Kissing Grandma!

Anna loves to kiss her grandma. It is the funniest thing because Dixie is the only one that Anna kisses on. They will just be sitting there or Dixie will be holding her and Anna will grab hold of Grandma's face with both hands and just plant one (or five) on her. She wiggles her little head around like she is making sure the kiss really sticks! It is so cute and just cracks us up! I was excited to finally get some pictures of it. They will even go back and forth. Anna will kiss Grandma and then Dixie will kiss Anna, then it is Anna's turn again. I think part of the funny part is that is actually tickles Dixie a little bit, so Anna can really get her laughing.

And because I had a few people tell me
they would like to see this picture bigger,
I am putting it on here again. Enjoy!

Not 30, Nope Not Yet!

But oh so close! Neil had his 29th birthday this last weekend. We had a ton of fun. There were so many people we wanted to invite, we had to spread it out over more than one night. And we still didn't get to fit everyone. I guess our new home isn't as big as we hoped! :) It was nice to have a nice kitchen to cook in and I love the bar, because people can sit and talk to you while I am getting stuff ready. We really need some taller bar stools though. The ones we have are a might bit short. But better than nothing.

I made Neil a camo cake for his birthday and put a turkey feather on a arrow going through his candles. It turned out really cute. 
I am really looking forward to doing bar-be-ques this summer.(On a side note I think I figured out how I want to theme Anna's first birthday party, but it is still under construction in my head. Is it too early to be thinking about that?)            

Anna got to meet her Aunt Martha for the first time this weekend too. She is Neil's dad's sister and she lives in Arkansas. It was so nice to finally get together with her. She loves to love on the babies in the family and it is so cute to see her loving on Anna. Apparently Anna even has her feet.

We also got to take a cousin picture. Almost all of Anna's cousins were here. We were just missing Curtiss and Craig, they live in Arkansas too. We had them all pile on our new bed and I just snapped away. I love little Anna's face in this picture. And lets admit it she is the one I am most interested in. I mean isn't everyone? 

So I know that you want to see pictures of the house so here you go. Here is one of the kitchen and the dining room. A view of the living room from the front door and of course the cutest room in our house, Anna's room. It is not done yet,  I still want to do some painting in there, but the bedding is all done (thanks to Dixie!) And then there is a cute picture of Anna just to finish things off nicely. Enjoy!

I mean look at how cute she is! She is loving her new room! 

It is so much fun to watch her play in there. She is sitting pretty good now.

Still a little wobbly!

What A Mess!!!

Have you ever heard a baby laugh? Just out and out chuckle? I think it is the best sound ever! Neil can get Anna really going some times. It is so sweet.
Well, I know that you have all been wondering at my lack of posts, and I am sorry. I am actually using Dixie's internet right now. We still don't have ours set up. We do have phone now though, which is nice. We got such crappy cell service at our house!
So we are moved into our house and there are boxes everywhere right now. I am hoping to get it some what cleaned up by this weekend for Neil's birthday! He is going to be 29 on Saturday. It is so strange to think I have known him for 13 years. And I love him more today than I ever thought possible. He is such a great husband.
It has been fun watching him be a Dad. When Anna was first born I think he had a hard time relating to her, because all she did was sleep and eat (and that was all me.) But know that she is babbling and laughing and playing, he has really starting enjoying her. It is so cute to she her light up when he walks by. And it is even cuter for me to see him smile back.
Well, I will post pictures of our cute house when I get interenet again. Hopefully that will only be a few days.

Tata for now.

Gees Mom! I'm playing here!

I just love this picture, because I think I will be seeing this face a lot in my life. I have so much fun taking her picture and I have a feeling she might get tired of it some day. But in the mean time, I will be snapping away!

Well, in case you have not heard, Anna is home. We got to go home on Monday. She was in there for 7 days. She tested positive for RSV. Which is basically a really bad cold, but for kids under 2 it can be really bad. Basically she had a really hard time breathing, and they had her on oxygen for 6 days. We still have to do breathing treatments for a few weeks, but she is much better!! Here are a couple of more pictures from our trip to the hospital. Daddy always makes so many things better. She was sleeping so hard while he was holding her! So cute. And check out those cute bunny slippers. You've got to have your slippers when your sick! The second pictures is during one of her treatments.
She actually is a much happier baby since we got home. She used to be a very calm and passive baby, but now she laughs a lot and smiles all the time. And she can cry at the drop of a hat! She is much moodier, which I just think is so strange! I wonder if this is a permanent change.

She had her first bite of potatoes on Wednesday. She LOVED them. It was fun to watch her face. She is also sitting pretty good now. Still a little wobbly, but she is getting closer.

Update on Anna's Hospital Stay

Well, this week has not gone at all how I thought it would when it started on Monday. On Friday last week Anna had a crazy cough, but that was nothing new (she has had some sot of cough since Thanksgiving) On Saturday night she got a small fever and coughed so bad she started throwing up. So Sunday morning I called her doctor. He said that I should feel free to take her to the ER and if they thought she needed anything they would call him. Well, I decided to let her rest all day on Sunday. We didn’t go anywhere or do anything except eat and sleep. She seemed to be doing so much better that night. So Monday we went back to life a little bit. We are so close to finishing the house! Monday night went ok, but she woke up a lot.
Tuesday morning she was so lethargic. Totally unresponsive and didn’t care about anything. It was so sad. So I called the doctor as soon as they opened. I said, “My baby doesn’t feel good and I would like to see the doctor.” “Okay, I have a 10:45.” “I’ll be there”. Click
Well, needless to say he admitted us in to the hospital. I realize I am such a nerd. But this was a little stupid. When the doctor said that she needed to be on oxygen, I thought okay great! That’s easy. I’ll go to the hospital, they’ll put a mask on her, she’ll breath and we’ll leave. 3 hours tops. Well, 4 days later we are still here!
I swear I am going to gain 20 pounds being here. All I do is sit and eat and watch Anna sleep. I am loving all the goodies I am getting, but I swear if I leave here and weigh more I am going to be mad! The hospital food is surprisingly good.
As of Friday night they still don’t know when we can go home. It all depends on when Anna can breath on her own again. They keep trying to wean her down, but every time we get to a 1/2 a liter she just can’t hold it. So we wait. I told Anna if she stays sick long enough maybe we will have a house to take her home to. Poor Neil is working so hard on the house. And since I am here he is making all the decisions on lighting fixtures and carpet and tile. So when I get to go see it again it is going to be such a surprise! Neil brought Anna flowers tonight. They are so pink and pretty. She seemed to really like to look at them. It was so cute and the little card actually made me get a little teary eyed!
She has been really great today. She has been interested on what is going on around her and talking (complaining) to her nurses. And her color is pink again. She is so cute! The nurses have been really great and our stay has been mostly comfortable. She looks so sad with all these cords coming off of her. I am glad that she is not mobile yet. She just lets me hold her or sleeps.
I am REALLY BUMBED that Anna and I are going to miss Emily’s first birthday party. It is going to be so cute and I can not believe I am going to miss that cute hat on her head!
They said that Anna will be contagious for at least four days even after we get to go home. Well, if you made it to the end of these post congratulations. This is even the short version of what has happened.
Thank you to everyone that has called or come by to check on us. I have really appreciated the contact with the outside world. I just wanted to give everyone an update and to say THANK YOU so much for praying for us. I know that it has given me peace to just let Anna heal. I also thought you might like to see some pictures of my sad little girl.

A Little Word I Like to Use Called "Tada"!

I am loving my macbook. One of the things I really think is neat is that it has a built in camera (and we all know I like my camera!) I have posted several movies before, much to my audiences' viewing pleasure! Well, I was going through all the movies I took during Christmas and I came across this little gem! (Does anyone see where this is going? Jennifer?) I thought that it was lost forever, but I found it, just sitting waiting for me. Now this is a pretty short clip, mostly because it was rudely cute short at the time of filming. But there is a lot to see, so you will probably have to watch it more than once. Make sure you watch what EVERYONE is doing at least once! Let me just end by saying I love being a part of this family!

The end of an Era!

Does this quailfy as an era? Well, . . .my blog! I am calling it an era.

Since we are living in such a tiny little place, Anna has been sleeping in a bassinet since she was born. Well, I think 5 1/2 months is the max for her. And really it is pretty insane that she has made it this long. It is a pretty small bassinet. She has been sleeping great since she was about a month and a half old. But no more. This past week every morning at 2:30 and 3:30 and 4:30 she is waking up all fussy. Then she sleeps great until 7:00 ( The cat meows to get out at 5:30!) I am pretty sure she is killing me slowly. So Neil and I are going to have to find a new spot for her in the trailer. I'm not really sure how that is going to work, but I can tell you this is not! I don't know how families with more than one kid and kids that move can keep their sanity. I have people tell me all the time, "Oh yeah we lived in a trailer while we built." I don't know how. And basically all we do in there is sleep. But not well! At least not this week!
Here is a real cute picture of Anna. I took this for Valentin's Day. Isn't she so pretty! I just love her laugh and smile. It is so adorable!

Here is a picture of the kitchen area with the cabinets in. The counter tops are not on yet, but you can get a little idea of how it looks. And you can see the plant shelf above the kitchen too. We have some real cute pendant lights that will hang at the edge of the plant shelf. And I am ordering a real cute lamp today to put up there. I think I am going to try and make it look kind of like a library up there. Put a small bookshelf and globes and maps. I think that will look really good. I could be wrong though. I am not that fabulous of a decorator, so we will see.

1-800-ASK-ZACK

Well, sorry for the lack of posts. My computer has been giving me grief and apparently it needed an update. So I took it to my computer guy. You know, 1-800-ask-zack. It's nice when someone really enjoys what they do. It's a pretty good spot, and nice prices! :) They even do house calls! :)

We have been crazy busy on the house. It is getting harder to be patcient now that we are getting closer to being done. We still have so much to do, but it is really starting to look like a house on the inside. The interior paint is done (except for a little touch up) and Neil started laying the tile. It is his first time to do tile so we will see how much more he wants to do after he is done with the hall bath. So far it looks pretty good. I am trying to talk him into pink grout!

By the way did you know that there is a correct order to paint in and a VERY INCORRECT order! The painting took so much longer than it should have. We painted the ceiling first and then we were going to paint the walls. Well, I don't know why, but when we got to that stage we hit a wall. I could have hit a wall! Apparently we were supposed to start with the trim, the thing we were going to paint last! So after about three days of just staring, we finally decided to start over and pretend that we had painted nothing. We painted the trim and then taped it off completely! and then we painted the walls and taped them off completely and then we painted the ceiling again. It was kind of crazy but it does look really good. We still have some hand painting to do, but we are both avoiding that! :)

This is a picture of all the walls and trim taped off. It took us a whole day just to do the taping. But once we did start over and did stuff in the right order, things went so much smoother!

Anna went to her first tea party! It was very cute. She just watched the girls run around and get all dressed up and Bella was the perfect little hosttest. It was really fun to watch. I think the adults standing around had as much fun as the girls.

Our cabinets went in this week too. I will put some pictures up when I have pictures of the stucco.

Hanging out on Mama!

So I found a great way to get some exercise on Tuesday. Strap 14 pounds of wiggly weight to your back and then caulk base boards.

Neil had to help me up more than once! It was pretty funny though, me going up and down. What was really funny is when I would bend low to the ground Anna would look like a turtle on his back, her arms would fling around in the air and she would wiggle all around. Every time she would get real fussy I would have to walk over to Neil so he could fix the problem because I couldn't see her at all. After a while when she had been quiet for some time I asked Neil what she was doing, and he said she was completely out! I don't know how she fell asleep that way but she did! I was surprised her arms and legs didn't fall asleep! We took her off my back and laid her down in her play yard and she slept for hours. I feel so bad for her laying in her play yard all the time just looking at a very boring white roof! Someday soon her nursery will be cute! I SWEAR!!! ok really I hope!

What a Big Night!

We had a big night last night! A few weeks ago Anna reached out for her Bunny but she just swatted at him and then forgot why her hand was out there. Well, last night Anna reached out for Duck and grabbed hold of him! It was a big moment in our family. It was so cute because Neil was so excited for her. When we got home I filmed her for a few minutes and got this little clip.


Tomorrow my little Missy Moo will be 4 months old. I have loved every second of it. Well, no that is a lie. Every second has not been easy, but I do love her more and more every day. She is such an angel. How do you thank the Lord for a miracle you don't deserve?

Just Stuff

Well our house looks lot different then it did when we broke ground on Oct 30th. It is starting to really look and feel like a house inside. Except that it is freezing!!! Neil and some of his freinds worked all last week to put the trim on. It looks nice, but the thing I love the most are the space saver closets. It is going to be wonderful having shelves in my closets!!!! We have a garage door on the house now, so it looks even more like a house when you drive up. Neil is hoping we will get the color coat of the stucco on this week. We still have several time consuming things to do, like chocking miles and miles of trim, painting and laying the tile. That is something we have never done before so it should be interesting to see how well that comes out.

Here is a CUTE picture of Anna in one of her Christmas presents. She is really starting to talk and jibber a lot. It is so fun to listen to her. And she started to reach out for her toys, but she usually just swats at them and doesn't grab hold yet. She doesn't hand out her smiles very often, but when you get one it is so sweet! Gosh I just love this kid! But I mean really how can you not?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all!!! We hope you had a great day and enjoyed those you were near!

Neil and I had a great time pretending Anna cared what went on around her! :) We started with spending Christmas Eve with James and Erica (and baby!) Erica made Anna the cutest pink camo stocking. And then we just relaxed and watched Monday Night Football.
Christmas morning started early with Anna getting a baby sized Radio Flyer wagon from Neil and I. Then we went to my parents to spend the morning and have dinner. It was actually a pretty calm time. We all just ate and talked, mostly about our cousin Shane and his wife Tina, because we found out at 9:00 am that she had gone into labor. I wanted to rush down to the hospital so badly but we didn't know what was happening so we waited. She had to have a c- section which she was really sad about. But their handsome baby BOY was born at 12:26. In case you didn't know, their doctor told them they would be having a girl!

We spent Christmas Night at Jed and Jennifer's eating more food and playing games. And of course opening presents. The whole day was a ton of fun and I have no idea where I am going to put our goodies until we get our house done. I told Neil on the way home from Jenn's that we should just go straight to the storage unit! :)

Neil and I got to meet the baby Wednesday Morning. Tina was feeling okay but after any surgery there is always some recovery time. The baby is soooo handsome! and so tiny! I didn't think Anna had grown that much , but I have to admit she is not my tiny little baby anymore!!Can't wait to see you all in the new year!!!

Bell Ringers?

Or a plot to take over Earth? You decide!

This is a very good example of why you take your camera every where with you. Because if you don't have it you have to go home and get it! And then you feel kind of like a dork driving up and rolling down your window with Darth Vader watching you.

I was shopping at Wal-Mart yesterday and while I was loading my goodies I heard someone start to ring a bell. I looked up and saw three Storm Troopers standing there!!! And while I was watching Darth Vader walked out of the store!!! It was so cool! I kind of wanted to get my picture taken with them. But I had to remember this is Redding, not Disneyland!!

I wonder if they got more or less donation because of it? I could see people thinking its cool, but Darth Vader can be a little intimidating! plus Storm Troopers with weapons!

So has anyone else seen some cool or interesting bell ringers this year?

What! No Lime Sauce!?!

Well, it is the end of an era. Taco Bell no longer makes their lime sauce. It has instead been replaced with some avocado sauce. A couple of weeks ago Neil and I went to Taco Bell and he got a grilled steak stuffed burrito. It was so good I decided to finally get my own last night. Well, I went to order and when I said "add lime sauce please" the little lady said "I'm sorry we no longer make that!" Well, I said "That's just sad!" So I got the burrito anyway. And I must say it is NO GOOD!!

One of the Many Reasons We Love Hope

Brenda had me bring my laptop to Starbucks Friday morning so that we could transfer pictures between the two computers from Thanksgiving and Tree Cutting. It is so neat to be able to hook up the two computers together and just hit a few buttons. So after we were done transferrng pictures Heather wanted to see them. We turned Brenda's computer around and Heather and Hope watched them. It is so much fun to watch Hope while she is looking at pictures. She is so animated!!!! She laughs and yells and moves her hands all around! Well, since our computers have a camera we thought we would try and film Hope while she was looking at the pictures. Whatever you are filming shows up on the screen so you can see what you are filming while you are filming. Kind of like a mirror. So in our attempt to film Hope this is what we got. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I still laugh ever time I watch it.

Let's Elf!

Well I am joining the craze! After watching Brenda, Em and Zachary I had to give it a try. I think these cousins make a nice little addition to the elf community! so . . . .

Check Out the Cousin Elfs!

Extra Thankful This Year!

I love Thanksgiving! It is probably second to New Year's for me. There are no expectations except to eat lots of food. And if you time it right you can hit more than one house!

That is what we did this year. We started out at Dixie's. Which was extra fun because Jeff (Neil's cousin in the Coast Guard) got to spend a few days in Redding. It was Anna's first time meeting him. She thought he was pretty cool!

Then we went to my mom's to load up on more food and have dessert. In the midst of all the traveling and eating, Neil and I did Anna's footprint for the month. (She was two months old the day before Thanksgiving.) And I also took some cute pictures of her in her cute Thanksgiving outfit!Neil and I went with the gang to Mt Shasta on Saturday to get our Christmas tree. I can't wait to post pictures of it when we get it up. It is going to be great. Anna was pretty unconcerned about which tree we picked. We put her in her Snugli and carried her around. She stayed nice and warm and asleep the whole time. It was pretty crisp up there, but no snow!

The house now has shingles. And gutters. And the heating and cooling system is in. It is just cracking me up the order you do stuff in. Like one of the next things we have to do is put the shower insert in. It goes in before any drywall goes up. Why? You'll have to ask Neil.

Anna got to meet some more cousins this week. Eric and Liz were in town for the holiday so we got together at Aunt Denise's on Sunday. At one point while Uncle Jim was holding Anna in his rocking chair she started snoring. It was so cute. It was fun to get to just sit and talk to everyone!

I hope everyone had a great beginning to their holiday season and I look forward to checking posts and seeing pictures!

What a Change!!

Well, a lot has changed since my last post. So you will get a lot of info in this one. It is so much fun watching all the stages of a house going up. Apparently one of the first things you should do is get a "blue room". All the guys helping Neil were complaining because they had to leave the job to go to the bathroom. Lucky for us there is another job site right around the corner. But I know you will be happy to know we got one today. Was that too much information?
So onto something a little more interesting and a little less gross. Paul and Kenny came on Friday night (the 9th) and chalked out where all the walls would be. There were red lines all over the floor which I guess is what they measure the walls off of. It was neat trying to imagine a three dimensional wall from a flat floor.Saturday morning in the rain they started building walls. Did you know that you build walls flat on the floor and then stand them up? And you build them top to bottom (roof to the floor). So you have to imagine it upside down. Strange. They worked all weekend and got all the walls up so that we could have the trusses delivered on Friday (the 16th). There was a huge pile of trusses on the middle of the living room walls. The truss company delivers them to the roof and puts them on the roof in a specific order. So that by the time you get to the spot where the trusses are laying , they are the only ones left that need to go up. You can see them in the middle of the picture all piled up. There is a long board they put at the peak of the trusses that holds them all together. Which they take off when they start putting the sheeting on. Paul built all these "Cat Walks" in the large rooms so that you have a guy on each end of the truss and a guy in the middle holding the peak. I didn't get to see him, but I guess Neil even walked some of them. Which he is not really a height person. You can see one of them behind Neil's head in the next picture. The boys got all the roof stuff finished tonight and we go for our roof inspection tomorrow morning. Once we get that signed off we will start putting the singles on. Actually the gutters go on first. So this is just about what our house lots like right now. Hopefully tomorrow it will look a lot different.

What a good day!

We had a great day yesterday! But how could it not be a great day when you start it wearing these shoes! Auntie Brenda got these for Anna and she loves them. They even stayed on her feet all day.
This has been a busy week for our house. It is finally taking shape! The footings were formed on Friday and the plumber came on Saturday. Then he came back again on Sunday, because our house is the cool new place to hang out in the neighborhood. It seems the whole neighborhood is young families. Every night we have been down there a new family has come down to meet us. They are all super nice and friendly. Which I am excited about. But the plumber had been gone for maybe two hours when Neil and I got to the property Saturday night and the kids had used it as a jungle gym and broken the pipes. In order to pass our first inspection we have to prove that the house will hold water. So you have this pipe that is like 5 feet out of the ground which is connected to all the plumbing and you fill that pipe with water. So the inspector puts his hand in the pipe and if he feels water, you pass. Well that's the pipe the kids broke off. So all the water leaked out. So that is why he came back on Sunday. So we passed our first inspection on Monday and then the footings were poured. Then the poor plumber guy had to come back again on Tuesday because the concrete guys hit a pipe and again our water was gone. So finally I think the pipes are safe because yesterday the concrete guys came back out and poured the slab!!!! Hear is a picture of Anna and I standing were our front door will someday be. That is the garage to the right and the office to the left, and behind us is where the kitchen and living will be. It is so funny how small it looks when it is flat. The house is 1660 square feet, but it sure doesn't look like it.

This is the front left hand corner of the house and it is going to be Anna's Room. Last night after the concrete guys left Neil and I put Anna's name and date of birth in her first house. So cute. We are thinking about staining the concrete instead of laying tile in the kitchen and dinning rooms. So we went down to the house to make sure none of the neighborhood kids thought it would be cool to carve in our floor. But we put Anna's name where we knew we would put carpet. And we took pictures of her next to her room.
I am starting to get sooooo excited about this house stuff. It is just more believable now that it is happening and I can see progress.
We are hoping the framing will start this weekend. So maybe by the end of next week we will have walls!!! Crazy!!!!

A Cousin Halloween!

There were cousins everywhere this Halloween. We had a pasel of babies at Jennifer's home in the afternoon.

Wesley came up from Sacramento (his mom came with him!) and Jason was there too (he is the duck!) with his sister Kara. Of course Tessa, Bella and Jack (who was the dragon!) were in on the fun. You can see how much fun the babies were having. We couldn't get the mobile kids to all stay in the same place long enough to take a group picture (I am hoping Jessica got one), but the babies slept right on through all the fun. You can tell they are all used to getting their picture taking. The flash doesn't even phase them!
Anna was so warm in her costume, she basically slept the whole time we were at Trunk or Treat too! She was very cute as the Cheshire Cat. I was hoping to go as Alice and getting Neil to be the Mad Hatter. But we were very lucky to get the one costume done this year.

We broke ground on or property on Tuesday! Already it is starting to take shape. I am sure I will be posting pictures as we go along. Or you can stop by and see any time.