My little chef

All dressed in her new cooking outfit, Kayleigh helped me make some muffins. What a cutie!

I really love nap time. Kayleigh's nap time that is. :-)

Vacation tickers

I really want to put up a ticker for our upcoming vacation but I've heard they aren't the best thing to have on a public blog. I guess the crazy people out there know when you aren't home due to the ticker dates and will rob your house while you are away. So, I thought I'd just do a post to say we are going to Alaska to visit my brother's family later this year. We are so excited! I am already nervous thinking about how Kayleigh will do on the plane, but I think she will have a lot of fun seeing her cousins and traveling with us. We are going for 9 days. We'll do some sight seeing and some relaxing at their house. The best part about the whole thing is that we got 3 plane tickets (thank you American Express-Delta SkyMiles) for 60 bucks! And yes, that includes the insane baggage fee. Alaska, here we come...in awhile.

10 year reunion?

Michael got an invite today through Facebook for his 10 yr. high school reunion. Even though this isn't my reunion, it still makes me feel so old! I can't believe he's been out of high school for 10 years. Anyway, it's in June at Barnes Park. That will be fun/interesting I think.

A new mattress

I am so excited to go to sleep tonight, why you may ask? Because we got a new mattress! Costco had a great deal on a king size (once you sleep on one there's no going back to a queen) with $140 off coupon good thru tomorrow. It's a Sealy pillow top. So, we thought we'd take advantage and treat ourselves to hopefully some better zzzzz's.

The current mattress we had was a hand-me-down from Michael's parents which we were so grateful to have. Without that we would have been sleeping on the floor for the last year and a half. The mattress was old though (like 30 years old) and had 2 big dips where we would sleep each night.

My dad went with me to go and get it today. Of course it had to POUR rain while we were there, and I mean it was coming down! We got it all loaded up though and home we drove. Michael's dad was at our house and helped unpack it and bring it in and remove the old one. Thanks, everyone for helping.

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention that Kayleigh's huge bruise on her head is from a dive she took into our wall. She tripped while running with her shoes on and headed straight into the wall. Poor thing! It's getting better though, so that's good.

The birthday aftermath

Almost a week later I am finally posting about Kayleigh's big day. She had a very fun day. I took her to my mom's house in the morning to go swimming. We had a great time in the pool together. After that I brought her home for some lunch and a nap.

While she was having a nap I made her birthday cake. For Christmas my mom gave each of us kids a cake decorating idea book. Thanks to the book, Kayleigh got a pretty sweet cake if I do say so myself. It was time consuming (mostly making the frosting) but it turned out great and was pretty easy. When Kayleigh woke up from her nap I showed the cake to her and she got a big smile on her face and said "Snowman!"

Michael got home around 5 from work and brought some balloons! Kayleigh loves balloons and she'd been telling us for the past few months that for her birthday she wanted balloons. We added the 2 he brought her to the 2 she got from my dad earlier that day.

Michael made us a pizza for dinner while I got ready. After eating we brought out her presents for the big party. Even before people got to our house she wanted to open them. She kept picking one up and even started ripping the paper before we started.

Michael's grandparents were the first to arrive followed by my parents and brother, my sister and her two girls and Michael's parents. We had a full house! Thanks, everyone for coming, Kayleigh enjoyed the attention and a fun party all for her.
Of course the kid got spoiled, I think there were more presents for her to open than there was for Christmas!

She has really enjoyed playing with every toy she got. Each day she goes from one thing to the next and entertains herself well. She is officially two, where does the time go? We love her so much and are happy she had a great day!

Kayleigh's stats

We went to see good ol' Dr. Doug yesterday for Kayleigh's 2 year check-up. Michael was so happy that he had the day off since it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and was able to come with us. Kayleigh learned how to say "Dr. Doug" and we told her if she was good she might get a sucker. Well, she was good and got 4 suckers and a sticker! Thanks, Dr. Doug!

All I can say is she is growing like crazy. She is now 37 1/2 inches tall (100%tile) and 33 lbs. (98%tile). Whew! The Dr. said many will mistake her for a 3 or 4 year old, and he's right, they do. Oh well, she will be a tall girl. That's okay, I've had lots of practice in searching for jeans that come in a long size. All is well and we are happy about that.

Happy Birthday Kayleigh!

I, officially, as of 3:33 a.m. this morning have a two year old! Wow! Kayleigh has been such a good girl ever since she was a baby. Michael and I have thoroughly enjoyed having her in our family. She has grown a ton in her short two years and everyone thinks she is 3, but she's only 2.

This past year she has started talking a lot and it's so fun to teach her new things to say. She loves nursery and her little friends in there with her. She grew out of her crib this year and sleeps in a big girl bed. She LOVES treats and would eat them all day if we let her. She finally learned to crawl and walk this year. And her other big accomplishment is that she gave up her binki.

Kayleigh is so cute, sweet, and happy. We couldn't have asked for a better daughter and are grateful she is healthy. We love you Kayleigh.

Our weekend project

Ever since we moved to this house I have wanted to put knobs on the cabinets and drawers in our kitchen. One and a half years later, we finally did it! Thanks to both of our parents who gave us gift cards to Home Depot for Christmas Michael was able to get a drill. This new drill did the job beautifully!

But, I must share a little story about this drill. That night after putting on the knobs, Michael put the battery on the charger for the night and we went to bed. On Saturday we woke up and while I was getting ready for work Michael went into the kitchen. He came back into our room holding a very melted battery to the charger. Wow, what a sight to see! (Of course we didn't take a picture.) Michael took it back to Home Depot and they quickly exchanged it for a brand new one. The worker said you should be able to leave the battery on the charger for days and it shouldn't do that. Whew! I was glad they were so nice and just gave us a new one. Who would think that the battery would melt like that?? We leave our cell phones and cameras charging all night all the time.

Back to the cabinets, I am still getting used to the new look, but I love being able to open/close them without having to touch the doors.

Happy New Year

Michael saved some fireworks from the 4th of July to do on New Years. Both Kayleigh and my niece were pretty excited for these. It was funny though, once we got outside to do them they were both not too into them. Kayleigh was scared of them and Grace thought they were loud. Oh well, we tried right?

I'm excited to start a new year and can't wait to see what it all brings. I'm excited to watch Kayleigh grow and develop more, along with all of our nieces and our one nephew. (Do you think we need some more boys in the family?) I'm excited for some home improvement projects we have scheduled and for our tax return. :-)We are hoping to visit some family up in Alaska this summer as well, I hope it works out that we can go.

Family party

The Sunday after Christmas all of dad's family headed on over to my parent's house for a party. We enjoyed a fabulous dinner of sandwiches and salads. After dinner we did the nativity-my dad reading it with everyone singing songs in between. My cute niece, Phoebe, was the baby Jesus this year. After the nativity we split into two groups and played Christmas bingo and a matching game. The matching game was pretty cool because it was the matching of pictures of our ancestors. My dad made the game on the computer and then we hauled our t.v. over to their house for a bigger screen to play it on. I loved seeing everyone and showing Kayleigh off to one of my cousins who has never met her. He just got back from his mission and she was born shortly after he left. Wow, time flies!

Friends get together

Michael was in a group of 4 boys that hung out and became good friends during high school. All are married now and busy with life, but, since one of them, Jacob, was in town for the holidays, we planned a get together. We all went to dinner at Apple Bee's and came to our house afterwards for games and chatting. It was a lot of fun! One of the best parts was that we all got babysitters so we really enjoyed ourselves. And I have to say, everyone was pretty darn good at Harry Potter Scene It! Thanks, boys, for being great friends to my hubby!

Temple Square, again

Even though we went early in December, we thought why not go again? My parents hadn't been to Temple Square yet this year to see the lights. When they said they were going we thought we'd tag along too. Our first stop was at Crown Burger for some great burgers and fries. Lots of greasy food, why does it taste so good?
Anyway, we made our way to Temple Square where it was much warmer than the last time we went there.

Kayleigh wanted to see Baby Jesus again, I thought it was neat she remembered that he was there. The nativity is always cool to see there. The lights are pretty cool too, year after year. I enjoyed the little nativity scenes they had representing cultures around the world. Kayleigh liked to keep pointing out all the baby Jesuses. Michael got some great pictures.