This last weekend we went to a little girls birthday party who goes to our church. She was turning 3 and this was the first birthday party that Adriana got to go to. She had a blast. It was a really neat party. They rented out this facility that had blow up jumpy things and lots of other fun things for the kids and the dads got to play with. I don't know who had more fun, the kids or all the dads. Anyway, here are some pictures.

Playing Air Hockey with daddy.

Riding the big apple with Mr. Worm riding with her.

Playing Basketball with daddy.

Adriana loved watching the little girl open all her gifts. She also got lots of cake and ice cream. The party was princess themed so Adriana was in hog heaven. She had a great time and it was so fun to watch her play.

Reality Bites!

Yesterday was a depressing day. Nothing tragic happened, just went through old clothes that I don't fit into anymore. All you women will understand where I'm coming from on this one. I have kept this stuff in the attic for sometime, however we are out of space and its time to get rid of stuff. If we don't sell our house and move, we're going to have to get rid of a lot more things I'm afraid. Its just hard going through clothes that I fit into before I had Adriana. I never lost my baby weight with her and now I'm tacking on another child's weight. I am trying to eat better this go around, and hopefully that will help. Anyway, I just had to come to the realization that I will probably never be a size 6 again! It makes me very sad. I had a lot of cute clothes and outfits, that now are in a huge garage sale pile. This stinks!
Another reality hit that we face is Ryan is having to get rid of or pack up all his books for baby #2. Anyone who remotely knows Ryan knows what a book worm he his. He has a whole bookshelf full of his favorites and boxes and boxes of others too. We have no other place to put the bookshelf in the house, so he is having to empty out the shelves, for they will be replaced with baby things since that room will now be the nursery. He is going to actually try to sell his books and get a new Kindle. (Its a device that you can download books onto and read them off this little computer device instead of having a ton of books taking up space.) I know he is torn between selling his books and packing them away, either way, this stinks for him too.
I was just kind of down yesterday that we don't have enough space for just the little things that we want to hold onto, for down the road use. Maybe something will still work out with getting a larger house, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
All I can say is that, if I ever do get down to my size 6 or 8, I'M GOING SHOPPING!

Taking Cards

Maybe I live in a cave or something and this stuff has been out for a while, but within the last 2 days I have seen objects that accept credit/debt cards that I would never have even thought about. Yesterday, I was at Wal-mart (I know, you're so shocked!) and I was wanting to get a soda out of the vending machine and to my surprise, one of the machines took a credit card. That just blows my mind, and I don't know why really. I think its a great idea, because people like us, who never have actual change or money, can now have equal buying rights to certain products and not just be out of luck. The other object I saw a credit card thing on was a pay phone at the mall. Who still uses a pay phone? I guess its a good thing that they take other forms of payment in case of an emergency, you know, like having to call your best friend and tell her that there is a sale going on at JCPennys or something. You now have that option to use your credit card at a pay phone. Has anyone else seen these credit card machines at unusual places?

Dishes Song

Adriana STILL loves to help out with various chores around the house. Because of the mess she tends to make, Ryan doesn't normally let her help with the dishes anymore. Well the other night, she asked Ryan to help with the dishes and he said yes and she was so excited! (Just a side note, so you don't think I'm a slave driver, me and Ryan decieded long before we were married, that if I cooked, he would do the dishes, just so you know that he's not treated like Cinderella, well for the most part.) Anyway, Adriana was patiently waiting for Ryan to get the dishes in order to start cleaning them, that she was just standing there in the kitchen singing this song to herself. It was so cute! Of course, once we pointed out that she was singing a cute song, she sang it loud and proud, and she really loved it when I started recording her singing it (suprise, suprise!). Anyway, here is our little chore lover, singing her song.

Side note: Here is the latest picture of me and my belly. I keep forgetting to have Ryan take the picture, so I did it yesterday by myself. Sorry for the poor shot, but you can get the idea anyway. I am bound and determined that this child will have just as many pictures as Adriana (this coming from a second child), but right now, I haven't been off to a great start. I will do better.

I, for some reason, feel patient right now, and so I'm going to try to upload some pictures on here, to show you guys what we have been up to lately.

We FINALLY got our A/C fixed last night. We ended up spending the night at my parents house on Saturday night, because it was 87 degrees in the house! It was not fun! I spent all day Saturday cleaning in the heat, to get our house "show room" ready, since they were showing it on Sunday. Anyway, we got the A/C working again, by the goodness of a man from church coming out Sunday and Monday to help get it fixed. We are truly grateful to have our A/C back.

I would say the biggest thing we have been working on, is potty training. We finally just put underwear on Adriana (expect when sleeping) and she has only had 1 accident. I am so pleased at how well she is doing with all of it. She went all day at school without accidents and LOVES having big girl underwear!

It has been hotter than a firecracker out there this week. I feel sorry for Ryan having to work out there in the heat. The heat indexes have been well in the 100's. We have hit summer hard! Well, we are heading out to go swimming, for the second time today, so I better go. Enjoy the pictures!

Looking pretty in a new dress

from Heehee

Ready for Summer

Say Cheese!

The cool swimming pool at the new fitness center

that we joined. The pool is really neat, and Adriana

LOVES to go!

Adriana at the other pool at "splash time"

last week when we went.

Me and Adriana, not a great picture!

Adriana had a boo boo on her foot so I got her this cold pack to help ease the pain. She fell asleep holding it on her foot, it was so cute!

ALWAYS bad timing!

We got home last night, Friday night, to find out that our A/C blower has gone out. Of course this would happen on the eve of the weekend, when all labor and service calls are practically doubled in price! This always seems to happen to us at the worse time! I know I have written about our sewage lift pump going out, which has happened at least 3 times, every time it happens at night when we can't get anyone out here till morning.
This is all so weird to me though. We had just talked to our realtor on Thursday and told him that we wanted to take our house off the market (too many out there for competition and we haven't had ANYONE come and look at it). We were actually going to contact the builder about a possible trade on a bigger house up the street. Our realtor was suppose to contact us on Friday to sign papers and get it off the market. Well, I had a Realtor call me on Friday evening and tell me that they have a couple interested in looking at our house on Sunday. I just think the timing is pretty strange. Maybe if we get it sold we can just buy a house up the street instead of worrying about a builder trade. If anything, the cool thing is, we are selling our house with a home warranty and because this A/C problem has happened while our house is still on the market, it will be covered by the warranty, even if we don't sell our house. This is a blessing because we will only have a $75 deductible no matter what the problem is. I also think the timing of this is great too. Saying since the day before we were going to take it off the market, and now we have had all this new events unfold. The only problem is we have to clean in the super heat today and have to show our house with no A/C. Hopefully we can get someone out here in the next 48 hours. Enjoy your A/C today!

Our New News

Well we went for our first ultrasound today. We got a due date of Nov 14 and am expecting a little baby BOY then! To be honest we were wanting another little girl, but the more we think about a boy, the more excited we get. I had a hunch it was a boy anyway, but to know of sure now, makes the planning that more fun! We just wanted to pass along the news to you guys.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Mini Me

ME


Mini ME

Everyone has always said that Adriana looks just like me, poor child! I was going through some pictures today and came across these two. I thought we looked similar because we had about the same smile, and of course, a sweet face. :) Just thought I would share them with you, if I come across anymore, I will try to post them.

Goopy Eyes, Cat Fights and Baby Boom

What a title right? I had to allure my readers in somehow. I feel so bad that I haven't been keeping this more up to date like I should, so to figure out whats going on in our lives, just read the title. Let me explain.
We have had a lot of new "adventures" within the last week or so. For one thing, we joined a new community center here in Ozark, which is a lot of fun. Now mind you, we should be working out and trying to stay trim, but they have a great aquatics area that has slides, a lazy river, fountains and lots of other things, so we enjoy taking Adriana there and she loves it. Its a really great facility. Very family orientated and not too expensive (the best part).
Zoe also got in ANOTHER cat fight last week. She had gotten in a cat fight a couple of months ago, and by the time I looked outside she was chasing the cat that got in our backyard around and they were rolling on the ground fighting. Zoe suffered a gash above her eye. Well, apparently she has forgotten what it was like to get beat up by a wild cat. Last week we had the windows open and I hear the infamous cat fight sounds and look out and Zoe had gotten out of our fenced in yard and was being chased by a different cat. I ran to the front door and by then they had gone their separate ways and Zoe was hunched over on the front porch. She didn't allow any of us to touch her for the rest of the night, and by the next day she didn't leave the bed. She laid in bed for 2 days (which is not like her at all, she's lazy but not that lazy). I knew she was in pain. She eventually let me look at her back (where chunks of fur where coming out) and I saw a few blood spots. She has a couple of big bumps on her back still, but she is back to her old self. She still doesn't like to go outside, but it won't be long before she forgets what happened and will probably get in another fight.
On to the Goopy Eyes part. All of a sudden Adriana has had the worse goopy eyes. They are matted shut in the mornings and they can get nasty during the day. The doctor just said to try her on some allergy medicine and see how that goes. She has never had problems with her eyes, so the first day she woke up with them matted shut, I wondered if she might have pink eye. Well, I was telling Ryan that that's what it might be, so she runs in our bathroom and digs out my pink nail polish (what we paint her toes with and call them pink toes). She comes running in and holds the polish bottle up to her eyes and says "pink eyes". It was so funny. She has also started calling them goopy eyes, since that's what I call them. So now, she wakes up every night, in the middle of the night, crying out "goopy eyes, goopy eyes", whether she has them or not. I'm getting tired of trying to clean this nastiness off her eyes. I hope it will pass soon! They seem to be getting better, but they still can get matted shut. I just need my sleep! Whatever am I going to do when this baby comes!
Speaking of babies (did you like my intro into this next part?), there are a TON of people pregnant now that are due in the last few months of the year. I don't know if I'm noticing it because I'm pregnant or what, but I know at least 15 people that are due Sept-Dec. Its crazy! Also, we HOPEFULLY find out what we are having this Friday. And hopefully I can get a specific due date too. I'm very anxious and will pass along results when we get them.
Well, I would say that's about it for now. Its going to be a hot one today, so I'm taking Adriana to a pool in Nixa for what they call, "splash time" geared towards littler kids. We went last year and she loved it. We'll see. I'll try to take pictures. Hope everyone has a great day!

Catching Up

Well since I FINALLY got the trip pictures done, I feel free to write about more current events in our lives. These last few weeks have been so much fun. First, our trip down south, and then last week me and my parents took Adriana to the Zoo and then on Friday night, Ryan, Adriana and I decided to go down to Branson for the evening. We have had so much fun and our summer is off to a good start.

THE ZOO

Last Thursday I had heard that the weather was going to be beautiful with a high in the low 70's so I decided to take Adriana to the Zoo here in Springfield. It was the first time we had been to the Zoo here and Adriana had only been one other time to a zoo in Montgomery, AL when she was about 5 months old, so I was excited to see how she would react to the animals. I called up my parents and asked if they would like to join us, so they met us there. Adriana had a great time. Some of the animals were hard to see, but the ones she did see, she enjoyed. We walked all over the park and then took a train ride around the little lake they have. This was the highlight of the trip for Adriana. After a couple of hours there, we decided to eat our picnic lunch. Of course, Mimi's lunch tasted better than Adriana's. We feed the birds our scraps and Adriana enjoyed seeing them swoop down and pick up the pieces and fly away with them. It was a great trip and we had a lot of fun.

Adriana with Mimi and Pa

Adriana feeding the goats, she LOVED this part.

After we feed them they had hand sanitizer there

and she was putting it on, and one of the goats

wanted to see what was in her hand, so she let him

lick her hand with the hand sanitizer in it. Needless

to say, he didn't like it, nor did he come asking for

more.

Sitting next to Mimi on the train ride. She

LOVED the choo-choo train!

The scary tiger with a cute face.

Pa and Adriana sitting on the Elephant

Our Picnic

Eating Chocolate pudding as fast as she could.

BRANSON

I didn't take any pictures of our quick trip to Branson. B-town, as we like to call it, is only 20 some miles from our house, and Ryan knows his way around there pretty well, so we packed up the van and headed down there about 6pm Friday night. We stopped and ate a bite and then took Adriana to this little play land, geared towards toddlers. We thought Adriana would have a blast there. Unfortunately, she was 1 inch too short to ride all the rides, so she was just limited to being able to ride 3 rides. The tea cups was the only one that the parents could ride along with them. She has been such a chicken about everything these days and super clingy that that was the only one she would ride, so we could be there with her. Keep in mind all these rides are made for 30lbs children and not big folks like ourselves. Ryan rode with her the first time and she had a lot of fun. The tea cups moved very slowly and didn't even spin real fast either. We were the only ones riding this ride. The second go around, I decided to ride along. Bad idea! I guess since I am pregnant (at least that's what I'm blaming it on), I cannot handle any kind of spinning whatsoever! No matter how fast or slow it goes. As soon as it started it just took my breath away and my stomach felt as if I was plummeting down a huge roller coaster the whole time. I immediately closed my eyes and I guess was moving around too much, that it made our tea cup spin even faster. Now mind you, I'm trying to hold it together so I don't scare Adriana, however, all I kept saying was how fast it was going and that I wanted to get off the ride. Eventually Adriana noticed the spinning cup and she started wanting off. Well, I'm sad to say, they had to stop the ride for us to get off. We were still the only ones on there, but nevertheless it was quite embarrassing. Ryan was standing there making fun of me the whole time, and by the time it stopped I opened my eyes to everyone around the ride staring at me. I made it a point to mention that I was pregnant and that's why I couldn't handle the ride. Ryan had to get Adriana out of the cup because I was too dizzy and the little 16 year old boy running the ride had to help me get off without hurting myself. So that was fun times, let me tell you!

We decided to go for more of a tamer adventure, so we drove down the street and did bumper boats. That was fun. Adriana got to ride with me and and we kept bumping into daddy. It was only us and one other family out there, so it was pretty tame. After that, we went and got ice cream and headed home.
All in all, we had a great time, minus my lovely encounter with little tea cups.

Our Trip: Part 2: Play time

Alright, I know we have been back for almost 2 weeks and I still haven't wrote all about our trip. The last post took me about an hour to upload all the pictures, because I have them on 3 different memory cards, so I have dreaded posting more pictures for that reason. Sorry for slacking off.

Lets see...where did I leave off....oh right, the beach. Well after we went to the beach we went to this wonderful restaurant right on the beach for dinner. It was my mother-in-laws birthday that day so we ate somewhere special. This seafood restaurant was so nice and it was nice to eat fresh fish. While we waited for the food, there was a dance floor (where no was was dancing) and the kids just loved it. It was dark and had a mirror ball going and they just had the best time running around and dancing. (I have video of it, but for some reason can't get my videos to download at the current time).

Here are some pictures of the kids at the restaurant. You can see by their little faces that they got a little sun kissed at the beach. They had the best time together.

Cousins--Riley, Jack and Adriana

Once we got back to Montgomery, we wanted to entertain the kids still. Kara, Ryan's sister, had a great idea to take the kids down to this "splash pad". It was in the downtown part and free and open to the public. Since that Monday was a holiday, it seemed like the downtown was a ghost town, which was good. We had the whole place to ourselves. I decided not to get in the water, but to take pictures. They were all in there having a good ol' time and I was yelling to them, that it was starting to rain. They couldn't really hear me over the fountains, so I was trying to gather all the stuff and head for shelter. Well, come to find out, there really was no shelter out there. They saw me running around like a mad woman and realized that it was pouring down rain. Luckily, there had been some big concert event in that area the weekend before and there was one little pavilion still up. We all took off running for that covered area. While we were waiting for the rain to pass, we let the kids eat a picnic lunch we had packed for them. It was actually really cool how it turned out and we had a lot of fun sitting there with the rain falling all around us. The storm passed by quickly and the kids were able to go run around a little more in the water. We had a great time and am glad Kara suggested it.

Here are pictures from the splash pad.

We had to climb a ton of stairs to

get to the splash pad. The kids

loved all the climbing. The adults

did not!

Ryan and Adriana in the splash pad. She wouldn't

get down and run around like her cousins did.


Having a blast!


Kara and her kids, Jack and Riley

Our picnic area. At least we were staying dry.

Here are some extra pictures. Adriana loves her cousins so much. Here are some shots of them together.

Poor Riley doesn't look like she wants to be

hugged. Ready or not, here comes Adriana.

Anything for a photo op.

Adriana and Jack

Adriana and Riley. They are only about 2.5 mo

apart in age, so we tend to dress them alike. They

love playing together and being girly girls.

Here is a picture of Savannah and Adriana.

Adriana LOVED Savannah (who is a friend of

the family).

We really had a good time on our trip. We enjoyed seeing friends and family and getting to go to the beach, for Adriana's first experience. We had a great time and look forward to doing it again. Thank you Jim and Sandy for you hospitality and good food, we loved it! We love all our family in the South and wish we could see you more.

Our Trip: Part 1: The Beach

Total Miles: 1767

Hours and minutes in van: 33:57

Miles Per Gallon: 21.3

Spending time with family: Priceless

We had a great time on our trip. We were gone for 7 days. We left on Thursday and headed down to Alabama. We left around 5:30am and didn't get to his parents house until 7pm. It was a long day to say the least, but Adriana did really good. She was so excited to see her cousins and PopPop and HeeHee, she tolerated the ride very well. Unfortunately she doesn't take very good naps in the car, so it can make a long day for mom and dad too.

The next day we headed down to Florida to see Ryan's oldest sister, Lauren and her apartment in Panama City. We had a good time visiting with her, unfortunately it rained and rained and rained. They had said on the news down there that the weather was that of a tropical depression. The first night there it was so windy, and I was afraid that a hurricane was going to come and sweep us back to Missouri. Luckily by Saturday, it had cleared up a little bit after the kids naps and we were able to go to the beach for a little while that evening. Adriana LOVED the beach. The first thing she said when she saw the white sand was "Snow!". She was scared to walk on the beach at first, but quickly warmed up. Unfortunately, when we pulled up to the beach we noticed that the red flags were up, meaning that it was a high surf and they didn't want people in the water. The good thing was, there was a part of this beach geared towards kids. It was a very shallow entry and it stayed shallow for about 100 yards. It was a great way to get Adriana used to the water. Because it was so windy it made it a little chilly to be in the water, but it wasn't bad once you got use to it (although by the end of the evening Adriana's lips were a bluish color). Adriana had a death grip on Ryan's hand the ENTIRE time we were out there, but she had fun. Every time a wave would come and splash up against her she would hold her fist up in victory and say "yes!". It was too cute! One time a wave came and splashed against her and a little drop went in her mouth. She didn't know what to think of the salty water. I told her that the water was really salty and so now every time we talk about going to the beach, she reminds me that the water is salty.

We enjoyed ourselves so much and wish we could have stayed at the beach longer than an hour and a half. We made some fun memories and look forward to going back there, hopefully sooner than later.

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories coming soon....

Me and Adriana on the beach. You can tell

by the look on Adriana's face how cold she was.

Now you know where Adriana gets

her chubby feet and toes (from her mama).

Family Picture

Adriana and her beach escort.

She would NOT let go of her daddy's

hand for nothing!

You can see the excitement in Adriana's

face, of how much she enjoyed the beach.

The high tides on the other beach. There were

surfers everywhere, I'm suprised I got a picture

with none of them in there.