My first try...

All I had to say last night was FREAKIN' A. ..  I'M KNITTING.

John laughed and laughed.

I'm pretty proud of myself...can you tell?

Fever...

Baby girl's first fever...103.2 taken under her arm (which you raise one degree to be closer to accurate....)  She's had it almost a full day...we go see the doctor today.  I don't like my little girl being sick, but you know...she still is giggly and smiles and plays...even if she's a little droopy. 

Poor little girl.  :(

Twighlight Zone...."The floating baby"

Oh...what is daddy going to do?

Just getting ready to toss her up in the air...

Up in the air she goes...

Aaaaaah...she didn't come down!

Do do do do do do do do....freaaaaaakkkkkyyyyy.....

Day in the Life...

Some of my favorite people are those that I've never met in person.  I've never spoken to on the phone and I've only seen a few photos of via online methods...and yet I feel like I know them better than those that I see every day. 

Recently my online friends and I decided to do a day in the life (DITL) to become better acquainted with what real life consists of.  I chose October 21st as my DITL.  I had a lot of fun documenting my moves throughout the day and while last Wednesday was just an ordinary day...I thought I'd post it out here for those of you who might be curious...

Welcome to a day in the life of ...

Good morning!

John took the clock picture when the alarm went off...I was hiding under the covers...he always gets up and gets ready first so I get at least another 20 minutes of sleep before he leaves for his Army PT (Physical Training) - When he's done getting ready he sneaks this next photo as he kisses me goodbye. This is how I know its time for me to wake up. If I don't get up before the girls wake up I don't get a chance to shower until after 9AM!

At 7AM on the dot Maddie wakes up and Bella starts to stir. Its amazing how regular their body cycles are... good morning from Maddie! She is sitting on one of the "loaner" beds that we are still using.  I'm glad the Army lets us borrow them for so long...we should be getting her real furniture, toys, books and clothes in just a week or two!

Bella starts hollering so I sneak in to take her morning picture - Good morning!

We all head downstairs after getting dressed so I can make some breakfast. Maddie unloads the dishwasher for me every morning as a standard chore.

I give Bella some cheese while she waits for breakfast to be made...she's so hungry in the mornings that if I don't give her something to eat immediately she gets really upset.

John comes home from PT just in time to eat some breakfast with the girls and I finish making Maddie's lunch so she can leave for school as soon as she's done. I like to make different pictures on her bag every day and a note inside to help her to remember to have a good day. With Halloween so close her bag tends to be spook oriented.

8:10AM - Maddie leaves for school

And John leaves for work...

Bella goes into the living room that doubles as her play area for the last 15 minutes of sesame street. She loves the puppets...

and that gives me a chance to eat my breakfast. Peaches today. YUMMY...with just a touch of cinnamon.

Bella is playing quietly by herself so I use that as my chance to fix my hair...rollers today.

Rollers take so little time that within 5 minutes I'm done!

Bella and I spent the next 30 minutes playing in the living room. She was all about tongues this morning...see her staring at my mouth waiting for me to stick out my tonugue again?

At 9:45AM we head out the door to go to story time at the library. Its soooo cold outside. I bundled up Bella in her winter coat and mittens and a big fleece blanket.

Bella is the youngest participant in Story time so we stay in the back and she mostly crawls around and looks at the books on the shelves. The librarians just adore her...she's got full reign of the library and they let her go wherever she wants. Today our librarian Andrea is reading a story called Library Mouse. Its a super cute story.

At 11AM we head back home and take the "long way" so we can walk by our favorite spots. One is our mushroom forest. Almost all of the mushrooms were kicked over ...I only found one that was still in good enough shape to take a photo.

We also made sure we could crunch through the autumn leaves as we walked back home.

We're home! Ours is the one with the flag out front. You gotta love Army row housing.

Even though its way past her normal naptime - I feed Bella lunch first so she'll sleep well. She has sweet potatoes and I have leftover spaghetti from dinner last night and a carrot with some ranch dressing.

When we're done I head upstairs and put Bella down for her nap. She is OUT in about 3 seconds.

John and his coworker/our friend - Ed - surprise me by coming to our house for lunch. I wasn't expecting them so I feed them leftover spaghetti too...we sit and chat until 1:00. Back to work they go and I sit down to type up the morning of my DITL.

Within a few minutes of finishing the morning post Bella woke up from her nap. I could hear her through the monitor making splurbert sounds so I went upstairs and peeked in her door...unfortunately my stealth moves weren't great and she heard me and gave me this great smile...

We played down in the living room rolling balls around the floor and at 2:35 Maddie arrived at home...I could tell immediately it hadn't been a stellar day at school...can you?

Sure enough...she's gotten in trouble for being chatty, but nothing major. I gave the girls their afternoon snack - Maddie wanted carrots and goldfish and Bella had some pears and goldfish.

Normally I have the car on Wednesdays, but John needed it to take Ed back to work (he had knee surgery recently) so he arrived home while the girls were snacking to drop off the car so we could go to Amberg and shop for a b-day this saturday. Amberg is only about 20-25 minutes away and is a fairly big town.

As we were driving we passed the actual city of Vilseck so I snapped an "out the window while driving" photo.

We ended up at ROFU a kinder store that one of the librarians had recommended to me.

They were stacking the shelves so there wasn't a whole lot there that I was impressed with. We ended up finding Bella's new winter hat, a pair of great winter stockings with a puppy bum (she loves puppies) for the little birthday girl and a squeaker toy. We also found some halloween stuff in this store...it was a tiny section that I'm sure was put together just for the Americans that shop there...but it finished all our halloween shopping so I was happy about it!

We headed home at 5PM and traffic was so bad that we didn't make it home until 6PM! Most of it was while we were in the city of Amberg.

Once we hit the backroads we decided we just had to stop and get a picture of the sunset...it was beautiful tonight!

When we got home John (who had promised me he'd handle dinner so we could shop ) had gotten sidetracked with his Mafia Wars game on Facebook and didn't have anything ready... In his defense he did have sushi rice cooking and some veggies cut up so I guess we could say he was overzealous for dinner and because his selection of dinner was going to take another hour to complete, our typical DITL became not so typical and we went fast food for the second time since moving here in May. I hate fast food...but it worked for tonight as we were all starving. Thus...dinner a la Burger King.

Then DITL went typical again as I am a clutz and I spill on something I'm wearing every day. I was lucky that today it was at the end of the day.

After dinner, Maddie decided to create some drama herself and got in trouble from her dad and was sent to bed early...right after dinner at 6:45PM. She was NOT happy about it...

I stuck Bella in the bathtub for a quick scrubdown and some intense splash time. She was so darn cute.

After bathtub time we played blubber tummy. It makes her laugh so hard. Its one of our favorite games.

When she was all ready for bed, we read a story and then I snuggled her a little bit before heading up to her room to put her in her crib.

Ahhhhh....my day is mostly done. Just a few dishes to clean up (nothing too much since it was BK for dinner) and the living room to straighten and I'm headed upstairs to read my book for an hour...right after I post the last of these pictures... Thanks for sharing my day with me!

To knit or not to knit...

Its my newest crafting craze...my newest goal.

I will learn to knit.

Why - you ask....

Check out my ex-coworker's blog.  He and his friend started it together and post some of their cool designs...
http://blog.splendorknitting.com/

After seeing the great things they've been doing I decided I HAD to learn how to knit so I could make something even half as cool.

And just as a preview...


My stepdad recently came down with Swine Flu - I bet he wished he'd been wearing a mask like this... 

And I'd like to warn my family that next Christmas (as in a year and 2 months from now) you will all be receiving a viking hat.  Tell me thats not the funnest winter headgear you've ever seen?

11 months - where did they go?

October 13, 2009 Miss Bella Larson turned 11 months old.  While her parents don't like to brag...ok...they really do like to brag - she's known around town as the sweetest little munchie around.

This month she has learned to stand all by herself for about 3-5 seconds before she lowers herself to the ground (yes...using only leg muscle and not holding onto anything!)  She is so close to walking...it makes us sad...it means she's growing up...and in a month from now she'll be a YEAR old!

She's weighing in around 20 pounds.  The formula has fattened her right up.  Her hair is a beautiful silky blond with highlights and lowlights naturally woven in.  She's still got just her two bottom teeth, but has become quite adept at breaking up food with them. 

She loves ELMO...actually, all the sesame street puppets.  She loves music and does quite the little bum bounce dance when the tunes are playing.  She is practicing her laugh and so at odd times you may hear a baby voice hee hee hee ing around the house.

She's a word mimic.  We're working on TaDum!  We chose that word because she currently says dumdum quite well....usually after daddy...so we'll often hear either daddeee dumdum or daddeee pbtttttt.  Its quite hilarious...at least mama thinks so.

She loves her stroller rides and felt her first drops of snow yesterday...they were teensy tiny...but we've got bigger flakes coming down today and we'll take another walk in it.

She makes her first animal noise - its Pbtttttttsblptttt when you ask her what an elephant says.  Its adorable and has won the hearts of all the librarians.  (there is a rug in the library that has an elephant on it...)  She waves hello and bye bye....when she feels like it.  And can spend 20 minutes turning herself around in circles.  We're not sure what thats all about, maybe she just likes feeling dizzy?

She's got her mama's errr....more challenging traits of a stubborn personality and the best scowl ever.  Of course it just endears her to us all the more...and yes, I may eat my words when she's a teenager.

Simply said...she's the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me...and I love her more every day.