Children's Museum!

We went the day after Christmas to the Indianapolis Children's Museum! It was our first trip there, and we are definitely going to get a membership for next year! Marissa loved going and is begging to go back (especially after looking at the pictures!). They have the neatest things there! A whole floor dedicated to preschoolers through kindergarten. Obviously, that is where we spent most of our time! There were also neat exhibits there for the Christmas season only. During the Christmas season, they have a slide that goes from the second floor to the first. Of course, her and Daddy had to go down that (Mommy stood and took pictures!). She went ice fishing, sat in a real race car, went rock climbing, planted flowers, played in water and sand and balanced on a log! What fun we had!!! Here are some pictures!

Love,

Kristi

What a wonderful Christmas!

We had just the most wonderful Christmas!! It was really the first year that Marissa got into the whole Ho Ho/Santa and presents thing! She is playing right now, so I thought I'd update our blog really quick!

The things we thought she would love are her favorite things (yay!). She loves her dollhouse, her Baby Alive baby doll, her art desk and her new play kitchen! We had sooo much fun with her and still continue to play play play!!!

We started out the holiday by going to our church Christmas Eve service and it was so very nice. It really was a nice reminder to us what the season is all about...Jesus! We then went to my Aunt's house for Christmas there and came home and went to bed and waited for Santa to come!

The next morning we opened presents and played and then went to Mom and Dad's house for brunch, opening presents and then later in the day, a movie and pizza!

Here are a few pictures of our Christmas! Hope yours was a blessed one too!!!

Love,

Kristi

It's the Christmas Season!!

Well, it has been the best weekend!! I took off Wednesday and have been off work 5 days straight. Needless to say, it is going to make Monday extremely hard to go back!

To start off the weekend I got to go to Tumbling with Marissa! She is just growing and maturing so much. I have noticed such a difference in her lately. She is interacting and playing with other children more, she is listening better (at least this weekend...haha) and chatting up a storm! Remember, I wanted her to talk! I prayed for it daily and she talks non-stop now! I think she is catching up so quickly with the other children. She is counting, working on her ABC's and using the potty so well! She is not potty trained completely, but each day it's getting better!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my Mom's house and then later went to Phillip's Mom's house for yummy dessert. The next morning, my brother, Chad, and I went shopping! (It's kind of tradition now!). We left at 4:30 and went to Walmart. It was unbelievably packed, but we did manage to get what we wanted. We headed to the next city for more shopping and got back around 11:00 a.m. That was plenty!

Saturday we spent more time with Phillip's family and Sunday....we rested!! Well, I put up more Christmas decorations and am nearly finished (one more room to go).

I think we'll go out to eat Mexican tonight to end a wonderful weekend!

Hope everyone's weekend was wonderful and that everyone is looking forward to Christmas!

Love to all--
Kristi

Almost Happy Thanksgiving!!

I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is next week!!! I think this weekend we are putting up our Christmas decorations. We always like to get a jump on it so we can enjoy our Thanksgiving weekend and just relax! As you know, the house gets totally torn apart putting up decorations!

We had a great weekend with family and friends and just looking forward to Thanksgiving. So many things to be thankful for! I look at this past year and feel so blessed. Phillip lost his job, and found a better one. We had our home broken into, but nothing was taken. We have a new room addition that will allow us to have family and friends over during the holidays. We have our health. We have our Marissa. Just so many blessings...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Halloween!

Well, we had a great Halloween! We only went a couple places because when you live in the country and when you have a toddler, only a few stops can be done before they get tired of being buckled in the carseat a million times! Marissa had a great time and soon discovered that getting treats was pretty fun!! What a great Halloween! Here are a few pics of her as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz!

Day before Halloween!

Wow, I'm really slacking on the blog lately! Everything is going well with us, don't worry! Over the past few weeks, we have ....

Gone to the pumpkin patch/petting zoo...

Went to my Grandma's 95th Birthday party...

Went to Marissa's Tumbling Halloween Party...

And now we await Halloween tomorrow!

Here are some pictures from 2 out of 3 of those activities. I'll hold the party costume pictures until after Halloween to not spoil her costume for those of you who might see her on Halloween night!

Hope your Halloween is safe and fun!!

Happy Monday!

How time is flying! I cannot believe it's mid-October! It's been unseasonably warm here in Indiana this month, and, unfortunately, no good rains to speak of. It's so dry and dusty here, but it is allowing the farmers time to get their crops in, so this is a good thing for them!


On Friday, we will celebrate Grandma Evelyn's 95th birthday. Our whole family is coming to visit her and have cake and ice cream for all of the residents of her assisted care home. I cannot imagine living 95 years, although I hope to! I am taking a vacation day this Friday, as I have to use up some before the end of the year. It's been weird this year with Phillip at his new job and not having any vacation days. Normally by this time of the year, I would have already used up all of my vacation days with him!


Our life is more back to normal since our break-in. Our door is fixed and I'm slowly (notice I said "I"...this barely affected Phillip...haha) getting more comfy in my own home again. It is just such a violation. I never was really afraid in our house before until this happened. Of course, I admit to being a little bit of a scaredy cat anyway!


Other than that, we are gearing up for Halloween around here. Just got part of Marissa's costume and waiting for the last item. If the outfit fits, she is going to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I wish I could make her Halloween outfit, but I don't know a thing about sewing! (My Aunt Cookie is one of the best seamstresses I know, but I didn't inherit any of that!). I missed the cooking gene and the sewing gene!


Marissa continues to do well and amaze us each day with her talking. We are just so proud of her! She will say something and we will not really know what she said and then she will point at it and we will say "Ohhh of course, you said that...how silly of us!" She still carries around her pet cat everywhere she goes --- we don't go anywhere without "Yeah" (that's his name...we're not sure how this got started, but we think it might have started when she couldn't say much and that's all she could say, so the cat's name became "Yeah"). We have had some close calls with Yeah and have almost left him places, but he was thankfully found!


I think that is our update for this week! Hoping everyone is well and that the state of the economy is not getting everyone down. It is not a good time, for sure, but it was sure to happen around the Presidential Election time. At least the gas prices are down and that makes us feel better!



Kristi

Why to have an alarm system!

Well, yesterday wasn't a good day. We were broken into and in our new room. It was quite scary, as it happened at almost 10 a.m. while we were both at work. Luckily, our alarm system got them -- well, scared them off. I only slept a few winks last night because it felt like such a violation of our home of 17 years. We live in a farming community with wonderful neighbors going by at all times of the day. What we found out yesterday...it CAN happen to us! They managed to break the glass in our new french doors and made a huge mess, but did not step a foot in our house as soon as the door opened. (We know this because our alarm company records every "tripped" alarm and it only tripped the one that opens the door and not the motion detector which would have went off next if they have attempted to walk through our house.) It's the best $300.00 up front we ever spent 2 years ago and it's the best $30.00 a month that we spend. I can't think of a better $30.00 than to keep our family safe. Our contractor came to our house yesterday evening to secure the house and get us boarded up. He said this is actually quite common with new additions and new homes. Apparently it's just an assumption by a burglar that you have new things in there. I look out into my "garden" room now...the one that I had all the shades open due to the beautiful view and now I see my shades closed and a sheet over my door because I have the creeps! I'm sure in time this will fade because it's all so new, but for now, I just want to sit in our room and have no one checking out what we have (and that isn't much!).

So this blog is to say...Get an alarm system...or activate yours (this is to my friend and she knows who she is ... ha!).

Hope your weekend is awesome!

Kristi

Zoo trip!

She had to show her kitty to every animal!

We went to the Indianapolis Zoo this morning. Our zoo is relatively small and we went through the whole thing in about 2 hours! ha! Marissa really enjoyed it, but I think enjoyed the playground more! It was so much fun for all of us! Here are some pictures and a little video of this very friendly Walrus!

Happy Saturday!

I'm up really early this morning because I can't sleep, so I thought I'd make a blog entry!

I took Thursday and Friday off and it was sooo nice to be at home with my girl. She has been so fun lately! Since she started to talk more, she has been just so interactive and fun! She just amazes me with what she knows and what she says. Some things are not clear to me, some are only clear to me/us and some are clear to everyone! Did you follow that? ha!

She has learned "mine mine mine" and that has been fun! She also is starting the "why's?" She asked me "why" every turn I took in the grocery store the other day. These are such fun times!

I'm reminded every day of the sacrifice her birthparents made and how extremely blessed we are to have this little girl in our lives. She has changed me/us in ways that we would have never imagined. I have learned to stop and enjoy little moments, because I know these moments are once in a lifetime. We cannot turn back the clock with our kids and they are only small for a short period of time. I have learned to drop everything I'm doing when a little person asks me to sit down and play with her. I have also learned to let the house go when she needs me. For everyone that knows me, this was extremely hard! My house was almost immaculate before Marissa was born, but now there are toys in almost every corner of the house. I love it though! Anytime I feel overwhelmed, I just think of a time when I would have given anything to have a toy in my house!

I just feel so blessed today and thought I'd write about it :) Thanks for reading!

Hi everyone!

It's Tuesday already! My Mom and Dad are going to my Mom's high school reunion (50th!) in Kentucky on Friday, so we are without a babysitter, BUT I decided to take Friday off and then just decided yesterday to take Thursday off too to make it a nice 4 day weekend! We plan to take Marissa to the zoo on Sunday (first trip!) and then to a rollerskating birthday party for our little cousin on Sunday afternoon. I don't know if Marissa will want to get on skates, but we are going to let her if shows an interest (and she wants to do everything the big kids do!).

Last week one day my Mom watched my cousin's kids and they played with Marissa and played hard. I have never seen my girl so tired in my life! She would gladly not take a nap every day, but this day her treat was to play with the kids all day and not take one. By 6:00, Phillip was driving her home and she was out. I mean OUT. To the point that he fully changed her into her night clothes and she didn't wake up. And didn't wake up until 6:30 the next morning!! If you know Marissa, you'd know she isn't the greatest of sleepers, so this was BIG! ha! She had a great time though with her cousins!

We are still enjoying our family room, although Phillip and I feel it won't be officially complete until the patio is finished (it didn't get finished last week) and our roman shades are on the windows (they look sort of bare!).

I have attached a couple of pictures of our room and our piano (that we hope Marissa plays beautifully!) and also the curio cabinet/clock that was my Grandma's, along with some of her bird collection. Most of you know that my Grandma is still living, but is in the process of getting her house ready to sell since she is in an assisted care facility now. In a way it's nice that she is giving us the things she wanted us to have while she is still living because she can see us enjoy it in our homes. She turns 95 in about a month. Wow.

Oh, also I'm going to include a couple of our girl too. She is obsessed with this raincoat and boots!! My co-worker bought it for her and also bought the boots in Japan when she was there. I almost have to hide it from her so she'll possibly forget about it (fat chance!), but she usually catches a glimpse of it and then has to have it again. haha! It's actually a 12 months size, but fits her nicely (runs big obviously!!). We'll have to get another when she outgrows it...

She is talking more and more now. It's just amazing how she took off overnight on this. As most of you know, Marissa is in speech therapy just to help her say more words. It wasn't something she had to do, but something I wanted to try to catch early if something was wrong. She wasn't where she should be as far as what the "guidelines" are, so we decided that it couldn't hurt her. I'm not sure if the speech therapy actually helped or she just finally started talking on her own. She is not where she should be, I guess (according to the "experts"), but is quickly getting there. She went from saying virtually nothing, to saying 2-3 word phrases. We still freak out when she actually says something more than just a word!!

I think that's it for an update for us!! Better sign off now before I get started on the high gas prices and my opinion on that....ha!

Have a great week!

Kristi, Phillip and Marissa

It's Finished!

Wow, it's so nice to say that the room is finished! Our patio is being poured this week and my roman shades are on order, but we are living in our room ... finally!!!

We had a nice weekend. Mostly just cleaning and organizing. I can't believe it's Monday already.

You all have a great week!

Kristi

Wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Hey all!! It was such a nice weekend! I took off Friday and had a 4 day weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. At the beginning I *thought* it might not be a good one when our new carpet that supposed to be installed on Friday was found to be damaged and had to be re-ordered. However, after the initial disappointment, it didn't put much of a damper on the weekend. We still had fun in our new addition without carpet! I loved spending 4 straight days with my girl!! It makes it even harder to go back to work on Tuesday. We didn't really do much of anything, and just relaxed! (I guess God knew what He was doing--we needed the rest, rather than spending the whole weekend in a frenzy moving into our room).

I'll attach some pictures, including our finished fireplace and room, with the exception of carpet, and a couple of pictures of our girl!

Have a great "short" week!!

Kristi

Happy Saturday!

Well, we have all been sick for the past week and it has been no fun! Seems like this Indiana weather causes a lot of sinus problems! Marissa got it first and then Phillip and I. We are feeling somewhat better, but still not up to par. We had to miss a birthday party for a Guatemalan friend of Marissa's today because we just weren't well yet. So, Happy Birthday Sammy!!!

Our house is coming along right on schedule. It has been bricked and our electrical work inside has been completed. On Monday they will build our hearth for our fireplace, the plumbers will come and then carpet installed on Friday! There are a lot of little things that need to be finished, but we will be living in our room by this coming weekend!

That's all I have to report. Back to resting.... Have a great weekend everyone!

Birthday party pics

On Saturday evening, after the big haircut event in the morning, we went to Cousin Noah's birthday party. Marissa had a blast playing with her cousins! Here are some pictures of our growing girl! The pictures of the little girl playing with Marissa is her cousin Ashlyn, who is 9 months older than her. Have a happy Monday!