Ayla's first trip to the dentist

Seriously... my baby is old enough for the dentist. It blows my mind. At any rate, she did FABULOUSLY! Even the dentist himself said that he's never had such a cooperative 2 year old. His main goal was to count her teeth, put the little mirror in her mouth and look around and then maybe touch her teeth if she was up for it.

When he got done looking around she said "I thought you were going to clean my teeth!?" He was just like "Uh, okay" So the hygenist came in and polished her teeth. Ayla stayed perfectly still and kept her mouth open. She was watching cartoons while they did it! She was cracking me up though - they'd spray the water in her mouth and suck it out. She's close her lips when they told her to, like she'd been there 20 times or something.

She even finished up without me, about half-way through they took me to get my teeth started in the next room. When they brought her to my room when she was done, she came in and said "Mom, are they making your teeth minty too?"

Ayla opening wide Showing of her newly polished pearly whites

She even got a new Dora toothbrush and toothpaste from the dentist

It was a great trip to our new dentist(I'd never seen this guy either, we switched to a place near our new house), we both got an "A" for healthy teeth and no cavities!

I have to brag a little bit here...

I know we all think our own children are...smarter, cuter, funnier(can't forget naughtier) than 3/4 of the world's population BUT, I was amazed at my 2 1/2 year olds ability last week. We were at Village Inn for breakfast out with a friend and Ayla was coloring on the sheets they gave her. Pretty soon she says "Mommy, I made a face!" I look down and this is what I see.... two eyes, a nose, a mouth and hair!! Good job, Ayla! Then, she colored these tools. She said "I made all of the hammers red, screwdrivers green and the wenches(which makes me laugh every time she says it) blue" She didn't miss one, I was quite impressed.

Guess what I saw today......

Yep...Alivia's eyes!! She has some, and they are BEAUTIFUL!! I think Livi thinks it's funny not to show me her eyes because I literally have not seen them since the hour she was born, really. However, she wasn't shy today and I was(okay, still am) completely giddy. She is a gorgeous little baby.
Her profile here, looks just like my brother...she is such an amazing mix of Tom and Sabrina. I swear she got all of the perfect features of each of them.


Ayla still loves her baby cousin, 'Livia'! She kept saying 'Silly Livia' today...when she had the hiccups, dropped her binky etc. She always makes it a point to mention Arin and baby "Tad" also. She just doesn't want to leave any of her baby cousins out!

Great Grandma Jane got to meet Alivia for the first time today too...she fell in love, just like the rest of us.

My Gracie dog....

Isn't it crazy how much you can love your pets?? We have two dogs. Gracie is our older dog and she's perfect, truly. She is a golden retriever/german shepherd mix. She allows Ayla(and Ayla's friends) to climb on her, sit on her, hug her, lead her around by her collar, play with her, dress her up.....she comes to get me when she hears Ayla waking up or if she cries. It's so sad they she's starting to get old... She also looks fabulous in a pink tutu

Just because she's cute...and I love Gymbo!!

This came today, one of her new fall outfits. Doesn't she look like she should be walking to school with a backpack and lunchbox?? She definitely doesn't look two!

"I would never let my kid..."

Out in public with ratty hair, mismatched clothes or wearing RAINBOOTS on a perfectly sunny day!I would never let her cover her toddler body in graffiti....even if she is Super Ayla

There were sooooo many I things I was never gonna let MY kid do, well until I had one!

Attention Target shoppers......

Okay, anyone reading this most likey knows me pretty well. I'm type 'A', OCD, a bit anal, a little nutty...whatever. I'm fine with it, it's just me. At any rate, Ayla really loves coloring and drawing right now and she often wants me to color with her. We each have our own crayons because mine have to be perfect...I know, but I did warn you. Well, every so often I throw my slightly used crayons into her one gallon bucket of crayons and open a fresh pack....I have to or I can't color. I know how ridiculous this sounds. I'm even laughing a little as I type it.

Last week I was at Target and found an electric crayon sharpener on clearance. $11, so I picked it up. I figured it was worth a shot.

Well, guess what??? It's AMAZING. It sharpens crayons perfectly. It even gives them the little ridge that the Crayola factory gives them . The four throw-aways you see above were my "test subjects". If you look below....they look brand new!!!! This little contraption has changed coloring as I know it :0 It's called the Elmer's Crayonpro....get one, you'll love it!




Also, it makes the prettiest little shavings. I think I am going to melt them down to make some crayon blocks for Ayla. She'll definitely think they're fun.

Somebody loves her Auntie Jamie..........

It's Alivia!!!!! I'm going to pretend that she didn't have her first major poopy blowout in this outfit just a few short hours later :0

North Dakota bound over 4th of July weekend...finally!

We returned from our holiday trip to Jamestown, North Dakota on Monday the 6th. However, my camera battery died while we were there and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE! It turned up two days ago in Darren's car but we've been crazy busy with the impending arrival of our new niece, Alivia. Now that she's here and healthy, I've got the time to sit down and knock this out. It's gonna be a long one!

Our trip started later than we expected due to a delayed doctor appointment for me. We hoped that Ayla would fall asleep after a few hours and we could drive through the night. Just a few hours into our roadtrip, Ayla had required us to stop and potty 3-4 times. She was a little restless and getting tired. Yipee! It would be smooth sailing after she went to sleep!

"Pottying in the weeds" break as Ayla like to call them

By midnight, Ayla was still wide awake, cranky and restless. We were getting nowhere quickly (due to our every 45 minute potty breaks) and we were all tired. Has we not been stopping we'd be about 2 hours from our destination...we still had 4+ to go :( We decided to stop in a small town, get a hotel and sleep until 6am before we got back on the road. We found a Country Inn and Suites and made camp. The guy who checked us in was VERY nice and I'd guess that he'd done some traveling with a 2 year old previously, he totally seemed to get it. At no additional charge he upgraded us to a "special" room and said he hoped we'd like it.

We got SPONGEBOB! It was actually hilariously funny and totally overdone. Super cute though. We had Spongebob curtains, rug, wall murals, trash can, bedding, hamper, shower curtain, placemats...the works! Ayla knows who Spongebob is but isn't allowed to watch him because of the language and violence("dumb", "stupid", hitting etc). It was about 1am at this point and Ayla was terrified of Spongebob, she slept right between Darren and I in the regular bed, go figure!

After sleeping from 1:30 to 6am, we were on the road again. At about 8 am(2 hours Ayla had breakfast) we stopped for gas. She went potty and wanted a treat. Apparently because we were sleep deprived, we allowed her to pick Oreo Cakesters. She'd never had them before and doesn't reallyget those kinds of things from us. She does get sweets sometimes though...usually at Gigi and Papa's house! Well, that ended up not being a great idea. It was a mess, or so I thought....


I took a picture of her messy face and hands, thinking to myself 'why did we let her have these?' Hahahaha, joke was on us. Thirty minutes later she says 'uh-oh'
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Yep, the Cakesters were a definite no-go. I'll have to write that down somewhere for future reference.


Here is little Miss Ayla getting cleaned up on the roadside. She traveled the rest of the way in her undies and shoes. He pj's were so disgusting that we buried them roadside.


We FINALLY made it to Jamestown, I never thought I'd be sooooo happy to be in a small North Dakota town...I considered kissing the ground when we emerged from our Husker red van in my Inlaws driveway. I decided against it considering the fact that they may already think I'm a little unbalanced and my daughter looked like a social service case.

We all showered, Ayla got a little nap and we headed out to the Richter's dairy farm! It was my first visit and I was super excited. I'm a big time animal lover(which probably explains why we have 2 dogs, a cat and two rabbits) and have never been to a real farm. It was a great time. The Richter family was very generous to us. They showed us around, allowed us to get up close and personal with some of their farming equipment and the cows!

Ayla found a little nest of kittens. They were about 10ish days old and just opening their eyes. She got to hold one that had it's little eyes open. They were the size of hamsters!

This is the milking process. I found it very interesting. The milk is always contained and never touches human hands. It flows into these huge 5 gallon clear balls and travels through a plumbing type system to a 1500 gallon tank! Now THAT is milk production. They have about 75 cows that they milk twice a day, it takes close to 4 hours each times....that's nearly eight hours of milking a day! One cow can produce up to 7 gallons of milk in about 5 minutes. They aren't all high producers like that but it blew me away.

This is a bottle for feeding the calves. It's one half gallon and Ayla could hardly carry it.

She sucked it down in about 2 minutes!!

After the farm, we headed back to the inlaw's house. Ayla flew a kite for the first time and uncle Nathan helped her get it up. Poor guy, he was running around in the field behind their house for a good 5 minutes to get that thing up.

On Saturday(the 4th), we headed up to THE buffalo. They have the Buffalo Museum, store, restaurant, and some little shops/old schoolrooms/jails etc. Ayla had a great time. She rode a pony named "Daisy" and thought that was pretty exciting.

We didn't go for a carriage ride but Ayla did like the big horses.

Family picture under the Buffalo. We have a picture of Darren and I under there, from when we were dating.

That evening, we did fireworks at John and Carol's house. Ayla had fun stomping on snappers and holding onto bamboo sparklers and morning glories

And then...my camera died! Depressing, huh? I didn't have my charger with me either. I'll post more pics when I get them from Lesley and Nathan.

Anyway, the rest of our trip was fun. We stayed up late and Ayla wasn't afraid of the fireworks at all. Arin liked them too, unless they were screeching.....I don't like those either!!

On Sunday, we went to Fargo to take Lesley, Nathan and Arin to the airport. I got close to tears saying good-bye. I feel like I've gotten closer to them and it's hard to be away. Especially with Arin because she's changing so fast. She's changed so much in the past month alone!

Afterwards, we went up to see Ron and Rosie. Ron's been in the hospital for a couple of weeks but is making great progress. He should be home before too long. We continue to pray for them.

We had dinner with John, Carol, Joey and Melisha. It was great to see Joey and Melisha too. We hadn't seen them since last summer. They are expecting a little boy, Brennan, in a few more months! Melisha looks adorable.

We said our good-byes and headed to Sioux Falls for the night. We're smart now. We're just going to plan on half-way marks. That way it won't get quite so ugly. We slept well. We took Ayla swimming in the morning and had a nice and short trip home!

I'm an Auntie again!!!!

Baby Alivia Miyoko(Japanese for beautiful child) was welcomed into our world today at 2:22pm. Mommy pushed for four, yes FOUR minutes. She's a rockstar!! Livi weighed in at 6lbs 12oz and 21 inches long. She is absolutely perfect in every way. She has quite a bit of dark hair and a sweet and fiesty little cry. Everyone has fallen completely in love with her already. Sweet momma kisses

A family of three

Gigi and Papa meeting Alivia for the first time

Sabrina and Tom will post all about their birth story soon. For now they are resting up and getting to know their daughter....

To Tom and Sabrina - Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this process, from years ago really because that is when the process of "making Livi" began. My heart is over flowing with love for the three of you. Big hugs and don't laugh.....YES, I'm crying again :)

Small hole update...

It's more than a hole...it's a hole with walls!! The foundation was poured yesterday, the molds will remain up for another couple of days. Within the next week or so they will get the basement floor, driveway and I think front porch poured. The lumber has been ordered and will show up in about 3-4 weeks. YAY!