Bye Bye

3,2,.............ONE Year Old

I can hardly believe Charlotte is going to be a year old on Sunday. Last year I could barely figure out how I was going to handle a newborn let alone a toddler. She is walking, talking, developing her personality. Which I must say is just like her momma! She has figured out how to throw temper tantrums. Which has been really hard for Jim. He just doesn't want her to cry. So yesterday when we went to the doctor I asked her what I should do (While Jim was listening) and she told me that I need to ignore the tantrum and let her cry it out. Otherwise it is going to be a long road. So problem solved. Jim only believe something I tell him when he hears it from someone else. So we are working on stopping the tantrums. We brush her teeth when we are in the bath tub and she wants to hold the brush and chew on it and chew on the toothpaste so when I take the brush she throws a fit. So last night Jim helped me instead of just letting her have it. So now we are both on the same page. He is such a good dad. Charlotte loves him to pieces. When he comes home she literally hyperventilates when he walks in the door. She trips over her own feet trying to run to him. I love it. He plays with her from the minute he walks in the door until I put her to sleep. He is just dying to get her powerwheel put together and give it to her. We are having a small party for her on Sunday. Just close family and friends. I went and bought two fancy cake pans and I am going to attempt to make her birthday cake. One is a big cupcake (Which is the theme of the party) and a ladybug. I have been practicing my cake decorating technique. I hope they turn out. I enjoy baking so I think I can handle this. I order her a whole cupcake theme package of decorations. I am really upset with the company I ordered them from. I placed the ordered over two and half weeks ago and I still haven't received the stuff. I called them on Monday and they said it should be here today, which would be fine except her part invitations were in the order, and it is getting kind of late to send them out. So I had to go to hallmark and buy her different invitations. I sat in the parking lot and filled them out so I could get them out yesterday. They only had one design and they weren't what I really wanted but I had no choice. So I told the company that they were going to have to send me a prepaid postage so I could return the invitations. Oh well I guess as long as the rest of the stuff gets here today everything will work out.

I finally got my corner kitchen nook and table. Our kitchen is so small that we don't have room for a dining table and chairs. So I thought a corner nook would be perfect. Well after a year of searching for a used one. (we are to poor to buy a brand new one) I finally found one. The problem was that it was in Menasha, which is about 15-20 miles north of Appleton, and Appleton is about an hour drive. But I figure for 50 dollars it was worth the drive. A brand new one would run us anywhere from 300-1,000 dollars so I convinced Jim that it was really worth the drive and I had been searching for this table for over a year. So we planned on going up on Sunday. Well as Wisconsin winters go we got a huge storm that came through Saturday. I almost said forget it and didn't go, but Monya called and asked if she could take Charlotte for the afternoon, so Jim and I were by ourselves so we decided to go for it. Well an hour and half trip turned into almost two and a half hours. We finally got it and got home. I was worried that Monya had Charlotte for so long because she has had Charlotte a lot lately, but of course her and Dave didn't care. So now I have my table and when we get it home it is too big for the kitchen. So I thought maybe we could try it in the breezeway. We don't ever use that room and it is such a shame because it has tons of windows and is really a nice room. So once I got it set up in there it looks really nice and now we use the room all the time. I love being able to sit down together as a family to have dinner. Even Jim likes it.

So now I need to get prepared for Sunday. We are going to have a small little picnic type lunch. All of Charlotte's favorites. broccoli, bananas, corn. Just Kidding. I will make that stuff for her but for everyone else I will make a picnic lunch It should be a lot of fun.

A Christmas Story

Well Christmas has now come and gone and I think all in all it turned out really nice. Charlotte was so much fun. We didn't have a lot of money to buy her stuff but between everyone she got a lot of gifts and she is still pretty small so even one new toy is a big deal to her. We got her a little sesame street laptop computer for babies. She is always pushing the buttons on our computer so she really liked all the buttons. She also got some bath toys, and a few different learning toys. The one thing she got that she really likes is the V_smile Baby. She loves playing with the buttons on the TV and this allows her to play learning games on the TV. I am glad I got it. At first I thought it was kind of a dumb idea, but Jim said she would like it and we could sit and teach her shapes, colors, and words. He was right, she really likes it. Then she made a huge haul from her Grandma. Jim's mom got her a ton of stuff. She bought this little rain forest play center. It is really neat and Charlotte really likes it. She also bought her these dolls collector dolls, clothes, books, and she made her a little Christmas picture frame. She is really talented when it comes to making stuff by hand. Jim always complains about her making us stuff but I like it and the stuff she makes it really cute.Grandpa Dave and Grandma Monya gave Charlotte a 50 dollar savings bond and a cute Christmas ornament. I seriously don't know what we did to deserve those two people. Charlotte loves them so much. Charlotte also got a really cute pink rocking horse from my brother Pete. It is just her size. I thought it was really nice that he did that. I wish I could have done something for him and his his wife. I felt the same way about my two nieces. This was the first year I couldn't do anything for them. I felt so bad. I always tried to make sure they had a good Christmas, but this year we just couldn't do it and it killed me. I know they understand but it still makes me feel bad. I had both of them out here for the day and it was nice. The got Charlotte a little Tigger rug and a cute little handmade blanket. It was really a nice Christmas. I made a huge Christmas dinner. We had Chicken, Ham, and I made my first leg of lamb. It wasn't as good as Kerie's but it did turn out nice. I really wish we had been in London for Christmas, but things just didn't work out. I am determined to get there this year. Jim knows how bad I want to take Charlotte there, so we are looking at maybe Easter or during the summer holiday. I really wish we didn't live so far apart, or at the very least that it didn't cost a small fortune to fly there. I miss all of them so much. Well I think that should cover it. I am glad the holidays are done, but I am happy with the way things turned out. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. I posted a Video of Charlotte on Christmas Morning, Take a look, it is below this post.

Charlotte's First Christmas Video

Ho Ho Holidays

OK the Holidays are finally here and I am having a ball with Charlotte. She loves the Christmas tree and the snow. She is now walking on her own. She can walk across the living room without any help. It is so cute! She can now say bubbles (which I believe has to do with her bed time song!) uh oh. Which is so funny. Whenever she drops or throws something on the floor she looks at me and says, "uh oh". It is so funny. She also says Baby, Puppy, and sometimes cat. I just can't believe how fast she is growing. I can't wait until she opens her gifts. I know she is going to love unwrapping them. Christmas will be enjoyable again.

Jim and I did our Christmas shopping last weekend. What a headache that was. There was so much traffic at the mall it was nuts. We finally got to Toys R Us and we did really good with the money we had to spend. (which wasn't a lot) We even ended up getting Charlotte her birthday present. I was a little worried at first when Jim showed it to me but this was something he has been looking for, for a while. SO what is it you ask? Well it is the smallest power wheel I have ever seen. I didn't even think they made power wheels so small. It is for ages 12-36 months. Jim is convinced Charlotte is the next Nascar champion in training so he has to get her on something motorized as soon as possible. I honestly do not think she will be able to do anything but push the button and run into the wall, but she does love when Jim pushes her around on her little Tigger scooter. So I agreed to it and I guess we will see what happens. I think she will catch onto it by summer and then she can ride it outside. She already climbs on and off her scooter by herself so maybe I am underestimating her. I know Jim will work with her until she gets it. It should be fun to watch. We are doing a cupcake theme for Charlotte's birthday. I got her a shirt that says I am 1 and a little hat that says it is fun to be 1. We are going to do a small little party here for her. We will invite the people who are close to her and I think she will love the fact that she is going to get her own little cake. I really can't wait.

Christmas dinner is going to be lamb this year. I am a little uneasy about making it because I have never done it. When I go to London Cherie's oldest daughter Kerie always makes the most amazing roast dinner you could imagine. SO I have asked for her help in cooking my leg of lamb. When she cooks it, it is the most amazing dinner you could imagine. She is the Queen of roast dinner. Honestly I wish I was just there eating her dinner instead of trying to screw up my own. But I will give it a shot. I was just going to cook a chicken and a ham but we were at Dave and Monya's last night and Dave convinced me to cook the lamb. He has never had it before and he was to chicken to cook it for his dinner because he didn't want to screw up his dinner. So he convinced me to possibly screw up my dinner instead and then allow him to try it. So Isaid what the hell and I am going to give it a try. To cook it right that is. I will let you know how that turns out.

I made a crap load of cookies this year. I finally have all of my grandma Lasse's cookie recipes so I made all of them. They all turned out really good. I absolutely hate making the shortbread cookies though. They to be perfect every time, otherwise the just don't work. I made 5 batches and three turned out the way they are suppose to. Which isn't bad because this was the first year I have done it on my own. The sugar cookies were to die for. I changed the recipe slightly just because I am not a huge fan of almond extract. But they were really good. I made a plate for my Uncle Bob and took it to him. He was pretty happy. He hasn't had the shortbread since my grandma passed away, so he was in heaven. I also made plates for Dave and Monya, Steve and Kimberly. (Our neighbors) Jim mom, my dad, My brother Pete and his wife Vicki, I also made a huge batch of Shortbread for my brother Charlie but he hasn't got it yet. All in all it turned out really good. So thank you Faith for giving me the best gift in the world.

I really hope everyone has a good Christmas, and if you are waiting for a Christmas card from us don't hold your breath. I never got them in the mail so I will send them next year:)

All by myself

Charlotte is at Monya's this afternoon and before I start on the paper work I have to do I decided to take a moment for myself and update my blog. Monya loves having Charlotte and Charlotte loves being at Monya's so it is a win, win situation. She is convinced she isn't going to have a grandchildren of her own so Charlotte is her baby fix. Her daughter Rachel even thanked me for letting Monya get her baby fix, that way she stops bugging her to have a baby.

So Charlotte is almost a year old and I can hardly believe how fast time has went. She is trying to walk everywhere. She thinks it is so funny though that she usually ends up falling down laughing. She has her top two teeth in and is working on two more. She now points to everything, and wants you to tell her what it is. She loves to look at photo albums of Jim, myself, and of course Charlotte. She loves to look at herself in the pictures. Her new words are "at" for cat and "uppy" for puppy. She seems to forget the first letter of the words. It is cute, but we keep trying to get her to say it right. Jim has taught her to do the angry face. It is so funny. She scrunches up her face and she thinks she is so funny when she does it.

As far as the rest of my life it has been filled with pictures and movies and slides. I am really getting tired of scanning pictures. I want to be done with it so I can move onto researching and putting together the rest of the Allen book. I am really hoping to get the movies done by Christmas but if the transfer unit doesn't get here soon that isn't going to happen. I am hoping it will be sometime this week or next. I started to go through the movies and it is surreal to watch my grandparents and mom. I wish for one more day with them both. This is going to be such a gift to our family. I really don't know how to thank my Uncle Rick and Aunt Cecil enough for trusting me with these movies long enough to get them transferred. This is going to allow these movies and slides to be preserved for generations to come. It is really awesome.

The picture below is what I woke up to the other morning. It was the first snow fall of the year. I always love the first snow fall. It is one of the reasons I have come to like living in Wisconsin. You go to bed one night and the world is grey and brown and everything looks dead and then you wake up the next morning to this...... It is beautiful, white and clean. It is like a fresh start. Of course any snow falls after the first are not so nice or really necessary in my book. I really do hate winter, but the first snow fall is the best. Charlotte was pretty amazed at the outside world too. It is so much fun to see everything for the first time through her eyes. Every single thing in this world is new to her. It so awesome to experience.

Jim went hunting opening weekend and he dressed Charlotte up in some of his clothes. Little did he know that she would be the only "Dear" he would see. I really feel bad for him. There are two things that Jim loves (Besides myself & Charlotte) Racing and Hunting. Every year as this time of year comes around he gets depressed. He use to go hunting with a guy he worked with at Cardinal Glass, but then he moved to Washington, well since then Jim really has no place to hunt. It kills him every year to drive through town and see everyone with their deer. Right now he hunts on our neighbors property by Briggsville but it is a very small area and he is surrounded by other hunters, so the only way he is going to get a deer is if the other two guys shoot each other and the third and fourth guy die of heart attacks, and then maybe he would have a chance of a deer getting close enough to shoot. I really wish we had the money to buy some land. He really deserves to be able to hunt. He works his A** off to provide a good life for Charlotte and me, and all he lives for is the chance to go hunting. It kills me that I can't help him. He would be happy to just shoot doe the rest of his life as long as he had a place to do it. I really hope that someday we will have the money to buy a little bit of land and put a nice little house on it. He would be so happy. I really hope that he is able to get a deer this year some how. He deserves it.

Ketchup :)

OK not Ketchup but Catch up. I have been doing nothing but looking for my camera, so I have not blogged about anything and I have a lot to share. I got my new camera last night. I am soooo Happy to have a camera again. I bought the camera from a guy off of craigslist. I took the camera to the Camera Company to have them look it over before I bought it. Well the guy is a professional photographer and he does a lot of business at the camera co. So I didn't have to pay for them to inspect it, Which was nice. Also I got a better camera then I had before. I now have the latest Canon model. The Xsi. It is not a whole lot different then mine. I don't think I would have bought this camera brand new. You are only paying extra for two more mega pixels and the fact that it is the newer model. It is just nice to have a camera again. I also got two lenses and a battery grip(Which I have been wanting.) and the magic lantern DVD and manual. The two lenses are nice. I had a 400 dollar lens on my camera so I now have the same lens back. The other lens is just the one that normally comes with the camera. I doubt I will ever use it but it is nice to have as a back up. Anyway after a lot of negotiating I got him down to 650. He had it listed for quite sometime so I knew he wanted to get rid of it. Lucky me! So now the camera drama is over....

I dressed Charlotte up in her Halloween costume and took some pictures. I want to take some outside but it is so darn cold here right now. It was 14 degrees this morning. We will see what happens this afternoon and if it warms up some I will take her out and get a few shots off. She was so cute on Halloween. We went to Dave and Monya's ,Steve's , My dad's, Jim's mom's, and then the camera drama started. She had a good time I think. She liked playing with her tail. It was a lot of fun for Jim and I

The next thing on the list is family portraits. We had our family portraits done for the church. We don't really go to church but we are still considered members so the offer to take our pictures for the church directory. We end up getting a pretty good discount on the portraits so I said what the heck. Jim didn't want to do it but I thought we needed a picture of the three of us. I am not a huge fan of the professional boring portraits but until I find a good photographer that has a little creativity and isn't afraid to be artistic this will have to do. They turned out nice. Boring but nice. There is a lady in Madison that does really nice portraits and I am thinking in the spring we will see how well she really does. I really wish the lady that took Charlotte's seven month pictures hadn't moved to Washington. I would love her to be our permanent photographer. She is coming back in December to visit her mom and she want to do a session with Charlotte. I am so happy about that. I love her pictures. I will have to get her something cute to wear.

The family soup dinner is another thing I haven't wrote about. It was a success. It was really nice to have Faith stay with us. I think we have become closer then we ever were. We had a lot of people in my small little house. We made four soups between Faith and myself and then Pete brought two soups which were awesome, and Charlie brought some really good homemade chicken noodle soup, and fresh homemade bread. Everyone else brought a little bit of everything. Our cousin Lynn brought taco dip that was gone before I even got to see it so it must have been good. Aunt Shirley brought this really good fruit and whip cream dish. ( I still need to get that recipe.) I am not sure who else brought what but we had a ton of goodies. We got a lot of pictures and everyone was able to look at the Allen book (Which Dennis Kluge has been so kind as to let me copy) and the Porter book. Then on Monday we went out to our Uncle Rick's and we got a bunch of copies of our grandpa's stuff and we got a ton of old slides and 8mm movies. Faith and our Uncle Bob and Aunt Shirley have both helped to pay for the tools to transfer these on to DVD and to copy the slides onto the computer so I can make copies for everyone. I have been working nonstop scanning pictures, coping books and I am waiting for the film unit to get here so I can start on that. It has been so much fun. I really can't wait to get it all done so I can start doing some research on the family. That is what I really want to do. We have a great start but there is so much more to do. I know that now we will be able to date our family back farther and we will be able to get more information then even the two books have to offer. So I better get busy.

Charlotte has taken her first few steps on her own. The great part about it is both Jim and I were there to see it. I honestly can't believe how fast she is growing. Everyone says they grow fast but I guess you really don't understand until it is happening to you. Two months from now she will be a year old. It is crazy to think about.She has also gotten her top two teeth in. She was really cranky there for awhile. She wasn't very cranky with the first two, but these two were a nightmare. Now everyone keeps asking when we are going to have another one. Well my answer is....... Not anytime soon. I am having a great time just enjoying Charlotte. I also need to figure out what I am going to do with the store. I am just barely breaking even and even some months the money is coming out of our pocket. I don't know if we can keep this up. I really wish I would have waited to try and do this until Charlotte was older and the economy was better. Oh well, you only regret the things you haven't done. That is what I keep telling myself. OK I think that is it for now. I am all caught up.