Christmas Pictures

I have always been a little bit of a nutso about getting Anna's pictures taken ... well pretty much all the time. This Christmas all credit for the taking of the pictures goes to my mom- all my brain power was used up finishing my finals. (that's another post- which I will try and get around to as I really want to get back to blogging on a normal schedule!) Mom got the outfit and made the appointment so thanks Mom! I guess the only thing I can take credit for is the bow and Adam hates it so.... Anyhow. I thought several of the pictures turned out very well though- you never know with a 3 year old what you're going to end up with! Esp when they announce that they HATE getting their picture taken! ha! silly girl- she later told me she in fact LOVES getting her picture taken and would sing and dance for us so we could get good pictures. :) She DID in fact sing and dance- and we did get some cute shots. We also got some of those photos that are so "your child" that it makes you laugh just to look at them. Like this....

We only printed out four of the 72 that I now have on cd (yeah we fell victim to the "for only this much more you can have xyz" scam they got going on over there...). We printed the first one on this post and we also printed this one.

This is not one that we printed but it is one that I really like of her. Just a cute face she makes all the time. Usually right before she says something that will make me laugh hysterically at her.

I think this one was taken when it was becoming quickly apparent that we might have reached the end of her patience with us. ;)

This is another one we printed. Feel free to beg for a copy.

Another one of her dancing- I believe it was the hula dance. Of course if you know us at all, then you know that Aunt Julie is definitely having an influence of this little girl! The hula! Honestly!

The photographer wanted Anna to sit in a pretty, feminine, white wicker chair. Of course, she didn't want to sit in this chair- she wanted to sit in the weird blue office looking chair. We had to bribe her (no I am not ashamed) with a turn in the blue chair if she would sit in the white one first. Here's the response we got.....in case you don't know how to interpret Anna's faces- this one means... "well ok... I'll sit in the chair but only on my terms and I'm gonna be as ornery as possible about it!"

When she finally got to sit in her blue chair this is the first thing she did....VERY ladylike I think!

Then she bounced up and down on it for several minutes.

The final shot is my favorite- and no, she is not smacking herself in the face like the dummy photographer thought maybe she was doing (Sigh). She is laughing. And this picture looks so much like my sweet, silly girl that I would have had to purchase this one no matter how much it was!

Christmas!

Ok I have no idea how to rearrange all these pictures- if anyone else does please let me know! They are in all kinds of crazy order but you'll get the general idea. :)

We have started our Christmas decorating this week. Anna is so excited- she was fun last year for sure but this year she really is ready for those presents. ha! And this year Adam actually went and got Christmas lights for the outside of the house! That is all kinds of weird if you know him. Only for the love of a little girl I guess! He had big plans but had some troubles with the brick clips (or something like that) so just did the icicle lights on the garage side of the house. He said that's the only side Anna sees :) They do look very nice though and she sure loves them being up. I have promised her several car trips a week before bedtime to look at Christmas lights. Guess I should go ahead and do that....

Anna "helping" Uncle Brad put up Christmas lights

Probably saying some choice words when I took this :)

Watching the action

In addition to the lights outside, we've been at work on the inside as well. I haven't gotten everything done yet so I guess we'll see how much more I get to. Seeing as how I have 4 finals in the next two weeks, well, we'll just see, won't we! I have never succeeded in finding Anna a Christmas stocking that really "looks like her" which as all loyal readers of this blog (all 2) know, I'm super big on things having meaning and the stocking is no exception to this rule. So this year, I bought a plain ole white one and let Anna have at it with her favorite glitter glue. At least for a few years, that will be one of her traditions - decorating her own stocking. Here's a picture of her standing in front of it. There's a picture of the actual stocking further down... I'd love to have them all prettily lined up next to each other but apparently blogspot doesn't agree with me on the importance of that. Are you picking up on my irritation?

Proud of her stocking

Anna was ummmm.... well let's say a whirlwind.... of tree decorating. She was grabbing ornaments so fast and most of the time I had no idea where she or the ornaments were at. She just couldn't stand to wait until mommy had a chance to get things organized or put the hangers on. I must admit to doing a wee bit of "redecorating" after she was asleep.  In the end she had fun and she loves the tree and the lights and I'm sure the excitement will only escalate as presents get wrapped and put under the tree. And then probably rewrapped after she realizes she can peek. And then probably rewrapped again and put up somewhere else when she continues to unwrap them. Hey what's Christmas without a little bit of snooping? :)

Thanks so much to Nana and Papa for the beautiful Christmas tree for Anna- it's SO much prettier than our old sad small one.

2009 Christmas Tree

Smiling for the camera finally

The stocking

Decorating

This is one of the faces we got a lot of when we tried to take pictures of her decorating

This is the other face we got a lot of this year. silly girl

With Daddy, putting on the star

Really quick posting of funny Anna video

Like that title? :)

Adam recorded a version of a song he used to sing with his mom and sister all the time for Anna to listen to. I think Nana actually sings this song to her sometimes too. Something about little fishes and they swam and they swam right over that dam... probably loses something without the actual music and lyrics... Anyways, she LOVES it- I tried to catch the funny dancing she does to the song. Enjoy the silly girl....

Book Review: Sammy's Hill

I just finished reading such a fun book- Sammy's Hill. My sis-in-law loaned it to me so I knew it'd probably be a good read. :) This book is about a young woman working for a senator and follows her through various funny predicaments,etc. Kinda reminded me of Bridget Jones or Confessions of a Shopaholic. Only not English. Anyway, I found myself laughing over and over because I saw so much of either myself or my sis-in-law in this girl. She reminded me of Julie in several ways - first just her fun loving, upbeat attitude towards life. But also her ability to get herself into embarrassing and amusing situations with the greatest of ease. For example, she sends an email referencing cameras and whipped cream to her boyfriend (who works for another, rather high powered senator) and manages to copy the email to his entire mailing list, including all the work emails. This is so something I expect to hear that Julie has done one of these days! She reminds me of myself more because this girl is a neurotic mess. She gets a weird idea in her head that maybe she has some deadly infection from a paperclip that stabbed her in the foot so she immediately goes into planning mode of how she will live without her left foot, she practices walking without it, etc. She obsessively calls her boyfriend when he doesn't answer her first call, cried when her fish dies, makes all kinds of emergency plans for crazy things that have no way of EVER happening, wears mismatched shoes, and I am not making this up- she has a phobia of sitting down on a toilet and having a snake bite her on the butt. I thought my sister and I were the only ones on the planet who occasionally jump back up to doublecheck for snakes!
So if you need a good fluff, chick book- this one is definitely a great read!

Still here

Hello again from the land of no blogging~

I kinda hate not maintaining this thing very well but life seems so unsettled and like there is so much just hanging up in the air that I'm afraid to speak of something in case it crumbles to dust or blows to bits or whatever the case may be! Things change so fast these days so I guess it's easier to not put things down for the world to read about.

I do have some things going on however! So I guess I'll take the chance and fill you in and if things change because of something outside my control - well they just do and that's that.

So first of all- my nursing program! I ordered all my equipment and scrubs for my nursing program- all I lack are the ugly white shoes. Blah! Even I know plain white leather shoes are a no-no! Kind've a fun reason though- it's cause they want you to be able to see the bodily fluids that will most likely fall on your shoes during your shifts! ha! I can already tell this nursing thing is never going to be boring to say the least! I love the scrubs- LOVE THE SCRUBS! They are a very pretty eggplant purple- and seem to be pretty comfy- esp once they've been lovely thrown through several wash cycles. :) Can't wait to have those as part of my normal clothing routine. Not that it will be THAT huge of a departure from my normal jeans and t-shirt. But at least I'll look undressy for a reason now. (at least on Mondays and Fridays!) I start my program in mid January- right off the bat I am in clinicals- reporting Monday morning at 6:15 sharp. I am really getting excited about getting started- its hard to realize and stressful to contemplate but I just am in love with what I am doing so far. So let's all pray that continues :) I think we hit all the major departments at the hospital but I don't have my papers right here in front of me so I'll have to share all that later.

Classes this semester are still going well. I have strong grades in both so heading into the final weeks will be a little less stressful. I still really want to do a post on some of the most interesting things I have learned about the human body but I have to get all my thoughts together for that and they have been decidedly NOT together lately. Nothing else gross going on in microbiology- we are in the final stretch. Studying all the specific microorganisms and what diseases they cause which is interesting. Next time you tell me you're sick, I'll tell you what organism caused it. :) In lab (ugh, I don't love lab) we are hopefully going to correctly identify our mystery microorganisms this Friday after doing several tests on them over the last two labs. My partner, (grrrrrr) almost screwed us completely by forgetting to invert the petri plates upon which our organisms were growing in the incubator which could have killed them before we even got started. Luckily, I happened to be standing right behind her (and by happened I mean intentionally followed her around to make sure she wasn't messing up) and saw the mistake and was able to sneak around and fix it without her knowing. She's a little sensitive to say the least. A and P is even more interesting this semester- learning a LOT more than I did in the last class. Which is scary and disturbing since that was supposed to be everything I "needed" to know. Yikes.

On the home front, I had my lady from Upper Case Living come today and help me put up my wall decor. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! I am so excited about how it turned out. Now I just need to get to work on every other single thing in the room. :) I also finished my tv center project - I really like the way it looks but I am sure Adam will hate it when/if he ever notices it and everyone else might too! But I like it so I'm leaving it! I'll take some pics and post them later.

Other than that and taking care of my sweet baby girl, there is not a terribly lot of interesting things going on right now. Looking forward to the holidays, trying to work with Anna on some "schoolwork", doing some reading and some farming (hehe- I love farmville!), and I guess that's about it.

Here are the Halloween pictures as promised forever ago. My friend Brooke gave me a great suggestion last year that I really wanted to try out. I think it turned out so freaking cute on her! For some reason, my obsessive (read crazy) personality makes me want to have a meaning in everything so since Anna is so so so into painting lately, this fit in perfectly. And it was so cheap to do! She had such a fun time with the holiday- we went to a couple different area Halloween functions. And don't worry- I did my motherly duty of eating the ones that might possibly be a choking hazard ;) The bigger function was complete with cookie decorating, coloring, rides, and bouncy houses (her favorite!) She was such a darling in this costume.

Fall Leaves

So fall is upon me and it's been cold! Argh! Fall is my most favorite time of year so I'm getting a little cheated here :(

Anna and I did get out and play in our front yard with some leaves today. Notice I said play in the leaves... not rake the leaves. We only have one tree out there now courtesy of an ice storm a couple winters ago, but this tree was looking quite pretty, sporting all the various colors of fall. We had purple, green, yellow, red, and orange and every shade and combination in between. Anna had all sorts of fun throwing leaves at momma, reaching up as high as she could to reach the limbs, and basically just trying to strip the tree of leaves as fast as she could. Quite by accident, she was wearing a cute new jacket courtesy of a great friend :) that looked beautiful with the leaves. It was nice to do something so "fall-y" instead of just staying inside watching the rain. Maybe this weekend we'll have some nicer weather to get outside a few more times before we have the big S word...snow!

Here's some pics...

Boring blog

I haven't blogged much lately so I guess that means I can catch you up on what's going on with me. It's super interesting and not at all like anything I've done lately. Oh wait- no its not - its exactly what I've been doing forever! I guess some of the specifics are new, but the general idea is pretty much exactly the same.

School is going well- love my classes for the most part. Learning some interesting things and I really am very happy with the new school. Not so much dissection in A and P this semester- my lab partner (not the swab one!) enjoys the actual dissection work so she does it all and I just get to observe which suits me just fine. So far we've just done a cow eyeball and a sheep brain. We got to see the layer in the eye of animals that makes the light reflect off the eyes and makes them all shiny. Never knew what that was before. Sheeps brain is boring- just a small grey blob with a very few structures that are recognizable- mostly just have the know the basic area where things are. I already told you what we've been up to in Micro :)

I was accepted into the nursing program so assuming everything goes as planned I'll be starting that in January. Crazy huh? One of my girlfriends got in as well so I am really hoping to be able to get all the ducks in a row and complete the program along with her. Sure would be nice to know someone in the program right at the start. I start working at the hospital right off the bat- don't have much detail on any of that yet. My orientation is this Tuesday so I am looking forward to hearing some more specifics and getting registered for classes.

I have a couple girlfriends who recently moved into beautiful new homes and all the talk about decorating has inspired me to make some changes to my own rather dated things. Some of it has been up since I moved in! And that was a while ago... I took almost everything out of the kitchen and the rest of it is going as soon as I get some other projects done first. Redoing the living room as I find things I like so it is quite bare too right now. I just decided on something I want to try so if I like it I'll post some pics of before and after. But don't send my any "I hate that" comments cause that will make me sad.

The big project for the moment and probably until Christmas is getting Anna's dining room turned playroom to look like an actual designed playroom instead of an empty room with toys thrown everywhere. It was driving me nuts and looked terrible so I've made that my priority. I have some cute ideas (I hope) and already have some of the things for the room. Some additional storage was a MUST cause dang does that girl have a LOT of little tiny toys. I also got a really cute uppercase living wall lettering...thing... I don't know what those are called? Like wall stickers but not... Anyway, it says Dance, Giggle, Sing with little pink flowers in between the words. Totally Anna and really cute. I am really looking forward to seeing what it looks like - hope it's as cute as I think it will be! Mom is making me some curtains for the room and we're going to make up a little memory board for her as well. I think she'll like having a place to stick her photos of all her little friends and whatever else her sweet little heart attaches itself to that day. I bought the letters of her name to alter with scrapbooking paper and embellishments- this is super cute when all done. Also have some half formed plans to attach a pretty ribbon to some pretty hooks and string it up somewhere with altered clothes pins to hang her art. She is painting so much these days that I think it would be fun to let her display some of it. I kinda stole that idea from a friend but hers is an entirely different format so too bad! I think I'm going to try and have it all put together for Anna to wake up to Christmas morning.

Aside from classes, home stuff, house work, homework, and trying to ensure that Anna gets every bit of time she needs and deserves from Mommy, that's really about all I've been doing. I feel like I'm getting a little out of touch with friends because time is so limited which bums me out. I hope that isn't going to be such a problem going forward but its a pretty intensive program... so here's my plea to all my girlfriends- don't forget about me while I'm in school!

Sorry for the boring blog- it even feels boring as I type it! Maybe we'll dissect something more interesting in lab wed so I can tell you about that! ;)

**edited to add** Oh I forgot to tell you about my newest time wasting obsession! I think Jules (B- its Jules V fault that I even play these) is quite disgusted with me about this new habit! I started playing farmville and happy aquarium on facebook. Yes they are as silly as they sound but actually pretty fun and gives me something to do with my brain late at night when I can't sleep. I actually "play" a lot with Anna- she likes to see the animals and fish and gets super excited when I add something new for her. They are actually HER aquarium and HER farm :) and I think she enjoys being on mommy's computer.

Holy Crap!

I stole that title from a text from my sister-in-law just to give the appropriate credit. (question: after all these years do I still have to call her sis-in-law? or am I good with just sister- cause that's really what she is...)

ok on to the reason for my post- I think I encountered my first "eww gross" in the course of my nursing career. And yes as a disclaimer- I realize I will be doing MUCH MUCH grosser things than this- but it makes a good story to start grossing you all out with. :) I am in microbiology this semester- its interesting and boring at the same time. For our lab yesterday, we had some extra credit available to those who needed/wanted it. Three things were needed to complete this project- all samples of our "normal flora" -microorganisms that exist in/on our bodies at all times and as long as we are healthy, actually help us in various ways. For those of you that didn't know that you have microscopic creepy crawlies on and in your bodies all the time- I am sorry to be the one to bring that to your attention. Anyways, back to the samples.... we needed a throat swab, a spit sample....and you guessed it- a rectal swab. All together now...."ewwww!" For everyone's peace of mind- I'll just tell you that I totally made my lab partner do the rectal swab because she needs the extra credit and I don't! Sometimes studying DOES pay off :) The bad part is that next week we have to observe the cultures (yes we had to incubate and grow the microorganisms obtained from the swabs- just like they do in a medical lab) and also make microscope slides of everything. Now I just have to convince her to do the slides as well....

My artist

I find myself quite close to Halloween with no clear idea how I got here. Seems like I just started classes again last week. Yet somehow I'm almost halfway through! Or maybe more - its hard to keep track. Well, not hard but I'm too tired and lazy to go look it up for you. All I know is I just took my lab midterm and my 3rd micro test this week. My brain is fried and my body is REALLY tired! Anyhow, back to Halloween. So after much agonizing over what Anna should be for Halloween this year, I have decided on an artist. (thanks to "Miss Brooke" for the suggestion last year- LOVE it! I say "I" decided because Anna wanted to be a witch. Yeah...my innocent 3 yr old somehow got it in her head that a witch was the way to go. I am still not entirely sure how she came up with this suggestion- I don't let her watch scary tv... unless you count the occasional Arthur that has a slightly scary character and must be fast forwarded through very quickly. I suspect that my arch nemesis (as far as tv shows goes!) is the culprit. I speak of course, of the dreaded and horrible "Dora". I hate and despise this show. Yes I said hate- and I meant it. Its the worst show ever in the history of shows. It is literally mind numbing and makes me want to shove something through my eardrums and eyes so that it cannot reach my brain for one more second. Anna, on the other hand... loves it. Sigh- the things we put up with for our kids! Anyway, bygones about that. So, after much explaining to her (and Adam) why I don't want her to be a witch, I talked her into being an artist. This is extremely fitting (which as we all know is important to me- I like for there to be meaning in everything I do- makes for some unneeded stress sometimes....) as Anna loves loves loves to paint right now. A big thank you also to my mom who introduced Anna to "big" paints as opposed to the normal watercolors used by every other child on the planet. She is now using the craft paint that most definitely does not come out of clothing. She loves them however. She also loves to color, sticker, glitter glue, draw, etc. So artist in real life and artist for Halloween. I have the cutest little beret hat that is WAY to big for her head and will be heading to the nearest Hobby Lobby this week for the palatte, brushes, and apron. Should be cute!