Halle's favorite past time- playing in the wipes

Halle trying to clean up some spilled water for me

No photos please

The princess retires for the evening in her carriage

Mommy and Halle

Jaren and Chloe

The glitter princess

Fun at the zoo

Still more fun at the zoo

More fun at the zoo

Girls having fun

Chloe at Kid's Kingdom

Luuukkkeee, I am your father

You Know You're Truly a Mom When....

You know you're truly a mom when...

You are doing Pilates to regain you're figure while you're drooly, snotty nosed, cherub like infant beats on your head with a squeaky rubber ducky.

You are doing Pilates while said cherub like creature is biting your forehead.

That's all I have for today. And "no" I didn't quite finish my workout.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I know everybody is busy this time of year and I'm no exception. The sad thing is I'm not busy with Christmas stuff yet. I mean, I should be busy with that because there's plenty to do but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I have Christmas cards to write and send, cookies to bake, presents to buy, and an endless list of housekeeping things to do and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. So I'm going to have to really buckle down and forget having much relaxing time until we get to FL for Christmas! I don't know if I'd mentioned that our Christmas present from Trav's parents is money for a trip to Fl. Everybody is sooo excited. We haven't been to FL in more than 2 years so this will be really nice.

There really is so much to report especially on the Halle front. When I get a chance I'm going to post our life in pics because we really have done a lot lately. But anyway, where to start? I could start with teeth- she's had an eruption lately! She had been working on getting her bicuspids (I'm pretty sure that's what they are) and it took them about 3 months from the time you could see them before they actually broke through. So, I wasn't really paying attention to the rest of her mouth. But I noticed on Monday that she was getting two more teeth in the bottom to match the ones on the top and yesterday I put my finger in her mouth and felt a molar that had broken through! Then on closer inspection I realized that she's getting 4 molars! It's not as soon as Chloe got hers (6 months which is freakishly early) but I think she's still 6mths ahead of schedule.

And since we're talking about teeth, Chloe has had a loose tooth for about a month! I'm so bummed! From time to time I check on how loose it is- you know wiggle it- and when I did that the other day I noticed that the new adult tooth has already broken through. Then I checked the baby tooth next to it and sure enough, it was loose too! My poor little four year old is already losing teeth. Travis was just like that as a kid and had to have braces and extra teeth pulled and all sorts of bad stuff so I really hope that Chloe doesn't have to go through that. My teeth are pretty straight and I haven't had any work done so hopefully she'll at least get that from me.

This has been an eventful and busy week and one of those reasons is that Mary had her baby a month early. The birth and subsequent events have been recorded in at least 3 blogs so I won't recap but we were able to visit Kris and Mary last night and even though we were in the NICU waiting room we had a great time. You wouldn't have thought we were there because their son isn't completely well. But I've written this at least 3 times today but I'll write it again, that is a gorgeous little boy they have and I can hardly wait for him to get well and go home!

We have Lael's 1st birthday party tonight and I'm excited to go. Don't tell her but I bought a little prince and princess set because I wanted her to have a truly girlie toy and bought bright pink wrapping paper and a large pink bow and a card with ladybugs. After so many years of buying boys things for the Fadely boys I think Tisra will like the girlie-ness of it all. I don't think Lael will notice so, I guess the girlie gift is as much for Tisra as it is for Lael.

Well, I shall go now as I have a poopie diaper to change and children to feed. But hey, it's a gorgeous day!

The Babies Are Sleeping

The babies are sleeping or were sleeping anyway- I just heard Halle cry. I love this time of day, though. Everyone is down for a nap by 1:30-ish and then I get a chance to workout. I can hardly believe I'm able to get it to work out this way and sometimes it takes some work but it's so worth it.

I've never been much of a schedule person before. I like to do what I want when I want but I'm finding out more and more that you can do life that way but there are other things you have to give up. Like a designated work out time or devotion time or just by myself time so I'm thinkin' that a schedule is the way to go. Ironically, I'm going to have to come back to this because 2 kids are now awake...

OK, I'm back. In other news I'm officially and E-Bay-er (ee?). I've never purchased anything from E-Bay before because since it's a bidding thing I've just assumed that I would'nt get whatever it is that I want to bid on. I have been borrowing Christina's Winsor Pilates tapes though and I really wanted the DVD's for myself. I looked at them a year or so ago (when I was pregnant) and the set was about $60 at Target. Well, I wasn't really willing to cough up that much dough so I thought about E-Bay. I figured there were plenty of people that bought them from an info-mercial or something and never used them and I was right. I was able to get the set for $10.50 thanks to Trav's hard work at figuring E-Bay out and bidding for me.

So, Thanksgiving is coming up and my parents are coming to town. Chloe is sooo excited about watching the Thanksgiving Day parade and making breakfast with me. I have finished buying all of our Thanksgiving Dinner supplies and I've never gotten it done this early before. I'll be making casseroles ahead of time so Thanksgiving Day should be pretty stress free. Mom will be here to help out so everything should run smoothly. We'll also be opening presents from my parents since we'll be in FL this year! We haven't been to FL for Christmas in 4 long years so we're long overdue for a visit. We'll be seeing family, of course, but we'll be taking quite a bit of family time as well so it will be a vacation time that we really need.

I don't expect to have time to post for the rest of the week so have a happy Thanksgiving!

November 17, 2005

Hmmm, it's been a while. I think of great posts all the time but I'm rarely in the position to just type it out so I guess you guys will be getting leftovers a little early this year.

Halle is officially crawling. Yep, the little tyke is mobile. She still doesn't crawl all over the house, it's sad but it looks like her teeny arms won't take her that far. So, it seems, she reserves crawling for desperate times, like when she's trying to find me.

Chloe is a doll, of course. OK, this is too funny but the conversation between she and Jaren yesterday was priceless. Occasionally Chloe gets on a kick. Her most recent "kick" is that she's going to marry Grant. It comes up probably every other day, with no encouragement I might add. Well, yesterday she was talking to Jaren and said, "even when you get big I WILL NOT MARRY YOU! I'm going to marry Grant!" I don't think Jaren has ever said anything about marrying her so I'm not sure why she brings it up but it is cute!

I am trying out Pilates. I know, I'm way behind the times. I actually have tried it before and I didn't like it. It seemed a little too "girly" because it wasn't up to the intensity I'm used to. Also, the tape I have was set to some kind of tribal-ish drum music and it doesn't take very long for that to really get on my nerves. Well, Christina has some tapes that don't have goofy music and I tried it yesterday and really liked it. Some of it was difficult and some seemed silly because it was so simple but people say that it works well so I really want to give this a chance since the other things I've tried haven't given me the results I want. The instructor said that it works the little muscles to support the big muscles which is why people that do pilates don't have bulky muscles. We'll see.

There's nothing much else happening on the Button front. I'm meeting Travis for lunch in a while, that should be fun. More later.

Stuff

Well, I'd like to say I have some grand reason for not posting recently but really I just haven't felt like writing. I think I kind of fell into a "worn out" slump from all of the recent events but I'm much better now.

We have finally decided on a church home and that church is- Sumner Life! I'm sure it's not a big surprise to anyone but it was a tough choice. Well, really, we just wanted to find where God wanted us and He didn't seem to be speaking much until the last couple of weeks. So, we didn't plant a church in AL but we'll be attending a church plant in TN, it's funny how things come full circle. We are really excited and everyone that is at the church is excited to be there as well. The energy that's there is refreshing. I think that everyone feels like they are there for a purpose and that God is going to use them to make this a great church and I'm excited to be part of that.

We had a fun Halloween. Chloe was a princess- thanks to a very fancy dress that Grandma bought her a couple of years ago. We weren't really sure what we were going to do for Halloween and then I remembered the dress. It was perfect for a princess and she loved it! We put on lots of hairspray and glitter, eyeshadow and blush and you could tell she loved it! She smiled the entire time I was putting makeup on her. We went to Cornerstone's Halloween carnival and she had a nice time. I don't know how many people were there but for the most part it was shoulder to shoulder people so I think we'll do something different next year. Cornerstone always puts on a top notch carnival but with little girls I think it will be better to do something a little more low key.

This past weekend was a rough one for Halle because she was sick-again. She ran a fever until Tuesday but is much better now.

I'm going to end now. Luke is here for the next 3 days and Jaren is out of town but they still need supervision. Happy November!!! I love November!

Amy's Southwest Casserole

Hmmm, not sure I like the name but that's ok. I'm going to do my best to write down my chicken black bean dish but since I just throw in a little of this and a little of that it's difficult to pin down. But here goes:

What you'll need:
1 16 oz pckg. of dry black beans cooked according to package directions or 4 cans of black beans rinsed and drained (if you don't drain them the dish will be to soupy)
3 boneless skinless chicken breast-cooked
1 package taco seasoning
mojo (you can find it in a bottle in the Mexican food section) just use a splash- to taste
1 package frozen corn (I like white best but you can use any variety)
1 small jar salsa-thick and chunky- whatever heat you like
1 8 oz pckg. Mexican cheese

Combine all ingredients in a large skillet and cook until bubbly. I like to serve with Hint Of Lime Tostitos but you could serve over rice or anything else really. You can also make a casserole by layering flour tortillas, bean mixture, cheese...repeat, in a springform pan with the last layer being a tortilla with cheese on top. Cook at 4oo degrees until the cheese is bubbly- about 20-25 min. slice and serve with sour cream and Franks hot sauce, mmmm.

Blink Once for Yes, Twice for No

Have you ever seen one of those Dr. shows where there's a patient in a somewhat vegetative state and they ask them to "blink if you understand what I'm saying."? Well, this post has nothing to do with that.

It does, however, have to do with Halle blinking. I'm sure you're thinking, blinking? It's one of those things like breathing you just do it. Well, she has started blinking with purpose. The other night at Target she bumped her head on the shopping cart and made a face and blinked very hard and deliberately as if to say, "you may pick me up now!". She'll also copy my blinking pattern. We played a blinking game during dinner last night and it was adorable.

OK, so there's only so much you can write about your kid blinking. So, everything else with us is fine and I must say that I'm incredibly happy to be here. I'd like to be more settled but that will just take time. Now if we could only decide what church to go to.....