Cali turns ONE

Cali turned ONE on Thursday the 18th. We had a little party for her on Saturday.

Her adorable cake!

This beautiful cake was made by Katie Rowten. She did such a great job! I love it!

The sweet little birthday girl!

She couldn't care less about her presents.

Daddy and his smallest princess!

She is not too sure about what to do.

She only made a little mess because she didn't really want to eat it, she barely touched it.

Cali is my sweet little girl and the best surprise Christmas present I could have ever asked for. I thank God everyday for her. I am so glad he always knows best and knew that we needed to another little angel to love!!

Santa Baby

Since I can never get myself in gear to make picture appointments I am "forced" to take a hundred pics and hope my little angel cooperates.

"This is exhausting, time for a little snack."

Making a run for it!! Look at that determination to get away.

Escaping down the hallway.

"Playing peek-a-boo is more fun that posing in front of the tree."

"Yep, still more fun, I will keep doing this for a while longer."

"You don't look like Santa so I will just pull down your fake beard to find out for sure."

"Okay, I will tell you what I want."

"Ha Ha!!! My mommy took 108 pictures before she noticed I have a crusty nose. That will show her!!!"

ELF DISCO

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Santa

This was the best we could do! Cali didn't want to have anything to do with Santa! I also didn't realize how messed up her hair (and crooked in the the clip) was until after the photo. Oh well, I am just impresed we got her looking at the camera and not crying. In the others they took she was either staring at him crying or trying to get away.

Only ONE MONTH left

Until my baby turns one and I totally lose my mind. I know it sounds like a cliche but the past 11 months have just flown by. She turned 11 months yesterday and I almost missed it. I did get these lovely shots after she spilled her water down the front of her.

I have friends who only have one baby and are talking about how they can't wait for them to sit up, or crawl, or walk. Since this is my third, my last, my baby, every new milestone is a bitter sweet one for me. She took her first steps about 8 months so she is walking pretty good by now. She still seems too little to be doing it. I will probably be in tears on her actual birthday.

Enough of me getting upset. We have been enjoying the fall weather like everyone else. Having 18 trees in our backyard makes for lots of leaves for the kids to play in. I love these pictures.

One of Caleb's chores is taking out the trash. One day he was taking longer than usual. I didn't know this was part of taking out the trash.

Here is Cali looking happy in her highchair. This is the BEFORE picture.

These are AFTER her Aunt Kara thought it would be funny to give her a "small taste" of Sour Patch Kids.

It was actually pretty funny. I don't make a habit of giving her stuff to eat just to see her reaction. However I do play a little game when I give her stuff like corn, green beans, kidney beans, etc. I like to see how long it takes for them to appear in her diaper and if they are still in the same form I gave it to her. I know I am a little weird.

No Cheerios for me!

I will just have this broken marker tip instead.

Really Late and LONG Halloween Post

I am just getting around to posting about Halloween because of all the chaos going on around here, which I will get to in a minute.

Just like everyone else, Halloween is a week long (or longer) event. We did the Fall Festival at church.

However this year I decided that after the Chris took the kids trunk or treating that I was ready to go home and I didn't want to stay for the cheesy carnival games inside the gym. I convinced Caleb to leave by saying that those were only for little kids and I convinced Caden by letting her know they were only serving hot dogs. So we were able to get out of there pretty easily. I told them I wanted REAL FOOD, so we went to Taco Bell!

We (the kids and I, along with Kara) also did the trick or treating at the OC dorms. That is always fun for me to see some people I only get to see once a year. Here are a few pics of the kids with some of their friends.

The kids each had fall parties at school so I had to divide my time between both of their classes. For some reason Caden wanted to put her costume OVER her clothes. My weird little girl!

Caden's party was nice and organized with centers and a lot of parents there to help. Caleb's on the other hand was pure chaos. It doesn't take much to get his class rowdy. There are 26 kids in his class and 19 are boys!!! CRAZY!! However the teacher is strict when she needs to be so he has a good class.

For Halloween night we went over to some friends house and had dinner and then went Trick or Treating. There were mostly boys and of course they all kept running from house to house that the other parents could barely keep up. Poor Caden was one of only 2 girls and was one of the youngest and she couldn't keep up with all those crazy boys.

Cali was worn out by the time we got done trick or treating.

But she perked up soon after to take some pictures. Here she is with her Aunt Kara and Caleb. Caden was too busy playing to take a picture.

A few days ago Cali thought she would help Caleb sort out the candy. Surprisingly she didn't try to eat much, I think she just likes the sounds the wrappers make in her hands.

Now onto the craziness around here. We are having MAJOR PLUMBING ISSUES!!!! I hate when things don't work as they should. We aren't exactly for sure what is wrong. It is something the plumber (that we normally use), can't fix. We are waiting to get someone to run a camera down the line (in the backyard) and find out where the problem is and then dig up the line and fix it. We think our line might have come detached from the cities, but we wont know for sure.

It started on Saturday when the office bathroom and closet flooded as well as the toilet in our master bathroom. We had the plumber out on Monday morning and he said it was clear for the moment but that we still have issues. So I thought it would be alright to do a few loads of laundry, WRONG!!!! The 2nd load is what flooded the office bathroom again.

We are able to flush a toilet occasionally, so we picked the kids bathroom. So at least we can use the bathroom occasionally, but we are having to take showers and do laundry etc at the neighbors. It has been a PAIN, and it is SO frustrating, but I am trying not to get upset even though I know it will cost a lot of money to fix. It is driving me CRAZY - not to mention the smell.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Halloween pictures for this week's activities will come soon, but I wanted to show the kids sporting the Eyeball cookies I made last night. I had to triple the recipe because both kids have school parties today and we have a get together tonight. These were a little more time consuming than I originally thought, but I thought these would be a fun thing for the kids.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

MY husband is OLD!!

Well not really, but for the next 3 months he is older than me.

Chris turned 34 last week and we had a nice family dinner at Carrabbas (minus the overcooked Chicken Parmesan I was given - BLAH). I always feel like a idiot whipping out the camera in a restaurant, but because I have not been taking many pictures lately we did it anyway. Here are a few.

Chris and Caleb

Kara (Chris's sister), Caden and Me. I have been cursed with small eyes, among other things. I often try to make my eyes look wider in photos without looking like a freak in the process. I don't think I succeeded . However Caden and Kara look cute so the picture stays.

Me and the kiddos

The whole family. Believe it or not, this was the best family one we got. Poor Caden.

Awesome Wedding Weekend with no Bride

Cali and I, along with my mom, my sister Angie and her daughter Dakota, flew up to Fargo North Dakota last weekend for my cousin Marnie's wedding. My mom took lots of pictures. Do we have any of us with the bride? NO!! Do we have any of the bride at all? NO - a big whopping NO!!!!! What were we thinking? We just took tons of pics of Cali and Dakota. We could have done that in Texas.

Oh well we had a nice weekend anyway. Like I said we have pics, but they are on my mom's camera. Every time I get together with my (Texas) family there is lots of laughter. My sister and I laugh so much. You know the kind where you laugh so much you cry and your mouth gets really sore. Gotta love it!

There were many funny things from this trip, but here are a few highlights.

Me embarrassing Angie on the plane last Friday (day before the BIG game) because I was talking trash to some strange guy wearing a Texas Longhorns hat.

Angie and Dakota dumping an entire and very loud tin container of veggie puffs on the floor of the church during the very quite unity sand part of the wedding ceremony.

Me forcing Angie and Dakota (about 18 months) out on the dance floor to do the YMCA. Me forcing my mom to go out on the dancefloor to do the Chicken dance with me.

Angie and I trying to walk around the airports carrying our purse and diaper bag, a HUGE car seat, while pulling our suitcases with one hand and pushing an umbrella stroller with the other. Good thing we only had the suitcase part of our time and not on the layover.

Angie and I were on one of those electric walkways (carrying and pushing all our crap) at the Minneapolis airport and some 90+ year old woman gave us dirty looks for walking too slow.

Well I hate posts with no pictures, so here are a few of Caden from a little b-day party at a Pumpkin Patch.

Blogging Funk

If you haven't noticed I have been in a blogging funk. I have just been so busy these last few weeks I just didn't think about it. However after the 4th person last night at church told me I needed to blog I thought I would write something.

Here is a conversation I had with Caden yesterday morning.

Me: Your hair is always full of tangles I need to trim it.
Caden: (in a whine) What does trim mean?
Me: Cut it.
Caden: (more of a cry now) No, I don't want to look like a boy.
Me: No, I am just going to cut a little bit off.
Caden: (still a little cry) No, I don't want to look like you either.

Magic Hair Gel

There must be some magic powers in Chris's hair gel. Cali has fallen asleep like this many times. I think it is so funny.

My sweet baby is 9 months

Cali turned 9 months old yesterday and I missed it. Oh well, one day late isn't too bad for the third kid right? My mom had given Cali this beautiful dress for Christmas and she is finally big enough to wear it.

I took about 20 pictures but these are the only ones that looked half way cute. I was getting frustrated that she would not stay on the blanket. (Yes Chrissey this is your blanket that I have not given back, so sorry I need to get my own!) Chris said this is really not a good time of day to take pictures. Apparently 6:00 in the evening on a day when your baby did not take more than a 30 minute nap is not ideal for pictures.