Jingle Bells

I'm not real sure where she picked it up (daycare maybe?) but Addison recently fell in love with the song "Jingle Bells". The last few nights, she has requested this video to be played before bed.

After bath time tonight, we let her pick out her own jammies and she selected her "jingle bell jammies", which are in fact her "Tinkerbell jammies", but we don't have the heart to correct her.

And lastly, before bed we were saying prayers and it went like this...

Mommy: Dear Jesus, bless
Addison: Mommy
Mommy: and...
Addison: Daddy
Mommy: and ...
Addison: Jingle Bells!

Happy Halloween!

We just got back from taking our little bumblebee trick-or-treating at the Mall of America. It's hard to reason with a not-yet-two-year-old that she can't eat all of that candy right now. So after letting her eat 2 suckers and a Twix bar we figured we'd better call it quits or we'd never get her to sleep tonight. Unfortunately she still had a remnant of a sucker in her mouth when I put her in the car seat and upon choking on it for a few seconds, she ended up throwing up. The good news was that she got the chunk of sucker out of her throat. The bad news is that the wad of napkins in the glove compartment and the 6 wipes we had in the car didn't do a whole lot of good in fighting the mess. We were able to "stabilize" and make our way home.

Then it was time to pull the liner out of the car seat for laundering. (Somehow, this is the first time that it has required a wash). Oh. my. goodness. It will truly be a miracle if I ever get that thing put back together. I know I must have done it once before when the seat was new, but for goodness sake! I skinned my knuckles trying to unhook the carseat from those little safety latches.

In spite of it all, I'd do it again to see her have that much fun (though I'd check her mouth better before putting her in the car seat). This year Addison's "trick or treat" sounds more like "trick or meat", but we think that's cuter anyway!

So, happy Halloween everyone, and trick or meat!

Addison and Minnie

I love watching Addy play; especially when it shows her imagination at work. Tonight after dinner she loaded her giant Minnie Mouse into her high chair and proceeded to feed Minnie some supper. It was just so sweet and cute, I couldn't resist sharing a clip of the video I took.

Addison counts

We finally got a video of Addison counting tonight, and once again, it takes place in the bathtub. You'll hear her say her numbers 1-10, but what you may or may not hear is the 11-13 that she whispers after 10. She amazes me every day how intelligent she's becoming. Such a little sponge soaking in every morsel she can get. Hip-hip-hooray for puzzles. They've helped Addison learn her shapes and her numbers.

Addison's Greatest Hits

There will come a day when Addison will surely groan and roll her eyes into the back of her head when David and I break out into harmony singing silly songs for her. But for right now she loves it. "Wheels on the Bus," "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "If You're Happy and You Know It," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "The ABC song," "Jesus Loves Me," and "Jesus Loves the Little Children" are frequently requested at all times of the day. And as you'll see in this video, she'll often request a "mash-up," demanding the song be changed half way through. Here's Addison singing one of her current favorites, the alphabet song, appropriately mashed up with Twinkle Twinkle. Enjoy! Oh, and she also threw in a little bonus in the second half.

(Sorry about the technical difficulties at the beginning of the video...)

After bath time the other night we were snuggling in the rocking chair singing "Jesus Loves Me". Without prompting, this was how it went:
Me: Jesus loves
A: me
Me: this I know. For the Bible tells
A: me
Me: so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves
A: me
Me: Yes, Jesus loves
A: me
Me: Yes, Jesus loves
A: me
Me: The Bible tells
A: Addy
Me: so.

:-)

I've had a stack of puzzles on the shelf in Addison's closet for over a year now. When I first put them up there I thought it would be forever before she would be ready for them. Last week I decided to pull a couple of them down to give it a shot. To my surprise, Addison really seemed interested in them and didn't do too bad. This afternoon she pulled out her shapes puzzle and put all the pieces in the right spaces right away. Then she dumped the pieces out and did it all over again, and again, and again. I was pretty impressed and I know her grandparents will be as well, so I'm posting the video here!

Indiana State Fair

This corn dog and ear of corn were intended to be shared just two ways, but after offering Addy a taste, we had to give up a little more than we were expecting!




After a lifetime of refusing to even TRY ice cream, Addison finally indulged and decided that ice cream is indeed yummy.

More Indiana Fun

 



We had lots of fun visiting Grandma and Grandpa's house in Indiana.  Addison really enjoyed exploring their BIG yard and even the field of soybeans.

There's more than just corn in Indiana...

 I'd heard that the Gas City petting zoo existed, but had never been there myself. If you were familiar with the Gas City/Jonesboro area of Indiana, you might understand why I didn't have very high expectations.  Don't misunderstand, I have nothing against those communities, (after all, my husband is a product of them!) but they're small, very rural towns in the middle of nowhere! I always had the impression there was "nothing" to do there and one had to drive to Muncie, Kokomo, or Indianapolis to find anything "fun".  However, Addison's really into farm animals lately, so we thought it might be a nice little outing while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Gafford. I must say, I was surprised and impressed with what we found. I had no idea the variety of animals we would encounter and you can't beat the price! (FREE plus a vending machine of food for the animals at a whopping quarter per bag). Addison had the time of her life and as always appeared to be fearless around each and every animal.

The 10th Anniversary Adventure Conclusion

 So sorry to have made you all wait so long, wondering if we were ever reunited with our car in Schaumburg! Has the suspense been killing you??? God worked it all out just perfectly. :-)

As a result of our previous blog post, our dear college friend Cami Thomas learned of our predicament and informed us that she in fact lives in Schaumburg. We've stayed in contact over the years through Facebook and email and we knew she lived somewhere in Chicago-land but had no idea she lived right where we needed help! So following our afternoon of fun at the Field Museum, we took a cab back to the hotel, picked up our luggage, continued on to the train station, and rode the train out to Schaumburg where Cami (and her little guy Levi) picked us up and drove us to the dealership. It's amazing how much catching up we managed to do in a mere 15 minutes! After we paid a rather hefty bill (which at least was $900 less thanks to our warranty), we checked into a nearby hotel and went on to enjoy a delightful anniversary dinner at the Weber Grill Restaurant.

Our 10th Anniversary Adventure

In case you haven't read about yesterday's adventure on David's blog, we'll tell the story here as well...



You know those kind of days when you crawl into bed at night, reflecting on the last 24 hours and you think to yourself, “Huh; that didn’t go at ALL like I planned.” Yep; that was today and the start to our 10th anniversary trip to Chicago.

While the plan may have been rather last-minute, it was in fact a plan. Reservations had been made through Priceline, tickets were waiting for us at will-call for “Beauty and the Beast”, and arrangements had been made for Mom and Dad Gafford to meet us at the Ikea in Schaumburg to take Addison and Allie back to Indiana where we would meet them in a couple of days. Our first time leaving Addison for the night, but a fun opportunity to celebrate our decade of wedded bliss in one of our favorite cities.

I was driving the Outlook so David could be working from the passenger seat. Addison was happily watching “Finding Nemo” in the back seat for her 31st, 32nd, and 33rd time (it’s her favorite) and Allie was snoozing along in her crate. All was well and then the “change oil soon” message lit up on our dashboard. “Ok, no problem,” we thought. We can take care of that while we’re in Indiana. Over time though we began to notice our temperature gauge spiking and grew concerned. Fortunately we were pretty close to our meeting place so we pressed on. David called Dad and he was pretty confident that we could make it.

Once Mom and Dad arrived, we popped the hood and discovered that the radiator lacked any coolant. Dad made a quick trip over to Wal-mart and picked up 2 gallons. We poured it into the radiator reservoir but couldn’t get it to circulate into the radiator. Getting to the radiator cap turned out to be more complicated and time consuming than we would have liked. Meanwhile Mom and I had Addison playing with toys in the kids department in Ikea, and Allie was tethered to a nearby tree while David & Dad worked. All the while, our window of time that we’d allowed to get downtown, checked into our hotel, and eat dinner before the show was quickly diminishing.

About 90 minutes before the show was to begin, we thought we’d finally fixed the problem and proceeded to change to our “evening wear” in the back of the Outlook at the edge of the Ikea parking lot. Just as Mom and Dad were beginning to pull away, Dad noticed that the radiator appeared to have a very significant leak. How were we ever going to make it downtown in time?!? Mom and Dad followed us to a nearby dealership whose service garage had closed just 5 minutes previously. Fortunately we were still greeted by a very kind employee named Allen that was on his way to his car and he was able to quickly get the Outlook checked in and ready for service first thing tomorrow morning. We frantically transferred all of our bags over to Mom and Dad’s van and booked it to try to make it downtown in time.

Of course there was traffic along the way. When is there NOT traffic around Chicago? We watched the clock tick on and really couldn’t see how this was ever going to work out. Then, I kid you not, I looked over to Addison with folded hands who said clear as a bell, “Daddy pray”. So we did. We prayed for a miracle.

By the grace of God, we pulled up to the theater at 7:27 where we jumped out of Mom and Dad’s van at a red light, literally ran to will call to collect our tickets and were in our seats (after crawling over about 10 people to get to our seats in the exact center of our row) with about 20 seconds to spare before the show began. We were so frantic we were shaking and all we could do was laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad continued to our hotel where Mom fought to be able to check in on our behalf and leave our luggage in our room for us so they could finally hit the road back to Indiana. When we finally got to the hotel a couple of hours later, we were scolded and shamed by the dude at the front desk for not having Mom’s name on our reservation with us. He just didn’t get it no matter how we tried explaining the circumstances.




Now here we sit having finally eaten dinner at the 24 hour Dunkin’ Donuts down the road, the only food place we could find that was still open. No, today didn’t go quite as we planned. We HAD plans for tomorrow too, though I have a feeling tomorrow won’t quite look how we expected it to either. We really have no idea what tomorrow will look like. Our car is in Schaumburg and we’re downtown Chicago without it. Will the car be fixed in time for us to pick it up tomorrow and carry out the rest of our plans, or will we be renting a car and figuring out a plan B. Only the Lord knows and we’re trying really hard to just enjoy this very nice hotel room and not worry about it.

We do know one thing for certain. We will always remember our 10th anniversary get-away and the “adventure” that came with it!

And finally, I’ll leave you with this little visual image: In the flurry of changing in the back of the Outlook, David and I both forgot to change our shoes. You should have seen me rocking the little black dress with my “matching” Crocs.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Hot Air Balloon Ride

David knew that taking a hot air balloon ride was one of the few things that was on my bucket list. Though heights are not his favorite thing, when a half-off Groupon came across his email last year he decided he had to snatch it up. What we didn't know at the time was that weather conditions have to be absolutely PERFECT in order for the balloon to actually be able to fly. 12 times rescheduling and a full year later, we finally got to fly! It was a truly incredible experience free floating over the St. Croix River and into Wisconsin. In all, the flight lasted a little over an hour before we finally made our landing in a new housing addition north of Hudson. Thank you David for an unforgettable (and very early) morning!



Here you can watch our ascent into the sky and catch a glimpse of the sunrise. Our flight began at 6:00 a.m.




This was once we landed and the air was being let out of the balloon.

Fingerpainting with Shaving Cream

Take me to Disney World

Addison is so excited (or is that Mommy and Daddy are so excited?) that Grandma and Grandpa are taking us all to Disney World in a week! Of course she's excited to see Mickey and Minnie, but she's really excited about seeing her cousins Emily, Lauren, and Olivia again. Here she is practicing up on their names wearing a pretty princess dress on loan from a friend of mine (Thanks Amy!!).

Sandbox

Grandpa Gafford worked all weekend to get Addison's sandbox in working order and she got to try it out for the first time tonight. I think we're going to have a fun summer because she absolutely loved it!


"Thank you "Dampa" for my sandbox. I love it almost as much as the strawberries all over my face!"

Let there be light!

When we bought our house 3 years ago we loved everything.....except the chandelier hanging in the entry way. It already had 1/2 of its lightbulbs burned out, it was covered in dust and cobwebs, and it was completely out of reach for us to do anything about it. One by one the remaining bulbs went dim leaving us with very little light at all. About a year ago we found the perfect replacement light at Menard's. It was even on sale, so we snatched it up. However, the light did us absolutely no good in the box, but that's where it stayed. Until we could figure out a way to get up that high... in the middle of our entry way....over a flight of stairs. Lo and behold, Menard's now rents scaffolding so guess what we did this morning!

Thank you so much Jimmy for helping us out!!!

A pretty girl in her Easter dress

Ooooh what's down there?

All ready to help Mommy water the flowers. When will there be flowers, Mommy?