Christmas is in the air!

This photo was taken by my good friend, Jody. I can't thank her enough for taking M's christmas photos for us. There are more, but I don't want to show them until our Christmas card is mailed out.

Check this out!

Jan, one of my best friends, named a craft after me. She makes all kinds of great stuff and this is her latest invention. She's debuting her line of Smelly Bacteria Stuffies at a craft show this Friday and is telling the world about them on her blog. I'm a science nerd so I think this is awesome!

Check out the link below for Andrea the Anthrax Spore.
***Link***

If you are interested in buying any, let me know. I imagine she'll sell them on her Etsy.com store at some point. Click *here* for her store to see other things she makes and sells.

Visiting Andy's Family

Friday we drove up to Indy to visit with Andy's family and see his Grandpa, Frank. He hasn't been doing well so it was really nice to see him. Here is some of the gang that was there.

M made her rounds saying Hi to everyone. She was having fun here with Elle.

I think Jack looks adorable holding her.

Andy's Aunt Lisa

And I captured this great photo of Andy's cousins, Dan and Elle.

Maggie and Miles also had a blast there too. Frank has a HUGE fenced in yard (we are talking acres here) and they ran around and smelled the smells for hours. Doggie heaven!

Thanksgiving Day

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend visiting family! And Madeline was great the entire time we were gone. We couldn't have asked for a better holiday. I have alot of pictures so I'm going to break up our visits into two posts. More to come...

Thursday we drove to Cincy to be with my family this year. Here's Aunt Jackie with M.

Somehow a bet got started of who could throw, punt and kick a football farther....Aunt Terry or Aunt Katie. This was quite entertaining, let me tell you! Here is Katie throwing the football.

Kicking from the stand was the best! Neither of them was good at this. Notice where the football is in both pictures.

Terry won by a landslide....144 ft. combined to 88 ft. combined.

Back in the house, Madeline was the source of entertainment.

We had a full house! My Mom cooked for over 20 people and she did a great job. People were in the dining room as well as 3 tables set up in the living room.

Mom and Dad with M.

A nice family photo of us. :-)

On Friday morning, we made a quick stop at Grandma Lewis' house to visit more family. Zander was there and presented a super cute photo op. How cute are they together? He is 3 weeks older than M.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am extremely thankful for all the blessings I have in my life.

- a wonderful, loving, supportive husband
- a beautiful, healthy daughter
- a loving family
- a secure job for both Andy and me
- a nice house
- a pantry full of food

I hope you all are thankful for the joys and blessings you have in your life too!

The Game

We had a great time at the _ichgan game!! You all were right, there isn't anything like it and I'm so glad we went. Holy crap it was cold, though. We were layered AND I had bought "Toasti Toes" and hand warmer things. When we got dressed to leave, I wasn't even thinking and just put on my winter beanie hat. It's the only one I have. Once we got to the stadium, it dawned on me that my hat was blue. I had other OSU gear on, but it was buried beneath my coat. There was no way I was gonna keep that on so I bought a new red hat at the stadium for $20. We found our seats and watched the TBDBITL. Script Ohio is the best!! Unfortunately we didn't stay for the whole game. Andy woke up in the morning not feeling well but he figured it would go away. Well, it didn't and he felt bad enough to want to leave at half-time. He was pretty sick once we got home so it's a good thing we left. He picks up EVERYTHING that Madeline brings home.

I'm bummed the season is over and we don't have anymore games to go to. We had such a great time this year.

Andy's parents came up to babysit for us while we went to the game. Madeline showed them all her toys. :) I can't remember if I blogged about it or not, but Madeline is sitting up now by herself. She's been doing it for about a week now. She looks like such a big girl!

Suited Up

She's ready for a blustery winter.

Michigan game

Well, the response was overwhelming...... we should go the game. And that's what we've decided. I checked the weather today and it's supposed to be fairly nice, so I'm really looking forward to it. But if the weather turns bad and it's anything like it was yesterday, then I'm not so sure about that.

Holding her own bottle

Look what she can do now...

She's sick AGAIN. You can kinda see it in her eyes in this picture. It's the name of the game when she's in daycare. Ugh! We were supposed to visit Andy's family in Indy this weekend but we had to cancel for other reasons. And I'm so glad that we did with her being sick. She started out semi-okay yesterday and then got progressively worse as the day went on. She's got a fever and everything. :(

Sunday Visit

My folks and Grandma drove up to visit today. As usual, Madeline cried for the first half hour or so but then finally warmed up.

She was kinda wary of my dad.

But then decided he was cool.

Yesterday we went and picked up an exersaucer for her. She loves it!!

WWYD?

We have tickets to the M_ch_g_n game, but we don't know what to do. We really want to go and we've never been to a M game. But with the economy the way it is n' such, we could also really use the money we would get from selling them. It would be a nice chunk of change. We are torn. It makes it extra tough because we have really good student seats that we wouldn't get again unless we paid an arm and a leg.


So what should we do?


1. Are you kidding?! Go t0 the game! GO BUCKS!

2. The money would be nice padding in this economy. Sell them.


You can leave me a comment or vote in the poll I have going on the right of my page.

5 Month Pictures

She's rolling over both ways now and "talking" and giggling alot. She was giggling in her sleep last night which was SO stinkin' cute. She still can't sit up by herself, but she LOVES to stand as you can see.

Babies and more babies

No, I'm not pregnant! Don't even go there. But congratulations are in order for my cousin Tom and his wife, Beth. Their beautiful little boy arrived today at 10:08am. His name is Nathan Thomas and he came into this world at 6lbs, 11oz and 21" long.

Also, I forgot to announce another new addition. One of my other cousins Kelly and her husband, Joe, welcomed their baby boy into the world on October 21st. Jacob Joseph weighed in at 7lbs, 7 oz.

Congratulations to everyone and I can't wait to meet these two bouncing bundles of joy!!

Scary night!

This gave us a heart attack, but fortunately everything turned out okay in the end.

Madeline woke up around 3:30am (her usual time to fuss) and I went in to check on her. She had been sleeping on her belly and I could see this dark stain all down her back and her side. I turned on her light to see better and it looked like blood! I yelled for Andy and took her to the changing table. We opened up her sleeper and fortunately it was just a REALLY bad blowout. Although, her stool did appear to have blood in it. That still concerned us but we were thinking it had something to do with the antibiotic that she is on, so we decided to wait until the morning to call the doctor. The poor thing was covered in grossness though, so we had to give her a bath at 4 o'clock in the morning. She didn't seem to like it anymore than we did and all three of us fell back asleep easily once we were finished.

I called the doctor first thing this morning and sure enough, it's a side effect of her antibiotic. I sure wish they would have told us that ahead of time!

Stuff like this really makes you realize how precious they are and the time spent with them is golden. My job has been working me like crazy lately and it's been cutting into my time with her. I hate it and it's not going to let up anytime soon. I have to go into work today and it's pretty much up to me how long I stay (if I don't do it today, it will just make tomorrow that much worse). So I don't care how much work there is to do, I'm staying for 2 hours and then I'm out.

We call her "Little Smalls"

After a long, crappy, stressful day at work, there is nothing like coming home to this sweet face.....

Two sickies

Monday night, Andy came home not feeling to well either. He had a sweatshirt on and was shivering underneath a blanket on the couch, so it wasn't looking good. I decided to make him an old family remedy, the Hotty Totty. My Italian Grandpa drank this all the time when he was feeling under the weather. Heck, I don't think you even need to be sick to drink this.

Combine 1 cup of coffee, 1 shot of whiskey, 1 shot of wine, a lemon wedge and sugar to taste. Bring to a boil and then turn off. Breathe in the steam while it cools, then drink.

I'm sure it tastes better when you don't over boil it and burn it. (Ooops.) But hey, Andy is feeling better today.

Madeline is still sick. This ear infection is taking her through the ringer. We are battling a fever of ~101 until her antibiotics kick in. Unfortunately we got a late start on that. I went to pick up her prescription after Andy got home from work yesterday. The medicine comes in a glass bottle. (Who does this anymore anyway?!) It had been a long day, I was tired and hungry and it was cold outside so I had my gloves on.....you see where I'm going with this....I dropped the %$!@ bottle and it broke. I turned around not 5 minutes after I purchased the darn thing and took it back, fully expecting to get a replacement. Nope. The prescription is only good for one bottle.

Stupid lady: "You will need another one from the doctor, Ma'am."

Me: "The doctor's office is closed."

Stupid lady: "Then you'll have to wait until tomorrow."

Me: "WHAT?!"

Stupid lady: "And oh, by the way, the insurance company probably won't pay for the second bottle either."

Needless to say, Andy and I were both livid. So poor Madeline had to wait until today to get her first dose of the antibiotic. I hope it starts working soon because she is miserable. And lesson learned....pick up all prescriptions before the doctor's office closes.

A wedding and the park

My sister was the Matron of Honor in a wedding on Saturday. The bride is an old friend of the family. Jackie met her in grade school and they've been best friends ever since. I almost didn't think we'd make it because I was feeling super lousy when I got up that morning. But after the day went on, we decided to make it a quick trip.....down to Cincy for the wedding and straight back home that night. I'm glad we went because the time we did have there was fun. And Katie was beautiful!!

We made it home just in time to see the ball intercepted at the end of the OSU/Penn State game. Boo! (I know Sarah W. is laughing cynically. Stop it already!)

Then yesterday we wanted to do something fun as a family. The sun came out and it looked like a nice day so we decided to go to the park. Madeline was acting cranky but I didn't really think anything was wrong with her until we got home. You can kinda see it in the pictures though. Poor thing has ANOTHER ear infection.

BIG NEWS!!

I'm going to be an Aunt!! I'm so stinkin' excited!! My sister found out a few weeks ago and had her ultrasound to see the heartbeat this past week. She is due June 17th. So Madeline and her new cousin will be exactly one year apart.

Way behind on my blogging

Things have been beyond busy this week and I haven't had a chance to post yet about last weekend. We drove down to Cincy to visit Andy's family and particulary see his Aunt Phyllis who was in town from California. Here she is with Madeline.

Later in the week, Madeline and I attended a Halloween Party at my friend, Erin's, house. All of the babies were SO adorable! I only got a pictures of a few of them though.


This is one of Madeline's friends, Weston. How cute are they?

These two little guys are twins.

Madeline playing with Aunt Janny.

M and Brody talking it up.