosis gene carrier. They explained what that meant and the low odds of probability that both Ben and I have not only the gene but the gene with the same mutation. There are over 1000 CF gene mutations and you have to have the same mutation to run the risk of passing it on to your child potentially giving them CF. So the next step they wanted to take was to test Ben. So we have to wait at least another week to get those results. We aren't concerned because the odds are so low that we would both be carriers but it is what it is and either way, this child is a blessing from God and will be seen as such.

I'm trying really hard to be good about my diet but I'm failing miserably. I really don't want to get gestational diabetes again but it's really hard when I'm craving so many sweets with this pregnancy! So I'm looking forward to cooler weather coming in the next few weeks (hopeful thinking) so that I can get out with Alli and take some walks. Exercise is one of the best ways to void off gestation diabetes...so time to get active.

We hope everyone has a great weekend.

Let's start taking bets...

2011-08-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well we had the official doctor visit today so that now I can comfortably say...yes...we are pregnant. Of course, most people who read this are family or very close friends...and you already knew :). So here is the little peanut...
We thought we were around 9 weeks along...little peanut is tinier than expected and is only measuring 8 weeks exactly today. So we are a week earlier than we thought, no harm done...kinda figured because my body likes to be off anyway. :) So...due date is March 16. We will try NOT to have this baby on the Ides of March. :) So anyhoo, here's the lo down from today's visit.

Baby's heart rate was good at 159 bpm. Fast little booger huh?!?
Everything looks good...I continue to get to be normal, which is nice....
The best news is that just because I had gestational diabetes with Alli, does NOT mean I will have it with this one. So we'll see how it goes.

Ok...so I know mom and Shannon are hoping I've got a little boy growing inside me...anyone else venture to make a very early guess??

Small achievements

2011-08-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

Today marks day 3 of Alli waking up with a dry diaper....we're making progress here. Now if she can just mentally "want" to potty train....one day...one day

For the Love of Cousins!

2011-07-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Alli has the most adorable and loving cousins ever. We love each and every one of them. This past weekend was such a joy to be around family.

Caitlin adores Alli and loves to get her to play with her and we just love the bond they have!

She is so sweet and attentive

We were so excited to hear that Ashley and Carter were coming in for a last minute visit. Alli seemed to really bond more with Carter after this visit and I must say I think I bonded with him more too....He held my hand!! Love that little boy.

Holding hands with Grammy

Both love the water sooo very much

And why not get dirty while we're at it.

Jumpers Playhouse Success

2011-07-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

This party turned out to be everything we hoped it would be. Thank you everyone who was able to make it!!! Alli loved every minute of the fun. I'm sure she wishes we had a room in our house with all these crazy inflatables. Below are some of the pictures I was able to capture. I can't wait until I see some of the others that were taken with better cameras that have faster shutter speeds. My camera isn't fast enough for action shots inside. Enjoy

Turning 2!!

2011-07-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind in posting about Alli's 2nd birthday. Alli turned 2 on July 14th. We had the party today so on the 14th we went down to see her Grammy Smith. Grammy and Papa gave her a new car! This is Alli trying it out for the first time after a couple hours of charging.

We also did a cake for Alli so that she could get to blow out candles and actually celebrate some on her actual birthday.

Thank you Marilyn for taking care of the cakes. They tasted wonderful!! Alli loves her car!

I'll post a separate entry about her party.

I heart DC24

2011-07-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce everyone to my newest best friend. I'm not a believer in buying friendship...especially friendship that costs this much money. But in this instance, I feel as though it was completely worth it. You see...I had to buy this "friend"
to take care of these friends...My allergies being the way they are and Alli sneezing all the time...we felt it was best to spend the money on a product that would WORK and LAST. We LOVE it. The next item on the agenda is this bad boy:
This...my dear friends...is the greatest thing on earth! This is an attachment that goes on my Dyson that grooms/brushes the dog and then sucks all the loose hair up...which means less hair int he air and all over my house. Can I get a hallelujah?! HALLELUJAH. Yeah, we're excited.

To be honest...I've never been so excited to vacuum in my life. That is saying a lot. If mom and dad had invested in one of these many years ago...then maybe dad wouldn't have said to me over and over again, "slow and methodical." :) Happy vacuuming everyone!

Summer will be gone before we know it

2011-07-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

What!? It's July already! Well, Ben had his interview on Tuesday. He said it was really quick! He had heard that the other shifts had 30 minute interviews but his only lasted maybe 5 minutes. Not sure whether that means they already have someone in mind and are going through the motions or they just had a lot of guys to get through that day and were in a hurry. Who knows, honestly. Ben is ok with it however it turns out. He would LOVE to be promoted and get to go through more training...but even if they don't pick him, he will continue on pursuing his bachelors. He lacks 13 classes.

Alli's birthday is in 2 weeks. OH MY GOODNESS....I have a 2 year old. She is a lot of fun and her communication is improving each and every day leaps and bounds. We're still working on some things...like "F" sounds. Phone, Fan, Fry.....to her they are Pone, Pan and Pie. HAH Today she said phone and it actually sounded like phone...awesome! We are excited about her birthday party. It will be a small intimate group of kids and the Jumpers Playhouse and she just loves it there so I know she will have fun!

Ben and I had a very busy work schedule in June and July is shaping up the very same way. I'm so thankful to parents and aunts who are so willing and able to watch Alli to make it possible for me to work on days that Ben is working too. Alli loves being with family and we love being able to leave the house knowing the person Alli is with loves her like their own!

Alli has recently become incredibly obsessed with movies...but especially The Incredibles. No lie, she wants to watch it all day long....I love the movie but if I watch it that much I might go crazy. I'm trying to introduce her to other disney movies but she will say "NO" and go run and get the Incredibles movie jacket. She did sit and watch the most recent Shrek movie at Nana's the other day...so she might like my Shrek movies. We'll see. I don't necessarily want her "glued" to the tv watching shows and movies but she doesn't like to play independently with her toys, so if I need to get some cooking done or some work on the computer, then the movie is a good outlet for distraction and entertainment.

We hope everyone is enjoying their summer. We would enjoy it a lot more if it wasn't so hot. Oh well, such is life in Tennessee.

Tuesday

2011-06-25T18:25:00.001-07:00

Ben's driver interview is this coming Tuesday. We'll see how that goes...Every week seems to bring a new adventure for him. It could be an interesting year.

We're gonna be famous....

2011-06-14T18:47:00.001-07:00

Ok...maybe not really famous but....

The sleep center's new marketing brochures came out.

So now all the marketer for all three labs will be distributing

these bad boys throughout the mid-state....

check us out....

I felt like a big goof ball in the above picture. The photographer was asking me questions about a study on the screen to try to get the picture to be more natural...still feels goofy.

Below are pictures of the new pride and joy at MTMC. They took the opportunity to talk about our work with pediatrics in the photo of little miss Alli! I should get paid royalties! Oh well.
Anyway, been promising to put those up and they just came in so there ya go. We're famous...kind of.

OOOhhhh DIY projects I want --- I need!

2011-06-08T09:52:00.001-07:00

Ok...sitting here at work listening to the drolling sounds of snores and I decided to browse through my craft blogs that I follow. I decide to check out one blog that is discussing a major DIY blunder that she had and at the bottom of her entry I see a link on her blog that said if you like this entry then you may be interested in this.... The THIS is what I AM interested in. Check out how she organized her pantry. Oh my goodness the ruler idea is so so so cute! I hate my pantry every time I look in it. I would love to snazzy it up. She went a step further in snazzying it up when she did THIS. Love LOVE lOvE!

Experimenting with whole wheat flour

2011-06-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy baking and trying new things. I have found that I don't do it as often as I would like. I see a lot of other people trying new things and then this spurs me on to start baking some more. I follow a few coupon blogs very religiously and the lady that hosts one of them does a lot of homemade baking. This is the same lady I posted about earlier when I made the freezer breakfast burritos. Anyway, she uses a lot of whole wheat flour. This is perfect for me because it gives me a way to experiment with using our wheat. I absolutely LOVE the attachment for my kitchen aid mixer that grinds grain. It keeps me from having to buy a grinder. I ground up some whole wheat flour the other day and tried these whole wheat chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.They were heavy on the butter but I felt the oats, whole wheat and protein from the peanut butter made up for it. :) Every one of us liked it. If I can sneak in whole wheat and oats by giving Alli a cookie then by golly I'm giving that girl a cookie. hah.

Tonight I had some nearly over ripe bananas and decided to make a whole wheat banana bread recipe. She adds chocolate chips (she's addicted to chocolate) but I left that out. I'm anxious to see how it tastes compared to my banana bread made with white flour. The recipe was completely different with ingredients I've never put in banana bread before so we'll see how it turns out!

Next I plan on trying out a whole wheat pancake (another one can be found here) recipe which is also great for making up a large batch and freezing for a quick breakfast for my little one!

**UPDATE** Oh my goodness, I just pulled these bad boys out of the oven and I am PLEASANTLY surprised. The new recipe had a sweetness to it unlike my other banana bread recipe and all the whole wheat did was add a little grit to the texture! Ben and I both really like it! A++ for the whole wheat!

Jumpers Playhouse

2011-06-02T20:19:00.001-07:00

Ben and I have been trying to figure out what to do for Alli's birthday. We wanted to do something fun but July is SOOO hot! I refuse to do outside parties but I was almost tempted to just do sprinklers and water slides for the kids to play in while we hang out inside...but we had one other idea too. We've wanted to check out the Jumper's Playhouse for a while. We went today to see if Alli would like it. I think the screaming fit she through when we said it was time to go home was a good indication that she had had a good time.
Took pictures on Ben's iphone because I didn't feel like lugging my camera to the playhouse.

So I think we will probably do a party at the Jumper's Playhouse for many reasons 1. Alli loved it first and foremost! 2. We can have the place to ourselves for a private 2 hour party so it will just be the kids we invite in there. 3. It is indoors in the A/C!!

Lastly, just a picture of Alli being helpful! :) Enjoy the A/C everyone...this summer is beginning to look like its going to be bleak!

Options..

2011-05-27T19:59:00.001-07:00

Well now that we have decided to stick it out here for a while, its time to start planning out what we want to do with Alli's room. Alli's crib is a convertible crib but I don't see the point in converting it when we know we want to have another child. Ben wants Alli to stay in the room she's currently in so she doesn't have to get used to another room. But we won't be able to move all 3 pieces of her bedroom furniture into the other room when we have a baby. The other room as funky angles and because of where the doors and windows are...the furniture just doesn't fit. So I'm thinking about selling the armoire. We don't use it as much as I thought we would anyway. The crib and changer would fit no problem and then I will probably also have room to bring my rocking recliner in as well...

So this means we would need to store or sell the full size bed we currently have in our spare room but what do we get for Alli's furniture. Our rooms just aren't large enough to put a twin bed out from the wall, plus dressers and toys, and still have room for kids to play. So I'm thinking we should get a day bed with trundle so that her bed is up against the wall, leaving the middle of the room open for play. We would have the trundle that we could pull out in case we needed to turn the bed into a full size bed for company. So here are some options I like:

This one doesn't have a trundle but it would make for a great use of space if we didn't want to go the trundle route.
So we'll see. As of right now Alli is still happily in her crib. She doesn't try to climb out so we aren't forced to convert her bed yet.

Splash Pad

2011-05-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

I had not taken Alli to the local splash pad until today. Supposedly today was the opening day. You can't beat that it is less than 10 minutes from my house and free! Normally this place is packed and that is enough of a deterrent for me. I don't like over crowded places and neither does Alli. But today our church's mother's group got together at the splash pad and I thought it would be fun to go with a bunch of Alli's friends from church.

We didn't plan or consider how many cicadas would be around the water. Many of the kids were screaming and wanted nothing to do with it. Alli didn't mind all the much. In fact, she touched one after I pointed it out to her and touched it myself.It took her a good 45 minutes to an hour to get comfortable with the water spraying everywhere. She loves water but wants it splashed on her terms. After most of the play group had left, Alli decided it was time to start having fun. So we stayed an extra hour.

She had a great time and I think we may try to go back tomorrow when Ben is home to enjoy it with us. This month is a perfect time to go since the cicadas will keep it from getting over crowded and Alli didn't mind them!

For anyone interested

2011-05-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

I love browsing coupon blogs. There is one blog I regularly follow and she is a very practical kind of person. She tends to do a whole lot of freezer cooking to reduce the amount of time she spends on meals and it also ensures they eat out less and eat healthier. One of the meals she cooked this week was in an effort to save money because he husband is addicted to the breakfast burritos from McDonalds. It's simple and practical and I ask myself...why didn't I think of that. So here is her recipe. I did alter the ham to sausage.

Freezer-Friendly Breakfast Burritos

1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped green pepper
18 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped ham
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
20 flour tortillas

Saute onions and green pepper in butter. Beat eggs and milk together and pour into the skillet with the onions and peppers.

Add the ham, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until eggs are set. Mix in cheese and let melt.

Scoop 1/2 cup egg mixture onto tortillas. Fold ends under and roll up. Freeze (see instructions below) or put all burritos in a baking dish, top with extra cheese (if you’d like) and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until heated through. Serve with salsa.

Freezer Instructions:

Wrap burrito in a paper towel and then in a sheet of foil. Seal tightly and place in freezer bags. When bag is full, remove all air and seal. Freeze.

To serve: Remove foil and put paper-towel-wrapped burrito in microwave. Reheat for around one minute. Serve with salsa.

As the recipe states, it makes 20 burritos. I already had green pepper and onions on hand so the only thing I needed were tortillas, cheese, eggs and sausage. So $8 in ingredients and I had 20 burritos. Think about what you pay for a fast food burrito...Mine come out to $0.40 a piece...Score...Can't go wrong with the fact that they tasted really good. Ben thought they tasted like quiche in a tortilla. Sounds yummy to me!

Prayer Request

2011-05-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

I posted this on facebook already but thought I'd mention it here as well in case someone misses it.

Anyone who knows my Ben knows that it has always been a lifelong passion of his to be a firefighter. He doesn't want to stop there though. He wants so badly to progress in his field and learn anything and everything he can. Every time a promotion has opened up that he was eligible for, he would apply. He has been passed up on 3 driver promotions. We aren't sure why and are not really sure it even matters. In a lot of ways the fire service is a buddy system. Those who are well liked by the higher ups get the promotions. Ben works very hard, he tries not to allow the negativity of others at work pull him into the cycle of complaining, and he always does what he is told (no questions asked). This cannot be said for many of the guys on the department. Ben has not hid the fact that he wants to promote up and that he seeks further training and growth.

It is time once again for driver promotions at work. Ben (as always) received a good evaluation this year. Something new to this driver promotion is the requirement that you had to get an evaluation score above a 3.0. This may have knocked quite a few guys out of even applying but this really doesn't even matter. Ben deserves this promotion and this is his only way he can go to the fire academy to get the extra training he so badly wants. The department won't send you to training unless you are getting promoted to something. So, I'm requesting prayers on Ben's behalf. This week they will be taking their driver tests (probably Thursday for Ben). Ben will have to answer questions on basic fire fighting knowledge and knowing how to get to various places within the city by displaying street by street turns. Ben knows his job and knows it well and I would love to see him get the promotion he rightfully deserves! I pray he does well on his test and has a good interview in the upcoming weeks. I'd appreciate (and I know he would too) any and all prayers and thoughts on his behalf this week and in the weeks to come!

Just sit back and chill

2011-05-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is something I've never been good at...chilling...After a long exhausting process over the last few months of we're selling our house...we're not selling...back to we're selling our house....we found a house we love...we lost the house we love...

We have once again decided to just sit tight and not sell our house. A culmination a many things has brought us to this decision. Go ahead...if you feel like you are on a seesaw when you read about our plans then I'm right there with you.

The potential buyers that we had for our home have failed to contact us for 1.5 months. Maybe not that long but that's what it feels like. They weren't going to be a traditional sale anyway. They were interested in a lease purchase option. So now that we do not have any offers on the house, the house hasn't shown in 3-4 weeks, and there is NOTHING on the market that we like (in our price range)....we really began to look at the overall picture. We have so many things going on in our life right now. Ben is once again applying for a driver position at work (please please please pray for him that he gets this position. There is so much stuff going on at work right now and we really need a moral boost here). Our neighborhood continues to go downhill in the sense of all the homes in foreclosure that are dropping the values of our homes. We just found out this week that there is a home on our street that is 1450 sq ft that either just sold or is listed at $90000 under foreclosure. How can we compete with that? We have 1500sq ft and bought our house for $144900. Our only option would be to rent our home in the event we found a house we wanted to move into and we just aren't sure we are comfortable handling a rental property right now.

So...we are taking the house off the market...again...and we are going to sit tight and chill. We want to wait and see how things pan out in a multitude of areas. I want things to feel settled for a bit. Alli's 2nd birthday is coming up and Ben and I've said from the beginning that we would like a 2-3 yr gap between our kids. So we will probably be considering having another child before long. We would love to have at least 2 kids so that Alli isn't an only child and grows up with a brother or sister that she can be close to and have as her best friend. I love my siblings and have many fond memories of our childhood and adult years. I would love for Alli to one day say her brother or sister is her best friend.

I was really hoping that Alli would be out of diapers by the time we add another child to the mix but this monkey is just bound and determined to delay the potty training process. I know kids MUCH younger than her already close to being out of diapers. Alli runs from me when I tell her she needs a diaper change...not a good sign. This monkey has been on her OWN schedule from day one. She was lazy about crawling....lazy about walking and now she will be lazy about potty training. So...work in progress....

Have a good week everyone.

Ok forget everything I said...

2011-05-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well today we went to access the potential repairs needed on the home and thank goodness for Craig Gibbs! He looked the house over for us and we realized there are some problems that make the house not worth the investment. So grateful for his knowledge and willingness to help us out!!!

So again...moving on...patience will pay off...

HUD Horrors!!

2011-05-04T19:59:00.001-07:00

Well this entry could become long and drawn out. So I will leave it short, sweet and to the point. We lost the home we were going to purchase through HUD. HUD uses 3 different agencies to list their houses. Each have different policies. Some of the policies are so new even to the listing agencies that they don't know all the rules. The listing agent for HUD helped "guide" our realtor through the application process and we followed his directions to a T! But they sent back 3 times for corrections. Little did we know HUD has a rule that if 3 or more corrections are needed in the contract then the contract is null and void and they go with the next highest bidder...so that they did...and we don't get our house.

Moving on. . .

We were upset but we went back to the drawing board and have noticed another house over in the Hunters Point subdivision. We love this area. We drive through it often on our way to that side of town. We've noticed this house has been vacant for a while and recently went bank owned. Rod took us through the home and we think it just might work for what we want out of a home. If we can get it for just the right price then we can get a "203k loan" which allows us to add money on top of the price of the home for the cost of repairs and upgrades to the home. So we will see how this plays out. We're going to take a look at it tomorrow with a contractor to get a rough estimate on what it would cost for the work that needs to be done to it. We are excited and see the potential but we HAVE to get the house at the right price or it just isn't worth it. So here it is:I like that it puts us closer to a part of town that I shop at most. It also puts us closer to mom's and Shannon and Rusty's. So...as with all things...if it is supposed to work out...it will.

I can tell Alli is getting closer to the lovely age of 2!! Within the last week she has developed a high pitched scream during her "fits". We have successfully developed the toddler temper tantrum. I can't help but laugh sometimes. It is so comical to me when she gets so worked up. I know it doesn't help the situation so I try not to laugh where she can see. I try to remain patient and calm with her and without giving in to what she is pitching a fit over...she eventually calms down after a minute or two and we are over it.

One funny thing Alli is doing lately is telling people bye bye. If she is in the front yard or anywhere she can see cars drive by, she will wave at them and say "bye bye". It's pretty cute. One day she was in the front yard with me and someone drove up to the stop sign at the cross street in front of our house. Alli began waving and saying bye bye to them. They turned left in front of our house to leave the neighborhood. They saw Alli waving at them and waved back. Alli continued to wave and say bye bye so in response they put they hand out their sunroof and gave her a very big wave bye bye. I love how outgoing she is. It's pretty funny and cute.

She likes to do things to be helpful and feel like a big girl. Tonight, she helped me hang her shirts on hangars and I lifted her up to hang them in the closet. She also loves to stand on the stool and help me "cook". She also helps me water plants and feed the dogs. Her face lights up and she gets this huge grin. I try to encourage her as much as I can to do these things and to build her confidence and her desire to help. She's growing up so fast!

Stuffy love

2011-05-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

When Alli was born, her Nana Love gave her a soft teddy bear. Alli never showed a lot of excitement in regards to stuffed animals until she got her Violet dog on her 1st birthday. The teddy bear has always sat on a shelf above her changing table. Yesterday Alli looked up at the shelf while I was changing her diaper and said "dog dog". She thought her bear was a dog. So I told her it was a bear and then she asked for the bear. Ever since I brought the bear down off the shelf...she won't let it out of her sight. Here are a few pictures to show what I mean.

Picky eater habits

2011-04-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Well Alli is truly our picky little eater. She knows what she wants and definitely what she DOESN'T want. Last night I brought Ben some pulled pork bbq to work for his dinner. Alli said she wanted to eat so we let her try out the bbq and to my shock she kept wanting more. Then I had a small epiphany. I realized that Alli has never refused to eat anything pork. She LOVES bacon and sausage...she also liked pork chops when we made them and now she likes pulled pork. It took me a while to realize this because we don't cook with pork all that often. We eat more chicken and beef. I guess I will need to start incorporating this more often. Now if only I could disguise some veggies in with what she does like....oh well. At least she eats something.

Easter Weekend

2011-04-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

We've had a wonderful but crazy busy weekend. Alli went to a birthday party yesterday for a little girl in her nursery class. It was at a local park and the kids had so much fun. They got to play on the swings and slides, run in bubbles and do a small Easter egg hunt. I was there without Ben so I didn't bring the camera. It was too bad though because she was having so much fun! I hope she is able to develop great friendships through the children at church.

This morning we did Alli's easter basket when Ben got home from work. Here is a video of Alli playing with her Mr. Potato head.

I was able to grab a few quick shots before church. Unfortunately we don't have any of all three of us together but I do like the individual shots we got with Alli.

Thank you Grammy for her beautiful dress!

This afternoon we had an Easter egg hunt at mom's. My camera battery died so I will have to get some pictures from Shannon. But we were able to get a couple. Here is one that I thought was adorable.

playtime!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and was able to feel the beautiful spirit that surrounded this day.

Frills and Dirt

2011-04-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

We recently spent the weekend visiting with Ben's family. His sister's and their boys were in to visit. We had a great time and Alli loved playing with her cousins. She napped horribly that weekend but you wouldn't know it because of all the fun she had with the boys.
Below is a preview of our future frilly/tomboy; pushing the stroller with the soccer ball in the other hand. HAHA That's my girl! Who ever said you can't be girly and play in the dirt?

Papa Smith loves his grandkids and spent a good majority of the weekend carting them around in the wheelbarrow.

Carter is a few months younger than Alli but is SO adventurous. It was great for Alli to be around him. She has been so gun-shy of grass and if the ground is uneven she wants to hold your hand. After watching Carter run around without a care in the world, she followed right behind. We loved it!

Alli really started to show her first signs of jealousy this weekend. She loves her Papa Smith and didn't want to share him.

Love Michael's face here. haha

My future athlete here with an awesome action shot captured by Ashley. Thanks Ashley for grabbing all these shots! I really should've brought my camera down.

One of Alli's newest obsessions....pushing this umbrella stroller around. I finally had to collapse this thing and hide it in my car.

Alli playing around while we cleaned out the car

Alli found daddy's medical gloves in the laundry room and had fun trying to put them on. She loves to help our with cleaning. Any time we sweep, vacuum, mop, dust...etc....she wants to help. Ben was cleaning the house the other day for a showing and she helped him dust. I think its cute and hope it lasts...but I'm realistic and know that one day she will fight me tooth and nail. :)

She's been sticking her tongue out a lot the last 36 hours. I think it's funny. Oh yeah and excuse her high-waters...if the 50 degree weather would ever go away them I would be able to stop putting clothes on my daughter that are too short for her. Poor thing is too skinny and too short for the pants that I have that are 24 months and her 18 months clothes...as seen below....are too short. yay. I'm not buying her any more pants...not with summer coming on.

We are looking forward to this weekend. Alli is going to a birthday party on Saturday and Sunday is Easter and we are doing an Easter egg hunt with Shannon and Rusty's girls! Love it! Look out for more pictures!

Good news...good news

2011-04-19T20:37:00.000-07:00

We finally heard back from the people who initially were interested in our home. I won't go into all the details but it was good news. We hope to be able to hash things out over the next couple days and see whether or not we have the house drama resolved.

In other news...the HUD home paperwork is nothing but drama. haha but it's government so should I expect anything less? :) They kept sending paperwork back because they didn't like wording one time, and this time they wanted Rod's supervising agent to be signing off on the agreement...maybe NOW they will be happy with the paperwork and we can move on.

Oh and for those of you reading my blog that I haven't already personally told, we are selling our home and moving into one (in smyrna) with more land and an extra 650 sq ft. We are tickled. More news to come.

Long day with an emotional ending

2011-04-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

I spent the whole day today at a sleep conference. Thankfully I was able to go with Ashlie! I think I would have lost my mind without her! The conference was from 8am to 5:30pm. The speakers were either extremely boring or spoke with so much medical terminology that we couldn't follow what they were saying. Oh well...doesn't matter. I have my CEU credits and that's all that I need!

I rushed home because I also had a personal progress night planned at Krystin's house. I really didn't want to go. I was tired from getting up early and sitting in lectures all day and really didn't want to be out in any severe storms. Krystin wasn't worried about the storms and didn't want to cancel so I felt like I really had no choice but to go since that is my calling at church. So I forced myself to go and after the night we had...I'm glad I went.

I've served in this calling for 3 years and for one reason or another I've never felt that I've been able to bond with the girls to the extent "that I expected" I needed to or wanted to in order to help them. Tonight we encouraged the older girls to mentor the younger girls on their personal progress and Krystin and I floated around from group to group making sure they didn't need any help. I also checked off the girls in their progress. To my surprise, the older girls took charge and really helped the younger girls. I was so proud of them tonight.

I was able to be free to answer questions the girls had, encourage them where encouragement was needed and instruct them on what they might want to do next. The night really turned into one that I was enjoying. Their youth is invigorating and I loved feeding off of that. I finally got to my last set of girls and I know they won't realize it but they impacted me more tonight than I ever expected. Two of my sweet young behives, Carla and Emily, were sitting and chatting with Krystin. Krystin had to leave to help one of the other girls so I took the opportunity to check Emily and Carla's progress. While sitting with them, we got into a discussion about school and some of the pressure the girls are under.

These two sweet 12 year old girls are facing trials and experiences that I hate to see them have to experience. Unfortunately it is a fact of life in the day in age we live. Kids are mean...they aren't raised with values and manners, and our poor youth suffer and live it day in and day out. Carla mentioned that she had had a boy say to her that there was something different about her and another girl at school (who just happens to be another girl from church). This boy told her that it was as if they had a certain glow. Krystin and I both told her this was a wonderful thing to be "different" in a good way. The kids at school may not see their "difference" as a good thing and may pick on them...but it's good to be different and to have values and to stand for those values.

Carla shared with us how she has a 12 yr old friend who got drunk at her 18 yr old cousin's birthday party and doesn't remember what happened afterwards. Next thing she knows, after a few weeks of feeling "weird" her parents take her to a doctor and find out she is pregnant....at 12!!! She also has a second friend who "might" be pregnant. She also has friends at 12 who smoke. Emily is worried about her older sister going to HS next year. She fears it so much that she said she is going to pray every day that her sister is kept safe in school. She shouldn't have to worry about the safety of her sister in school...but this is what our schools have come to. Carla and Emily both expressed how they are called names at school and picked on. Emily....sweet emily...was called a B**** at school....Emily, quiet and shy, meek and mild. It breaks my heart for them.

So I shared with them that people are always going to be mean. We all get picked on. I told them that I know it's hard for them because even 10 years ago when I was in HS I was picked on. Then I got the shock of my life. Emily looked at me with total shock and said "WHAT? You were picked on?" I said yes sweetie I was picked on...and then Emily says, "But why, you are perfect?" I was absolutely floored that she viewed me this way. I didn't realize I had made this impact on Emily. I thanked her for her sweet compliment but admitted that I am no where near perfect and have many faults but it doesn't matter the reason, we all get picked on.

I left the get together tonight with a heavy heart. I wish I could protect these girls...I wish I could make them strong against the trials and temptations that they face. Some days at church I feel as though the girls don't even see me...but after tonight I realize the girls see me more than I thought. They see me as something I don't feel I'm qualified to be seen as. God bless Emily for her sweet compliment. I pray that I can live up to her standard. I realized tonight just how much I love these girls and I hope to God that I can be the example they need me to be as their leader. I pray I am being that example for Alli. These kids face so much in life and I just wish that in some small part that the little interaction I have with them at church can help make them strong to stand against the tidal waves of trials and pain they face.

Happy little garden

2011-04-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

The last couple of years we have planted a small garden with mom in her big garden bed. The soil has been over used and needs nutrients added into the ground if we really want to continue to plant there. It was always a hassle to drive across town to water. So this year we are trying to grow our garden in pots. We are growing what we use the most...although we'd love to one day have a much bigger garden to do a few "bigger" plants.
The picture below shows 4 pots. The big white one has 1 tomato plant, 2 green pepper plants and a bunch of georgia sweet onions. The clay pot colored one has 2 red pepper plants and some more onions. The plant on the railing is a rosemary herb. Then, hard to see is another clay pot hanging off the deck which has parsley and chives.Here is a second pot of tomato, peppers and onions
This picture shows you both or hanging herb pots. The second herb pot on the right has our cilantro and basil.
It feels good go grow things...maybe its the money saving aspect or maybe it's the healthy aspect...not sure... But we like it.

Thanks Alli

2011-04-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Alli, I was sporting this adorable bruise on my left cheek. I can't wait till it turns the pretty color of green...

I may be sporting a black eye...

2011-04-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

Ok...I love my daughter so much...and its a good thing too...because she can really inflict some pain. Tonight I was lying on her bedroom floor talking to Ben and Alli had walked behind me to go to her bookcase. Next thing I hear is her walking toward me, and then WHAM! I get smacked in the face by one of her toys...Not just ANY toy...probably the heaviest toy she has. Oh my goodness that hurt. It actually brought tears to my eyes. I think Ben was in shock! haha. We aren't sure if she tripped and dropped it on my face or if she just dropped it on my face because that seemed like a good idea. Needless to say, my poor cheekbone is puffy and bruised. I just might be sporting a black eye tomorrow. I'll be sure to post a picture if it happens. :) The joys of motherhood. I just couldn't be mad at her. Ben told her to apologize but I'm not even sure she did it on purpose...although she did smile when I said ouch...not a good sign...appears she might like to inflict pain...gonna have to nip that in the bud.

Conference was great this weekend. I loved so many of the talks. It was nice to have Ben home today to enjoy it with us. It's easy to forget things you should be doing and become complacent. Then conference rolls around and you hear the words from God's inspired Prophet and apostles and it really uplifts and re-centers your purpose. To make the weekend even better, the sun came out, it was 70 degrees and the wind was blowing....LOVE IT.

Girls afternoon OUT

2011-03-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was beautiful!!! I dream of days like that...feel the warmth of the sun on your face and a nice cool breeze to make it perfect. Days like that are truly when I look to the sky and thank God for all His beautiful creations.

Shannon asked me earlier in the week if we wanted to go to the zoo...well sure! Alli loves the animals so it sounded perfect. There was a gun show in town Ben wanted to go to with a buddy of his so that made it that much more perfect.

Of course all of Nashville's surrounding areas thought it was a great idea too because there were a TON of people there. We had fun anyway, but we had to maneuver through a mass of people at every exhibit. It made it really hard for Alli and Alaina to see the animals. I would've loved to take Alli out of the stroller and let her see over the fence but once she is out of the stroller, good luck getting her back in. If the zoo hadn't been so packed, I probably would've let her walk the whole thing.

Due to the massive amount of people there, I was never in a position to get a good picture of Alli with any of the animals at the zoo. I was constantly having to make sure we didn't lose her or get run over! So needless to say Alli didn't really get "excited" over any of the animal exhibits but she LOVED to be with her cousins. She just adores Caitlin and Alaina. There is a great jungle gym at the zoo and there is a huge padded mat area for toddlers. Alaina and Alli really loved walking the mats and throwing themselves down on them. I wish I had had my camcorder with me because it was so cute. We might have to go back soon so that Ben can see how much fun she has there.

On the car ride home, all three girls thought it was funny to buzz their lips together. Alli and Caitlin did this almost the whole ride home. Of course Alli ended up with spit all over her chin...gross...but that's what kids do. :)

Thanks again for inviting me Shannon. We had so much fun and look forward to hanging out with the girls again!

Pictures

2011-03-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of what Alli was wearing on the day we went to do the pictures for the new brochures at work. Wasn't she a doll?!?
Alli loves loves LOVES to read. This was last This was on a Sunday morning after Ben got home from work. Alli was so happy that daddy was home. He was lying on the floor in front of her door. She took a book over to him, stood between his arms and plopped herself right down and handed him a book. Love it!
I was at work a couple weeks ago and was really missing Alli. I Asked Ben to send me a picture of Alli. So this is the picture he sent me...Bonus!!! A picture of both of them and it's adorable!
We were in the spare room the other day and Alli was wanting to "read" the "books" that were in there. The books that she was referring to were my photo albums. So here she is on the bed, surrounded by the pillows she has strategically placed for her lounging comfort....and she is ready to read. Adorable.
Progress on the house continues. Ben and I finished up the chair railing today. We also finished painting the hallway upstairs. Now the only rooms in the house to be painting are the master and spare bedrooms. One day...not entirely important we do them anytime soon but we have the paint so might as well. We might start the crown moulding next....time will tell. We need a break from this weekend first.

It's finally open and My little model

2011-02-18T19:23:00.000-08:00

Well as of this week, the long awaited day has arrived. The lab in Murfreesboro is officially open. They have run studies 3 nights this week. I toured the lab on Tuesday to familiarize myself with my surroundings before I run any studies. Then I received an email on Wednesday afternoon asking me if I could make it Friday for a photo shoot at work. They were getting some new pictures for the marketing brochures for all three facilities (Baptist, Hermitage and Murfreesboro). I asked mom if she wouldn't mind to tag along to help distract Alli so I could do this photo shoot. They needed me since I was the day tech for Murfreesboro.

So we headed down there this morning and right as we walk in the door, we walk in on the photographer taking pictures in the front lobby. Immediately he is taken back by Alli and starts taking pictures of her. I was thankful I had dressed Alli nice today! The photographer and our marketer just kept going on and on about how adorable Alli was....of course I'm biased, but I agree :). We showed mom around the lab and waited for them to need me. Then the marketer pops in and sits down to have a chat with me. He says, "So Ashleigh was telling me that the facility also does studies on pediatric patients. (I knew where he was going with this) How old is your daughter?" I laughed to myself and I told him that she was 19 months. They then asked me if I was open to maybe taking some pictures with Alli in one of the patient rooms. They wanted to showcase that our facility works with pediatric patients. I agreed based off the knowledge that we would only do what she was comfortable doing and once she was upset...that was it, we were done. Little did I know my daughter was a HAM!

We sat her on one of the beds and I knelt in front of her trying to interact as if I was her technician. She didn't like me being in front of her and being on the bed all by herself. So I sat on the bed with her but she kept trying to climb in my lap and hug me. So I pulled the headbox and wires off the wall and sat them in front of her. I showed her the wires and let her play with them. This is very similar to what I would've done anyway with a pediatric patient to try to get them comfortable with the wires so it worked like a charm. She sat there and felt the wires and ran them through her fingers. The photographer LOVED it! It gave them exactly what they needed. I bet he easily took 50 pictures of her today...if not more. They got some of me by myself at one of the computers...acting like I was reviewing a study...I HATE acting...it feels so cheesy.

Not only are these pictures going to be in their marketing brochures but they are also updating the website...so I'm curious to see what they choose for each. I will post a link to it once it is updated. We'll see how our little model worked out.

Quick post

2011-02-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

It's late but I had to post this really quickly before I forgot it. As Alli gets older and develops more independence, we've been dealing with some minor power struggles to show mom and dad are still in charge. This mainly came into play recently at bedtime. We had about 6-7 nights where we had to insist on 7pm as bedtime and crying wouldn't mean you got to stay up longer and play. Well finally one night after persistently pursuing our schedule, we had a break through. Alli and I said our goodnight prayers and then as I was holding her she leaned over to lay down in my arms. I asked her, "are you ready to go night night and lay in your crib?" She then leaned rolled and pointed towards the crib. So I took this cue as a possible answer that she was ready to go to bed. I was fully anticipating her to stand up and start to cry as soon as I laid her down. I was so wrong. Instead, she laid there calmly and let me cover her with her blankets. Then she did something I wasn't expecting. I told her I loved her and she blew me kisses. It caught me off guard but it has now become a new tradition. Normally she would only blow kisses when asked, so to blow kisses unprompted was very sweet. So every night now we ask, are you ready to go night night and then we exchange kisses. Then last night and tonight she added one more cute thing...she now also tells me bye! LOL

She woke up screaming around midnight from what I can only assume was a bad dream. We snuggled and when I put her back in bed she blew me kisses and then said bye bye. haha so cute. Good night everyone

1 down....many more to go...

2011-02-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

We finally finished the 1/2 bath. We had some kinks in the road but we learned how to do some things we didn't know how to do so that's cool. We are so tickled with how it turned out!

Here is the first step in the "fake" board and batten look. We placed our boards 10 inches apart.

Alli running around with the dog leash while we were working on the bathroom. She loves to take the dogs on a walk.

She wanted to help daddy out so bad. He was filling in the nail holes with wood puddy. So she started rubbing her finger on the wood trying to be like daddy. Loves her daddy!

See, like I said, LoVeS her daddy!

Step 2 in board in batten is the chair railing

Last step...a nice coat of semi gloss white paint to give the wall a nice board covered shiny...beautiful look!

~We LOVE it~

My taste buds NEEDED this!

2011-02-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

I had some Tilapia in the freezer that we needed to cook and I wanted a new recipe to try. Tilapia is really the only fish Ben will eat. I love just about any type of fish but Ben isn't as fond of it so we like Tilapia because it isn't as fishy tasting! So I wanted to grill it. We had a Taste of Home grilling magazine and I found this tasty sounding recipe for Halibut. I knew halibut was a white fish and thought Tilapia would be a great substitute. Here's the recipe.
Halibut with Zesty Peach Salsa:

photo curtesy of taste of home website (wouldn't want some copyright person to get huffy over the use of their picture)

Ingredients

1/3 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons grated lime peel
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 halibut steaks (6 ounces each)
SALSA:
2 cups chopped fresh or frozen peaches
1/4 cup chopped sweet red pepper
1/4 cup chopped red onion
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

In a small bowl, combine the first seven ingredients; mix well. Remove 1/4 cup for basting; cover and refrigerate. Pour remaining marinade into a large resealable plastic bag; add the halibut. Seal bag and turn to coat; refrigerate for 2 hours. In another small bowl, combine salsa ingredients; cover and refrigerate until serving.
Drain and discard marinade. Using long-handled tongs, moisten a paper towel with cooking oil and lightly coat the grill rack.
Grill, uncovered, over medium heat or broil 4 in. from the heat for 4-6 minutes on each side or until fish flakes easily with a fork, basting occasionally with reserved marinade. Serve with peach salsa. Yield: 4 servings.

Editor's Note: When cutting hot peppers, disposable gloves are recommended. Avoid touching your face.

This was SOOOO YUMMY! My taste buds needed this fresh and citrus filled meal! It was nice to make something so healthy and fresh tasting. We absolutely loved the salsa. We would make it by itself! I'm not a big fan on red onions but it was perfect for this salsa. Next time I will leave out the jalapeno. It didn't need that extra zest for our liking and this way Alli can eat it without any problems. She loved the peaches and the red peppers. If only I could get her to try the fish. Oh well...small victories right?!?

I know my body parts.

2011-02-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post this for a couple weeks and yesterday I finally sat down with Alli and got her to show everyone how many body parts she has learned. Enjoy.

DIY Disaster? I hope not :)

2011-02-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

I've been watching a TON of HGTV lately. There is a show DIY disaster. With all of our plans for upgrades on the house and knowing some of our previous mistakes in our other home in Winchester, I hope we don't encounter any DIY disasters. We are trying to do many of the projects ourselves and well...it's a learning process. We are trying to use what little skills we have where we can, learn some of what we can on the fly and the other things we just AREN'T comfortable with....seek help! This next item was totally NOT on the to do list but we found a deal at home depot and fell in love with it and the project fell into place.

**beware many photos to follow**
1/2 Bath Upgrades!
Below is a picture of the types of counters we have throughout the entire house. The kitchen and all bathrooms have the very same counters. They aren't bad for what they are so the biggest thing we were going to do to the 1/2 bath was a nicer faucet, paint and some wainscotting with chair railing.

No this picture below is not a dressing room somewhere, it is my bathroom with the hideous cheapest dressing room like light fixtures we've ever seen...these have to go...so remember them so you can appreciate the after picture. Here is the beginning of the addition of the chesnut paint. We taped off the area where the chair railing would go and the wainscoting below.

Getting closer....

Now here is the reason for the new LOVE of our 1/2 bath. Behold the beauty of a new granite vanity top and brushed chrome faucet! **aaahhh**

more painting...Alli had to get in on the action of the pictures :) Wow her hair was looking rough that day.

Remember my hideous lights...these are SO much better! Here is where one of our DIY disasters took place. We went through two lights before we settled on this one. Before we changed lights, the old ugly gave plenty of light in our 1/2 bath even with the darker wall color. The first light we bought only lit up the mirror and didn't project any light towards the toilet area....not good. So I thought maybe we needed lights that faced up. Ben changed the fixture to face up. It helped with the lighting some but the fixture looked STUPID faced the opposite direction it was meant to. So off to the store I went in search for a light that faced up. I couldn't find what I wanted in the brushed chrome. So then I found this one that faced down but it didn't come with globes so I could pick my own. I found clear globes with some air bubble design and they work perfectly! Now we have a nicely lit half bath.

Here you can see front to back the much better updated upper half of the room.

Let's basque in the beauty just a little longer!

We have since changed our plans as far as the wainscoting goes. We are going to do a fake board and batten look, much like this post here. This will be a much easier installation and Ben won't have to worry about cutting around the pipes behind the toilet. Soon I will be able to show everyone the finished product. We are still working on a plumbing connection issue that developed with the new sink on this vanity top. This vanity has very screwy and close together pipes...so Ben has had to make a couple trips to home depot.

As soon as our beloved tax return comes in, we plan on taking care of some of our wishful to do list:
Kitchen- new counters, paint cabinets white, new sink and faucet, tile floors oh and pot lights in ceiling!
1/2 bath and laundry- also getting tile floors
entire downstairs - chair railing and crown molding
Master bedroom - fresh paint and crown molding
Hallway and 3rd bedroom - fresh paint, chair railing in hallway
Spare bath - tile
Master bath - oh the plans we have for this room (all depending on how much $$ we have to spend and what deals we can find at the discount tile stores) tile floors, tile surround on current tub/shower combo, new vanity (hopefully granite or marble), paint wood on vanity complementary color of the vanity top, new mirrors to get rid of the one big massive mirror we have and new lighting!!!

Our major projects are obviously devoted to the kitchen and master. We are hooking up with some of Ben's co-workers to get major discounts on some labor for the areas we need "help." This mainly relates to tile and electrical. We could do the tile ourselves but it is so time consuming and well...we'll see how it goes. Straight cuts are easy...its the areas where you need to make curved cuts that worry us. Long post, I know, but the family that lives far away will appreciate the updates and pictures. :)

Oops forgot

2011-02-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

Well I forgot to tell everyone about Alli's 18month check up. First off she weighs 23 lbs (forgot the ounces) and is 32 inches tall. Her head (brain growth) is right on track for her age...but my little petite girl is overall in the 30th percentile! She's so tiny. She has a decent height with having grown three inches since last check up but her weight is so tiny. haha. It's going to get to the point that to fit her height, her pants will be falling off her.

So anyway, she looks good and we're happy about that. We talked a little about her picky vegetable eating. Alli also doesn't like drinking plain water bottles....so we talked about what to do about that. We're making some progress but it is a challenge.

.................
We've been busy working on our 1/2 bath right now..It's a big change. I'll show pictures when it's all done. Have a great week.

ummm...so cute

2011-01-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

I saw this scripture case tutorial.....and knew I had to make one. For whatever reason....it took me MONTHS to get around to doing it. so finally...here it is.
Isn't it darling?!?

Painting Finally

2011-01-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

Well as of this past December we've lived in our home 3 years. Our home was painted with a flat off white paint. Seriously, who paints a house with flat paint...builders...that's who...because its the cheapest thing to paint! UGGG. So this was a long time coming...but Ben and I HATE painting. So we've done a few rooms here and there. We've painted Alli's room before she was born, the spare bathroom upstairs, kitchen, hallway, and the master bathroom as well. Then we had our stairwell professionally painted because of the height. We have decided enough is enough...so below you can see the before picture of the hallway. We really love the red color but decided it didn't belong in the hallway...so now only the kitchen will remain red. So we primered the hall and then got on with the rest of the downstairs.
After of Hallway: top color is Behr - Toasted Almond: Bottom color is Behr - Chesnut
Where it looks white between the two colors is where we will be putting chair railing in the next few weeks!
Love love love love love! Aahhh...we painted from 7:30pm - 2am...eek! Long night but it was nice to get it all done in one night while Alli slept. Now all we need to paint are the remaining rooms upstairs. We are going to continue to use the toasted almond in the spare bedroom, chair rail the hallway upstairs just like downstairs hallway and then do toasted almond as well in the master on three of the walls. The wall behind the best we are going to accent with the color in the master suite which is a pretty blue color! Yay...almost done with paint!

BIG room transformation...

2011-01-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

Let the transformations begin! I began thinking yesterday about how we can make our house functional with the current space and layout we are dealing with. Let's face it...our front entry room is AWKWARD! The room was designated by the builder as "dining." I'm not putting my dining room table in the entry room...not only that but I have four bookcases in there and a table wouldn't fit unless NO one ever sat in it. So that being said....how to use that space...

We currently have my "craft table" upstairs in the master because its the largest room in the house with extra space. But it was also having to serve the purpose of printer holder/office stuff. This made it NOT functional as a craft space. But we got rid of our previous desk to open our living room...and SO thankful we did! So I figured....Once we sell the sofa and chair from the front room (that we never sit in) then it would be a perfect spot for the roll top desk I've always wanted! This would keep all the office clutter hidden which would make me happy seeing as it would be in the front room. After researching some desks on craigslist, I quickly came to realize these desks are HUGE! So I had to alter the layout of where I wanted the desk to go since there are two walkways that come off the front room. The desk couldn't block either

I found a gem of a desk on craigslist for $200. These desks easily go for $800-1500 brand new. We offered $150 and the desk is well worth it! It is such a great addition and will be so functional for us. (Especially as Ben starts working towards his bachelors this coming month! EEK) ....so due to the size of the desk we've moved the sofa out into the garage...I intend to sell that beast within the next week or two if it kills me! We also moved one of the smallest book cases upstairs into the spare bedroom. Then on the large wall of the front room we have the desk with a bookcase on each side. The short wall that faces the front door has the largest book case and we will eventually put a parson chair there. Isn't it pretty??!?? The best part is the sell of the couch and chair will more than pay for the desk! Yay!

EEK projects!

2011-01-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

Ok...the short and skinny....our house is OFF the market. While we would love a piece of property with more room to grow into, it appears it isn't in the cards right now. :) The biggest reason why is that the interest rate when up on us and the rate being so low is a prime reason why we would have been able to move up in house at this time. With the change in interest rate and the potential hit we would take in our equity to get out of the home, it did not make financial sense to sell at this time. So....we will better spend our time and money fixing up our current home to be a home we are very happy with.We have TONS of projects we "want" to do but they will be a major work in progress and I'm going to guess it could take a good year to get them all done. We'll see how it goes. I won't bore you all with the details of what we want to do unless you are curious... But one thing we MISS in this house is a fire place. We would LOVE a fireplace. I miss the mantle of a fireplace. Our current house really lacks places where I can decorate and make it feel "homey." Shannon is always doing such cute cute decorations on her mantle and I so wish I could do things like that. Well....today I saw a tutorial for a fake mantle...EEK I'm giddy. It's a take off of the Pottery Barn mantle shown here: I was browsing through some craft blogs a few moments ago and like answer to my decorative desires... I found TWO blogs that have made their own versions of this ledge at a MUCH cheaper cost than pottery barn's $400 price tag!! EEK Looks like I'm adding one more project to our to do list!

It's finished.

2011-01-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

Well as mentioned before, I only lacked a little before finishing this magnet board for Alli. Today I hung it on her wall and added the magnets. Voila! She loves it! I know this board will be used for years to come and will grow with her as she does. I love watching her run up to the board and scream puppy as she sees the puppy magnet...So cute! The funny thing is...every animal is puppy as far as Alli's concerned. We have to work on learning our animals.
On a side note...Alli and I got a virus this past week and were out of it for a few days. During this time Alli really LOVED watching her My Baby Can Read videos. She now wants to watch them NONSTOP whenever we are downstairs. It has it's benefits though. Since the repetition, Alli has learned the following:

Body parts: hand, feet, eyes, knees, head, belly button

Songs: Eentsy Weentsy Spider (with hand motions), Old McDonald Had a Farm (when she sees the cow she screams "MOOOO", I'm a Little TeaPot (she will bend over when you are supposed to 'tip me over and pour me out')

She's also learned Arms up, and shake head yes and no.

Fabric covered magnet board

2011-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Well as I said in my previous post. I wanted to make a magnet board for Alli's room. I found a horribly hideous framed picture at goodwill and went to work repurposing it. I still have some work to do to it because it really needed a primer before I painted it. So I have to fix that and find some cute hooks or nobs to screw into the wall to hang it by. Won't it be so cute for her to put all her animal magnets on?!? I love it.

Homemade Christmas

2010-12-31T21:32:00.000-08:00

I was so excited to get to make some of the gifts this year for Christmas. It really felt like I was giving more from the heart instead of just spending money because of tradition. Now that all the gifts are handed out I want to share what I made with everyone.

First for Caitlin and Noah (my 6 yr old niece and nephew) I made them indoor fishing sets with two fishing rods and drawstring bag. The tutorial is found here and here. Now the applique fish idea was all mom! I loved the idea and with the fish I stuffed them with batting and then handstitched the hole closed. So cute:

For my niece Alaina (1 yr old) I made a bean bag alphabet set with homemade drawstring bag. Tutorials found here and here. Now the tutorial for the bean bag letters was a number tutorial. I just printed out letters to the size I wanted and used that as my template.

I also did the bean bag letter set for my nephews Eli (2 yrs old) and Carter (1 yr old)

I loved this tutorial as soon as I saw it and thought it was simple yet classic. I guess I like that kind of thing. I made a temple block for my sister in laws Kara and Ashley and Mother in law Marilyn. Tutorial found here. Now I altered mine from saying (I'm going there some day) to For Time and All Eternity with their temple sealing dates.

Alli and I also received some wonderful homemade gifts for Christmas as well. Aunt Brittney made Alli some homemade bean bags. One for each letter of her name. Brittney hand stitched the letters onto the fabric casing of the bean bag. She also stitched some decorative details beside the letters. She also gave Ben and I a nice framed 4 generation family tree. We drew names and although Aunt Ashley didn't have our family, while making cousin Michael's gift, Ashley also made Alli a set of magnetic Animal cards to go on the fridge for Alli to learn her animals. We have to keep our fridge clutter free due to the house being on the market so I wanted to come up with a way for Alli to still play with her animals. So this will be my next project: Fabric Magnet Board. This will be put in her room where she can play to her hearts content while keeping the house clutter free.

We enjoyed seeing all the family for Christmas and love all the wonderful gifts that were received. Ben and I hope that 2011 brings many wonderful opportunities and blessings to all our family and friends!

Santa Who?

2010-12-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

December has flown by and I never once thought about taking Alli to see Santa. I guess it wasn't something that I felt like we "had" to let Alli experience. I got a text message from Shannon yesterday asking me if I'd taken Alli and if we hadn't, would we want to go with them. I thought, ya know....why not. I wasn't sure what Alli would think of a strange man all dressed up in red with a large beard. haha. So we planned to go and I thought we'd give it a shot and if she wasn't down with it then we would at least be there to keep Shannon and the girls company.

Alli missed her nap today because she fell asleep on me in the car on the way home from visiting Ben at work. I thought she'd transfer from the car into the crib without a problem but it woke her up completely and that was it. So I told Shannon what was up and we decided to give it a shot. We were excited to find the line wasn't that long when we got there....the line was deceiving though because we stood there for at least an hour. Alli made friends with a little boy named Keagan behind us and shared snacks with miss Alaina. Alli was so tired by the time we actually made it to Santa that I thought it would be a bust. Shannon went first with the girls. Caitlin told Santa what she wanted for Christmas and when she was finished, Shannon put Alaina on Santa's lap....Alaina took one look at Santa and started crying...poor thing..I don't blame her. haha. I thought Alli would be the exact same way. Santa's helper had already won Alli over by asking her for a high five. She then took Alli and sat her with Santa...

To my COMPLETE astonishment, Alli didn't cry. She was completely ok with sitting with this unknown man. I was so surprised. Now....although she was ok with Santa...she wan't real big on smiling for a good photo. They took three pictures and none of them were cute. It was as if Alli was just pacifying us. hah! I didn't even think Alli would sit on Santa's lap so I didn't bring my camera. Shannon had hers but said the lighting was terrible so she just bought their photo for her girls. So...although Alli sat on his lap...at the price of $15 for ONE photo...I did NOT purchase a picture of the event. I didn't feel it was a practical use of my $15. So sorry Alli...I'm sure you don't mind missing out on the photo :)

Oh well...at least it will go in your journal as an experience. The next few days are going to be very busy. Tomorrow we get to spend the whole day with the Smith family we Britt, Jay and Michael are in from Idaho and Don, Ashley and Carter will soon be leaving for Arizona. Then Christmas Eve and Christmas morning is with the Love clan! I can't wait for all the family being in town. I don't think the holidays mean anything to me if I can't be with all my family. Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

#14

2010-12-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

Alli is quickly closing in on 17 months!! Eek. We noticed last night that Alli has a tooth coming in on top and on bottom. This will make 14 teeth in her teeny tiny mouth! I can't believe she has so many but it makes it so much easier when feeding her because I can trust her to chew up bigger pieces.

Let's see what I can update everyone on...
Alli's words:
Puppy
Ball
Momma
Daddy
Bye Bye

We are still working on Grammy, Grandpa and Nana.

When we say Bath - Alli will go to the bathroom and try to climb in the tub.
When we say pet Mitzi - she'll find mitzi and pet her, and likewise with Pepper and Sammy. She knows the difference in all three dogs.
When we say sit on your bottom - she will sit.
Oh and she now also knows how to kiss. She has been giving us open mouth kisses for about a month or so but I wanted her to quit doing that because she would walk up to the dogs and do that....yuck! So I worked with her on it one night and now we can say give us kisses and she will lean forward with mouth closed and kiss us! We love it! The grandparents love it too.
Alli LOVES the freedom of walking and running. She pushes her little shopping cart around the house and loads it up with whatever she can find. Usually it is books, toys and her puppy.
Even though we are alone a lot and she doesn't have too much interaction with other kids her age, when she is around other kids at church or at family get togethers, Alli isn't shy and will try to play with the babies her age. This gives me a lot of hope for her come time for nursery. I don't think he problem will be going and playing with the kids, it will be knowing we left. So that will be the transition we have to work on. But when she is in a regular routine of seeing different people then she becomes comfortable. She is so used to going to the fire hall to see Ben, that she will frequently leave us to go harass the guys. I love how social she is!
Alli also loves to go on walks around the block in the stroller. Now that the weather is turning colder...we have to be sure she is bundled up well...Sometimes we can get her to be happy wearing her hat below.

Well that's all for now. Hope everyone is enjoying their December and the bitter cold reminder that Winter is here to stay. :)

Love Her!

2010-11-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

We love to do family pictures every year. This year Shannon has given me a difficult task of choosing a favorite out of all the wonderful pictures she took. Enjoy.

I have no idea why we weren't centered on the road...Can you tell I'm anal to even notice that?!?

I included this one to show everyone Alli's true personality...wild and crazy and on the go ALL the time!

Love...
Love Love...Seriously. I almost cried when I saw this picture. She's beautiful and I thank God every day for her and her sweet spirit. Ben and I both are better because of her. Love her!

I included this one in here because it made me laugh. When I zoomed in, I realized that Ben was sticking his tongue out at Alli. She thinks that it is funny.

Yay for Christmas!!

2010-11-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

Well I never got to update everyone on the showing we had this week. I was told that it went well. The people that looked at it were in the very early stages of looking at homes. They had scheduled showings from morning till night. Of all the homes they saw, ours ranked up near the top and will probably warrant a second showing. They really liked our Christmas light decorations outside...haha I guess it's the little things. The realtor said it showed well and had many if not all the things they were looking for in a home. So we'll see what happens.

I've been really excited about this Christmas. I've wanted to learn how to sew for a very long time, but I always felt it was out of reach for me. I'm still not sure I can do something complicated like a pattern for clothes....mainly because I don't know all the terminology and how to read the dumb patterns but...I've been building up my confidence on small projects like the bandana dresses, bibs and snuggle blankets. So I found quite a few cute kid projects over the last few months and I've been waiting for a time to be able to make them. I've decided on a couple for the kids Christmas presents. Mom has been so very kind to let me borrow hers....but these projects have taken a LOT of hours and I only have my nights to work on them after Alli goes to bed, so I've been biding my time to get my own machine.

This Black Friday didn't excite Ben or myself. I asked him if there was anything that we needed and should take the opportunity to get while sales were on. Ben and I agreed there wasn't anything pressing but then he looked at me and said, "why don't you go buy yourself a sewing machine?" Normally I would have said thanks but push it aside and say it wasn't a need and it could wait. But this time...I really felt like if I had my own machine I might start making more things on my own...so I gave in and began looking at the sale circulars. I found this beauty! **I LOVE BEN**I would have been very happy with a beginners machine but mom convinced me that with the sales, if we could afford it, it would be worth getting this upgraded machine so that it would last me much longer. I have to say, after working with mom's since I began, I LOVE the little upgraded features. Mom's machine was a great machine to get started...so I can't wait to see what this one can do.

I put it to use tonight to make an ADORABLE bag for Caitlin's gift!I'm so stoked about how CUTE it turned out. I was just going to make the bag but mom gave me an awesome idea to add the applique fish to the front...so it let's her know what's inside! ADORABLE! **For those of you who don't know what I'm making, its a fishing set so she can fish inside on rainy days** I can't wait to finish Noah, Eli, Alaina and Carter's gifts as well. I will probably eventually make all this same stuff for Alli but I wanted to make sure I finished the Christmas gifts first.

16 months

2010-11-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

Alli went to the pediatrician this morning for her 15 month well visit. We went a little later than her 15 month seeing as how she just turned 16 months in the 14th..oh well. She only grew like a 1/4 inch. She is 29 1/2 inches tall and 22 lbs 3 oz. She grew a little over 2lbs in three months. Alli tends to have growth spurts every other check up...She stair steps in her growth. So maybe she will gain some height by her 18 month check up in January. She didn't care for the shots, but who does...Here are some recent pictures of Alli from around the house. I never have my real camera handy when she is doing these silly things, so my phone is the best I have.

Alli insisted on feeding herself yogurt this day. She did really well with the spoon until I walked away....at this point the yogurt ended up in her lap and the dogs followed her around licking it off of her.

Alli has been loving walking around with her push behind walker she got last Christmas. There is an area underneath the handles where she tends to place things and cart them around. We thought, well i guess she might enjoy a real cart where she can put things in and push around. I found one for her and here she is pushing her cow around the house. I guess beef is on the menu tonight. :)

Alli LOVES to brush her teeth (chew on our toothbrushes). She screams for them whenever I am in the bathroom. So here she is sitting in the sink while I get ready...you can see the toothbrush in her left hand.

And last but not least, this is one of my favorites...her smile just makes me melt.

Oct/Nov

2010-11-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

I've fallen behind on getting updated pictures posted. Here are some pictures from the Trunk or Treat. Alli was a white tiger. Alaina is crawling away from the picture.
I loved this costume but it was really long on her. We had to make some adjustments. She might be able to wear it again next year.
Alli trying to figure out what Alaina is wearing.
Our kitties...
We had a request by Ben's aunts to take more pictures...I've been in a horrible picture funk for the last three months and have failed to get any recent pictures of Alli. So when we went to the farm I tried to grab a few. Alli was really clingy to Ben so the majority of the pictures are with Ben only.

Below she is super excited about the dogs and is pounding Ben's leg in excitement.

Umm...can we say daddy's girl?!?
Ignore her funky rolled up jeans...I can't help my baby is short. ;)
This was the best I got. Alli was not happy about posing for a picture with mommy.
Alli got to play with cousin Carter for a while yesterday. She enjoyed playing with the magnets on the wall with Carter.

yumm pretzels!

Changes are happening

2010-11-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

Well today it is official...the house is on the market! If you're curious, realtracs.com MLS #1229843. We have decided further not to build out in the neighborhood that we had been considering. We have prayed a lot about it to decide whether or not it was the right decision for us and we just don't feel at peace with it...so that is our answer. While we love the area, and love the people out there...it must not be where God needs us. So we will continue to keep our eyes open for what we want. We are in no hurry. The first major step is to sell this home. We are hopeful...but realistic to this market where our neighborhood is dominated by foreclosures. The foreclosures have drastically dropped the comps in the area and a home much like ours is but all one story and a 2 car garage is going to be on the market in a few months at $10k less than we are asking for ours....so...we are hopeful...but realistic...please God help us sell our house! We'll figure the rest out from there.

Alli is so funny lately. She makes the funniest faces, movements, etc. She has really begun to find her personality in regards to what she likes and doesn't like (or thinks she likes and doesn't like). So feeding her is well...a challenge at times. The one constant right now is macaroni and cheese, publix fried chicken and watermelon...or bananas. I know if I have any of this around that she will eat. Not much variety or healthy options...but how healthy are picky toddlers anyway??

Ben is taking his final in his FINAL class for his associates tonight!! YAY...Soon that diploma will be his...

I'm busy busy busy...between cleaning house to get ready to show and taking care of Alli...I've also added my to do list to get ready for Christmas. I'm spending the majority of my nights working on the kids gifts....I can't WAIT to show you all how they turn out... so stay tuned.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2010-10-24T17:34:00.000-07:00

We are pressing onward...Ben is trudging through his last class to finish his associates. He only has a week or two left. The math in it is really annoying him. Ben has also recently applied for the Hazmat promotion at work. We'll see if they consider him or not. There should be another driver promotion coming up but it hasn't opened yet. Maybe this will be his time...that is yet to be seen. The politics in this department are ridiculous!

Ben and I have been spending a lot of time over the last few months discussing our neighborhood. We really feel like things are going down hill and fast. We knew this house would be temporary but we honestly didn't believe it to be THIS temporary. We've spoken with a realtor and she took a look at the comps in the area and it isn't good. We stand to potentially lose all the equity we have in our home. I would rather loose all the equity in my home to get out before this starter home neighborhood won't LET me get out and we owe more on the home than it is worth. We've talked to a local builder that we go to church with and another realtor we go to church with and they both said the starter home market is taking the WORST hit. We're going to be putting our house on the market soon. We lack having some rooms painted and we are also in the process of de-cluttering. This should make for a FUN holiday season. We aren't sure where we will go yet but we are looking into all options. There is a beautiful new subdivision off of Old Jefferson Pike past 840 that we would LOVE to build in, but we are being realistic to the fact that we might be able to afford more house by looking at foreclosed homes as well. So that's why I say we are considering all options...except starter home neighborhoods. So we are praying it all goes well.

Alli continues to grow and change right before our eyes. She has had so much trouble lately with going to bed on time. One day she this past week I didn't get her down for her first nap until much later than normal so she didn't wake up till too late in the day for a second nap. So we trudged on without a second nap and by 7pm she was ready for bed without a fight! So the next day I did the same thing with her. I pushed her 1st nap later and went without a second nap. It has made bedtime so much smoother. She hadn't shown any other signs that she was ready to go to one nap a day. So I will keep playing it by ear and see how she does day to day. To top it off she's been cutting some more molars so she has had tooth pain AND she luckily inherited my horrible sinus problems and has had sneezing, watery eyes and drainage. Poor baby.

She almost in to a full out run now as well! It's becoming a challenge to keep up with her some days. She has also started to walk on her tip toes. She learned the other day that this isn't always fun. We were visiting Ben at the fire hall and I was standing there talking with the guys while Alli was running around. She tripped in her crocs and face planted her forehead into the corner edge of the kitchen cabinetry. By the time I saw her fall Ben was already in motion to pick her up. So all I could do was watch in horror as I waited for my baby to suck in a DEEP breath and start screaming. It immediately bruised and you could see the red indentation where she hit. She was quickly back to her lovable self after some soothing. Still not fun to remember!

We are hoping to take Alli to the pumpkin farm this week!! If we make it, then I should have some pictures soon. I've been a bad mother lately about keeping updated pictures.

Let the parent/daughter showdown begin...

2010-10-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

The time has come....we have reached that point...the point where Alli pushes buttons, tests limits, misbehaves...you get the point....now what do WE as parents do? Well the obvious answer is discipline...but HOW are you going to discipline??

I've actually been thinking a lot about this lately. I took a lot in from conference about how to be a better parent and even in previous conference talks I've keyed in on a few remarks made about disciplining with firmness while showing an outpouring of love. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the moment of frustration and lash out. It's much harder to step back, control your emotions and calmly/firmly discipline while lovingly telling them why they are in trouble. I wasn't so good at that today!

Today I had to go to the dr for a routine visit. Ben had to drop his truck at the repair shop at the same time (for a wreck 2 weeks ago). He intended to be back in time to get Alli from me at the Dr's office. It took a little longer than he hoped. So for some reason this morning Alli was feisty. I don't remember how the first two incidents occurred but two different times this morning Alli got my finger in her mouth and bit. She didn't bite so hard that I couldn't get away but for some reason....my maniac daughter...thinks that it is funny to inflict pain. She likes to see your reaction....(yes I know...she needs discipline...this is a developing problem). So I get her to the Dr office no problem. Well unbeknownst to me, they needed me to update some paperwork. Alli wasn't too thrilled that I was putting my attention into filling out paperwork. So while standing in front of me she proceeds to BITE my knee! She bit so hard through my jeans that she broke skin! Just out of sheer reaction to the pain of it, I quickly knocked my knee away from her but it knocked her down in the process and either hurt her or scared her because she then proceeded to cry for 3-5 minutes in the waiting room....I'm sure I looked like a real good mom for knocking my daughter to the ground. I made sure to tell her so others could hear as I was soothing her...."you're the one that BIT me!" haha...poor thing. After this 3rd bite of the morning, I was more cautious to her actions and could see her attempts before she got me again and I was able to sternly say NO. This worked...thankfully.

But this incident got me and Ben talking today about how we as parents want to discipline her at this current age she is in. I am pro spanking. I know not all parents are...but I am. I'm not saying beat her...and I know some people believe the prophets have preached against it...but I don't believe that. They prophets and apostles have preached about teaching with a firm love. Anyway, I won't go into that...we just don't think at Alli's current age that spanking her is effective. So some of our thoughts were smacking her on the hand (again like spanking, not sure if she would get it...I think she might believe its a game), time out, or just a firm NO with an explanation of why no.

I think at her current age that time out would be effective in the right circumstance. She HATES to be left alone, so we could use this to our advantage to show her that bad behavior equals something she doesn't like. But time out would have to be enforced in a place where she can't "play". I would have a difficult time confining her to a chair at her age and putting her in her room is out of the question because of all the stuff to play with. So...not sure where to put "timeout" at where she can be isolated but kept safe. Then there is the question of what if you aren't home. You can't do time out in the middle of the grocery store....so I guess stern no is the best thing I can do there.

Anyway, we aren't at terrible twos...but we're getting started. The other problem we've been facing is that Alli is learning how to avoid sleeping. Over the past week or so, bedtime has become an all out war. All we used to have to do was our night time routine, place her in the crib, tuck her in and say good night. That would be it. She might roll around and play for a bit but she would rarely fuss. Not any more. Now she is fine until about 5 minutes after you left the room...she realizes she is now down for the night and she wants to be up playing. She will cry...and cry.....and cry... After about 10 minutes I'll go check on her....no diaper, fed, not teething, no fever...what's the problem?? Nothing...as soon as I pick her up she will calm down and immediately start to smack my face or giggle or point to books or dolls in an effort to play. In exasperation of hearing her cry, we will sometimes let her down to play a little longer to wear herself out...but she's already tired so this doesn't work, it only over stimulates her further. In addition to this, three times in the last 8-10 days, she has woken between midnight and 3am with intermittent crying. When we go in, she is WIDE awake and wants to play. WHAT THE HECK?!? Trying to put her back to bed doesn't work because then she just cries again. So I had to let her play and get tired again. This keeps me up anywhere from 1-2 hours.

Well after tonight's bedtime episode, I've wised up. I'm starting to believe that Alli is crying purely to keep from going to bed and get you to come in her room to play. I think the same thing is happening in the middle of the night. If she woke in the past she would just go back to sleep, but now she knows she can cry to get our attention. So tonight I checked on her once after crying for 15 minutes. When I saw she only wanted to play, I told her it was "time to go to bed". This immediately brought tears, so I KNOW she knows what bedtime means now. So I cuddled for a few more minutes then again said, it is bedtime and put her back in her crib. She immediately cried. I left the room and listened to my dear defiant little one cry for another 30-40 minutes. I hate it...I can't tell you how much I HATE hearing her cry. It is something that goes against your nature as a parent to sit and listen to your child cry and yet do nothing. But I fear if I go in...if I give in and get her up....and let her play....then we are on a slippery slope and she will develop a BAD habit of thinking this is how to get her way....So tonight, I stood firm...and it sucked. It will be much harder to be firm in the middle of the night when all I want to do is sleep. Hopefully she will sleep through the night tonight and I wont have to deal with that.

Sorry for the novel...just want to share the joys of parenthood.

The impact of a good friend..

2010-10-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

I believe we all go through life and regardless of the circumstances we are impacted by those who surround us...for better or worse. Now definitely we can choose/determine how we allow others to impact us....but sometimes we are impacted without even realizing we have been.

Today I was at Walgreens picking up a prescription and I walked through the magazine isle. I figured I would look for a Sudoku book while I was there (MSLTs give you a lot of down time and my boss said "bring a book"). I didn't find the kind of sudoku book I was wanting but instead my eyes ran across a small cook book for freezeable meals. I have an absolute, need a 12 step program, addiction with cook books and new recipes. So yes, I got it. This simple little thing, reminded me of my dear friend Ashlie and how much I miss spending time with her.

When I moved with Ben to Winchester, it was the first time I had ever moved from home... I consider myself a little shy and I did not make friends quickly....let me rephrase....I didn't make friends. Winchester had a lot of older people...church had a lot of middle age to older couples...there were very few young people for us to associate with. All I had were Ben, my in laws and work. And for a while this was just fine. Although I didn't work at the Urgent Care but a brief period before the sleep lab opened, I got to know a lot of the girls over there. Ashlie was always so sweet. We would talk about what I was learning in regards to sleep medicine and she was genuinely interested in whatever you talked about. She struck me as a very sweet girl. Time passed and Ashlie showed more and more interest in Sleep. Eventually she joined us on the "dark side" and I trained her to work with me when my sister in laws moved away.

Ashlie and I worked together so well. It was easy to talk to her through a 12 hour shift. Conversations weren't forced and even if we had silence, it wasn't awkward. We quickly became close, CLOSE, friends and to this day I think of her as another sister. She is someone, who unbeknownst to me, has impacted my life for the better. We had so many wild antics while working together....so many fond memories. These memories will occasionally stop me in my tracks and make me laugh when I do something or go somewhere that triggers a memory...kinda like my trip to walgreens. I used to bring cook books in to work all the time to look through and Ashlie always laughed at me for my obsession.

So many memories: bobble head pens, softball in the control room, mario, TMI stories, singing My Girl at the top of our lungs while cleaning patient rooms in the morning, scrapbooking, and the list could go on.

We moved from Winchester to Smyrna and I began working in Nashville. Ashlie had also moved and Winchester was too far for her to drive to work. So I encouraged her to join me in Nashville. She came on PRN and we got to work together there as well...although the environment wasn't the same, we enjoyed chatting across the room through texts...

A very long story short...Ashlie, you mean the world to me. You are like another sister....never have I had another friend like you. I always looked at Ben's friendship with Daniel with envy. I wanted that friendship where we were as close as kin and if unfortunate circumstances took us in different directions, we could pick up the phone and talk as if we still saw each other every day. I have had many friends through the years that were good friends, but not great... Some that I once thought were great, I have since realized never cared about me at all....It wasn't until we had moved to Smyrna that I realized how much of an impact Ashlie had really had on my life. She was one of those that impacted me without my knowledge...I had found what I always envied. I found a friend that I could trust my most intimate thoughts, and even if we didn't always agree, I knew she would love me regardless. Ash, you've been with me through good and bad and a simple stupid cook book today has reminded me again how grateful I am to have your friendship. I hope I am as loyal to you as you have been to me. Thank you for being you.

Alli's non-biological aunt

ok...Ash as a side note...this is incredibly sad that the ONLY picture I have of us together is this...I mean...dang...we need to remedy this....pronto!

Lake and Park Playtime

2010-09-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

We have had one BLEAK and MISERABLE summer...we have been begging, pleading, praying for mercy from this heat...finally we have it. This past week has been truly amazing! Thank God for Fall and Spring to give relief from the extremes of Summer and Winter. Alli has been sick for a week with an ear infection and then I got a sinus infection at the same time....so once we were on the mend, Ben asked me what we wanted to do on our day off....I wanted out of the house to enjoy the beautiful weather. So off we went to the lake. We enjoyed a small packed lunch lakeside and then we took Alli closer to the water to see what she would think.

Ahhh the lake...it's really pretty, but the knowledge that it is a man made lake with houses at the bottom doesn't instill the sense of serene pure beauty.

As we thought, Alli LOVED the water. She wanted to get in...completely in!! She ended up getting mad at us at the end because we made her quit playing in it. HAH she was getting soaked.

See....she wanted in!

So off came the shoes and rolled up her pants.

Lovin' life

I think we will be enjoying nature hikes and camping trips in her future.

After the lake we took Alli to play at the local park now that she's a little older and bigger than she was during the spring. This picture of her in the swing cracks me up. Look at that face.

We let her play in the smaller kids play ground set and she was drawn to this mock plane cockpit. She loved turning the "steering wheel." (ok really...a steering wheel for a plane...someone was confused when they made this design....and I know it was supposed to be a plane because of the propellers painted on the front!)

BUBBLE!

Daddy took Alli down the slide...fun times

WHHHEEEE!

What you are supposed to slide DOWN the slide...I thought it was meant to crawl UP.

ooh silly mommy made me slide down...

Happy face

I love her!

Needless to say, we had fun. I love the Fall! We hope everyone else is able to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather as well...oh and I ordered Alli's Halloween costume. She's going to be a white tiger . I saw a posting about costumes on sale for as low as 6.99 at buycostumes.com . So I was able to get her an adorable costume with good reviews for the same price I'd pay here locally for something that looks cheap. yay!

After 9 months....do I remember how to do this??

2010-09-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

Well after my 9 month absence, I returned to work. Today I shadowed a co-worker to learn the protocols for the day studies I would be performing. I knew the procedure for the studies but I wanted to walk through one with another tech to feel confident being on my own. I was initially hired to work at the Murfreesboro lab that we have opening up. This lab is still under construction and should be done in a month or so. In the mean time, my employers have purchased a lab in Hermitage. They were in need of a tech to run MSLT studies there as well. So I will work both facilities. At the Hermitage lab it will just be me and the front desk receptionist....so I better be confident in what I'm doing... I'm quickly being thrown to the wolves next week because I'm scheduled for two days. It's nice to get back into the field of sleep after 9 months. I really was beginning to feel like I was forgetting things. While its not the same kind of test I was doing over night, it is still in the field that I love and it will be nice to keep my skills sharp.

As a side note, I just want to put a plug in here that Ben is ONE class away from having his Associates in Fire Science!!! YAY Ben I'm so proud. Maybe we'll have a party when he's done. I know he's excited! He won't take much of a break because after he finishes his Associates he is moving on to his B.A. Bring it!

9/11 Tribute

2010-09-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

Back in June, Ben found out from a co-worker, Josh, that he was planning on organizing a memorial stair climb in honor of the 343 lost fire fighters from ground zero on 9/11. Josh had seen this done in Denver last year. It is also done in New York. Ben immediately wanted to be apart of this event. He and his buddy Erik have been preparing for this for the last couple months. Nothing could prepare you though for what it would truly be like. Here is a picture of Ben with Alli and an old Nashville fire truck.
They allowed 343 fire fighters from around the country to register to climb 110 flights of stairs (stories) symbolic to what the 343 climbed on 9/11. The guys wore complete turn out gear, air packs, and some took additional tools or HEAVY high rise packs. The opening ceremony was simple and to the point. They explained why we were there and who we were honoring by being there. All of the fire fighters were assigned one of the fallen fire fighters and wore his picture around his neck on a lapel. I don't remember Ben's but I know his last name was LaForge. It's so easy to see some of these events happening far away and think oh it will never happen to me, but it could...it really could. I couldn't help but think standing there in the level 1 of the garage underneath the Pinnacle building, that this building (under the right circumstances) could fall and I could be trapped by a pile of rubble. How that must have felt...how those fire fighters must have felt rushing in to try to save any and all they could find....knowing their own lives were at risk. I usually don't worry about Ben in his job. I know he is trained and I know "most" of the guys he works with also take their training seriously...so all in all I feel secure in thinking he'll be home the next day...but accidents happen and my husband could be one of the heroes called home early. Memorials like this one day really put in perspective the value of life, the value of family, and the value of the brotherhood that Ben shares with the men that he trusts his life with as they together fight to save the lives of others. Below is a picture of his group (company) that he climbed 110 stories with. All of the fire fighters in Ben's company are from Smyrna's department.

The Nashville Fire Department Honor Guard Bag Pipe Band Set the tone for the day...

Time to suit up

Ben and Erik

Ben's Company

The Pinnacle building isn't 110 stories high so what they did was climb 29 floors and then took a freight elevator down. They did this 3 times. Then on the 4th time up they stopped at the 22nd floor. This was a vacant floor where all the family and friends were waiting and cheering them on from the open door of the stair way! Here is a shot of Ben going up his 1st set of 29 floors.

2nd set of 29 floors...really starting to show how hard this is..

Alli was an INCREDIBLE trooper. We had to be out of the house by 6:30am to get to Nashville and get Ben registered in time. So Alli was up from 6am-12pm. Normally Alli is really showing fatigue by 3 hrs up...this girl was amazing today. I love her. She made it possible for me to go and support Ben in something he felt so honored to go and do. By noon our poor baby had absolutely crashed on my shoulders and most of you know...our baby will NOT sleep on us...so she was tired.

killing time in between seeing Ben climb the stairs.

After 3 1/2 trips up the Pinnacle...our guys were done...and completely exhausted! Ben was so proud to have accomplished his goal of making all 110 flights while keeping all his gear on. Some of the guys had to take gear off due to fatigue and overexertion.

Alli was so excited to see her daddy! We are so proud of him!

Our hero in so many ways!

Love this...

The company

Thank you to all those who give their lives daily in protecting our lives and our freedoms...I mean this for all Fire Fighters, Police, EMS and Military!!

goals

2010-09-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

Well this week just flew by. Alli is getting stronger and more confident in her walking. She prefers to walk with her walker but she will sometimes let go of it and take off on her own.

On Saturday Shannon and I made wreaths for fall. Shannon posted hers on facebook. We made them to look like this and this. Ours were made of burlap in black and orange colors. I wanted to do the boo letters as well. Now after making the wreaths out of the orange and black it seems too busy to add the letters covered in scrapbook paper of different halloween patterns. Now if I still want to do the boo letters I could just take some or all of the orange out and make it just like the lady in the link did with the all black burlap. The thing that is keeping me from doing this is the fact that the burlap is MESSY and sheds tiny fibers that smell and seriously annoy you because they get all over you and we felt like we were breathing them all day. So it may just be what it is...Either way it is still cute.

It was nice to have Ben at church with me yesterday. Alli was much better behaved during sacrament. Sunday school was another thing though. Ben ended up having to take Alli out for the last little bit. We were discussing 2 Chronicles 29 when Hezekiah reopened, cleansed and restored the temple. So the focus of the class conversation was on the importance of temples and temple worship in our lives. The temple is such a wonderful refuge from the world. I think it's easy to forget how peaceful it is there when you haven't been in a while, and then when you're there you remember, oh yeah, this is what I've been needing and missing. There is so much turmoil in the world that the temple is a very important recharging zone for each and every one of us. Regular attendance is just what we need to give us the spiritual protection and rejuvenation that we need to face the trials of our day, or so at least Ben and I have come to realize. The conversation of the class followed this thought process for a while and these verses were brought up for reflection: D&C 109: (the dedicatory prayer offered at the Kirkland Temple)

22 And we ask thee, Holy Father, that thy servants may go forth from this house armed with thy power, and that thy ^aname may be upon them, and thy glory be round about them, and thine ^bangels have charge over them...

25 That no weapon ^aformed against them shall prosper; that he who diggeth a ^bpit for them shall fall into the same himself;

26 That no combination of wickedness shall have power to rise up and ^aprevail over thy people upon whom thy ^bname shall be put in this house;

27 And if any people shall rise against this people, that thine anger be kindled against them;

This is an additional reminder of the amazing power offered to those who attend the temple in worship...that angels will watch over you and no weapon formed against you shall prosper...who wouldn't want that amazing protection?

Emily then brought this point up...what keeps us from going more frequently? She suggested this: the temple has a fairly open schedule to be able to attend. We can pick the day and time that works in our schedule. So then she asks, what if regular church services were the same way and you could pick a day, any day, various times....would we attend church every week like we do now? We love church, we know it revitalizes us and helps us get through the week....could we find ourselves going a month or months without attending as we do with the temple...She suggested that maybe offering us open flexibility gives us too much leeway. So then she suggested we give ourselves a goal to achieve. Like the regular schedule of weekly church attendance on Sunday, she suggested we set a feasible goal that fits us each individually. So this got me thinking. Before Alli, it wasn't uncommon for Ben and I to attend as regularly as once a week. It was wonderful to be able to go that often. Since having Alli, we are LUCKY to get to go once every couple months. Between Ben's crazy two job schedule and feeling guilty asking for baby sitters, we haven't gone as much as we would like to. I want to set a goal for that to change though. I would love to set a goal to go as often as every two weeks and never go longer than a month between attending. I feel like this is a feasible goal for us. So now its a goal...time to get to it.

Today I'm thankful for:
1. goals...
2. a close temple
3. the hope that fall is coming soon!

Missed this one!

2010-09-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Ben and I got an opportunity to go to the Temple last night. Grandma and grandpa Smith came up to watch Alli. Not 15 minutes down the road, I get a text message from Marilyn, "Alli just walked by herself." Ben and I were like WHAT?? Earlier that day she had been doing this funny hopping thing while on her knees. She had one leg stuck out ready to stand and the other knee bent on the ground. She would throw her arms up in the air and hop. It was as if she was trying to propel herself into a stand. Well this is apparently what she did later that night and then took 4 steps! She did it twice before she went to bed. I hate that we missed it, but at least we missed it for an opportunity to go to the Temple. I tried today to get her to do it again. No such luck. While at the firehall Ben let her go to try to walk to me and she took two steps to me before giving up and trying to crawl. It won't be long now.

Seeking what knowledge you can

2010-08-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

Church was good today, but Alli was wild! She did her normal routine of wake at 7am - put her back down at 7:45am so I could finish getting ready. She played in the crib until 8:10am when she fell asleep. I had to get her up at 8:35am to go to church....nuff said...no nap. That's ok, we make do. So we get to church and she is behaving like my good little girl....and then as soon as sacrament starts she is squirmy and wanting to crawl everywhere. If it wasn't sacrament, I would've said go for it. But instead I spent the majority of sacrament chasing her around or trying to confine her to our pew.

I know as a young mom that being able to get much out of church right now may not always happen. I know that my biggest responsibility is to my daughter and I am grateful for that responsibility. So even though I sometimes feel as though I get NOTHING out of church....I still trudge on and go because I get to take the sacrament and show God that I do want to learn even if I am a little distracted. :) So even though I had a huge distraction today without Ben's help to control this distraction....I did get something out of church yay!

The first two talks were on keeping the commandments and I didn't get to hear much from them but I am thankful for the reminder to follow the Lord and keep His commandments. I think the last talk focused on finding joy in life...not sure...too distracted. But what I did pull from his talk was improving how I can show gratitude. I think he was trying to say that by focusing on things we are grateful for, this can help us find joy in our lives. I really want to commit to discovering daily things I'm grateful for. So whether on this blog or in my journal, I'm going to try....try....to keep a regular record of the things that I am grateful for.

Sunday school....oh sunday school....Emily Halverson...I think I love you. No really, I love her lessons. She is always so prepared and so close to the spirit. She teaches with such conviction. Anyway, 1 Kings 19 and 2 Kings 5-6....again Alli was a bit of a distraction but I know the lesson was mostly about how to share the gospel. We talked about the example of the servant who said, "oh if only there was a prophet in the land, then the king would be healed of leprosy." How amazing her faith was....that even in the office of servitude she could think of her master and share her faith that she KNEW that if they could believe and call on the Lord, that the king would be healed...

And yet it was a side comment that really threw me today. Emily was explaining how she and her husband were brainstorming about what keeps us from being able to fulfill certain callings (so to speak) in life like sharing the gospel...and she and Jared came up with this thought: "If your calling feels to heavy to bear, maybe you are trying to do too much on your own." Wow. I needed to hear this. I am sometimes too much of a type A personality. Sometimes (don't lie Heather)...ok most the time...I feel I am better off to do things myself because then I know they will get done right (or at least the way I want them done). The main calling that sometimes weighs heavily on me is that of motherhood. Especially on those days when Alli is crazy or tired or just doesn't feel good for one reason or another....and all I want to do is sleep or have a little selfish me time, I feel so worn out and don't feel like I am able to get any motivation to get anything done. This has bothered me a lot lately...my fatigue has been extreme. I feel like a complete slug some days. I feel like these days outweigh the days I'm productive. I remember the days of working; I remember the days in high school when I had 4 hours of homework, band practice or softball practice, and I had been up since 4:30 for seminary but somehow I managed to do everything and be everywhere all at once. I needed this gentle reminder that I'm not required to go it alone. God is with me. He is there to lift me up and help carry my burden; whether that means give me the strength I need to get through a rough day with Alli, or help her rest well so I can rest or just help change the spirit in the home so that the burdens do seem like burdens at all.

So today I am thankful for:
1. My Heavenly Father and his gentle reminders that he is hear, he does hear and know us, and we are not alone.
2. A nice summer breeze...even if it has a sting of humidity....its still a breeze which is better than none at all.
3. A good long Sunday nap for Alli, so I have time to ponder on the things I've learned today.

My 2007 Mazda CX-7 Grand Touring

2010-08-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

After being contacted by Paul about starting my new job, we knew we would eventually need to get a second vehicle. It would be pretty difficult (without help from our wonderful family) to make it work on one vehicle. So we set an ideal budget and decided to start looking around. We found some good options but nothing floored us. We grew to really like the Nissan Muranos. They are really good little cars. We had a horrible time finding something in our price range though that wasn't 100,000 miles. I also test drove a Dodge Nitro....believe it or not...I liked it. It had its own flaws and well...we decided against it. So we kept looking....and looking...and looking...to the point I was tired of looking. So I gave up on the idea for a bit, knowing we weren't in a hurry to get a vehicle just yet. I knew something would come around. Then yesterday Ben wanted to go get the new wheels and deals that was released. We looked through it and Ben found a Kia Soul and jokingly told me this was the car for me. I was pretty adamant against anything Kia. I looked at it later and said, you know...I kind of like how it looks. To me it looked like a bigger version of a mini cooper. It had extremely low miles for a 2010 and was $500 away from our budget, so we said hey lets go test drive it...So we did...wow...disappointment!! The car had no guts!!! It fought to go up the hills and turns around hickory hollow. Yeah no thanks. While at the dealership Ben saw the Mazda CX-7s on the lot and said they looked nice. I told him that I had seen some before when we first started looking but nothing in our price range so I kept looking. He wanted to look inside and then he test drove one. I think he was pretty sold on the vehicle after that. It drove much like the murano, had many of the same luxury features of the murano but for a newer car it cost much less. We thanked the salesman for his time and went home to do some more research. Not long after we got home, Ben found my car...It had been sitting at the BMW dealership off 100 Oaks for 7 weeks with no takers. This car was pristine. They had reduced the price $3000 trying to sale this car! We were in love with it before even taking it out on the road. I test drove it since I hadn't earlier....WOW...the turbo in this car is awesome. I'm going to have to watch it on interstates. Anyway, we love it, here it is. (Oh and thank you to all the family who has offered rides and support while we were at one vehicle and the offers to take me to work if we didn't get a vehicle before that. It was greatly appreciated and we love you all.)

The car has a look of luxury to us...without the price of it.

Eek # 9

2010-08-24T19:21:00.001-07:00

Alli and I were sitting in the truck tonight waiting on Ben to come back (he was getting dinner from 5 Guys) and I realized that Alli looked like she had yet another tooth! Sure enough on the bottom right she is getting one of her big teeth in. This might explain some of the cranky sleeplessness lately....or not...but anyway we're excited because this means she'll soon be able to start chewing food so much better.

Well we've been hard at work lately painting the house. We've painted the spare bath upstairs a pretty green color. It looks very close to Alli's bedroom. This wasn't on purpose but it all works out. We painted it based off a color we liked from our bathroom towel set. Well when it was color matched...it didn't get matched close enough so it looks horrible with the towel set...but we still love the color and it goes well with the set of towels we had from the other bathroom....

So next we painted our master bath a really pretty serene blue color. I love it!!! I need to figure out what to do as far as towels...I'm thinking white and grey/silver....not sure. We'll paint the master next...Not looking forward to moving all our bedroom furniture for this...but it does give us an excuse to do a good deep cleaning...
Today we had painters come and paint our stair way. We knew we wouldn't be able to do that with the high ceilings. The painter was our neighbor down the street (Wall Painting - Scott Wall). They did an awesome job! They are probably going to also paint our downstairs rooms as well because they will be able to get it done so much quicker than we can with Alli bug running around. The color in the main living area and hallway is a pretty chesnut golden brown color. It's warm and inviting. We like it. Here is a picture I took with my phone when they finished. Excuse the bad lighting. Now that the paint is up, we think we are going to need to paint the hand rails white. The current stain on the handrails is going to clash something horrible with the chesnut.
I almost forgot there's more to update on. My former boss Paul contacted me this past week and said it's go time...which means, the job he's been promising me for 2 years has finally come to fruition. The only difference this time is that now I'm a full time mom and I don't want to job he and I initially discussed so when I quit 8 months ago, Paul asked me if I would be interested in part time day work running the MSLT studies. I said to check with me when they got all the kinks worked out and I'd let him know. I never thought it would really happen because they've been talking about it for 2 years and it was only just talk. Well they finally got everything worked out and they are putting a lab in Murfreesboro at the new hospital in an adjacent building. So Paul contacted me about 2 months ago and offered me the job. I said yes depending on pay. He said he'd get back to me. So this week he offered me a $2 pay raise from what I was making when I quit (which is pretty much what I was hoping for since I'm part time and won't be on their insurance, etc. etc.). So I said sounds good...let's go. So now I have to go back through all the ridiculous hospital orientation hiring process. I imagine the lab will be opening in the next month or so. Marilyn is looking forward to getting to watch Alli once if not twice a week...I'm looking forward to being able to help bring in an additional $1000 a month if not more. When we sold my car and worked off one vehicle this summer we were able to knock out SOOOOOO much debt. It was a true blessing and this part time job will help us kick out Ben's truck payments. We will probably have to get me a car soon after starting my job but we will see how long we can go without having to do this. Anyway...that's life as we know it. Fun times...

Is Silence a Bad Thing??!!??

2010-08-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, if I walk into my garage and I hear nothing....it is a very bad thing. I walked into my garage this afternoon to get something out of the freezer for lunch and that's why I heard....silence. Normally we have a box fan running just to keep air circulating, and the freezer is also running....this afternoon, neither were running....I saw on the floor by the freezer a liquid had pooled slightly out in front of the freezer....ugh...not a good sign. I knew at that point that I had just lost a lot of money in food. Sometimes the outlets in our house will shut off if they get too much of a surge of electricity. It has happened a couple times to the outlet in the garage where the freezer is plugged in but we've always caught it in time to not have had to loose any food. Unfortunately, this time was different. Absolutely everything was thawed. Thankfully, it was all still very cold but not frozen enough to be able to refreeze the meat. So my day turned into a cooking day. I had to cook all of the meat I wanted to save so that I could then safely re-freeze it. So I cooked 12 chicken breasts....
and 3 pounds of hamburger meat.
yeah rahhh...
Unfortunately I did have to toss a bag of tilapia, bag of veal steak, steak, and pork chops. I just couldn't cook it all. I also had to throw away some meals in a bag (since there was so much water, strawberry juice, blood...etc in the bottom of the freezer)....

I'm so glad that it is all done and over with. We're going to have to keep an eye on that freezer...I don't want to have to go through that again.

Grandma Mary Montella

2010-07-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

We have known for some time this day would come but it doesn't make it any easier. Today we lost Ben's grandmother on his mother's side. Mary was one of the sweetest women I believe I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I still vividly remember our Thanksgiving trip to Las Vegas in 2006 for her 90th birthday. I was a little nervous to meet so many of Ben's family all at one time. As soon as we walked into Aunt Marlene's home, Mary lovingly welcomed me with a hug and a wonderful conversation. I loved her immediately. Ben has many wonderful and fond memories of his grandmother. He had the pleasure of visiting her often while on his mission in Vegas. He and his companion would go over to her house probably once a week or so for dinner because Mary wasn't a member and they taught her the discussions. We love her, and even though we will miss her in this life, we look forward to being with her again one day!

1 year wellness check up

2010-07-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

Alli went to the pediatrician this morning. Our little girl had not grown much from 6 to 9 months so I was looking forward to a big jump in stats this visit. Here are her stats:

9 mos: 12 mos:
25 3/4 in 29 1/4 in - 55th percentile
17 lbs 6oz 19 lbs 5oz - 20th percentile (she's so skinny compared to other babies)
18 in (head circumference) - 70th percentile (Alli has a big brain!! woo hoo)

Dr. McCollum is very pleased with how well Alli is growing. He says she is perfect. We expect her to walk very soon. She is holding on to all kinds of things in the house and walking around while holding on. Soon, she'll let go....and then trouble! We got the go ahead to switch Alli to whole milk. Sounds like we could've already done it and the doc would've been ok with it but either way she will start on milk now. We gave her some this afternoon when we got home and she doesn't appear to have any problem with the transition other than not liking it cold right out of the fridge. Her only word remains to be puppy. One day she'll say momma and daddy. Oh well.

Thank you again to everyone for her birthday gifts. She absolutely LOVES her new toys. Her clothes are adorable; mom, she loves the dog; Marilyn, she loved the rhyming song book and her quiet books for church; Ash and Don, she is getting so good at putting all the shapes in her shape ball; Shannon, she likes to watch the seahorse light up and play music.

Why we have hanging pots showcasing DEAD plants!

2010-07-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm going to go ahead and just state the obvious....I love colorful plants...but I'm terrible at remembering to water the hanging plants. I have no idea why. So our poor hanging plants have suffered this year. I finally remembered to water them a few weeks ago. They were so dry that the water was just pouring over the side because it didn't have time to soak in. So I brought the plant down to be able to watch the water go in and realized that a bird had built a nest in the left planter closest to the front door. So I took the next out and watered my plants.

Then a day or two later I was leaving the house and I must've spooked the bird because she went flying out of the planter. I took the planter down off the hook and sure enough she had rebuilt her nest, but now she had 3 little eggs in the planter. One was already a cast off because it wasn't even down in the nest. But there were two that momma was patiently sitting on trying to get them to hatch. So I knew at this point it was either let my plants die or remove the nest again and possibly kill the baby birds by disturbing the nest. I wasn't about to kill birds....so death to my plants. So I did not water my plants any more and a few days later the eggs hatched and you could hear the baby birds chirping for food. Then over the next few days you would see momma and another bird (I assume daddy), alternating feeding the babies. It was kind of fun to watch the process. I'm surprised at how quick those babies grew. It was only a matter of a few days to a week. Then today I go outside with Alli and see that one of the babies is sitting up on top of the soil and out of the dug out nested area. I thought, well the babies are starting to get stronger and braver. So I put Alli down safely inside the house and decided to get pictures.

Here is baby bird in the midst of my dead plant

close up of baby bird. Kind of ugly...the feathers haven't fully developed.

I don't think he/she cared that I was that close and taking pictures

Then I caught a glimpse of another bird in the grass to the right of my porch. I thought it might have been momma looking for food. But the bird was just sitting there and not pecking into the dirt for worms....So I went around in the grass to get a better look and it's the second baby bird. I guess he/she had already gotten daring and flew out/fell out of the nest. This one cared a little more about me wanting a picture and tried to fly away. His/her wings still aren't strong enough yet and he/she could only fly a few feet away.

He/She saying get away...or feed me...haha who knows bird talk??I guess the other bird in the nest still might have been wondering where bro/sis went...or he/she could've cared less. Alli and I went to run errands later today and when we came home I found this to my surprise.

The second baby made it out of the nest and was chillin on my rocking chair. Again, this bird could care less that Alli and I were 4 feet from it and making noise. I went inside and put Alli down for the night. When I came back out to water, both babies are now no where to be found. They have spread their wings to fly. :) I thought they were cute and just wanted to share.

Not much going on

2010-07-26T11:19:00.001-07:00

There isn't a whole lot going on at the Smith house lately. Ben is working a ton of hours...like always, bless him! Today he started a 72hr straight run of shifts, off thursday and then works friday...ugh. Alli has her 1 year check up on thursday morning. I can't wait to see how big she is. Maybe dr will tell us its good to put her on whole milk now. I'm tired of messing with formula.

Now that we've had Alli's party, I'm trying to finish up her 1st year scrap book. Here are the most recent pages.

I guess the only other thing going on is that Ben is trying to get through his last three classes as quick as possible. He is so close to getting his associates. He has set a goal and wants nothing more than to achieve it. Hopefully in a month or so he'll be done!!

Pool Party

2010-07-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

I had a feeling Alli's party might start out like this...

Alli doesn't nap well away from home since she and I tend to be home around nap times. So having her party away from home when she still needs naps every 2 hours...well you do the math. Anyway, once daddy or I held her, she was much happier.

She wasn't excited about her cake. This probably had more to do with her mood than the cake. Normally, I think she would have dug right in. Oh well.

Here she is much happier.

Her thinking face...

ooh bows...

oh what is it...what is it...can I eat it?

ahhh the pool. She loves the water.

She's going to be a natural!

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it. Alli loved having you all there!

Alli's One

2010-07-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

Welp....Alli turned one today. So many mixed emotions with seeing her turn one. We didn't do a whole lot today to celebrate...actually we did nothing other than sing her happy birthday. When she is older we will start a birthday tradition, but right now since she isn't old enough to even know what's going on....we didn't do anything. Saturday we will celebrate more with all the family. So she will get to do the traditional cake and gifts....Happy birthday baby girl!! Don't grow up too quick on us.

New Ribbon Sculptures

2010-07-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hey check it out...New ribbon sculptures!!
Turtle
Angel Fish
3D Daisy

I've got more coming...I found some cute cute ideas!

Spice rack transformation

2010-07-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

Here is the original spice rack. Now time for paint.
I pre-drilled holes for my dowel rods that were going to hold the ribbon spools.
Now some black spray paint
Add the dowel rods...
Now all I needed to do was add my ribbon. Easier said than done...the dowel rods were a tight fit, especially with the paint on them. This rack perfectly fit all my ribbons. Isn't it great??!!