Happy Holidays

Hey! I am sorry I couldn't send these to everyone, we really only sent them to close family members. I thought I would post them anyway...

I am busy packing. We are off to Utah tomorrow. I can't wait to see everyone!

Mud Slide

Out of all the outfits I could have put on addy today...this is the one I choose?!

P.S. Yesterday I chopped almost 6 inches off of my hair. AHHH! I love it.

Christmas Gram

What's a Christmas gram?! I want one!--Buddy the Elf.

So it snowed in Houston. It melted shortly after, but we were able to build a snow man on our car and catch a few flakes in our mouths. Addy thought Santa was finally coming.

Thanksgiving weekend Pictures

Here is Addy helping with the decorations.Playing in the tree box is the best part right?

Tada here is our tree

We went to Galveston to look at the lights. If you are wondering how the restoration process is going here are a few pictures. I took these from our car as we were driving so they aren't the greatest, sorry.
They are still working thanksgiving weekend.
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Pretty much everything is torn up, ripped apart, and piled up.

This whole first floor is wiped out.

Abandoned places everywhere.

Boats that were lifted out of the water during the hurricane are now just pushed off the side of the road. This one claims to kill all looters.

This boat is for sale if there are any takers.

We ate at rainforest cafe, I thought addy would love, but they sat us by the monkeys and she was pretty scared of them. We walked around at Moody Gardens. And watched Polar Express in 4D. Addy had a blast.

I would recommend anyone to go Moody Gardens this holiday season. It was just as much fun as last year. But make sure to make plenty of time to eat because the restaurants don't have enough staff to get you in and out in under 2 1/2 hours!

The Hills

For all those you watch a silly reality tv show called the Hills... I want to hear your thoughts. Who started the rumor? My theory is that Lo started the rumor. She has always been jealous of Lauren and Audrina's friendship. She thought perhaps this would break them up for good. Ha ha ha. Maybe it will... maybe it is audrina's way of getting off of the show. (Justin Bobby said that is the only way they can be together).

My opinion is that Spencer needs to leave the show (although he won't because other than his daddy it is his only source of income). It's the same old story every episode. I am so sick of him whining "I hate everyone." "You aren't loyal." "blah blah blah."

Early Christmas Spirit

Sorry, I know I changed my blog before Thanksgiving. In my defense Thanksgiving is extremely late this year. And yes, I put my tree up early as well. We are leaving for Christmas vacation on the 16th? or somewhere around there and I wanted to be able to enjoy having a tree up for a little longer than 2 weeks.

Just because my Christmas stuff is up early doesn't mean I am going to skip being grateful and having the Thanksgiving spirit as well. What I am most grateful for this year is prayer. God has given us every tool on this earth to come home to Him. For some reason he lets us ask for more through prayer. I believe everything I have has come from Him. I see His blessings all around me everyday. For this thanksgiving week I am going to try and do as Elder Bednar did in his last conference talk, about prayer, and only speak of what I am grateful for. I do believe God has given me everything I could want or need through prayer. How lucky I am to see His miracles.

Twilight

I went to TWILIGHT this weekend. There is something about having a book you have read and loved come to life. While no movie has ever even comes close to as good as the book, I believe this stayed reasonably in boundaries of the book. I remember when I went to see the first Harry Potter movie and how disappointed I was. I was expecting to feel that way, but didn't. My only thought is that they did portray Edward a little darker in character than I imagined him. However, maybe this is because I have the knowledge of all four books. Perhaps I did view him this way after just the first book I don't recall. I really enjoyed the movie overall and would recommend it to anyone.

Addy's Birthday Party

There are a lot of new posts I haven't blogged for a while so we have a lot to catch up on. Addy turned two. Which has been crazy for me. It's a big milestone to not being a baby anymore. I am very sad, but also very blessed with such a sweet daughter.

This is the morning of her party. She was so excited she new something cool was going to happen. Sue came for the week and we had so much fun with her.

For her birthday we went to Jumping Joeys. All the kids had so much fun. About five minutes after we got there Addy jumped down the tallest slide just as an older boy was climbing up the slide (not the stairs) She ran into him and his teeth went into her cheek. Looking back now I am very grateful his teeth didn't hit her eye. But at the time i felt awful, because I went to all this work to plan her birthday party and I thought she wasn't going to enjoy it. I thought she was going to need to go get stitches.

Here she is drinking some tylenol.

We were able to distract her by letting her open a present early and bandage her up. Then she was off to keep bouncing.

She had lots of fun friends come.

The making of Addy's Birthday Cake

This year I wanted to make Addys birthday cake. I had a bunch of cake decorating stuff that I have never really used. Thanks to my friend Trecia, who let me borrow her skirt and flower cake pans and talked me through most of the process. Here we are clothing the naked barbie top. Addy was awed by everything about her birthday cake, which made it that much more fun to make.

I started with a dome cake. Frosted it and put little ruffle cake pieces and frosted it again.



Then I layed the fondant on top.


I added a bow to the back to cover up the crease where the fondant came together.Stuck the Barbie in the top.

Placed the barbie portion on the flower cake.


WhaLaa! Finished product about 4 hours later.
I am pretty proud in case you couldn't tell.

The Barbie Portion was supposed to be just for addy and the flower portion served all the guests of her party. But for some reason she just grabbed the cake pieces that we cut and I didn't really stop her.

Special thanks also to You Tube and expertvillage who taught me how to work with the fondant on a princess doll cake.

Family Pictures

Here are our family pictures. We had so much fun taking pictures. All photos are from Kelsey Call Photography. Thanks Kelsey, there are so many that I absolutely love. I am only posting a few, but we have more than a hundred that I like. I need to make book just on this shoot. Now every time we go shopping she looks for pretty walls and runs up to them and says cheese.

This picture says it all. Our life is so fun, but it is pretty much all about Addy right now.

Halloween

She absolutely loves her new tricycle. And will eventually use the petals to push it.

Here is Addy trick or treating with her friend Bella. She made the cutest little lady bug.

Installing a Husband

I love Caleb. He is a great husband, but I thought this was kinda funny...

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as
Romance 9.5 and
Personal Attention 6.5,

and then installed undesirable programs such as
NASCAR 6.0,
NFL 5.1 and
Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?
Signed, Desperate.

DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind,

Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.

If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources..)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance.

We recommend
Cooking 3.0 and
Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck Babe!
Tech Support

Princess and the Pea

I don't think so...No prissy princess here. Addy came into our bed around 4:30 last night and this morning I woke up with her sippy cup under my back. I guess as a mother you sleep how and when you can.

Updates...

It seems when your child is sick time stands still at your house while the rest of the world keeps going. That is what the last two weeks have been for us. Last Monday Addy had a runny nose. By Wednesday she had a small cough and Thursday night we spent in Emergency care for pneumonia. She was fine Thursday morning she was a little sick so we were laying low and not doing anything. She danced around the house just like normal. Then in the afternoon she started throwing up and her temperature started skyrocketing. It happened so fast it was crazy which the doctor said that is typical for small children. He said she most likely just slept wrong and fluid from her nose drained into her lungs.

Here she is after we got home--they almost wanted to keep her over night. She had a IV for a few hours so I had to take a picture of the little arm band. She has never even been to the doctor for being sick for anything. Luckily kids rebound fast and she is all better. We spent most of this week just hanging out watching movies and getting lots of rest to recover.

We also went to the Dentist this week. Which wasn't as bad as the ER so maybe that is a blessing in disguise she thought it would be much worse. She was pretty proud of herself after. The dentist was glad I brought her in because she said some 4 year old's don't even have all the teeth that Addy does and she understands it is difficult to brush a 2 year old's teeth. She is cavity free so far.

But she does have a permanent fat lip if you notice her tongue is always playing with it. She must have fallen and bit her lip hard enough to cause a pocket to fill up with fluid. Both the doctor and dentist looked at it and said if it doesn't go away on it's own she will have to have a Pediatric NET/Plastic Surgeon take it off. We are definitely hoping for it to go away on it's own. After the trip to the ER I don't think I could handle having her go through surgery.

This weekend we went to the Houston Zoo Boo.

Addy rode the carousel and liked it. She usually acts like she wants to ride it until it starts and then screams bloody murder until you let her off. Something switched and she even sat on her own animal.

This loved making her own mask and roaring.

ZIP N' STEAM

I absolutely love these!!! They make cooking healthy veggies so easy. Pick some up at the grocery store along with some fresh produce and try them out. I am all about a quick easy meal you can cook in the microwave.