ONE BIG POST

Life has been busy the last couple of weeks that I haven't gotten a chance to blog, so here is a little, more like a big catch up post.

Family Visit:

Last week my brother Paul, Brie and Susanna came up for a visit for week. It was a lot of fun, and perfect timing because Dustin was gone that week at a caricature convention so I wasn't alone. Also that week I got to see my sister Jennifer for a couple days because she was here for work so we had a little family reunion and eat some yummy food.

While Dustin was having fun in St. Petersburg drawing with other artists everyday and doing workshops, Paul,Brie, Susanna, Thomas, and I hit all the major parks. We first hit SeaWorld, than Tuesday we went to Disney World and we went to Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. I was excited to go to Magic Kingdom because I had only seen it once and didn't get a chance to ride any the rides. We hit the parks the right time because most of our lines for all of the parks were only 5 minutes long so we hit almost every ride. In Magic Kingdom I got ride all the traditional rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, and It's a small World. It was a lot of fun and tiring at the same time.

Wednesday was relaxed day since we were tired from the two parks but we did go down to downtown disney at night, which is always fun.

Than Thursday we hit Universal Studios, and we were able to ride many rides there as well, and got to see Harry Potter World and drink butterbeer (my favorite part of course).

Than that night Brie and I went to midnight showing to Breaking Dawn with some ladies from my ward, yes I know, not the greatest movie but it's always fun to have a ladies night, but I did get lost finding the theater and that was quite an adventure, ha ha poor Brie seeing me all frustrated and saying, "I don't even like this movie, this is not worth it." I think I liked the movie, I think, I think the acting was better, but there were some grotesque scenes in there, so if you have a weak stomach don't watch it.

Than Friday was another relaxing day, and that night we watched the last Harry Potter movie. It was a lot of fun to see family.

SORRY no pics, hopefully I get some up soon

Our New Couch:

Till now all we have had were two chairs in our living room, but we had some good friends that moved and gave us some furniture so here's our living room, finally our apartment feels a little more like a home, so I did some decorating and made those canvas pictures in the back.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas:

This last week Dustin let me get a Christmas tree, and not only a tree, but a bigger tree than I expected. Since we don't know how long we are staying Florida, we have tried not get too many things because we don't want to pay to move it, and also most of our stuff is in Idaho, so I was surprised Dustin let me get a tree, but since we are not going anywhere for Christmas because Dustin will be working he said we could do something, I was so excited, but we wanted to keep our budget low because who knows what we will keep and what we will get rid of when we move so we went to the dollar store for decorations, so here is our tree, it looks better in life, I want to take a better picture of it sometime but I hurried and  took a picture before Thomas got to it,  because it didn't take long before he started pulling off the ornaments. 

Living in Florida it doesn't feel like the holidays it still feels like summer so I have been breaking my own rule and I have been listening and watching Christmas music and movies before Thanksgiving, trying to get into the mind-set, it's sort of working.

Instead of being Santa, I'm being Ollivander:

Another reason I have been super busy, is because I have been working on something for my mom that she's doing for the grandkids this year. She is getting them all wands from Harry Potter, so I've been going to Harry Potter world a few times, and I've studied all the types of wands so each grandkid gets one according to their birthday, I also wrote them a Hogwarts acceptance letter, along with a letter from Ollivander telling them what their wand is made of and it's powers it possesses. It probably sounds pretty nerdy, but when I was 10 my brother-in-law did something similar for me one year for Christmas, where he carved me a wand and gave me a Hogwarts letter and I loved it so much because I was reading the books at the time, and still today that stands out in my mind so I wanted the grandkids to have the same magical feel, so here are some pictures of us with the wands, that's 30 wands and $900 worth.

Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving was a little different this year because of many reasons. First Dustin had to work most of the day so it seemed pretty much like a regular day, and since Dustin had to work we stayed here so I had to make the Thanksgiving dinner, which made me appreciate all the years my mom has done Thanksgiving and wanted her there. But I thought my Thanksgiving meal was a success, not as good as my mom's of course, but we were pretty full afterwards so I count that as a success. I didn't take any pictures I didn't have it all fancy and stuff, I know that doesn't matter but I'm funny that way.

Eh?

Today we went to Thomas' 1 year check up and he's doing great, and developing good! For this last appointment I was nervous  because I felt like Thomas hasn't gained that much weight and I was afraid they were going to say he was under weight, but the little guy did gain some weight! He's still little but the doctor wasn't worried, he is now 18lbs 6oz and 31inches.
During the appointment the doctor asked if he said any words, and I told him he's still babbling, so no, but for those who have been around Thomas know he loves saying "eh" and loves when you say it back and forth with him, and he did that in the appointment and the Dr said that counts as a word, so I guess Thomas' first word is "eh?". Maybe the next one will be dada or mama, who knows?

Thomas' First Birthday!!

I can't believe my little man is ONE! He turned one yesterday, and boy, did he get spoiled. Between grandparents, friends & family, and of course his parents, he got a lot of presents. We finished opening them this morning, to spread out the wealth a little!
We started the day by letting him open one of his presents, which was the walker, and he loves that thing a lot, he thinks it's the coolest to walk around without my help, he just needs to learn how to steer so he doesn't keep running into walls! Than later that day I took him to Seaworld because he LOVES it! When we went to the entrance he was talking out of excitement, it was pretty cute.  Than for dinner we had homemade pizza and cake!!! The cake didn't turned out how I wanted because I ran out of time, and also  Thomas was pretty fussy when I was making it, but it tasted good, so that's all that counts right?
The cake eating was probably my favorite, at first he wasn't sure what was going on because we sang Happy Birthday to him, than gave him this huge piece, but after a few bites he started chowing down. It was so funny and cute that I started laughing, and because I started laughing, he reacted to it and started laughing and being more crazy with the food (it reminded me of the scene in Christmas Story when the mom was trying to get her boy to eat his food so she said: "show me how a piggy eats" and they little boy went crazy and they both starting laughing and being silly). Afterwards he was a mess, so bath time, and bed. He was one happy camper by the end of the day.
I love my little boy, I've been having so much fun being his mom this past year and I'm looking forward to the next years.

Halloween!

This Halloween was a success! We had a lot of fun celebrating with our friends in Florida. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays because I love Halloween decorations and of course I love dressing up.  I had a lot of funny dressing up this year, mainly because I have always wanted to have purple hair, and yesterday my wish came true, and it's made me want purple hair even more! (Don't worry mom, I won't die it purple). As you probably already know from my previous posts that I'm a big Harry Potter fan and it has increased since my Harry Potter World experience, so naturally we were going to dress up as Harry Potter characters, Dustin and I were Lupin and Tonks, and Thomas was Teddy, there son, he's a metamorphmagus (can change hair color and  some facial changing) like Tonks, so we tried to dye Thomas' hair but that didn't go over very well, so in the pictures you can kinda see pink in it. 

In Orlando, we aren't the only Harry Potter fans, that we had a big group that dressed up as the characters, we had McGonagall, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco,Rita Skeeter, Bellatrix, two death eaters, Dobby, and Winky as well. It was a lot of fun to hang out with our friends.

Brie did an awesome job at decorating her garage for the little trick or treaters, she did such a great job she won the best garage contest. She used the backdrop that Dustin, Adam, Brie, and I painted for several days, so here are some pictures of us working on it.

Good vs. Evil

And of course I used my scrapbook paper that my sister-in-law, Crystal designed.