Our Journey of Love

We had a nice Halloween, just stopped down to see a few neighbors and then came home to hand out candy. Karalee had walked so much that day that she really didn't feel like doing it for Halloween which is fine, I don't blame her! Why walk if you can con someone into carrying you? Lol I didn't even try to keep track this year as I have a hard enough time walking out a room and remembering what I wanted/needed lol. Preggo brain is fully engaged these days! Lol Our neighbors said they counted 300 kids though which is about what we had last year. I do know I actually had a little bit of candy left over this year, guess buying 700+ pieces was a good idea LOL. Karalee didn't see many of the kids since she was so tired she and her dad went and started night night. She was playing in the bath when her buddy Addison came by-she's so stinkin cute and was dressed up like a leprechaun!! Oh my gosh was she precious. Of course I didn't have my camera so no pics of her to share.

October 31, 2008
Karalee with Kit Kat

She made me so incredibly proud a few days ago, we walked down to our park and Karalee is a huge fan of holding onto our stroller and walking that way. 'Course she does like to drop to her knees and take a break quite often lol. At any rate she walked a fair portion to the park, then had me carry her the last leg of it. She got all excited when she saw the playground and bounced up and down on me until we got there to play lol. On the way back she walked down an entire sidewalk BY HERSELF!!! That's right, she let go of the stroller and took off!!! I so wish I'd had the camera but of course I didn't darn it! She kicked butt on that walk and I'm so proud of her! She was tired by the time we crossed the street to head home so I carried her but oh my gosh did she do fantastic with her walking! She got new shoes a few weeks ago so she's been adapting to them and this was the first time she took off with out holding onto to anything or anyone. Proud proud proud of my kiddo! The last few days she's just been taking off and she's getting faster! She's doing so well at walking! It's like she decided, okay I'm ready and that was that! :-)

She has decided that brushing ones teeth is for the birds lol. She used to love it, now it's a trick getting them done. I took one of my friends idea's and started letting Karalee "brush" my teeth while I brush hers and that works more or less. I can at least get a swipe in on top and bottom in the front and back. Not as well as I'd like but I figure it's something. I usually let her take the tooth brush with her while I get her ready for pj's and she chews on that so I figure that helps too. I let her brush her teeth in the bath too lol. I found it to be less of a fight if I did that. Hey a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do! :-)

She is getting very independent about feeding herself, she'll let us do the first few forkfuls/spoonfuls and then she wants to take over. Most of the time she'll let us put the food on the spoon/fork then hand it over but she does like to do it herself at times. She does pretty good...long as the food is solid and heavy enough to stick to her utensile as she likes to turn it upside down to eat lol. She's also got a favorite dessert which is mini oreo's as they're perfect for her little hands. She also loves the chocolate chip cookies you get at Old Chicago or Red Lobster.

She's still an absolute sweetheart and loves snuggles. She started a few days ago that if I'm holding her she'll rub and pat my back just like I do to her and it just melts my heart. My little love.

Karalee got the giggles one night because of a marker of all things! She discovered she could pop the top off, and put it back on, repeat. Well Dana and I started making noises when she'd do it or gasp and act surprised and that coupled with the marker
was just too darn funny to her.

October 21, 2008
Our little giggler-she had us in stitches all night laughing :-)

Karalee does have her first shiner, she tripped over the hose and smacked into our porch before either her Uncle Jim or I could do anything about it. Poor kid. She cried for about 5 minutes, calmed down so I could give her the Tylenol and then she was right back to walking all over. It's not too bad a bruise considering she hit the porch but it did swell a bit and it's now a bit bruised looking under her eye. Hasn't slowed her down though like I said lol. She still takes off and doesn't stop until it's time to eat or sleep! We give her tylenol to help her sleep easier and help with the swelling. She refuses ice packs near her lol.

November 1, 2008
Karalee walking like a zombie, it was hilarious, she just started it all on her own.

Up close of Karalee so you can see her shiner

November 2, 2008
Eating her oatmeal-herself, she's getting quite independent about that. You can see a bit of the shiner, she has oatmeal on it so it looks shinier then it is. :-)

Karalee feeding herself oatmeal

Here's a few more shots of Karalee at the air museum.
October 19, 2008
Karalee by aircraft tire, look how small she looks next to it! I think this is on the B-52

B-52 (I think that's the correct name-I'm a bad air force brat! I'm sure someone will correct me if I have the plane named wrong.) This is the plane where K had her picture next to the tire

Dana and Karalee

Karalee had a blast with this, it was shot up by air and she discovered it was quite easy to knock that foam ball right off the stand lol. So she did...repeatedly hee hee

My book club is going well, we meet once a month although we will have a long break due to the holidays we all decided that was a lot to put on our plates so we're going to pick a long book or possibly just pick 2 books to read for Nov and Dec, then just meet in January to talk about them. It's so enjoyable to have people to hang out with and chat about the books. I will admit I've slacked and the last two I never finished lol, heck one I never even really started. We were supposed to read Shadowland (which is the one I didn't read, I just couldn't get into it) and City of Embers that I did start and will finish, I just started too late to have it done by our meeting. I did read our last selection though called My Enemy's Cradle by Sara Young and that was excellent! I was hooked from line one and it held me all the way through! We'll be meeting to discuss that one in a couple weeks, I can't wait!

October 18, 2008
Our book club group-David was an honorary member that night

Our handsome host Bob

Baby is moving more and the movements are getting stronger, I'm hoping that next time I feel him/her really moving that Dana will be close by and be able to feel them as well. We did get the heart beat monitor from my aunt and it's very cool the listen to our childs heart beat! We don't have the one that displays the rate but you can clearly hear the heart beating away inside! It's so cool! Thanks Christie!

Dana's carpool buddy got some unfortunate news that he has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). If you google it you can find more information, basically it means he has trouble breathing and there's nothing doctors can really do about it. They've put him on steroids and instructed him to stop drinking, smoking and to start working out. Hopefully that will be enough to get him breathing better and strengthen his lungs up. :-) I do know he's been doing better since the steroids kicked in, says his lungs kinda hurt but he thinks it's because he's not used to being able to breathe so deeply. Once he gets used to that I'm sure it'll be all good news from there! Their car pooling has been a day by day thing since this diagnosis, hopefully they'll be able to keep carpooling consistently since I know Dana enjoys the company and heck it's always nice to not have to pay for gas for a week right! :-D

Dana's whole department dressed up for Halloween under one theme which was that they were on a business trip and chartered a book which sank/blew up something of that nature. We (okay I) had a blast destroying the clothes he brought home. We burned holes in the pants and his shirt-we weren't sure the shirt was going to stop burning for a second lol. Thing took off with that flame! Lol He made quite I sight I must say lol.

October 31, 2008
Ship wrecked Dana hamming it up

Monica's husband Wade and their son Cole on Jim & Gregg's porch

The witch and the mouse, the mouse looks ticked!

Halloween decorations at night all lit up

Well dang, I thought I'd had a post in September and wasn't too far behind but I log on and see that my last post was in August! Yikes!!!

Dana updated our operating system and poor guy had quite the ordeal with that. First one he bought wouldn't work with our system because it needed more gigs or whatever (I'm not savvy at computer lingo in the least, I tend to stick with thing-a-ma-jig, that dealy etc for my terms lol) so he had to return that, then the second one he bought something caused issues and he had to mess with that. Then he tackled fixing our scanner and that took forever. All in all I haven't been on the computer much since he's been fixing one thing or another lol. Poor guy, all that falls to him because lets face it, if I touched it the computer would implode and smoke would billow towards the heavens while Dana used all his internal will power not to strangle me for "helping". LOL

Let's see. Karalee took a tumble down the stairs that scared the crap out of Dana and I, she did get a cast on her right leg and had to wear that for 3 weeks which stunk since she was just gaining full confidence in her walking ability so that put the brakes on. She's had it off for about 3 weeks now and is just starting to get back into trying to walk, she can do it she's just really nervous and is preferring to crawl more then walk. We're just letting her go at her own pace. I have to give my kid kudo's though, her temperment is so awesome, she just rolls with the flow and deals with whatever life hands her. It wasn't 2 hours in her cast and she had it down how to crawl all over, by the end of the week she was standing and she did take steps along the couch etc in it. Was funny when she got the cast off, she kept leaving her right foot angled because she was so used to it. I'll admit I was most excited-and she was too-that she could have a real bath after it came off! She had so much fun in her bath that night, didn't want to come out! My little water baby. :-)

I love this picture of her, she just got done eating spaghetti:

August 15, 2008

Everyone's been asking if she knows about the baby, well...we've told her and we talk about it but you can tell it hasn't dawned on her yet and really I'm not sure it will until the baby pops her one in the behind while she's sitting on my lap so we've got time lol.

Dana's parents were out at the end of August, beginning of September which was very nice to see them. They had a blast playing with Karalee and I'm sure were quite worn out by the end of their time here. Luckily they have time to re-coup their energy for December's visit. They enjoyed watching her while Dana and I worked and I think Karalee had a good time as well! She was a bit slow to warm up but once Grandma Karen got down on the floor and acted silly for her she was good to go! I don't have pictures of you guys on my side, I'll have to steal them from Dana's and post them a bit later! Sorry!

My parents came out last month which was very nice, they had fun seeing how big Karalee has gotten. Sadly she had her cast when they were visiting so they couldn't see her walk but on the upside they did get to sign her cast! We checked out the Forney Car Museum which is a huge place, bigger then it looks from the outside! Everyone had a good time checking out the vehicles and we got a few pictures. My family tends to be more camera shy so you have to be quick to get pictures lol.

October 3, 2008
Karalee and G-Ma Lee at Forney Car Museum

G-Ma Lee, Karalee driving, G-Pa Brian, Dana in a Model T

Karalee driving Model T

G-Ma Lee and Karalee posing-look how serious K looks! Lol

Herby-yes from the movies, you know you love that VW!

G-Ma, G-Pa, Me, and Karalee before they headed to the airport

Last weekend my best friend David flew out from Phoenix so we went and toured a ton of touristy places, we were all worn out by the end! Monday morning before he left we toured the capital and it's pretty neat inside! Lot's of marble and gorgeous detail on pillars, got to see the paintings of all the presidents to date which I personally think is a wonderful tradition. We wanted to go up to the dome but that didn't open until 9 so we had to skip that, next time we'll catch it for sure! I have few pics of David but he decided to be camera shy so I had to be sneaky at times. :-)

October 18, 2008
I like this picture, David was so embarrased I made him sit there by the shark hee hee

Made David stand by the diver too, tried to talk him into posing inside the suit but he wouldn't go for that lol.

Dana & Karalee at the aquarium

David, Dana and Karalee at aquarium

We went to a local pumpkin patch with David and Karalee got to play in this huge box they set up with corn, it's like a sandbox but it was filled with corn instead so she had a blast in there. I think she easily could have spent all her time there and said to heck with everything else lol. She did get her very first pony ride and initially she wasn't sure about it but then she relaxed and giggled a few times. She's a total natural up there and already has the proper riding style and motion. She helped pick the pumpkin and even helped Dana hold it when we were in line to pay. She also picked out a goard that has a bunch of bumps so it'd make a great witch. We carved our pumpkin last night and Karalee was an orange mess by the time we were done.

October 18, 2008
Karalee in corn box

Karalee on her first pony ride-she giggled part way through but of course not near anyone's camera lol

Another pony shot

Karalee and I checking out pumpkins

This is the one guys!

We took David to the Denver Nature and Science Museum which is always interesting to go visit. They have a lot of exhibits and they try pretty hard to make quite a few interactive. There's a place where you can practice "landing" a space shuttle and usually when we're there Dana can't find one that works so he was very excited this time to find one he could make move! Must've spent 15, 20 minutes trying to land it as it's more difficult then it sounds to do! There's also a neat place where kids can go dress up like astronauts and practice "flying" the shuttle which Karalee had a blast doing! She LOVES buttons so she was in heaven with all the stuff to push and move lol.

October 19, 2008
Dana trying to land the shuttle

Karalee flying the shuttle, my astronaut!

After Dana gave up on his shuttle he came to join Karalee in hers.

After the museum we went to Wings Over the Rockies which is an aircraft museum. Turns out they were doing NASA stuff too so that was very cool! They had a room where you could play with all kinds of things, like seeing your voice displayed as you spoke to the morse code machine. The morse code machine was Karalee's favorite because she could push the button and make the noises, we also discovered you could make a heck of a racket if you turned the knobs lol. So I was in charge of the knobs and she handled the "typing" Lol We had so much fun! I think she could've stayed doing that for hours!

October 19, 2008
I think I found the problem!

Youngest skydiver I've ever met!

From flying shuttles to aircrafts, she can do it all!

Beep beep beep, we're sending a message!

We're gearing up for Halloween and have most of our decorations in the yard, I went and bought the first part of our candy stash. Karalee is going to be a mouse and she looks stinkin' adorable in her costume! I'm hoping she'll feel confident enough in her walking to walk at least part of the way down our street to trick or treat!

October 13, 2008
Halloween decorations-we added some more but those will be another post, probably be on our trick or treating one.

We carved our pumpkin and Karalee was a great help!
October 27, 2008

Karalee helping gut the pumpkin

Karalee playing in the slimy mess

We went to Boo at the Zoo on Sunay with our friend Monica and her little boy Cole, he was dressed as a monkey and oh my gosh what a cutie he is! Karalee kept getting called an elephant which cracked us up considering she has no trunk and to us it's obvious she's a mouse lol. She walked some of the zoo but then got tired and grumpy so we left not long after that, I don't blame her though, she'd missed her nap and I get grumpy when I get jipped out of sleep too lol.

October 26, 2008
Mouse in a stroller

Karalee pushing our stroller-cutest behind ever! Hee hee

There's a mouse I don't mind finding in my house, look how well she's doing walking!

Karalee playing the drums

Our friend Monica's little boy, I think he's about 6 weeks old in this shot, isn't he adorable! I love this monkey costume!

Monica and Cole

Karalee has 9 teeth now and is working on her second molar. Kid is so incredible with teething, doesn't hardly phase her more then a few days and she's never slowed down by it. She floors me with how well she takes everything! Her hair is almost long enough that I can put it all up in a pony tail but it's not quite there.

Check out this artwork by Karalee! Her daycare had a craft day and Karalee chose all the leaves and colors herself, you go kiddo!

October 26, 2008

My belly is growing, seems like it's going slowly but I do show a bit now which is nice. I have felt the baby move a bit, hoping to feel him or her more often soon! My aunt Christie ordered a fetal heart monitor and I'm excited for that to arrive, hopefully we'll get to hear our little one's heart beat at home! First doctor's appointment the heartbeat was in the 160 range, the last appointment I went to it was about 150. Karalee got to sit next to me and hear the heartbeat, I think she was more confused then impressed lol. Our next appointment is supposed to be an ultrasound but given how that went with Karalee I'm cautiously optimistic lol. For anyone that's forgotten it took about 5 tries to get to that ultrasound from various issues arising. We aren't finding out the gender, we want to be surprised! I'm about 18 weeks pregnant now. We're very excited about this baby, nervous and stressed from life but overall just really excited! I can't wait to meet this little guy or girl and love on him/her. I hope Karalee adjusts well to sharing our time but we'll see! She's such a sweet kid I think she'll be fine after the first shock wears off.

There's a ton of belly shots but that's because I'm catching up, so enjoy! Curiously I have zero pictures of anything in September so I'm hoping they're on Dana's side of the computer 'cause I can't imagine we had a whole month of no pictures!

July 26, 2008
Positive Pregnancy Test-I took something like 4 so be glad I just posted one lol