2009- a year of change

I've been thinking about the past year and then about this new year. This year is going to be a year of change for our family. I know change happens to everyone but our family is going to experience several larger changes.
Jesse~ He's graduating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In May Jesse will be done with college... for now. He says he's been thinking about getting a Masters degree, but not for a few years. With graduation another change comes- getting a career. Jesse has worked before but this will actually be a job that he wants, not just one that pays the bills. :) All of those years of school will finally pay off for him so we're excited. Jesse has applied for several jobs and plans on applying for a lot more. Most of the jobs are back in the west, closer to family, so another change will be leaving Indiana for wherever we end up. Some of you may say, "But how do you know you'll leave Indiana?" To that I answer, "Because he's applied to zero jobs in Indiana and plans on applying for zero jobs in Indiana." Sorry Indiana people, but we're just not Midwesterners. That and there aren't any jobs for him in Indiana.
Rosalee~ That kid changes EVERY day! She is starting to run which is hilarious because it usually ends with her landing on her bum. She also is starting to talk more and more everyday. Some of the big changes we'll see are having her completely potty trained, her getting some teeth (FINALLY!), being able to feed herself using a spoon/fork, and being able to hold simple conversations.
Marie~ Sadly I think I'll be the boring one of the family this year. Not much will be changing for me in 2009. (I'm looking forward to moving in early summer though!) This August Jesse and I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. I know 5 years doesn't seem like that long but it is 1/10 of the way to 50 years and with today's society making it 5 years is longer than most.

Christmas pictures

I'm FINALLY going to post our pictures from Christmas. Our morning started off with Rosalee and I sleeping in and Jesse making breakfast. We woke up to the smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen. Rosalee sat up in bed and loudly said, "meat!" I started laughing but then realized she was serious. I took her into the kitchen for some bacon and then I made her go to the bathroom. She kept standing up claiming to be "all done" just so she could have more bacon. Finally we went and then I promptly took her to the kitchen for more bacon. I attempted to show her what Santa brought but she wanted nothing to do with anything unless it was bacon. As you can tell from the below video she could not be bothered. Maybe next year Santa will just put a slab of bacon in her stocking!

After being stuffed on bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs Rosalee was FINALLY ready to care what was under the tree. We started by opening stockings and as soon as Rosalee saw that her fruit was a bunch of bananas she had to eat them before moving on to the presents. So while she continued to eat, Jesse and I took turns opening our stockings.
This year Santa brought Trouble a bag of pig ears which kept her busy for most of the morning.

Here is Jesse and his goodies. The funny thing about his apple is when he saw it he thought it was a chocolate covered cheese ball. I'm not sure that those exist or if they do if people would eat them, but that's what Jesse thought he got. I almost felt bad telling him it was an apple.

Good ol' Santa! Somehow he always knows exactly what to give me.


We couldn't get Rosalee to stay still with her stocking gifts so we just put them next to the ball toy and took a picture. I think the half eaten banana adds a bit of class to the photo.

After Rosalee played with the ball popper several more times we got her to open some more presents. The masking tape on the present was from when she tried to open the gift a week early. When we finally let her open the presents she was so delicate about it. She's really funny about things sometimes!

This year Rosalee got some toys, books, and a few outfits. She kept kissing the box of this toy and calling it a "gwin". We tried to get her to say pen-guin but I guess it'll come in time.

As soon as Rosalee opened her gift from Angie and Brett she had to stop and read her books. She refused to open anything else until her dad read to her. Thank you Angie for the GREAT animal books! Rosalee really likes the frog book with the real frog photos.

Rosalee opened more presents just to find out she got more books. These books kept her busy enough that Jesse and I could open our gifts. Jesse claims we have too many pictures of him so I wasn't allowed to get any pictures of him. But he was more than willing to take tons of me!

Thank you Angie and Brett for thinking of us this Christmas!

What makes Marie happy? Beautiful funky shoes from Santa. I love that I can send Jesse to the store and know that if he returns with a shoe box that I don't have to worry.

After a busy morning we got dressed and headed to our friend's house for a wonderful dinner.

Rosalee's heaven

What happens when a baby is left alone for just a few minutes? She goes into the kitchen, gets some cereal, and feeds herself. Excuse me for having to use the bathroom! Oh well, she had fun and it made me vacuum the living room.

Christmas came early

The first reason I feel this way is because last weekend it was FREEZING. We had temperatures in the negatives. Then came the snow, mixed with ice, just ice, a little more snow, finished off by ice. Now it is raining and according the weather man it will be sloppy wet, a little icy, but not white for Christmas.

The second reason is Jesse got one present early. I had to give it to him early or we would have missed out on the event. Some people may not know, but Jesse is a HUGE fan of basketball. So I bought him some tickets for last Monday nights game. They played a smaller school, Indiana University Fort Wayne, but Jesse didn't care. He was just excited to get to go to a game. I also thought it might be nice to go to a game against a smaller school because our chances of winning would be greater. Well, Purdue won!!! They beat the other team by 15 points so Jesse was very excited. Rosalee had a great time at the game too. She loved all the attention from the people around us, getting to yell, eating (of course), and the half time show. The "gold girl" was tossing batons in the air and shaking all over the place and Rosalee kept laughing and clapping. She clapped every time we clapped after Purdue made a basket. We even got her to say, "woo woo" a few times. I'm not sure if she was cheering or trying to say Purdue, but it was still cute!

They both were very focused on the game. It was great to see them having such a wonderful time. I'm pretty sure neither of them even knew I took a picture!

A true Rosalee photo! We bought a hot dog for Rosalee to share with Jesse, but (as you can see) she savagely attacked it and claimed it for her own. The couple behind us kept laughing at Rosalee's determination to eat it despite the fact she still has no teeth.

The people behind us took a picture of us. My auto flash didn't go off for the first picture but I wanted to show it so you can see how we pacify Rosalee. She started to fuss if we took the hot dog away so Jesse let her eat it. When the flash didn't go off, I asked if they could take a second picture. This time WITHOUT the hot dog! So in case you're wondering, Rosalee is looking at the man with the hot dog and pointing at the camera. My hair looks gross in the pictures but I believe in wearing hats, unlike some people I'm married to. :)

All bundled up and ready to go home after a great game!

Queen of cuteness

Here are some videos that I took of Rosalee today and yesterday. I love that neither video are of anything too incredible but at the same time they show how much she's learned. At times when I think she's so young she amazes me by understanding and doing SO much! She knows A LOT more than she can express to us but she's getting better at using ASL and copying words. Today, for example, she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a box of crackers. She brought them to me and signed "eat" and then said "more please". Well it sounds like "Moe pees" but I know what she's saying. :) I love that I'm able to be home with her and capture these fun little moments.

Rosalee gets better at walking all the time. She pretty much has stopped crawling and toddles around the house now. She'll only crawl when she falls and then she gets right back up on her feet. She's fallen hard a few times but it doesn't seem to stop her from taking off!

Ward Christmas party

Last Saturday was our ward (church for the non-Mormons out there) Christmas party. They had a ton of food, family pictures, cupcake decorating, crafts, and various musical and theatrical productions for our entertainment. My favorite was the children acting out the nativity story and the girl holding Jesus with a choke hold around the neck.

Rosalee ate a freakish amount of food. She seriously ate more than I did! She would ask for more from anyone willing to offer her some food. I think she loves that her dad has a sweet tooth because she gets a lot of sweets when he's around.

Some babies (Mia!) decided to steal and eat Rosalee's shoe instead of the ham and potatoes.

This is Rosalee's new best friend Nelly the seeing eye dog. I think Rosalee was ecstatic to see a dog at church. The first picture is of Nelly helping clean ham juice off Rosalee's cheek. The second one is my favorite because both of them were begging for ham from Jesse and I just laughed the whole time. Thankfully Nelly's owner is really nice and didn't mind us spoiling her.

Remember to laugh

Both Jesse and I laugh a lot. We need to because if we didn't we'd go mental. Sometimes life can be down right awful but as long as you remember to laugh it doesn't seem as bad. So today has so far been one of those laugh or go insane type of days.

I'll start with the potty issue. Rosalee uses her toilet every morning like clock work. Today was no different. She sat, she went, she stood up informing Jesse that she was "all done". Believing this innocent child he took her into the bedroom to change her. She now only wants to use the toilet so sometimes she won't go poop as long as possible... today was the breaking point. In the few minutes between when they left the bathroom and came running back Rosalee had pooped on the bed, inside my slipper, on some dirty clothes and one sneaker (all next to the bed), on Jesse's slipper (she did this as he ran back to the bathroom), on the bathroom floor, and then again in her toilet. Seriously, how can one tiny person have THAT much inside of them!? Instead of being mad about the ridiculous amount of poop we had to clean up we just sat there and laughed.

Ice issue- sometime between 10 last night and 10 this morning ice fell from the sky. The roads are covered, my sidewalk is covered, and the car doors were all frozen shut. I had a very small window of time to drop something off at Purdue (for my Saturday school teaching job) before the little boy I baby-sit would be dropped off. So we bundled Rosalee up and headed out to the car. The driver side of the car was covered in ice. The passenger side was not as bad so after body slamming my door twice I was able to get in. Then with Jesse pulling on the outside of the door and me kicking the inside, the driver door opened. I turned on the car so we could get the heat going and Jesse proceeded to scrape the ice off the windows. Since Rosalee's door was still frozen she stayed in the front seat. She had a great time standing and playing with the steering wheel while Jesse and I were body slamming, pulling, pushing, kicking, etc. the back doors. When we finally got her in her seat she was mad, not because it was 10 degrees, but because she couldn't drive anymore. I think the frost bite had moved into our brains because all we could do was sit there and laugh hysterically. Our hands were bright red (neither one of us were smart enough to grab gloves), our noses felt like they could fall off, our shoulders were sore from slamming the car, and yet all we could do was laugh.

I guess either than wanting to remember silly times like this I just wanted to share our opinion on laughter being the best medicine. I really think that only when you can truly laugh at yourself for silly, or even stupid, mistakes then you're happy with who you are. Plus it's SO much easier to enjoy life by laughing instead of crying or yelling. Try it sometime. :)