A Month...

Has passed since I last updated this blog! Crazy how time flies around all the holidays. It feels like just last week I was thinking there was 53 days until Christmas! We have done A LOT since my last post, and I am going to squeeze it all into 1 post instead of breaking it up.

We made out first trip back home the week before Thanksgiving. One of my best friends, Corey was getting married and I was in the wedding!

Minus the Tahoe breaking down on the way, it was an easy trip. Jocelyn is an old pro at traveling these days. The broken part on the car was an easy fix, Brian had us back on the road in less than an hour.

We stopped in Georgia to visit my Grandma Lordy for a few hours. 

Then we were on the way to Florida. We spent the night with Brian's parents on Thursday night.

Friday we dropped Jocelyn off with family and headed to Celebration for the wedding weekend. The weekend was so much fun. It was nice to stay in a hotel with the bride the first night and with my hubbs the second night (without Jocie both nights!!!) and just relax. Well kinda, it was a pretty hectic weekend, but worth every second.

Congratulations to one of my favorite girls and her new husband! 

Then came about a week of actual relaxing before Thanksgiving! 

Mostly, just hanging out and visiting with family.

Thanksgiving went great. Too much food, but it was sooo good! 

I am going to miss being there for Christmas, but I will have my in-laws here with us!

Sisters

Brandi, Me and Kelli

Us with our girls

The Lee's

Of course I realized I didn't get a single picture with my dad's side or my moms side of the family.

I always plan on doing it, but then forget. 

Maybe once I have a real camera that takes really good pictures (hint hint Santa!)

I will want to use it more and take lots of pictures :)

I will leave you with my little Diva in her winter beanie.

Brian said she looks just like me in this one.

Have I mentioned how cold it is here? Although it feels great,

I have a feeling I am going to get my fill of it rather quickly.

I just don't have all the right clothes to wear in this kind of cold.

I did get myself some Uggs for my birthday though. Jocie loves them too!

Hopefully it won't be another month before I post again, 

but we have 3 sets of visitors coming between next week and New Years so I can't 

make any promises.

just in case...

Merry Christmas!

17 Months

I never make these update posts for some reason, but Jocelyn has become so awesome lately that I couldn't resist! Every stage, B and I say "this kid is so cool" and then the next week rolls around and she is even cooler! I have to say that my kid is my favorite thing around these days :)

Stats:
about 25.5 lbs, size 4 diapers, 12-18 month clothes. Size 5 shoe. Not sure of height.

Sleeping:
Unfortunately, she is only taking 1 45-60 minute nap a day at the moment. Sometimes I get lucky and can get her to take 2. Not very often.
She is going to bed by 8:30 at the very latest and sleeping 12-13 hours! Woo Hoo! I will trade day time sleep for night time sleep ANY DAY of the week!

Words:
Baby, Oh No!, oh man, hello, bye bye, mommy, dada, "I draw", banana (doesn't quite sound like that though), night night, ball, vroom vroom, and a few others that I can't think of at the moment.

Funny Story: My friends Whitney and Graham were babysitting while Brian and I went out to dinner for our anniversary and when they were giving her dinner, they asked if she wanted some more grapes, and she replied "Heck Yes!"  Of course, she pulled that one out at the perfect time. She never says that to us :)

She kisses every picture frame with people in it and calls them all "Jo Jo" whether she is in the picture or not. Her favorite one at the moment is the picture of her cousins in Kansas. She kisses it every night before bed.

Last night we went to Home Goods so I could get some furniture for my new in home salon!!! She pitched a FIT to get a baby doll that she found. She screamed and cried the entire time and then finally daddy gave in and got it for her. Let me tell you, she hugged and kissed that doll for the next 3o minutes. She has just started loving baby dolls in the past 2 weeks or so. I think she needs a doll stroller to push them around in!

She loves to sing Dora, and Happy Birthday. We let her watch the video of us singing Happy Birthday to her and she is just in awe.
.
I am learning to let her be more independent. I am amazed how much she can do the more I let her! We went to the park yesterday and she goes off by herself and plays and doesn't care where I am. It makes me sad and proud at the same time. I guess she has to grow up sooner or later though right?

She Loves her coffee, just like Mama!

Hanging out in her new winter clothes. Watching TV!

Halloween Recap

I know I am kind of late on posting this, but for some reason I totally forgot. I kept on thinking that I didn't have anything new and exciting to post about. WRONG!

This year was Jocleyn's 2nd Halloween, 

but the first one that she was able to wear a costume for an extended amount of time 

and go trick-or-treating!

I had the hardest time deciding what she was going to be.

One trip to the Halloween store and I chose Little Red Riding Hood.

I found a costume and then told B about it. 

He had the idea that I make it instead of buying it, 

because then Jocelyn and I would appreciate it so much more.

I knew that it wouldn't be too hard but just hoped that I would be able to finish on time.

Luckily, it was simpler than I thought!

The first 2 pictures are from my Moms club Halloween party.

Jocelyn is signing "more" every time I try to stop the swinging or take her out.

Needless to say, we spent the entire party on the swings :)

This is Jocie's FAVORITE thing to do when Daddy gets home

"Vroom Vroom" in every car.

 I tried as hard a s I could to get a picture of me and the girl, but she fought me the whole time.

This one turned out pretty good.

This one is a little blurry, but you can see the costume.

Of course she wouldn't wear the hood. 

Next time I will think twice about a costume that requires a head piece to know what it is ;)

On our way out to Trick-or-Treat

Heading to the first house.

Brian didn't get any pics actually going up to the doors.

But, she loved to ring the doorbell and knock.

This would be after melt down #4 (we only went to 5 houses!)

Poor thing, she fell off the curb at the 2nd house holding Wasabi's leash and scraped her thumb.

At the next house, daddy went to catch her as she was falling again and he poked her in the eye.

At the last house, she wanted the lady's candy basket and cried as she had to return it :(

I guess it wasn't the  most productive night, but she got some of her favorite candy, Kit-Kats!

And when we got home, our basket of Reese's and Kit-Kats were still there untocuhed.

Luckily I bought our favorites!

End of the night, cleaning up the boo-boos.

Until next year!

More than Anyone

happy 3rd anniversary to my favorite husband in the whole wide world!
you are the best husband, father, and best friend a girl could ask for.
i love you so much more than you know

That's gonna leave a mark.

we have been working hard on getting the playroom all ready to put the toys back in.

i painted it purple last week, and yesterday i put a fresh coat of white under the chair rail.

now, all thats left (besides decor) is painting the picture frame things purple, and painting the trim.

i bought this shelf a while ago and brian and jocie put it together while i was painting yesterday.

jocie is a great helper.

soon enough, i won't need brian around. jocie can put everything together.

following directions.

holding the nail for daddys hammer! ;)

all done.

oops a little out of order, hammering!

and then, she decided to crawl onto the back before brian had hammered down the cardboard backing.

she fell in and smashed her poor little head :(

perfect timing for halloween, she looks like frankensteins baby.

it actually looked worse in person.

the fall didn't keep her from playing with it though.

finished project!

This is really old, but I never shared the pictures and thought you would enjoy!

This is what happens when you let a 1 year old play with a bottle of bright red nail polish in an all tile house!

I love the little foot prints.

Lucky I caught her before she tracked it all over.

One minor freak out was when I realized I had about an ounce of acetone left in the bottle.

Brian saved the day with a huge tin of it in the garage!

 Poor baby had an acetone bath :(

SAHM's Unite!

Now that I am lucky enough to stay at home with my sweet girl all day long, (Thanks Babe!) I have to find stuff to do to stay busy. Well, of course cleaning every day and cooking 5 course meals every night keep me on my toes ;) Jocelyn needed to get out and make some friends, (as do I) since I pretty much don't know anyone.


(By the way, SAHM= Stay at Home Mom)


In Florida, I kept saying I was going to go join clubs and take Jo to the park and sew dresses and paint pictures and all that jazz, but other stuff always got in the way. Like, work, even though it was only part-time. I finally went to my first MOPS meeting (Mother of Pre-Schoolers, FYI) the we found out we were moving.


Fast Forward a month. I decided that if I was going to change my ways, it needed to start right away. Luckily, I found 2 great groups to go to. First was MOPS. It meets every other Wednesday for 2 hours. That means two glorious hours that I get to talk to other moms while Jocelyn goes into the daycare area! The first meeting I met some really nice girls. One was actually from Florida too. Believe it or not, I have met a lot of people from some part of Florida, small world! MOPS is religious based group that meets in a church.

Then, there is another group I found through meetup.com They meet different days during the week and do all kinds of different activities. So far, I have met up with them to do a playtime at the mall, and I actually didn't enter into ANY store while I was there. That has to be some kind of record for me! We went to the zoo, walked a few miles on the river and this morning we met at a park by my house.


Jocelyn is having a great time learning to play with other kids her age. I am not only making new friends and meeting people that have all kinds of thing in common with the Mister and myself, but I am also learning how to let Jo do things by herself rather than  being right behind her and holding her hand for every move she makes. She has to learn to do this stuff sooner or later and I can't  keep her wrapped in bubble wrap forever. 


The girl I rent my house from is actually in this playgroup too. That makes it really easy for all the complaints we have! Ha ha! Just kidding, we LOVE this house and neighborhood. 


Having playgroups to go to really makes the day go by faster for us and it makes me use Jocelyn's nap times for being productive (like writing this blog and checking Facebook) and getting stuff done around the house!


Speaking of naptime. I have been extremely lucky. Jo is waking up around 8:30, taking an hour nap at 10, a 2 hour nap at 3 and going to bed by 9. Is that awesome or what?

Unfortunately, now that we are doing things at different times during the day, I am hoping to consolidate those naps to 1 hopefully 3 hour nap. We'll see how that works. If it doesn't, I have no problem with 2!