Picture found...

So I mentioned previously that Reese didn't enjoy the birthday cake part of her Bday --- here is proof. The pictures of her crying her eyes out were on my mom's camera so I had to wait for her to send them to me. She was all fine and dandy until she started digging her fingers into the cake and then the crocodile tears started... here she is trying to reach for her muuma with cake covered hands. It's her party and she can cry if she wants to...

Not much... but I'll blog anyway...

She nearly wore us out pulling her around in this laundry basket. Needless to say we've hid the basket for now so she won't see it and want to be pulled around for hours again. She loved it but boy it wears you out running up and down the hall... plus in our little apartment there are just too many obstacles.

So not much going on like I said. Todd just recently switched to working over nights again for the next couple weeks and it kind of stinks... except that he is off by noon - so that gives us some more time to see him during the day. Reese has adjusted well to the new place... except last night when she decided her bedtime was 1 am. As much as I love her I was quite angry with her last night. It was so frustrating when she would come over numerous times during the night with binkie in mouth and blankie in hand and lift her arms up to be picked up and numerous times after this happened I thought "finally this child wants to sleep," boy was I wrong. She would lay in my arms for a few minutes then poke her little head up and point at something in the room and start a little conversation about whatever she was pointing at. My mother always advised to just force her to sit and rock and eventually she will give in and go to sleep. Well as I tried to do that she would scream bloody murder! I would get so frazzled that my neighbors above, across, and behind would think I was murdering my child that I would give in. A major disadvantage to living in an apartment... I feel bad about letting her sit and cry for the sake of my neighbors. I know I'm probably overly paranoid, but in the moment I can't handle it. So we'll see how tonight goes. It just stinks when I know she is tired and I'm very tired and that doesn't help with the patience. I enjoy my sleep -- I'm not one of those people that can get by on less than 8 hours of sleep... no matter how hard I try to condition my body to survive on less it just makes me more irritable to everyone around me. This lady needs her sleep. Reese has been enjoying the high speed internet... especially when her daddy is hogging the TV to watch the jazz. She is able to see some new Elmo clips besides the DVDs that she has seen over and over again in our personal collection. It cracks me up when he comes on the screen and he says hello to the audience and she says "hi" and waves. Reese's vocabulary thus far consists of Da Da, Mum, Taa (she always yells this one too, I think it's Todd - not sure why she yells it... certainly didn't pick that up from her mother), she woofs when she sees a puppy and on occasion she will say kitty -- or "icshy" well it doesn't exactly sound like kitty but you get the idea. Lately everything is "pid" or pretty, she points at the lights or when her hair is done and says pretty.

Greeting from the North Pole... (Rexburg)

We made it... we are now living in Rexburg! Well we've actually been here for a week I just haven't really written much about it. It has been pretty much freezing cold everyday we have been here. Of course the day we moved in was the coldest of all -- the wind didn't help. So we are pretty settled I still haven't found a home for everything we own yet... our old apartment had a ton of storage and this one just doesn't. We are getting there though. Our new apartment is a lot bigger everywhere but our living room and our furniture kind of fits. We can pretty much count out having any sort of party at our place (I suppose it is good that this place has amenities like a clubhouse - for such occasions). My favorite things about the new place:
1-huge kitchen and bathroom
2-walk-in closet in our bedroom
3-internet and cable included
4-bathtub (with slanted back so I don't have to sit straight up -- I am definitely a tub girl).
5-DISHWASHER (how glorious is this!!!)

Reese loved her beef stew last night (well it was more like potato and carrot mush - when she got her hands on it). She is trying to figure out this whole utensil thing... she knows what they are for but hasn't quite got the holding it right side up yet to scoop things on to her fork or spoon.

I am amazed that she ended up scarfing down that hole pile! I know it looks kind of gross but she absolutely loved it -- she had originally started with a plate, but when she very first grabbed the plate and almost dumped it on the floor we had to make a few changes.

For the moment I'm not working which has been wonderful. I'm just a fill in when ever they might need me at the Downeast up here. I'm not missing working full time at all. This won't be permanent just for a the semester or so... but it is so nice to be able to just be at home with Reese and play with her. Lately she thinks people who can roll their tongue are just the coolest. She tries so hard to do it too -- I'm sure she'll get it one of these days.

Birthday Party

Once again these pictures are not in the order I intended... so hopefully it's not too confusing. Tired baby after all the partying... check out the new jammies Grandma Z made and of course the elmo slippers. For those of you who didn't know that little fleece bronco blanket is her absolute favorite and won't go anywhere without it. She has so many cute blankets that friends and family made and she likes this stupid one the best (just a little piece of fleece I picked up so she could have a blankie like daddy's when they are watching the game).

Licking the beaters of her first birthday cake. Since Reese doesn't have an opinion on the matter yet she had my favorite Rainbow chip!

Check out the new stroller from her Uncle Jason and Aunt Alisha. Dylan (who is a few months older than her) fought over this the rest of the day. They loved to push it around -- Dylan's dad wasn't too happy to find out that his big boy was playing with a doll stroller (he should want to play with trucks and trains right?)

Brooklynn helping Reese open her presents, a ball popper from Uncle Justin.

Ok we just sang happy birthday and Reese is looking around wondering what she is supposed to do with this cake. I have the picture on my mom's camera... but after she started digging into her cake she just cried and cried... I don't know if she like the cake on her hands or didn't like everyone staring at her but she didn't care for any of it.

The remnants of her cake. A bite anyone?

Grandma and Grandpa (and Uncle Thomas) came down even though the weather was bad.

The birthday girl and her daddy. Yes this is how she smiles when you put a camera in her face.

Mommy helping her open her presents.

My masterpiece of a cake... as you can tell Elmo was the theme and she loved all of the decorations she ooooed and awwwed all night while we set up. Notice her trick or treating bucket that doubled as a vase... creepy that there are flowers poking out of Elmo's head.

The decorations, nothing too fancy, she is only one after all!

You've got to have a pretty poofy skirt for your birthday! I couldn't capture of her smiling so this will have to do.

She loved harassing Dylan... she kept trying to open up his vest to look at the bears on his shirt -- the followed him around all day trying to talk and play with him... and he was quite frightened of this strange girl pulling and grabbing at him.

A few days late... but Happy Birthday to Reese!!!

This was her birthday announcement... sorry to those who recieved theirs way late... they got lost in the mayhem of moving -- P.S. it was a nightmare trying to get her birthday picture taken for her announcement. She would not sit still, nor would she look at the camera. She had to keep standing up and point at the camera lense while saying Oooo! If she wasn't doing that she was pulling her tutu up to her neck or pulling on her hair... it was quite a struggle and this was the best picture I got. Also a little side note I couldn't find anything to use as a backdrop (not one white sheet in our whole house) so I used our tree skirt (the snow looking kind).

Hard to imagine this was us one year ago... man I look pretty worn out for only pushing for 2o minutes. I know I sound like everyone else who has every had a child... but I still can't believe what a wonderful, beautiful child she has grown into! Naturally she is the most wonderful and beautiful child there is! She brings us so much joy and chaos to our lives but I don't know what we would do without her and I can't remember what we did before she was here. It seems like every second of the day revolves around her in some way and she undoubtedly knows that too. One year down... many, many more to go!

Christmas Day...

After a breakfast in Downey we went down my mom's for the remainder of the day (usually we open presents and have dinner at my Grandma's but there is getting to be too many of us so we broke our usual tradition and had it at my mom's). We had a nice ham dinner with all my brothers and their families, Grandma Nan, and my Uncle Kent and his family also came.

Check out that Christmas morning hair!!!

So we had a "little" snow storm all Christmas day. We barely made it to Preston (picture taken from my mom's front porch). We had the worst time trying to get out of Downey. It is sooo windy there that snow just blew into huge drifts that caused us to get stuck twice on the same road.

The snow ended up being so deep that we had to delay our trip home until the next morning (bummer that Todd didn't have to go to to work Christmas night-sarcasm). It wouldn't have been a problem if we had taken our jeep but we took the Altima and it's not so much of a winter vehicle especially when the roads haven't been plowed , so it parked in it's snow trench until the snow plow was able to come the next morning.

All the grand kids got matching pj's from Grandma. This is the best of about 7 photographs... the youngsters had a hard time sitting still and all looking at the camera at the same time.

Reese and Daddy opening up their presents.

Christmas morning...

Thanks Annagrace for Reese's present... she loved playing with the stacker toys.

Chillin' in her chair with her care bear Santa left her checking out the remaining items in her stocking.

Opening up her stocking. She was more excited to see she had a small package of goldfish crackers than any of her movies or other toys.

We didn't wrap her tent or the giggling Elmo chair inside. She loves Elmo in case some of you didn't know. Just a side note before Christmas we had the Elmo chair sitting in our storage closet every once in a while we would catch her in the closet pointing up at the Elmo (she wasn't supposed to see) and Ooooing and smiling.

Ok so these are in reverse order... Reese setting her eyes for the first time on all the goods Santa left for her. Last year she was still snuggled up inside mommy's tummy (in no hurry to come out might I add - even being 5 days late at Christmas). We are definitely glad she didn't come while we were traveling for Christmas.

It's a Christmas miracle (me posting)...

Christmas Eve...
So after I got off work we headed down to Downey to start the holiday celebration off at Todd's Parent's house. We had a nice little Christmas dinner, played a few games and read the Christmas story from Luke.

We all sat around the table and enjoyed a few rounds of scum. There was just Todd's Parent's, his brother Thomas and ourselves.

Grandma wasn't able to use all her antique ornaments on her tree this year - since some little girl likes to take them off and haul them around the house. So instead she used plastic child friendly ornaments that were ok to disappear or play with.

We did have plans to send out a Christmas card this year but it didn't quite happen. I'm horrible when it comes to sending things out (especially when there is a deadline involved). We tried to take some cute family pictures but the only day where the sun was actually shining was frickin freezing so our pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. So this picture was the best of the bunch. Reese's hair is all wind blown and Todd isn't even looking at the camera, but trust me it was the best.

I tried...

Ok one thing I am looking forward to when we move to Rexburg is internet!!! We will have our own connection (emphasis on own -- and not trying to pick up whatever signal we can from the neighbors). I just tried to upload a bunch of pictures but it just isn't happening, so sorry. I'll be a lot better when we are up north keeping this thing updated. This is the first time I've sat at the computer in like a week (I remember when it used to be a couple times a day). I'm just busy, busy. So the big move is only a few weeks away -- and I just don't even want to think about it. I remember when I first moved up to Pocatello I could load all my belongings in the back of my jeep -- now we have to do the whole moving truck business. Packing and cleaning is the worst part! I have decided though that a change will be nice - it will stink having to meet new people and get adjusted but it will mix things up a bit. I will be working a lot less which is good and bad. Good because I would rather be home being more of a wife and mom and bad because we will have no money -- we will be pretty poor. I am excited to brush up on my suzie homemaking skills... I must admit I'm not a very good wife... I get home from work and cooking and cleaning is the last thing on my mind. So we might be poor but there will be a nice meal on the table and a clean house for Todd to come home too. It will be nice to also have a more structured day -- Reese has little to no routine - due to our crazy schedule. Ok so I'm babbling...

Not much on this week's agenda... tomorrow there will be another football game (like every Sunday), we still need to finish up our Christmas shopping, Todd's work Christmas party is also tomorrow, and that's about it until Christmas. I have major plans to de-clutter my house and send some things to the DI in preparation for the big move -- but really not much else. How exciting are we?

Don't kill me... no pictures again..

Ok so we are over at a friends and we are using their internet and I don't have my memory card with me to upload some pictures. So what's been going on... Thanksgiving was great. We were in Preston for the blessed holiday -- it's so nice to have good food! Reese loved dinner too... she sat on my lap and sat mouth open the whole time -- she needed a taste of everything especially potatoes!!! We didn't stay too late since Todd had to be back to work at 8 (oh the joys of working retail during the holiday season). I had to work at 5:30 the next morning. Todd did get off work in time to hit the early morning sales. He managed to find a laptop after waiting in line for hours like all those other mad crazy shoppers! He didn't get the one he wanted but found one that will work for school and it ended up being a $100 less than the one he was hoping to get. I never do the early morning shopping... I think it's crazy and there never seems to be anything worth getting up that early for. I would rather sleep. So not much else has been going on -- we did find an apartment finally! It has been a nightmare trying to find a new place to live -- so we had originally planned on living in Idaho Falls but we found a place in Rexburg. So we are moving to Rexburg the first of January, ugh... I'm looking forward to a change... but not so much living in Rexburg. Who knows though I may end up liking it up there. Soooo... not much else going on - just working on getting my Christmas shopping done. Well I better get back to socializing with my friends ---later...