Shopping adventures

While walking from shop to shop yesterday Grace said "Momma, take picture. Gracie stand with guy!"...so that's what we did.

I've been working on the railroad...

Daddy and Grace have been having fun with the train set Grandma & Grandpa James got Grace for Christmas!!

So, I've failed this blog miserably! I promise you all that Grace is still alive and well! Ha! We've been busy. The truth of the matter is...I have spent just about every spare minute I have crocheting lately! I just love making all kinds of cute things.
Anyways, Grace is staying the week in Kentucky, so I'm really missing her :( Seth and I have been keeping ourselves busy with Christmas shopping, gift wrapping...etc so that we don't think about how much we're missing her. She did call us last night thought. Seth talked to her for a little while, and when he gave the phone to me she immediately said "Where daddy go?" (aka her favorite thing to ask these days). I am pretty sure that somewhere deep down inside, she misses me too. I'm looking forward to seeing her this Friday night!
We bought her a few Christmas gifts that she's going to love, but the one I'm most excited about is her Christmas jammies!! I'll put a picture of her in them on here at some point, but based on my track record I will give you this advise...don't hold your breath. :)

Be Blessed & Merry Christmas!

Jenna

Indiana State Fair 2013!

We had so much fun at the fair this year with my family! Here are some of the pictures I took that day...

Seth and Matt - just being good dads!

Looking at the pigs :)

Grace was enjoying her time with Granddad!

She may have been telling us to stop taking pictures...

I just love this girl!

Uncle Seth with his buddy Owen!

Grace had so much fun 'driving' the tractors!

Matt wanted to drive too!

I LOVE watching them play together! They had lots of fun :)

Grace and Daddy feeding animals.

Family Picture!

We love you guys!!

We love these three!

Granny and Granddad enjoying their grandkids!

"Is it time to leave yet?" 

That's one big ball of popcorn!

Please pretend that I posted these pictures in August... ;) Thanks!

Sleeping Beauty

Grace was a tired girl after playing all weekend at cousin
Harrison's house! We had a great time there and it was so fun
to celebrate Harrison's 2nd birthday!
Many thanks to Grammy for taking this picture : )

Cousin Fun

I told Grace she couldn't have a snack.
I suppose Owen felt bad for her.

Grace smothering...er...kissing Owen!

Strawberry Picking!!!

We had such a fun (and messy) last minute trip to the strawberry patch tonight! Seth decided we would go after seeing our friends Matt and Tiffany post on facebook that they went and he thought it would be fun! We had such a good time as a family. I'm looking forward to doing this more in the future!

Here is Grace, picking out her strawberries.
She wasn't as picky of the color/texture/size of
each strawberry as mom and dad were...

Having a good time!

Don't be fooled, no strawberries actually stayed
 in that little basket.

I wish this picture would have turned out better (joys of using a 'dumb' phone for
taking pictures) because it shows how much she was concentrating on
enjoying those sweet berries!

And this shows what Grace did most of the time
 we were there! What a mess!

 As we were leaving, I told the lady running the farm that she should probably charge us at least a half a pound more than what was in the basket we brought up since Grace ate so many! And actually, we left when we did because we didn't want her to get a tummy ache! I'd be lying if I said Seth or I didn't try any...BEST strawberries ever!!!

Millie Sue

Yesterday morning, Grace woke up and was immediately asking about Millie (our lovable lab). We heard "Doggy? Doggy? Miiiyyeeee?" over and over again!

You see, next weekend we're going to NC and then the next week Seth and I are going to Orlando for a conference. My sister and parents were so kind to take Millie for two weeks. I thought it would take a while for Grace to realize that Millie wasn't home when we came back from dropping her off with them on Saturday night, but she noticed first thing in the morning that something was different. I think it's safe to say that Grace loves Millie...

The good news...they will be reunited next Monday when Grace goes to stay with my parents!
The bad news...we miss our dog now and will be missing our baby next week.

Favorite Word and Girls Night

Grace's favorite word these days is "Mommy". That's right, I'm no longer mama, I'm mommy. This is so cute and so heartbreaking at the same time! My little girl is definitely growing up faster than I want her to. So, back to her favorite word...she says mommy alllllll day long! The first few times I answered "Yes, Grace" or something like that, but now I've started saying "Gracie" back when she says it. After we go back and forth with this for a little bit, she ends up giggling. :)

Last night we had girls night. It was just me, Grace and Millie. We had dinner, went on a walk, gave Grace a bath, did some cleaning...etc. We had so much fun playing and talking! I'm sure that people thought I was crazy talking to her as much as I was on our walk, but that's ok. My favorite moment of the evening was not the walk, or the fun she had in the bath, and it definitely wasn't the cleaning! My favorite moment of the evening was trying to get Grace to go to sleep. I put her in her crib to go to sleep and left the room like normal. It usually takes her about 5 to 10 minutes to stop talking long enough to fall asleep. Last night was a different story. It had been 40 minutes after I had laid her down and I could still hear her chatting away. I guess our fun evening wound her up! So I went up there (to check for poo...because I know that she sometimes does that after we lay her down and she won't fall asleep with a dirty diaper...she'll just start saying "Mommy! Mommy! Poo!") and there she is, sitting in her crib chatting to one of her stuffed animals (no dirty diaper-thankfully). So I laid her back down, covered her up, and spent about 5 minutes just running my fingers through her hair, what little hair there is! She just laid there so peacefully, smile on her face, enjoying the attention. Eventually, I had to leave the room so that she could go to sleep, but I enjoyed my time with her so much! She fell asleep within 5 minutes, in the exact place I left her. She's really precious and I cannot imagine my life without her.

New meaning for old words...

Grace has her own special way of asking us to pick her up these days. Instead of saying 'up' like any other kid would...Grace comes over to us, raises her arms and says 'Come here'. We figure it's because of the many times a day that we tell her to come here and then we pick her up. For the longest time she would only say those words to the dog, but now she's learned to whistle at Millie (no actual whistling sound is involved..she just blows air in Millie's general direction) so she uses 'Come here' for us now! Silly girl :) I just love her!

Uncle Josh

Just in case Grace reads this blog someday...I want to post what her Uncle Josh said about her on Facebook yesterday!

Josh Thebirdman Crum
"I love my niece

She mimics me when I say "come here""

And it is absolutely true! She does repeat "come here" whenever he says it. Whether he knows it or not, he is a role model to my baby girl. I pray that he will live a Godly life, and that she will mimic that as well!

Rainy Days

With all the rain we've been having lately, half of Fort Wayne is under water. Ok, I exaggerate a little...but it's pretty soggy up here! As we were driving home yesterday, Grace was being pretty quiet...which is unusual. She normally talks our ears off or cries since she hates the carseat. Then Seth drove through a pretty decent sized puddle that splashed a whole lot of water on the right side of the car and Grace immediately says "Whoa!"!

This made me remember how much I used to love it when my dad would drive through puddles and spray water!

Feed the Baby...

Grace is fascinated these days by pictures of herself. She carries them around and talks to it as if it can actually understand what she's saying! She hates the camera these days...I know this because she immediately stops what she's doing when I pull it out and starts running away...but I was able to get this video anyways since she was trapped in her high chair! I love this little girl!

Tooth

Grace has a new tooth! She's only had two teeth on the bottom for the longest time and six on the top...I wondered if she would ever get more bottom teeth! I thought she would get her back teeth on the bottom before she got any more front teeth because her gums are so swollen in the back, but then I looked last night and there was a little tooth poking through :) Now I'm just praying that it doesn't go back into the gums again like several of her others have!
She's a pretty decent teether...no uncontrollable crying or anything like that. She just sleeps a LOT, doesn't eat as much and is a bit more clingy than normal. The clingy part is when I know the tooth is coming soon...because if you know my daughter, you know that she's the most independent little toddler ever! Sitting calmly on someones lap just isn't her style. She'd rather run around telling others what to do :)

Easter 2013

It's a bit of a struggle (as you can tell) to get this little girl
to look at the camera!

 

Trying to talk Gramps into sharing his lunch...

We had such a fun time in Kentucky for Easter with the Kilty's this year! It's so fun to see Grace and Harrison play together. They're both growing up way too fast!

Happy Monday!

We're really looking forward to summer days where we can play outside!!
Picture courtesy of Grammy 3.31.13

Just Like Daddy

I'm thinking this little girl needs an IU hoodie in a smaller size...

Just Relaxing...

One Saturday, Grace and I enjoyed an afternoon watching Beauty and the Beast (my favorite movie ever) together. Ok, to be completely honest, I watched the whole thing...she might have watched 20 minutes of it total. She would hop up and dance when the music came on! I'm going to enjoy lazy Saturday's with my little girl!

Visiting with Auntie Erin!!

Grace is so excited that Auntie Erin and Mia could come to stay the night! Here are some pictures Erin sent me while I was working and they were playing.

2/6/13
 Happy girl :) She looks just like her daddy...

2/6/13
 Grace is showing Mia what her life will be like in a few short months
with a little kid running around, pulling her leg!

2/7/13
Enjoying time with Auntie Erin!

Somersaults, giggles and growing up too fast

Grace absolutely loves sitting in her little pink chair that Aunt Sarah and Uncle Adam got her for Christmas! She especially loves sitting in it with blankets on her lap. Last night, she decided she wanted to do this. She put two blankets in front of the pink chair and then climbed up into it. Once she got in it, she bent over to grab the blankets and pull them up into her lap. This, of course, takes multiple pulls in order to get all of the blankets on top of her…and she must have ALL of the blankets on top of her. On her fourth or fifth pull, she bent over a little too far. The next thing I know, she somersaulted out of the pink chair and onto the floor! Seth says ‘WHOA!’ and all I could do was laugh! Grace sat up, looking a little dazed and confused, unsure of what just happened, and then looked to me and realized that she must have done something very funny and decided to giggle about it!

It’s crazy to watch our precious little baby turn into a toddler.

Cheap Entertainment!

Grace loved this box that came with a Christmas gift we bought this past December. I'll be honest...Seth & I had a lot of fun with it too! We put it between the couch and the chair in our living room. I lost count of how many laps we did around the couch and through the "tunnel"! It was cute to see her peek into one side of the box and giggle when she saw me at the other end!

Favorite moment

Grace has always been a very good sleeper. The other evening as we were in the living room I said something about going "night, night" and she immediately grabbed her blanket and walked to the stairs mumbling "night, night, night, night...". She reminds me of her uncle Nate, who loves to get his sleep too!

My favorite moment of each day is when I go to Grace's room to wake her up in the morning. She's absolutely adorable all the time...but is even MORE adorable (if that's possible) when she's just waking up! I usually walk into her room at about 6:30am and say something like "Goodmorning, Sunshine" or "Hey, Gracie girl! Time to get up!" and she generally begins her stretching process...which usually takes a couple minutes and requires rolling around and a few hugs for the stuffed animals. Once she finishes up with that, she stretches her arms up to "mama mama" and I get a huge hug and a couple snuggles in before the day begins. I guess the way that she looks at me and gives me her sleepy smiles just makes my heart feel so full. I wish I were better with words so that I could fully explain how precious this part of the day is for me, but it is, absolutely, my favorite moment of every day.