River Weekend

Here are some pics from our trip to the river this weekend. My hubby came home one day this week and said we should go to the river one afternoon and just relax. I couldn't believe this was coming from my husband! I was so excited, so we got sandwiches and a cooler and had a great time as it was about 100 degrees.

A water drop got on the camera and I didn't realize it for a few pictures :( Anyway, it was super hot but not too crowded and we had this little inlet away from the current all to ourselves so Caelen apporiached with caution but got comfortable pretty quickly. I think she'll love Casini Ranch camping this year.




When I asked her if she wanted to go home she shook her head and said, "No" like I had made a funny joke or something.

This weekend my folks came to dinner and while Caelen was taking a bath she wanted her Grandpa to come in so here they are playing in the water.

My Funny Girl

A few more pictures for fun!
Here's Caelen with Grandpa Bob on Father's Day. I think the look on his face was common around the whole table as Caelen picked up his steak in her hand and started chowin' down.

Here we are last night doing one of Caelen's new favorite things. She loves being pushed around in her little shopping cart. She added a new twist last night with ALL her blankies as well!

Here she is this after noon in "Mommy's Dress". It's my apron!

And this, my friends has to be the funniest picture EVER of Caelen................

Unusual Request

When I put Caelen to bed tonight and got her all situated with all her "Bachies" (blankies) I asked her if there was anything else I could get her, referring to her customary cup of juice or milk.
She said, "Yeah"
I said, "What?"
She said, "Apple"

Bless her heart she was so sincere.

147 Foreclosures in RP Currently

Oh how I wish I hadn't been the only one to see the horrified look on Caelen's face as she stood in the backyard and Woodrow came flying out of the house straight for her! Woodrow flies around all the time and sometimes knocks Caelen down (luckily she's tough) but usually he veers off to the side right at the last minute and just brushes past. I've never even seen Caelen react like this. Her huge eyes got even huger and she just looked horrified! I pretty much doubled over right there and started laughing hysterically. Oh and he did miss her by a few inches :)

Caelen has been so bossy. Of course at her age it's halarious. I'm currently reading "Stolen Innocence" by Elissa Wall and it belongs to my girlfriend so I'm trying to get through it so she can read it. Plus it's really good. Anyway I try to sneak in a few paragraphs here and there throughout the day. But man if she sees me reading it she points at it and says, "No Book! No Book Mommy!" while shaking her head back and forth. She'll do it until I close the book and put it away. If I'm not being compliant she might try to take matters into her own hands and often grabs it and pushes it closed on my hand.
She likes to grab my finger and make it do things, like press buttons on her toys. But today when she asked for her fork and I told her to go get it off the table she shook her head and said, "Mommy" grabbed my pinky finger and pulled me over to make MY hand get it.

The people next door foreclosed on their house and just vanished one day, so we had no neighbors for a couple of weeks which was pretty sweet. Then yesterday a for sale sign went up and it's been non stop traffic ever since. A couple of gals wanted to talk to us and came to the door last night. They seemed really nice and wanted to know about the neighborhood etc. They also told us the house was going for $299,900!!! I couldn't believe it. The lot is bigger than ours, but the house is only 3 rooms compared to our 4 and in no where as good of shape. But still!! Holy smokes. A few years ago both our houses would have gone easily for $550,000.
I sure hope we get some good neighbors (doesn't everybody?) because I'm just sick to death of the neighbors near me. They're trouble and I stay in my house.

Hound Dog

Thank God Woodrow is super patient. Caelen was straight out of her new pool so her swim diaper was soaking wet when she got the idea to hop on Woodrow! He probably liked that come to think of it.....
Here she's literally bouncing up and down on him like an excercise ball.
She loves this big oaf and he's about 100 lbs heavier than she is. He has gotten a little grumpy with her but only a couple of times and I don't blame him at all. One time she was ramming him with her shopping cart over and over! He looked helplessly confused as he couldn't get away, so he nipped at her arm as a warning and ran off looking really embarassed. She just laughed and laughed so obviously it didn't hurt at all. She calls him "EE- O"

Pillsbury Pictures

Here are pics from our 3rd annual Four-Family-Pillsbury-Trip. We go with 3 other couples to a house up at Lake Pillsbury every year. It started when Courtney and I were pregnant and Tyler was 6 months old. This year we had Ty, Caelen, Riley AND Austin. We had a lot of fun and it was really relaxing.

Caelen loved this little bug chair that stays at the house all year.

This is Caelen's new inflatable pool. There are tons of pics of the kids in this pool!

No she wasn't sleeping under the stars. She thought it would be fun to get in Austin's pack 'n play outside.

The guys love playing Holy Board (it's really fun) and here they are!

Proof that I was on the trip.

Here's Caelen, Tyler and Riley.... and just for fun, here they are almost a year ago during our August trip to Pillsbury!

The Good Stuff

One day when Missy is old and too big, I'll look back and remember with wonderful joy the days of "Watty Watty." This is Caelen's most favorite thing and it makes everything in her world all better. It means "Rocky rocky" and all it consists of is her sitting on my lap, facing me with her head on my chest and we rock in the rocking chair in her room. Or, if that's not handy, the big recliner in the living room works as well.
She requests it quite often throughout the day, usually after she takes a nap, or is sleepy or grumpy. If she falls down or hurts herself, she's recently started asking, "Watty watty?" through tears. It most certainly is required if she wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to be calmed down.
Tonight, for the first time, she requested it before she went to bed. She said night night to daddy, we turned down the lights and rocked. And she began just talking away. Telling me about everything that was going through her mind. Her favorite topics normally include the special people in her life, animals, and body parts or clothing. I loved it and could have done it forever but I'm trying to get her back on a normal bedtime schedule (which we have deviated from alot lately) so I put her down and didn't hear a peep from her after that.

She's stringing "sentences" together now. Today she waved at Gabbie and said, "See ya Body". And she was telling her, "No Body! No ball" today when Gabbie was trying to eat her ball. She'll say, "No Dada," when he's not behaving. ;) She's also beginning to get bossy! She'll point to the ground and say, 'Mommy!" when she wants me to stand right there. She'll gently push me away and say "No Mommy" if she wants me to move. It's really funny to have an 18 month old try and tell you what to do!

Her congestion and snot is back. It's been going on since February and I am so over it I about had a nervous breakdown this afternoon. She had so much snot, was super cranky, I was trying to get ready to go out with a girlfriend (which I eventually ended up cancelling only 1/2 hour before) I was trying to make mac 'n cheese, forgot and it boiled over, extinguishing the flame and filling the house with gas which I didn't smell until the whole house was full because we were in the back of the house. (At least my Carbon Monoxide detector didn't go off.) I turned it off, opened every window, got the fans going and went outside with her and she flipped out because she wanted to be inside. There she was with her snotty nose pressed up against the slider crying and crying. Finally we were able to go back in. I put her in the bath and she pooped. So Thomas scrubbed and bleached it and we tried again. After that the evening calmed down significantly, but I thought I was gonna lose it there for a minute because all that time, in the back of my mind is the looming trip that I have to get ready for. My house has be clean as someone lives here while we're gone, I have to do all the laundry, pack for Caelen and me, and buy all the groceries.
Jesus please give me peace! ;)

Making do with a limited vocabulary

Yes, yes, "Outside" is the most exciting word of the week. So much so that last night at 5:00am I awoke to the sound of a little voice exclaiming, "OUTSIDE!" She was fast asleep in her crib.

In an effort to imitate her mother Caelen has begun ordering the dogs around. She walked up to Woodrow yesterday who was sleeping peacfully on the treshold of the open slider, stepped on his back with one foot and yelled, "Aye-Yo, Ow-Sigh!" (Woodrow, Outside!)

Last night while at our friends house for girl's night (which never really is a girls' night seeing as the boys have intruded and now theres no one to watch the kids except for us! Ugh) we were putting Tyler and Caelen down in seperate rooms across the hall from each other. Well, they were just feeding off of one another and having a competition on who could scream the loudest. Anyway Tyler was crying and saying "Bible" and Caelen was crying and saying "Wonder Pets". I guess they have a pretty limited vocabulary to express their distress with so whatever words come to mind have to do the trick.

Chicks to Chickens

What is up with the weather? I am not in the mood for clouds and cold at this point in the year! Yuck.
Not much has been happening but at the same time a lot has been going on for us. We've been so busy running around from here to there. We did a family dinner at my grandma's house for her 95th birthday this weekend. We visited with Thomas' Dad and Faith, and Thomas worked a whole lot this weekend.
Some of that work included getting the chicken coop built and the chickens moved outside. Hallelujah because the smell, sound and dust from the chickens is out of the playroom now! I always knew chickens weren't real brain trusts but seriously! Thomas put them in the outside part of their pen (completely enclosed with chicken wire) where their food and water is. The inside part has tons of straw and is covered so they can go in at night. Both are equal sizes and in all is about 8 feet long. So he put them in the pen at about 4:00pm and they hunted around and got aquainted. When we went out at 10:00pm to see how they were doing they were still outside, curled up together in the freezing night! Thomas had to go in and show them the inside area (which was a couple steps away.) They looked around like they couldn't believe their luck. They stayed inside all night. Dummies.
Now if you ask Caelen where the "Cheep cheeps" are she hollars, "OUTSIDE!" She loves that word anyway, so any chance to use it...

Tahoe '08

We spent our 6th anniversary (can you believe it?) in Tahoe with our little bug. Sometimes we couldn't believe we brought her when there are wonderfully willing grandparents to watch her, but most of the time we all had a great time together and (let's admit it) Caelen was most of the entertainment!
She did well on the drive up. It took us 5 1/2 hours because we kept stopping. First for dinner and for Caelen to play at a park in Fairfield while we ate our dinner. We wanted to get her last bits of energy out in hopes that she'd fall asleep in the car. Well we beat her to that and had to stop again at a Starbucks so that mom and dad would stay awake! Finally at 9:00 she went to sleep for the night. We arrived at 10:30pm to find our key and directions to our room taped to the hotel office door! They weren't waiting up any longer apparently ;)
We got settled quickly and all went to sleep.......... until Caelen woke us up at 6:00am! Needless to say she was super cranky until after her morning nap and then moods were great for the rest of the trip!

The beach was right out our door and down a couple flights of stairs. Caelen was reluctant about the water because of the waves. And she is SUPER finicky about anything getting in her shoes: dirt clods, sand, anything. So that will explain the lack of tiny sandles on the beach.

These Canadian geese hung around the whole time we were there. They're obviously really used to people and were quite calm and dare I say friendly? In this picture Caelen is telling her dad about the goose.

In these shots she's taking her Sesame Sticks out to see if the geese want any, they answered heartily YES!

Thomas showed Caelen how to skip rocks which turned into her throwing handfuls of sand into the lake the rest of the weekend.

During Caelen's morning nap we got a little hot tubbing in. It was nice having the hot tub right next to our room! The weather was gorgeous, about 80 degrees, the perfect weekend. Hotel workers were scrambling about to get things set up as they normally don't get busy until Memorial Day weekend but with the unexpected early heat they were quite busy!

Here's Caelen staying hydrated with some watermelon. She thought to jab her fork into all by herself, mommy's big girl.

Getting ready to the spend the afternoon on the beach!

Just out of view in this shot is a bouy. Once she learned all the words pertaining to the lake (boat, goose, even an airplane flew over) bouy was the last thing she didn't have a word for. She pointed to it and asked, "This". I said, "Bouy." She pointed to her bottom and said, "Poopie." I said, "No, bouy." She pointed to my chest and said, "Boobies." .... I don't think we ever quite got it.
Here's Thomas enjoying a couple of the finer things in life; his little girl and a cigar.

These five little goslings were too cute, I just had to get a shot of the goose family!

There was a dog around that was white with black spots and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince Caelen that it was a dog. She knew that thing was a cow and she'd yell "Cow!" and "Moooo!" everytime she saw it. The dog's owner thought it was about as funny as we did!!

We had such a fun time, WAY too short a trip and Caelen's vocabulary seemed to explode over the weekend. She talks all the time and it's so fun to hear what she's thinking about at 1 1/2! Aside from the little bug Thomas and I had a great anniversary weekend and started making plans for #10, maybe Tahiti.....

My Day

Our Mother's Day was fun this year. To help our mom's out Thomas went to work at his mom's house and I cleaned my mom's house. That was Saturday. Then Sunday we woke up and didn't go to church because I was pretty nauseasous. Caelen had it, then Thomas, then me. It was this weird bug that I never threw up with but I'd get these waves of nausea and then they'd go away for half an hour or so. It wasn't bad enough to ruin mother's day though.
So after Caelen's nap and Thomas cleaned my car for me we went out to the coast. We got some fish 'n chips then we tried to go to the beach but it was so windy the sand stung your skin! So impromtu we headed for the river. The temperature went from 58 to 75 from the beach to the river. It was gorgeous and not to crowded. Caelen eased herself into the water after about 15 minutes and then didn't want to get out. Her diaper filled up to about 50 pounds LOL. She had a great time!
Then we went home, snoozed on and off, then put Caelen to bed and watched PS I Love You, which I cried through but I LOVED ;) It was nice to spend the day just the 3 of us as we rarely get to do that.

The chickens have been moved into Woodrow's old crate so they have a lot more room and can't fly out. We often go in the room to find the cat lounging close by on a chair watching the action.

Wanted: New Coop

The chickens are getting way to big for their tiny box and proved it today by flying out! I don't know how it happened but I heard Gabbie barking and a chicken sqwaking and came in to find Gabbie had cornered a chicken by the bookshelf in the computer room. That poor chicken had no clue where she was!!

Got Caelen some sidewalk chalk which she had a really fun time with this afternoon! It even comes with a cool bucket container that she can put the chalk in and out of. Can I just say, she is the cutest thing? Especially at the grocery store today. She wanted to walk. "Watt!" she says. So I let her down the walk the aisles with me. She's so good, she stays close, is very gentle with things on the shelf but rarely touches. The cutest part is her saying Hi to everyone she comes across. Here's this little shortie wandering the aisles saying, "Hi!". One lady asked her how she was and she squatted down, pointed to her bottom and said, "Poopie".

Shopping Cart Stories

The best toy ever! Caelen got this from church nursery. They were gonna toss it in favor of newer toys, so I disinfected it (well, my mom did) and now it's earned the status of "Most Used Toy". So here's a photo chronicle of it's life with us so far:

Caelen biffed it out the slider and scraped her knee, so in this pic she pointing to her knee and saying owie, while wearing my high heels and shopping.


In this picture Caelen had accompanied me to the garden. She picked all the artichokes off the ground where I had thrown them and put them in the basket. She then transfered them all to her shopping cart once outside the garden gate. At this point I'm trying to persuade her to put them in a bowl so I can wash them, but she's not interested.

Here's some backyard time with the cart. She most enjoys trying to run Woodrow or me over with it. She's a reckless driver!

That's it for the cart. Onto mom's water bottle!

And a PB&J!

I didn't know you could do that

This afternoon as Caelen was on her way out the door to the backyard she caught sight of a picture of herself on the piano, waved at it and said, "Bye me. See ya."

My name is Dee Dee and you're Mama.

Caelen calls herself "Dee Dee". LOL Caelen is just too hard to say I guess.

Chicks are getting big! They have a lot of feathers (not their baby down anymore) and can "fly". We let them out in the backyard occasionally and they have a great time on the lawn, but they all manage to stay in a group. No one wanders off to far. Two chicks were trying to see who was the tallest, or they were getting ready to fight, but Caelen broke them up. And some other chicks would lay down on the warm dirt, roll onto their sides and spread their wings out to soak up all the heat. It was amusing.

We're going to celebrate our 6th anniversary in Tahoe. I'm so excited. It was kind of a last minute plan but since our Hawaii trip went out the window with the ATA bankruptcy we thought that it would be nice to just take a couple days and get away. We'll bring Caelen because I feel like life is just boring without her LOL! The whole time we'd be there I'd just be thinking, "Oh Caelen would really enjoy this!" Or "I wish Caelen was here to see this." I haven't spent a night away from her since she was born and I just don't think I'm ready yet. I don't know if I ever will be. I think it's great and very necessary to get away from your children occasionally as a husband and wife, but after a few hours at a restaurant and movie, I'm ready to see my baby girl again. I know that she would do great on a sleep over at Grandma and Grandpa's, it's not her that I'm worried about ;)

Lot's of cows today, and plenty of snot, typical day in the life......

Thanks Amoxicillin

RASH UPDATE :)
The doctor said that an allergy would be large spots that move around every few hours (not Caelen's rash) and the fact that she continued treatment and didn't get any worse doesn't sound like an allergy. Then he said that there is a rash caused by amoxicillin that happens after about a week of treatment that is not allergic- it looks like little raised red bumps, and are about an eighth to a quarter of an inch across. It lasts 4-5 days and goes away even if treatment continues.
I think we hit our BINGO. Amoxicillin rash? Who knew? Thanks Doc.

Tip clo through your tulips.

I am so thankful we live in a county populated by cows, but that might be more the cause than the remedy to Caelen's bovine obsession. "Dow! Dow! Moooooo!" Is about all she says anymore while we're driving around town. Thankfully we can usually find a cow to view out the car window on each trip, and if not then the Clover cow on the billboard by Walmart does the trick. She knows it's coming and starts talking about it about 1 mile ahead of time. She just loves cows!

I'm thinking of buying a trailer and moving into the Kaiser hospital parking lot. I figure I'll at least save on gas. Caelen has probably been to the doctor at LEAST every other month since she's been born. Rashes, sinus infections, Roseolla, stitches, the list never ends. My patience for doctor's visits and my checking accout are running low. But NOW we have a mystery total body rash to deal with. She was taking antibiotics for her sinus infection and 8 days into treatment broke out in a rash from cheeks to toes. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until yesterday because it was such a delayed reaction but the pharmacist thought it could be related. I'm waiting for an E-mail back from her doctor. Oh and in the meantime, we all got a new cold so the snot is back in full force! I'm so thankful that she's a happy go lucky girl who has no clue there's anything wrong with her!!!

She's busy charming everyone with her new words and adorable laugh. And now she has a new shopping cart toy that she just LOVES and walks around talking about all her little friends. I don't know what the correlation is. Either she remembers playing with the toy at nursery and that's where her little friends always are, or she thinks it would be fun to go shopping with her buddies. I'm sure it's probably the former senario come to think of it....