A month of Gratitude

I have been thinking of posting all week, but didn't ever get around to it. I was thinking of different titles for this post:
- The month of moving
- The month of madness
- A primary program every Sunday?
- So exhausted
- Off on a Loooong trip to Colorado
- Will life ever slow down?

But then I got thinking, I have so much to be thankful for. So I am going to try not to focus on the craziness in my life (because it really probably could get worse!) and focus on those things that mean the most in my life.

I am thankful for:

- A husband who loves me for who I am, and who is willing to give his co-worker a ride home from work even though it was 30 min each way out of his way, who is HOME from Seattle, who reads scriptures with me every night, who I trust enough to trim my hair for me, who goes along with my crazy ideas, who helps my mom with SO much, and who is a great Daddy to my baby!

- A daughter who is so precious and cute, who is saying tons or words, who randomly tells me "Love You", who runs to me and gives me big hugs and pats my back, who folds her hands so reverently during prayer (ok for like 10 seconds), who takes great naps and sleeps so beautifully at night, who LOVES Elmo, who carries around a little figurine of Jesus and says His name all the time, and who loves to watch football, or as she says, "Foo Ball Ball"

- A mom who is the most incredible woman I have ever known. Who has had to make some HUGE life changing decisions in these last few months, who is so brave, who is faithful, who has a Dyson vacuum and lets me borrow it VERY often, and sometimes even vacuums my house for me, who is an awesome Grandma to Mais, who babysits for FREE, and who is my shopping partner.

- My new house! I love everything about it!

- Our new ward, and especially our primary. Today was our primary program for Sacrament meeting, and it totally captivated Mais. She just sat there and listened for about half the time, and then fell asleep. All on her own, just sitting on my sister's lap. Because she had a nap during church, she was SO good for the rest of the time.

- And last, but not least, I am grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For the peace and the comfort that it brings into my life. For the Plan of Salvation. For the knowledge that I have that I will see my dad again, for the scriptures whose words are so true, for President Monson, for General Conference, and for Jesus Christ and His ultimate sacrifice so that I may live with my Heavenly Father again.

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I am really sorry, but still no pictures of the house. I haven't taken a single picture on my camera since Halloween. That's right, the WHOLE month of November, not a single picture. We have been pretty busy. The weekend after we moved in, Shaun's family came to visit. Shaun and his dad put in a new garage door opener for us, put some child safety locks on all our our kitchen cabinets and did a few other things around the house. The next week, my mom sold her house! YAY! What a blessing in this CRAZY market. We moved some of my mom's things to her new house that weekend (even though she wasn't supposed to close on her old house until December 30). The next Monday, my mom's realtor called and asked if she could close at the end of November instead. Of course she said yes because she already owned her other house. So from Monday through yesterday I spent some extremely late nights at my mom's helping her pack up and start moving some smaller boxes and things to her new house. My sisters flew in this weekend to help with the move also. So many ward members showed up Saturday morning to move all of her furniture. Her house was empty in 2 hours! It was AWESOME! So between our move and then moving my mom for like 2 weeks straight, we are all pretty exhausted, sick of moving, but so THANKFUL it is done!

We leave Tuesday to head to my sister's in Colorado for Thanksgiving. My nephew will be blessed on Sunday. I am excited to meet him for the first time, but I have to admit, I am not really looking forward to the LONG drive that we will be making (2 days each way), and the extremely FULL car that we will be bringing. But I am looking forward to stopping in Provo for some delicious Cafe Rio! I have seriously been craving that every night for the past month and as I am typing this, my mouth is actually watering! YUM!

I scheduled my ultrasound for December 8th. That means in 2 weeks we will know if we are having a boy or a girl. We are so excited, and I can't believe how fast this pregnancy is going. By the way, in the last week, I have totally popped out! My aunt saw me on Sunday, and then saw me again on Friday and there was a huge difference. And after I took my coat off at my mom's house on Thursday, she said, "WHOA! When did that happen?" Kinda crazy! My sisters think its cute, I'm still getting used to it again, especially this time since it seriously came on in like 2 days!

Well, I probably will not have time to post again until we get back next Monday, so Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Halloween and House

So I have a free minute in the middle of the day (I know very RARE!) so I thought I would hurry and post some pictures from Halloween and 1 picture of our house! (I will post more of the house when I take more!)

Mais is enjoying a sucker from her trick-or-treat bucket
Baby Elmo pauses for a quick picture!

"Just one more thing, Grammy. What do I say again?"

Pre-trick-or-treating pose! Her Grandma Grimmett sent her that CUTE Elmo Halloween Balloon!

This is the front of our new house! I love it, but I will love it even more when Shaun is home (tomorrow!) to enjoy it with Maisey and I.

Like I said above, I will post pics of the inside, once I actually take them, which won't be until we actually unpack everything! We are getting there though!

Choices

My Sister sent this to me in an email! I thought it was really funny and sometimes I feel like this is my life!

Life Boils Down to 2 Choices:

Should I get a Dog...?

...Or Have Kids?

A nice surprise!

I have a lot to catch up on. Hopefully that will be later in the week.

But for now I just wanted to share that Shaun in officially done in Seattle on Friday! He called me this morning and said the project is ahead of schedule and they will be done a week and a half early!

I am SO excited!

Our Pumpkins

So my goal was to be in bed by 9 tonight because I am starting to catch a cold (I think it is from lack of sleep) and I need to be nice and healthy for our big move this weekend. Well, I got on to check my email, and saw that my friend Jenny emailed me to tell me that she started a blog. So of course I had to log in, add her to my friends list, then start checking everyone else's blogs. I saw that a lot of people posted pics of their pumpkins, then I got to thinking, I haven't put those up yet either. So there you go. That's my train of thought for this post, and I now have 7 minutes to be in bed by 10 pm! The artist hard at work!
I hate scraping out the guts!

Daddy, Mais, and Baby Elmo Pumpkin (Mais is going to be Elmo for Halloween!)

Uncle Scott, Daddy, and Mais are so proud of their pumpkins!

The finished products out for display!

My part in all of this: Watching Mais so Shaun could work, picking out what Shaun carved on our pumpkin, and cleaning up! I hate carving pumpkins, but I love to see them carved! So thanks Shaun for doing the dirty work!

I now have 4 minutes to be in bed! That was a record post time for me!

Whirlwind!

Maisey has never been sick, except for the common cold, oh and 1 time she had a vomiting spell that lasted like 48 hours, but she has never had a fever before! At least until yesterday.

On Friday, Mais was not acting like herself. She is getting two more molars in right now, so I figured everything was attributed to teething. She took really bad naps and was just really fussy all day, with one crying/screaming spell for like almost 2 hours. But then... Saturday morning at 3:30 am, she woke up screaming. Shaun went in her room to calm her down and put her back to bed. At 4:30 she started screaming again. So I got up with her and she was inconsolable. We turned Elmo on and she sat on my lap and watched Elmo until she fell asleep around 8:00 am. She woke up about 20 minutes later, screaming again. She felt pretty warm so I took her temperature and it was only 97.7! I wasn't sure what was going on, again I still thought it was the teeth. I had been up since 4:30 with her and I was exhausted. Shaun took a turn with her so my mom and I could go run some errands. When I got home, Mais was so miserable and just sitting on Shaun's lap either crying or moaning. I took her temperature at 12:30 and it was 102.2! I was really surprised and scared. My baby had NEVER had a temperature above 99 before. Usually she is in the 97's. So I called the doc's office, and of course their office hours ended at 12:00 pm. So we ventured off to Urgent Care. We filled out paper work and Mais screamed in the waiting room the entire time. After about 30 minutes I finally went up to the receptionist and asked how long the wait time was and she said at least 2 hours. Practically in tears I asked her how she expected a 14 month old baby to sit here and wait 2 more hours? She just shrugged her shoulders. I went back to Shaun and Mais and told Shaun as I burst in to tears.

Just after that my mom called me. We had taken our van in earlier that morning to get the brakes changed, which by the way we needed new rotars (spelling?) too, so that was bad news because it doubled the price. She told me that our van was ready to be picked up, but they closed in 2 hours. So Shaun let me leave to go pick the van up and then come right back. Of course, like 5 minutes after I left (and only about an hour after we got there) they call Mais back into the room. I think the receptionist lady felt bad and could tell I was frustrated so she let us in earlier. It turned out that Mais had a really bad ear infection. So when I got home I filled her prescription (at Safeway! :) ) and started her up on the 3 hour rotation of Tylenol and Motrin!

Saturday night was supposed to be the first night that any one not related to us and under the age of 30 was going to come over and baby sit so we could go to Stake Conference (She is a girl, or now a teenager, that I used to babysit when she was little.) So we called and cancelled and decided to order take out Mexican at our favorite Mexican place. To top the weekend off, when Shaun got home with our order, they got mine wrong. So I had to drive all the way back to get it fixed.

Needless to say, it's been a whirlwind of a last few days, and the tornado hasn't even touched ground yet. This next week is going to be crazy too. We sign on our house tomorrow morning, and we move on Thursday. Then Friday is Halloween and then we need to finish moving on Saturday. All while I babysit 4 days this week and Shaun works 3 days in Seattle. I don't think life will ever slow down!

First sign that Mais wasn't feeling good: She fell asleep with an apple slice in her mouth!
Moaning Maisey just laying on Daddy's tummy while waiting at Urgent Care
How do you know when you baby is feeling better? When she is back to her normal self. She was walking around with Papa's cane and hitting things with it. Thank goodness for Tylenol, Motrin, and amoxicillin!

Switching to Safeway!

So... I found a Safeway in the town we will be moving to, and I am going to switch to their pharmacy in hopes for better luck!

I went today to get it all figured out! Luckily, I could leave Mais with Shaun. And it was a good thing. It took 3 Wal-Mart employees and 30 minutes to figure out what was going on and then finally I'm pretty sure they just opened the register and gave me the money that they owed me! Oh and 1 Wal-Mart employee that was helping me looked at the clock and said, "Oh it's 6:00, I'm off, let me go get someone else to help you!" At least the person she got was some what competent and was able to at least get me my money!

In 30 days, when I have to go back, I will for sure be going to Safeway!

One of those days!

So before I vent, I should give some background. This week I started babysitting for a family in Woodburn, the town that we will be moving to in 1 WEEK!!!!!!!!! It's supposed to be on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, but this week the lady asked if I could babysit on Wednesday too. So on Monday I babysat for my cousin, and then Tuesday-Friday I babysat a 1-year old, a 2-year old, and then they also have a 5-year old who goes to all day Kindergarten and then after school programs so I don't see her too much! So to sum it up, I haven't been able to get much done during the week! I leave our house at 7:15 am, and don't get back until 6 pm. Then I feed Mais, the trooper, dinner, and then it's straight to bed because we get up so early!

So... since I can't really do things during the day anymore, (who wants to drag a 2-year old and 2 1-year olds to the grocery store? That's suicide!) I had to stop at Wal-Mart on my way home yesterday to drop off a prescription for my pre-natal vitamins. Mais was hungry and tired and very uncooperative. And let's just say, Wal-Mart employee's weren't very quick! (What should I expect?) So today, I stopped by again on my way home to pick up the prescription because they don't keep that specific kind in stock so they had to order it. They said it would be ready anytime after 3:30 pm. So at 5:30 I got to Wal-Mart and went to the pharmacy. I had Mais strapped into the shopping cart and again she was being very uncooperative! The pharmacy lady told me that it wasn't ready yet and to come back in 15 minutes. I really wanted to say, "would you like to watch my screaming 1 year old for 15 minutes?" But instead I politely said, "Ok, I'll be back." I was talking on the phone to my mom and she had a great idea! Buy Mais some chicken nuggets from the McDonald's in Wal-Mart to keep her occupied for the 15 minutes! Great idea Mom! So I went straight over to McDonald's and bought some chicken nuggets. All six of them ended up catapulted out of the cart and my crazy 1-year old was OUT OF CONTROL! We kept walking around the store, and all of the people were starring at me, well probably Maisey, but it was very embarrassing. Finally 15 minutes had past so I went up to the pharmacy again only to wait in another 10 minute line. When I got to the front, the same lady that helped me 25 minutes ago acted like she had never seen me. (I don't know how you can't remember Maisey screaming!) I told her my name and my birth date and she looked me up in the computer and said that it still wasn't ready. So I said, "I will stand here and wait then!" She went to the back, and magically it was ready! She told me it was $35 and I thought that was a lot, but I couldn't deal with that right now. I didn't care how much it cost, I just wanted to get Mais out of that store and back in the car. I swiped the card, took the pills, and off we went.

When we got home, I strapped Mais in her high chair (we are now way behind schedule because it took so long) and gave her some dinner, because she didn't eat ANY of the chicken nuggets. I told my mom that I though $35 for a one-month supply of pre-natal vitamins was kind of expensive and she agreed. So I looked on the slip that comes with it to find out how much the insurance covered. I couldn't find that amount anywhere. I looked in the bag to look at the prescription only to find 15 days worth of pills there. So I immediately call the Wal-Mart pharmacy and I am on hold for 12 minutes until finally I talk to someone. They tell me that they must have overlooked my insurance so I will be getting a $25 refund (Good thing!) and that they accidentally only gave me half of the quantity and the rest of it is sitting there! What a pain!

So I guess I will be venturing off to Wal-Mart Pharmacy again tomorrow evening! Wish me Luck!

A Photo Tag from Monica

This is the 4th photo in my 4th folder.

Shaun and I are rockin' the Boomerang at 7 peaks in July of 2005.

I tag Robyne, Randi, and Kendra. Can't wait to see what you post!

Thursday Night Highlights!

So... I've decided that Thursday nights are the best night of my week (not counting the weekend!). After a long week of single parenting, I am so excited for Shaun to get home the next day. I just sit and veg in front of the TV for hours watching what some would consider dumb shows, but I think they are hilarious! My new discovery... Fox's Hole in the Wall. It is probably the dumbest show out there next to MXC, but for some reason it makes me laugh so hard. I totally want to go on it with my sisters. I think it would be so fun. If you haven't seen it, check out a clip from the link below. It's a great start to Thursday nights. Then of course, you have The Office, which was absolutely hilarious tonight, just like usual. I found this clip online for some deleted scenes from tonights episode. So Funny, I don't know why they were deleted! Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!

The Office - Baby Shower- Clip One - Video - NBC.com

Fox Broadcasting Company: Hole In The Wall - Home


And, While I'm ranting and raving about TV shows (which I don't actually watch TV that much, pretty much just Thursdays), the new season of 24 starts on Sunday, Nov. 23rd. So I guess I'll have to add that one to my list of shows.


And since this post, I was informed that the actual season of 24 doesn't start in November, just little clips of the season. They should tell people that on the commercials! :)