Random Catch up....

Well, I see that it has been a while since my last post so I thought i'd catch up on some small things. This will be followed by more posts of our trip up the Northeast Coast with part of my family.

So Here goes....

My little Annie is growing up so fast. Just the other day she came up to me with all this jewelry on. She put it on all by herself, and look at those hands. She is such a girl.

Seeing as how this girl is 1 1/2 years old, she is at the age where she loves getting into stuff. She is great most of the time, but occasionally when I am not paying attention to her she gets into trouble. By trouble I mean pulling out things she knows are no touch. For example, the following pic is of Annie enjoying some hazelnut flavored coffee she found in the pantry. Yes she was eating the grinds of coffee. She made a pretty mess of it too. Of course I couldn't get upset at a face like that. I actually just laughed at her because she looked so cute, and I thought it was pretty funny. Hey! If this is the worst mess she has made thus far, we are not doing too bad I think.

 Playing at her friend Rev's house in the sandbox with Rev, Brooklyn, Judah, and Will. She loves playing with sand and rocks and dirt, yet she is girly too, I love the balance she has.

 She is finally getting to a fun age where she does random things that are so funny but she has no idea she is being funny. In other words she is not doing it on purpose for attention yet. Case in point, she tried putting her swimsuit on the other day and this is as far as she got........ So cute right?

 Annie has recently become VERY attached to her baby doll. Before she was hardly aware of it, but now she loves taking it everywhere and caring for it. It happened in like a weeks time. it's so cute, and I hope that this will help when her new baby brother arrives. Maybe she will want to help me care for him.

 So about three weeks ago Annie contracted a disease called hand-foot-mouth disease. It is a very common and contagious disease. I believe she got it from the gym where I go to work out. I went on a Monday and Tuesday, and by Friday night she had a fever. We weren't sure why she had the fever so we gave her some medicine and put her to bed. That night and the next night after we barely slept at all. Annie was up like every hour very restless and fussy but could not be soothed. On Sat. morning we were googling her symptoms, by now she had these red dots breaking out on her feet and hands and face. So since the doctors office was closed we googled fever followed by rash type, and this is what came up. We also talked to Bethany because Hudson had had it before. She described his symptoms and they were the same that Annie was dealing with. By the time we did get a hold of the doctor monday morning Annie had a blister on her thumb, some small ones on her feet, and one on her bottom lip. Unfortunately the doctor said the only thing to do is keep giving her medicine for the pain, and lots of fluids to keep her hydrated. Luckily she never got any sores in her mouth so she was able to continue eating fine. Well it took like a week and a half for it all to heal. I felt so bad for her during this time, but I guess thats part of life, and it happens. Here is what the little red dots looked like on her feet.

 Moving on..... Since we have a new baby coming Annie will be upgrading to another room along with all her pretty decorations and bedding that Nana made her, so the baby can have this room and the crib. I thought i'd snap a few pics of her room before I start moving stuff over. My mom is a very gifted sewer and made ALL of Annies bedding including the valance on the window, the bumper, bed skirt, and blanket (which by the way is her most favorite thing in the whole wide world, maybe even more than mommy and daddy haha. No i'm serious). I love her bedding so much that I decided to keep this color scheme in her new room. We just ordered a black and white blanket for the queen size bed she is moving into, and I will get some pink sheets to fit as well. It was the guest room, but since we had nowhere to put the queen bed we just decided to move her into it.

The Lord has truly been providing for our family and I am so thankful and I never want to take his blessings and generosity for granted. For a while now I have been needing a new car. We sold my Nissan Altima a while back so I have been driving Scott's truck around town since before Christmas. Since Scott works as a salesman and got a company vehicle, we decided to sell his truck also and try to find a family vehicle. After searching for a couple of weeks i'm so excited to be a proud new owner of a  2007 GMC Acadia, which is what I was hoping we would be able to get. God is so kind to provide a good amount of money from the truck, and some money in savings to afford such a nice vehicle.  So goodbye 'Big Red' and hello 'not yet named Acadia'. I'm so excited!!!! This car will be great because I won't have to climb up into the car to strap the kids in, and I won't have to bend over to strap them in either. It has everything Scott and I were hoping to have in a vehicle. he wanted All Wheel Drive, and I wanted a sun roof. We both wanted leather seats (for easy clean-up) and captains chairs in the second row. An added blessing was the dvd player, we didn't really need that but i'm sure it will come in handy on family vacations with the kids down the road. I know I loved watching movies while traveling, heck I still do. We had to drive five hours away to go pick it up, and Scott's mom watched Annie for us so we had a nice little alone time together. We picked this up on Saturday and drove home only to have to leave it in the drive-way for a week and a half because on Sunday morning we left for a camping trip with some of my family up the Northeast Coast for camping, which is where I will end this post. Coming up we will share our northeast coast adventures with you. Stay tuned.... 

Yours truly

Annie, OBX, Playtime

So we recently got to go on a trip with Scott to the Outer Banks, NC. We had a great few days. Annie has not been to the ocean since she first turned one so it was fun to take her to the beach. The water was as cold as ice so only our toes touched that. Annie loved playing in the sand. I was afraid she might go all girly girl on me and hate the feel of the dirty grindy sand, but not her. She got right down into it. I'm so thankful we get to spend special time together as a little (growing) family.

Our Journey to OBX was not without a small setback. We got a flat tire on the interstate and pulled off an exit to find a tire shop. Unfortunately when we were only like a mile away from the place, we had to stop so we didn't ruin the rim. And of course the jack was behind the backseat where Annie sat with all our luggage. So we unloaded everything, changed the flat, then drove a mile to where we had to buy a new tire as this one was ruined. But Hey! if this was the only thing that set us back we were doing pretty good.

 Our hotel was right on the beach, we just had to walk out the back door and over this bridge.

 She had a bit of a tough time walking in the deeper sand. It looks like she doesn't know what to think about it here.

 Classic daddy daughter pic walking on the beach together. I LOVE THEM!!!!!! They are both so cute.

 Yeah I threw this one in there too, although right now i'm not a big fan of pictures of myself as I grow larger and larger, and larger........ Hmmmmm I guess it' because i'm growing a baby inside me. And it's a boy for that matter, which means i'll probably be ginormous around due time.

 She loved getting her hands dirty digging in the wet sand. That's my girl, not afraid to get a little dirty but still girly enough.

 I love being able to paint her little nails.

 At the visitors center we saw this huge 945lb marlin caught by a 14 year old boy. He fought for an hour before reeling it in.

 We did a bit of exploring while at OBX. Here is Annie in front of a replica of the wright brothers airplane. We got to visit the exact spot where the first airplane was ever to fly. It was cool visiting such a historical location. I can't say Annie was thrilled about it, but she went along with us anyway.

 On a rainy day we visited the aquarium in the area.

 They had an awesome shark area. Where you could easily see all the sharks swimming around. Annie is keeping her eye on this one, making sure it doesn't attach them.

 Here is a bigger shot of the enclosure.

 We recently went to Kim and Rev's house for a little playdate time. This was the best shot I got with at least two kids smiling. Although its cloudy out it was still a little bright, so the kids were scowling alot from that. We had a great time. Kim brought out easter eggs with pretzels and raisins in them. While all the other kids were collecting the eggs and bringing them back to the basket, Annie figured it would be easier to just take the basket and take all the eggs that way. Of course they all still shared. Thanks Kim for inviting us to come play with you guys it was fun seeing the other kiddos too and letting our kids play together.

     Annie has been changing a lot lately I feel like. We have pulled out her little potty just to get her used to it. So anytime we go to use the quest bathroom Annie follows us in there and sits on her little potty. When she sits down she starts grunting and squeezing her hands together like she's trying to go number two. I guess I kind of taught her that because thats what she does when going in her diaper. I was trying to get her to make the connection. Then she gets up and flushes her little potty. At least she is not afraid of it. Thats a start right? She is also starting to show some attitude now. I feel like I am actually having to discipline her for stuff. For a while there I would say NO and that was enough to teach her. Now she is starting to test her boundaries a little more to see what she could get away with. She is still very sweet and obedient though. I definitely see how crucial it is to be consistent with disciplining her. No slacking in this area will help us both in the long run. I also saw her for the first time the other day not wanting to share a toy. I was shocked to find her yelling NO! and pulling a toy back from the other kid. Of course I think they were trying to take it away from her so I don't know what to do about that. I guess it would be best to teach her to share her toys and be kind. After all, as Shannon teaches her kids, they are not our toys anyways. They are God's and we can't be selfish. I'm not sure what else Annie has been doing different lately. She is talking a lot now. She likes to say the words she knows we understand. Especially the word cookie. Some of her words she can say of her own accord include, Cookie, cracker (ka-ka), car, maggie(ma-ee), and some others. I love that I can start understanding her and what she is asking for. Oh yeah she can also say hold me(homey), and hungry which also sounds like homey. 

      

In other news, we are looking forward to some things coming up, Ben and Bri are coming into town!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!! We can't wait to see you guys and catch up with how life in Seattle is going. I'm sure Annie will be excited to see you guys too. Also I am stoked because tomorrow night I get to go on a special date night with my handsome hot husband. We are going to a nice steakhouse for dinner then he got tickets to Cirque du soleil which is in town visiting. I can't wait, because I have always wanted to go to a cirque show. I am so excited about it. I'll let you know how it was.

 Alright time to go snuggle up with my hubby and watch a movie on this stormy evening. 

Yours truly.