Busyness!

Wow, it was a busy weekend and will be a BUSY week too! Here's a lowdown of all the busyness-

*On Friday night I got to eat a yummy burger at Ruby's Diner and then saw Twilight! I really did enjoy the movie. The actor for Edward was definitely not the perfect Edward for me, but he did a better job than I thought he would and I thought he was convincing! The chemistry between Edward and Bella was most definitely believable. I thought Bella and lots of the other characters were great, and I loved the soundtrack and the gorgeous scenery! The special effects were pretty bad though, and I hope they can improve on those for the next movie.

*The Primary Program was on Sunday! The reason this is a big deal to me is that I'm the Primary Chorister. YAY, it's all done with now and the kids did a really great job! I'm sure they're just as glad as I am to have it over and done with!

*I decided Sunday would be the perfect day to take down all the fall decorations and put up Christmas!!! It was a big job and took me most of the afternoon to get it all done, but it made me so happy too! I turned on the Christmas tunes and lit my new Christmas candle (Winter from Bath and Body Works. Love it!) and our house was totally transformed. We don't have our tree yet, because we always buy a real one, but other than that our house is totally decked out!

*I'm supposed to be doing the laundry, and getting everything organized and packed for our Thanksgiving trip. We're leaving tomorrow, and it shouldn't be any big deal to pack for a 3-day trip except that when you travel with a toddler it DOES become a big deal! Snacks, books, toys, clothes, blankets, and everything I can possibly think of to keep an 18 month-old occupied on an airplane. I better not forget anything!

*We're off to Phoenix tomorrow! My grandparents and my Aunt and Uncle live there and all the extended family are convening there for this year's Thanksgiving festivities. I just checked the forecast and it looks like temperatures will be in the 70's. Beautiful! Looks like I get to dust off the T-shirts and pack them in the suitcase! Will it be warm enough to swim in my Grandma's pool? I don't know, but I'm packing the swimsuits just in case!

*I wish the plane ride was already over with. You don't enjoy a flight with a toddler on your lap, you simply endure it.

*I'm so excited to see all my wonderful extended family! My dad asked me what I was looking forward to the most and my answer came without hesitation. . . "Orange rolls!" My grandma makes the most heavenly rolls in the world and I am already drooling in anticipation! I've had them for Thanksgiving and Christmas for my entire life and it just isn't the holidays without orange rolls! This is an actual picture of them that I got off my cousin Tammy's blog. She's an amazing photographer! I never thought anyone could get a photo of these rolls that actually makes them look as good as they taste!

I really hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and safe travels!!!

18 Months Old!

Last week Kirsten had her half-birthday! My baby is 18 months old!!!I used to do these Kirsten updates every month but I missed the last couple of months, so here's the lowdown on some of the new things she can do:

*Running and CLIMBING. She climbs up on absolutely everything she possibly can!
*She can slither backwards down the stairs now! That just started recently.
*She's understanding so much more of what I say! She knows what I mean when I say we're going to leave or when we should go upstairs or downstairs, and lots of other things too!
*She goes to nursery during church! She does pretty well in there too so far!
*Words! She doesn't like to talk on command very much, but she will repeat us when she wants to and says random words when she wants to too.

The words we hear most often from her are:
*Hi and Bye! Bye is one of her favorites, and she lets me know when she wants to leave someplace because she just starts saying "Bye!" She says bye to objects and rooms as often as she says bye to people too. :) It's cute!
*Daddy and Mommy, but it must be more fun to say Daddy because she says that much more often than Mommy.
*Boo! She also likes to say something that sounds exactly like buoy. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean!
*She says a few animal names, mostly Kitty, Doggy, Giraffe, and Fish. She can also say "Bock-bock" for a chicken, "Moo" for a cow, "Woof-woof" for dog, and "Roar!" for bear.
*Baby
*Gone
*Off
*No
*Bath
*Light
*What's that?
*Whoa and Wow!
*Uh-oh!
*Ho-ho-ho! That's the most recent one I taught her. I say "Santa says Ho-ho-ho" and she laughs and repeats it.

Here she is at the park with her little friend Saide!

Things Kirsten is obsessed with right now:
*Lights! She says "light" when she sees them and constantly wants to turn the switches off and on. It's like her greatest joy in life right now!
*Our fireplace. She gets SO excited when we turn it on (we have a gas kind that can turn on with a light switch) and immediately she tries to climb up on our end table so she can turn it off. Every time we go downstairs she sees it and starts babbling about it, even if it's not turned on. She calls it "off" for some reason and will point at the fireplace and just say "Off" and want us to make the fire come back.
*Toothbrushes! She likes to brush her teeth every night and doesn't usually want to let go of her toothbrush.
*Carrying random things around the house and putting them in strange places. She especially loves to carry anything with liquid in it that she can shake, like a bottle of hairspray.
*Her sippy cups. They have to always have ice in them, and if the ice all melts she immediately brings it to me so I can put new ice in it.
*Sesame Street and Blue's Clues! She also starts laughing whenever I turn on 'I Love Lucy.' I didn't expect a toddler to find humor in that show yet!
*Hats, or anything she can wear on her head that resembles a hat! She also loves it when I wear a hat and she can take it off me.
*Climbing up everything. It's pretty scary to have a kid who's willing to endanger their life at any point by climbing up things. It's hard to take her to the playground too. She spends all her time there wanting to climb UP the slide and climb on other things, and I have to be right next to her to help her and make sure she doesn't fall.

Her least favorite things right now:
*Not being allowed to climb something.
*Getting her hair combed (always has hated that!) She even cries when I put it in a ponytail or really try to do Anything with it at all!
*Getting her diaper changed. She gets so impatient!
*Books. She very rarely brings books to me anymore, and just doesn't have the attention span to sit through one, much to my disappointment!

Things she still can't quite do:
*Feed herself very well with a spoon. She can try, but it's not too successful!
*Color. I don't know why she won't color, but crayons just go straight into her mouth and she tries to chew on them! Kirsten goes to nursery now, and all the other little kids color. Why can't Kirsten color???
*Go to sleep without her binky in her mouth.

Kirsten really is a great 18 month-old! She sleeps for very long stretches through the night, actually LIKES going to bed, and she's sweet and happy and very busy most of the time!
We love her so much!!!

Tonight!!!

I'm SUPER excited, because I have tickets to go see Twilight tonight! I'm going with my friend Miranda and I just can't wait! YAY!!! I hope it's totally awesome, and I hope it will change my opinion about the guy they picked as Edward. He just. . . doesn't look anything like Edward to me. He looks like Cedric Diggory. :) I hope that doesn't bug me through the entire movie. We'll see!

Who do I think should be Edward?

Hayden Christensen

He looks exactly like Edward to me. And I wouldn't be thinking of Darth Vader the whole time either. Too bad they didn't get him! But I'm still totally excited and thrilled that I get to see the movie tonight!

I'm Having. . .

A Girl!

Kirsten is going to have a sister! I told her she's SO lucky, because I have always wanted a sister and never got one. So I'm really glad that I can give Kirsten a sister. I hope they're good friends! The lady who did my ultrasound was telling me about her little girls and how they're best friends and just adore each other. It was making me really excited to have two little girls! Bring on the matching outfits! :)

*The baby is looking healthy and great, and they actually moved my due date up a few days to April 15'th! These are a couple of ultrasound pictures of the baby's profile.

*I felt like this baby was going to be a boy, and most other people guessed a boy as well! We were all wrong. When I first heard that this one was another girl I said, "Really?" just because I thought I was so sure it was a boy! This is why I'm really glad I find out the baby's gender as soon as I can, and not wait for the birth. I would have kept on thinking it was a boy all the way up until SHE was born, and then it would have been tough to adjust my thinking!

*I won't have to buy very much! Since this baby will be born in the same season as Kirsten, they'll be in the same sizes at the right seasons and she can wear all of Kirsten's outfits!

*I definitely have been feeling much better lately! I love the second trimester! I still have a very strong gag reflex in the mornings, but it's SO much better than it was. I've also started feeling the baby move a little bit when I'm in bed at night!

Finding Out Tomorrow!

I'm SO excited! My ultrasound is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and we'll get to find out whether the new baby is a boy or a girl!!!
Almost everyone has guessed that it's a boy (including myself!) but if you haven't guessed yet this is your last chance! I'll post about it as soon as I know!

Christmas Decor. . . You're Calling My Name!

For everyone who thinks I go crazy with Halloween decorations. . . well, that's true. But I go even MORE crazy at Christmas time! I know it's not officially Christmas time yet, but the stores already have their beautiful decorations out. I'm not allowed to venture near two of my favorite stores, Pier 1 and Pottery Barn, until I have some money to spend there. I'm just dying to have some of these in my own house!

How gorgeous is this wreath from Pottery Barn? So unexpected and simple!
I also love this garland from Pottery Barn, and it would go just as well with fall decorations as with Christmas!

Pier 1 always has gazillions of cool Christmas things, and I totally want this cute Santa candy jar!

I also want these dessert plates. They'd look amazing on a Christmas table with white dinner plates and a red tablecloth!

Ornaments galore! If you've never checked out Pier 1's ornaments, you really should! I always find a bunch that I love.

Both of these Pier 1 pillows would look fabulous on my couch-

Here are some ornaments I'm drooling over from Pottery Barn-

I'd want this on my doorstep ALL year long!

This centerpiece is so stunning!

I just can't resist buying Christmas decorations every year. Especially because they literally do call out my name when I walk by them!

More Fall Fun!

About a week before Halloween, my parents came to Seattle for a weekend to visit Kirsten. Yes, only to see Kirsten. And it's understandable. She sure changes a lot faster than Stephen or I do. :)

We had a good time while they were here! My Dad went to work installing an extra electrical outlet for us and opening up our hall closet to reveal extra storage room beneath our stairs. I think every time he comes to our house he figures out some way to improve it, it's great! We also took Kirsten to the Country Village in Bothell to play and shop at some cute stores.
She loved feeding the ducks!

See that gorgeous sunshine? October was a beautiful month in Seattle!

Kirsten and my Dad went through this enormous tunnel in the playground area!

She thought it was hilarious to peek through the little windows in the sides and see me and Stephen there.

She also rode this funny little merry-go-round.

And then we took this cute little train ride! Kirsten loved it!

She always has a blast when Grandma and Grandpa are around, that's for sure!

American Eagle. . . Still Love It!

When I was in college, I worked for a summer at an American Eagle store that was opening at our local mall in California. They give their employees a pretty amazing 50% off discount, so I bought ALL my clothes from there. Jeans, sweaters, T-shirts, you name it! Even when I stopped working there I still bought a huge majority of my wardrobe from that store.

It's been awhile since I bought anything from American Eagle, but we were at the mall tonight and noticed they had a buy one, get one half off special on all their sweaters and hoodies. I found this awesome sweater! I seriously love it, it fits so well and I got it in this color and also in solid black. I'm excited to wear them!Stephen is the KING of hoodies (seriously, he wears them almost all the time), so he found this really cool one there.

So when do you become too old to shop at stores like American Eagle and Aeropostale? A lot of their stuff looks too juvenile to me now (mostly their summer clothes) but they still have such nice winter clothing there!

Naughty Post-Halloween Antics!

Kirsten is definitely becoming more her own little person every day! She also seems to find more trouble to get into every day. All these things happened in the weekend right after Halloween:

*Kirsten got into the bowl of Halloween candy, found a few Dum-Dum suckers, and started sucking on them right through the paper. I took the paper off for her, and then she managed to get a sucker completely stuck in her hair! She was the stickiest girl EVER until her bath that night!
(By the way, our front entry is usually NOT messy like this! We're painting a new storage area inside our front hall closet, so all this stuff has to just sit there until the paint dries).

*She broke a ceramic pumpkin decoration on the wood floor. I don't know HOW she did it, she must have thrown it on the floor pretty hard for it to break. I heard the crash and came in to find her sitting among all the broken pieces, playing with them! Yikes! Luckily she didn't get hurt by anything, and Stephen was there to help me get everything cleaned up.

*She killed my cell phone! I always figured there was no harm in her playing with it as long as the phone was SHUT. She sent off a text message once before, but that's the extent of what she had done until that weekend. She was playing with the shut phone, and then I discovered the screen was completely blank and wouldn't turn back on at all. I took it to the Verizon store on Monday and they said the wetness indicator had gone off on the phone. Since she didn't have it near water, she must have had it in her mouth and actually got it wet enough to kill it! Isn't that nuts? I had no idea she could do that. They couldn't fix it, so I ended up having to pay $50 for a new phone and kept my old battery.

I sense I'll probably have many more stories like these as she gets older, won't I? :)

Trick Or Treating!

Here is she. . . my cute little Halloween bug! Last year she was a ladybug, this year she was a butterfly. . . hmm, next year I'll have to think of something less buggish for her. :) But isn't she the most adorable butterfly???This crazy-carved pumpkin was in the entryway to Stephen's work building. Microsoft does Halloween right!

Kirsten was thrilled to be in that entryway, because the first thing she saw and made a beeline for were the Halloween balloons. Her favorite thing!

She loved wearing her costume too! She liked the puffy skirt and wearing the antennas on her head.

I love those cute wings on the back of her costume!

I was a witch! My hat is WAY cooler than you can actually see in any of these pictures. It's kind of drooping to the side, but trust me when I say it was the best witches hat I've ever seen!

Stephen didn't wear a costume. Bummer, I know! But I didn't really see many Microsoft employees dressed up.

Trick-or-treating at Microsoft was WAY cooler than I thought it would be! There were tons of people there, and they decorated the buildings and had loads of candy! We filled up Kirsten's trick-or-treat bucket SO fast. She didn't understand the concept at all, so Stephen just carried her and I picked up candy for her and mostly manned the camera.
Check out how cool Stephen's building looked!

Okay. . . so his building was NOTHING compared to Building F. Stephen works in Building C, and Building F was decked out to the max!!! We headed over there, and it was seriously a maze of decorations. Some of it was pretty scary to me, but Kirsten wasn't even scared! She just looked at everything and thought it was all fascinating. Here's just a small sample of all the Halloween stuff in Building F:

Scary, I'd say so! At one point they had a larger-than-life werewolf howling and making growling noises. I kept waiting for Kirsten to cry, but she didn't! After that we entered into the Land of Oz (still in Building F!)

The Wicked Witch of the West jumped right out at Kirsten, and Kirsten just stared! She's brave. I would have cried for sure!

And the only time she cried, in the entire building, was when the Tin Man started talking to her. See that face mask he's wearing? I agree with Kirsten! Masks are the scariest, and he was the only character to wear one. The rest just had face paint. I didn't get a picture of her crying, but she does look pretty worried in this picture.

The Emerald City! See what I mean about this place? I just had no idea that trick-or-treating at the Microsoft buildings would be so great!

And on Halloween. . . I started looking pregnant. All of a sudden! Poof! Crazy, huh?

We didn't take Kirsten trick-or-treating anywhere else. She was on overload by the time we left! But it was such a fun Halloween and I'm sad that it's over!