Argh.

Seriously, my hormones are all in a rage today. I hope there's not a repeat of that tomorrow. There's too much going on! We have Dream Dinners, and then after we come home to put the food away, I'll be heading to the airport to pick up my parents and then to my in-laws' to pick up the Kritter. During my trip to the airport, B will be mowing lawns (ours and a friend's). Then B and my Dad and one or two of B's friends will be going to the baseball game. Mom and I will most likely eat leftovers after a trip to the grocery store (although she might go for a sandwich or bowl of cereal instead... I know, so exciting, right?).

Sophie and I were sitting at the table earlier and she kept asking to sweep. I thought she was saying sleep and was so confused. When I figured it out, I had to laugh. She also asked me to sign thunder and I thought she said feather. I'm losing my touch here.

Speaking of which... she's started doing that within the past few days. She loves to ask me to sign words with her. She also loves to ask for help when trying to make certain signs. It's all very cute.

I cannot believe how quickly she's growing! I am just in awe of these past few weeks, seriously. She has started to read books to us (from the illustrations, not from the words... she's not a prodigy as far as we know) and it's absolutely awesome! She really seems to remember the story based on the pictures. I love it! She's also very polite right now. She says "Yes, Mom" or "Please, Mom" or "Thank you, Mommy" all the time now! I can't get over it! My favorite is, "Okay, Mommy!" It sounds so simple, but to hear it come out of her mouth in her tiny little voice just kills me!

I made quinoa tonight for the first time and I have to admit, it was pretty good. I like it because it cooks faster than rice and isn't as starchy. It's not quite as quick as couscous, but I just can't eat couscous all the time.

I still need to vacuum but that's not going to happen tonight. I ought to mop the floor but don't plan on doing that tonight either. I will probably put together a bag of toys for Sophie as well as gather some food for her.

Instead, I'm going to post pictures of the garden. B's pretty proud of it. I have no idea if we're doing anything right or wrong here. He was too hot to plant before I could really do some reading. I guess this will be a learning year. ;)

This is a picture dump of the Kritter over the past two months. Yeah, I suck like that. All the images are 320x200 (or vice versa), so it shouldn't take TOO long to load, but for those of you on dial up, if you really want to see the pictures, click the cut link and walk away. There are 20 pictures behind the cut and one teaser out in front.

isyllt and Anna, if you want me to make this a private post, I will. Just let me know.

Other pictures previously mentioned will be uploaded at a later date. Videos will be uploaded at a later date. This is all I'm doing for now.

Edited to add: Click the pictures for high res images.

• When something is difficult, Sophie says, "So heavy." I'm not exactly sure how this works, but that's the way it is. When trying to put macaroni and cheese on her fork, when the noodles won't stay on her fork they're "so heavy." When she's trying to put the bracelet back on her baby doll, it's "so heavy" to fasten (it's a simple Velcro type closure but she always turns it backwards). I don't know why, but I find this all highly amusing. There's a face and a sound that go along with this that just makes it that much better. B thinks it might be because we say, "so heavy!" when picking her up.
• Sophie has named her baby doll "Sophie Kritter," which, of course, comes out sounding like "Sowie Tidder." Love it.
• .
• Miss Thang went up the little slide and then down again all by herself with no help from me after a few times of sliding together. She also managed to walk up a rather large plank so she could go down the big slide (all on her own). The only bad part about hanging out at the neighbors' house is Sophie loving their play fort just a bit too much. She hates leaving!
• Sophie also played in the little play house last night and closed all the windows so she could throw them open and yell "peek-a-boo" (which still sounds like "piddaboo").
• I had the back door open during dinner and Sophie kept announcing she could hear the kids playing ("Hear tids!"). She was so excited to go play with them she had a difficult time finishing dinner.
• Lately, while reading our books, she has taken to eating the food off the page of the book (pretends to pinch at the picture with her fingers and put it to her mouth saying, "Mmmm, dood!"). She has also started tickling people and animals right on the page of the books ("tiddo tiddo tiddo" with her little fingers going wild over the picture). Seriously, when the heck did she get to be so funny??
• Sophie likes to wear hats. She has a variety of hats she wears from time to time. Her favorites are the pompom hat, one of my straw hats, and Papaw's train cap.

There's probably more, but that's all I can remember for now.

In other somewhat slightly related news, I think my camera is coming down with some fatal disease. If you watch the videos (and bless you if you do, they're long and just of the Kritter playing with a ball, so exciting!), you'll here a clicking sound that simply shouldn't be there. I'm not sure what the deal is. It's also fighting to focus. I'm not sure if someone jacked with a setting or what, but that still shouldn't cause the clicking. :(

B and I have plans to start a garden. We were hoping to start it this year, but we have a little too much prep work to do. Because of all the fence repairs that have had to be done lately, B has been able to gather up enough landscape timbers to put together the area for the garden. It's likely not going to stay where it is, but this is a rough idea. I can't wait to get our little garden started!

Sophie had a blast this weekend at the park. I took her Saturday and we met up with "Missy Tay and Lala." Sophie had a blast on the slide and the swing and in the tunnel. I had to drag B to the park with us the next day so he could see just how much fun she had. The child hates getting out of the swing! She could live in it, seriously!

In the videos of Sophie swinging, if the volume is up high enough, she can be heard squealing, saying "Whee," and possibly saying "fun" or "swinging." The video of her in the tunnel is probably my favorite because she goes down the slide at the end. Unfortunately, the severe static electricity she experienced crawling through the tunnel was totally missed. Her hair was standing straight out (all the wisps not in the pigtails).

This is really all I've got for now. Sophie has been having a blast with her crayons and chalks and even markers that I decided to let her try a little finger painting the other day. I took some yogurt (banana and vanilla - closest to white and no chunks) and divided it into three bowls and made red, yellow, and blue paints for her. I laid out some paper on the table (think I'll use freezer paper next time) and taped it down, and poured a little of each color out on the paper. I made sure she had on one of Daddy's old t-shirts (he hates shirts with pockets for some reason, but Sophie doesn't mind), pulled her hair back, put her up in the high chair, and let her go to town.

We made colors together, we played in the paint, and she actually realized she could eat the paint towards the end. B was completely grossed out, but Sophie had a blast. After she was done with the paints, she wanted to draw on her chalkboard. She's still wearing the shirt covered in yogurt.

People keep asking for pictures, so I feel the need to comply. These are all from last weekend while the guys were out working on the fence. The weather was wonderful here, so Sophie wanted to be outside as well.

This entry is going to be even more all over the place than other random entries... I think. Watch, I'll get to the end and realize I didn't really have anything to post in the first place. That's always fun.

For those of you looking for a new home in the DFW area, this little site is one of the coolest MLS searches I've seen... ever. I wish there was a site like this that would search the entire country. I know there are other areas who use this company (Diverse Solutions), but they don't link together. That would be the ultimate.

Yesterday, Sophie sat and colored for about two hours. Two hours! Every now and then she'd give me a crayon and ask me to color. I drew a bunch of shapes for her and she tried to color them in! This is the reason I want a scanner. I want to be able to scan these things so I don't have ten thousand papers laying around, but also so I can show my family what she's doing now. It really was too cute. She was almost heartbroken when I took away the crayons so she could eat dinner.

Tonight we are having Thai chicken with peanut sauce. Of course, it's a Dream Dinners meal, but I'm still looking forward to it. B will probably hate it, unfortunately. I wonder if I have an onion in the pantry for fried rice....

Sunday's game was incredible. I seriously should have bet on it. I knew it was going to be close and had a feeling the Giants were going to win, but I was afraid it was just wishful thinking. Any team that gets light penalties for cheating and drug abuse and continues to win games regardless, and then has the audacity to actually trademark the phrase "19 and 0" needs to be taken down a notch or two. After watching how cocky some of the Pats were on the field, I was very pleased when Eli had a shining moment at the end and helped his team pull off a major victory. Sorry Pats fans, it's not your fault and this isn't against you.

I have to admit, the commercials just haven't been as good as they used to be, though. There were a few worth noting, I think Coke, Pepsi, E*Trade, and possibly a few others were pretty decent. I think Budweiser will have a tough time trying to beat the frog commercials, although I did like their commercial this year (hasn't that one been aired before?).

I have a couple memes to post (one from my mother, of all people), but I'll put them in a separate post... whenever I get around to doing them.

I need to go get the child out of bed now, since she has awakened from her nap and is currently giving herself "boops," I'm guessing on the nose.

( The rest of the post (pictures and videos) will be behind a cut, just to be nice.  )

She's growing so quickly right now. There are things she was doing just last week that I wanted to catch on video but never did, and now she doesn't do those things any longer. Cookie is now teetee instead of toodoo. :( Pizza is still potsy, so I should try to get that one on video. Cracks me up! Anyhow, enjoy the pictures.

This is my current favorite photo of Sophie. My mother took this with her camera phone (Sanyo Katana) and the only thing I would have changed would be to get the whole tree and a little less blur, but that simply wasn't possible with that camera, I'm sure. No matter what, I still love this picture.

There really aren't many pictures in this dump. I probably have some somewhere else that I wanted to dump, but this is all I can handle tonight.

The first two are from Thanksgiving (yes, we got snow that day - pretty big flakes, too). The next one is from the day after, I think. The last one is of our vicious attack dog, Chui. He's really just yawning. What a bum.

( clicken a clicken da link for pickies )

Well, PPP finally figured out my Google score is 0. I'm not sure what else to do to raise it, either. I'm a little disappointed, but I suppose it's just as well since I have a lot going on lately. I don't have time to sit here and refresh to get the good opportunities anyhow. Still, it's a serious bummer.

On a much lighter note, I will have a big picture dump very soon. The pictures are on the SD card that I've already put into the reader slot on the laptop. I just need to go through them and see which ones I want to post. I'm sure there will be lots, and I'll probably break it down into a couple different posts.

Digital Photography Review is one of the most informative sites I've seen for digital photography questions. I wish the site had been around when I was searching for my camera. I bought mine because of its size, and I'm happy with the one I have now, but I really went in blind. I bought two cameras prior to the Casio Exilim I have now and returned them both. For those of you photographers (amateur or professional) out there, have you ever used this site before? What other sites do you like to use for camera information?

For those of you who have no clue when it comes to cameras (like me), how did you make the decision to purchase the camera you currently own? If you don't own a digital camera yet, are you planning to buy one? Will you be researching prior to making your purchase?

I'm full of questions today. :)

I have to share my sister's creation for my mother's Christmas gift this year. I am so in love with it! This is what she's been talking about wanting all year long and I think Anna did a marvelous job with it. Of course, she did say it was super easy and she was able to just drop photos into the template, but still... She had to coordinate with my other sister and me to get all the photos together and that's no easy task! :)

My mother is going to go nuts when she gets this. Needless to see, I'll be ordering one as well.

She tried to keep with themes for the months. Also, the christening photos are featured in the months the girls were christened, same as birthday months.

I think Shutterfly will basically do the same thing as this, but I think I want mine to look a little more scrappy. We'll see how it goes. Enjoy!

I am even more behind on catching up. Eventually I'll get there, but it won't be tonight. I have read a lot of posts from my phone, but haven't had a chance to comment. There's so much I want to say, really.

So what have I done tonight? Absolutely nothing as far as catching up. My heart just isn't in it tonight. Of course, that puts me even farther behind.

However, I do have lots of cute pictures and a video to share. :)

Dates are all in yyyymmdd format. Some of these have been hanging around for a while, sorry. I am putting all the pictures behind a cut except for one. The video is my only other teaser. In the video, Sophie was helping Daddy by mopping the kitchen floor. She chatters almost the entire time, but it's difficult to hear it.








The tutu (which Sophie says beautifully, along with "wings") was made by isyllt. It scared her at first, but she got to the point where she didn't want it off. I absolutely love it! I wish the wings were a little darker red and that the elastic was black, but it's still terribly cute overall. B agrees that I need to figure out something for antennae. Perhaps we'll do that tomorrow.

• I actually won a little contest over at Get My Knit On because for some reason the name Lorenzo Lamas will forever be burned into my brain. Go me.
• We're looking at ordering a turken or turducken for Thanksgiving this year. Yum! My parents are coming down after Thanksgiving so this really won't be on Thanksgiving. My mother also said she doesn't like duck, so if I can find a turken, we'll skip the duck, I suppose.
• .
• Quite a few people participated in the Top Five I posted last week. All the comments have been unscreened. catscar had the suggestion to use a poll instead of screening comments, and I think that's a marvelous idea. I now own top_five, but haven't done anything with it yet. For the people who played last week, would you be interested in joining the community or would you rather just play here? I think for now I'm going to post a top five topic for the week and let people fill it out as they can. I'd love to have suggestions for topics. Let's see if I can keep up with once a week for something like this. ;)
• We're probably going to the Fort Worth Zoo next Wednesday. I'm pretty excited. I just hope the weather cooperates (as of right now it should be beautiful that day).
• We might be going to Middlefaire this year. Some of B's friends are going down there to play.
• The Dream Dinners menus for the next couple months look out of control good! I doubt I'll be ordering too much in November, though. I am not using Dream Dinners for Thanksgiving dinner.
• Anyone want an extremely blond peekapoo?
• Tonight is Tuscan Turkey Medallions with garlic and Parmesan penne pasta, spinach salad, and grilled corn on the cob. I wouldn't bother with the corn if B wasn't planning on using the grill already. Now, if he would just get home!

That's about all I've got. It's a big bag of nothin', really. Because of that, I'll leave you with a cute picture from our last pool time.

• Our trip to Michigan this time was just over three weeks. Half of that time was spent at my parents and the other half at my sister's. Sophie had lots of family time.
• B was stuck at work again. No vacation for him.
• .
• The whole family went to the zoo and we had a blast. Sophie was a signing fool that day, especially when she saw the birds and the fish. She was so well behaved, too.
• After the zoo, we all went back to Tracie's for dinner and a little birthday celebration. Tracie made a beautiful ladybug cake for Sophie (still on my camera). I will post a picture of the cake and all the cupcakes that went with it when I get all the photos off my camera.
• Tracie's daughter, Emily, is the cutest little monkey. She actually uses her feet to pick up things and to scoot her around on her back (she has a bald spot to prove it). I can't believe how flexible this little girl is!
• Maddy is such a tiny little thing. I don't remember Sophie ever being that small. I barely remember Sophie being Emily's size/age.
• Sophie is signing more words, but I'll be darned if I can remember what they are. She signs bread now, which is wonderful since she absolutely loves the stuff. She also signs apple for nearly all fruit (except for banana, of course).
• Sophie is also trying to say more words. She says "appie" for apple, "nummy" for yummy, and "ahmie" for Emmy. There are more words in her vocabulary, but I can't seem to remember them all right now.
• Each day Sophie is taking more steps on her own. Today was a big day for her as far as walking goes. She might not take many steps together but she was trying to walk on her own often.
• The professional pictures came back while we were out of town and they're positively adorable. Our photography editor suggested sending them off to an agency since Sophie is so photogenic. I'll add that to the list of ten thousand other things I want to get done.
• I showed Anna the boat blanket I'm knitting for Maddy (mostly to make sure she liked it enough for me to continue knitting it) and she loves it. I am done with two panels of boats and have one panel of boats left, along with two panels of cable and four border pieces.
• Jet's Pizza exists in Texas now. The one location in Texas is very close to us. Yay!
• Earthquake Cake is very interesting to make, and very tasty to eat.

I can't think of anything else really going on here. We're trying to get back into a routine now that we're back in town. Let's hope that happens soon. I think Sophie's napping is in the process of changing, but I'm not so sure if it's just her adjusting to being home or if it's really changing.

To do:

• finish knitting the boat blanket (nothing else is on my needles until that is done)
• clean desk
• reinstall pc
• clean guest room and nursery (purge)
• help B install fence in nursery (yay for fence!) and finish hanging butterflies and other bugs
• list extraneous crap on Craigslist
• do Dream Dinners fun times!
• paint master bedroom
• repaint guest bedroom
• move office to old guest bedroom and repaint old office
• move guest bedroom to old office
• paint dining room
• Shop: IKEA, Home Depot, BBB or LnT, Fossil

Last night, B posted a wonderfully short entry with the best link ever.

I can't wait to get home now. :)

This is purely a photo post, not much information to accompany it at all. This was taken at a birthday party this past Sunday and the bathing suit is not Sophie's, but she modeled it quite well.

My sister and her husband were supposed to be moving to Hawaii for a few years due to the nature of Steven's work. Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen, but Steven will be in Hawaii for several months this year. I am quite jealous. Hawaii is probably one of the best places I was able to visit while working at Aloha and I was looking forward to planning some Hawaii trips.

I found an excellent little site for Hawaii trips tonight called Hawaiian Beach Rentals. I had such dreams of going to Hawaii to visit Anna, Steven, and Madeline while they were living in Hawaii, but that's not going to be happening now. Once the Critter is older, however, we might make a trip to Hawaii so she can experience it. I was only able to hit Honolulu and I still thought it was breathtakingly beautiful.

Hawaiian Beach Rentals even has a toll-free number for assistance. Maybe Steven can use this site to find a place to stay while living in Hawaii for the next few months.

I am digging up my photos from Hawaii that have been edited. I would love to edit the rest someday, but it's not likely ever to happen. Maybe when we take Sophie to Hawaii (I'm hoping Hawaiian Beach Rentals will have a better search in place by that time) I'll take more (and better) photos and I'll actually edit them and upload them in a timely manner.

( Hawaii photos behind the cut )

Sophie pictures from Christmas 2006 and newer are up on my dotPhoto page now. The new pictures start on page 16 of the Sophia Mae album. I have them uploaded here as well and the new photos start on page 17. I have other pictures of the family uploaded here but do not have any preview pages built (and probably won't).

Reminder, I date my photos in the file name (yyyymmdd) so the pictures are always in order by date in my folders. When dotPhoto prints photos, the filename is included on the back of the photo so I never have to worry about writing on the photo, either.

The next Sophie project will be to get all of the videos renamed and up on photobucket for easy sharing. That's a much larger project since I have to watch the videos (not a hardship, just lengthy) and then rename. Sophie likes to watch the videos with me so I might be able to do this while she's in my lap.

Edited to add: This is the long post (that has since been modified several times) I was trying to get to go through since Thursday morning. Narf.

Click here for wedding photos, all shot by Jen.

Thanks Jen!!

Caution: if you're on dialup, you might not want to click.  50 thumbnails per page and the large images are not resized (in other words - they're pretty effin' huge).  Most of these are pretty raw (no touch ups and what not) and it's just basic html spewed forth from Photoshop, nothing exciting for now. At least the pictures are up!

So, like a dummy (in love, of course), I spent the time at home tonight (not that there was much time at home tonight) working on trying to get a blasted picture to print correctly for me so I can put it in my nice new red frame and take it to work instead of writing Christmas cards or finishing the blanket or wrapping gifts. I am so lame when it comes to printing sometimes (on screen graphics are usually ok for me). I finally broke down and begged Jen for help, and of course, she came through for me, as usual. This is by far my favorite image out of the bazillion pictures Jen took, but I'm a little biased. She did an excellent job with the coloring on this photo, too. Believe it or not, this is a total candid shot. B didn't even know she was taking the picture. She's that good!

Thank you cards are done (except for the cards B is going to write) but Christmas cards are not. CDs have not been burned. Pictures have not been printed. The last gifts have not been wrapped. The house has not been cleaned. We have not gone grocery shopping. I don't even know what we're taking to B's parents' house for Christmas dinner. All I want to do right now is crawl under the blankets and not come out until next year.

At least we have the sonogram this week. I am excited and nervous all at the same time.

Since I've been playing with photos a bit today, I figured I'd post at least one here. Jen has more posted here.



( behind the cut.... )

We have wedding photos! Jen is the most awesomest ever!

As soon as B has them loaded to the server, we'll have pics and links posted for sharing.