Happy Halloween!!!

So most of you have already seen my pictures on Facebook but I wanted to get an update in before it was too late. I REALLY need to work on posting up here more and if I'm going to make a book of each year I better get somethings up here so I actually have something to print out!!!

Halloween this year was SO much fun!!! I can't wait for next year already because I know that Riann will understand it that much more. Out of all of the holidays I think Halloween is in my top 3 because you get to just be goofy.

We got around to looking at Halloween costumes early because we knew money would be tight about this time and we really wanted her to look cute!! I thought it would be pretty easy but every time we'd go to the store Paul would just shake his head at every costume I'd pull out. While we were looking one day my mom called and we talked for a little bit and I told her what we were doing. She got really excited and wanted to help because she wanted so bad to be here and pick one out with us in person. She asked us if she could buy Riann a costume and that way she could "shop" with us. We said sure but we had to "approve" it because our weather out here is SO different than Washington and we had to make sure she would either be warm or we could add warmth to it. From that day through the following 2 or 3 weeks we'd get about 5-10 photo's a day from her while she was out shopping. Finally there was a REALLY cute dress that she absolutely loved and she got it without talking to us. She called me up later that day and told me she was sending it with the receipt so if we didn't like it we could take it back. She sent me a few pictures and I thought it was pretty cute so we decided to give it a try. Once we got it Riann tried it on and we started thinking about what we could do with it. Paul got to it first and stripped Riann down and put it on her. After he saw how "cold" it was he was really concerned about keeping it. Not knowing that he had already put it on her I came home from work and checked it out and had her try it on over her clothes. She just happened to be wearing a sleeper at the time so I thought I'd give it a shot and see how well it fit with the sleeper on underneath. I thought it would look okay so I ran in and told Paul we were keeping it. He eyed me funny and asked how I would keep her from freezing and when I told him my idea he seemed okay with the idea.

Well fast forward to getting ready for the big day, we had spend the next week or two thinking of what we could put under it to keep her warm. My neighbor reminded us that Wal-Mart was having some decent sales on their winter clothes so we checked it out got some pretty warm stuff. My neighbor was also wonderful and let us borrow a shirt her daughter had that was PERFECT for what we needed. As we started piecing everything together we felt like the outfit wasn't complete. We kept wondering what it was until I caught a post on another friends blog about what she was doing for her daughter's costume. She had made a wig out some of yarn she had found for a great price. Her pictures were adorable and I figured I could do that too!!! We started looking around but nothing was as cheap as I wanted it to be. I started to think about all of the scarfs I had tried making and realized I probably had something I could work with at home. As soon as we came back from the store I dropped everything and pulled out my craft box and started asking Paul his opinion on colors. The only one he would agree on was a roll of black and white yarn so I pulled it out and started thinking about how hard it would be to put together. We played for about a night and finally decided how we were going to attach it to her hat. The next day as soon as I got home from work I started getting stuff together. I had asked my neighbor if I could borrow her sewing machine and she said yes so Riann and I immediately went and picked it up. After dinner I got to work. Unfortunately I don't know how to work a sewing machine and gave up after about an hour of struggling with the bobbin thread. After getting Riann down for he night I sat in our bedroom and threaded the yarn through a needle and once that was complete I put it on the hat. It was a lot of hard work but totally worth it.

At that point I had wished I had waited until we were closer to Saturday because I really wanted to put her in her costume a few times. I knew if I did she'd probably not let me put it on her by Saturday so I tried to just let it be. Saturday was a pretty long day because Paul was busy getting other things done around the house I had to wait for Riann to wake up from her nap before I could get her dressed. Once they were both done we pulled everything together and got going. It took me about an hour to patiently get Riann ready and to a point where she would be warm enough to be out for a while at night. If you check out the Facebook album I linked in above you can see how many layers she was actually wearing as we got ready. She was great!!! I didn't have to do much to get her help with getting dressed and she was happy to let me take her picture.

Once Paul was home he and I got ready in our last minute costumes and we were out the door. We headed off to the church for the truck-er-treat. We were about 5 minutes early which still made it feel like an hour late. We just barely found and squeezed into a parking stall. By the time we were out of the car and to the trunk to hang out and pass out candy we had already had about 10 kids stop by. Paul took Riann around the first part of the parking lot and then brought her back for me to take her around the rest. She was so cute!!! Any time someone would let her pick a candy from a bowl or a basket she would shuffle the candy around looking for a sucker. Then as we would walk away she would pull it back out of her bucket and start gnawing on it with the wrapper and all!!! After the trunk-er-treat was over we jumped back in the card and headed to a neighborhood close by. We only got to about 5 houses there before Riann decided she was too tired to keep going. We finally caught one or two houses on the way back to the car and then headed home.

All-in-all it was a great night!! There were a few moments where I wasn't sure everyone was going to make it but it all worked out really well. I think we had the cutest kid of the night but I'm a little partial to my little one so I don't know how much others would agree. Below are a few pictures of my little girl!!! I love her SO much!!!

Thanks for listening to my rant!!! Sorry it was a long one but I had fun and enjoyed myself so I thought I'd share... I hope my next couple of posts are a lot shorter!!!

Getting the "hair" sewn in...

The finished product!!

Almost done!!

I like this one because you can kind of tell how different it is for her to actually have hair.

Getting into the car to get over to the church...

Hanging out with her friend Claire and their suckers...

Hooray for candy!!! Let's go get more!!

The cutest Witch of Halloween!!!

Checking out the block!!!

All bundled up now that it's dark...

Climbing up to the last house...

How about I just come in to play!!!

ALL DONE!!!!

Just a quick note!!! He's IN!!!!

Paul got accepted back into school!!! Here are the key points from his acceptance letter...

"Congratulations! We are pleased to offer you admission to Brigham Young University-Idaho. We look forward to having you on campus and feel that you will be an asset to this university."

Yada... yada... yada....

"Once again, congratulations on your acceptance to BYU-Idaho! Rich blessings and life-changing opportunities await you here.

Sincerely,

Admissions Committee
Brigham Young University-Idaho Admissions Office"

I've been a little stressed the last year because he kept telling me he was going to get his application in but never mentioned when he was going to do it, just that he'd "take care of it"... Well he started the process without telling me and we recently finished up the last few steps. We found out the day after our final piece was submitted that he had to petition one step in the process and I was a little worried that we wouldn't make the deadline but he got everything done on Thursday and the day he submitted his petition (Friday) they emailed him to tell him they had dropped all of his holds and two days later (Today, it could have been sooner but we didn't check until today) we got this email!!!

I'm so excited for him!! The next year or two is going to be even more busy and probably stressful than this last year but I'm so proud he's getting on to what he wants to do next!!!

Just thought I'd share the good news!!! Have a FANTASTIC night!!!

Crater's of the Moon

SORRY!!! I'm so sorry for not posting in a while. There's been some drama recently with my blog and I just got it all sorted out. I deleted an email account that I didn't know was linked to my blog and by doing that I deleted the entire blog... Well Paul saved my life after I cried for about an hour and got my blog back up and running but in the process I had reestablish that email address and reset my password. Paul being the super sneaky person that he is, reset my password to something I couldn't figure out and something he couldn't remember so I haven't been able to get on... But now we've gotten everything figured out and know I know what my password is and I'll try to do my best at getting back to this on a regular basis!!!

The sad thing is not to much has happened since I last posted. I figured instead of trying to recap everything that's happened over the last 2 months I'd just start with our AMAZING adventure from today. I'll try not to post too many pictures but I had so much fun!!! Riann is really turning into a sweet girl. We've recently dealt with a lot of temper tantrums and "life ending" fits that I've been really afraid for what was coming over the next year. However for the most part she seems to be getting past most of it and is really a LOT of fun to hang out with. I hope it stay this way and that it doesn't get any worse when she gets closer to 2. This better not be the calm before the storm!!!

Well today we decided to go on adventure. I was having a really rough day and just wanted to disappear. Paul was trying to get Riann down for a nap and I barged into the room and told him we needed to go for a car ride. This is something we used to do quite a bit and so it seemed like a great idea for the weekend I had been having. Paul not being one to say no to anything involving cars picked up Riann and walked straight to the door. In about 10 minutes we had a little bit of food, a few jackets, and we were off. We weren't sure where we were going at first but Paul checked out the map and decided that Crater's of the Moon looked like fun. We hadn't been there before and we both REALLY wanted to do a trip out there so we decided that today was the day.

It took us about 2 hours to get out there... not the amount of time we thought it would take, we thought we were only about an hour away but I guess were about 2... we pulled in and we were pretty surprised right off. I was always told that it was just a bunch of Craters that were made from old volcano's that had erupted and fell apart hundreds of years ago so I didn't expect to be blown away by anything too amazing. As you come into the park everything goes from sagebrush to black lava. The whole ground is the beautiful black rock that just winds in every direction you can see. As we got further into the park we started to realize this wasn't anything like what we had been told. Now if your not really a nature person you may not appreciate how beautiful it really was. To most it's probably just a ton of lava, but if you really get to look at it and see what it's like and take the time to image how it all got there, everything that was created was pretty amazing.

At our first stop we started on a short hike through a small lava field but moved on quickly because there were some pretty nasty clouds coming in. On our way to our next stop we decided we weren't going to rush through the park because of rain and so we got out and really started to look around. Our next stop was a cone that we were allowed to hike up. I think the sign said it was about a 68% incline and it was about .5 miles long. We had forgotten to grab Riann's stroller so we were a little worried about how much she would want to really get out and hike but we started up and she followed. We had to carry her a few times because the paths were too narrow or the hills were too steep or rocky but she was amazing!!! She trucked along everywhere we went and we didn't have to decide to not do anything because she was with us. She was so happy to be there and she seemed to love every minute of it just as much as we did.

Fast-forwarding a lot... We hiked around a few more places and came up to some caves that were in the park towards the end. We were all getting tired and there was only one cave out of the 5 were were equipped to go through so we hiked straight over to it. We hadn't seen any rain until just the very end so we figured it was fine to keep going. We came up on the tunnel and climbed right in. It was pretty rocky but Riann was really patient with all of the carrying and passing off we had to do and we had a blast exploring. While we were in the tunnel there were lots of pigeons that kept flying out of their holes and it kept spooking us. We weren't sure where we were going and at times they sounded like bats so we were a little on edge. Once we finally got to the end of the tunnel and had to hike over the lava fields and back to the car. About this time it really started to rain and we even had some thunder clouds come in over us. We decided because we were pretty much the tallest things out in the middle of the lava fields we had better book it back. We got back to the car just in time and got out of the rain. On the way home we got to see some of the most amazing lightening we've seen out here so far. Our battery was dead on the camera or else I'd have pictures of that too.

I have a TON of pictures but most of them need to be compiled into panoramic shots. As soon as Paul has those together I'll put them up but for now here are a few shots of our adventure. It was soooo much fun!!! I'm so glad we got to spend today together. I have one of the most amazing families and every moment I get with them is absolutely wonderful!!! I love them both sooo much and I'm so grateful for the memories I get to create with them every single day!!!

This is one of the first things you see as you come into the park. It's just a black mass of lava and whatever vegetation can survive out there. There were a few chipmunks but they were too fast and too small to catch with the camera.

Just one of the lava mounds around the first places we stopped.

Paul and Riann walking up the steep cone. At the top it was amazing!! There isn't anything growing anywhere on this thing until you get to the top. There are a few trees and a lot of brush. Up there you also get a great view of the valley and the rest of the main stops in the park. I got some great pictures from up here and can't wait for Paul to get them set up.

It was super windy at the top so we had Riann "fly" down the hill side. We're going to cut Paul out of the picture and see what it looks like...

Paul and Riann at our second stop. This was at the top of another lava cone. The center of this was all hallowed out and there was still snow at the very bottom from last winter.

One of the small caves on the way to the main tunnel/cave we got to hike through.

The road into the caves. You can tell we were getting bad weather on the way in...

The road out of the caves. It cleared up a little at the end giving us just enough time to get out dry.

Inside the cave. I think this might be this year's Christmas card picture!!!

One last shot before we had to get moving through the cave.

Riann our little hiker. She did a great job!!!

My NEW Gym!!!!

So Paul finally let me have a little space at the "top" of our garage to make a gym out of. I have to say I LOVE it!!!! Here are a few shots of what it really looks like!!!

This is the main layout. We have a TV which I will be adding a DVD player to and my work out video's will be going in the blue stand underneath it. There is the elliptical we just got for $80 on Craigslist. LOVE that site!!! I have a weight "stand" over nex to the TV where my hand weights, Paul's perfect pushups,a kettlebell, and a basketball (that is suppose to resemble a medicine ball) sit, Paul's punching bag, a chair for squats and resting, and our scale. We even had the PERFECT amount and shapes of carpet to lay down so that I don't have to sit on the actual garage floor. It's so wonderful!!!

This is the view coming in from the house.

Here is the TV... not yet hooked up...

The new elliptical with my nasty sweat band...

The weight stand. This is going to improve when we can spend more money on more weights...

Paul's punching bag and the view from the back of the garage...

Riann woke up from her nap and wanted to help clean...

She just HAD to sweep the floor!!!

She's pretty excited about the new gym too!!!

The sad thing is I haven't been able to use it too much yet because my schedule has been pretty crazy but it's fun to have a place to look forward to. I can't wait to really get working out there. I just need a treadmill now and maybe a step to do stair stepper videos and it would be PERFECT!!!! Now if only I could find REAL time to get my butt in gear and get out and use it!!! I'm hoping to be down 20-30 pounds by the end of the year and maybe I'll really be able to push through and be 60-80 pounds down by this time next year!!! That would be AMAZING!!!!

Happy Birthday to RIANN!!!!

Wow I can't believe it's actually been a whole year. Its taken me a bit to find time to get these up but I'm glad I can finally sit down and do it. My little baby is growing up into a girl!!! It's amazing how fast time has gone by. It's been so much fun!!! Last night Paul and I sat back and looked at pictures of her the first week and it's amazing that she has grown so much. She changes each and every day and is so much more amazing as time goes by!!! I'm so excited to see what comes. I can only imagine what she'll be like when she's 16 and again when she's 25, 30. She'll grow up to be someone very special and I can't wait to watch it all unfold before my eyes!!!

We love you baby girl!!!! So much!!! Happy Birthday!!!!

My Angel!!!

I don't think they were talking about the candy when they called it
"Fun Dip".

These are her new angry eyebrows... any time we say "Don't give me 'tude!!" This is what we get.

Riding around with Papa!!! She's getting REALLY good at hanging on for piggyback rides. The other day I was working out and she wanted to be held so I threw her on my back and started doing squats!!!

Definitely breaking the rules... There are VERY few places she can't climb on her own these days.

Just hanging out!!!

She's already trying to sneak out of the house.....

LOVES talking on the phone!!!

Can't get enough of the good stuff!!!

Hates just having to sit around....

She's wonderful!!!!