Sad Sunday

Mais had her first walking accident today. She was playing at my cousin's house with her kids and she thought she could step out the front door but totally took a dive right onto the door mat. YIKES! Jenn called me to tell me what happened and she asked if I was mad. I said, "Of course not. Alex fell out of a shopping cart when I was babysitting him. Accidents happen!" However, when I went to go pick her up, it looked worse than I thought it was. That's what happens when babies are brave. Good thing we don't have any photo shoots planned for the week! :) Serious Road Rash on the forehead and nose!
"Mom, now my nose looks like Elmo's!"
In other sad news. . . Shaun left us tonight for the 13th week in a row. This single mom business is getting pretty tiring! The worst part about all of this is when Washington Mutual went under this week Shaun was at a training in Atlanta, not working in Seattle. So his manager from Seattle called him to tell him that the project was cancelled! For 18 hours, I was so excited, joyful, elated, happy, thrilled, cheerful, glad, and any other word that you can come up with. The next morning, however, he got an email from the head partner over the project saying to show up to Seattle next week because JPMorgan Chase wanted to continue with the project. My hopes of a semi-normal life were demolished. I guess I will have to wait 8 more weeks until this stupid project is OVER! I can't wait. Mostly because I hate on the weekends when Maisey cries every time she goes down for a nap, or Shaun leaves the room, because she is so afraid that if she lets him out of her sight, he won't come back for a long time. This poor little girl doesn't understand all of this business. It's hard on me, it's hard on Shaun, but mostly it is so hard on Maisey!

Go BEAVS!

So, The Beavers beat USC again! A 2006 repeat, but not as close!!! Only this time USC was ranked #1!!!!!!! Mais was really into watching the game with me. I put her in her Halloween jammies tonight because they are orange and black! Also today, she got her first bloody nose! It was really sad. She has been walking around with her blankie all day. She likes to put it around her waist like a skirt. So she was walking with it and her hands were wrapped up in it and she tripped and fell face first on to her magna doodle! OUCH!
She wouldn't hold still enough for me to hold a kleenex on it so I gave her a wet washcloth to suck on and then every once in a while I took the bottom end (not the end she was sucking on) and wiped her nose.

So, like 2 weekends ago Mais and Shaun were watching football together and I was out running errands. When I got home, Shaun had taught Mais how to lift both of her arms in the air when he would say "Touchdown!" After tonight's game, he probably wished he hadn't of taught her that. (He was going for USC!) Anyway, anytime we even say the word "football" she does that! I have a video of it, but it's having trouble loading in this post, so I will try it again later.

CTR Elmo

Mais is totally going through the Elmo stage right now. Last week my mom and I went to the grocery store. Mais was just riding along in the shopping cart until she spotted an Elmo balloon. She started pointing and going, "oooooohhhhhhh, oooooohhhhhh" very LOUDLY! So a few days later I took her to Toys R' Us with me because I had to get my cousin's little boy a birthday present for his party last weekend. I purposely avoided the Sesame Street aisle so we didn't have a repeat scene from the grocery store a few days earlier. But towards the front of the store, Maisey saw an Elmo pinata way up on the very top of one of the shelves. And there she went again, "ooooohhhhhh, ooooohhhhhh" even louder, if that's possible. So I divert her attention with an Elmo greeting card because I can pay for that if she ends up ruining it and it kept her quiet for a while. Since she was being so good I decided to go look through the clothes section. Once again, somehow she spotted a whole rack of Elmo clothes. "ooooohhhhh, oooohhhhh" translated to "Mommy, I NEED one." We ended up leaving Toys R' Us with an Elmo outfit, an Elmo Halloween costume, and an Elmo trick-or-treating candy bucket, oh yeah, and a birthday gift for Alex.

So I know that none of that actually had to do with a CTR Elmo, but I just wanted you to know how OBSESSED she is with Elmo.

So to the CTR Elmo:

Tonight for FHE, my mom, and Mais, and I went to an LDS bookstore in Salem called Brass Plates. They are going out of business and so everything is on sale. So we went and Mais was wanting to walk everywhere and take every book off the shelf, so we were trying to distract her. My mom found these really cute CTR bears and told Mais she would buy one for her. My mom showed her a yellow one, but she didn't want it and we couldn't figure out why. She started reaching for this red one that was on a different shelf. So my mom gave that one to her and we ended up buying it. In the car she kept giving it kisses and kept loving it and singing songs to it and we weren't even telling her too. She was doing it all on her own. So, we stopped to pick up dinner on the way home and we took her new CTR bear in with us. When we were ordering, she started singing "Melmo, Melmo, Melmo, Melmo" and then it hit me. She wanted the red CTR bear because she thinks it is an Elmo. This girl has a one track mind!

The CTR "MELMO"

Fall is here... and so are the teeth!

Happy Fall!

Maisey and I have been walking every morning and every morning, it seems to be getting cooler out. The leaves are starting to change color and fall to the ground, which leads me to my favorite part about fall... the crunchy leaves. I love to walk through the leaves when it hasn't rained for a while and I love listening to them crunch under my feet. In the afternoons, Mais and I walk to the park, but we don't take the stroller, she actually walks with me. She, too, has started to stomp on the leaves, because she sees how much fun mommy has! She also loves to hold leaves in her hand. It amazes me how much she learns just through watching me.

Anyway, Maisey got 3 new teeth in 3 days, and on Saturday, she just started taking off and walking. She is walking all through the house now and she LOVES to clap for herself. She took a few steps a couple of weeks ago, but this is like real walking! I am so glad that she decided to do it on a weekend when Shaun was home, so he didn't miss out on it. Check out the video. I took it on my phone so it's not the best quality, but you can still see her!

Productivity

Today has been a GREAT day! Lately, Maisey has been really cranky and just not really herself. But today, she was back and we got so much done. This morning we went on an hour long walk. She really enjoys walks now, well as of 2 weeks ago. She used to cry in the middle of walks so loud that I would end up carrying her home and pushing the stroller with one hand. But we go on really long walks now and she loves them. When we returned from our walk I put Mais down for a nap and was able to do some house hunting (No, we haven't found a place yet) and take a shower. Mais finally woke up 2 hours later and we went to run errands. We went to the post office, Albertsons, Blockbuster, and Target. She was an ANGEL!!! She was being so good and cute. When we got home we played for a while and read some books. I put her down for her afternoon nap and she went down so well. I made some cookie dough and cleaned up the house for a bit. Then after an hour, I had to wake Mais up to take my brother to work. When I got home I baked the cookies so my mom had warm Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies (the best ever, but especially during fall) when she got home. I also made dinner, and cleaned up, did some laundry, bathed my little mermaid, and made this totally cute poster for Mais. She loves to look at pictures on my mom's bulletin board, so I decided to get crafty and make one for her that she can actually touch without getting in trouble. Here is the finished work and I covered it with Contact Paper so she could actually touch the pictures. I did realize that I left my brother off of it though, so I think I am going to replace the picture in the top right corner. I also watched "Made of Honor" tonight with my mom. It was pretty predictable, Ok, VERY predictable, and I wasn't in love with it. Anyway, if you read through all of this, thank you for caring enough. I was just so excited that the one day my daughter decided to be good ALL day, I was able to get so much done. Here are a few pics of what we've been up to.

The aforementioned poster!
Mais and Grammy in their BYU Gear for the big blowout against UCLA last Saturday!
"Hey Mom, I'm hungry! Can I make us some lunch?"

Mais is into everything these days! Literally IN!

After 26 years... Finally a BOY!!!

We have not seen a boy in our family since my brother was born 26 years ago! Finally, in the middle of the BYU Football game on September 6th, 2008, Derick Scott Curtis was born. He weighed 8 lbs. 1.5 oz. (to be precise!) and was 21.5 in. long. My sister swears he has hair on the back of his head, but from all of the pics it doesn't really look like it. We are sad that we won't be able to see him until Thanksgiving!

Welcome to the world Baby Derick!
The proud Mommy and Daddy!
One day old!
Just home from the hospital!
Peacefully sleeping!

Congrats Christina, Clayton, and Shayla on the new addition to your family!

The Hustle and Bustle of Seattle!

We had a GREAT weekend in Seattle. We went to The Cheesecake Factory (of course!) on Thursday night. On Friday we headed downtown to meet Shaun for lunch. After lunch we headed toward the Space Needle to go on this AWESOME tour called Ride the Ducks. It's like a bus that drives you around town and points everything out to you and then it drives straight into the water to do a tour on the water. It was so crazy and so fun! So this is the bus floating in the water!
Maisey loved the "Quackers"
She loved kissing with the quackers!
This is for Ryan, even though he won't be able to look at it. That's right... he totally has a popped collar!
Mais took a brief snooze on the tour!
Like I said, BRIEF! She loved being in the water though.
Back on land!
Thanks for coming with us Janel! We had a blast!

After this, we picked Shaun up from work and headed to the Mariner's game. Janel has all of those pics so I will post them later. It was both Maisey and Janel's first game! Maisey was awesome during it. She LOVES to eat pretzels. She didn't fall asleep all game. What a trooper!

On Saturday, we went to the BYU football game. We ended up winning... it was a miracle! Again, Mais was awesome and loved to eat a pretzel!

The BYU Crew!

Mais and Mommy sportin the Cougar Blue!

We had a great time, but Maisey misses her daddy and I miss my husband! I guess we only have 2 more days until this weekend!

Maisey is Missing Papa

Enough Said!

Elder Grimmett

Elder Ryan Grimmett went into the MTC on August 27. We are so proud of him and the choice that he has made to serve a mission.
The fam with Elder Grimmett
Mais is sure going to miss her uncle!

I've never had the expereince of taking a missionary to the MTC before. It was so neat. I know that Ryan will make a great missionary and the people of Tampico Mexico are lucky to have him!