So my sister yelled at me for never blogging so here goes.

Some new tidbits of my life:
*I watch a lot of tv at night. Each night is filled with great tv shows: the bachelor, american idol, ugly betty and lots of house hunters and property virgins.

*Working part time has really de-stressed my life. I never feel like thank goodness it's friday. I usually even forget it's friday!

*I need some fun and excitement in my life. I don't have many (any?) friends and feel like it's about time to get some. It's starting to get me down.

*I want to start working out. I'm going to go to the gym on campus here with my friend Monique (yes I said it...a friend. She's the mom of the baby I watch.) I'll keep you posted about if that actually happens and how that goes. I'm pretty anxious about it though, so I think it'll actually go down.

*I love Kate so much lately (as always, of course!) I don't want to jinx us by saying this but she is so good lately. She's so sweet and polite and is REALLY funny. She is silly and laughing pretty much from the time she wakes up till the time she goes to bed. I think me working part time really helps. She seems to have de-stressed as well!

*Kate can now recognize and name the letters M, K, D, P, Q, B, E, T, Y, O and the number 5

Anyways..enough of that. Here are some pictures and videos from lately.

As you may know, Kate loves to dance. Check out some of her new dance moves. Don't mind the binky in the one video. It's probably one of the only times I've ever seen her in a picture or video with that silly thing.




Super Bowl party pics

Dustin and his brothers and Dad after the big WIN. They were jumping around in the snow.

Cheering after a touchdown with Aunt Melissa and Pappy.

Kate, Pappy, her cheesy smile and her hotdog.


Kate before church today...right before the dance party.

GO STEELERS!

Super Bowl Sunday...Go STEELERS!

So I've been bored and tired lately so I haven't been blogging much. Here are some random things from the last few weeks.

It's another ABC video...but this is from last wednesday just a week after the first ABC video. I was impressed at how much better she got!


Kate was really sick all last week. So I didn't even leave the house all week long. Here she fell asleep on the couch one day. (It turned into an ear infection for anyone who cares. So she's on an antibiotic now and doing much better.)


Kate's surprised face


We had Christmas this past weekend with my sister. This is the Valentine's dress and elmo toy my niece got for Kate.


I'm sporting my niece's new boots to see if they are the look for me. Sexy?? I decided not!


Snuggles with Daddy


Kate loving her Dora "tunnel" (as she calls her tent) And sleeping in there with her babies



Somehow we got Kate excited to go back out in the snow. She's getting all ready here. She actually liked going down the hill once we were moving but she was still really scared.

Jumping on the trampoline with Uncle Phil


We had a Steelers' party at our house 2 weeks ago and when they scored the last touchdown to win the game Dustin jumped out in the snow face first in excitement! What a nut.

This girl knows what she wants

This morning I was picking out Kate's clothes. I asked her if she wanted to wear her heart sweater to which she quickly said no. I said "No? Why?" Kate says "No, I no like it."
What??!! Is is so bad?

She then picked out a different sweater to wear which made her very happy to wear. Okay...whatever gets her dressed easily. (don't mind how rough she's looking tonight! or the gloves!) Oh my opinionated little girl.

ABC's

I missed the beginning (her best known part!) but Kate loves to sing her ABC's.

Snowed in and Locked out

So today involved several things: being snowed in and being locked out. First we can start with the snow. It snowed 10 inches here between last night and this afternoon. I went outside before Dustin got home from work to shovel the driveway so he could get into the garage. That was NOT going to happen. I had no idea how much snow was out there or how hard it is to shovel that much snow! The plow truck had plowed our road leaving about 2 feet of snow blocking our driveway. I bundled up Kate and myself and headed out! To no avail...it was very hard work and Kate HATES the snow. She cried nearly the entire time.
Backing up to breakfast around 8:15 this morning we get to the locked out part of my day. Kate is eating her breakfast (her second bowl of cereal) and I'm getting bored so I decide to go downstairs in the basement and turn the computer on so we can go down there after breakfast. I shut the door behind me like a cautious mom so she doesn't fall down the steep wooden steps. She is crying because I left her and is trying to open the door to come down. I get back upstairs and try to open the door to get back into the kitchen and the door is locked. She must have turned the lock while turning the handle. So my mind races. I don't have my cell phone or anyone to call for that matter. No house keys downstairs. Kate won't cooperate in turning the lock for me! But this story obviously has a happy ending...as of course I'm not sitting downstairs blogging while Kate is upstairs by herself crying still! I remembered this house has a keyless entry into the garage. And I remembered the code the owners set for it since we haven't changed it yet. Then I trudged through 10 inches of snow in my pj's, barefeet with slippers to get in the house. Happy ending.

Some pics of the snow today:
Here Kate is desperately saying "all done" and "uppa". This is our driveway by the way...the snow is up past Kate's knees.



This is how bad Kate hates to snow. She even hates Dustin out sled riding in it!

Christmas pics

I'm finally getting around to posting some Christmas pics:
Kate's new guitar...she loves to be like her Daddy.

Kate's favorite toy: her baby and stroller. She screamed when she opened it and has been wheeling it around ever since. (And notice the Elmo slippers!)

A family picture with all of our Christmas jammies. Santa brought them to us on Christmas Eve. Pictured: Justin, Melissa, my dad, me, Dustin

Seriously the prettiest little girl I know!

We had a nice visit from our friends Justin and Erica! Here's Kate and her BFF Brooklyn.


This is what I get when I ask Kate to pose for a picture these days!

Christmas cookies and more

Kate and I baked sugar cookies tonight. We had lots of fun! I couldn't keep Kate from eating the dough...by the spoonful. She thought it was pretty funny when I told her not to so she's try to do it faster. Finally she stopped.


She is really concentrating on rolling out that last little bit of dough (do u love my rolling pin...I don't have one and it was the first thing I could find!)


She is quite proud of herself.



Just to eat that dough, too


Enjoying a piece of the finished product before bed


Here is a random pic from the past week:
Kate is really excited that the Steelers scored. Now that is one big smile.

A home to call our own

We moved!! We met a family in our church that was moving out of state for a while and asked us to move in and take care of their house while they're gone. Did I mention free of charge?!?! We will just pay utilities. We are so excited and feel so blessed. How this came about was pretty neat...long story short is they'd been praying about what to do because they wanted to take a new job but didn't know what to do about their house. Well, if you know me you know that of course we wonder how in the world we will make it work and is there any way for me to not have to work full-time. Well I was visiting teaching this lady one day and telling her my woes (I got that ability to tell my troubles to near strangers at the drop of a hat from my mother) and she knew right then her prayers had been answered. She asked us to move in (coincidentally right at the exact time our contract in our apartment was up) and we said yes!! So here we are in our new house. Some perks of this new house that we have never enjoyed before include:
-no rent
-3 bathrooms
-dishwasher
-2 car garage
-huge backyard
-3 bedrooms
-dining room
-at the end of a cultisac (sp) so no traffic or noise
-fireplace (although we aren't allowed to use it for insurance purposes)
-semi-finished basement
-no computer desk in the living room!
and the list goes on!!
Here are some pictures of the new place:

Kate helping me pack in the old apartment



The house from the outside.



The backyard



The kitchen



The dining room (which needs a little tlc in the decorating department!)


living room and fireplace



The basement aka dustin's music room


So we're super excited about this new adventure. We will be living here anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half. (of course we're hoping to stay until dustin graduates in a year and a half) I am going to work part-time starting in a few weeks so that means more time home with Kate!

*And just as a side note...we're not sending out Christmas cards this year so don't be offended if you don't get one since no one is!!

For those of you interested in how Kate sleeps at daycare...I took some pictures! This is Kate sleeping on her cot.

And this is the rest of the kids (well half the room) sleeping on their cots. Notice I put Kate in the corner to try to shield her from all noises!


We had so much fun at daycare the other day with this bounce house. The kids had a blast. Kate loved it so much that the other worker had to go in and drag Kate out! I'm thinking one of these will look great in our living room!