A Busy day at the office

Here is Adriana "checking her e-mail" while wearing her "reading glasses".

New Hair Do

Alright, I guess I can't hide under a rock until my hair grows out, so here goes. I have been wanting a short hair cut for some time now and just had things come up that made me postpone it until now. I normally get my hair cut from a girl at the mall who does a great job, well, this time I went to a "European Spa" place because I had a free coupon for a hair cut. Now I know why I had a free coupon. I showed this girl, who looked like she was 12 by the way, a few pictures of what I wanted my hair to look like, apparently she was blind, because it is NOTHING like what I wanted! She kept getting shorter and shorter. Ryan isn't big on short hair and didn't want it to "look like a guys", well that also didn't happen. Let's just say I was in tears on Friday night over my HAIR! I'm not someone that EVER cares about my hair. I mean, its hair, it will grow out, right? Well, I was crying because I look like a MAN! I HATE MY HAIR! I know it will grow out, but its not at all what I wanted. Ryan was very supportive and said "well at least this will make for a funny blog!". I would rather tell jokes to have a "funny blog" and not a butch hair cut, but what can you do? I can wish all I want that I hadn't gone there, but that won't make my hair re-appear. So for now, if I don't get out of the house until the sun goes down or you see me walking around with a paper bag on my head, you will know why.

Adriana still doesn't know what happened to moms hair and she will just stop what ever she is doing, and want to touch my hair. Poor child is probably embarrassed to be seen with me. One of my many chances to embarrass my child as every good mom does.

The other night at the dinner table Adriana decided to mimic our cat Zoe and how she eats. I saw her the other day bend down over Zoe's food bowl and try to eat her food like she sees the cat eat, well now we are trying this out on our food too apparently. Here is a video from the other night. (In the video you will hear her say "eow", that is what Zoe says).

Here is another video I took today of Adriana after she had a chocolate chip cookie. Her mouth was covered in chocolate and I told her she looked like Cookie Monster (one of her favorites on Sesame Street). Whenever she sees or hears Cookie Monster, she talks in a real gruff voice (like Cookie does).

I hope you enjoyed the videos, she has been cracking me up lately with all the new things she does. She is getting to be a such a big helper around the house, cleaning up after spills, throwing trash away in the trash can and picking up her toys after playing with them, most of the time without being asked. I must say I am quite impressed. For example, this morning she was drinking out of a water bottle (which she loves to do) and had spilled some water on the floor. I was side tracked with something else and hadn't noticed and she just walked over to the kitchen, grabbed a towel and went over and tried to clean up the spilled water. I thought that was very good for a 17 month old to know how to do that. Well, I guess I'll stop bragging on my daughter for now. :) I'll be blogging more soon!

My Girls

Most of you who know me pretty good, know that I am an animal lover, always have been. I have always thought of my animals as members of my family. So when I refer to "my girls" I'm talking about Adriana and Zoe. Although one is more moody, and not very friendly towards guests in our home, I still love them both so much. I often refer to them as "The A to Z team". They have a love hate relationship. Adriana Loves Zoe and Zoe hates Adriana. Zoe is very good towards Adriana, but wouldn't be broken hearted if we ever decided to get rid of Adriana. Anyway, they are always into something. A couple of weeks ago when my mom was here helping me with projects around the house, they both got into things they weren't suppose to, while I was distracted with other things. The first and grossest thing was when we were outside working on our patio, Zoe was out there with us "hunting" in our backyard. I found this little frog and decided to show Zoe. She loved watching it hop around and just followed so gingerly behind it. A few minutes later, I look over at Zoe and see her foaming at the mouth trying to chew something up. At first I thought she had thrown up, but low and behold, she was trying to eat the frog! I was so disgusted. Now it takes a lot to gross me out, but that did the trick. I was so dramatized by it, I didn't want anything to do with Zoe for the rest of the day.
Well, my other child also got into mischief while I was busy painting my room that same week. I was up on the ladder painting around the ceiling and looked down just a fraction of a second too late, and saw Adriana stick her hand in the open outlet socket. I saw her get a quick shock. Needless to say, I'm sure it hurt her so much and scared her at the same time. She cried and cried. A few minutes later she was playing like normal again. But being the drama queen she can be, every time she would walk in our room, she would hold her hand and say "Uh, uh" as if to remind me what had happened to her. She would keep doing it until I would say, "Its okay, I know you hurt your finger, but you're alright now". She carried this on several times a day for almost 2 weeks. In a way it was cute, annoying and a good reminder to me how quickly they can get into things they aren't suppose to.

This has been on my heart and mind now for the last couple of weeks, and so I think maybe if I write about it, it might help me move on. On the 4th of July, there was a sad and tragic thing that happened at my home church in Jeff City. Our old music leaders son went missing. Out of the blue a young, 19 year old boy named Jeff was all of a sudden gone. His parents were out of town that weekend and came home on Sunday night and couldn't find Jeff anywhere. They published a missing persons ad on the front page of the local paper asking anyone who knew anything to please go to the police. As the days went on, the worse case scenarios play in your head. But I don't think anyone would have thought that it could be this bad. A week later on Sunday the 13th, the front page of the paper read, that Jeff's body had been found and that 3 boys were in custody. One of the boys that they said was the main suspect also went to our church. News like that totally blows your mind. How can you wrap your mind around boys that you grew up with, went to church together and were raised in great, loving and caring homes, end up with such a sad ending? To this day its hard to wrap my head around this. The boy suspected of killing, who's name is Gabe, was a good kid, at least when I knew him. I went on a skiing trip with him, worked on the TV ministry at church with him and knew he was smart as a whip. As the story kept unfolding as the days went on, the other 2 boys that were with him that night, didn't know that Gabe was going to kill Jeff. They were in fear of their lives, once they saw what he did to Jeff. After shooting him 3 times, he set his body on fire. Gabe is awaiting trail.
What's so hard to think about is the families. Think about Jeff's family. Their son was murdered over what boiled down to be a $100. Jeff's parents, Tony and Pam are great Christan people. I have never seen them without big smiles on their faces. They love other people so much and are so willing to help anyone out whenever there is a need. Then there is Gabe's family. His parents were Sunday School teachers to my brother when he was younger. His dad is high ranking in the Highway Patrol. They too always have big smiles on their faces. They are very caring people, who I know, have raised their son to be better than that. My mind is baffled at the thought of all that has gone one. Can you imagine raising your kids the best way you know how, raise them in church, teach them right and wrong and then they grow up and make this stupid mistake that will affect so many people from here on out? Needless to say our town, church and families are all broken up about this. Both families have lost their sons. I will continue to pray for the Ward and the Word families. They are good people and I know God will carry them through this very hard time.

Tickled Pink

Well I know I have been slacking A LOT lately with keeping my blog up-to-date. These last few weeks have been so crazy busy, that its been hard for me to sit down in any free time I had to write. Now I think things are going to start getting back to normal, so hopefully I will be able to keep this up more.

Here are some recent pictures of Adriana. She just got some Elmo PJ's and was so happy to wear them, she even had to put the other shirt that came with the set on her head. She is changing and growing more every day. She's so funny because she will imitate everything that you do or say. When my friend Susan was here last week, she kept imitating her laugh, it was so funny.

Girls Week

Well my best friend Susan left yesterday. We had a great time! She brought her 2 daughters with her and just had a girls week (except when Ryan was home). We shopped till we dropped, literally! The words that came out of our mouth by the third day of shopping was "I'm tired of shopping". I never thought we would utter such words. Susan bought a lot of things to decorate her house with, and I think its going to turn out so cute! I'm actually going up to her house tomorrow to help her decorate with all her new things. I love to decorate and am anxious to help her out.
Adriana is still crazy as ever. She is jabbering all the time, and its only a matter of time before "real" words come out of her mouth. She has loved all the company we have had over the past couple of weeks, it has been fun for her to have someone other than mom to play with.
Well, I guess that's all the latest for now. I'll try to post some new pictures soon.

Pictures

Alright, I'm finally getting pictures up. Here are some pics of us on the 4th of July.

Grandpa and Adriana

Our family in front of the state capitol

Our family in our cheesy matching shirts

Say "CHEESE!"

I love how the blue baloon brings out her blue eyes.

Stop to smell the flowers

Grandma and Adriana

Here are shots of our patio. Sorry the view isn't the best, its shot from our deck. It still needs

some work. I want to put plants and funiture out there. (Note: I didn't take a picture of the after from the BBQ grill, it looks the same as the other patio just smaller.)

Before

.

After

Supplies

Playing Catch up

Alright, I'm sorry that it has been so long since I have written. I have been so busy lately that I haven't had a chance to hardly breathe. I want so badly to post pictures right now, but my camera died on me when I went to download the pics so I have to wait for them to charge up. I will try to post pictures sometime today still.

4th Of July
We went to my parents for the fourth this year. We had a great time. We went down on Thursday and stayed till Sunday. Luckily, Adriana did a lot better sleeping there than she has in the past. She didn't take but a 20 minute nap all day on Thursday so as much as she wanted to fight sleep that night, she just couldn't. The first night is always the worst and I dread it every time. Anyway, on Friday the 4th we went down town with my parents and walked around and looked at all the activities and booths they had set up. Adriana LOVED looking at all the commotion and had fun walking around. I took some pretty good shots of her down at the governors garden (I'll post later). Later that night my parents took Adriana home and we went with my friend Susan to dinner at Pizza Hut and then over to her sister Amy's house, where we shot off fireworks. I had a great time, I don't get to see them very often and it was good just hanging out and talking. On Saturday we just had a lazy day. I did some shopping, helped my friend, Tennille, with some wedding plans and just hung out at my parents house that evening. My brother Chris, came by that evening for supper and to go swimming at my parents new pool. The weather had been so mild that the pool was freezing that evening. On Sunday after church we had a nice lunch and my brother came out again to give the pool another try. We had so much fun. Adriana LOVED the pool and loved splashing around. We had me and Ryan, Adriana, Chris and both my parents in the pool, it was a great time with the whole family.

Chores around the house
My mom came back with us on Sunday to help us with a patio that we are trying to get laid down. Me and Ryan have been working on this patio for close to a month already. We decided to lay 12"x12" pavers down for my BBQ grill to set on and another one on the other side of the deck just for extra sitting area and a place for Adriana's pool. We laid the one for the BBQ grill with no problems. We had started laying the other one and realized that we didn't level the ground that well. So with half the patio laid we decided to tare it up and try again. WHAT A NIGHTMARE!! It wouldn't be so bad if the ground wasn't so rocky to dig in. We have pulled up I don't know how many pieces of asphalt, barbed wire, wood, and about a ton of rocks! Anyway, my mom knew we were trying to get this thing finished so she volunteered to come help us this last week with that. My mom is a work horse! She would be out there at 7am working away in all the heat and humidity. We worked on it for about 6 hours or so on Monday but the heat just got to us and then on Tuesday we were back at it. We actually got it done on Tuesday around 12:15pm. I thought maybe angels would start singing or something, but I never heard them. I'm so glad to have gotten that finished. It still needs some work around the patio with rocks and plants, etc. but I'm glad those pavers are done! While my mom was here we also painted our furniture in the master bedroom, it was quite old and out dated and so we painted it black and replaced the handles on them. It looks so good and so much more modern. While we had the furniture out of the room, we decided to paint our bedroom also. We were very ambitious and worked very hard, but we got it all done in 4 days. Also while doing all of this, I was trying very hard to finish a scrapbook for my friends who are going to have a baby and her baby shower on Saturday. So during the day I would work with mom on our projects and at night I would scrapbook. Needless to say, I am wiped out STILL!
I still have to clean my house today. My best friend is coming for a couple of days with her 2 daughters and I'm looking forward to hanging out, but I need to do a lot between now and when they get here. I will do my best to post pictures today, but if I don't get to it, I will soon.

Taking a Break

Alright, I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but man, have I been busy this past week. We went to my parents house this last weekend for the 4th (will post pics later) and my mom came home with us to help me around the house with projects. Man alive, have we've been working! We keep tackling projects that I've needed to get done for some time now, we are making good head waves. Right now, we are painting our bedroom, and actually need to run to Lowes to get more paint, so I will have to be going, but I wanted to write something in my blog. I will try to post pics by this weekend. Hope everyone is doing good!

Peek-A-Boo

Here's a video that we took last night. I originally got the camera out to shoot Adriana, because she loves walking around with a blanket on her head and playing peek-a-boo, and last night she had a blanket on her head and picked up my phone to talk on the phone while still being covered up. Of course, by the time I got the camera out, she didn't do it anymore, but this I did still get a picture of her doing it (I wanted video though).




Anyway, she was in a real good mood last night and actually smiled for some pics, so here are those.

And last but not least, here is a video of her playing peek-a-boo with daddy.

I love how she shakes her head while daddy is hiding.

Warning: This is Boring

Well, I don't have anything in particular to write about today. I have found that people stop looking at your blog if you don't update often, so I figure I'll write something to keep people coming back for more. Not much is new around our household. Adriana is changing more and more all the time. She just started doing animal sounds. Its so cute when she does them and she gets so proud of herself. Right now, Adriana is watching her favorite video, which is a Sesame Street video and there is a song on there that The Count sings and for some reason, it scares her, and she always frantically looks for the remote so I will turn it. I don't get it, she isn't scared of the Count any other time. Anyway, like I said there's nothing going on with us as you can tell by this boring blog entry.
In the news: Did you hear about the boy on Saturday that got decapitated at Six Flags in Georgia? He jumped a couple of fences to get his hat that he lost on the Batman roller coaster and ended up in a restricted area and while he was there he got struck by someone on the ride. He was from a youth group that was there for a day. It is so sad. I'm leery about rides and things that can go wrong and stories like that just confirm my fears. Now granted he was doing something he shouldn't have, but its still scary.
Also, have you seen the new milk jugs? I just saw them in passing on the news this morning and they look like gas cans or something. I don't know why they are changing them, hopefully it will bring the price of milk down. Look for them in a store near you.
Well, I'll stop boring the socks off you, and wrap this up. I hope you are having a good week thus far. Its a short week and a long weekend ahead, so that will give you something to look forward to. Have a great day!