PICS

The difference between 6 weeks old and 3 months old, in the same dress in the same chair.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tsunami test/Contest winner/Kayla is 3 months old!

Ok, so the Tsunami watch was a test and no one knew about it. Turns out on the radio Nick heard that the Tsunami watch was REAL, but it was real because there was miscommunication coming out of Japan. Japan was running an emergency TEST of a 9.2 earthquake and the weather center didn't realize it was a test. So they sent out the Tsunami watch for Guam. Shheesh.

So, the winner for the caption contest....I couldn't pick one. I did have a few favorites but I couldn't bear that task of picking one. I didn't want to seem like I was playing favorites even though that is what I was supposed to do. Pick my favorite. So my bright idea...write everyone's name on a piece of paper and leave it up to my cat to choose. I threw each paper name at him and waited until he picked one by playing with it. Roo usually cant resist playing with a paper bally. But this time he did....he spotted a lizard out back right after I threw the balls at him. Figures. So while he was lizard hunting, I flung each paper ball at him until he went after one. He went after this one................(drum roll please)

EMILY's MOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And now he continues to play with the rest of the paper balls.
Emily's Mommy's caption...:"Hey YOU in the WHITE...don't come any closer or I'll have to dirty my diaper!"


CONGRATS JODY!! Expect a picture of our little princess in the mail. Im still waiting on them to arrive to me from shutterfly.com. But I should be getting them any day now. And I will also be using this caption with her picture in her scrapbook. I will note on the page who the caption came from.

Here are the pictures from the paper ball drawing.
Roo and the paper balls on the floor.

Roo distracted by a lizard.

Baby girl during the paper bally drawing.

Roo walking away from a paper ball he played with.


Also Yesterday was our Birth mother's 19th birthday. And I took these pictures for her.


Today marks Kayla's 3 month birthday. Happy 3 months old baby girl. Mommy and Daddy love you more than you even know. Now stop growing up so darn fast.

Possible Tsunami!

Today there was an earthquake in Japan, 9.2 on the scale. Which means possible Tsunami for us within 6 hours. THANK YOU GOD for making the island of Guam WAYYYYY above sea level!


Dont forget....enter your caption into my caption contest by evening of Wed. Oct 29th!

Lots to share!

We have had an eventful Fri-Mon. I have a lot of pictures to share of these events. Some of these might be a little bit random! Enjoy! Click the picture to see it larger.
These events start on Friday after Nick got home from work. We bought a new car. I mean, new to us...not new. Not even close. Because of Kayla's adoption we had to sell Nick's car in order to be able to afford the adoption costs. We since have been sharing 1 car. Nick takes it to work leaving Kayla and I home without transportation.
Here is the car, half washed so you can see the condition of this car when we bought it. But for only $750 what can you say? The things we sacrifice for our children!


Got this idea from a friend...it turned out real good. Its simple to make and light and fresh to eat. Cucumber with seeds removed in the middle. Ranch dressing in the middle topped with baby dill. I couldnt get enough of this. I ate 2 whole cucumbers in 3 days.


On Saturday after Nick mowed the lawn, we came across this big fat guy on our patio.


On Sunday I came up with a craft project...paint red hearts on paper and put Kayla's footprints on the heart. I decided to make these for a few special people in our lives...Grammy and Grandpa, Aunt Maureen (Nick's Aunt), Aunt Malissa (My sister), Birth mother and Birth father. I also made extra copies for Kayla's baby books and scrapbooks. Here are the pictures and final result.
Painting the red hearts....

Painting Kayla's feet purple.


The end result:

On Monday our neighbor Addison had her swimming lessons so we joined her at the pool. Kayla only last about 20 m inutes before falling asleep, but we had fun.



Tonights dinner is from the crock pot lady's blog, (to your right of my blog)Buffalo Chicken Lasagna.

Oh...and dont forget to join my CAPTION CONTEST. Details are posted in the previous blog post. Contest ends on Wednesday.

****CAPTION CONTEST****

****CAPTION CONTEST****

Yes, I am creat​ing a conte​st.​ A conte​st to see who is most creat​ive at comin​g up with a quote​ for the follo​wing pictu​re.​ The follo​wing pictu​re was taken​ on Sunda​y morni​ng belly​ time,​ Oct 26th.​ I, the pictu​re taker​,​ will choos​e my favor​ite capti​on the end of the day Wedne​sday Octob​er 29th.​ ( Thurs​day morni​ng my time)​ You see, becau​se this is a speci​al day. This day was the day 19 years​ ago our "​Stork​"​ was born.​

If you win, I will perso​nally​ mail you a pictu​re of our preci​ous baby girl.​ All you gotta​ do is submi​t a capti​on for the pictu​re and messa​ge me your maili​ng addre​ss if you win.

Contest is running here and on my myspace.

GOOD LUCK!​

Kayla got a package from Grammy!

Kayla got a package from Grammy today. THANK YOU GRAMMY! She enjoyed looking at each item, especially the bracelets! Here are pictures of her with her presents.
The 3rd picture down is her getting excited over looking at the pretty bracelets.

12 weeks old

Yesterday we snuck outside after Kayla's bath. She had an early bath as a result of a vomiting incident. It wasnt too much but the amount she did have went all down the front of her dress. I wont tell you about the poopie incident after her bath which resulted in another bath.
Enjoy her 12 week pictures. Oh..and I forgot about wordless Wednesday yesterday. Oops.

We got one!

Here is little missy hanging out on the floor today.


Above is little missy yesterday on her glider in her room watching me put things away.

So, I got my refund today since the seller of the brand spanking new yellow bumbo with tray wont ship to me in Guam. I dont get why not. Guam belongs to the United States therefore we use the United States post office like everyone else. Whatever.
Instead I bought this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370096342597
Its not brand new, and not in the color I wanted, but it has a tray and the price was reasonable so it will due. Still wish I could walk into a store and just buy the darn thing, but oh well.

Any Mommies out there that have/had one of these for your baby? How did you like it? I think Kayla will just get a kick out of this. She loves to sit up. Shes getting quite strong at it too. And with this, she can sit on the couch with us, sit at the table with us, sit on the kitchen counters while Im doing kitchen duties, she can sit in the tub (which I cant wait to try) and she can sit on the BEACH! (which I also cant wait to try) Man, I hope this thing comes soon.

Also, I been working on getting our outfits together for our Christmas pictures. Yup...already. I plan on taking our pictures first week of November so I can order them on snapfish and get them out first week of December. I am usually the first to start sending out cards. Anyways, Im trying to get the 3 of us to match fairly, but not totally. Our pictures are going to be on the beach so its been difficult for me to find outfits that are Christmasy yet summery and match pretty well with santa hats on our heads. So I came up with this thus far:
Nick is wearing Kahki shorts with this shirt: ( I cant get him to wear denim)
http://www.oldnavy.com/browse/product.do?cid=41569&pid=419570&scid=419570742
IF I can find a Kahki skirt I will wear that (if not then it will be a dark denim skirt) with a satin spaghetti strap shirt I bought last week.
Kayla will be wearing a green shirt with this:
http://www.oldnavy.com/browse/product.do?cid=37709&pid=581639
I have YET to find Kayla a green shirt. And Our outfits will be topped off with santa hats!
I hope the pictures turn out good and we half way kind of match! We dont like fancy, we arent fancy kind of people.

One other thing:
This week marks 2 years since I have started blogging. TWO YEARS! Wow. Never ever thought I would be blogging for 2 years. I love it. Its thereputic to me. I was reading through my first couple of months of blogging and its crazy to look back on where life had me what seems like so long ago. This time 2 years ago, we had just started with IUI's after trying a couple attempts at home. The doctor then told me I am young and healthy and should be pregnant within 3 cycles. Hmph....well...God had different plans for me. And for that I am now thankful.

uh oh

So...for the past month I been looking for one of these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150305044471
I cant find one here on Guam. Not at the BX and not at Kmart. Where else is there to shop here? Besides the malls that cater to the Japanese tourists. No where. Go figure. So I finally decided to go onto EBAY and I bought one in yellow. I paid for it via paypal. Then after my payment I read this:
"We regret that we can NOT ship to Alaska, Hawaii, APOs, or foreign countries."
I am assuming that this means they wont ship to me in Guam. I emailed them and I really hope they can return my payment SOOOOOON because I found another seller willing to ship one for me in Lilac for $11 and shes only charging me $14 for it because its used.
Of course I really hope the first seller will ship to me since its brand new and includes a tray.
Gosh...why are there NO stores to shop at on Guam? I wish I could be a normal person and go into a store and walk out with what I was looking for.
Oh well...I guess I can get over it. After all...I live on GUAM. Tropical paradise 365 days every year! I guess I can manage.

waffle-o-holic

My name is Michelle and not only am I addicted to crock pot experiments, I am a Waffle-Maker-o-holic.

Yesterday morning I made 3 batches of belgian waffles on my new waffle maker. I cant stop making them. Im already thinking about what my next batch will be made of. I made strawberry banana, ham and cheese and apple banana and threw them in ziplock bags and into the freezer. So in the morning all we gotta do is pull one out and pop it in the microwave and breakfast is made. It is wonderful. The above 2 pictures are of the waffle making experience yesterday in the kitchen.

Michelle is thinking..."Rasberry and ??? waffles? What goes with raspberry?"

The bottom 2 picures are of my sweet girl yesterday in her room on her glider chair.


Tammy-Your in my prayers.

My weekend

My weekend:
Friday: Nick has a half day at work because he was helping with putting together the Haunted House on base. Kayla and I take a 3 hour nap. Went out with the girls to Bamboo Willies. The Bar/Resturant on the beach right here on base! I was the driver so I drank free Diet Cokes while my friends Jody and Linda drank. We got watch the drunk young guys that are here in Guam on a 6 month deployment sing Karaoke. Interesting. Entertaining. And how NOT fair is it that these guys get 6 month long DEPLOYMENTS to GUAM while my husband gets real 7 month DEPLOYMENTS to
I-freakin-RAQ? (By the way, he is leaving in March 2008 now for 8 months)
Saturday-I wake up early, even after a late night to go to the BX and secretly buy myself a waffle maker (and a couple Christmas gifts) so I can secretly make my husband a breakfast of fresh homemade strawberry banana waffles. I also try to make a run to the post office to mail my Mother In Law a gift..but they weren't open. Before the beach I throw into the crock pot Acorn Squash, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon.
My friend and neighbor Jody, her husband and daughter and the 3 of us are off to the beach. The guys go off fishing while us 4 girls go swimming. I couldnt capture any candid moments since Kayla and I were busy IN the water. Then we all go get a bite to eat at Bamboo Willies while its still dinner time and not get your drink on time. But the guys get their drink on anyways and decide since us girls went out Friday night that they should go out tonight. Come home to house smelling fantastic of my crockpot concoction. But thats the only thing good that came out of it. I threw it out after tasting it.
Sunday-Absoluetly nothing and it is absoluelty fantastic. I took a 3 hour nap and Jody and I did take a walk with the babies. I feel exhausted. I made Cheddar BBQ Bacon Beer Burgers for dinner. They came out better than ever and I added a little bit of Blue Cheese crumbles to mine.

Tomorrow Our social workers comes for our 2nd and FINAL post placement visit!

2 missions of the day

Today's 2 missions:

1) Crock pot dinner
2) Shampoo carpets, starting with Kayla's room, then living room, followed by the rest of the house.

Today's crock pot dinner folks, I did not get from the crock pot lady's blog. I got this one from the KC Masterpiece website but I'm putting my own twist on it. It is Sweetly Southern Rib eye...meant for rib eye steaks on the grill. My twist? Short ribs in the crock pot because we LOVE how tender they come out. They melt in your mouth. So basically I'm taking the seasoning from this recipe and adding BBQ sauce and short ribs and fresh garlic. I dont make anything without garlic.

In the crock pot:
1.8 lbs of beef short ribs, KC Masterpiece BBQ Seasoning, Brown Sugar, KC Masterpiece Hickory BBQ Sauce, fresh garlic.
Cook 4 hours on high.

I garuntee this will come out melting in your mouth! I will post results.

.

Yesterday was my good friend and next door neighbor Jody's daughter's first day of swimming lessons! Kayla and I attended. I was going to get in the pool until the sun went away, the drizzles came and Kayla fell asleep. (Once again, thanks rainy season!) So we just enjoyed watching. Addison just turned 1 this month and she did fantastic in the water. She accidently tried to swim underwater and didnt even make a fuss. She is in the picture above doing one of the lessons, trying to catch the "jellyfish". Next year I plan to have Kayla in this swimming class. She will already be a pro by then hopefully!

New pictures to come soon. Nick some good ones of our sleeping beauty last night

public

My blog is now open to the public. If at any time I get ANY offending or unwanted comments I will go back to it being private in a heartbeat, just as I did before.

Enjoy reading my path.

Rain rain rain- blah

Yup, its STILL raining here in tropical paradise. I have to find out when this raininy/typhoon season is over. Its really getting old having rain every day. And its deceiving too. I wake up to blue skies and sunshine then 10 minutes later it raining buckets and all my outdoor plans go down the street drains. Oh well. I shouldn't complain. After all, we live in GUAM and its only like this a few months a year compared to yucky snow and cold weather in PA for a whole winter plus. At least its still in the 80's here and that wont change any month of the year! I dont know if its the weather or what...but Kayla and I have been curled up on the couch all day going in and out of consciousness. She just cant stay awake and I'm right with her. I have dishes to be done and clean laundry piled on top of the drier and I hate to even think about taking care of that. We are just major couch potatoes today.

Anywho, I wanted to blog about my very first yucky Crockpot dinner that I made on Sunday. I ended up throwing it in the trash. Weird thing was, was it wasnt disgusting, it was well cooked, I just didnt like the flavor of it. It wasnt a recipie from the crockpot blog lady. It was Pot Roast, 7-up, water, potatoes, dried beef onion soup mix and a few other random spices that I threw in.

Didnt like it.

I have a few other recipies in mind and Im not sure what Im making next. I will probably make something within the next few days, just not sure if it will be bbq ribs, acorn squash, or buffalo chicken lasagna.

I put up some Halloween decorations this weekend, and found my old Devil costume. Hence, the above pictures.

And over the weekend I took a new car seat picture. Where has my tiny newborn baby girl gone? I got so sad when I saw these 2 pictures side by side. Is that normal? Any other mommies get sad when they see how fast your baby is growing? Someday Im going to miss how tiny she was/is. I dont like that thought.

Here she is 4 days old:

Here she is 3 days ago.


Also, every Wednesday Im going to try to Wordless Wednesday. Pictures only. We'll see.

Ok, back to the couch and my baby girl. Shes due to eat any minute. Oh which reminds me...she has been going 4-5 hours now in between meals! YESS!

Its raining

**UPDATE 10 minutes later....

No beach. Its pouring buckets outside. How come every single time I wanna go swimming it rains? Not fair.

I guess I will make it a scrapbook day instead.

Kayla got her ears pierced!!!!

We got Kayla's ears pierced yesterday at just 3 days shy of 11 weeks old! It went so much better than I thought it would. Nick held her, I video'ed it. She did wonderful. First ear she cried for just seconds then was all smiles. And the 2nd ear she cried for maybe 30 seconds and then went to sleep right after. That could be from the tylenol she had 20 minutes before in the car. She acts as if nothing happened so I assume they arent bothering her at all, Thank God.

Here is the video of our precious little girl. Picture to come soon.

Im hoping we can get to the beach today. The weather is kinda gloomy, Im hoping it clears up soon! I really wanna take a dip and sit in my beach chair in the water all day.

pics and crock recipie

Yup, took more pics yesterday. How could I resist? Look how beautiful they turn out.







Over to the right of my blog you'll find the crockpot recipie blog.
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/

From that website I've picked this to experiment...errr...make next. My husband wouldnt go near this meal with a 10 foot pole, but I on the other hand very much enjoy all types of squash. In fact, I think its my favorite veggie.

Acorn Squash CrockPot Recipe
The ingredients:
--acorn squash
--2 T brown sugar
--2 T butter
--2 tsp cinnamon
--4 pinches of salt
Cook for 2 hours. Of course there is more to it, so check it out over at her blog.

Oh, and a shout out to one of my dearest greatest blogger friends, who has become more than just a blog friend to me. She is the true meaning of a friend, who most of you know is going through IVF, which I know about all too well. She's getting so close to creating her baby I can just already see her BFP!

Tammy...I have passed to you ALL my wishes, prayers, baby dust (if I even have any!) luck, thoughts, hugs, love, kisses, smiles, crossed fingers, and thoughts. I am eating, breathing and sleeping and dreaming of your BFP. You, Mark and Peanut deserve this miracle of life more than anyone I know. And more than anyone else I know, I want YOU to have the blessing of being able to look at, smile at, smell, fall in love with, and feel the warmth of YOUR baby. I want YOU to drown in your baby's eyes just the way I have. I want YOU to be exhausted in the morning. I want this for you as much as I wanted this for myself. Words cant even explain.