9months!!

This is a little late as she's been 9 months for a couple of weeks, but here are a few fun little facts about what Ally is up to. She doesn't have another checkup at the doctor until 12mo. but doing the weigh me then weigh her and I together thing, she weighs in at 17 lbs even. She can sit on the scale and it says the same thing so I'm thinking she is in that ball park. I'm going to ask if I can get her weighed when we go in for flu shots soon, so we'll know for sure then. She is still very contemplative and quiet for the most part. She gets very excited when she sees people she knows but it's only a second and then she's content to sit quietly. Totally different than her sister. She can say dada, (which is totally unfair but really cute), nana, and is now starting to say mama. She can also clap her hands and wave "hi" and "bye bye". And her FAVORITE thing to do, and this seems to be a hit for both girls, is look in the mirror at herself. She waves, claps and giggles. It's so cute! But I don't think she understands whose holding her when she looks in the mirror. She waves and smiles, then turns and stares at me, then the mirror again, then me. I think she's trying to figure out who that person is that looks just like her mommy and is holding a cute baby. It's very funny.
Ally just recovered from her first stomach flu, very fun for me. It's always hard when they are this age. But after 2-3 days, she is much better.
And a quick note on Em, her new friend Billy is now discovered to be her son and his brother is Mickey Mouse. We find out new things about the mysterious Billy all the time!

And the Girls Play Risk...

Jamie and Leslie made a vow that they would never play Risk with us. It took about 3 weeks for us to break them. This was a classic game as Joel, Leslie, Jamie and myself played Risk together. Joel and I got beat and it was Leslie and Jamie left to battle it out. This was a dream game for us to see the two girls left, playing a game that they vowed to never play. They still have to play one more game with us... stay posted for the results.

Has Anyone Seen Billy?

Emily is pointing to her new "friend" Billy. Billy goes everywhere with her, well anywhere at home. Billy isn't allowed to leave the house according to Emily. She carries him in her hand but she says that he isn't small. So he must be a heavy little friend. We do know that he has dark hair. She puts him to bed, they play in her room, watch tv together, etc. Pretty much Billy goes and does where she goes and what she does. It is cute in a funny way. Can anyone else out there see Billy?

I guess she's not a get up and go girl.

Allyson is definitly not a girl who can get out of bed and go about her day without a major hair fix! She has the worst baby bedhead I've ever seen! And the first picture is to show you what her hair normally is like. She is also showing signs of a messy eater. That was well after she had eaten. I don't think she understood the problem though!

Our Little Princess, Isn't she Beautiful?!

Farmers Agent - The Miker

For those of you that know me with a sense of humor... this shows the proffesional side to me! I've been sending out about 1,000 post cards per month in Redding. I've got a cable tv blitz that will be going for the next 6 months with over 1,000 commercials that starts really soon.

I'm ALWAYS looking for more business as I started this from the ground-up with NOTHING. Thanks to all for the support as I could not have done this business without a lot of people that read this blog.

Check Out The Bedhead!!

Ally's Going To Jail...According to Emily Anyway

It's been a little while since I put on some recent pictures. The three in their dresses are of this past Sunday before church. I can't believe I had time to take them before getting to church. But as you'll notice, Em's hair is still wet. But at least I got some cute pictures. The one on the bathroom floor was so cute. Emily has this Dora that dances and sings. But she is on rollers so she really only works on hard surfaces. At our old house she worked great, now here we have mostly carpet. So Emily was wanting to Show Ally how her Dora doll worked. She coaxed Ally into the bathroom and sat there showing her how to use the doll. It was so cute. This was how I found them. They play really well together for the most part.

It's not always hearts and flowers though. The other day Em was rolling around with Ally and I guess Ally grabbed her and she got scratched. Emily came into my room whining that Ally had scratched her. But then she got really serious and said, "but it's okay mommy, I called the police and they are going to come and get her because she was mean to me." And then she just turned around and walked out. So today, we were all upstairs when the doorbell rang. Mike and I headed down to answer it and Em stood on the top of the stairs and asked who it was. On a whim I said it was the police that Em had called and they were there to take Ally away. I thought she would laugh since it was a joke she had created. But instead she started sobbing that she didn't want them to take Ally away. It was heartbreaking, (but funny).

Ally has now figured out the stairs. Lovely! Keeping me really busy now. Plus she now has a tooth on the upper right. She is so cute. The other a.m. she was sitting in my bed before I got up and I was letting her play with a wooden coaster. I was putting it on her head until it fell. I did it 3-4 times and then just let it drop. She waited a second and then picked it up and tried to put it on her head. It was so cute. It's amazing how much they drink in at this age. She also waves and says bye bye.

For those of you who haven't heard, Emily is no longer in Pre-school. No, she didn't get kicked out! We found out that she misses the kindergarten cutoff by 6 days so she'll go when she is five. So we decided that since she was 50/50 about it anyway we would stick her in next year for five half days to let her do pre-kindergarten. I'm not sure who wasn't ready, her or me. But either way, she gets to stay at home again. And she actually hasn't said anything about not going other then she still prays for her teacher. But she still gets to interact with kids her age, she is in children's church this year at church and has just started a Wednesday night program at church. She is loving both of them.

A new look...

We've changed the background on the blog to do something different. Jeremy inspired the change with his new lime green look. Hope you enjoy it. If you want to be added as a link on the side, let us know. I lost all the links in changing the background and want to make sure we didn't miss anyone.

Heaven

Hello All. Recently my good friend Jenn, showed me a blog of one of her friends daughters patient, (did you catch that!). Anyway, her patient is this cute little boy with a disease called Trisomy 18 also known as Edwards downsyndrome. Most babies don't make it to birth, the ones that do usually pass away a few days later and a small percentage live to their first birthday. This amazing christian family had their baby boy, Elliot July 20th. They just celebrated his 2 month birthday. And it is definitly a real celebration. He is on feeding tubes and has a hole in his heart and needs 24 hour nursing. But he is really cute and so far has a lot of spunk for someone so sick. Every little thing he does is so important to this family and as I was reading their blog today, below is what the dad had to say about how his son has taught him to long for heaven. It is very touching and I hope it stirs your desire to be in heaven with God. Not sometime in the future, but longing for it NOW! I've always personally struggled with wanting heaven. I keep saying after I get married, after kids, after I raise them, after after after. But that isn't what we are supposed to feel like. Anyway, enough from me. I hope you get as much out of this as I did!


Eliot continues to teach, and we continue in our pursuit to pass on the lessons learned. I must admit that, until recently, I have never longed for heaven. Don’t get me wrong, it has always been somewhere I eventually wanted to be; it sounded great and all, but, honestly, I enjoy the here and now just fine. I looked at heaven as through a telescope. It was a nice place, not too distant, the surface of which reminded me of my current surroundings.Scripture describes the feelings that we as believers should have for the afterlife with these words: longing, burdened, & groaning. Whatever my affections for heaven were, these words would not be an apt description for them.Enter Eliot…he is my reminder, my illumination. This world is out of kilter. Not quite right. Eliot’s head bobs with each breath. His heart has a hole in it. The list continues from there. For the first time, I long for heaven. I want to be there. I want it worse than any desire that I have ever experienced. This world will no longer suffice. I am restless for that which lies beyond. Eliot has revealed the distance from earth to the afterward. He has taken my telescope and fashioned a magnifying glass- and the true distance from here to home has been exposed.so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life…We…would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. II Corinthians 5 Matt & Ginny Mooney

What a Day!

Thursday Evening will have an awesome line-up...

Bunko Starts for the ladies (and little children) at our house at 6:30 in the garage!

Risk Starts for the men at our house as early as possible inside the house!

My Name is Early Starts at 8:00 PM

The Office Starts at 8:30 PM

ER Starts at 10:00 PM

Hope to see many of you there!

Risky to Let them Play...

I came accross another blog where the game Risk seems to be a hot topic. This photo came accross and I thought this would be a classic photo to include. Do you see her reaction when she lost?

I think the recent comments from the previous post really highlighted one thing. Why in the world would we want the wives to play with us? Do you see her reaction losing a game she probably got forced to play? Not pretty when everyone goes home!

We might as well be real with each other avoid the trouble that comes along with letting the ladies play. Is it really worth getting their cards like I took from my lady friend Joel? On a positive note, if our wives came dressed like her, it could make the game at least a little interesting. So maybe we should let them go shopping before the game since that is what they really want to do.


Here are some comments from the web-site on Risk. I'll share a few of them here: http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=07838

"That game that starts us all off"
"Simple, Fun, Timeless"
"The best game ever"
"We are a family addicted to Risk"
"Risk is one of the best boardgames ever invented"
"This is a classic"

So when does this tournament start without the ladies. What is our budget for them to go shopping, $5 to $7? Maybe we should just give them slurpie money for the kids and send them to the park while the credit cards stay with us? -Mike

And the Risk Champion is.....

At Last we got to play Risk at the house. Jed and Joel came over for the challenge. The ladies watched the husbands suffer.

It was a great victory and I have to provide many thanks to Joel for letting me have your cards!

Can't wait to stick it to you again :) Now if we can only get the ladies to learn how to play this game. Sure beats the board game that forces us to get our feelings out.

Pictures of the New House

The long awaited photos of our new house!

The outside of the house from the front. Notice my clean and organized garage!

The Kitchen. Loving the Granite. The Dishwasher is so quite that you would never know that it was on. This makes it nice to watch a Giants game in the evening as the only noise you hear is Barry Bonds hitting HR's! We have some taller Bar Stools on order.



Our Dining Room with the Tall Table and Tall Chairs. Great for playing Texas Hold'em! Looking forward to Winter with the Fire-Place and Leather Couch! The only thing missing will be the Giants games on TV this Winter. The good news is that we have the TIVO to watch all 162 games over again this Winter. You think the players only watch video to get better? Wrong, as I have to watch video of the Giants to learn how to become a better fan!




Up the stairs we go! Make a Left and you'll see as much as the loft as we could get in the photo. Great to relax as we have a nice computer area up here.



Emily is very proud of her room that she put together all by herself :)

Ally's room looks almost exactly like the old house!

Our Bedroom, Walk in Closet to the Right of the bed. The TV is mounted on the wall. The cords will be hidden behind the dresser.

Below you'll see the Master Bath in our room and then Emily and Ally's Bath-Room to the right.

Come by and Visit Anytime. We have room for two to sleep upstairs in the loft or Two to sleep down-stairs in the living room!

All moved in!

This past weekend we were finally able to move in to our house. We got our keys Wednesday and started slowly moving stuff. My mom and I came in Wed. and Thur. night and painted the girls rooms. They turned out really cute. I'll post some of Em's room soon. Ally's room looks the same as it did at the old house.
It was a little crazy because Emily got sick on Wed. and then Ally and Mike on Friday. So We were all running around with colds but Everyone seemed to do okay so we moved on. But it was worth it because all the boxes are unpacked and everything is in its place and we are just enjoying it now. It was nice to move on a holiday weekend as we get an extra day to relax before we get back to the routine of day to day life. And yes, it must be said, I never want to move again! Although I'm sure we will, but I can pretend that we never have to pack and unpack a house again. And by the way, the only bad thing about having a house with stairs is moving into a house with stairs. Up and down for three full days is exhausting. If it weren't for all the fast food we ate during the weekend I would have lost 5 lbs!
We also just want to give a quick shout out to those who helped us move. There was no way Mike and I could have done this by ourselves and your help was wonderful and we are so thankful to have all of you as friends and family. Thanks again! And to any of you who move in the future, count us in! Just not in the next week or two.

Pictures of the girls

Mike finally had a few minutes to show me how to transfer our images from our new camera onto our blog. so here are a few cute ones. The first is of Emily and Mike washing our car. She loves to help him, but mainly gets herself all wet. The second is of Allyson standing up, her FAVORITE thing to do. It's funny because she just started crawling a couple weeks ago and the only crawling she wants to do is to go to something that she can pull herself up on and stand there. She looks SO proud of herself when she finally gets up, which is getting faster and easier each time. I'm thinking we'll have an early walker for sure! She also crawls to things she isn't supposed to have and when we tell her no, she sits down and dissolves into tears with a broken heart. It's very cute, even if she doesn't think so!
The bottom two are of Emily on her first day of preschool. She was so excited and when I dropped her off, she just ran into the room and didn't look back. She is also the Only child that when I come to pick her up cries. The other kids come running MOMMY MOMMY and throw themselves into their parents arms. Not my child, she tell me to go home again! But I guess that is a good thing! She has already learned a bible verse and seems to be totally involved and enjoying it.

Big Week For Allyson

Ally totally skipped the scooting phase and went strait to crawling. She started cruising around yesterday and she is able to pull herself up on some things. Plus, she learned to say papa and mama this week. I can't believe how fast she is growing up!

Did you know Peter Pan goes to church?

Emily had a cute "revelation" at church on Sunday. It takes a little background to give you the full idea of what happened, so bear with me!

Our friend, Rebekah, who goes to church with us, was recently Peter Pan in a play at our local theater. She has a beautiful voice and actually has natural red hair. So she got it cut pixy style for this play, ( I was very impressed what she was willing to do to fill this role to the best of her ability). She is also very petite and was perfect for Peter Pan. So naturally we got tickets to the first show and got almost front row seats. Emily had a blast but as most of you know, Emily is pretty much scared of everything and that included Peter Pan. She was fine with "him" during the play but when Rebekah came out so we could tell her what a great job she did, Emily didn't want to go near her.

So a couple weeks passed by and it happened that with vacations and church activities that Rebekah didn't sing very much during the Sundays between the play and this past Sunday. So when we got to our church on Sunday and she was up front waiting to sing, Emily was literally clinging to my dad with her head buried in his shirt, we were all scratching our heads trying to figure it out. We thought that maybe it was because we were in a new building but during nursery she was fine. As soon as nursery ended and she went back into the gym, she started freaking out again. As soon as Rebekah came up to her and told her that her dress was pretty, Em stuck her fingers in her ears and ran the other way, almost in terrified tears. We weren't sure what was wrong with her. But later nana figured it out. She realized that the only time Emily was scared was when Rebekah came near her. And at the beginning of church she kept telling my mom that she was trying to get to daddy, but refused to go see him. And since Rebekah was singing with Mike that day, she was standing right next to him. Later that night, my dad asked her if she had seen Peter Pan recently. And she said "Yes." So he asked her where and she said she had seen him at church and that she didn't like him.

Poor Rebekah, who has known Emily forever, will always now be known as Peter Pan and Emily will probably be scarred in church for a long time. Who knew Peter Pan went to church?

Family Update

Mike and I recently bought a much needed new camera. It's a great camera and came with a great picture program. But I haven't figured out how to get the pictures from the camera to the BLOG. So, I'll just give you a quick update on the with our Family and put Mike to work tonight.

As most of you have been wondering, our house will be done and ready to move into on September 1st!!! YEAH!!! We have our new address and phone number and will send it out via e-mail in the next few weeks. We also traded our gas guzzling van with a more efficient car. We bought a new Chevrolet HHR. It's really cute and just perfect for our little family. We decided that a car is plenty of room since we are pretty sure we are happy with just the four of us, sorry all of you grandparents out there! I guess it's up to our siblings to continue providing grandchildren.

Allyson is growing up very fast, as usual! She has been sitting by herself for quite some time and it's rather challenging putting her to bed because she immediately pops back up and plays. But she put's herself to sleep. She is also super close to crawling, going so far as to take one small crawling step. But she hasn't quite perfected it yet. She even pulled herself almost to a standing position today at the doctors office. I personally think she'll walk before Emily did, but I've been wrong before! She is still a very happy baby and loves to squawk and say blah blah blah. She still isn't saying mama or dada though.

Emily is getting excited about preschool. She starts two weeks from today and has proclaimed that she doesn't need to wait that she is now tall enough to go.

The girls and I just got back from four days on the coast. My friend Jen has a girl Em's age and a baby Ally's age and we took all four girls over to the coast by ourselves. He parents have a permanent travel trailer over there. We had an awesome time and didn't want to come home. It was wonderful to get away from the 115 degree heat. We stayed very busy with the girls but overall it was still very relaxing. The four kids entertained each other so it was actually easier than being at home and being the single woman entertainment committee that I usually get to be. Then Mike and I took the girls to the Giants game on Sunday. They both seemed to have a lot of fun, and a miracle occured...the Giants actually pulled off a win.

Anyone need insurance? Mike's business is going really well. For any of you who live near here, you should come and see it. It looks really good. Mike and I have spent many hours framing and hanging pictures. He seems to really like it there, in fact so much that most days he gets ther at 7 and gets home at 7! Maybe we should use the same decor at our house! Kidding aside, it is a lot of work for him but I think he has finally found his niche in life and we are truly happy that he has had this opportunity.

I hope you have all enjoyed our long update. A lot seems to be changing and happing in our life but I tried to condense it down for you all! I'll get some new pics of the house, car, and girls asap. And in a couple of weeks a very cute little girl on her first day of preschool!

Just an Emily update, it's been a while.

I'm loving Emily at three, (for the most part!). She says the FUNNIEST things every day. I wish I could remember them all. But this one is a nightly routine so easy to remember. When it gets close to bedtime we always tell her to put on her pull up, (we aren't quite night trained), and her pajamas. She runs into the bedroom and is gone for a long time so one of us goes and checks on her. Usually what we find is a naked girl looking for, what would you guess?? No not pajamas but shoes. You see, according to our little girl, socks and shoes are essential to bedtime. You can't put on pajamas unless you have socks and shoes. We've tried telling her that she doesn't need them, but anyone who knows Emily knows her one track mind. By the way, she TOTALLY gets that from Mike, like you wouldn't believe. They are two peas in a pod. So on go the shoes and socks. The funny part is, she never looks matching and she cracks me up. Tonight, as you can see, she is wearing black Patton shoes, red socks, pooh pajamas with a black t-shirt she decorated on top. And some nights she'll come running down the all totally naked and upset because she can't find the other shoe that matches the one in her hand. And no matter how much you tell her she doesn't need to shoe and to go get dressed, she will come back until she finds the other shoe, so we learned not to waste our breath and to just get up and find the other shoe for her.

On another note, her new word is lasterday. We think it means yesterday but we aren't entirely sure. But in Emilyland lasterday happens a lot.

Emily is now totally potty trained and mommy is SOOOOOOOO happy. So true to our word, she gets to go to preschool starting August 21st. The preschool we enrolled her in is at a church that is very charismatic. We figured they are the most equipped to handle our enthusiastic daughter. I'm sure they'll claim her as their holy spirit filled holy roller!! She is really excited. I think she'll really enjoy it, she's only been asking to go to school since she was able to talk. Unfortunately, I don't know how she'll take it when she realizes she won't be able to ride the bus to school. That would be the ultimate dream come true for her!!