Catching Up

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I love Christmas time! There's just something about the lights and the cold that make me feel like a little kid again! All of our family parties are starting this weekend, we have a week full of fun counting down to Christmas. This will be the first time Matt and I are in our own house for Christmas morning, so that will be fun, and hopefully Ava will enjoy whatever Santa decides to bring her.

Here are some random pictures from the last month...


This is one of my favorites, it's Ava's fake cry face. I'm so glad we caught it on camera, it makes me laugh everytime I look at it.

This was on Sunday, in her little church outfit, I thought the hat was fun, and she actually kept it on for the most part!

We went up to our friends cabin this last weekend, so we were going through Ava's snow clothes, this is her modeling her hat and gloves.

This was at the cabin, they had an old-school high chair for her. The cabin was awesome, it was up South Willow in Grantsville and it had everything from Foosball and Ping Pong to a treehouse. It was beautiful and so fun to play with our old friends again!

This was way funny to, we had some of that soap stuff that you can spray out of the can, so we decided to make a smiley face on her tummy. I thought she'd think it was fun, but apparently I was way wrong. I love that she's crying because she has a smiley face on her belly.

Here she is showing off all her teeth.

This is me and Ava and her cousin Davin. I was babysitting and Davin wanted to cuddle, so Ava wanted to cuddle. The best way for me to get Ava to cuddle with me is to watch someone else's kid who likes to cuddle. She only wants to sit on my lap if I'm holding someone else. I hope this phase passes before the next kid comes along.

WARNING***GRAPHIC PICTURES AHEAD*** At the beginning of the month, I had the screws removed from my ankle. Last October, I had a little run-in with a Rhino (ATV - Connie, not a real Rhino :)) and the Rhino won. So I was able to get all 13 screws and 2 plates removed from my ankle because its been a year. The idea being that some of the pain I was feeling that was weather related would go away and..so far-so good! So here are some pictures of the ankle from the original accident and what it looks like now.


This was a couple weeks after the accident, after I got the cast off.
That big spot is where the roll bar landed on my ankle, it squished my ankle so it was like 1/2 inch thick, it was way gross!

This is my beautiful ankle a year later...so much for those dreams of ankle modeling... When I went in to the doctor to talk about getting the stuff removed, he was like, we will have to give you a few more scars, like he thought that would worry me, I just kinda laughed and was like, Do you see my ankle? That's the least of my worries!

This picture is a little blurry but here's everything they took out. it's so crazy that all of that was in my leg, I went back to the doctor today for a follow-up and they showed me the x-rays and you could see all the holes from where the screws had been. It was awesome to look at.

Well, I guess that's about it, sorry for such a long post. Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Years!

The Furious Five Plus One

I'm sure this won't be interesting to most people except the ones that were with me, but last weekend I had an awesome Girls Night Out with my old roomies. My last year in college (the year I met my wonderful husband) I lived with the coolest five girls in the world. It's been SO long since we've had only the Original Six together, so we ditched the husbands and kids and had a blast (no offense honey). We had so much fun together in Cedar, and it was SO fun to get together with them again. I think if we were the Furious Five, Jeffie would be the tiger, cause she could school any of us in a fight, Holls would be the snake, the snake just comes off as motherly to me, and Holls, you are the mom. Beezer would be the bird, because look how beautiful and skinny the bird is. Amanda would be the monkey, mostly cuz of that part when he's doing acupuncture on Po, Ess would be the praying mantis, cuz she's so small, and I would be Po, for a lot of reasons! Ha ha!!

We kinda had our own sorority, we called it Alpha Fatt, we celebrated on Fat Tuesday by eating pizza and, come to think of it, we celebrated most every day by eating pizza... it's also how I got the name Fatty. Are you feeling the sweetness of these roommates? Anyway, here are some pics from our awesome weekend. We stayed at my Aunt's condo in Park City. We ate out at Loco Lizard (sooo good) and then we went hot tubbing at the Best Western and then played and laughed and talked all night long!

Our personal photographer, Essie...

I love you girlies, I had so much fun!!!

Before I left for my big weekend, Matt and I had a little pre-Thanksgiving dinner. I cooked a turkey all by myself, and we had my mom and dad over. Matt made two homemade apple pies that were delicious. I mean homemade, as in, crust and all from scratch, right down the the apple filling. It was so good, he's officially being given all pie baking duties for the rest of our married lives (love that!) Here is his masterpiece in progress...

And this is what Ava did to entertain herself while we cooked the dinner, apparently I need to put the baggies a drawer or two higher. I'm pretty sure letting my little girl play with plastic bags put me on the nomination list for Mom of the Year, it's either that, or Safety Sue!

Tagged

I've been tagged quite a few times and I never seem to get around to doing it, so I'm finally going to do one. Here goes:

LUCKY 7'S

7 Things I Can Do...
1. Play the piano
2. Make Ava laugh
3. Be sarcastic
4. Run a marathon :)
5. Plug my nose with my top lip
6. Find mosquito larvae
7. Knit

7Things I Cannot Do...
1. Jumping jacks without peeing a little
2. A cartwheel
3. Monkey bars (I could always touch the ground, so I never really learned :)
4. Stay away from my husband or little girl for very long
5. Laugh quietly
6. Wear a bikini
7. Move things with my mind, like Matilda (i've tried)

7 Things I say Most Often...
1. Seriously
2. I love you
3. Like
4. That's what she said
5. For real (but more like fur real)
6. Ava
7. albagalkbigshbjg (jibberish, with Ava)

7 People I admire...
1. My husband
2. My mom
3. My sisters
4. Carma
5. Diane
6. Ess
7. Mother-in-law

7 Favorite Foods...
1. Pull N Peel Licorice
2. Vanilla Pudding snacks
3. Cookie Dough
4. Fruit snacks
5. Laffy Taffy
6. Edamame
7. Twix

CraZy 8'S
8 TV Shows I Like To Watch
1. The Office
2. Grey's
3. Biggest Loser
4. 30 Rock
5. Lost
6. That 70's Show
7. Scrubs
8. King of Queens

8 Things That Happened Yesterday...
1. Went to church
2. Took a nap
3. Ate dinner at my sisters
4. Ava stayed up till 11 (thanks to the debut of her front teeth)
5. Matt went to work
6. Talked on the phone
7. Ate too much cookie dough
8. Planned my week

8 Favorite Places To Eat...
1. Cafe Rio
2. Costa Vida
3. Olive Garden
4. Macaroni Grill
5. Subway
6. Coldstone
7. Quizno's
8. Papa Murphy's

8Things I'm Looking Forward To...
1. When Ava's teeth come in and stop hurting her
2. Thanksgiving
3. Christmas
4. Matt's grave shifts to be done for the week
5. Another baby someday
6. This weekend
7. Football season ending :)
8. Going sledding with Ava

8 Things On My Wish List...
1. Lose Weight
2. Decorations for my house
3. For Ava to stay healthy through the winter
4. Season 4 & 5 of The Office on DVD
5. A new bed
6. A bookshelf
7. A second car
8. A job that Matt loves

8 People I Tag...
1. Leslie
2. Esther
3. Carma
4. Megan
5. Shannon
6. Kami
7. Diane
8. Andrea
And any one else..

Don't Try To Church it Up Son, Don't ya mean Joe DIRT???

Happy Halloween everyone! Matt and I had a great time dressing up and trick-or-treating with Ava, our little bumblebee. Matt went as an all-too-convincing Joe Dirt, and I was a devil, tail and all. It was a lot of fun, mostly just seeing all the kids dressed up.

Ava and her cousins made a little petting zoo, that is, if you would normally pet a bumblebee. Anyway,this is her cousin who is a month younger than her as a monkey.

This is her cousin who is 6 months older than her, as an alligator, okay, so you wouldn't pet an alligator either, whatever!

And this is her other cousin who is two months older than her as another monkey. I love Halloween!

The other night, Matt, being the wonderful husband he is, not only gave me permission, but practically ordered me out of the house for a girls night. So I called up one of my friends, an old roommate from Cedar and we went out to eat and then went to see Mamma Mia, I really thought it was a cute movie! Anyway, while we were waiting for the movie to start, there were the photo booth things, and we just couldn't help ourselves. It took me back to highschool, but it was fun. It was so nice to get out and just be a silly girl!

Back in the Game

We FINALLY have internet at our new place. YAY! I felt like I was so out of touch with everything and everyone. So...I have some catching up to do, so this might be a long one.

To start off, I don't know how many of you are Twilight Fans, but I consider myself one (November 21st YAY!!) If you aren't familiar with the character of Bella, to say she is clutzy is a bit of an understatement. There are people in the book who feel it their sole responsibility to protect her from herself. Well, I think Matt has been feeling the same strain as of late. Let me explain. We move into our new townhouse, and we have been living there for a total of 1 day and 1 night. Well, we needed to change the cord on our dryer, becaue it was the wrong one for the outlet. So Matt picked one up, and while he was busy doing something, I thought, I can do this, no problem. So I climb behind the dryer and start fiddling around. Well, the dryer cord looked like it might not be the right one, so I thought I'd check to make sure, by putting it up to the outlet. Well, I didn't think about how it wasn't connected to the dryer, so basically I was putting an extremely high voltage plug into the wall, with it's bare, ungrounded wires laying in my lap. The result?? Big BANG...smoke....horrible smell...house of darkness. I was actually really lucky that all it did was burn me, but this is what was left of my shirt.

And this is what was left of my stomach...

When my hands finally stopped shaking we were trying to figure out how to get the power back on and it turns out, it blew the main breaker, which isn't located in the normal breaker box, but is actually in the box outside the house. I think people generally don't find that switch on their first week in their home. Apparently those safety things you plug into outlets aren't only for children.

So, that same day, I went over to my mom and dad's to bring in the mail for them, cuz they were out of town. So, I pull into their driveway and as I'm heading to the mailbox, I attempt to make a seemingly simple step over a little rock wall, seriously, this wall is not more than a foot high, but I somehow miscalculate and go sprawling onto their front lawn. And this is what happened to my only leg that was somewhat scar-free.

It might not look that bad, but the top of my foot was so bruised, I coudn't wear sandals for a week. And my shin had a huge bump on it! I came home and Matt wrapped me in a padded suit, put a helmet on me, and made me sit on the couch for the rest of the day. Then he started calling me Bella. I told him that was fine, if he could be Edward... :)

We decided to go to Wheeler Farm a couple weeks ago. It was the day before we were all graced with the first snow, so it was a little cold. So we bundled Ava up and went to look at the animals. It was really fun. The farm is all free, and you can do a little wagon ride for like $1.50.

You can also buy duck food for 50 cents, so we let Ava feed the ducks. There were a ton of ducks, they were super loud and they definitely aren't afraid of people. They were starting to get really close and I think Ava got a little nervous. Then the geese started heading over and I got a little nervous, so we moved along.

They had some brand new baby pigs, this is Ava watching them eat.

This was on the wagon ride.

That night we went to Heber and had a Halloween party at the Rigby's. We made sugar cookies and painted pumpkins. This is Ava making sugar cookies for the first time. She definitely takes after her mom, she ended up eating more of the cookie dough than anything. She was a little shy at first, she put the first little bit in her mouth, watching me the whole time, like she was waiting for me to tell her not to eat it. But as soon as she tasted it, and realized I wasn't going to stop her, there was no stopping her.

This is her playing at our house. She really likes to sit in these totes. I thought it was cute.

Matt and I went to the BYU-UNLV game on Saturday with some friends from Cedar and my sister watched Ava for us. When we got back they were at a Halloween Carnival/Trunk-or-treat at the church and my sister had dressed her in a little chicken costume she had. She looked really cute. She actually took her first few steps that day, but she hasn 't done it since. She's only done it when she doesn't realize she's doing it. If Matt or I are in front of her, she just lunges at us, no matter how far away we are. But she's getting there. We're thinking by the time we enroll her in preschool, she should be up to 5 or 6 steps at a time. :)

The costume was super hot, so we altered it a little.

My mom had a Halloween party today for all the grandkids, so we dressed her up as a bumblebee, which is what we are going to do for Halloween also. My mom is so cute. She had all these fun games and crafts for the kids, and she even made play-dough and gave little bags of goodies to the little kids too. She had decorated her basement and everything, it was really cute, she put a lot of work into it, and the kids all loved it!

Here are all the "Desmond" grandkids, in their costumes.

And last but not least, here are some pics of our house. There are kind of a lot, sorry, but consider this a virtual tour of our townhouse.

These are a little out of order, but here is Ava's room. All the bedrooms are upstairs.

The Garage

This is the closet under the stairs, and we've made it Ava's playroom. We're hoping it will help her develop her wizarding skills, (you know, by living in the cupboard under the stairs, ha ha ha ha)

The Kitchen

The Dining Room (sorry, kind of a dark pic)

Again, kinda dark, but this is the living room, don't you love all our decorations? We'll get there, eventually...

Guest bathroom, downstairs

Ava's bathroom, upstairs

Ava's bathroom (I know what you're thinking, I'm so glad she showed us the toilet, I rarely see those, well, you're welcome...you are welcome)

Laundry room

Shelves in the laundry room ( love those, they are super duper handy)

One end of the Master Bedroom

Other end of the master bedroom

Our closet, Yay, for big closets!!

Master Bathroom

Master Bathroom (don't you love the two sinks Kim?)

Okay, I think that's all, other than, I have to say, I am SO glad I have the internet again, I totally thought I'd be fine without it for a while, and I was wrong.