Pre-Halloween!

A sneak peak of our Halloween costumes!

Hailey's going to be a butterfly! She wouldn't really sit still for a good pic. Hopefully tomorrow!

Mommy's a clown! Yes...those are home-made red shoes! :)

The things they say...

Today Hailey had "ketchup milk" for dinner and read a story about "ketchup's house." You guessed it...she's obsessed with ketchup. We had KFC for dinner; chicken, mashed potatoes and mac & cheese but she insisted she had ketchup. Sometimes we give Hailey pink milk (milk with a couple drops of strawberry syrup) because she will gulp it down and tonight was one of those nights. BUT tonight it was ketchup milk. We read a story about Santa and reindeer (when mommy read it) and when Hailey read the same story to her baby it ended up being about visiting ketchup's house. Oh the imagination! :)

Big Girl

This weekend was busy but we had so much fun! Friday night we decided to put Hailey into her big girl bed. Well, it was her same bed but we changed it into the toddler bed part. Since then we have seen a completely different side of her! She is so independent and a "big girl!" Here's a cute pic of her showing off her new bed.


She has done so well with it! We haven't heard any pitter patter of her little feet running around...yet. We practiced with her that she could play in her bed while the lights were on, but she needed to lay down when the lights turned off. Hopefully it continues! Since sleeping in her toddler bed she has become so much more independent in everything! She's way more open to going potty on the potty and wore big girl underwear for most of the day yesterday! She picks out which ones she wants to wear (each time because she's still peeing in them) and grabs them out of her drawer by herself. I think it's going to be easier training her from panties then pull ups because she knows the minute she's wet. She looks at us and says, "I'm peeing Mommy" and we whisk her away to the potty! We're definitely getting there!

Saturday we spent the morning playing and potty training and after nap headed over to the Paulk's. Hailey was so excited to see Riley! She kept asking if we were really going to Riley house, we'd say yes, and she'd yell yea! We're so blessed to have such great friends (us and Hailey!) and we're not too far away. We let the girls play for awhile, then Shelby and I snuck out to Meijer to pick up food for dinner. Nich and Ty did pretty well handling the three kids! Way more work than just Hailey! The girls played some more....and more...and more.


I didn't get a cute picture of the girls, but Hailey sure loved Lincoln! After Riley went to bed Hailey got to play with him and hold him. She'll be such a good big sister some day!

After dinner and bed times the fun began! Nich and Ty watched the new Hulk movie and Shelby and I got to scrapbook! It's so much fun with someone else! :) She's making a book of Riley's family and I was still working on Hailey's book. I got 4 pages done! Amazing how much you can accomplish if you put your mind too it!

Sunday we surprise Nana and Papa and headed up to Flint after church. Of course, Hailey didn't nap the entire drive and passed out after only playing for 1/2 hour at their house. She slept until 5:30! Nana and Papa have my old toy box filled with toys for Hailey and she knows right where to go! She found the dress up dress and became a whole new person! Here's some cute pics and video of her. My little star!


I was helping her jump off the fireplace hearth onto Ceaser's bed. She wouldn't jump by herself, but got such a kick out of it!

Papa was checking to see if the light would come out the other side...

Sweetest video of Hailey singing her heart out! Pay close attention...she slips in "I love Riley!" I love the ta'da at the end too!

Glasses Girls!

So I have to wear my glasses for a week. NOT excited about it. I have GPC, an eyelid disease that makes my eyelid rough so a contact doesn't fit right. Proteins build up and make bumps on my eyelid. (Dr Schaff would be proud!) Glasses for a week with steroid drops, then for the next six weeks I can't sleep with my contacts in and have to clean them with hydrogen peroxide.


Hailey hadn't seen me in my glasses for awhile and wanted to wear her glasses too! She's such a sweet heart!

Polite 2 year old!?!

Hailey now takes her baths in the sink and she had such good manners tonight I had to get it on video! "Thank you Daddy! Excuse me Daddy! Thank you Daddy!"

Catch up pics!

Ok, now for some pics that I have been really wanting to post, but I figured I should probably post all the cruise ones in a row. Now I'm caught up and can post random adorable pictures of Hailey!
The day after we got back Grandma and Grandpa took us to Applewood at Mott's Farm in Flint. The three of us rode on a golf cart down the hill and got this family picture!


She and another little girl made friends and ran up and down the hill! Brittney showed me a new downloadable program called Picassa (highly recommend it by the way!) and I did some special effects to this picture!
We stopped at Meme's house on our way home and Hailey remembered there were blocks under her couch. She just had to bend into a pretzel to reach them!


The only ear of corn from our garden this year! It was about an inch long but Hailey peeled it and carried around her "baby corn" all around the house that day!

Britt also snapped this precious picture of Hailey reading the Bible. She was reading it by herself for about 10 minutes. It's just such a perfect picture. One of Meme's friends was going to use it for her Bible study.

Britt and Shelby also posted pretty cute pictures on their blogs of her. Click on their names to see the posts I'm talking about! Brittney has a video of Hailey dancing and singing in her flower girl dress and Shelby has pictures of the two girls playing at their house last weekend.

Day 4: Key West
The last day as we were heading to Key West I got up early enough to see the sunrise and it was beautiful! There were three people (myself included) that were up that morning snapping pictures. And we got some great ones! Every other morning it was cloudy or rainy around sunrise time. I didn't set my alarm, I just have to pee every day at 6:30am. On the cruise I got up, checked the sunrise then went back to sleep for a couple more hours!
We also saw dolphins - there were probably 6 of them that kept jumping keeping up with the back of our boat! I was the only one to actually catch the dolphin jumping in mid-air! Pretty cool . It was worth getting up early the days before!

Pic of our ship! Ours is the one farthest right. There are also 2 Carnival ships that pretty much followed us to each port.

Key West was mostly full of little shops, Ernest Hemingway's House, Key Lime pie shops, and lots of touristy attractions. We caught up with a couple friends we had made and walked around the island making up our own sightseeing tour! This is Heather and Trae, Nich and I at the southernmost point of the USA. (as you can probably read from the bouy!) While we were waiting to get our pic taken, a tour guide was telling people that they used to just have a wooden sign saying "Southernmost point of the USA" but each year college kids would come down and steal the sign and hid it somewhere else on the island so the mayor decided to build this huge buoy so they couldn't move it. Useless neat facts...free courtesy of someone else's tour guide!!

While walking around the shops we kept seeing "Protected by NASA" in all the shop windows. I thought it was hilarious that NASA had anything to do with Key West's safety, but as we looked closer it ended up just being an alarm company. It would've been a lot cooler if it was THE Nasa!


Another pic of the 4 of us. We hung out quite a bit with them. They stayed at the Airport Regency hotel with us and shared our carpool shuttle to the port. Even though there are thousands of people on the ship, there are some people that you just see over and over again. We kept running into each other and ended up becoming pretty good friends! We had a great time walking around, talking and taking goofy pictures with them!

Goofy picture of Nich and Trae!

This is a full picture of our dining table and our waiter's Rakish and Garfield. We had a great company, great service and great meals! I was pretty brave and even ordered some foods that I couldn't pronounce! I also always ordered two desserts (and gained 4 pounds!) There were so good to us! We had a wonderful trip and are so grateful to Grandma and Grandpa for watching Hailey so we good have such a relaxing trip. Hope you all enjoyed the pictures and stories! :)