Chicken Pox... are you SERIOUS!!!

Eliza is now into the "take pictures of my babies mommy" phase.... I was trying really hard to get her to let me get a cute picture of her today with her little piggy tails and everytime I snaped a picture that doll was up in front of her face!
Eliza's officially got hair enough to get pig-tails! She looks SOO cute even if it takes a ton of hairspray to make it stay!

And this was the closeset we got to a picture of her adorable outfit today... The doll was up again about a half a second later so sorry for the poor quailty but she's still cute!

So it's been a bit of a long week in this house. We spent the whole first half of the week just trying to get Ben and myself healthy. Eliza seemed to be getting significantly better only to take a turn for the worse on Wednesday evening. We spent wednesday playing at Grandma Waite's house with Kara and Lucky. That evening we went to see Grandma Merritt (for the first time in two weeks) Eliza was pretty estatic to have her playmate back! By bedtime that night she was running a random fever.

Well Thursday we hung out and did laundry and cleaning Eliza ran a fever all day long and it kinda made me start to wonder what the heck was wrong with her! Well that evening I was putting her PJ's on and she had what looked like a mild case of the chicken pox all over her chest and back! Poor kid! Next morning resulted in a phone call to the Dr. who promptly told me that although it's not completely normal for kids to get chicken pox from the vaccine (that she got a week before) it is likely that she is having a negative reaction to the vaccine. The good news was that she is NOT contagious (thankfully).

Friday we spent in Loveland letting me play with Rachel and Bruce. It's official that I'm about twice the size of Rachel despite the fact that I'm only 4 weeks ahead of her in the pregnancy! If you want evidence you should check out her blog pictures and my last ones! There is proof enough!

Saturday was a big family dinner and such while Rachel and Bruce were here! Jaron was missed (we love you and hope you had a fun Saturday on the mission!) It was tons of fun to just sit and socialize with my family! We stayed out too late but it was totally worth it just for my family fix!

Today was church and it went great! Eliza woke up grumpy but by the time Ben picked her up from nursery she was MUCH happier... She must be her mothers daughter and was really in need of a social pick-me-up!

Wahoo for Immunizations... i guess.

Heather Wakeboarding! Heidi Wakeboarding! (both amazing girls!)

It's been a bit of a long week in our household!

Last week we got a notice in the mail that Eliza is really behind on her shots. It's apparently one of the punishments for changing through 3 different doctors in the first year of life. (I strongly advise against that if you can avoid it at all!) So anyway. They had planned on catching her up at her 18 month appt but she was sick and then there was lots of confusion on her records from the last dr. so we eneded up not getting any at that appt. Long story short the notice I got said she needed 5 shots to catch her up. So Monday moring I called the office and they fit me in that afternoon. The whole experience was fantastic overall. I got to hold Eliza on my lap and she didn't cry nearly as long as she usually does. The nurse bent over backwards to make it easier on her. She even got a second nurse to help give the shots so it wouldn't take as long! I was really grateful for the effort she put into making it as comfortable as possible for Eliza!

Monday morning we got to have Lilliana (a friend from nursery) over to our house while her sister was at the dr. Eliza absolutly LOVED having a friend over to play with and it made my job really easy all morning because they entertained each other the whole time!

Tuesday was the beginning of the torture... As mentioned above, Eliza had shots. Therefore by Tuesday morning she was sick. Her fever didn't last long after the shots but now she has a terrible cold. Runny nose, sneezing, coughing, etc. I officially hate shots! So we spent most of the day at home. We did make a trip to the mall that has an indoor playground for Eliza to run around on. She loved it! She's officially into the monkey stage though because the baby area was broken so she played on the big kid area that only had a climbing wall to get to the slide but she figured out how to get up there anyway!

Thursday Ben joined the sick party... Not full blown "I feel so terrible I can't move" but he sure didn't feel great. I went to my OB appt for the baby. Had the pleasure of doing the glucose test (for diabetes), Iron test, and getting a Rogaham shot (for having a negative blood type). HUGE thanks to my mommy for coming over and taking care of Eliza while I sat at the Dr's office for 2 hrs! All my tests came back normal so that was great news. Especially considering that I had a terrible glucose test hangover after that test so the thought of taking a three hour version of that test sounded horrible!

Friday I went to my mom's as usual. Eliza was still sick but we had loads of fun! Ben also was getting sicker... That evening we went out on the boat. Heather, Heidi, my Mom, and Scott Parkinson (from the ward) all came with us! It was tons of fun. The weather was perfect and it felt really good to be out on the lake! Heather and Heidi did really well! They're so tiny it was fun to watch how fast they popped out of the water!

Saturday was a very busy day! in the morning Ben went to work in Denver for the morning (poor guy was sooo sick! if it weren't for the wonderful drugs he may not have made it!) Eliza and I went to Loveland for the Corn Roast parade. It was fun. Eliza had one moment of absolute terror which resulted in her grabbing onto grandma and refusing to let go for the majority of the parade. (it was some scary looking clowns from a haloween float) Outside of that she loved the parade! Once we were all home (Ben included) we all laid down for naps! Ben was feeling pretty miserable so even after our naps we left him at home to rest while Eliza and I went to the Stake Carnival! It was tons of fun! I've never been to such a fun activity! it was very well put together and well attended! Eliza's favorite part was the playground (of course) and so we spent most of our time over there just hanging and watching everyone play around us!

Sunday I woke up sick with everyone else. So now we have a house full of sick people. None of us went to church becauses we figured it wasn't really fair to expose everyone else to our germs. Eliza's gone from runny nose to really congested cough so I think that's progress but I just wasn't ready to expose the whole nursery to my sick kid! So we all stayed home and slept for a good portion of the day.

That was our week... Sorry it's such a long post! I apparently had a lot to say!

Blow out weekend!

Pictures first:
Eliza has really been into trucks and trains these days and we were playing with the train set the other evening and here comes Eliza prancing around the living room with stands (to prop up the tacks) pulled up her legs as far as they could go! It was sooo funny because she'd get all irritated when they would knock together and get stuck but she didn't want to take them off... until we pulled out the camera and then they were off faster than we could get a good shot of her (little stinker!) We caughter her with one on.. but not both:

So the week was good all the way around here! Eliza and I stayed busy just puttering around the house. I've been working on catching up on the laundry that I let pile up for more than a week (shame on me!) and then there were the dishes that I'd like to think took a whole week to pile up the way they did but in reality it was only a day or two!

I was in charge of the Wednesday night activty this week and it wasn't a total bomb (although it did come remarkably close). Those really spiritual activities are a whole lot harder in the middle of the week and even harder when it's the last week before school starts and all the girls want to do is have one last summer party!... Oh well in the end it wasn't too bad and I survived the ordeal :-)

Heather and Heidi came and stayed with us on Friday night which was fun! We were suppose to get up Sat morning and go out on the lake... but as the weather would have it we didn't get to go. (Thanks for the rain but the timing wasn't ideal) So we decided since the sun was out in Longmont we'd try going to the outdoor pool here... well that's didn't work either. We ended up rained out of the pool before we even got to ride the slides ONCE! So we called Ben to have him turn on his dad's hot tub for us... and it was empty so that didn't happen either. I was at that point feeling like the whole weekend with the twins was a total bust! They on the other hand had a great attitude about the whole thing and enjoyed playing Wii while Eliza and the rest of us took a nap. When we took the twins home we eventually got the camper-trailer hooked up to the truck and hauled it to the dump. That was a project 100% thanks to Ben who did all the dirty work... including removal of a wasps nest that was conviently located just inside the door of the trailer that attacked him when he was trying to fill the tires. He's my hero! just for being brave enough to do it at all!

What a Laugh!!

It's been a fun week! Eliza has been as busy as can be and I think I can comfortably say that she is officially a toddler! We are now experiencing the joys of learning our boundries. As much as I see this as a necessary part of growing up the temper tantrums are growing increasingly annoying and I'd love to find a quick easy cure for this exploration of the rules.

We had Aunt Abby with us for most of the week and that has been sooo much fun! Eliza and I just loved having the company! We didn't do a whole lot but we did steal an oportunity to drag Abby to the pool with us! Eliza loved that and she even got brave enough to dunk herself! It was a very odd kind of self dunking though... seeing as how she doesn't like not being able to see, she would put everything but her eyes in the water, jump up and start giggling! what a silly kid, not worried about breathing but certainly concerned with what she can see!

We went to a new park this week too which was fun! I was under the impression that there were water features there for Eliza to play in but instead it was a pond that I was totally unwilling to let her play in despite her efforts to do so anyway! Eliza did manage to step out of her little bubble long enough to make a new friend at the park too! (A little boy who is about a month older than her) It was funny to watch them chase each other around. He kept trying to convince Eliza she wanted to go down the slide but she doesn't much care for slides so she just got ticked and told him off... It was really funny because you can't understand a word she says but you sure know that she's mad at you!

Saturday was the Stroll-a-thon (fundraiser for research for Rett syndrome) Eliza had been kept up wayyyy to late the night before so that Ben and I could go to a movie (Harry Potter)... But inspite of the lack of sleep and a real solid meal all day she did fantastic! She loved all the people and the playground and everything that was going on! The actual 'walk' part of the stroll-a-thon was probably her least favorite part but she survived with only a few tears in the end! And I didn't get totally frustrated with her thanks to a grandpa and aunty who helped out a lot! By the end of it all we were apparently lucky to get Eliza into a carseat awake because she was totally passed out before we even got out of the parking lot!

Church was great today! There were some fantastic talks on temples given and it made me so excited for our next temple trip! We are so lucky to have a temple so close to us. Eliza did really well in Nursery, no tears except when they discovered she was the one with the umm... "aroma" issue and therefore had invaded her personal space! After I fixed the "aroma" issue she was very excited to go back to class (that made my day!) she didn't even want me to stay! The funniest thing about that was that a lady stoped me in the restroom and said that she thought it was funny how distictive Eliza's cry is and that she thought it was funny that she could tell who's child it was that was screaming down the hall without ever seeing her!.... I'm still not sure if that was a compliment or not but it was still funny.

Oh and one last random side note: I finally got my Armorie (fancy word for cupboard) to move all of my livingroom toys into and my house now looks amazing thanks to a fantastic husband who cleaned and set it up for me while I was at the stroll-a-thon! It makes my living room look sooo much more organized and clean! I LOVE it!

what an exhausting but fun week!

Well it's been a fun couple of weeks... Nothing happened (that I can remember) last week so we'll just leave it out for now!
This week on the other hand has been full of all kinds of adventures!

Monday was normal... clean house, feed child, clean up after child, quit trying to clean up anymore because Eliza makes a mess a whole lot faster than I can clean, and 7+ loads of laundry.

Tuesday I got Abby (my sis-in-law) to cut my hair for me! It turned out SOO cute and she did some great highlights in it as well! I'm really loving the cut so far and we're really thinking about going a little shorter in the back with the layers so who knows... it may be different by next week! Here are the pictures of that! (make sure and Ooo and Ahh lots cuz it looks so dang cute!)Side View

Front (please pardon the fact that my face appears to be rounding out thanks to this baby!)

Oh and a pregnant picture... just because! (this is about 25-26 weeks along)

Wednesday, I don't remember... I'm sure that something exciting happened on this day too but frankly my memory is about 2 min long these days so the day must have just not been worth retelling!

Thursday Eliza and I spent the morning filling cream puffs I made the night before for girls camp. We hung out and talked with Abby for the morning and then delivered the cream puffs to my transportation people to send to camp that evening. I only had one major screw up in the baking process... (I burned my first batch of chocolate). After the delivery was made we took Abby to the air port so she could go to her friend's wedding in Seattle and then came home to chill (temporarily).

Friday we got up early and went over to Grandma Waite's house. Heather and Heidi did a YW's project that was cleaning the sotrage room and toybrary (toy-library) and then having a grage sale to earn money to donate to the RETTS research! Heather apparently spent the whole night up before being sick but they still had a very successful garage sale the next day. And in the end my mom has the cleanest basement I've seen in a LONG LONG time! Eliza and I just hung out for the sale and Eliza loved running around outside playing with all the toys that were for sale... she seemed to think it was the coolest adventure ever! After the sale I sent my car with Dad and Eric to Golden for Eric's swim meet and then mom and I went to Alan's driving school thingy... Oh and just before we left to go to Alan's thing Ben called me and reminded me that I had agreed to have the missionaries over that night for dinner... So I ended up cooking everything I could at mom's house and hoping that I would get home fast enough to actually feed the Elders on time! Luckily in the end it all worked out!

Saturday was a really fun day! We slept in (which was much needed considering that Eliza had been up puking in the middle of the night) and then got ready and went to the Denver Zoo! It was loads of fun! Eliza even walked the majority of the zoo by herself (which is extra impressive when your legs aren't even a full 12 inches long!) We were all totally wiped out by the end but it was totally worth it! Here are a few of the pics from that!

Daddy and Eliza looking at the monkey's.... Eliza was more interested in the water but the monkey's were still cool!

'Liza showing us where the Elephants are

These next few pics are just too dang cute! Eliza has taken to sharing Kara's stool with her and has also picked up on feeding Kara too! It was so adorable I had Heather take some pics of her!

"Open wide Kara"

Kara: Eliza I'm hungry, can I have some more now!?
Eliza: Uhhh why is your face so close to mine?

Kara: FOOOOOOD!!!

Eliza: Oh, I get it...