Bonnetteville

Meet Ella!

2010-01-04T22:34:00.008-06:00

This morning at 9:05 Ella joined our family. As most of you know we let her be a surprise and we were so excited to have another beautiful baby girl join our family. She was 7 lbs. 11 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. She is such a sweet baby and we love her so much already.

The rest of the story

2009-11-02T10:05:00.005-06:00

The other day my friend Lexi had a post on her blog that I thought was kind of interesting. She talked about how we sometimes edit our accounts of our lives when we are talking to others or blogging. It was something that I really haven't given much thought. I am one of those people that when asked how I'm doing, I almost always say good even if I'm not. I think I do this because a) sometimes its easier, less time consuming, b) I don't want to burden others with my problems, c) I'm prideful, and d) I don't want people to view me as a "Debbie Downer."

After reading Lexi's post I thought that it might be interesting to have a post that was the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, I'm gonna revisit the hospital post, but this time you get the rest of the story :)

At 4:00 a.m., after a night of up every hour or two with a baby that was coughing and wheezing, Kailey finally with sad eyes said, "I can't do it anymore." I was already having a hard time looking calm and supportive to help her calm down, and this almost did me in. At that point Joel and I agreed that it was time to bring her in to the e.r. Scratch that, Joel decided it was time, I'm a nervous wreck in situations like this and rely on Joel to make important decisions. Kailey and I got in the van and took off for the e.r. When we got there, we were eventually taken back to a room and the doctor explained that she would need breathing treatments and a steroid shot. The last time that we were there a month earlier, she had to have an i.v. for fluids and she did great. She didn't even fight when they put in the i.v. I thought "good, no i.v.; this should be easy, and we'll be out of her before lunch time." Boy was I wrong. When the respiratory therapist came in with the breathing treatment Kailey was terrified. After trying for a long time to reason with her and calm her down, the therapist had to call in another nurse to help hold her down. The therapist and the nurse held her and made her take the breathing treatment. Watching them hold her with terror in her eyes as she kicked and fought tore my heart apart. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to watch, and over a breathing treatment, too. After all of this the doctor informed us that it didn't help enough and we would have to be admitted. So a while later Kailey and I went up to her room. I had only been communicating with Joel through text, so communication wasn't perfect, but I knew that he was coming as soon as he could get Eli ready, and that was good news. Shortly after we made it to the room, Joel and Eli arrived. When he walked in, Joel was on the phone with his sister Wendy. She was already in the parking lot waiting for someone to bring Eli down so that she could take him home with her for the day. This is where I started to fall apart. A culmination of no sleep, stress, viewing the torture of my child, pregnancy hormones, and not enough food took me down. Joel suggested that I walk Eli down to Wendy so that I could spend a little time with him. I didn't want to bring him to Wendy, because I just wanted to have him there with us, but I knew that it was for the best. I certainly didn't want to spend all day keeping Eli away from the nurse call button, grossness of the hospital room, bed controls, Kailey's play doh (messy but a comfort for her), and various other hospital equipment. So I picked him up and headed for the parking lot. As I got to the elevators I started thinking about him crying as I passed him off to Wendy, and that was all it took. I started crying and couldn't stop. I cried all of the way down to the first floor and barely made it too a bench. I sat down and Eli hugged me, and I cried for a while. Then I finally decided that I had to just call Wendy and let her know that I couldn't handle giving him up. So Eli and I went back upstairs to enjoy one another's company, and struggle through the day trying to stay out of the equipment and germs.

While I'm on a Debbie Downer kick, I do have gestational diabetes (had to go in on my birthday to learn how to use my glucometer and deprive myself of precious carbohydrates and fats), and we have chinese drywall wamp waaaa.

Hospitals, yuck

2009-10-30T10:32:00.005-05:00

As many of you know, we are getting to know the Our Lady of the Lake Emergency Room very well. Last month we were there because Kailey became dehydrated from a stomach bug. The we started out this week with another emergency room visit. Friday afternoon, Kailey started showing some signs of croup (you know, the yucky seal bark cough). She ran a little fever, it was no big deal. I figured, it's viral, its just gonna have to run its course, and no use running to the doctor when that's all that she will say. So by Sunday morning, things were still pretty much the same, a little bit of coughing and low grade fever. However, Sunday night things started going down hill. It all started with some wheezing. After she went to bed, she woke up coughing, this scared her, and she started crying. The crying really exasperated the wheezing problem and it turned into labored breathing. So we would get her calmed down and after a while she would go back to just wheezing, and go back to sleep. This went on through the night. We thought we could make it until morning and bring her right in to the pediatrician, but by 4 a.m. she was having a hard time calming down and the gasping was lasting a lot longer. Long story short, the breathing treatments and steroids in the emergency room didn't improve her breathing enough so we had to be admitted. I was so sad, because I knew that this meant that she would be missing her preschool character parade (they don't do halloween themed parties, but they do let them wear their costumes for a character parade and have special snacks after). I was also sad because Monday was Joel's birthday. We just had to postpone his birthday celebrations.

We did have lots of great visitors at the hospital. My mom and dad, Joel's mom, Mavanie, Jamie and the girls, and Jenny (Allison and Sara stayed in the playroom down the hall so that they weren't exposed to the germs) all came to visit. We also got a few phone calls from friends, and email/facebook well wishes. I'm grateful to have such wonderful family and friends.

Eli had a fun time playing peek-a-boo in the closet :)

3 hours and play doh in the data cord...argghhh

2009-10-22T08:34:00.004-05:00

I'm currently enjoying a three hour glucose tolerance test at the lovely lab services office at Woman's Hospital. If you want to know how I really feel about the glucose test you could check out this post from almost exactly two years ago.

Earlier this week I came in for my prenatal visit and the one hour test. The folks in the lab wouldn't even give me the drink for the one hour test because they said that my sugar was already too high and they didn't want to put even more sugar into my system. Ofcourse! I always fail that stinking test anyway. I was ok with this because this meant there was a chance I could plead with Dr. Breaux to just skip that whimpy little test and go straight for the 3 hour. Now, don't get me wrong it's not that I was so eager to get in there and take the wretched 3 hour test; it's just that I knew that I would fail the one hour anyway and those two blood draws would be in vain. If I could just convince Dr. Breaux to skip the one hour test I could get away with 4 needle sticks instead of 6! See, for me it's all about minimizing the number of times a needle is put into my arm. Did I ever tell you about the time I almost passed out in the waiting room when I went in to have my booster shots to register for college. I just saw the dark spot where the blood was underneath the band aid, and the black spots started moving in. Clare had to take me out into the parking lot and I had to lay down on the side walk. Anyway, Dr. Breaux agreed that I could skip the one hour test and here I sit watching the clock, waiting for the next round of torture.

This morning as I was getting ready to go, I packed up my computer, phone, and data cord (I have some pictures on my phone that I wanted to put in a post) so that I could do some blogging while I hang out for three hours in the waiting room. Once I got settled in the waiting room I pulled my stuff out only to discover that Kailey had used my data cord to make some imprints in her pink play doh. Now the data cord will not plug into my phone, so no pictures :( If I had my keys I would just use my swiss army knife to clean it out, but Joel has my keys. He had to take Kailey to preschool this morning and Eli to Jamie's house so we switched cars. So here I sit with two and a half hours to go and no pictures to post.

Half way there folks!

2009-08-28T16:47:00.003-05:00

I reached the 20 week milestone today. I got Kailey to take a picture of my belly. This was more difficult than I thought. She does good with her Fisher Price camera, but my camera was a little trickier for her. Her's what we got.

By the way, we did have our sonogram a week ago today. We did not find out what we are having. I wouldn''t have been sad if the technician had let it slip or if I had been able to see something. Ok so that was an understatement. I was listening carefully to every word that she said hoping to hear, "that is HIS foot" or "that is HER heart," but she was good, she didn't slip up. She also went pretty fast over the key areas so not to expose anything. I'll post some of the sonogram pictures as soon as I stop being lazy and get the scanner out :)

First day of School!

2009-08-18T23:05:00.005-05:00

Today was Kailey's first day of school. She is only going a few days a week and half days. It was fun getting her ready, new backpack and new shoes. Then yesterday about half way through the day, it occurred to me that I was going to have to leave her there for three hours. I started to worry about her being homesick or what if she didn't have any friends to play with at recess. I decided that I needed to just put the worries out of my mind and just deal with them if they actually happened.

This morning, Joel and I dropped her off, and she did great, no tears. She has always been such an independent girl.

First Primary talk, school's about to start, Eli is 18 mo...

2009-08-12T11:12:00.005-05:00

I have a few things to catch up on, I don't have all of my pictures ready, but I know if I don't get started I will keep procrastinating.

Sunday Kailey gave her first primary talk. She talked about preparing now to go to the temple. She did a good job (with help ofcourse), aside from keeping her mouth on the microphone the whole time :) Joel's parents happened to be in town on Saturday, so they stayed for her talk.

That's Izzy (Mavanie's pup) stretching in the background, she had been napping too.

Kailey starts school in less than a week, next Tuesday! I think she will have a good time. She has been good at jumping into new things. She got her hair trimmed a couple of weeks ago, we've done a little clothes shopping, so we are almost ready.

Eli turned 18 months on the 1st. You know what that means...nursery!! Not that I don't enjoy having Eli around, I was just very ready to not have to reassemble the bottoms of the primary bulletin boards every Sunday, and keep him away from the piano (sometimes while Sis. Gale was playing). We went this week for his check-up. He is 24 lbs. (50th percentile) and 32 inches (90th percentile) and as healthy as a horse. Our pediatrician pointed out that he has not yet been in for a sick visit, they have all just been well check-ups.

This is one of Eli's favorite things to do. I dont' understand it either.

Since I've been slacking on the blog we have been to California for the Bonnette family reunion and Eva got her ear's clipped, and I made it out of the first trimester. I'll get some of those pictures up soon.

New pup

2009-06-17T00:15:00.004-05:00

Today we took a trip out to Prairieville, and picked up a new pup. We had been thinking about getting a new puppy for a while. Since we lost Sam a while back, Rickey has been a little lonely. The past few weeks we have had Izzy staying with us (Joel's little sister's dog), and Rickey has been really happy. They play and Rickey doesn't squeal/howl when I leave the house. One time we were leaving the house, the brakes on the car squealed, and Kailey exclaimed, "Mama, I hear Rickey."

I figured now was as good a time as any since the new baby won't be here for another 7 months; should give us plenty of time to get her house broken and settled. So this afternoon we brought home a miniature schnauzer. She is about 2 months old. We haven't decided on a name yet, but we are working on it. Kailey has given us many suggestions, her crazy made up names of course. I wish that I had written down the name that she was calling the pup tonight when she was in the bath.

I've been on a summer break

2009-06-10T09:37:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in quite a while. I guess I was just on a summer break. My brain has been programmed to work august through may, and then shut down for the summer months. After all I was only in school or teaching school for 20 years. K-12:13 yrs. + college: 4 yrs. + teaching: 3 yrs. = 20 yrs.; I couldn't have you thinking I had repeated a bunch of grades :) I'm just glad I was able to break this in June instead of going all the way to August.

We haven't had a whole lot going on. I've just been trying to find food that I can eat without feeling ill, and trying not to succumb to the fatigue of the first trimester. This pregnancy has turned out to be a little more challenging than the previous two. All in all, it could be worse, much worse. I have seen the suffering first hand that others have endured in the first trimester, and I really do have it easy.

Kailey did a week long summer class at the dance studio, and she had a really fun time. Joel and I got to go the last night for parents night. I am so proud of how far she has come from when she first started dance. I have a couple of pictures on my phone that I will add later. (My phone and cord are in the back and I'm running out of time with the babies. I knew if i waited until I had time do both write the post and add the pictures this post might not happen for a while).

One more thing and I'll be caught up. Seven years ago, when Joel and I were still dating he gave me Cold Play concert tickets for Christmas. The concert was probably the best show that I had ever been to. Not that they were my favorite band that I had seen live, they just had the best live performance. So Cold Play came back to New Orleans and we did not hesitate to buy tickets. We went last night to the concert and it exceeded my expectations. The very best surprise was the opening band, Snow Patrol. I love snow patrol!! I knew their music much better than the Cold Play music. I would have gone to the concert if it had just been Snow Patrol.

Dress rehearsal

2009-05-12T11:16:00.000-05:00

On Friday, Kailey had dress rehearsal for her recital. I am really excited about the recital. The theme is the Little Mermaid and she is a guppy.

Kailey and a fellow guppy, Brynn. I found out on the first night of dance class that a girl in Kailey's class was the daughter of a teacher that I taught with at Tara.

Kailey and a friend from church, Brooklyn.

This picture is terrible because of the distance and lighting, but Kailey's class in on the front row. This was part of the finale. The other pictures of her on the stage were worse than this one.

Dresses from Memaw!

2009-05-10T22:16:00.006-05:00

Kailey's Memaw sent her some sundresses in the mail. She was so excited when she got them that she wouldn't wear anything else for days. If only I could sew so well.

Star Trek movie and a poppy seed

2009-05-08T23:31:00.004-05:00

Last night Joel and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. As I have mentioned before, I loathed Star Trek for most of my life. It wasn't until a year or so ago that I actually gave it a chance, and found that it wasn't that bad at all. I'm no treky, but I do like star trek. I was actually looking forward to this movie.

picture from: www.startrek.com

We took our seats in the theater, and the movie started, within the first thrity minutes of the movie I was crying. I cryed 4 times during this movie. Might I remind you this is a sci-fi, action flick. {SPOILER ALERT: this next sentence might ruin some of the movie if you planning to see it and are a serious star trek fan, so read the very small sentence at your own risk} I cried when Spock of the past met up with Cpt. Kirk of the future and told him that they would be friends, what the h??? (If anyone mentions this to Joel, I might have to ban you from the blog, ok so I don't think that is possible, so lets just say we might not be such good friends for a little while). I knew something was going on. That night when we got home, as I lay in bed, I calculated due dates in my head. This morning I went straight for the pregnancy test (I only waited until morning because they say that you are less likely to get a false negative if you do it the morning; I have had a false negative in the past). As suspected, after my crying fit in Star Trek, there is indeed a poppy seed-sized new baby growing inside of my belly :)

When I told Kailey she jumped up and down for a long time, and told me that it was going to be a girl, and she was going to name her Re'Etta (I hope I got the spelling right, my years of teaching in public schools gave me advanced unique name spelling skills).

Thanks Otis!

2009-05-04T12:43:00.003-05:00

The other day Eli and I took a quick trip to the store. In the car I had it on NPR (i'm secure in my nerdiness thank you very much), and in between segments they played a song that I believe was Otis Redding. Eli was dancing like I have never seen him dance before. I personally love Otis Redding, and was happy to find that Eli and I have this in common. I have loved Otis since I was 7 or 8 years old. Jamie and I had a Dirty Dancing soundtrack that we played a million times. Today I added Otis to Pandora on my phone and we were cooking with crisco. It is a marvelous thing to have happy dancing babies in your livingroom.

P.S. I've been away from the blog for a little while thanks in part to yet another corneal abrasion, so I'll be playing catch-up this week.

Messes

2009-04-24T12:03:00.006-05:00

Babies posses a certain super power; they can make messes faster than any mother could ever clean. Most days my babies are gracious and keep the messes within reasonable bounds, but today they are letting loose a little.

This was taken a couple of days ago. Eli climbed onto the table, got the pitcher of Kool-aid, climbed down, took a few drinks, spilled it down his shirt, and then noticed that Rickey was licking up the trickled down Kool-aid. That's when he decided that he needed to pour her some.

While I was doing laundry today, this was going on: Kailey stripped all of her clothes off. Eli dug stuff out of the trash, pushed a chair over to the kitchen counter and poured out a cup that contained melted ice and a little bit of dr. pepper all over his clothes, poured out a bag of teddy grahams, got the salt shaker and poured out some salt, pushed the play kitchen around the room, and he is still going.

We are only half way into this day folks.

The first part was typed this morning. Now for the happy ending: Eli took a three hour nap, hallelujah!

By the Way

2009-04-23T11:27:00.002-05:00

If you noticed, I started to change my "folks we know" to a new list over on the left. I just wanted to let you know that even though I've not done anything to it in a long time. I'm not finished, so if your blog is not listed over there I have not disowned you :)

A new canvas

2009-04-19T22:56:00.005-05:00

Tonight in the tub, Kailey was having a good time coloring the bath tub with her bath crayons. Then she discovered a new "canvas."

I looked at her and she said, "I'm drawing him." His back was mostly orange :)

Easter

2009-04-17T23:45:00.007-05:00

This is Eli when he discovered the girls at the table coloring eggs. I think that he thought that there was kool-aid in the cups :)

"Look girl, I know its hard when your man is at Jetson, especially during holidays. Why don't you color some eggs to get your mind off of it. "

This caption was for Jessie. I read in one of her posts that she comes up with captions for her pictures (a throw back to her yearbook days). I do too, sometimes; I just never post them. I just couldn't resist with this one :)

This was Easter afternoon. I forgot to get out the camera that morning when they got their easter baskets, and their clothes and hair were still looking neat :(

Utah ski trip

2009-04-09T21:14:00.014-05:00

Our flight home from Denver was delayed, so we had to entertain ourselves for a while. Eli was in love with moving sidewalk, not sure what the technical term is :) Joel and I must have gone up and down the corridor 25-30 times.

Kailey had a great time using her chopsticks to eat her hibachi shrimp at Uncle Jonathan's restaurant.

Yay for skiing! Park City was nice; this was the first time that any of us had skiied there and we had a great time. Thier ski lift was awesome. I used to have bad issues with getting off of ski lifts, I think I have over come these problems with experience (I'll save that one for another post), but I didnn't have to test it out the Park City lift was truly wonderful.

Tubing was super fun. (Eli didn't think so, but the rest of us did. Eli at least had a good time playing in the warming hut.)

Jared (Joel's brother) and Ashlyn (his super cute daughter)
Keri (sister-in-law, Jared's wife) and Amilyn (sister-in-law, Joel's sister)Some of the other guys in the warming hut (back l to r: Zachary, Josh, Brandon; front l to r: Jamie, Allison, Sarah, and Joe)
Despite his intense hatred for his snow gear, I thought that he looked super cute.

Temple Square is so beautiful. In this picture we are in one of the vistor's centers at the Christus.
Kailey and Allison outside of the Salt Lake temple
Joel's brother Jared is a chiropractor. He brought his travel table over to the house and adjusted all of us even the babies. It was heaven after packing Eli on my hip through a few airports. If you didn't notice the needle in Joel's head, that was acupuncture courtesy of Jared. Thanks Jared, you're the best!

Some other pictures, like our snowman, and the babies riding on the baby tubing ride can be checked out on Jamie and Keri's blogs

The braces are gone!!!

2009-04-08T00:15:00.003-05:00

Yippeee! Hooray! I went in this morning and had my braces taken off. It feels glorious! It is so nice to eat food and not have 1/4 of it stuck in my braces. No more suffering after adjustments and new wires, no more stinking rubber bands, and no more cut up gums and lips from baby head butts and poking wires!!!!
P.S. pictures from the ski trip coming soon. If you want a preview, click here for Keri's blog. We had a great time hanging out with her, Jared, and Ashlyn.

2009-04-01T13:48:00.002-05:00

My April's fool day trick was foiled :( Months ago I set up the appointment to have my braces off, and as soon as the receptionist gave the date I started planning. My appointment was originally set for today. So my plan was to tell Joel that my appointment had to be changed to a later date. I was going to see how long it would take for him to notice that they were gone. Then a couple of weeks ago he called from work and said that the company ski trip dates were set for April 1st - 5th. I had to call the orthodontist and reschedule the removal of my braces. I was super sad to postpone the removal; the ladies at the office tried as hard as they could to work me in earlier, but it just didn't work.

So we are off for some skiing and general conference.

Church Pew and Coffee Table: Enemy of the Toddler

2009-03-24T13:53:00.005-05:00

For several Sundays in a row (I lost count) I found myself rushing to the foyer with a screaming baby. Last Sunday was the exception, some how we managed to escape Sacrament meeting without any skirmishes between Eli and the pew. I guess the pew put in a call to his friend the coffee table because last night I returned from a girls night (we watched Twilight at Jeni's, she and Laura put together an awesome party) to find a fresh battle wound on Eli's eyebrow. Joel said that he hit the corner of the coffee table and cried for a really long time :(

That is not purple eyeshadow above his right eye. Funny story about this picture: I was sitting on the couch a few minutes ago with Eli in my lap. He was playing with the cordless phone one minute, and the next he put his head back against my arm and was instantly sleeping. I thought he was faking because he never does this. He has been a sleep fighter from the beginning, and when I say a sleep fighter, he is a black belt in fighting sleep. He must have been super extra tired this afternoon!

Here's a picture from Friday:

On Friday, Jamie and I went to Ferriday to visit papaw (he is in the hospital), and hang out with our parents. We had a good time hanging out with the folks. I tried to find a pictures of Allison and Kailey playing, but they were all of their backs. They have so much fun playing that they are never still enough for pictures.

Shampoo Chair = waterboarding

2009-03-13T22:59:00.002-05:00

I got a hair cut today. I don't know if anyone else has this experiencet, but for me the shampoo chair/sink that they wash your hair in is torture! By the end I'm in so much pain that I'm twitching. What is the deal, can't we find a better way to do this!?!

Guess what we did today?

2009-03-11T15:40:00.005-05:00

Played in the sprinkler. It has been in the 80's the last few days, and Kailey has been asking about getting out the wading pool. I kept telling her no, because I knew that the water would still be freezing cold. I went swimming in a lake once on April 1st, and those memories will be forever burned into my memory, or should I say frozen :) I couldn't resist the pun. So this morning the babies were itching to go outside and play. I had been putting it off because I had chores to do inside. I heard what I thought was the mailman and when I looked out, I couldn't resist any more. The weather was beautiful. When we got outside I started pulling weeds, then I decided to water some plants; this was the point of no return. There has NEVER been a single time that I have gotten the hose out to water plants that Kailey hasn't ended up soaked. She always finds a way to weasel into the path of the hose. I didn't try to fight it, when she came over to "wash her hands" I went ahead and let a little get on her shirt. She pretended like she wasn't trying to get wet and went back to playing, and a very short time later she returned. Her hands were dirty again. This time I really got her and she squealed and laughed. I sprayed Eli a little and he didn't really like it. He furrowed his brow, and when I made it rain with the hose, he shrugged his shoulders up and looked irritated. At that point I went ahead and got out the sprinkler and let them play in the sprinkler. Eli had more fun with the sprinkler.

Sorry that the picture is from so far away, phone doesn't have zoom, and its not very wise to get the phone in the water (i'm experienced in that one).
Here are a couple of other pictures that I had on my phone.

This is Eli trying on his new belt and tie. He really looks like a little Joel in this outfit :)
The last time that we were at the produce stand Kailey was pretending like this sweet potato was a phone. On a previous trip, she was following me around dancing and singing "shake your booty" An elderly man danced with her for a minute. It was super funny. The produce stand is a fun happening kind of place, in case you didn't know.

A few nights ago...

2009-02-25T23:41:00.003-06:00

A few nights ago we went to a bonfire. Autumn Saxon came home from her mission a week or so ago, and her parents had a bonfire last Friday night to welcome her home. Sis. Saxon called that afternoon to invite us. After I got off of the phone with her, I told Kailey that we were going to a bonfire at the Saxon's that night. She started jabbering about who she was going to play with and how much fun she was going to have. Then she said that she was kind of scared because the last bonfire that we went to kind of scared her. So I tried to reassure her that everything would be fine and that she wouldn't get hurt, and she replied

Well, if I do get burned, Jesus will get in his car, and drive there, and park there, and get out and put me in his car, and take me to his house, and fix me up, and bring me back.

I had to try really hard not to laugh after that super long run on sentence about Jesus.

I'll put up some pictures from the bonfire soon.

Eli is one!

2009-02-06T20:58:00.008-06:00

Eli turned one on the 1st. Here are a few pictures.

I made shark cupcakes using my Hello Cupcake book that Jamie gave me for Christmas. I can't take full credit for these though; I had lots of help from Joel's mom, Mavanie, Brandon, Amilyn, and Wendy. Thanks guys!

Eli's face in this picture cracks me up. As you can see, he hasn't quite gotten the hang of opening gifts, so Allison, Kailey and I helped him out.

Watch out WWF

2009-01-28T17:39:00.005-06:00

This afternoon, I had Kailey and Eli on Kailey's bed as I read Kailey a book before her nap. Kailey was sitting next to me listening and Eli was squirming and flipping all around. Then out of no where he jumped up and body slammed Kailey. This is nothing new; he has a signature move, we call the "death roll" (you know, like the alligator). If you are on the floor and Eli is in a wrestling mood, expect to find him on top of you rolling around.
I was going to just let the Kumala picture speak for itself, but I decided I had better give some kind of background info. Kumala was mine and Jamie's favorite wrestler growing up. When my dad would watch. Jamie and I would run to the back, get our pillows and put them in our shirts and pretend to be Kumala. Why Kumala and not Hulk Hogan, Jake the Snake, The Undertaker?? The fancy tattoos.

Now we know what they teach the kids in nursery

2009-01-25T14:17:00.001-06:00

Apparently they teach the kids to eat bananas like corn on the cob in our church nursery. Check out my friend Jeni's blog. Nursery is the likely explanation if both Kailey and Brooklyn have done this. Naomi, you might be reading this, and its ok if you want to deny it; but Jeni and I know the truth ;) {for the record, Kailey is technically a sunbeam, sun beep if you ask her, but it is only january making it possible for her to remember something from nursery}

Thanks a lot GPS

2009-01-24T13:31:00.010-06:00

Joel and I decided late last week that we would take the babies to the New Orleans Aquarium on Saturday. So we set off that morning and headed for New Orleans. We put the Aquarium address into our GPS and I read out loud from our latest book selection as we drove, and the babies watched Its the great pumpkin Charlie Brown (I know, it's not even close to Halloween, but Kailey insisted, its one of her favorites). Before we knew it, we were in New Orleans, and going over the river, into Gretna. As we were going over the bridge, I said to Joel, "This isn't right, the Aquarium is back that way." I didn't remember exactly how to get there, but I definitely knew it wasn't across the bridge. His replied that he was just going where the GPS said to go. Turns out, we went over into Gretna, drove around, and ended up on the ferry, headed back over the river. I don't know how in the world the GPS came up with that route, but it was the craziest route I have ever taken to the aquarium that's for sure. (I was talking a friend, Jill, she and her husband had a similar experience in New Orleans, and she said that they figured that it was some kind of conspiracy to make people have to pay the tolls and ferry fees. In both cases, hers and mine, fees/tolls would not have been paid if not for the crazy round about GPS directions. So Ray Nagin and the GPS people, we are on to you!!) Any way, we did make it to the Aquarium and had a good time.

This is a shot from the Ferry as we were pulling up to the Riverwalk.

I love this one, Eli's face cracks me up.

After the Aquarium, we took the street car down to Jackson Square and walked a few blocks to have lunch at the Gumbo Shop. I didn't have high expections for this place, the name sounded a little generic to me, but it was highly recommended by Jelani. It was every bit as good as Jelani had promised. I am kind of picky about gumbo. I have rarely found a gumbo that I would consider good compared to mammaw's and Joel's mom's. I still prefer homemade, but this place had good gumbo (the best that I have had in a restaurant).

Moose surfing

2009-01-13T15:23:00.000-06:00

Let me set the stage: We were having family prayers before Joel left for work, I had Kailey, and Eli was free. We usually don't hold onto him during prayers, because it will be a fight. So Eli just does his own thing during prayers. During the prayer this morning I peeked to check on Eli, and Joel must have peeked the same time that I did. We found him standing on top of the rocking moose, not holding on. I jumped up and got him off and Joel added to the prayer, "please bless hot rod Eli that he won't do anything too dangerous today."I obviously did not get a surfing shot, so you'll have to accept this less exciting version of Eli and the moose, taken this morning.

Rickey's 4 year check-up

2009-01-11T00:58:00.000-06:00

I brought Rickey in for her yearly check-up a few days ago, and she is as healthy as a horse. She took her shots like a trooper, and ate up her heart worm preventative like it was candy. She's just a little overweight, so like many of us, her new years resolution is to lose a little weight, 4 lbs. to be exact. This kind of translates into a new years resolution for me too: walk Rickey everyday to help her lose the 4 lbs.

nonescadido

2009-01-10T00:26:00.000-06:00

Earlier today, Kailey was playing with one of Eli's toys. It was his Christmas gift from Jamie, a cute little pull toy. In true Kailey form, Kailey asked, "Mom, do you know what his name is?" I responded, "no," and she proceeded to tell me that his name is Nonescadido. I think that this zebra must be español. I think Kailey has been watching too much Dora, too (see Jamie's most recent post, the one with Sarah's peace sign belly button, check out the last part about Allison).

Those are a couple of pictures from earlier today. My mom came down today, so me and the babies headed over to Jamie's to hang out.

iPhone death

2009-01-06T00:50:00.000-06:00

Saturday afternoon, while I was on the phone (house phone) with my parents, Eli grabbed my phone off of the bed and took off with it. I was so involved in my conversation with my parents that I didn't really pay attention to Eli leaving the room with my phone. Well a few minutes later, I heard Kailey yelling that she needed to use the potty. After I got off of the phone, I went through the house searching for my phone. I found it in the bathroom a little water logged. I quickly tried to resusitate it by drying and shaking water out of it. I brought it to Joel to see what he could do, he shook it even harder and got more water out of. I frantically searched online for hope that there might be some way to revive my sweet little phone. I found a few sites that recommended putting it in a container with a desiccant. So I set off for Lowe's and picked up some damp rid, and it sits in the container still. I have tried it a few times, but there are no signs of life. Joel did find a video tonight that suggested that when iPhone's are dropped into water, the battery is often destroyed because the batteries inside these are not covered in metal like most other cell phone batteries. So there are a few other things to try, but for now it is just hanging out with the damp rid. (Joe I know you are cringing at my lack of photo editing skills, sorry).

sorry and a quick december recap

2009-01-03T23:41:00.001-06:00

I took a little break after nablopomo that turned into a big break. You know it is bad when your parents get onto you, and it is brought up at the book club meeting that you haven't posted in over a month : )

As I proofed the last couple of sentences that I had just typed, I read the word's "little break" and I was reminded of what "little break" meant when I was in college. Have I ever told you about my "little breaks" from my college days? I don't think I have. Jamie and I were terrible about staying out too late (not the way most people think, it was always good clean mormon fun) and putting off homework until the very last minute. So we would end up in the dining room (that's where our computer was), at 2 a.m. working on homework, and we would be so exhausted that we would take turns taking "little breaks." This is were you get out of your desk chair, lay down on the floor and take a 3-5 min. nap, get up, get back in the chair, work until you can't stand it any more, lay back on the floor and start the process over.

One night, as I was typing a paper, I was going through the usual ritual, and when I returned to my chair to commence typing, I was still half a sleep, literally. I began typing again only to fall back a sleep "at the wheel." I began to dream about horses and when I woke up I had typed the words "saddle bags" into my paper.

Since I have no pictures of me and Jamie taking "a little break," this is one of my favorites of Kailey having one. :) (I don't know why this text is a link and I ca n't figure out how to fix it, sorry).

Now that I got that tangent out of the way, Here's a little bit of what we have been up to since Thanksgiving:

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to Jezebel's first birthday in Ferriday. Then, Sunday night Clare, Daniel, and Jezebel came and stayed a couple of nights with us. It was super fun having them stay. And as an added bonus, Daniel fixed Kailey's kitchen (it never made its cooking noises like it was supposed to when you put the pot on the burner, and the phone never worked). I love those folks soooo much!!

December 11: I still can't believe that it snowed that much! Jamie called really early and prefaced the conversation with, "don't be mad that I'm calling this early, I was kind of mad at Mary when she called, but I was glad she did when she told me why she was calling."

December 13: Kailey turned 3!! We rented an inflatable and had some family and friends over.

December 25 - We went to Lake Charles on Christmas day to hang out with Joel's family, and then we headed to Ferriday to hang out with my family. I'll have to put up Christmas photos later; I haven't gotten those off of the camera yet. Terrible, I know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T22:34:00.000-06:00

Kailey and I tuned in this morning to the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. I always loved getting up and watching when I was little. This morning I was thinking back to when I was little, and remembering how I always hated the marching bands. They were like the vegetables of the parade. I have since repented and like to watch all of the parade, but when I was little I dreaded the bands.

Today we went to Amilyn's house for lunch with the Bonnette's and later headed out to Ferriday for Dinner with my family. Click HERE to see my favorite part of the day!

If you have already clicked on the link, read on . . .

You've just been Rickroll'd, but don't feel bad because so was everyone else that watched the Macy's Parade Today. To be Rickroll'd Macy's-Style click here.

Thanksgiving pictures and more details to come . . .

Roasted Chicken

2008-11-27T01:25:00.000-06:00

I found a recipe on allrecipes.com for roasted chicken that I really like. I didn't expect anything spectacular since the recipe is really simple, but I was surprised.

Juicy Roasted Chicken
INGREDIENTS

1 (3 pound) whole chicken, giblets removed
salt and black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon onion powder, or to taste
1/2 cup margarine, divided
1 stalk celery, leaves removed

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Place chicken in a roasting pan, and season generously inside and out with salt and pepper. Sprinkle inside and out with onion powder. Place 3 tablespoons margarine in the chicken cavity. Arrange dollops of the remaining margarine around the chicken's exterior. Cut the celery into 3 or 4 pieces, and place in the chicken cavity.
Bake uncovered 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven, to a minimum internal temperature of 180 degrees F (82 degrees C). Remove from heat, and baste with melted margarine and drippings. Cover with aluminum foil, and allow to rest about 30 minutes before serving.

Submitted by: robinrockingbird

I'm back and i've got pictures

2008-11-25T23:21:00.000-06:00

I took a little break from my continuous posting because we actually had no functioning computers in the house for a few days. No, I'm not lying, my house actually had no computer, 27 computer programming books, but no computer. So much for NaBloPoMo; the desktop is terminally ill, and the laptop charger got left in Vicksburg for a few days (long story). We had the charger back Sunday night, no excuse, and yesterday, I acquired corneal abrasion #5 courtesy of Eli (I was just holding him in my lap, and he flung his little arm around, which scraped a fingernail across my eyeball). I know, you are thinking, how in the world is that possible that in the period of 2 1/2 yrs. a person could have 5 corneal abrasions. Well, Jamie's theory is that I have something wrong with my blinking reflex, maybe so. Whatever it is, I'm tired of it. Imagine having a burning paper cut on your eye, and of course your eyes blink all of the time irritating and restarting the burning each time. Sorry, I had to get that off of my chest, I have been bottling up my anger toward my eye ball and had to get it out. My eye is feeling better now, still blurred, but not stinging and watering like crazy.

I promised some pictures a while back, so here are a few.

This was Eli's first time down the slide the other day.

Eli's first time on the clown car; its missing all of it's face pieces, the clown car that is : ( He was really concentratingEli is always happy when he is outside. When I open the door to let Rickey out, and he doesn't get to go outside he gets pretty angry.

Car seats are a cool fun toy when they are not in the car.Friday, after Joel got off of work, we sped to Lake Charles to the Barbe High football game. We had been planning to go to a game all season to see Mavanie march, but hadn't made to one yet. We made just in time to see her march. It was fun despite the bitterly cold wind.Kailey had a good time painting at Memaw and Granddad's house.
At the mall in Lake CharlesSunday evening Jamie, the babies, and I went out to Baker to hang out with Becca (college roommate) who was in town for Thanksgiving. It was great to hang out with her and her family, and meet her super cute baby girl Marianna! This is the only picture that I got that had all 5 babies in it. It was so good to see Becca after almost 4 years!

And no, my camera is not from 1995 with floppy disk memory and half a mega pixel. These are from my phone so the quality is horrible. It is just so much easier to take pictures with my phone rather than toting around our big camera that take beautiful pictures.

He wasn't kidding about the walking and TWILIGHT

2008-11-19T23:29:00.000-06:00

So, Eli was not kidding about the walking. In a previous post, I mentioned that Eli had taken a few steps, and I figured that it would be a while before he was really getting around. Well, nobody Eli that it takes a while to get used to walking. He has not been holding on or anything, just letting go and walking. The most that I have seen him take with out grabbing on to the next thing is 4 steps. I have really been surprised at how quickly he has taken off.

Sorry I have been going on a bit of a picture drought, I really need to get pictures off of the camera and my phone and post a few. Keep an eye out, there coming soon.

Also, we have a friend that has some connections in the theater business and I was able to go an see Twilight tonight at their employee screening. I was super excited. I really loved the books, so I was extra excited to see the movie. Frankly, the movie could have been terrible and I still would have loved it, because I love the story so much. Usually I am really picky about movies and sometimes overly critical of the acting, directing, writing, etc., but for Twilight I put aside the microscope and just tried to enjoy it. When I watched the previews, I was a little worried, because there were a few parts that looked a little hokey (couldn't think of just the right adjective, so that one will have to do), but I was glad to find that the previews didn't do those scenes justice. I plan to watch it again, at least once more in the theater with Joel and when it comes out on dvd, who knows, the sky is the limit :)

One last thing, I got the last wires for my braces put in today! Hallelujah! I will have to wear these for 6 weeks. I thought that I would get to go back in 4 weeks and possibly get them off before Christmas, but he wanted me to go 6 weeks this time : ( Wow, I just realized how close we are to Christmas. I had better get started on my Christmas shopping list, Christmas cards (I am going to try and get some sent out this year, did it the year before but not last year), and plan and prepare for Kailey's birthday. This time of year gets really busy quick, so I better get to work!

Ryan sitting and Eli's first step

2008-11-17T23:39:00.000-06:00

Today, we had Ryan, a nursery buddy, over. His mom is in the hospital with a new baby girl! Luckily Ryan is a good kid, so we had a pretty smooth day.

This morning, Eli, in pursuit of a roll of toilet paper, let go of Kailey's step stool and took one tiny baby step to the toilet as he attempted to reach a roll of toilet paper. It will be a while still before he is actually walking around, but he has had his first step!!

P.S. This is my 100th post! Yippee Hooray!

2008-11-15T23:19:00.000-06:00

Ok, I am running low on content, so I found a thought provoking question that I was having a hard time answering.

If you had your own talk show, who would your first three guests be? (mine are in no particular order, and just based on entertainment value)

1. Steve Carrell - I saw him on Leno the other night and he was hilarious!
2. Mo Willems - I love his books and I think that he would be fun to interview.
3. Lorne Michaels maybe or maybe Andy Samburg, my fave snl cast member of the moment (since it's my blog, it is legal to have a maybe in a top 3 list).

I might give this some more thought and come back to it.

Rony, Ponda, and Tiko

2008-11-15T00:34:00.000-06:00

It's late, so I'm gonna keep this short. My mom and dad came, and at one point when we were outside playing, my dad told me that his name was Ponda, and that Kailey was Rony, and Allison was Tiko. I couldn't help but laugh. Any body else need a crazy, I mean really cool name, let me know, we will hook you up.

A surprise visit, and pawpaw is coming!

2008-11-13T23:26:00.001-06:00

This morning Jamie called and let me know that Courtney, Jared, and the babies were passing through, on their way to Florida to visit her family. I was so super excited. For more details and pictures, you can take a look by clicking here. It was so good to see them, and meet Jack for the first time. I can't wait to go visit them in Texas.

Tomorrow my dad is coming to visit. He works offshore, and will be passing through on his way home. He called earlier in the week to let us know that he would stop by on his way in. My mom is going to drive up to visit, too. We are really excited to get to hang out with them tomorrow.

Another thing, Kailey figured out that her jeans have pockets and she can put her hands in them, today. Also, Eli started clapping today. He has gotten better at it just since this morning. I love it!

Kailey's names

2008-11-12T22:33:00.001-06:00

What is in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. - William Shakespeare

Kailey lately (the last couple of months), tells me everyday a new name by which she should be called. Most days, it changes a few time throughout the day. Tonight she was to be called Rony (pronounced like Tony). They are always completely made up. Some of the most common repeat ones are Loana (loan with uh at the end, I'm not even going to try to do proper pronunciations, it would take me hours with the character key to find the right characters and symbols), Shanta, and Amalise. These are the only ones that resemble normal names so I can remember them; the others are so abstract that they don't stick in my brain. I'm kind of sad about that because some that I've forgotten were real doozies. I guess I should start writing them down.

The way that it usually goes is:

K: Mom, I'm Rony.

H: Ok

A little later...

H: Kailey get off of the coffee table.

K: NNNNOOOOO, I'M RONY!!!

H: Oh, I'm sorry, Rony, get off of the table please.

Sometimes I get a name too. Sometimes it is assigned by Kailey and sometimes, if I'm lucky I get to choose :) I usually choose Loana or Shanta, I remember those easiest.

Veteran's Day & Unsolved Mysteries

2008-11-11T22:56:00.000-06:00

Happy Veteran's Day. Aren't you grateful to live in this country and enjoy the freedoms of this country? I know that I am. I am afraid that I take it for granted. I am grateful that my life has not really been touched by war, despite the possibilities in my lifetime. My grandfather served in the military, he served in the Korean War; and I have an uncle that served for about 20 years in the military.

The other day, I came across a show that I hadn't seen in a while, Unsolved Mysteries. I used to watch this show with papaw. It used to scare me then, and it scared me this time, too. I don't know if you have picked up on this or not, but Jamie and I both have this problem, we are scaredy cats and we watch shows that scare us despite that. Jamie had a post about watching the show "A Haunting," if you need a refresher, you can read it here. So I had the same problem with the Haunting show, and the other day I got sucked in by Unsolved Mysteries. That night, I had bad dreams about crazy ghosts and glowing luminol (stuff that they spray on surfaces to detect blood) on the walls. I have got to stay away from these shows even though I like them so much. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

The Conclusion of the slush puppy store guy and a good day

2008-11-10T22:01:00.001-06:00

First order of business: the slush puppy store. So as I mentioned when I first walked over to the slush puppy machine, the store owner started talking to me, he said, "Slush puppy are very good, I never have any complaints (with a very thick Asian maybe Vietnamese accent)" The way that he pronounced slush puppy, I knew immediately that this was the store that Paul Hollis (a friend from LSU) used to go to every morning before school/work and get an eggroll and slush puppy for breakfast. Paul used to tell us about how as soon as he walked through the door of the store, the owner would say, "eggroll and slush puppy" to Paul because he knew what he was going get. Paul would say the line with an asian accent, and apparently he had the accent down pretty good, because as soon as I heard the guy pronounce slush puppy, I knew that this was Paul's store where he got slush puppies. I almost laughed out loud when the guy started talking to me, as I realized who he was.

Sorry Clare and Jamie, it wasn't Kevin Bacon (see comments under the previous post). When we were in high school there was a guy working at the Chevron that I mentioned in the previous post that looked just like Kevin Bacon, so we just referred to him as Kevin Bacon. And Clare, yes I do remember the field trip when we made our own slush puppies and we added way too much syrup. I also thought more syrup = more sweetness and flavor...wrong! A word of warning to anyone that comes upon a self serve slush puppy machine, do not add more than the recommended amount of syrup.

Second order of business: a good day. I don't know if the planet's aligned, or if entered an alternate universe this afternoon, but I received excellent customer service all day!! I went to Sonic today for lunch, they had the food out quicker than I thought possible, the car hop was super nice, I asked for more ketchup, she went right in and brought it right out, they got my order right, and the girl later came by with the condiment tray and checked to see if we needed anything else. I was shocked. I headed to Wal-Mart next to do a little grocery shopping (I had started going to Winn Dixie lately because of shorter lines, better variety, nicer employees, but happened to be on the other side of town, so decided to press my luck with Wal-Mart). Everything went fine with the shopping, then when I went to check out, there was NO LINE (unheard of at our Wal-Mart particulary mid day) and the cashier was super nice. Asked how we were doing and chatted, not annoying chatting just nice small talk, as he rang up the groceries. He even put the bags in my cart (this is a rarity at our Wal-Mart) as I put my debit card info in. Next stop, produce stand, everyone was super friendly there, too. I don't know what in the world was going on in Denham Springs today, but it was like a nice spell was cast on the town. I was even feeling kind of friendly and helped an older lady pick out some apples. Kailey was feeling so good, while I checked out, she was dancing in the aisles singing, "shake your booty, shake your booty..."

P.S. I was devestated this morning when I remembered that I didn't post anything yesterday. I don't know what happened. I just forgot.

Slush Puppies

2008-11-09T00:57:00.000-06:00

I found slush puppies today! Growing up, Jamie and I used to get Slush Puppies at Murray's, a gas station in Vidalia. Then when Murray's closed, there was a Chevron Station that had them. Eventually the Chevron closed and I have rarely found a slush puppy since. Well, today I found one!! Joel and I took the babies to the park and on our way, we passed a gas station that had a slush puppy sign outside. I figured that it was probably an old sign and they probably didn't sell them anymore. I was beginning to think that Slush Puppies no longer existed because it had been so long since I had found one. So Joel and I stopped at the station on our way home, and lo and behold a Slush Puppy machine! I got a watermelon one of course, Joel a grape, and Kailey a strawberry. They were excellent! Also, I recognized the guy who owns the store almost immediately, but I have never met him. Its late, so I don't have time to go into the story right now. Just out of curiosity, Jamie or Erika, do you know how I know the convenient store owner? I'll put the story up next time.

2008-11-07T22:57:00.000-06:00

I don't have any deep thoughts or fun baby stories, but I have to post something because of NaBloPoMo, so here is a photo of Kailey when she was Eli's age and a recent pic of Eli, to compare. I expended all of my creativity in a "facelift" for Jamie's blog, so I'm not promising anything great in this post, but I do recommend that you take a look at Jamie's new beautiful background!

I think that they have the same nose and mouth.

For my birthday, Joel gave me Little Big Planet. It is a super fun game. If you get the chance, give it a try. It is really cute; I like cute games. Actually those are the only kind that I play. I don't play any games with shooting. I'm not coordinated enough for those, and don't care for the violence. If you recall the last game that I posted about was Beautiful Katamari another cute game.

Eli: Obsessed, curls, and a lonely tooth

2008-11-06T22:28:00.000-06:00

Eli has recently become obsessed with toilet paper. Every time that he gets a chance he speed crawls to the bathroom and goes straight to the toilet paper holder. Much to his dismay, I have removed the rolls from the holders and put them on the back of the toilets. Tonight as I was getting ready to bathe the babies, he came into the bathroom, opened the cabinet doors below the sink, crawled in and got to the extra rolls. He was in heaven.
Eli finally got a tooth. He has one lonely little tooth on the bottom. (it's kind of hard to see, but if you look closely, it is there).

Also, I noticed the other night after I got him out of the tub, when his hair is still a little damp it is curly in the back, kind of like Allison's. It will be interesting to see what it does as it grows.

Shoot, hate, stupid, kill

2008-11-05T11:00:00.000-06:00

Those are a few of the words that I am having to edit out of my vocabulary lately. Kailey has recently taken on a more colorful vocabulary. Lately she has started saying things like "I hate _______, " or "_______ is stupid." So I have been telling her not to say those words and giving her a nicer alternative to express her feelings. Well, the other day I said one of the "bad" words, I think it was stupid, and she gasped and said "mom, you are not supposed to say stupid!" So now I am having to be very careful what I say. I'm not trying to be super strict about the words, its just that sometimes she says them very dramatically and sometimes superfluously just for attention.

Sorry Turkey, you just aren't as good as candy

2008-11-05T09:00:00.000-06:00

This morning, I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day. Kailey came bouncing in, and here is the conversation that followed:

K: "Mommy, I want to have Halloween next week!" (getting more and more excited as she speaks, starting to bounce again, as she realizes that she might be on to something, and that it could work).

H: "Sorry KK, Halloween only happens once a year."

K: Look of disappointment

H: "Do you know what is coming up in a few weeks?"

K: "No" (with a hint of anticipation and hope)

H: "Thanksgiving! We will get together with our family and have dinner. We will have a big turkey and lots of other good food."

K: wrinkles nose like something smells bad, turns dramatically and walks away.

Go Vote!

2008-11-04T08:15:00.000-06:00

Don't forget to vote today. I always like to do a little search before I go to vote, and check to see what is going to be on the ballot (there are always little things that I didn't know would be there, propositions, other offices than the ones you see over and over and over on tv). Happy voting!

To get in the voting mood, you might take a look at this little clip. (this digital short starts out kind of slow. I was skeptical at first, but give it a minute, it is hilarious).

Holiday Card Giveaway

2008-11-03T23:52:00.000-06:00

I saw this on a friend's blog. This girl has some cute holiday cards, and I would love to win. You should check it out too. For a chance to win all you have to do is leave a comment.

The other Holly Bonnette

2008-11-03T15:54:00.000-06:00

One day I recieved an email that had a reservation for a rental car, and I had not reserved a car...I immediately assumed the worse, identity theft, stolen credit card... I decided to be rational and try to get to the bottom of it. So I started by calling the rental car company and cancelling the the reservation. I tried to get some info out of the car rental people but wasn't very sucessful. Then the idea came to Joel that there might be another Holly Bonnette. So he googled my name and came up with a myspace for another Holly Bonnette in Texas, who was about my age and married to a guy named Anthony Bonnette. Luckily her profile was public so we sent her message asking if she had recently reserved a rental car. We put my email address and our phone number. Later that day we got a call from Holly. I apologized to her about the cancellation and we talked for a while about ourselves and our lives. It was very interesting. It turns out that her email address is very similar to mine so the rental car company had just entered it wrong. Since then I have gotten emails from her coworkers and have forwarded them on. We have communicated through email a few times since then.

Fourth picture tag

2008-11-02T17:11:00.000-06:00

I got tagged a long time ago. So instead of some pointless rambling to fill my NaBloPoMo requirement, I'll post this the fourth picture in the fourth folder on my computer:I took this picture of Kailey in her new carseat. She had just turned 1!

Halloween

2008-11-01T18:01:00.000-05:00

Eli turned 9 months old today! He started standing up on his on last Sunday. Here are some halloween pictures:

We went trick or treating with the Deschamps. From L to R: Kalli

I had almost forgotten, but to today is the first day of NaBloPoMo. (I read it on Jeni's blog). I am going to give it a try again this year. I have blog commitment issues; I periodically neglect my blog. Maybe this will help me develop healthier blogging habits :)

Pumpkin patch and birthdays!

2008-10-29T13:35:00.001-05:00

So I haven't posted in a while. Here's what has occupied a good chunk of my "blogging time" (after the babies go to bed):
After the costume that Kailey wanted sold out I decided to make her a costume. It wasn't as hard as I thought that it would be, but it took more time than I thought that it would. (pictures of the finished product will be in the next post). After I finished the costume, Joel gave me Little Big Planet for my birthday and I have been playing that during blog time this week.

I don't have any trunk or treat pictures because I left my camera at home :( There is a picture of Kailey in Robin's post.

Some things that I missed:
Last Saturday we went to a pumpkin patch near Hammond. I didn't get any pictures , but there was also a petting zoo (too busy petting to take pictures I guess) with a cow, pony, goats, rabbits, chickens, and a turkey. We all had a really good time.

We even got to milk a fake cow!

Kailey tried to roll down the hill, but couldn't quite get it despite Joel's best efforts to help. She rolled in a circle rather than down, but had fun anyway.

Happy Birthday Joel!! (his b-day was the 26th). In honor of Joel's birthday, here are a few things that you might not know about him:
sometimes when we are sitting on the couch together he pinches with his toes. he loves scifi and martial arts movies, he becomes obsessed with things (guns, computer stuff, etc.) and researches the heck out them on the internet, he loves to make spreadsheets like no one i have ever met (except his dad).

Happy Birthday Joe!! (his b-day was the 27th). Bet you didn't know that Joe likes beets :)

Happy Birthday Jamie! (hers was the 29th). Did you know that Jamie's loves animals and wanted to be a vet for a little while when she was in elementary school. (Clare you don't count, because she knew Jamie at the time).

My mom came on our birthday to visit and she stayed to babysit while we (me, Joel, Jamie, and Joe) went out to eat. Ms. Shelia, Joe's mom, came and helped babysit, too. We went to one of our favorite hibachi grills in Baton Rouge. It was so nice to go out and eat without the kiddos. So peaceful. Jamie and I saw an old friend, Charlie, that we graduated with.

I'll be posting a few trick or treating pictures in the next couple of days.

2008-10-13T13:48:00.000-05:00

I got tagged a while back, so here it is:

I am: neglecting housework right now (yes!!!)
I think: i have the best most beautiful babies in the world
I know: my family will be together forever
I want: a kitchenaid mixer, a red one to be exact
I have: braces
I dislike: mayonnaise
I miss: some parts of teaching, sleeping in
I fear: losing a loved one
I feel: most of the time,happy; sometimes impatient with Kailey; sometimes disappointed in myself because of my shortcomings
I hear: dancing with the stars, the babies playing, Kailey singing a made-up song to her mickey mouse
I smell: Rickey's breath, because she is sitting next to me grooming herself, throw-up!
I crave: sweets, I never had a sweet tooth until after I had Kailey, and last night nachos from Izzos.
I cry: easily when something is touching, and easily when I'm hormonal/pregnant
I usually: leave the dishes for the next morning rather than wash/load in the washer after dinner :( I have a goal to change this, I just haven't done it yet.
I search: craigslist for an upright freezer for the garage. Jamie and Joe have one, I'm pretty jealous
I wonder: what is going to happen with the economy, what my family will be like in 10, 15, 20 years
I regret: not taking more studio art classes at LSU, I loved Dr. Malveto's drawing class (Jeni, Aaron, Clare, Daniel: I see him at Wal-Mart sometimes with his mom)
I wish: that i could twitch my nose like Samantha and have my house magically cleaned (I would do lots of other fun stuff with the nose twitch, but that would be the first thing).
I love: every piece of Joel, Kailey, and Eli
I care: about being a good person
I always: take my vitamins in the same exact order every night before bed (I have a pack of 8 prenatals)
I worry: about few things, I am not a worrier at all. Even if there are things that I should be worried about, I kind of ignore it, good sometimes, really bad other times.
I am not: athletic
I remember: how exciting starting college was, and how much fun I had with all of my roommates; I LOVE YOU GIRLS!!
I believe: in Christ (incidentally that is one of my favorite hymns, I hum it to my babies sometimes)
I sing: to Eli when I change his diaper to keep him from flipping over, crawling away, a peeing on the carpet. I also sing to entertain Kailey and Eli; I like to sing despite my lack of skill and talent.
I don't always: put my babies to bed on time like i used to.
I argue: sometimes with Joel, but not a lot, and we play nice
I write: neatly most of the time
I win: at Scramboni sometimes (a game on my iPhone with scrambled words, i compete with people online. I knew that college education would come in handy one day).
I lose: my keys, my shoes, baby shoes...lots of stuff (i try to be organized, but don't do very well)
I listen: to music while i do house work, the Killers are on right now, because I should be doing housework
I don't understand: advanced physics, mechanics...
I can usually be found: with a baby on my hip, following around a spunky little girl with pigtails
I need: to Ferberize Eli
I forget: a lot, i'm pretty absentminded
I am happy: watching star trek with Joel after the babies go to bed. For the record: I have despised star trek for most of my life. It wasn't until a few months ago that I really gave it a chance and start watching Voyager with Joel. I actually grew to like this series. We borrowed the entire series (7 seasons) from Joe. We finished the last episode Saturday night and I've been kind of sad about it since.

I tag Keri, and anyone else that reads that hasn't done this one yet and would like to.

milk (formula anyway) is still a four letter word in this house and a long legged lizzard

2008-10-11T15:45:00.000-05:00

I laughed so hard that I cried twice today:

1. I have been trying futilely to get Eli to drink formula. I have tried bottles, sippy cups, powder, liquid, warmed, cold...to no avail. Today I tried again cool liquid formula in a sippy cup. Here is what happened:

I guess it would be like trying to make us drink powdered or evaporated milk when we are used to drinking fresh milk. Can't blame him I guess. It is just so funny to me how everytime he gives either a look of disgust or heartbreak from betrayal.

2. Kailey has a lizzard that was I gave her once as a reward for using the potty when she was potty training. Evidently she really likes this lizard and when it lost its leg she was pretty sad. So the other day I tried to reattach the leg with tape when I couldn't find the super glue. Joel thought that it was funny so he modified it while Kailey was napping:

Kailey was pretty mad about this modification to her beloved lizzard.

Isn't that what parenting is all about, laughing at your child's disgust?

My three babies

2008-10-04T15:48:00.000-05:00

This is Rickey's favorite spot to lay (I try to remember to put the boppy up, mostly for this reason). When Eli was a new baby, it would especially make my blood boil. Now I don't get so angry, after all Eli often grabs a handful of Rickey and leans in to bite.

Serious sippy cup drinking

Eli turned eight months old a few days ago, he is drinking from the sippy cup like a pro, crawling everywhere, and standing up and walking along the furniture a little. Today he went from the couch to the coffee table.

Kailey is all of a sudden camera shy.

Kailey sings

2008-09-29T15:38:00.000-05:00

Our Kailey is a happy singing girl, and sometimes I have to struggle not to laugh at some of her versions of the classics.

Yesterday after church Kailey was singing: "a sun beep, a sun beep" (if your not Mormon or a convert that didn't experience primary, click here: "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam")

She also sings, "Old McDonald had a farm.....Eli-Eli-O"

Rock-a-bye baby goes like this, "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree top, when the wind blows in the great rock..." (I have no idea where this on came from).

4th times a charm?

2008-09-29T11:33:00.000-05:00

Check out the dilated pupil, this was after going in and having the eye checked out.

Two Sundays ago, I was in the mother's lounge with Eli. I was trying to burp him, and talk to Laura at the same time. Eli, in true form, climbed up to standing and started jumping in my lap. As I was deep in conversation one of his flailing arms flung a fingernail into my left eye. Corneal Abrasion #4! (Kailey has gotten me three time with her fingernails, guess I need to wear safety goggles while holding babies). I excused myself from the conversation, and headed to the bathroom to assess the damage. On the way I noticed that the damaged eye was blurry, but assumed that it was because the eye was watering profusely. When I got the bathroom and dried my eye, I realized, much to my dismay that the blurriness was not due to the water. So I went back into the chapel, slipped into our pew, stepped over Joel's mom, dad, and sister (they had evacuated because of Hurricane Ike), and got to Joel to explain the problem. He was the one that reminded me that we have an opthamologist in the ward; Laura's husband, Jeff. Joel and I made our way over to Jeff, and he came out to the hall to take a look. He affirmed that it was a corneal abrasion and called in a prescription for me. I still have blurred vision in that eye, after two different kinds of prescription drops. I'm trying to give it time now to finish healing.

Flour power

2008-09-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

Friday started out with a challenge. I was in the kitchen cleaning and Kailey and Eli were in the living room playing (so I thought). The tv was on in the background and Backyardigans were on. As I got to the end of the kitchen cleaning, I thought to my self, "I haven't heard Kailey in a while...Backyardigans is on maybe she has been engrossed in that for the past 15-20 minutes...not likely." I ran to the livingroom. Unfortunately she hadn't been watching Backyardigans.I left some groceries in the livingroom after shopping. I guess I should have cleaned the livingroom first. As you can imagine this took a very long time to clean up. Eli had even crawled over to play in it; both babies were covered in flour. There is still flour embedded deep within my wool rug. If you stomp on it hard enough, flour ever so lightly dusts the hard wood floors. If anyone has any tortillas or pie crusts that they need to roll out, come on over!

P.S. The picture above and a lot of my recent pictures came from my phone, and that's why they are low quality. Expect more low quality pictures : ) It is a lot easier to take pictures with my phone.

Continued

2008-09-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

Back to the timeline:

Sept. 1 - Gustav moves through. The guys stayed at our house, because we were almost sure that it would flood, even bought a water pump at harbor freight to put out in the yard to pump the flood water into the pond behind our house. Amazingly, our house did not flood; every time that we get any heavy rain, the water collects in the street and comes up into our yard. Joel said that we lost a few shingles off of the roof, but that was it. Having no trees in the neighborhood older than 3 years old was good thing for once. Most of the damage suffered in our area was caused by uprooted and broken trees. We lost power, phone, cable, and water had a boil order. That night after the winds and rain died down some, the guys took off for Ferriday. We lost power in Ferriday shortly after they left. Then Joel's dad called and recommended that we call Mississippi's hotline for road closures to make sure that the guys would be able to make it to Ferriday. I gave them a call and it turned out that Hwy. 61 (goes from Scotlandville to Natchez) was closed because of a tree across the road. So we sent daddy out to meet them at the downed tree so that they could hop in the truck with him. When the guys made it to the tree, a crew had just cleared it, so they were able to pass.

The babies having a good time coloring with pawpaw, before the storm hit.

Eli is starting to crawl. By last Sunday (14th) he had it figured out and is crawling all over the house.

Eli went down to Classy nails and had his nails done. He was able to get in with their best tech, Kailey.

Sept. 2 - Drove back home. It was super hot and sticky with no A.C.Our little generator would only run one fan, the fridge, and a light, so we moved the babies into our room at night so that they could feel the fan.

Sept. 4 - Take off one day early for vacation in Destin. A family in our ward invited us and several other families to stay with them in a beach house that a friend of theirs owns.
Sept. 7 - still at the beach, but we heard from our neighbor that power was back on at home.
Sept. 8 - back home

Sept. 9 - Kailey's first dance class. She did good and got a treat.I had to do a youtube search and learn how to put Kailey's hair in a bun. I didn't do a very good job, by the end of class her hair had fallen apart. This week was much better, it lasted the whole class!

This was right after her first class. She carries her ballet and tap shoes in her bag.

Sept. 11 - picked up Jared, Keri, and Ashlyn at the airport, Joel's parents and sister arrive (evacuated because of Ike), had dinner with a big group of Bonnette's.
Sept. 12 - Allison is 2!!!
Sept. 13 - Allison's birthday party.
Sept. 14 - Wendy and Dad Bonnette's birthday party.

P.S. I am going to add pictures tomorrow.

2008-09-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what it is about summer, but I have been terribly neglectful of my blog. I am so ashamed, I did not have one post in August! So since the last time that I posted, Eli turned six months, there was a terrible hurricane, Eli started crawling, we went to the beach, and Kailey started dance class. So here is a little time line:

Aug. 1 - Eli is 6 mo. old, weighs 18 lbs. 8 oz. and is a happy, growing boy! Also went to Chili's with some of the girls in the ward for Lisa's birthday, and headed to Barnes and Nobles afterwards for the Breaking Dawn release party (I ♥ twilight series).Aug. 2 - bought copy of Breaking Dawn
Aug. 14 - Joel went out of town for business and I headed to Lake Charles with the babies to hang out for a couple of days with Joel's parents and little sister.
Aug. 15 - When I got ready to leave to go home, Kailey asked to stay, so I let her stay in Lake Charles. I was really nervous that she would get homesick, so I called a couple of times on my way home to check and she was fine. She was so fine that she stayed until Sunday afternoon.
Aug. 30 - Left for Ferriday with Jamie and all of the babies, running from Gustav.
Aug. 31 - Eli is starting to crawl.
To Be Continued...
(I decided that I would do "to be continued" from now on because I have several drafts that I started in the past month or so, and never finished, so if I post part, I will have to go back and post the rest)

Memory Tag

2008-07-17T19:16:00.000-05:00

1. Add a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments. I can't wait to see what people remember.

It'll be fun! I tag all of y'all!

Chuck e Cheese?

2008-06-29T23:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Joel went to a gun show with a couple of friends. They put a stamp on his hand when he paid admission, it was a big stamp that said gun. So today in Sacrament meeting, Kailey was sitting in Joel's lap and she noticed the remnant of the gun stamp on his hand, and she looked up at him with a look of disgust and devastation and said, "Chuck e cheese?"

For those of you who might not have been to chuck e cheese lately, they stamp kids and parents with the same stamp for security. I was amazed that Kailey remembered that they stamp your hand, especially since we haven't been in about 4 months.

Since she was so devastated that Joel had supposedly gone to Chuck e cheese without her, he told her that we would go tomorrow evening.

some of my favorite pictures from my phone

2008-06-27T14:20:00.000-05:00

I've got a few drafts started that I need to go back and complete, but for now I'm just gonna share a few of my favorite pictures from my phone.
A few days before we went to Orlando, Jamie and I traveled up to Winnsboro to visit Aunt Lisa and get me and Kailey a hair cut. This was Kailey's first haircut and she did great. We just had about an inch trimmed off of the bottom.
Clare and her baby Jezebel came and visited in May. I was so excited to meet Jezebel for the first time. She is such a cute sweet baby! Clare, you're cute and sweet too : )

One day Eli kept trying to flip out of his bouncy seat and his car seat. Earlier that day he had tried to flip out of his bouncy seat twice (I got that with the big camera). Then I turned my back for a second to open the car door and he tried to escape from his car seat. Needless to say, I strap him in to everything now.Eli loves to suck on two fingers.

Dathan, Mimi, and Kailey

Eli also loves to stick out his tongue.

This one speaks for itself.
We are dog sitting for Joel's parents this week. Kailey and Izzy were bonding earlier today on the couch. It has been kind of fun having a couple of extra dogs around.

The other Holly Bonnette

2008-06-19T00:47:00.000-05:00

Yikes!

2008-06-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

It has been a month and 10 days since I last blogged! I don't know what came over me. I love my blog and I don't why I neglected it for so long :( I'm back and I'm going to try not to do that again.

At the beginning of May Joel took us on a suprise 5 year anniversary trip. He warned me in advance that we were going to be taking a trip, but he wasn't going to tell me when or where we were going. He did assure me that he would give me 24 hour notice to pack, but he wouldn't tell me where we were going until we got to the airport. It was fun and exciting going on a suprise trip! We went to Orlando with Jared and Keri (Joel's older brother and his wife, who was 8 months pregnant and was a real trooper the whole time). I'm not going to give a travel log, I'll just post a few pictures.

Is eeyore eating my child ?!? Seriously eeyore gave a good long hug and Kailey was excited. She also got to hug Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, and Goofy

The pinnacle of the trip for Kailey! We waited in a long line in the heat, she was hot and sleepy, but did not meltdown, because she knew that Mickey was at the end of the line.

Okay, when I was 8 months pregnant I would have been doing good to drag myslef around Animal Kingdom. Keri did great the whole time, I was truley amazed, and she and Jared were such a help with Kailey and Eli. I felt like I was constantly saying "Thanks Keri," or "Thanks Jared." By the way, Jared and Keri had their baby last week! Welcome baby Ashlyn!!

We also went to Sea World, Coco Beach, and Arabian Knights (kind of like Mideval Times, dinner and a show kind of thing, this one was a cool show with lots of horses). It will be fun to go back in a few years when Kailey and Eli are older and can enjoy more stuff. It was such a fun trip and good to get a way for a long weekend. Thanks Joel!!!

A Miracle and true rednecks

2008-05-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

A miracle occurred today. My children were not the ones weeping and wailing in Wal-Mart. I had the first peaceful trip to Wal-Mart in over three months!!

Also, I saw some true rednecks in Wal-Mart. The mom had on a gray muscle shirt and blue plaid pajama pants rolled at the waist, with a pink scrunchie in her hair. She was pushing the food buggy (I know, the fact that I call it a buggy and not a shopping cart means that I have a little redneck in me, too). The dad was pushing the buggy with the babies in it. He had luxurious long, butt cut hair cut straight across at the bottom around the shoulder blades (by luxurious I mean it had an unclean shine). He had an old blue t-shirt tucked in to old jeans with no belt, and the kicker (no pun intended), rubber boots that came just below the knee. Though they were a bit unkempt, they seemed like good people. The man actually seemed like a pretty good dad. He was doing a good job with the two babies. I have to say, they had things under better control than I've had in the past. I just still can't help but laugh to myself when I see this type of apparel in the Denham Springs Wal-Mart, and I'm reminded that we might just be outnumbered by them out here.

P.S. Details from the Orlando trip coming soon. I have lots of house cleaning to get to right now :(

Premonition?

2008-04-29T15:45:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post this for a long time, and kept forgetting about it. I don't know if any of you remember this, but this was from a November post, right about thanksgiving time.

"Now for the crazy dream. If you haven't noticed on the baby countdown over there, we've only got 2 1/2 months left. I guess that that has kind of been on my mind lately, because this morning I had a dream, that it was time to have the baby. I was also talking to Jeni in the nursery on Sunday, about braxton hicks contractions, and real contractions. So in the dream, Joel and I went to the hospital, and the contractions were really mild. I told the nurse that I didn't need the epidural yet, and then all of a sudden, the contractions got really bad. I called the nurse over, and asked for the epidural, but she said that it was too late, that they baby was ready to come out, and there wouldn't be time to set up the epidural. I was so angry, upset, and afraid. Then the dream ended. Between you and me, I'm a real weiney when it comes to pain. I surely did appreciate the epidural when I had Kailey, and fully intend to have one again with this baby. I know that there are women who choose to not have the epidural, but I'm all for it. When I had Kailey, it was a nice, calm, relaxed experience. I'll admit, I am a little curious about how I would handle it, and what it would be like with no epidural, but that curiousity does not supercede my hatrid and fear of pain, so I will be having the epidural, if I can help it."

I thought it was funny that I had this dream, and then it happened very similar to that. Premonition? I don't know, weird non the less.

Kaileyisms

2008-04-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, Kailey came down with a cold. Evidently she heard me talking to Jamie on the phone, telling her that Kailey had a fever and a stuffy nose; because, later that morning, Kailey looked at me with the saddest face and said, "Mom, I gotta fever in my nose."

Joel bought Kailey a cd called Power Tunes (his mom had the tape for him and his brothers and sisters when they were little), and she absolutely loves it, especially the song called "Attitude." The other day we left it at Jamie and Joe's, she was sad to say the least. So when I told her that we were going to go get it, she said, "Mom, I'm so happy, Attitude is my best song!!" It's funny to me how she expresses what she feels even when she doesn't know the right words to use.

A couple of weeks ago, Jared (Joel's brother) and Keri were in town, so we went to meet them and some other Bonnette's at Ninfas for dinner. On our way, Kailey was asking for goldfish, I told her that she couldn't have any because she needed to have an appetite for dinner. A few minutes later, she said, "Mom, I need my apple tight." It took me a second, and I realized what she was asking for, so I had to explain that appetite wasn't something that you eat, nor did it have anything to do with apples.

Kailey recently started this thing where she tells me that she is a baby robot and I am a mama robot. The first time that she did it, she brought it up early in the day, and had stopped by that afternoon. Then that night when I tucked her in bed, she said, "Night, night, mama robot." I did my best not to laugh and said, "nigh, night, baby robot." Tonight in the bathtub she was a robot fish.

Need a drink of meat?

When Kailey eats she always tries to get the food that she doesn't want to eat off of her plate. She usually tries to put it on my plate or on the floor. I guess she is trying to get creative in ridding her plate of the unwanted food, because here is how Joel found her cup. We had gotten up from the table to work on the strawberry pie that we had started before dinner, and while she was at the table alone, she took advantage of the opportunity.

Eli is 3 months old

2008-04-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

Eli turned three months old yesterday. (I've been a day behind on my last two posts, I need to get it together) His favorite things to do are chew on his hand and sit in his bouncy seat and look at the bee. He also does a lot of sleeping still, but he fights the sleep bad, just like his sister did at that age. I've started testing him out a little with the Ferber method, and he seems to be doing ok. I think that next month I will get him Ferberized. That's how old Kailey was when we Ferberized her, and it was a glorious, miraculous day when she got the hang of it!

Happy Birthday Mama!!

2008-04-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. I am grateful to have such a great mom, who is always there when I need her! She is always available for babysitting and talking on the phone.

One of my favorite childhood memories is doing aerobics tapes with my mom, she would put down towels "matts" for me and Jamie and we would workout to Men at Work.

I love you mama, happy late birthday!!

Kailey and Eli pictures

2008-04-15T15:08:00.001-05:00

Since I didn't have any pictures in yesterdays post I feel like I need to put up a few. So here are a few cute pictures.Kailey is such a good helper. She always tries to get to him quick when he starts crying and if he is in his bouncy seat, she bounces him and says, "calm down baby." She also gives him her pink kitty and a pacifier. I should've been helping the poor boy out, but Kailey was just so cute I couldn't help getting the camera first.

The ice cream truck has started coming around again since the weather has warmed up. Good news for Kailey, bad news for us. This was her first ice cream truck experience.

Joel and I did a lot of yard work on Saturday, and here is how Kailey and Eli spent their Saturday. This was the spring debut of the wading pool, and Kailey was super excited as you can tell.

Adventures in housekeeping

2008-04-14T14:59:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting the house work lately, so I had some catching up to do today. A minute ago, I pulled some old potato salad out of the fridge, I pulled the trash bag out of the can and brought it over to the sink, for some irrational reason, I thought that if the bag were by the sink (where I had the bowl of potato salad) and on the floor, that I could get it in the garbage bag more easily with less chance of spilling. Well, I neglected to consider the fact that a bag not in the can lacks structure, and the opening is just lying on top of the trash inside. Suffice it to say I didn't think this through and was hasty and irrational. So I raked the potato salad out, and much to my dismay, it bounced right out of the bag and slid down the side of the bag in one congealed blob, onto the floor. Kailey immediately started trying to eat it!!! I can't get her to touch the stuff when it is on her plate, but some how when it's old and bounces out of the trash it is magically and instantly delicious. Even after I yelled no and told her that it would make her tummy hurt, she continued to try to eat it. I couldn't get it up fast enough, making it more difficult, the congealed blob crumbled, making more small pieces available to Kailey. So I quickly grabbed her, put her in the livingroom, and shut the baby gate at the kitchen door. Thank goodness for that baby gate, but Kailey started screaming (Eli is sleeping, making the screaming extra bad) because she wanted to be in the kitchen with me. I quickly cleaned up and let her back in before she had a chance to wake up Eli. I had tied up the bag and it was still lying on the floor because I hadn't had time to move it yet. Well, Kailey went straight over and laid down on the bag, which had potato salad on the side where the blob had slid down after bouncing out!!! I just looked at her and thought, "are you kidding???!!!???" I didn't even say anything, I just got her and up and let her go back to playing with the salt canister (daddy), almond extract (baby), and tony's seasoning (mama)

"It's Jesus!" and an Eli smile

2008-04-07T15:42:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, on our way to conference, Kailey fell asleep in the car. She slept through the first 15 minutes or so, and when she woke up, Pres. Uchtdorf was conducting, and she sat up, and said, "It's Jesus!"

Living with a two year old

2008-03-31T22:41:00.001-05:00

Tonight, I had just finished bathing Eli, and I sat down on the couch with him. Kailey was eating some bbq baked lays, but I hadn't noticed that she was eating those. I had Eli in my lap, and Kailey came right over and patted him on the head with her yucky bbq baked lays hands. Bless her heart, she just wanted to be sweet and pat her brother on the head, but she sure did coat his poor little head in chip crumbs.

THE way to eat a watermelon

2008-03-27T22:15:00.001-05:00

There are some tech blogs out there with how-to's, so I decided that I should provide my readers with my very own how-to.

Watermelon has always been my very favorite food. Every time I eat watermelon, I eat until my stomach aches. I have probably eaten more watermelon in my 26 years than most people eat in a life time. A big thanks goes out to papaw. He knows how much Jamie and I love watermelon, and growing up he would buy them as fast as we could eat them. Also, every time that we went home to visit from college, during watermelon season, there would be one waiting.
When I eat watermelon there is particular way I go about it. First, I cut out the heart (put it aside and save it for last). Then I cut out the seedy parts, these go in the trash (I have always hated the texture of the parts around the seeds, if it is a really really good watermelon, I will eat these parts, but this has only happened about 3 or 4 times). Then eat whats left, and eat it down to the white part on the rind if it is a good one (this I do probably 75% of the time).

Here is a picture of a watermelon with the "bad" parts outlined in green.

This was the scene yesterday afternoon. In case anyone was wondering if Elmo was still hanging out, here he is. If you notice, Kailey even put his hand down, so that it looked like he was trying to eat. Today at lunch, we had watermelon again and she insisted again that Elmo eat some, too. So I put him in his chair, but I didn't put his arm down, so Kailey had to get down from her chair, go around, and fix his arm (I kind of laughed to myself). Also notice the pieces on Elmo's plate, coincidence, no way, but I sure didn't tell Kailey about the "bad" pieces, I let her think that Elmo got good pieces just like us : )

Some Easter pictures

2008-03-26T23:16:00.000-05:00

Kailey's first time having something stuck in her hair : ) This was a banana sucker and the removal involved a bath.

Kailey on the phone with her pawpaw; he was offshore, so we didn't get to see him at Easter. She likes to talk on the phone, especially to pawpaw. She has even started answering the house phone, when she gets to it before I can.

Eli with my mom and papaw. This was Eli's first time to meet papaw.

Mammaw had some Easter eggs ready for hunting, so Kailey found some eggs with some help from Rickey (Rickey really did sniff the eggs out the ones that weren't in plain sight, and Kailey was able to find them)Kailey had fun dying eggs with at Aunt Wendy's house with her cousins Dathan and Madalyn.

"That's not a puppy!"

2008-03-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

For Easter, we went to Ferriday on Thursday night and spent the day Friday with my family. On Friday, we went to lunch with my mom and mammaw at the Sandbar (our favorite seafood restaurant in Vidalia). Kailey was sitting beside mammaw, so when the food got there, mammaw was helping her out with her food. Mammaw explained that the round things were hush puppies, and Kailey with a look of shock exclaimed, "That's not a puppy! That's chicken." I had never thought about how confusing the name hush puppy could be for a 2 year old.

Tummy time, Mike the Tiger, and Kailey cutting a rug

2008-03-19T16:53:00.001-05:00

Tummy Time

Sweet sleeping baby

Kailey having a good time visiting Mike the Tiger

Kailey dancing in the front yard. Kailey has always loved to dance; now it has evolved in to dancing and singing. Her songs go like this: Hen -a - me - hen - a - you, or hey - na - me - hey - na - you. She especially likes to sing in the tub, and gets pretty loud sometimes. Sometimes she throws in some names and other words, too. The funniest to me was "hey - na - Jesus Christ - hey - na - you" (we had been reading Book of Mormon stories at night before bed, and the night before talked about King Benjamin prophesying of the coming of Christ).

Eli's Blessing, "I'm coming Mickey," and other adventures of Kailey and Eli

2008-03-19T16:18:00.000-05:00

It's been a while, but I finally have a minute to blog. I'll try not to make this is a super long post, even though lots has happened since my last post.

We had Eli's blessing on the 2nd of March. As usual, we forgot the camera, so we had to take pictures after we got home.

Thursday, the 6th, Eli smiled at me for the first time.

The next weekend we went to Lake Charles and stayed with Joel's family, because Playhouse Disney was at the civic center (it didn't come to Baton Rouge this time). Kailey was really excited. When we got to the civic center, and were walking up to the door, she said, "I'm coming Mickey!" She had a good time dancing and singing along. Precious little Eli slept through the whole thing, bless his heart. And as usual, we forgot the camera, so the only picture that we have is the one that we had made there with Handy Manny.

Monday the 10th, I went for the first time by myself to Wal-Mart with both kiddos and got my grocery shopping done. . Eli slept in the sling while Kailey hung out in the buggy as usual. I'm still a little scared to go off by myself with both babies. I guess I'm just afraid that Eli's colicky ways will come out and he will be inconsolable in the middle of Wal-Mart, and Kailey, knowing that I'm distracted with Eli will go wild (she picked up really quickly on the fact that I'm distracted when Eli is screaming so she can get away with a lot of stuff). Eli seems to be growing out of the colic a little at a time. Hopefully it won't be much longer and he will be an easier baby.

Eli is one month old

2008-02-28T20:31:00.000-06:00

We have survived a month. Adding another baby has been quite an adjustment for all of us. It turned out that Eli did develop colic. His didn't start up until he was about two weeks old (unlike Kailey who screamed from birth to about one month) His colic hasn't been nearly as bad as Kailey's; he usually only has bouts in the late afternoon and evenings. He also sleeps at night, only waking to eat. Kailey on the other hand had her days and nights mixed up, and didn't sleep until 6 a.m. That went on until she was almost 6 weeks old.

I think that the hardest for me were the adjustments that I had to make with Kailey. I was really sad in my heart for a little while because I wasn't able to give as much attention to her. She and I have both adjusted now. As is the case with a lot of changes in life, it just takes time.

Before I had Eli, as I was going through the day, I would think about how easy it was to get things done with just Kailey, and how once Eli got here it would all come to a screeching halt, and it did. Getting out is a little easier than I expected because I have experience from Kailey. It just takes me a couple of weeks to mourn my previous lifestyle. I'm mostly over it now, but I'm still sad about jazzercise. Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE jazzercise? Well I do love it, and am in need of some jazzercising to get rid of this extra baby weight. I just haven't come up with a plan yet to return. While I was mourning my one baby lifestyle a clip from Billy Madison came to mind. I searched for the video clip, but could only find low quality ones. So here's a low quality clip for all of the one baby mom's.

P.S. I'm trying to add some pictures but the camera is not cooperating, and it is close to time for Eli to wake up and eat. I might have to add those later.

Both babies are sleeping!

2008-02-18T15:26:00.001-06:00

Miraculously, both babies are napping at the same time, so I'm gonna try to catch up on some blogging. I may not make it through this post, but I'll try.

Today is my first day with no mom. Since Eli was born, I have had either Joel's mom or my mom here to help out, but my mom left yesterday afternoon. So far, we are doing good. Kailey, Eli and I met Joel and Jelani for lunch at Chic Fil A so that Kailey could play at the play area.

Here are a couple of pictures of Eli's first sponge bath, and first regular bath. Obviously not his favorite thing to do.

We had to put Eli out in the sun because he had a little jaundice.

Like Kailey and his mom, he furrows his brow when he is angry or upset : ) I keep worrying that he is going to develop colic like Kailey, but so far he is still a pretty good baby. We have had a couple of rough days with some serious crying, but thank goodness, it didn't continue.

Eli's first outing was a trip to the park on last Sunday. Kailey desperately needed to get out of the house. This is her and her Mimi at the park.

We had a Bass Pro Shop Valentine's Day, but I didn't get any pictures. I left my camera at home :( My dad came to visit, and if you don't know my dad, he loves fishing (that is an understatement). He has 25 years of journals on fishing and is currently the reigning Concordia Bass Club Angler of the year. So all of the Bonnettes and Hamiltons went with him to Bass Pro. The girls loved it. There is an indoor pond and aquarium, and stuffed animals, real ones, not teddy bears :), everywhere. If you haven't been to the Bass Pro Shop, even if you are not a fisherman, it's worth at least one trip to check it out.

The girls did some finger painting while Jamie and Joe went to the doctor for their sonogram. If you haven't heard, they are having another girl!

Kailey stole her Mimi's reading glasses during bedtime reading time.

I MADE IT! I'm finished and they are still sleeping!! I can't believe that I actually finished this long post without an interruption from Kailey or Eli.

Eli Aaron Bonnette

2008-02-04T12:32:00.000-06:00

I was planning to post after my doctor's appt. on Friday, but I never made it home. At the appt. the doctor told me that I was between 3 and 4 cm dilated, and offered to induce on Saturday. I told him that I wanted to hold off until Monday (my due date). So at the end of the appt., he scheduled me to go in on Monday morning to have the baby. Mary, the nurse assured me that she didn't think that I would make it to Monday, and I agreed, because I had been having light contractions all morning. After my appt., I went over to Jamie's to pick up Kailey, and we decided that we had better have our "last dinner" (we went to Outback the night that I had Kailey, for our last dinner as a couple with no kids). My friend Courtney is having a difficult pregnancy, and can't get out much, so we decided that we would go over to her apt. for dinner. Before we left Jamie's I started having light contractions every 6-7 minutes. I wasn't even sure if I was in labor though since I had been having contractions all day that would stop and start back up with out any regularity. I went ahead and drove us over to Ninfas to pick up our fajitas and over to Courtney and Jared's. By the time we got to Courtney and Jared's the contractions were much more intense and I had decided that we probably should go on to the hospital, but not until I had my fajitas. Well that probably wasn't the best idea. By the time I finished eating, the contractions had gotten much worse and were only about a min. or two apart (I labored for 8 hours with Kailey, so I thought that I had plenty of time). By the time I got down to the car I could tell we were in trouble. Joel sped to the hospital. I really thought that we were going to have to pull off to the side and have the baby in the car, but I held the pushes off. Once we got to the hospital, they tried to admit me, but I told them that there wasn't time, and I needed to push. So they go me to the assesment room, where they check you out to see if you are really in labor (this was pretty much a joke at this point). They also put in your iv and stuff like that, but once they determined that I was fully dilated and screaming at them about needing to push, they quickly ran me up to labor and delivery. They literally ran, I felt like I was on a tv show. Minutes after making it to labor and delivery, I pushed three times and he was out, delivered by the nurse. Dr. Breaux showed up a few minutes later. Joel checked his cell phone, and Eli was born 17 minutes after we left Courtney's apt. He was born at 8:15 p.m., weighed 7 lbs. 14 oz., and was 20 in. long. It all happened so fast that we didn't have time to get our hospital bags or anything; we didn't even have our camera. Courtney gave us her camera, but when we got to the hospital, we were in such a hurry that we forgot to bring the camera.

We got home from the hospital last night around 9:30 p.m. I was sooo glad to be home!

Waiting

2008-01-31T21:49:00.000-06:00

Still no Eli :( Jamie and I went to the mall this morning and did some walking around, it didn't seem to help out. We are still waiting. I was really excited to watch the Lost season premiere tonight, and I was hoping that because I was so excited to watch the show that Eli would decide to come , and ruin my show watching plans. Lost has come and gone, and it wasn't ruined by labor pains. Maybe my desire to have the baby was stronger than the one to watch Lost so Murphy's Law couldn't help me out here.

I go to the doctor tomorrow, so stay posted for more details.

Doctor visit and a few pictures

2008-01-26T21:41:00.000-06:00

I went to the doctor Friday for my weekly check-up, and all is well. Dr. Breaux did offer to induce this Monday or Tuesday, but I told him that I would rather give Eli another week to come on his on. Dr. Breaux said that if he hasn't come on his own by the following Monday that he would like to go ahead and induce. Hopefully Eli will come on his own before then. I think it is more fun to let it be a surprise. It is kind of exciting not knowing when the baby will come. There have already been a couple of times that I have had contractions, two in a row that were pretty close together, but no baby :(

This morning Kailey got her toothpaste, and "painted" her hand then left a lovely hand print on the wall for us. She said to me, "Mommy, I paint."

Kailey thought that my yellow cleaning gloves would make good socks.

stuck, finger painting, and the two elmos

2008-01-16T22:59:00.000-06:00

This little bin is only about 4-5 in. wide and somehow Kailey managed to get her little booty stuck in it. As you can see, she wasn't very happy, and Rickey was fast approaching, after the banana no doubt.

Kailey's first finger painting experience.

I don't know if you can see it or not but she lost interest in the paper and proceeded to paint her left arm yellow.

The other night she got both of her elmos and put them on her winnie the pooh sofa. She was so proud. For some reason she developed a new interest in these toys and would not let them out of her site the whole night and the next day.

Next, she and the elmo's laid down for a nap on the couch (notice the pillow, a laptop)

Trying to get both elmo's "in bed"

The next morning, she told me that she needed to potty, so I went in the bathroom to wait on her, and here she comes with both elmos under her arms. She insisted that both elmos have their own peices of toilet paper tucked under their arms. She was dancing in this picture with her arms, because she was so excited that both elmos had their own paper.

My bags are packed

2008-01-16T22:35:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I finally got my hospital bags packed. I had made a list and had been planning to do it for days, but I had a little scare that motivated me. Monday night, as I lay in bed trying to go to sleep, I had two braxton hicks contractions that felt real and that were spaced apart like the real thing (it really did feel just like my early labor with Kailey). So I lay there waiting on the third, a little nervous, since I didn't really have everything ready yet, but it never came.

So yesterday, while Joel was at kung fu, I went on over to babies r us, and picked up the rest of the stuff that we need for the baby. Then when I got home I packed my bags. Now we are ready and Eli can come on when he is ready. I even got all of his bedding washed and ironed today.

Rickey's going under the knife

2008-01-16T10:22:00.000-06:00

Today is Rickey's big day, I dropped her off at the vet a little while ago. We are having her spayed and having her cherry eye tacked (that is the red thing poking out of her left eye).

Kailey and I went this morning in the horrible weather to drop her off. I didn't expect it but, Kailey had a hard time leaving Rickey. I thought that she was going to be in tears before we left the office. She got pretty upset when the tech. took Rickey back and we didn't go with her. On the way home she kept saying, "Mom, Rickey!" (like, I can't believe you left her). I explained that we were leaving Rickey so that the doctor could help her out, and that he was going to fix her eye so that she will look prettier. That seemed to help some, she stopped yelling, "mom, Rickey!" When we got home, Kailey went straight to Rickey's box looking for her. It made me a little sad in my heart.

Joel sometimes jokes about getting rid of Rickey; I told him to get that out of his mind, because Kailey would have a cow. Rickey has a kind of hard to love personality. She is a scaredy cat so she is submissive and obedient if she is scared, but if she thinks no one is looking she will try to get away with everything. I guess since she is in a delicate state right now I should say something nice about her. She does have very soft fur, and she keeps me warm on the couch when I'm watching tv (she is a little heater, and sometimes it gets to be too much). I do love her, mostly, and look forward to going and getting her tomorrow.

Mmmm oranges

2008-01-06T20:42:00.000-06:00

I don't know if this is an extreme pregnancy craving or what, but right now I can't get enough oranges. Good thing they're in season. I buy at least six of them every time that I go to the produce stand. Last week I had to make an extra trip for more oranges, and I'm running low right now.
Less than a month until the baby comes! I am ready. I don't mean that I'm completely prepared for the baby, I mean, I'm done being pregnant. I really have easy pregnancies, and don't have anything to complain about, but I have just gotten to the point that I'm tired of waiting.

Fake-out, and isn't it supposed to be winter?

2007-12-28T21:58:00.000-06:00

This morning before Joel left for work, I went to the back to see if he was ready to have family prayer, and he was, so he called for Kailey. We both know that when you call for Kailey, you have about a 25% chance of her coming. This time, she didn't come, so Joel decided that we could just have prayers in the living room. We headed to the front, and when we got to the living room, we found Kailey sleeping on the couch. We decided to let her sleep and have prayers without her. Just as Joel started the prayer, we heard this gasp, then laughter. The child had faked us out! She was awake the whole time, pretending to be asleep. We thought that it was pretty funny. Where did she learn this, and when did she get the idea that she could do this?

Later in the morning, I was getting ready to put Kailey in the bath when Rickey came up frantic to go out. So Kailey and I went to the front to let her out. When we go there, we found that it was raining outside, and Kailey was really excited about it. She wanted to go play in it so badly, so I decided to let her go have some fun. Even though it is late December, it was somewhere around 70 degrees. She had such a good time jumping and hopping around.

Kailey had a great time tonight playing in the box that her kitchen came in. Aren't boxes great?

Christmas Eve calls en espanol, and nesting

2007-12-27T23:05:00.000-06:00

Joel and I were actually home this year for Christmas. We spent Christmas eve night putting together a kitchen set. At one point, I was laying down, taking a rest, and the phone rang. I reached over to answer, and after I said hello, the person on the other end said, "Hola, buenos noches!" for some reason when this person said this, it didn't register that that was Spanish, I guess because those are such familiar words, and I was half asleep. Then he started with some sentences in Spanish. It really caught me off guard, so I just said, "sorry, you have the wrong number," and hung up. Well, I guess that that confused him because he called right back. I tried again, telling him that he had the wrong number, but I was awake enough now to know that he didn't understand, so I just hung up, and went into the front to help Joel out. I figured that this guy would get it, and give up. Not the case, I explained to Joel who was on the phone, and a little after explaining the phone rang again, so Joel went and turned the answering machine on. After he turned it on, we got about 4 or 5 more calls, each with a message in spanish. I told Joel that I was going to get the phone, and try to help them understand that they had the wrong number. The whole time I was trying desperately to remember some of the spanish that I had in high school and college, but it just wasn't coming to me. So, they of course called again after a few minutes, and I answered. I got the same, hola, buenos noches, and I explained, "no hablo espanol," I guess this confused the man, so he passed the phone to someone else, they gave me a line in spanish, and I replied with my line, they passed the phone again, and by the end I must have spoken with 4 of them. After I had talked to the fourth one, there was a weird noise and the connection was lost or they hung up. Either way, they didn't call back. On one hand, I felt bad that they were trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with someone, and on the other hand, their persistence was pretty funny.

I would post some Christmas photos here, but I don't have a single one. I used the video camera all day, and didn't get the camera out once :(

I had a normal 2 week check-up today with my doctor, and some strange things happened, maybe the planets aligned, I don't know what was going on. I see a doctor at the physicians tower at Woman's and this morning when I arrived for my 10:15 appt., I pulled into the very full parking lot, and someone was pulling out of the very first spot in the parking lot. I don't know if you have ever tried to park at Woman's, but it is almost as bad as LSU, I usually end up parking in the back of the extension of the parking lot that was added recently. I could not believe my eyes. I walked in, ready for the usual 5 min. wait for an elevator, and lo and behold, the elevator opened right up. I got upstairs to the desk, 15 min. early (I had built in this time for the parking and elevator). I figured I would be waiting in the waiting room at least the 15 min. and probably more like 30. Instead, I went to open the door, and Theresa, the nurse, was coming out, and she says, "I was coming to get you." I went right in, and waited just a few minutes for the doctor. He checked the usual, heartbeat, measurement, etc. asked if I had any questions, and that was it. I was done with my appt. before 10:15. I walked out, and again the elevators that usually take several minutes, opened right up. I made it out to the car by 10:20. It was very strange.

I have a little over a month to go before my due date, and I guess that that and the hormones were starting to get to me yesterday. My hormones have been particularly crazy this week; I have had some crazy mood swings. So yesterday, I was thinking about how little time we have before the baby comes, and I started to think of all of the things that we have left to get. I just felt this urgency to make sure that everything was ready for bringing home a new baby. I made a list so that I wouldn't forget anything, and so that I could start picking some things up while I'm out. Well I guess the combination of the list and crazy hormones were getting to me, because I could not get my mind settled to go to sleep. I had to discuss it all at length with Joel before I could go to sleep. He was probably thinking that I was crazy, but I really had to get that stuff out. I guess that he felt bad for me, because today I was IMing him at work, and he told me to go get a rocker (one of the items on my list, that I was most concerned about).

Kailey's two, and ready or not, Christmas and Eli are almost here

2007-12-23T22:27:00.000-06:00

It has been nearly three weeks since I've posted, yikes. Since then, Kailey turned two, and moved up to a "big girl bed" on the same day. She got a tricycle, an art easel, a Winnie the Pooh seat, and a few other gifts. She was really excited about all of her gifts. She calls her tricycle the "cycle," pronounced like the tool that cuts wheat, and the same word as popsicle for her (can be tricky for me, when she says, "I want cycle/sicle," I'm not sure if she wants a popsicle or to ride her tricycle) She went in for her check-up and shots last week. We really love our pediatrician, Dr. Flechas, we never wait long, never too quick to prescribe meds, and great personality. Kailey is in the 90th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight (25 lbs and 35 in.). She had to have the flu vaccine (nasal spray, thank goodness) and a shot. I was so shocked because she didn't even flinch when they sprayed the solution in both sides of her nose, and didn't cry at all when they gave her the shot. The nurse was and I were both shocked and impressed.

The other day I was thinking about some things that I love about Kailey at this age:
When she wakes up from a nap, and is ready for me to let her out of her room, she yells, "mom....mom!" it just sounds really funny because she usually calls me mama or mommy, and she says it so loudly and abruptly.
I can have simple conversations with her.
She is starting to understand emotion and sympathy more, so if I seem bothered by something, she will ask me what's wrong, and after I tell her, she says, "awww".
She remembers people's names and gets excited to see people that she remembers.
She pronounces the letter J like she is from South America, she pronounces Jamie as yamie (she sometimes calls Jamie "my yamie," which is funny to me, and Joe is yo.
When she does something wrong, she says, "sorry" and this is pronounced, soffree.
She calls herself Kaikey (pronounced cake-e), a combination of Kailey and K-K, I guess.
She loves to help me feed Rickey, the dog, and will even tell me throughout the day, "mommy, puppy unggee (hungry)," in hopes that we can go feed her again.
She is very energetic and free spirited. I don't always love this side of her :)

We have been doing lots of Christmas shopping. I developed a theory on why I do last minute shopping. For so many years, I was in school or working and didn't have much time to shop, so it usually got put off until Christmas break, so now I just do the same thing, wait until a week or so before Christmas to do my shopping. I came up with this theory when Jeni, a friend in our ward, was saying last week that she had some shopping left to do, and was waiting for time off from work. I have decided that next year, I'm going to set a goal to get my shopping done early. Wait, who am I kidding, the main reason that I don't get my shopping done is that I am a procrastinator. It is something that I try to work on it. In college I would do anything to avoid doing homework until the last minute. My favorite thing to do instead of homework was scrub the bath tub, because I felt like I was really getting something done, and it relived stress because it is a physical, mindless job.

Kailey, after a long day of shopping (this was taken at 6 p.m., needless to say, this little nap ruined her 8 o'clock bed time)

This is just a funny picture that I took the other day. She loves to run from me, after I dry her off, but before I get clothes on her, and this time she didn't get very far when something on tv caught her attention)

Like I mentioned before, we moved Kailey to a big bed, and this is her sleeping in it for the first time. I was pretty nervous about how she would do, but she has done great so far. The first week, we had no problems at all, this week she got out of bed and cried a few times after we put her down for the night, because she had late naps that messed her up, but she is back on track now.

Jamie, Jeni K. (I know quite a few Jeni's, hence the initial), Lisa, Allison, Kailey, and I drove to Houston on the 8th for some Ikea shopping. I planned the trip to pick up Kailey's bed and dresser, and when Joel mentioned it Friday night at the ward Christmas party, Jeni and Lisa decided to join us. It was fun to have their company; I'm glad that they came. I hope that they were glad that they came. 8 hours in the car with a two year old and a one year old can be kind of tough sometimes, and we had some difficulty with the cargo. Kailey's bed frame was in a huge box, as expected, but not only was it huge, it was wide, wider than the van, which made it very tricky to secure to the luggage rack on top of the van. We had to pull off of the interstate twice to try to resecure it after it started sliding off. We finally took the frame out of the box and tied half of it to the rack and shoved the other half inside of the van. We had so much stuff packed inside the van, I don't know how we made it home with everything. Poor Lisa and Jeni had to climb back to their seats and had very limited space. It was a long day, but worth it, I love Ikea!
Where else can you get an iron bed frame and dresser for $150 each?

I can hardly believe that we have less than a month and a half before the new baby gets here! I've gotten a few things done that need to be done like working on potty training with Kailey and getting her out of the crib, but I still have lots to do!

Burninating the taco shells and a couple of funny pictures

2007-12-03T20:30:00.000-06:00

Tonight Joel and I had tacos (contrary to the menu on the right; the pork wasn't thawed so it had to swap places with the tacos). In preparation of the tacos, I put the shells in the oven as usual. I was feeling a little impatient because my back was hurting, so I decided to crank the oven up a little bit to broil and see if I couldn't get the shells browned up real quick. After I turned them up, I got a little distracted by other things, like Kailey throwing my freshly folded clothes off of the chair. When I made it back to the stove, I noticed some smoke coming from the back right burner. At first I thought that I had turned that burner on by mistake and something landed on it, but the burner was off. I knew that the oven vents through that burner, so I checked the oven. There they were, six little taco shells with 3-5 inch flames. When I tell you these shells were on fire, they were seriously on fire; big blue, purple, red, and yellow flames. I was going to grab the fire extinguisher, but I remembered that we never got one of those when we bought the house. I grabbed the flour and started throwing it on them. After a few seconds I had it under control. The whole time Kailey was laughing and saying oooohhhh. Evidently she thought that the fire was fun and pretty; I certainly did not feel the same. I had to open up doors and windows to get all of the smoke out of the house; it actually felt really good, because it finally cooled down a little outside. Here is a picture of the taco shells and flour sitting on the old dead dryer in our garage (our dryer died last week).

This beautiful picture goes with the title of the blog "burninating the taco shells"

If you are unfamiliar with Trogdor, and would like to learn about him, click here.

Yesterday my post had a section about video games. I completely forgot to include a story from last night involving games. Joel and I went over to Jamie and Joe's for dinner, and afterwards we played some 4 player wii tennis. Well, unbeknownst to me, I get a little over zealous with interactive wii controls. As we were playing tennis, i noticed, or it was pointed out, that I was really getting into the game. I tried to scale it back a little, but as the game got more intense, I didn't notice or try any more. I was sitting in about the middle of the couch and Joe's guitar was propped up at the end of the couch. At one particularly crucial moment, I lunged from my spot on the couch toward the end of the couch hitting Joe's guitar with my remote. I was a little embarrassed, but around the aforementioned company it was more funny than embarrassing. From now on, I am going to be extra careful when I'm playing wii, especially if it is not with close family.

These are a couple of pictures that were on the camera when I got the taco picture off.

Here's what happens when Kailey is left unattended with applesauce.

Allison got a little tired at lunch last Thursday and decided to take a little break (that's what Jamie and used to call it when we would lay on the floor and take a 5-10 min. naps when we were up late at night/early morning working on school assignments that we had put off; we were not very good students, but managed to come out with decent g.p.a's in the end).

A game addiction and whispering

2007-12-02T21:31:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted anything in a couple of days, because I rented a game, Beautiful Katamari, for Joel's Xbox. I'm not the gaming type. Joel is into Halo3 right now, but I don't even attempt it. This game is so much fun. It's kind of an odd game, but I like it a lot.

I have a Kailey story, too. We don't give Rickey any table food at all, and we don't let Kailey give it to her either. This just about kills Kailey, she wants so badly to share her food with Rickey. When we are eating, she will look at me with sad eyes and says "puppy ungee (hungry)." Also, I have been trying to teach Kailey to whisper. She can be loud sometimes at church, the library, etc., so we have been working on whispering and using an inside voice. She just doesn't seem to be getting it. Until this week she had never even tried to whisper. I thought that she just didn't understand what I was trying to get her to do. Well, turns out she did, and just chose not to. I was at the computer the other day, and Kailey was in the room with me eating a snack. Rickey of course was right at her feet hoping that Kailey would drop a crumb. After a few minutes I heard Kailey whispering Rickey's name, I turn to look and she had dropped small peices of food, was whispering Rickey's name, and bending and pointing to the food. I just laughed to myself and pretended like I didn't see. I figured it wouldn't hurt if Rickey eats a few crumbs. Then after she had given her a few crumbs I reminded her that we don't feed the puppy our food.

This picture is about a year old, but it was the only one that I could find effectively displays how Rickey spends about a fourth of her day. She follows Kailey around with her nose to the ground sniffing for food. (She's not sniffiing for food here, but that's what she looks like a good part of the day)

Clare had a baby! Good riddance pull-ups, and I got tagged

2007-11-28T22:21:00.000-06:00

Clare (best friend since kindergarten) had a baby girl today! Jamie and I talked to her this morning after Jazzercise, and all was going well. Jezebel Eleanor weighs 6 lb. 14 oz. and has lots of black hair. I am anxiously awaiting pictures.

I have been working on potty training with Kailey for about three or four weeks now. We got really messed up with Amilyn's wedding and Thanksgiving, because those were times when I couldn't help her as much as she needed, so she pretty much went back to the diaper for a little while. Well, I decided that this week we were going to get serious. I concluded that the pull-ups were setting us back, because when she has one of those on, she thinks it's just like a diaper and she can just go in it, and forget the potty. I felt like I was jumping off into the deep end. We have now made it through 24 hrs., no pull-ups or diapers, and we didn't have any accidents (I hesitate to brag, because who knows what tomorrow will bring). I'm not gonna' lie, I was scared to leave the house today with no pull-up. I loaded down Kailey's bag with extra clothes, her sesame street folding travel potty seat, and treats for going in the potty. I had a couple of errands to run today after Jazzercise, so I was pretty nervous. I was suprised at how well things went. I just hope that things continue to go this well.

I was tagged for the Seven Things Meme by Ann.

The rules are:
1. Share seven random facts about yourself, in your blog.

2. Include these rules.

3. Link back to the person who tagged you.

4. Tag seven more people and list their names & blogs.

Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged.

My seven random facts:

1. I love the beach.

2. I'm kind of picky about food, and don't like trying new things: I typically only eat canadian bacon pizza; I ALWAYS eat my hamburgers with only cheese, pickles, and lettuce; I get the same sandwich, fixed the same way everytime at Subway; I always get the same smoothie at smoothie king; I don't drink milk...

3. I do not like snakes, they scare me soooo bad. Once when I was pregnant with Kailey, a baby one got into our apartment, and I almost went into cardiac arrest. I left the apartment with the snake in there to roam and hide wherever he pleased. Luckily, when Joel got in from work, he found him and removed him using an oven mitt.

4. I wish that I was more creative when it comes to picking out gifts. I always draw a blank when I try to pick something out.

5. I am nursery leader in my ward, and it is not nearly as tough as I thought that it would be. Having Jeni in there with me has made it a lot better, too.

6. Watermelon is my very favorite food! I always eat a humongous peice, and I have a certain order in which I eat the sections of the watermelon slice (weird, I know, Jamie does it, too).

7. I like to fly. When I was young, I always thought that flying in a plane would be scary, but I like it. I wouldn't say that I love it, because I don't ever want to do any flips in the air or anything like that, I just appreciate that it gets me where I want to go a lot faster than driving, and the take off is kind of fun.

I think that I'm kind of long winded. Most other people that did this "tagged" thing had one line per item, mine kind of turned into more. When I post things they always end up longer than I thought that they would be. I hope that I'm not boring people with my posts that go on and on.

I don't think that there is anyone left that I know that hasn't been tagged, so I'm not going to tag anyone. Is something bad going to happen, like 7 years bad luck? I hope not.

Lady Stetson A.K.A. Rickey and a crazy dream

2007-11-21T21:15:00.000-06:00

Today, I brought Rickey in to be groomed. If you haven't seen her lately, her nails were atrociously long. I brought her to the vet that's right down the road from us, for the first time. Evidently they bathed her in Lady Stetson, and when they brought her out, I almost vomitted. Then I had to ride all of the way home with her. I don't know why in the world I didn't roll the windows down, but Kailey and I suffered through. You could literally smell her 5 ft. away. Thank goodness it has died down a little, you can only smell her about a foot away now. I guess Lady Stetson is better than stink, but I don't think I could handle it again. Can you imagine how the girl smells that bathes the dogs, by the time she gets home? Yikes!

Lady Steston AKA Rickey AKA Dorey (that's her real name nickname)

Some how I managed to go to Wal-Mart twice today. I must be a glutton for punishment, riding home with Lady Stetson, with the windows up, and going to Wal-Mart twice the day before Thanksgiving. The two trips to Wal-Mart actually were not that bad. The first time that we were there, we dropped off Kailey's antibiotic prescription (she was starting to develop bronchitis), they said that it would take an hour and half to two hours to get it filled, that really means 3-4 hours. I think we have the slowest pharmacy in the world. Jamie has gotten into it with some of the employees because of the lies about the wait time. So, I resigned to the fact that I was going to have to come back to the mad house later in the evening, and set out to pick up a couple of things that I had forgotten to get earlier in the week. Some how I managed to get in a short self check-out line and made it out quick. Later, when we went back, there was suprisingly no line at the pharmacy, and we got out of there quickly and easily. We even took a little time to walk by the christmas yard inflatables on the way out, b/c Kailey loves them. There was a Mickey Mouse one that she was especially excited about, and when we went by the Nativity one, she bent down and hugged the Baby Jesus.

Now for the crazy dream. If you haven't noticed on the baby countdown over there, we've only got 2 1/2 months left. I guess that that has kind of been on my mind lately, because this morning I had a dream, that it was time to have the baby. I was also talking to Jeni in the nursery on Sunday, about braxton hicks contractions, and real contractions. So in the dream, Joel and I went to the hospital, and the contractions were really mild. I told the nurse that I didn't need the epidural yet, and then all of a sudden, the contractions got really bad. I called the nurse over, and asked for the epidural, but she said that it was too late, that they baby was ready to come out, and there wouldn't be time to set up the epidural. I was so angry, upset, and afraid. Then the dream ended. Between you and me, I'm a real weiney when it comes to pain. I surely did appreciate the epidural when I had Kailey, and fully intend to have one again with this baby. I know that there are women who choose to not have the epidural, but I'm all for it. When I had Kailey, it was a nice, calm, relaxed experience. I'll admit, I am a little curious about how I would handle it, and what it would be like with no epidural, but that curiousity does not supercede my hatrid and fear of pain, so I will be having the epidural, if I can help it.

Pregnancy cravings

2007-11-17T20:50:00.000-06:00

Today I was craving lemonade, and a couple of days ago I was craving cheesecake. This evening we went to Aaron and Lisa Saxon's house to watch the LSU game, and have dinner, and lo and behold lemonade and cheesecake! Thanks Lisa, they were great.

I passed!

2007-11-15T22:15:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had the three hour glucose screening, to test for gestational diabetes (I failed the 1 hr. test). The nurse called this afternoon to let me know that I passed. I was so relieved! Also, the test went so much better this time, than it did when I took it during my last pregnancy. Last time, I thought I was going to throw-up and pass out right there in the waiting room. I felt so sick that I had to call Jamie to come get me, and drive me home. This time, I hardly felt bad at all, and the girl that drew my blood was very good.

I was kind of afraid of the gestational diabetes; Jamie had g.d. during her pregnancy with Allison. Even though she claims that it wasn't that bad, it couldn't have been that great either. I hate diets, and there are definitely some dietary restrictions that go along with g.d.

The only diet that I ever tried, ended after only about twelve hours. Joel and I tried the South Beach diet, before I got pregnant with Kailey. It was a nightmare for me. We started it one morning and were doing fine until about 9 o'clock at night. We were both starving, so we gave in and went to sonic. I have very little self control when it comes to things like that. It may have been good for me to have g.d. because I would've had guidelines to follow and would have been held accountable by the specialist.