Wrapping Up The Weekend

The family has all headed back to their homes and Joli and I are once again left to each other. Here is a picture of Joli have a little playtime with her aunties this weekend. It was just too cute!
One of the things my grandma said to do was to cook the chicken bones and make broth. I thought it was a great idea, the only problem was that I ran out of things to put the broth in. So I figured why not use an empty cidar bottle, well, here's why.

One thing I did this weekend was to finally pick up the computer desk I ordered. I figured out why I got such a great deal on it after I spent six hours reading the forty pages and putting together all fifty pieces. But it sure did turn out beautifully.

The next day I woke up to discover another box on my front steps. After having spent so much time putting together the computer desk the night before, I was not exactly excited to discover that it was the dog house that I needed to put together. To my surprise it took less than twenty minutes and looked fabulous.

Well aside from having to crouch down to get inside, Kota seems to fit just fine. Hopefully he'll be able to use it for awhile.

Cooking, Cooking, Cooking!

I told myself that I was going to remember to take plenty of pictures of Thanksgiving this year as I never seem to have pictures of my family. Well after six hours of cooking and setting up for dinner, I forgot, again. So irritating! I did manage to get a few pictures. Here is Kota on our front porch again. It was pouring rain all night and most of today, which basically made our backyard a big mud pit. I really didn't want to have the world's muddiest dog, so Kota got to spend the day on front porch. Which means that our guest had a running joke about an obstacle course to get through the first baby, past the dog, and over the second baby gate without getting jumped all over. Kota spent a lot of the day barking.
Here is my grandma showing off pictures of all my cousins new babies. Two of my cousins have babies a year or under, and one of my other cousin's wife is pregnant with twins! With eleven grandkids there's a baby boom every year or so.

Here is my sisters and my grandpa all relaxing. That's about a good a picture as I could get. I should have had everyone get together, but once again shoulda, coulda, woulda.

So that's it for pictures. Elena borrowed her photography teachers nice camera and got a few more pictures that will probably show up on a class project sometime soon, but that's it. We had a very nice dinner. I cooked a ton of food and we all ate way more than normal human beings should. I accidently cooked the turkey upside down but it ended up tasting so good that no one seemed to mind. Unfortunately we had way less stuffing than I meant to because a good portion fell out into the turkey grease. I bought Brianna a tofurky so she wouldn't feel left out, and she got to make it. Apparently it was nowhere close to the real thing. All in all, good Thanksgiving. We even got to see Joe on the webcam!! We love you Joe!

We Couldn't Find Nemo!!

As a special treat to Joli for being so good while I painted our house I decided to take her to Sea World. We've been discussing what we were going to see there for a few days. On the way there she was telling me that we were going to see whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles, Nemo, and Dory. When we first walked in the firs thing we saw was the Sesame Street Bay of Play. So of course we had to go ride the flying Elmos. After that we went over to the bounce area where Joli played for a few minutes and then remembered there were animals to see!
I tried to avoid seeing too many shows as Joli never makes it through them. So we mostly saw exhibits. Joli loved the otters and seemed impressed by the dolphins. We also saw mantarays that were in a pool where we could touch them. It was really cool! Joli kept saying "I can't reach that one". It was so cute! We went to watch the Shamu show, only because you can't see the killer whales any other way. We made it through about half the show when Joli's attention ran out, so we headed off to see what else we could find. We made it to the starfish pool and Joli thought that was really cool. At first I let her hold one but then we decided that maybe she should just touch them.

After we were done touching starfish, we decided to go look for Nemo. We found a ton of Dorys, but for some reason Sea World Decided to torcher all mothers and didn't have any. We went to three different aquariums and although there were a ton of cool fish in all of them, each trip inside resulted in me carrying Joli while she screamed "No! I want see Nemo!". So we had a big talk about how Nemo lives in the ocean with his dad, and I talked Joli into visiting "Chum" the shark. We happened to see a few more Dory fish while were looking at the sharks, which reminded her that we needed to find Nemo.

So we headed off to see what else we could see. We went to the penguin exhibit and that's when we hit a wall. Joli wanted to see the penguins but she was too short, so I tried to pick her up, which resulted in her screaming because she wanted down, and then screaming because she couldn't see the penguins. In the end I carried her out while she screamed about "No home". We did finally get to see a penguin on the way out.

Joli loved the penguin so much! She kept hugging her for a good minute or two. Eventually I told her to give her a kiss and then say good bye so other kids could hug her too.

I guess Disneyland is going to be wonderful for her after all!!

More Hard Work

I decided to take on my arachnophobia and tackle the yard. I trimmed the bushes, which was extremely scary considering what I had to work around. Apparently they're not poisonous, but that didn't make much difference in my head.
The next thing I did was take on the potted plants. I bought two big pots about a month ago to go on either side of the porch and I finally transfered the cacti I already had into them. I also put two cacti in two small pots to go on the steps. Now our front porch is even more beautiful. Notice I also managed to get both the babies in the picture.

I also mowed the lawn and took out the nasty plastic edging around the plants at the top of the yard and then mowed the grass that had grown up there. It was a lot of hard work but our yard is beautiful once again!

The Kitchen Is Done!!

After eight days of painting the last room is complete!! Here is my kitchen. Once again used to be white.

I put up this picture because I added the little pictures on the wall after I took the other one.

I also had to put in a few pictures of Joli wearing an outfit that I absolutely love! I swear if they made it in my size I'd be wearing it right now!

I'm not sure what that look was for, but she's still so cute!

This Means War!!!

I officially hate the flu!!! It is so evil!! How do people live thinking the flu is this totally normal thing that is okay and we should all just continue on with life as though nothing has happened?! It's rediculous and aweful! Yes there's a vaccine for a few of the thousands of strands of it, but if you have a child like mine who does not respond well the the vaccine you're completely screwed!!

Last year I thought it would be horrible to have my one-year-old get the flu so she had the flu shot. She then spent the next month completely miserable, wouldn't eat hardly anything, just laid on my couch and eventually ended up with low iron levels and I was having to give her iron drops which continued to make things worse. Fast forward a year and now I have a two-year-old who seems completely normal most of the time, except that she throws up about once a day and it's usually at night, and usually in my bed so as to cause the most damage and laundry as possible. This has been going on since Wednesday night. So it's only been a few days but if it's anything like the flu I had, it will probably continue for a little while longer.

So I'm at a complete loss. There's nothing I can do. I can get her vaccinated and spent the next month with an alien child who refuses to play with anything and only wants to lay on the couch all day, or I can cover my house in plastic wrap. Let's go ahead and put this on the list of reasons why having one child is quite enough for me!

Here is what my bedroom has commonly looked like between the hours of 1-5 am for the past four nights.

Here is what happens to Joli after she screams for ten minutes while I stick her in the shower to wash off all the vomit.
And here are the piles that continue to grow because once again I cannot use my dryer!

Joli is a totally sweet child, and when says things like "I love you, Mommy" or "You beautiful, Mommy" it totally melts my heart. And although I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world, if I would have sat down and wrote out a pro/con list about three years ago, the odds probably would not have gone in her favor. That's a great idea for teenagers. In that little joke of a sex-ed class that they have to do they should make you write out a pro/con list! You will have to include things like, "unless you have a husband that is always going to be around, pretty much count on pooping with an audience for the remainder of your life", or "I hope you like vomit", and don't forget to include "I hope you're not attached to your current friends, because they don't have children".

Don't get me wrong, I completely adore my daughter and now that I'm in it I love my life, but it I had had the benefits of a crystal ball I'm fairly certain I would have held off for a couple years. In any case, laundry here I come!!

No More Painting!!

I suppose that's not officially true as I still have a few touch-ups in the kitchen, but I thought it was time I put up pictures of living room. I completely forgot and didn't take before pictures but just imagine everything white. So here you go!

I took this picture of the entryway before I had started paint on the kitchen, so there will be more pictures of that later.

The Tradition Continues!

There is a grand tradition in this family that has been going on since the very beginnining of mine and Joe's relationship. It is the tradition of giving gifts long before the time to actually give them. In the last four years I have recieved two sets of Christmas presents. One set in November because Joe tried to get a jump on buying his presents and then couldn't stand to wait a whole month to give them to me, and then another set on Christmas because he feels bad that he doesn't have any presents for me to open.

Joli's birthday seems to following in the same pattern. We are coming up on her second birthday and once again I bought her big present a few weeks ahead of time in order to save money for her party. Of course once again I was so excited to give it to her that I went ahead and put it together for her. Last year Joe and Chris spend HOURS putting together the slide on ballpit that is in her bedroom, but this year I went with a somewhat simpler gift.
It's the cutest little kitchen and she loves it! It's made of real wood so I don't have to worry about any of the lead problems and it came with a few accessories!

I put it together during naptime so when Joli came out from her nap she was pleasently surprised. She keeps saying "Mommy I cooking!"

We went to Wal-Mart to get some more paint and while we were waiting Joli and I were talking about how she was wearing Daddy's shirt from when he was a baby. Here she is showing it off.

She kept saying "Look Mommy, lion kitty". This was the best smile I could get though. She still feeling a little sick. Poor baby.

Chaos

Well besides trying to paint the entire living room this week, I've also had the wonderful pleasure of having the dog chew a hole in the linoleum, and Joli got the flu I had so she's been throwing up for two days. It's been quite a week, but hey it's Friday! Here's a little teaser on the living room.

I forgot last week to take a picture of the bedspread once I got it on the bed. Fortunately I've been able to protect it from the throw up!

Joli seems to be changing every day. Even with the flu i feel like she starts doing something else at least once a day. She's so sweet about complimenting me. It's so cute! Every time I start painting, Joli will watch me for awhile and then say "That's beautiful Mommy". I'm so amazed that she's really starting to speak in full sentences. When I tell her I love her, she says "I love you too Mommy!" It's just so cute in her tiny little voice! The other day we were in Wal-Mart and Joli saw this ten foot painting on the wall.

She then proceeded to explain to me that it was a painting of Uncle William playing football! It was incredibly cute and I completely ignored the fact that William is not black and that he is a defensive player. Still cute!

Hanging Out and Recovering

In my quest finish the office Joli was wonderful about playing with her new easel while I worked.
She didn't like the chalk side as much as she loved the dry erase side. Her new obsession is markers so the dry erase board is wonderful. Unfortunately it's only been three days and I can only find four of ten of the dry erase markers. Hopefully they'll turn up before I spend all our money on markers.

Because she was so amazing while I worked endlessly on the office, I got up Saturday morning and made us waffles. Joli loved it and I finally remembered to use my new mug! Isn't it cute!

Joli found a new pair of shoes that Laume got me, she loves them, wears them all the time.

Here's my little girl looking so sweet and actually smiling for the camera for once!

She was actually taking pictures with her little play camera of our wedding pictures. She said she was taking pictures of daddy. I think she might want a few more pictures of him (hint, hint daddy!).

After spending all day sunday laying on the couch fighting a horrible stomach flu, I finally got my act together this morning and went to run all our errands. My first stop was to get Kota dog food only to discover that the dog food place was closed. (Crap) Then we went to buy my new laptop. I knew exactly which one I wanted, walked in and look for a few minutes, pick out the one I wanted and in less than five minutes I was checking out. (Yay!) Then they told me that my card wasn't being authorized. (Crap!) So here I am an hour into errands, still haven't actually done anything, and driving to the bank to get them to let me use my card, all while realizing that the comment that I made about killing someone at the bank while leaving the store might be taken as a threat. I went in and stood in line for twenty minutes and tried to remain happy while I watched Joli run back and forth across the bank chasing another small child who also did not particularly enjoy standing in lines (Because as an adult I absolutely love it! Nope I want to be two! Can you get arrested for running in a bank?). So I explain what happened to the nice teller. She fixes it in two minutes and tells me to go buy my laptop. (Yay!!) So I went back, bought my laptop and headed off to the grocery store. (Yay! Yay!!) After Joli and I made it home, Joli took an extra long nap (Yay again!) and then we took Kota to the vet to get his bandage removed. (Finally) While we were at the vet I decided to take a few photos of Joli looking so cute and she tried to turn her back in protest. I then explained to her how much daddy misses her and he really wants me to take as many pictures as possible so he can see her. This is what I got.

Yep she loves her daddy! All in all it was pretty good weekend, minus the throwing up all night part. She was so completely adorable this morning. Although I'm not found of being woken up at 7:30 in the morning, I have to say that waking up to a tiny little kiss and hug followed by "I love you mommy" was pretty freakin' cute!

It's Done!!

I took a ton of pictures of the transformation of our office, but I thought the most impact would be the before and after pictures.

Before:
After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After (This corner will look better tomorrow after I get the new computer desk):

Before:

After:

It's so exciting to be done and I'm really starting to like it. Once I get the curtains up it will look even better!