October

Wow, I can't believe it's already the end of October! Life has been busy, as usual. Eric, Amy and Espen were here this weekend and we had lots of fun together! Friday night we had a family get-together at Melody and Tom's house with about 25 of Jonathan's family members. Saturday we met the boys for lunch and then took a walk around the River Walk, and that night we just hung out at home. Thanks for coming guys! We love having visitors!

Here's Espen wearing my shoes :)

I'll sum up the rest of the month in pictures.

Justin came home!! He's been overseas working construction in the Afghanistan/Kabul/Dubai area since January. We were all so excited for him to be home, safe and sound.



We took 2 trips to the pumpkin patch, which was fun, but will be MUCH more fun when Amelia cares, and can walk around that crazy terrain on her own. :)



My friend Stevie and I have been making baby girl tutus and headbands to sell for a little bit of extra money here and there.. Or maybe just for our own kids :)
Cute bow huh?!?


And here's my favorite..


Recently Amelia has really taken to loving chairs. She likes to climb into them and sit proud like a big lady. So, Jonathan and I thought it would be the cutest thing to buy her a chair..


And it was..



It's a little brown leather chair to match the rest of our living room furniture. Love it!

I hope everyone has had a great October so far! Can't wait to post Halloween pictures, and see everyone else's!

California

We just got home from a wonderful trip to California. On Friday morning we got up bright and early, (poor Jonathan woke up at 2:30am and couldn't go back to sleep), loaded up the car and headed for DIA. Our plane left at 9:30am and was a success:

We spent that whole day and night with my Mom's side of the family:

Grandma telling Amelia she doesn't need to cry every time the dog comes around

Grandma and Amelia

That night we went to Holly and Ryan's to play some guitar hero


Saturday we got ready and went to San Marcos for the rehearsal dinner. First we got more pictures with the fam:
Grandma, Me, Amelia

Add in Jonathan

Take out Jonathan and add Carolyn


Here are some cute shots at the rehearsal dinner:



Passing out gifts

All the bridesmaids got matching Coach clutches. They're so cute!

The ribbon made a great hair bow!

I love my Maria


The next day was the wedding, which was wonderful.

Maria with her Dad

9 bridesmaids!

The whole wedding (Jonathan stood in the back with Amelia so he got lots of great pictures!)

Our family

And then she broke my necklace :(

But she loved the flowers

And my Coach clutch

And me!

The whole wedding party


YAY! Maria Chiovare is now Maria Ayala!! :)


Monday morning we were able to stop by Bryan and Erin's house and chat for about an hour, then we met Carolyn and Shirley for an In-N-Out lunch, and then headed to the airport to go home. After the worst flight home ever, and Amelia getting a minor motion sickness barfing episode, we are home safe and sound, and it feels great!

Houston, we have a walker!

Amelia is walking! Yay! She still does the "Frankenstein" walk right now, but she's getting better every day. Now, when she falls down, she gets right back up to walking, instead of crawling the rest of the way. Pretty exciting new steps in her life (pun intended).
She also knows how to go down the stairs, which is nice because no more baby gate! The other night while I was doing the dishes and Jonathan was busy, she went downstairs, got her favorite stick of chapstick, and came right back up! How funny.


We've also been working on her signs. It's pretty cute that all day every day she signs bath time, because she SO loves her baths. Even though she only gets one every other day, she'll sign it while we're driving and stuff. Haha. Maybe when it gets colder we'll take more.


Remember when she had tons of hair, and as she got older everything started to fall out except the middle mowhawk?? Well, we finally put it in a ponytail, and look how long it is!


If those videos don't work, could someone please tell me how to upload videos so they do work?! Thanks :)

The Many Adventures Of Patrick Jacobs

As I mentioned in my last blog, Kirsta and Joe came down to stay with us this past weekend for Labor Day. Unfortunately, Jonathan doesn't get Labor Day off work so we had to cram all the fun into one day. First, we went to the Colorado State Fair and checked out lots of animals:

Goats

Sheep

Bunnies

And cows


After that we came home and ate dinner, then headed out to City Park, which has rides going every night during the summer from 5-9 pm for only 50 cents! Sadly, we discovered these rides about a week after Kirsta and Joe had left last time, so I was DYING for Patrick to come back before they were closed. There's a train and a carousal that adults can ride with the kids, but all the other rides are kids only and they have to be at least 2 years old, which excludes Amelia from doing anything fun. So, Patrick was my go-to guy!

On the train

Ferris Wheel

These little cars just went around and around

More car rides

The carousal

I went on the roller coaster with him, and afterwards he said, "That was NOT a fun ride!" Lol.


As always, we had a great time with the Jacobs!

Messes

As Amelia gets older, she is figuring out how to get into stuff. I mean, REALLY get into stuff. We used to be OK if things were in their boxes, but now she knows how to open the box and get into whatever is in there. I thought I would share a few examples:

She has a yeast infection right now, so the Doctor told us to get women's Monistat cream and use it on her like diaper rash cream. Well, women's yeast infection treatment kits come with injection tubes, which we of course are not using on her, but they still came in the box.. She found them:



The only thing in the kitchen that we put baby locks on were the cupboards under the sink because there are some chemicals under there. I didn't want locks on the rest of them because when I am cooking dinner she likes to be in there with me but I'd rather have her playing with stuff than whining at me to pick her up. Well, until now. She learned how to get into boxes of food, such as:

Cornstarch!


Today she found the bag of straws:


We bought her a set of fridge magnets so she could have something to entertain herself, and she absolutely loves to "rake" them all on to the floor, which then just leaves me with another mess. So, what's the verdict? Do I baby proof and listen to the whining, or just keep myself busy picking up a lot of messes??

Wonderful weekend

We had a GREAT weekend around here. Eric called last week and said he needed to take a class here in Pueblo so he was going to come stay a night with us. In the 2 1/2 years we've lived here he had never seen our house! He got here Friday afternoon and then had class that night and again on Saturday morning. Amelia and I met up with him (he?) and Jonathan for the Saturday Taco Bell lunch ritual. After that I got in touch with Chrystal (from Grand Junction) who was in town for the Colorado State Fair. We met up at 1:30 to walk around the Fair, which was a really bad idea becuase it was 95 degrees out and lugging a baby around in that kind of heat is not my idea of fun. But, she invited me back that night to go to the Blake Shelton concert with her family because they happened to have an extra ticket. I got to go back that night babyless, in the cool night air. Wonderful. The next morning we met up with her family for a Cracker Barrell breakfast, went to church, and then got our house ready to have a BBQ for the Bed Bath and Beyond management. That lasted from about 4-8:30 on Sunday night and the weekend was over! Whew. This week I have something planned with friends every day, including Kirsta and Joe coming to stay for Labor Day weekend on Friday! The fun just never stops around here... Until it gets cold again and I become a shut-in. :)

August

First, my apologizes for not blogging in so long. It's not that I forget, and actually my guilt for not blogging grows with each passing day. It just seems to me that 99% of my readers are at any activity worth blogging about, and then I just feel like I'm being redundant. I think what I need to do is start writing about the "small" things in life, and trying to capture more day-to-day things on camera.


Anyway~ the month of August has had it's ups and downs around here. On the 4th Amelia turned 1!! I of course knew that it was coming, but on that day I finally realized that I am the Mom of a 1 year old! Seriously, where did the time go?? I feel like it was yesterday when my mom was here visiting and she told me to just make it through the first 6 weeks and then it would get better. Well, 6 weeks have passed, and then another 46 weeks! Wow. We had a BBQ at our house for our Pueblo/Springs friends and family on her birthday, and then that weekend we went to Denver for a celebration with the Gustavson side (and Joe's Mom) at Water World and Kirsta's house.

This is the cake I made her This is the new swimsuit we bought her for Water World That was a great week/weekend. The following Wednesday was her 1 year Dr. appointment. She woke up that morning with a fever, so we found it pretty handy that we were on our way to the Dr. When we got there they checked her all out and couldn't find anything wrong, assumed it was just teething and we decided to give her her shots. I wouldn't say that giving her shots that day was a mistake, but the teething combined with a stomach bug (which we found out later that night, which is what was causing the fever), combined with the shots, whose effects didn't show up for 7-10 days, has made this a LONG week and a half for us. There's been high fevers, low fevers, never-ending fevers, throwing up, crying (on both our parts after the throw up:) ), LOTS of whining and therefore lots of Tylenol, skin rashes and the worst diaper rash I've seen, and many sleepless nights. I guess these are the joys of parenthood.

Today seems to be the start of things looking up. The fever is gone and she seems to be getting back to her normal, happy self. Please cross your fingers for me that she stays this way, at least until her next tooth. :)

On a happier note, Amelia LOVES fruit. Such as:
Watermelon And peaches, fresh off our tree! She also signed "all done" for about a week and now she just wants to say it. Any time of the day you say it to her, this is what she does: Mostly it just sounds like "Aaaaaaa daaaa."


I guess that's all for today. :)