Halloween

Yes, I am well aware that I should have posted this two months ago! However, it's better late then never!
Here's was Michelle's second Halloween experience...

I decided to make Michelle's costume this year. We wanted her to go as Pebbles, but all the costumes I could find were, well, ugly! So I bought some fabric and made an outline and here's what I got:

Ok, so it didn't really fit over her head so well so I had to cut the sleeves apart! But, hey, for someone that doesn't sew and that didn't have a pattern I think I did pretty dang good for my first try! My second try came out a little better... at least it fit!

Then we had to practice the hair do... too cute, right?! I love it!

After we got her costume under control we went to a pumpkin patch and let Michelle pick out her very own pumpkin!

Halloween night we decided to skip regular trick-or-treating (Michelle is still a little young for that) and stick to Trunk-or-Treat. Michelle had a great time! We met up with her cousin Clayton and did our best to follow the trunk-or-treat path, but... well, she's only one! We did our best, but only made it to a few choice cars. She got plenty of candy for a one-year-old though! Her favorite part? Believe it or not it was handing the candy out to other kids!

Happy, very late, Halloween everyone!

Thanksgiving 2010

This was our Thanksgiving this year...

Everyone woke up early and headed to the kitchen,

a few insults and jabs were made,

ok, quite a few,

favorite foods were prepared,

games were enjoyed

by all ages!

We played outside,

and inside,

and then we posed for the camera,

and posed some more,

and had a lot of fun posing...

until it finally came out right!

And now that Thanksgiving is over....

It's officially my FAVORITE time of the year!

How do I sign in?

Please help me!

Ok, blogger friends, I need your help! I haven't been able to sign in to blogger since google bought it out! I have to go to Jessica's blog (which is private) and sign in so I can view her blog and then go to my dashboard from there. I can't just go to blogger and sign in. It keeps wanting me to make a google account to sign in. The problem is I already have a google account (That's my e-mail now.) and when I use that to sign in it gives me a whole new blog! Is there a way to either transfer my blog or sign in and still keep this blog?

Thanks for your help!

Day at the Park

Last week Jess and Clayton came down and, since the weather was GORGEOUS, we decided to take advantage of it and went to the park! The kids had a great time~

Michelle, being the OCD little girl that she is, could only play with one rock at a time... but Clayton, being the boy that he is, got right to it and started loading up the slides as fast as he could!




They both had so much fun! Jessica brought her real camera and got some pretty good pics, so hopefully I'll be updating this post with more picture pretty soon. (Yes, these are from my phone!Pretty cool huh?!) And if she forgets to send them to me... well I have a picture of her on the monkey bars that I might accidentally post instead :P !

Mini SD Adaptor

For my birthday last year I got this really cool new phone! This phone is really cool because it's basically a camera that just happens to do all the things a phone can do. It takes better pictures then my actual camera and is way smaller and goes with me everywhere! So, as I'm sure you have already assumed, I take most of my pictures with my phone. The problem with that is that my phone has the tiniest memory card- you have to use an adapter to load your pictures off your phone and onto a computer. So I asked my Pa, "Pa, do we have an adapter that will fit with my memory card?" "Sure." He says. So we look through the huge drawer full of adapters and connecting cords, and chargers and other miscellaneous camera/phone/computer stuff and find one that looks like it fits with my card. "Here ya go!" he says. I try to put my card in the adapter and it won't fit! "Umm, Pa? ...It doesn't fit." I said. "Let me try." He replies. Sure enough neither of us could get it to fit. "Why?" you ask. Well because my SD card is the only card in existence that requires a MINI adapter and not a MICRO adapter. "How do you know this?" you ask? Well, I know this because I have been to Fry's, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target and could not find a MINI adapter. Found lots of micro adapters though! So, being the girl that I am, I put on my best "I'm a girl and don't know what I'm doing" face and headed to the help desk at each of these places where I asked "Do you carry any Mini adapters for this SD card?" (Showing my phone's memory card.) "No, you have to order it straight from Sony. I think they're pretty expensive too. You should probably try to use a micro card instead of a mini we carry those and they're pretty cheap in comparison." Is the basic answer that I got.

We-he-ell! Guess what geeky camera/phone/computer/help desk guys?! Amazon carries them and I just bought one for $4! SO THERE!

Moral of this story? Never accept the first, second, third, or fourth answer you get. Keep trying until you're happy with your response!

Oh, and the point? - Picture will be coming in 3 to 5 business days!

It's Football season!

It's finally football season again! And, for those of you who don't know me, that's doesn't usually mean a whole lot. (Get ready to boo and hiss) I'm not a Cowboys fan or really any other football team's fan either. BUT- my daughter is!

Last week we went to the Plano East Senior High football game. Katie is finally a junior and the band has a great show this year! She's super excited about it and even gets to march with her piccolo instead of flute! This is a state year for East too so that makes it just that much more exciting. Anyway- We (Bryan, Michelle and I) went to the game with my Mom, Dad, Jess, Ben and Clayton. The kids had a blast! Michelle totally got into the game too! These are a few of the pics that Jess sent me (I was a bad mom and forgot my camera)...

"See Clayton, like this...Touchdown!"

"Hey Ref! What are you looking at?! That's holding!"

"Thanks for sharing your popcorn with me Clayton! Sorry, I'm pretty sure I ate almost all of it all by myself!"

TOUCH DOWN EAST!!

Like I said, Michelle had a blast! We'll definitely be back for as many home games as we can!

Cows, Puppies, and Perseid

Last night Bryan and I went on one of the best dates we've been on in a long time! We put Michelle to bed, grabbed a few snacks, loaded up on the bug spray, and headed out towards Leonard.

About a month ago I was reading a magazine article about inexpensive and romantic dates. One of the things they suggested was cuddling up with your spouse under the stars and watching a meteor shower. Knowing that Bryan is really big into space and stars and whatnot I thought it would be a good date idea for us. The only problem is that you can't see any stars in Plano because of the city lights. So I looked up when the next meteor shower was going to be and found out that the Perseid Meteor Shower was going to hit it's peak on August 12 around 3 am. So I put it on the calendar and told Bryan to start scouting out good places where we would be able to actually see the stars. He immediately suggested we go out towards Jessica's house in "Hooterville", and just like that an amazing date was planned.

I did my research and found out a bunch of really cool stuff about this particular shower; and tried to memorize as much of it as I could so I could impress Bryan. It turns out that he had done the same thing and already knew most of the things I found out. But he was a gentleman and let me "impress" him with all my knowledge before he admitted to knowing it all already.

It was a really good shower! The shooting stars came in bursts, or clumps. We would see three or four stream by all at once, and then have to wait a few minutes before we saw another group. It was so beautiful though. And I think the cows and the puppies on the farm we were next to were watching them too! Every time a group of stars would fly by the cows would start mooing and the dogs would start barking. They would quiet down after a minute, but it was pretty funny. Bryan tried his hand (or mouth) at trying to communicate with them, and was convinced that he could "speak cow" because they would usually moo back at him. Eventually I made him stop because it sounded like the cows were coming closer to our car and... well it kinda freaked me out!

I tried to take a few pictures, but my camera just isn't that cool so they all came out looking like bubbles and dark splashes. But I looked on-line and found a few people who had night cameras that got some pretty good pictures.




It was such a great date! I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to do something romantic, fun and cheap. The next really good meteor shower is supposed to be in December. Bryan and I already have the date booked and can't wait to go visit our cow and puppy friends and watch the stars fall!

What do we do when Daddy is home?

It's a Blogging Miracle

Yesterday I completely ruined my blog! I went into the new design portion of blogger and was playing around with the backgrounds when I realized that there was no way I could get back to the minima setting! And, as most bloggers know, you can't have a custom background without that setting! I was totally bummed and has resigned to having an ugly blog for the rest of my blogging life. HOWEVER! This morning I got an answer to my prayers! For anyone who has messed up their blog in the same way I messed up mine go to The Background Fair's website! She figured out how to get back to minima and she has a lot of cute, and free, backgrounds and headers. As a tribute to her saving my blog I have used a background and a header that she made. Thank you Thank you to the Background Fairy!

I broke my blog!

As you might have noticed not only has my background changed, but my cool fonts have all disapeared. Here's what happened:
I was looking around the blogger website and noticed that there was a new "design" feature. So I decided to play around with it a little and see what it did. Well, as a warning to everyone who has not played with this feature yet- THERE IS NO UNDO! And to make things worse, the Minima setting that almost every blog template requires, is no longer an option! So not only can I not go back to the background I had before, I'm now limited to the backgrounds that blogger provides because I can't set it to the basic settings!
Has anyone else had this problem? Were you able to fix it? I'm totaly bummed, but I feel like an hour and a half spent trying to fix it, without any results, is way too long! What do I do?!

Best Sunday EVER

Today was a really great day! It didn't start out too great, but it turned out to be pretty amazing. So here's how it went down:
Michelle woke up at 5:00. I got up and rocked her back to sleep, and then went back to bed myself. Michelle woke up again at 5:30. I decided to let her fuss for a minute and she went back to sleep. Michelle woke up again at 6:00. And again at 6:15, and one last time at 6:30. I oh so happily threw off the covers and gently reminded Michelle that we don't wake up until 7:00 at the earliest! Bryan, also annoyed with Michelle, got up and let the dogs out. I proceeded to bring Michelle back into my bed in one last, desperate, attempt to get her to sleep just a little longer. Michelle found this to be the perfect opportunity to jump, roll, fall, and bounce on Mommy and Daddy's "big" bed. So we got up and started our morning routine (see previous post titled It Used to be Fun). While Michelle ate breakfast I finished my lesson and put together my handouts.
**Speaking of which- does anyone know how to post a word document into your blog? I've seen a few people do it, but I can't figure it out! The reason I bring this up is because it has been suggested to me a few times that I start posting my lesson's and handouts through Sugardoodle or through my blog, but I'm not really sure how to do either!
Anyway, Michelle went down for her nap pretty early since she woke up pretty early. This gave me time to work on another church project. I put together a Spiritual Thought kit for the Young Women. It turned out really well. I was very pleased, and would love to share it with everyone, but, again, I don't know how! I then worked on a few things for my Beehives and made reminder calls. Michelle woke up and BAM whole new baby! She was sweet and fun and just too cute for the rest of the day! From then on the day just kept getting better! WE actually made it to church on time, and when we got there we got to sit next to Jessica and Clayton! They came down from Bonham to go to church with us. Well, they actually came down to see my dad be set apart as a high priest, but what ev! Thanks to Clayton being at church Michelle had one of the best days at church that she has ever had. She was entertained and had lots of fun all three hours! During the third hour I taught the YW lesson on Agency. It went really well. I was a little bummed because right at the beginning of my lesson my Mom, Katie, and Jess all had to leave to go see Dad be set apart, but I didn't get to go. I heard that it went really well and I'm proud of my Dad for his "upgrade" in the priesthood, but I wish I could have been there. ANYWHO! After my lesson I had three girls tell me how much they liked it and I even had a teacher ask me for a copy of all my stuff so she could use it as a FHE lesson! I was so proud of myself! Then I came home and put Michelle down for her second nap- she was pooped! We had a great dinner and got to spend more time with Jess and Clayton. Michelle loves her cousin so much; they always have so much fun screaming and chasing and just being together. After dinner Jess gave me her Brownie Cookie recipe and, I have to say, I did a pretty dang good job replicating her cookies! Half of them were gone before I could even finish baking. Around 7:30 Jess and Clayton had to leave and it was time for Michelle to take a tub. Bryan took her upstairs and played with her and washed her while I got to sit here and blog away! Lots of family time, good church meetings, a great lesson, a happy baby, time to relax and a loving husband- Like I said, Best Sunday Ever!

Michelle's Update

Michelle is super busy these days. We have been working hard on using our words, and Michelle is doing great! If you ask her, "What does that cow say?" she'll reply "mooo". She also knows that the sheep says "ba", the lion says "roar", the puppy says "ruff, ruff, ruff" and as for the pig, well he grunts! When she wants something she will say "Please", which, by the way, melts my heart! I have a very hard time saying no to anything she wants when she looks up at me so sweetly raises her little hand and in her small little voice asks, "Please?" She also knows how to say "no, no, no." but I don't think she fully understands what it means. Or if she does understand then she is a lot smarter then we thought! She always says "night, night" at bed time, and "hi" when someone walks in the door. She's just so stinking smart it kills me! Oh, and if you ask her: "Michelle, are you a baby wookie?" She'll make the noise (baby girl version, of course) that Chewbacca makes from Star Wars! Daddy taught her that one.

Michelle is getting so fun to dress up! She'll be very patient while I try a bunch of different outfits on her. She will usually make it to outfit number four before she starts protesting. And thanks to her grandparents and a Daddy that lets her Mommy go shopping for her, she has lots of clothes to go through!

OH- and just a word of warning: Michelle will sit with me and blog stalk after she wakes up from her nap. She usually finds one or two pictures that she just has to keep looking at so we have put together a book for her. You may notice, in the picture above, that the two photos she is looking at are from my sisters blog. So, we are no longer just blog stalkers, we are also photo stealers... sorry!

Michelle is her fathers daughter! Every morning she gets something to eat, gets comfortable and watches TV until she feels awake enough to play. She normally does this with a bagel, waffle, or cereal, but Daddy was home and made an executive decision to allow a box of raisins for breakfast! And it's always the same shows: Clifford, then her favorite, Dragon Tales, and if she's still interested after that Curious George.

She had her very first pedicure the other day. She did a great job of picking her color, sitting in daddy's lap and holding very still while I painted her toes. After she was all done she helped me blow on them so they would dry faster and then walked all around the hose showing everyone her "pretty piggies"!

Michelle is still a big reader. Her Aunt Jessica made a book box for her that she uses every day! She will sit a read for a long time, and then bring me a book or two to read to her. Love this girl!

It used to be fun

Do you ever feel like updating your blog is just too much work? I used to love sitting at the computer to update and load new pictures and tell my stories, but now... it just seems like a lot of work! I made this baby book for Michelle two months ago and that took up almost all of my free time. So instead of blogging I was "blurbing" (that's the program I used for Michelle's book). After I finished that Bryan got me hooked on this book series that he has read a few times. So, again, instead of blogging I was relaxing and reading. Well, I just recently finished the series and have found myself avoiding my blog. I haven't uploaded any pictures in a long time so that's going to take a while to get organized. Plus I haven't updated in a long time so I'm not even sure where to start. Do you know how many posts it would take to get this blog caught back up? And on top of all that- I'm really not that exciting right now. There's not a whole lot that I find blog worthy. Here's my life in a nut shell:

Sometime between 6 and 8 I wake up and get Michelle out of bed. We snuggle and play on my bed for about 15min and then make our way to the bathroom where Michelle has discovered the joy of unrolling the toilet paper and flushing the toilet over and over. In a few months we might try getting her a little potty of her own- I'm thinking Christmas or Valentines Day. Anyway, we then go back to the bedroom to get a fresh diaper and a bow for her crazy hair. Then we go to the kitchen and get some breakfast. We watch Dragon Tales and a little bit of Curious George while we play with some toys. Then it's nap time. At this point it's about 9:30 or 10:00 and Michelle is able to tell me she's ready for a nap by picking out a few books and bringing them to me. We read our books, cuddle in the glider and then lay down for an hour. Around 11:00 we wake up and have some lunch. Then it's back to playing with toys and reading books. Michelle also has a new found fondness for throwing things in the trash so I usually do 3 to 4 toy rescues through out the day. We play and clean up and play some more until 2 or 3 when it's time for nap number 2. Again, we pick a few book, read, cuddle and rock, and she naps for an hour. While Michelle is napping I'm cleaning up, blog stocking, watching TV, and if it's been a particularly hard day with Michelle, enjoying some Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream. Michelle wakes up and will cuddle with me for the next 30 min or so while she gets all her sleepyness out. Then Bryan comes home and all heck breaks loose! Michelle loves to be chased and Bryan loves to do the chasing! She screams and runs and laughs; it's the cutest thing EVER! Then we have dinner some time between 6 and 7. At 7:30ish it's time for a bath. Bryan is nice enough to give Michelle her bath every night so I can "relax". However, I've decided that I need to try to be a better wife and so I spend that time getting his clothes ready for the next day and packing him a breakfast/lunch so he doesn't have to eat at the cafeteria. By 8 Michelle is out of the tub and ready to get into jammies. We get her dressed, say night night to everyone who is around, pick two books (plus The Going to Bed Book which we always read at bed time!) and head the the bedroom for more reading, cuddling, rocking and finally sleeping! Once Michelle is down Bryan and I try to spend a little time together. Then between 10 and 11 we join Michelle in the bedroom and go to sleep ourselves. Ta-Da. That's my life- everyday, it's incredibly unblog-worthy, but there it is!

So you see, I have very little drive to sit down and blog about much of anything. Then toady I went to Tawna's blog and watched a video from LDS.org... I've decided that I'm going to start blogging again because, while I might not see it now, I have worth and my life does too. So, here's to trying to make it fun again!

Pictures I didn't post about

Ok, so these are all pictures that I have a story for, but just didn't find the time to post them. They loaded backwards, but for this post it doesn't really matter. Just know that the last picture is really the oldest and the first on is the most recent. So here's the short version on each-

Michelle got a big girl bed!

She has become quite the little tornado!

Michelle likes to play Wii Fit... as long as no one is looking!

YUM- her first popsicle by the pool!

We have a walker!

How cute is she?! (I'm talking about Michelle, of course) She did a great job at her first YW activity!

Time to babyproof the house!

The girl loves to swim.

We braved all the bees and took bluebonnet pictures.