Christmas 2010

 I am just feeling so incredibly thankful this Christmas time! I have such a wonderful family! It's a very big family indeed and I love everybody in it!! I have had the opportunity to do a special service project this season too; For my dear friend Amber. She and her husband (and family) have had a rough year and I wanted to remind them how many people love them and want to support them through this trial they are bearing. So I have had help from her mom in collecting fabric from many of their friends and family and we put all the fabric together and her sisters came over and helped quilt it together. Now we have a beautiful Quilt of Love to help remind them we all want to be there for them in their time of need. So when they are feeling lonely they can cuddle up in their blanket and its like getting a big hug from all of us. I was also able to visit her daughter in the cemetery. It was a very emotional experience for both Jesse and I; as we talked about Ambers' Molly and also the loss of our niece Marie (a few years ago, before I was even a Fox actually). We are so so grateful for out baby Maia and I thank the Lord each day for the opportunity I have to be a mother. Sometimes I just think this is what I was born to do, be this little girls mom. Maybe that's why I keep hurting my wrists and can't massage 'cuz of the pain! Because I just need to be her mom right now :) Anyway the blanket is a surprise which makes it even  more fun for me to work on! Secrets are sort of a difficult thing for me but I must say I have done pretty well keeping it :) But I know it will mean a lot to them. I wrote a little poem to go with it too:

This quilt is big enough for two

Because it was made just for you

From some you love and some you know

That all have a lot of love to show

When you're all wrapped up its a big warm hug

As long as Moose (their puppy) doesn't use it for a rug

We know sometimes your far away

That's why we made this to send your way

To let you know how much we care

And we'll always be there for you,

We Swear!

I have so many amazing friends that I am grateful for! I have my little community of people I love and care about and I love all the technologies available to me so I can keep in touch with them all!

So Christmas! We had a wonderful time with my family But lets start from the begging! Everyone got sick! We all had our chance with the throw up yuck! It didn't last very long so at least we had that! And everyone was finished with it by Christmas eve! So after I got the quilt done it was time for some family time! We went all over looking for this supposed awesome new iceless ice skating rink sounds interesting at least right? Well here is said "rink"

It's tiny!! And we watched people try to skate on it and they were just walking in ice skates on it.. So pretty much not worth it!

then this photo made me laugh because they had signs rather than like guard rails to enclose the "rink"

So then we went to Southglenn Mall or whatever the outdoor shopping is called now and they have a tiny rink that is real ice so that's where we skated! My mom met us there and brought this SUPER adorable Santa suit for Maia, and since it was Chilly we put it on her!

Santa Baby!

Then later that evening Jesse, Mandy, My Dad and I went to an Avalanche Hockey game! It was really fun! The Av's lost but we still had a good time! We got a great deal too! It was family night so we got 4 tickets and 4 MEALS for $99!! It was crazy!

We enjoyed it, it was my Dad and Mandy's first NHL game, now they know a little more about Hockey than they did before!

The next day was Christmas Eve and our tradition is to have scones and a program over at my Grandma Browns home. And that's exactly what we did! We helped make and devour some scrumptious home made scones and meatballs. Then we sang some Christmas songs and exchanged a few gifts, then we played Catch phrase for a while. Then went home to put the baby to bed! We opened up some cute Christmas jammies before bed though! Maia got some cute owls, Jesse a ' Everything's bigger in Texas' t-shirt and Cougar Blue jammie pants (can I say that Jesse has Jammies? or do they need to be called Pajamas for a man?) And I had a purple shirt to match Maia's owls and teal pants to kinda match Jesse. Then my Mom game me some BYU pink jammies too!
Christmas Morning!

Santa was good to us this year!

This is an Owl I made for Maia, it matched her Jammies and a pair of shoes she got, in this photo she was dancing with it!

In this photo you can also see the projector and digital photo frame my parents got us!!! We had a great time opening gifts and giving them as well! I made microwavable bean/rice heat bags for all the girls! Jesse did help with them as well! Hopefully everyone got them! Then we had a nice lazy Christmas day! For dinner we had probably the best Turkey of my life! It was so buttery and moist, simply delicious! Either because it was the best turkey or because food was finally tasting good again! 

The next day we had a Brown party after Church at my parents house! It was great to get to see everyone! I haven't seen them all for a long time! We had some homemade burgers, fries and onion rings and played The Game of Things. It was splendid! Later this week we are having another Brown party hopefully Steven and his girlfriend Ali will be able to make it too! For Maia's birthday we are having Lofgrens over! So excited! Of course their will be snow cuz I planned it and people will have to travel so Grandma, Grandpa and Sonja wont be able to come but all other Colorado Lofgrens will hopefully still make it! I will post about after Christmas after her birthday!

Maia and I used sponge curlers and had super cute hair for church!

Dec 26th 2010

My lovely Family minus Mitchell who is serving our Country in Afghanistan

Confessions of a Landlord

As some of  you know Jesse and I own a condo in Springville Utah and we currently have renters there. Over the 2 years they have lived there things have gone pretty smoothly; except for a few strange complaints. Things that are in the contract for them to maintain but still things come up and they make me laugh so I thought I would share them:

First call we ever had from them they'd been there 3 months we were just moving out to Iowa, it went something like this:
them : "Yes the lights in are front room have burned out"
us: "...and?"
them: "We need someone to come and change them."
us: "...That is not something we maintain, you have to provide your own light bulbs."
them: " But they are so high up we can't reach them"
us: "Go borrow a ladder"

Not word for word what was said but you get it. Everywhere I've ever lived, Jesse as well, you have to provide your own light bulbs, maybe they haven't?
Then things were pretty good. They paid their rent in advanced a few months and on time so there were no issues that came up until the next summer.

them: " So summer is starting and our Air Conditioner isn't cold enough"
us: "...Ok..well did you change the filter, like the contract says you need to do annually?"
them: "..yeah but its not working, you need to have somebody come out here and look at it"
us: "ok sure"

Legitimate complaint, a little entitled that its not cold enough for them, but I get it. So we talked to our friend who happens to work on AC and Heating units that happens to live in the next building what might cause something like that to happen. He tells us usually its the filter but every once in a while there is a fuse problem that can be fixed pretty easily. So we hire him to go and take a look at it. An $80 consult later guess what the problem was? The Filter. He said it was filthy and hadn't been changed in at least a year (when we changed it when they moved in!).

Then we talked to them about whether they wanted to renew their lease for another year. Because really we have a renter we live in another state why try to hunt for a new one when we can't be there in person? So lease renewed all the same rules apply and this is the call we get next:
(basically)
them: "Our fridge is too cold, the food in the back of the fridge keeps freezing"
us: "...turn the cold down"
them: "we did it is on the lowest setting, Its just too cold all of a sudden in the back"
us: "have you needed to defrost the freezer? Has there been anything leaking?"
them: "No the freezer works fine, the fridge is just too cold"
us: "...ok....well we'll research what may be wrong and see if we need a technician to check it out."

We did have someone check it out and guess what NOTHING was wrong with the fridge. Surprise. So at this point we are like ok we will just take these unnecessary calls out of the deposit no worries.
Then we begin to feel the pain of our renters not paying the full mortgage. We have been paying the difference for a while now and it is just getting to be too much to pay our rent here and half of theirs there. So we look into selling it, and we have lost value in the property due to economy like many others, so we decided on a short sale. (A short sale is basically we can't afford to make our payments anymore, we are using student loans to pay a mortgage at a place we don't live, and we will either foreclose or if we can find someone to buy for less than we owe we bring the offer to the bank. The bank looks to see if we have need to make this sale, and we do, then decides whether they would prefer to lose their full investment in us or take the deal of the other buyer.) Being nice landlords we let our tenants know that this is the direction we are going; and offer to let them make an offer if they want to buy the condo. As per our contract we do not need to do this we can give them 30 days notice to leave when we need them out, but we're nice. We made an agreement to lower their rent a few hundred dollars a month, cuz we're nice. Their response went a little like this:

them: "We aren't interested in purchasing the property, but since we are helping you sell your condo we would like our full deposit back. We take good care of the place and keep it very clean. We would like the deposit back in full and to have it go towards next the 2 months rent"
us: (WTF? aren't you the same tenants that can't change the ac filter? and have to cold a fridge and want me to change your light bulbs?) "No"
them: "We keep it very clean, and we are doing you a favor helping you sell your condo so we should get our deposit back."
us: "Your deposit is not like rent. If something is to get damaged while you are there or anything needs to be replaced the SECURITY deposit will be used to cover that loss. It is our Security to know that you will take care of our place. We can wave the 20% that we guaranteed we'd keep and if the place looks good when we're ready to sell you can have it all back then"
them: "but we keep things very nice and nothing needs to be replaced or fixed"

Eventually we decided we would give the deposit to a third party, our Realtor doing the short sale, and he can decide whether they deserve their money back after the move out.

Now they say the dishwasher doesn't clean the dishes well enough. We told them to buy some jet dry. What are we gonna do replace is because of the hard water spots left on your dishes? Thought nothing needed to be replaced or fixed? hahaha not the sharpest crayons in the box.
Craziness craziness. We wont be investing in real estate in the future :)

Shopping Poop

Today I took Maia out to shop for her Birthday presents (it’s nice that she is still little enough to forget what I buy her until the big day!) at Toys ‘R’ Us. We picked up a new soothie cord, anyone that has seen hers lately may know that it smells awful, and she started the straining. I thought to myself ‘oh great we just get here so you poop? Oh well I’ll give you a few minutes and then go change you.’ Right? WELL little did I know this kid had a monumental BM headed my way! I took her out of the cart to see if she would walk with this popper walking toy and I noticed some moisture had leaked through to her pants. SO ‘ok it can’t be that bad we’ll go change you and continue our shopping and give the kid a bath later all good.’


We get into the Mothers room there and I take her pants off and completely cover her leg in the poop!! Her onsie is beyond saving so I manage to get that off without getting pooh in her hair (thankfully!) and all I have in my diaper bag for change of clothes is a bib and an extra pair of socks!! Thank goodness she wore layers today! She happened to be wearing a skirt over her jeans, that DID get dirtied but it wasn’t awful, so I cleaned her up best I could and put on the skirt and her sweater and fresh clean socks. I bundled up the dirtiest clothes and set them in their respective corner of the cart and headed towards the clearance section. I noticed some people pointing at my baby and me and commenting how “it’s 20 degrees outside why is that poor little girl in a skirt?” I didn’t respond out loud but inside I was just laughing at my predicament. So I found some pretty cute clearance clothes, doesn’t happen much at that store, and went back to put them on. 


On my way back to the change room I made sure I told an employee what I was doing so they didn’t think I was stealing clothes. It’s just cold, I gotta clothe my baby! SO I took the tags off and kept them out of reach of Maia so that I could pay for them afterwards. Also asked for a separate small bag to put the dirty clothes in so I didn’t get pooh on everything else! The rest of the shopping trip was pretty much a breeze after that!


Here is a photo of the pants she was wearing, they are inside-out here.
yes I took a picture of poopy pants


When I got them home to rinse off etc there was still MORE pooh in them! I hadn’t gotten it as cleaned out as I thought!! HAHAHA!!! Oh what a day :) 


I laughed about it so much I just had to share; it may be kind of a ‘dirty’ story but I know you all probably got a kick out of it too!

Thanksgiving

We have been busy having fun our sister Lisa came to visit us, it was awesome!!
 
While she was here we were able to go and see Harry Potter; the Wilsons were generous to watch Maia for us while we went. Fantastic and then through out the week we listened to the second half on CD so we wouldn’t feel jipped since we have to wait another 7 months for the rest of the movie to come out! But we enjoyed it I think they did well at making it close to the book. Then Lisa and I went to ICAA Ladies Night In! We made some super cute mugs, coasters, and frames as well as got a nice foot warmer. Then we went and watched a Palmer Hockey game; The Ruffs came with us and took some sweet photos of the game (refer to Jesse’s facebook to see them). We are proud to announce the team is still undefeated, 8-0!! There are a few more games before Christmas break so far its been fun, except the late late games those make life a little more difficult.
For Thanksgiving I made a Cherry Pie and a Blueberry Pie completely from scratch!
   Yes an Indian Pie, last year it was Pilgrims this year and NDN (so no more crap about me not being fair! ;) )
  The B is for Blueberry however it does look like an R which stands for REALLY Good!!!
I have a new appreciation for store bought pie crusts, although these were not difficult to make they sure were tough to make look nice and keep together as I transferred them from counter to pan. But I’m happy with them. They are way tasty!  Then I made my moms Apple Yam casserole everyone told me that tasted like pie too. Then I did Cranberry sauce, which we still have a TON of, and Jesse and Lisa made some delicious frybread!!  We went to the Ruff-sters for dinner they made everything else and it was sooo delicious!! We were hopping to have time to make it over to hangout with the Wilsons and their party going on for dessert (that's why I did 2 pies) but we had a Skype date and weren’t able to make it. Our Skype adventure was with Julie and Brain and everyone out in Hawaii for the big reveal of what their baby is, and its a boy!! We are soo excited for them, and can not wait to meet the little guy in February!
Black Friday the girls went out and did some shopping while Jesse stayed home and got some studying done. Although we were not up at the wee hours of the morning we were still able to get some awesome deals! I got some fabric for Christmas presents and for a blanket for Julie’s little guy! As well as stuff for The Ward Christmas party, our last activity as a committee (boy are we thankful for that!!), I’m in charge of decorating so I am putting together some little trees for centerpieces. Then we got a killer front row parking spot at the mall ( I know it was sweet) and Maia got to meet Santa! There were no kids in line so we hopped right in!




She was so good! She kept waving at the camera lady because she was shaking toys and things to get her attention. But not a single tear from my baby! The little girl after us made up for Maia’s lack of tears though, poor kid. That night Auntie Lisa watched Maia so Jesse and I could go on a date! It was fun :) We saw The Next 3 Days, and really enjoyed it!
Saturday was the day of the big game! So we hung out and watched it, unfortunately we did not win but we put up our Christmas tree! Not the 2 ft tree we have had the past few years but a new 7ft tree the Ruffs so wonderfully donated to us!!
Here is Maia helping daddy with the tinsel!
She really likes the ornaments (of course, who doesn’t!) and we have only had one casualty so far and it wasn’t baby that broke it. We bought the shatter proof bulbs so we thought they’d be safer and they are so far but don’t play catch with them as they may break with too much pressure :)
Then sadly we had to take Lisa back to the airport so she could go home to Rexburg and we miss her so much! We had such a great time with her here! It’s nice to get to visit with family especially for the Holidays! Now we get to look forward to out trip to Denver for Baby’s first Christmas!!

Curtains and Candy

I LOVE them!!! So much fun and will help keep the cold out!! And thanks to Jesse for hanging up the curtain rod with the screw driver when the both drill batteries died! Such a strong Jesse! I was thinking I might get some fabric that is colored and put it up at the top like a fake valance…Just gotta find that! I have been looking at lots of quilting patterns lately and wow there are some very talented quilters out there! I don’t know that I like the super intricate designs but I have come up with some cool ideas for my next project! Can’t wait to get it started.
So we have had this large bowl of Halloween candy that Maia like to take stuff out shake it about and put it back in, no harm done right? So she started to get attached to this long tootsie roll it was perfect wand size and she would wave it around and beat the bowl with it; great system we had going on. Today while I was getting breakfast going she was playing with the bowl and other toys and I come back and she has devoured 3/4 of the tootsie roll along with half of the wrapper!! Serves me right for letting her play with candy! But her candy eating did not end there. Later on this afternoon she found a fun size pack or rollos she had hidden earlier from her playing with candy times. Started the same way waving it around beating things with it, but being rollos the gold foil began to open up. So she puts it in her mouth, naturally, and started chewing on it and realized its delicious. It was hard to pry away from her. Sure will be fun to give her cake on purpose on her birthday!

  drunk on candy

shortly followed by the sugar blues

Silly Baby

Maia in her bouncer! She doesn't get hurt in this one!

This baby of mine has been screaming so much lately! And whataya know another tooth shows up! So two tiny teeth up front! I will post photos when I can get them, they are still tiny teeth she doesn't like to show! We are doing all sorts of things to help her feel better poor kid! Her sleeping is getting better now that we put a space heater in her room, the fleece footy jammies just weren't enough! She has even been adjusting pretty well to day light savings ending which has been awesome! She also discovered the boinger that stops the door from slamming into the wall and oh what fun that is! My mom tells me its just pay back cuz as a child I would play with that thing for hours. So far I don't mind it but ask me again in about a month :)

 (isn't that dress cute!!)

I got curtains for our front room this weekend! Now the rod just needs to show up so I can show off the new look! I'm super excited about them! And will share soon!
I would like to post about my newest project but its still a secret! Hopefully I can keep it for the few weeks I need to before Christmas! Secrets are hard!
I also made the next best breaded chicken recipe! Baked this time not fried but chicken covered in ranch and dredged in bacon, breadcrumbs, garlic powder, minced onion, salt & pepper. De-freaking-licious! No not the healthiest out there but come one can you resist Bacon AND Ranch together in a meal? We can't :) But will definitely be trying to do good at eating healthy and keepin in shape since we are lucky enough to go to Hawaii in March! (Thanks again Momma Fox!!) Wanna not be too self conscious at the beach! We will spend most of our time with Julie and new baby I'm sure but you can't go to Maui, Hawaii and not go to the beach ever! But lets get through Thanksgiving and Christmas/ Maia's Birthday/ New Years before focusing on that too much!
My mom sent me my old fondue set! So who wants to come over for a fondue party?

Fried Chicken

Today I made the BEST fried chicken!! It was the first time I’ve made fried chicken like this but it definitely wont be the last!! Here is the recipe:

• 2 Tbsp garlic powder, or to taste
• 1 Tbsp ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 Tbsp Season All
• 1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - pounded thin
• 1 cup oil for frying, or as needed (will vary based on size of frying pan)

1. Soak Chicken in COLD salted water for approx. 30 minutes or Buttermilk for 1-4 hours (I used cold water)
2. In a shallow dish, mix together the garlic powder, pepper, salt, paprika, bread crumbs and flour. In a separate dish, whisk together the milk and egg and Season All (or more paprika).
3. Heat the oil in an electric skillet set to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Dip the chicken into the egg and milk, then dredge in the dry ingredients until evenly coated. Let chicken sit in coating while oil heats to help coating to stick better.
4. Fry chicken in hot oil 5 minutes then flip. Continue to fry flipping occasionally until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear/ internal temperature reaches 160 degrees F. You can cover the chicken between flipping to help avoid oil burns.

 

Anyway it was fantastic, would work well to bake it too! Currently I am baking a cherry pie! I have not had one since I was pregnant and made one pretty much weekly! Something about fall and winter brings out my craving to bake! So please friends come over so Jesse and I don’t eat it all!!

Speaking of Jesse and eating! Jesse and our friend Jordan Merrill recently did the ketoses diet. For 5 days they ate little to NO CARBS! It was intense, on the very last day they went and worked out super hard then got to come home and carb it up!! This is Jesse enjoying his hard earned french toast with plenty of peanut butter and syrup and a sobe!

This little baby is soo silly! This precious shirt she is wearing I got for her at Target; cute right? I showed it to her as we were walking around not intending to buy it I just like to show her stuff, she is in training to shop after all. Beneath the picture of the cake it says ‘Pretty Please?’ so what does she do? Put it straight to her mouth! The girls wants cake! I will resist the urge to give it to her for 2 more months when she has her birthday! I hope!

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun!

  My baby girl is getting so big! This photo was the first I had with her after everything had settled down from birth and everything. (Dec 31st about 10pm) Even then she closed her eyes for the camera, it must definitely be passed on genetically! It seems every other photo I take I’m closing my eyes or about to close them! Haha! I was just thinking about my anniversary coming up in a few days and all that has happened in the past two years. It has been great! So busy!! But wonderful! Since the October of 2008 I got married, went to Hawaii, Graduated College, Moved halfway across the country, and Had a baby!! Heck I did all that BEFORE 2010!!

I have now been a graduate of Utah College of Massage Therapy for 1 year. I can hardly believe its been a year since seeing all my friends!  I love and miss ALL these people!! Since this photo 2 have gotten married 2 have gotten engaged and of course I had the baby! What fun :)

We have been through a lot and still have tons to look forward to! For example this Thanksgiving my sister (inlaw) Lisa is coming to visit us! We are totally stoked! Plus Harry Potter is coming out. Then we are going to Denver for Christmas, and then inbetween 3rd and 4th TRI we are going to Hawaii to visit Julie and the new baby (who is due for arrival in january)!!! My mother inlaw was so generous and purchased tickets AND a hotel for us to go and visit! (Thanks again!!) After that the first year of Palmer will be done! Sciences out of the way and a different kind of busy will come into our world. If things keep moving this fast next thing I know we’ll be moving to Canada, and my baby will be in school!! I hope to enjoy almost every minute of this ride we are on! We have been so blessed with great friends and family and I can hardly wait to see what else is in store for the Brown-Fox family!

My little Helper

Maia was 'helping' me fold laundry it was very cute.

She likes to help she just isn't very good at it yet. She will get there soon I know but it's so fun to watch her try it out!

Baby Food

Sometimes I think my baby only eats Crackers and Puffs. Not that I blame her for not eating baby food but I keep buying it. I get food for her from WIC and they seem to think the only baby food babies need are 4oz single flavor foods = gross. Fruits are not so bad but there are only like 6 baby foods that are single flavor and Maia will eat like 3 of them. I think they are all orange too! So I found some recipes to use up baby food that my baby wont eat. She just wants to be big and eat my food, but she doesn’t usually like my food that much either. So she eats more crackers. At least she still has formula so I know she is getting SOME nutrients! We’ll see how these new recipes for her turn out!

On other fronts I am looking for a new sewing project now that I have finished the buffalo vest; Which is super cute! So if anyone has any ideas or needs/wants a blanket/quilt I am totally willing to do something! Although I also still have plenty of Modge Podgeing to do from my projects I didn’t finish at Super Saturday last week! Jesse has finals this week! He did well on his 2 exams today and there are only 5 more then we are DONE with SECOND TRI!!! Totally psyched! Jesse has also started Hockey practice again! He is the only goalie on the team this year so a bit of pressure. But they only practice once a week and games are about the same in frequency. His first two games are next Thursday (Oct 21st 6pm) at the iWireless center and everyone is welcome to come cheer them on!

Cruisin’

We had a great weekend hanging out with Uncle Bob and Auntie Pam! We are so excited they came out to visit us! On Saturday we went on a River boat Lunch Cruise in Muscatine; Maia went to play with the Ruffs. It was really cool, it was definitely a boose cruise but we were sitting in our own secluded section and we had a great time!

On Sunday Rob ran the Quad Cities Marathon!! We met up and cheered him on at mile 8 and then found him at the finish line. It took him about 5 hours and few minutes, it’s an AMAZING accomplishment!

This photo is about 30 feet from the finish line!

 

Miss Maia has been having LOTS of fun with family in town! She has gotten so mobile and has taken up chasing down Pam when she isn’t playing with her. It’s super cute! The girls were able to go shopping while Jesse was in school and Rob got to rest his sore feet! Maia is a pretty good shopper already! She is very talkative lately and makes noise especially loud anywhere she can hear her echo. Today she was cruisin along the wall trying to get into the diaper bag when she just let go and stood by herself for a full minute!! I couldn’t believe my eyes my tiny baby is getting so big so quickly! Along with all her crawling and cruisn’ she has taken to hitting her head on just about everything! We are tempted to look into a helmet to at least let her forehead bruises heal before she hits them again! She is pretty fearless our small one. She even stands in her crib waiting for us to come and get her once she wakes up!

Boards Weekend

As I was planning out my week I noticed I had at least one something going on every day this week! Then as the time has gone by one by one things on my to do list have gotten cancelled. Which is okay I can have things more spaced out this way but when my Dentist appointment got cancelled and rescheduled for next week I totally lost it! Who cries when they don’t get to go to the Dentist?! Someone with a toothache, i.e. I DO!! Yes it was kind of embarrassing explaining why I was crying to my husband but I have been waiting to see a dentist for almost a month now about this darn tooth and they moved my appointment! I am about 95% sure my tooth is cracked and I know it wont even get fixed right away when I got to the appointment they will have to do it at a next appt which is why i was so discouraged. So just one more week and I will know what to expect with that!

On other news we had a long weekend because Jesse isn’t taking boards for another year so we had some fun! We finished painting taught Maia to crawl and climb on her daddy and went to the zoo with the Ruff’s and Merrills! It was super fun!

Fish                                    Elephants

Goats                                 Emus

Lions! (this guy was soo loud!)  Turtles! Which tried to bite!

 

We also had some fun getting Maia a baby doll! She thinks its really funny, probably because it has no hair and no control of its body. Its a cabbage patch what do you expect?

  But she DID try to give it a baba! Quite forcefully I might add, she beat it with its bottle.

 

And today we went out to do a few errands and Maia was such a good baby. When we were at the grocery store I found her a treat to hold onto so she would keep being good. When we got home Daddy opened it for her.

Two hands up for Daddy!                       

All in all it was a pretty fun way to end the last long weekend of the tri!

 

We Painted!!

So it has been pretty eventful at the Fox house! This week I started my new job this week! I was able to do two massages this week, not much but its a good start! I am working at the Institute of Massage Therapy and Wellness in Davenport, it's definitely different from the school I went to but a job is a job.
I am happy to say I am posting from our brand new desktop!!!!!! My dad is so great! He gave us my brothers old desktop (which really isn't old at all but it's new to us!) it is about a hundred times faster than our laptop we were using. It's wonderful thank you dad!! How did the computer get here? Why my mom and Mandy came to visit and brought it with them! It's a short visit but it has been fun to spend some time with them. They helped us paint our apartment!

  

It's something we have been talking about doing for a while we just couldn't decide on a color. When my mom got here we went to the store and just picked a color I liked, my mom was skeptical at first but now that it's on the wall we all LOVE it!! With the new paint we moved the furniture around too it has been soo much fun to redecorate! We even had extra paint, like an entire gallon extra! So we will probably paint the kitchen and hallway to match; I mean its only paint and it doesn't take that long. Now I am just on the hunt for the perfect fabric for curtain in the living room. I hope to find and get them done before it gets cold out, I need them to help keep in the heat!

look at those cute girls!







I think it makes things so much brighter and will help a TON in the winter when I don't want to open the blinds because it will let in the cold!
I can't have a blog without a photo of baby so why don't we end with one of her in her new Cougar sweatshirt! She watched her first Cougar game with daddy on saturday! With an intermission for some shopping with Mom, Grandma, Mandy, and Shari!

Avocados

I have been thinking about what kinds of things to blog about and I can think of all sorts of things during the week but then I sit at the computer and everything goes out the window! Lets see what I can recall :)
My cousin Kenny left on his mission to South Africa last week! I am so excited for him! Totally gonna write him but postage is a couple bucks a letter, maybe I can email him :)

I have been so bored with food lately, just wanting to try to make new things etc. I recently made Jambalaya it was fantastic! And some new chinese stir fry recipes have turned out really well too! With all my new treats I've been making I have plenty of left overs to deal with. This week we made Nachos Supreme

left over taco meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, avocado, sour scream and queso!

Best Leftovers ever :) (at least for this week!!)

I have finally received my Massage Therapy license for the state of Iowa! So I am going to see about getting a job so I can make a little spending money. Actually right now I need money because I think I cracked  a tooth and finding a dentist that accepts medicaid has been next to impossible! This week I am going to go to the Institute for Therapeutic Massage and Wellness and see if I can get hired on to do a few massages a week. Ideally I would work from my home or have a place I rent but I still have a little baby and renting a place to work can cost almost as much as our rent! Thus my dear friend Shari is going to help me get on board at the school where she works and teaches.

I was just realizing today how many women I know that are expecting!! Its so exciting being a mom and I am so happy for my friends I hope everything goes well for them and their babies! I have one friend who lost her daughter and had no way of knowing anything was wrong or would go wrong. My heart broke for her when I found out, and I still find myself feeling sad and even guilty about it. Guilty that I have my baby girl to hold and play with and she has to wait to see her baby girl again. Tears me apart sometimes! But the strength I have seen from her is so inspirational, through this hard time she is going through she and her husband have held strong to their faith, family and friends. I can only imagine the difficulty they are facing but I keep them in my prayers daily both to strengthen them and myself. It helps me to realize what a miracle it is to have a child! And such a cute one at that!

With our trying new foods I haven't left Maia out! Today I made a short video of her as she tried avocados.

She'll come around to foods that are green eventually...we hope!!

Also shout out to my dad for being so awesome!!! He is sending us one of their old desktop computers that was once my brothers but since Scott is now at school and has a laptop we asked if we could have it. My laptop though I love it dearly is having a difficult time running these days. THANKS DAD!!!

Yep that's my dad dunkin not just donuts