Winding Down

Monday evenings Sara Madalin gets to hang out with her Daddy. He took a few pictures for me to show how she winds down after a long day at daycare.

First she starts with a little BabyFirst TV.

Then she gets really comfortable with her cup.

Finally she downs a few ounces of milk and does some toe touches.

Then she's off to bed before I even get home. I'm glad she's able to really relax for a few minutes after such a trying day.

So.... there was this football game...

I'm not sure if any of our readers know this, but there was a little football game on TV Sunday night. I think it was between some team from Louisiana and one of those Manning guys. Ha.

We look for pretty much any reason to get together and eat with our friends, so we invited a few over to watch the game with us. Granny and Gramps came over. And of course, they wore their Mardi Gras beads in support of that team from New Orleans.

Jana also came over. I seriously don't know what Martha and I would have done without her there to explain to us what was going on in the game. Oh, and she brought cookies.

Sara Madalin had a great time with Gramps. She'd run over to the gate and wait for him to chase her.

She'd let him hold her for about 20 seconds then she was off again.

Right before half-time I fixed her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm thinking that she enjoyed it almost as much as we enjoyed our steaks.

Looks like she also managed to confiscate a couple strands of beads from somebody.

We had a great time with everyone. Martha and I are pretty sure that we won't be hired to coach or commentate a football game any time soon. My only regret of the whole night was that I didn't get a video of Martha and Dewayne dancing when that guy for the Saints intercepted the ball and ran like 70 yards for a touchdown. I probably could have made a lot of money off a video like that.

Over-Hauls

When my younger brother was a toddler, he would call his overalls, "over-hauls." Sara Madalin wore her first pair of "over-hauls" today. I just can't get over what a BIG girl she is.

Cute

Friday afternoon I took a little trip over to our nearby outlet mall to pick up a few things for Sara Madalin. She has pretty much ruined every t-shirt she has. I can always tell when they have chocolate pudding for dessert at school. How? Because half of it ends up on her clothes. And then, for some reason, the knees of most all her knit pants are stained. I don't know what she does on the playground, but I have a feeling my little girl stays pretty active the whole time she's out there.

(This is off the subject, but, well, it is my blog so I can get off the subject from time to time if I choose. Thursday when I picked her up from daycare, she was sitting in the time out chair. It's a high chair. She frequently sits in the time out chair. Anyway, she was sitting there and about 5 other kids were standing on the floor around her rocking the chair back and forth. I told Reagan it looked like she was the queen and they were trying to break her free. Wanna know why she was in time out? She had been taking other children's pacifiers out of their mouth and putting it in her mouth. Pretty sure that's how she got strep throat last week.)

Back to the story of shopping. There are some REALLY cute Spring clothes out. I wanted to buy it all. But I didn't. I bought her a few outfits to get her through these cooler months until it's warm enough to wear all the things I bought her on sale at the end of last season. And while I was there, I picked her up a couple little "happies." I got her a headband with a flower on it and a little beaded, elastic necklace. Here she is modeling them.

I never imagined I'd have such a cute little girl to call my own.

Flashback Friday - A Bad, Bad Thing

A couple weeks ago, as I was getting my Flashback Friday post ready, I had to have Reagan bring the drive that we store our photos on to me. Normally, it sits up high on his dresser in our bedroom and I connect to it wirelessly. Because I've been having some "issues" with my MacBook, he brought it to me and I plugged in directly to it. While I was working, something happened (I can't remember what now, but I'm sure it had something to do with the toddler that lives here) that caused me to get up from my chair really quickly. As I did, I knocked the drive over. It hit our hard, concrete floor. Something inside the storage device broke. I attempted to access our photos, to see if it still worked. By doing that, I ruined every photo and video we had saved on there. Photos from 1994 until today. For the past two weeks it has been in the hands of some computer specialists that Reagan knows. They've tried everything they can to restore and retrieve our photos and videos. He got a call Thursday stating that they could save nothing. To say we are upset by this is an understatement.

However, we do have back up CDs that Reagan burned that have most of our photos from 1994 through 2007. But, Sara Madalin was born in 2008. We have photos backed up on another drive that have pictures from May 2009 until now. So, basically we are missing "original" files from 2008 until May 2009. So, I guess it's a good thing after all that I blog pretty much every day. Cause that's all we have left. We plan to have our blog printed, but because I reduce the file size before I post our pictures, and because that will not reproduce well, or at all, I may have lost some photos forever.

Reagan has been working to upload files he can find on discs that we've stored in the past. As he was looking, he found this photo. I thought I'd post it, if for no one else but us. It makes us laugh. Which is a good thing.

This is us in Vale, CO in the late 90's. I can't remember the exact year. We had gone on our first ski trip together to Copper Mountain, CO. The group we were with drove over to Vale for dinner one night. The main things I remember about that trip are:

1. I hated snow skiing.
2. I'd never seen so much snow in my life.
3. Skiing is WAY more work than it's worth.
4. The night this photo was taken, I had gone into the restroom at the restaurant. There was a lady in there who had to be at least 50. She spoke to me. Asked where we were from. Asked my age. I told her. Then I asked her a few questions. I also asked her age. And she said to me, as she touched up her make-up in the mirror, "A lady never reveals her age." Well, that would have been good to know BEFORE I shared my age with you.
5. It's hard to breath in the mountains of CO.

Have a great weekend.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Sugar putting a cold "rice pack" to her head after falling and bumping her head. Looks like she's had a little practice with that, huh?

Sew Much Help

See that grin?

That's the look of a little girl who is BUSY and up to no good.

I am teaching a Beginner Sewing class this semester. My students are using a beginner machine and I finally got one this past weekend. I have a different personal machine, but I wanted to familiarize myself with the model that they will be using. I don't know WHAT made me think that I could have something as interesting as a sewing machine out and not have help with what I'm working on. I can't wait until the day that I get to teach her to sew.

You can almost see the wheels turning. "Now, how can I get my hands on this thing without Mommy knowing?"

You might want to click that picture above to enlarge it. Miss Priss has her hair in a ponytail. I tried putting her hair in one last week while we were home sick. Now, every time she sees a ponytail holder, or goes digging through the drawer in her room where I keep them, she brings it to me to put in her hair.

Watch it Jiggle, See it Wiggle

Sunday morning after church we met our friend Jana for lunch at Ichiban. Sara Madalin was so excited to see Jana. She gave her a little love before we sat her in her chair to eat a lunch. I tried to get her to eat little hot dogs and she wouldn't eat. I tried to get her to eat mac-n-cheese, she wouldn't eat it. But when she saw the cherry tomatoes on her Daddy's plate, she nearly jumped out of her chair to get one. I'm pretty sure she filled up on snacks in nursery and didn't want any lunch.

Reagan also brought her some Jello-jigglers to try. Of course, the only color they had was RED. She was so funny trying to eat the Jello.

She tried to eat it with her spoon but soon gave up on that and just held the spoon while she ate it with her hands.

It's pretty obvious by the look on her face that she enjoyed the Jello and the fun.

And here she is giving Aunt Jana a little love before we left. Actually Jana was giving the love. Sara Madalin was more interested in getting down and going to the fish tank.