Little girl and her dinosaur

Her newest love . . .

Definitely worth the $5 I paid for it at a garage sale!

Weekend Review

Our garage sale was a HUGE success! I made over $300 just getting rid of stuff we didn't want anymore! It was so much fun, I am still exhausted from all the activities over the weekend. And this is what I got at other garage sales for a grand total of $21!!! (It's not all for Isabella, I got some of it for my niece.)

That baby doll is the biggest baby doll I've ever seen! I got it at our church rummage sale, I was only wanting to get the doll carrier, but Isabella fell in LOVE with the doll, she kept saying "baby, pease, pease, pease mommy!" So I figured for a dollar she could get it. It's huge, she can hardly lift the thing, she drags it around the house by it's arm. It's wearing her 3 month sleeper in the picture. Her preemie clothes I originally got out for it go to it's waist! Also, when I was leaving the church with it, it fell out of the carrier onto the ground. I very nonchalantly looked at Isabella and said, "oopsie, we dropped the baby". I then heard a loud scream, it was coming from a guy who thought it was a real baby! He and I both got a good laugh out of that!

Pool fun at home

Light Blogging Ahead

Summer time is definitely a busy time, but I love it! My mom came for a quick trip yesterday, and left tonight. While she was here I organized and priced all of my "stuff" for my upcoming rummage sale. I also painted/stained our deck on the front of the house, I changed the color of it and it turned out better than I thought it would. I also did a couple of other outdoor projects I have been wanting to get done. This weekend we'll be going to Monte's parents, followed by a quick trip for my mother-in-law, Isabella, and me to his sister's at the beginning of the week. My sister, niece, and my mom will then come out on Thursday, and Friday and Saturday I will be having a rummage sale. It is also rodeo week for our town, which is HUGE around here, so Monte and I will be going to at least one rodeo since we'll have some babysitters here! We also have a church fundraiser I will be trying to help out with sometime during those few days!

The days are flying by! Isabella and I met a great group of new friends at our weekly bible study/book club and we have been getting together practically every afternoon at the park/pool. I can't believe that she is not scared of the water! I (along with almost everyone in my family) was always terrified of the water when I was growing up. I'm so glad that Isabella likes it. One of her little friends was sitting next to her on the edge of the kiddie pool, and when he started crying she patted his arm and said "nice". It was so cute!

What I found this morning

My rose bushes survived the winter!! This is huge for me because I have not had the best luck getting my bushes to survive through the winters. We've already had to replace two other bushes this spring, but that was because of a stray tomcat that seemed to take a liking to them. Grrr.

Father's Day

We had a whole Father's Day weekend this year. Last year, on Monte's first Father's Day, I had to work the entire weekend, I felt bad. On Saturday we went out to the lake for a while. We had a picnic and did a little fishing.

Monte got spoiled with lots of good food this weekend! I made him toffee bars and a cake, also I made a huge breakfast this morning after church, and this evening after Isabella went to bed we grilled steaks.

Wearing her Daddy shirt. (And what it says is true) :)



I was really excited about giving Monte his Father's Day present. I wrote the little story (which took me back to my high school creative writing class days), uploaded the photos, and My Custom Story did the rest. He loves it, and so does Isabella! I realized after I did this that to keep things fair I'll have to do this with any children we have in the future also, but that's okay, it's a wonderful keepsake.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend any time with my dad this weekend, but hopefully will get to soon, I wish we lived a little closer.

Zoo Book

I thought I would post this in case anybody else wanted to use the idea. It seems like kids love looking at pictures, so when we were at the zoo I took pictures of a lot of the animals. Then, when editing the pictures I added the text (which you wouldn't have to do). I bought a 99 cent mini photo album, put in the pictures, and now Isabella has a book all about her trip to the zoo, which she LOVES looking at! You could do this with just about anything - vacations, holidays, birthdays, family members that your child doesn't get to see very often, etc. Here is the cover and a few of the other pages . . .

This is a first

It's the middle of June. Our heat is on.

This is the rainiest, stormiest, coolest spring/summer I can ever recall. But I guess we can be thankful that we're not flooded, like other areas in the midwest are. And things are looking up, the forecast for this weekend and next week is dry, sunny, and temps in the 70's! Yay! I think I'll finally get around to taking Isabella swimming then. We've been walking to the pool in the afternoons, when it's nice, and watching all the kids swim. She loves watching the kids go down the waterslides, and yesterday she actually acted like she wanted to go in. So far, it looks like she didn't inherit my terrible fear of the water I had when I was little. That's a good thing!

My Very Own Personal Trainer

That's right, I never thought I would be able to afford one, but it turns out that I got one for free. Let me tell you a little about her.

Her name is Isabella.

She insists that I go for numerous walks every day when the weather is nice, all while she gets to be pushed around. If I don't walk long enough she insists on "more, more, more, PWEASE".

She also orders me to take several bike rides, all while riding behind me and tapping on my back as if to say, faster, faster! If the bike ride isn't long enough, she insists on "more, more, more, PWEASE."

She makes sure I'm not neglecting giving my arms a workout by making sure I push her in her swing several times a day for long periods of time.

And last, she makes sure I watch what I eat because I know whatever I'm eating, she's going to want a bite of. So I better make sure what I'm eating is something I don't mind her eating.

So as you can see, when the weather is nice, it's really quite a strict workout regimen that she has me on, but I'm loving every minute of it!

First trip to the zoo

Or as Monte calls it, a day he won't forget for a very long time! It was awesome, we have never seen Isabella SO excited. We told her on Saturday morning that we were going to the zoo after she woke up from her morning nap. I can't imagine she even really knew what a zoo was, but she knew that she should be excited about something, and she was running all over the house excited and squeeling. Then she only took about an hour nap because she was so excited, which is pretty short for her. She is usually very shy and quiet, and wants us to hold her when she is in a new, strange place. But not there, we hardly even used the stroller, she was running and holding Monte's hand the whole time while I pushed the empty stroller. She loves birds, so of course all of the tropical birds were her favorite. But her very favorite were the chickens, yikes. I figured she would love the monkeys or the tigers or the zebra, but nope she kept wanting to go back to the chickens! She also experienced her first real "owie" there, she fell down and skinned her knee. Both Monte and I got blood all over our shirts as we were trying to comfort her. Thankfully she did that while we were on our way out, because it was all over from there! I love that we live pretty close it's only about a twenty five minute drive, so we will definitely be going back. I took pictures of a lot of the animals, and made a little book for her (I'll try to post it sometime). She loves it, she always brings it to me and says, "read, please", she names all the animals, her favorites to say are, "cock cock" (peacock) and "MON kee" (monkey). She has even been bringing it to bed with her!

The Shoe Dilemna

Although Isabella has small, narrow feet, I've never had a problem finding her shoes. Until now. This has just taken up WAY too much of my time, it's ridiculous. Now that summer is here, I needed to find her shoes that do not fall off her feet. And to make matters worse, she is the biggest chicken and doesn't like the way grass feels on her bare toes! Which makes sandals not a very good option. And I don't want her wearing socks and tennis shoes all summer long, too sweaty. The main problem is that every shoe I find is not made any smaller than a size five, and every shoe in her size are for pre-walkers. When she actually does wear her sandals she points at her feet and says, "shoes, oww". The poor thing, I actually noticed bruises on her feet today wear the straps go. I went shopping today and was so excited to find her these on a good sale. The smallest they had were fives, but I thought they looked smaller than the average 5. I got them home and they were way too big. So I've once again spent my evening searching the internet for shoes. Finally, the last place I checked I found these and ordered them immediately (check out the awesome price)! Lets hope these fit!

See, I told you in my last post maybe I might have something more interesting to talk about! Aren't you so glad you know all about Isabella's shoe problems! Very interesting, right?! :)

A Whole Lot of Nothing

My posting frequency has not been the greatest lately. I just feel like I have nothing to write about. We're getting into our summer routine around here, it's wonderful! Our days are quite predictable, lots of walks, bike rides, going to the park, gardening, playing outside, etc. And also lots of sleeping (Isabella) because of all the before mentioned activities. I really don't like being inside during the summer (even while she's napping I just take the monitor out with me) and that's making housework and cooking not very enjoyable to me right now. We walked to the pool today and watched all the kids swimming, I think I'll start taking Isabella to the pool pretty soon, they have a really nice baby pool.

Maybe I'll have something more interesting to blog about tomorrow, but I doubt it.

Clearly SPF 15 is not enough

We had a great weekend, I'm sorry to see it end. We went to visit Monte's parents. The weather was beautiful the whole weekend! We spent most of Saturday outside playing with
Isabella, she had a blast and loved seeing the cows. Then Monte and I went on a date while Isabella stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. (To say that she loves staying with them would be an understatement, it seems like she doesn't even care about us when they're around ) The evening didn't get off to a very good start when we went to visit Monte's grandpa in the nursing home (he's in his 90's). Usually when I have seen him he's been really good, and this time he wasn't, so that was quite a shock to us! He didn't know who we were, and he was very depressed. He talked about how he just wanted to die because he had lived his life. By the end of our visit, I think he knew who we were. I told him that we had to go, I gave him a kiss, and told him that we loved him, and he just started crying. That, of course, made us very emotional as well. Here he was sitting in the dark in a tiny, little room with nothing to do, when it was gorgeous outside. I told Monte I just wanted to break him out of there and take him home with us!

The rest of our night was much better. We went to church, out to eat, and we saw the new Indiana Jones movie. Isabella didn't make it to bed anywhere near her usual 7:30 bedtime each night, and she was even up at 5:30 one morning! But despite her lack of sleep she adjusted quite well, and still took some decent naps.

Today Monte's dad took us fishing (this is where the title of my post comes into play) while Isabella stayed home with Grandma. The only thing both Monte and I caught were sunburns (MAJOR sunburns) but it was still an awesome day just to be out on the boat. You would think that by now I would learn my lesson. It seems that I do this to myself at the beginning of every summer. I think that it would be nice to get a little sun, so I wait about an hour or so to put sunscreen on, definitely not a good idea for this fair skinned, blue eyed gal! Besides, it seems like being out on the water always makes you burn worse. Now I'm having visions of my skin turning to leather, like those old ladies that hit the tanning booths a little too much. However, on the bright side, I did get a hefty dose of natural vitamin D today. They say that vitamin D from the sun makes you feel happy. And despite my chills and discomfort from the ol' burn today I am in quite a jolly mood as I sit here at almost 11:30 at night, not tired.