Arizona

This was the view from my bedroom window last night

...and that's what I'm thankful for today.

Giveaway!

Mark your calenders for Novemeber 20th! It's the Pecan Creek Boutique! It looks so cute and amazing, I can't wait to go! Check out their blog and enter for a chance to win their giveaway!

http://www.pecancreekboutique.blogspot.com/

Thankful

I've been feeling really grateful lately, and seeing as it's finally November it's very fitting! For the month of November I'm going to periodically post about different things I'm thankful about. I saw it on a friend's blog and I thought it was a cute idea! She posts about something different everyday, but that might be a little ambitious for me...haha. Well so here it goes. Today I'm thankful to be...

a mom.

Being a mom to a toddler who is into everything is so exhausting! Example: this is where I found her today. I had only been gone about a minute to use the restroom.

Not only had she climbed up on the kitchen counter, she found a pen and was coloring on everything, including on of my photography books!

But she knew exactly how to win me over.  She sat up, smiled, and said "Cheese!"

I love this girl with all my heart.  She can change me from angry to laughing in seconds. 

 

We have our good days and our bad days, but the one things that never fails is the gratitude and overwhelming love I feel for her each night as I see her sleeping.  She is such a blessing, and I'm so blessed to be able to be her mom! 

Halloween

Since Halloween fell on a sunday this year, halloween ended up being stretched over a whole weekend! On Friday I got Kate dressed up in her witch costume. I made her tutu.

We headed over to Dustin's work to trick or treat at the office. This is Dustin's costume. It makes me laugh every time I see it!

He won funniest costume at his work and got Sun's tickets!

After that we came home and headed to our neighbor's house for a block party. While Dustin and I were getting soda's we weren't watching Kate for two seconds, and this happened:

Our neighbors had one of those colored lights sticking out of the ground to illuminate their halloween decor, and Kate touched it!  Luckily our quick thinking neighbor (and nursing student) gave us this amazing burn cream for her.  This picture was taken this morning, and believe me, this is an improvement.  Although the blister is still there, Kate is not in pain.  We're just waiting for it to heal.

After that episode, we headed to our ward party/trunk or treat!  Our ward is so amazing and fun.  There were so many people there!  Kate loved trick or treating, and all the scary decorations.

The next day was Saturday night, which is when we were planning to do our door to door trick or treating.  Well, we only ended up going to 3 houses since no one was out or expecting us.  We went to another one of our neighbors parties for a little while and then went to Jaron and Bethany's to play with cousins.

 Kate and Jaylee.  It wasn't on purpose, but don't they look like Elphaba and Galinda?

All the kiddos in their costumes.


Finally on Sunday rolled around (actual Halloween) and we went to a potluck our neighbors were having.  We have a lot of awesome neighbors!  I pulled out Kate's halloween costume from last year and put it on her.

 

Remember how huge it was on her?  Now it fits just right!

After the potluck, we came home and handed out candy to the trick or treaters.  We were poor this month so we couldn't afford any halloween decorations, so this is all we did.

Happy Halloween!

18 months

 I cannot believe my little baby is already 18 months old!  This has been the fastest year and a half of my life, and I've loved every second of it. 

Kate can say:  mom, dad, nana (grandma), nana (banana), I'm stuck, ball, up, down, woah, all right, what is that?, where did it go?, ouch, tv, mine, night night, I love you, bye bye, hello, hi, hey, uh oh, one, two, three, five, elmo, raar, quack, thank you, go, goal, weee, vroom vroom, bottle, sippy cup, eyes, nose, mouth, shoes.....okay she says a lot of things.

Kate's favorite shows:  Sesame Street, Dora, Backyardigans, Blue's Clues

Kate's favorite movie:  Pippi Longstocking.  Remember this movie?  Yes, the one from the 80's.  It's the only movie she'll actually sit and watch!

Kate's favorite foods: bananas, macaroni and cheese, peas, fruit snacks, and basically anything mommy and daddy are eating.

Kate has been going to nursery for the past 3 sundays!  She LOVES it!  When we dropped her off for the first time, she didn't even look back at us.  She was just so excited to play with people her size.

She can do the hand motions to popcorn popping and itsy bitsy spider.

Kate's favorite toys:  Elmo, her baby doll, her kitchen, slide and magna doodle.

Kate loves to dance, play with cousins, play soccer with daddy, play outside, play with mommy's hair, and get into trouble.

We love this girl, and we're so incredibly blessed to have her in our lives!

Kate's Kitchen

Our wonderful next door neighbor gave us this play kitchen. It's the perfect toy for Kate. She loves this thing! I'm always trying to stop her from playing in MY kitchen, and now she has one of her own!

I love that she loves to clean it!  Good training for the future!

Mmmm...time for dinner!

Bubble Ooodles

These little bubbles are probably the best $6 I've ever spent.  I know what you're thinking, $6 for bubbles?  But these bubbles are no ordinary bubbles.  They are amazing bubbles!  Example One:

They never pop!  They seriously don't pop unless you physically pop them.  Once I left some unpopped bubbles on my stairs, and they stayed intact for days.

Example two:  The bubble liquid is really thick so it lasts forever, and it comes with this cool trumpet thing.  One toot on this and your room is filled with bubbles!  I can make my front room look like Willy Wonka's Factory in seconds. 

I've been trying to teach Kate how to blow her nose lately, so I guess she got confused when I said to "blow" the bubbles!

That's not right either sweetie...

She loves these things, and I do too!