My kid is the "biter"

Look at this face.

Does it look like a face that would bite an innocent bystander? Well don't be fooled. Friday, when I was at the gym, I was walking back to the Child Watch when the head lady suddenly pulls me aside. "We were going to call you down, but then we figured that you were almost done with your class, but Avery bit a kid," The lady said to me. "What?" I yelped. So I went in there and talked to the lady who was watching her. The story was that she bit a little girl on the hand because she was impinging on her space and toys. Then she showed me the hand of the girl she bit, and there was definitely a little skin breakage. Again, don't let this face fool you.

There was a second offense. This time at the YMCA, it was a face scratching. I guess I have the bully kid. But at least I have a cute bully, that's a positive, right?

In all seriousness, we started disciplining her about a month or so ago. She has been serving some hard time in that corner. Looks like its working to me...

Our next move is going to be solitary confinement behind bars aka the crib. 

That should teach her.

So Avery,please spare me this face

And this one too.

Because I'm not buying it anymore... now come over here so I can kiss you, I mean go to your room... I mean... I'm confused.

Snowed in!

We got the call on Sunday. No church due to snow. Woo hoo (is that bad?)! After the excitement of the news, I had a let down because that meant stuck in the house ALL DAY LONG AGAIN! We took matters into our hands and came up with this.

If only it were the real thing. Hawaii, I long to see you one day again. Until then I will just have to watch LOST.

This girl only has one mode. Sprint.

PS Its Tuesday and the tent is still up. Travis wants to have a sleepover on Friday and sleep in it. Can't wait!

V-Day

I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's day. It always seemed that old boyfriends would break up with me in the month of February because 1) my birthday and 2) Valentine's day. Then they would get back together with me without having their bank accounts liquidated, and I fell for it every time! Anyway, I would like to say that this year, Valentine's day ROCKED!!!

We went to Marshall, Missouri. Why? Because that is where the Romney's live. Trav was roommates in college with Miles. He lives there with his wife Celeste (who I knew in college) and their little boy "Zo", short for Lorenzo. Also, the other Romneys, Jared, who lives across the street from us, who also was Trav's roommate in college, and who is brother's with Miles (is this sentence grammatically correct?) came as well with his wife Jen and their kids Adeline and JR!

So its Valentine's day right (or the day before) so what do you expect? Romantic music, flowers maybe a nice dinner? Well that is what normal people do, instead we decided to mercilessly shoot each other with paint balls. Marshall Missouri is in the middle of nowhere, and Miles has 10 acres of land, so we used it as our battle grounds for paintball shooting. His mom was nice enough to come and watch all of the kiddos while we did this. Thanks Nancy!

I will be honest, I wasn't too excited about the idea. But after we started playing, I was instantly in love with it. It was exciting and my adrenaline was pumping, and then Jen shot me in the butt! I'll get her back for that someday! I got really daring by the end of it, and if my gun wouldn't have pooped out on me, Travis would have gotten whaled! You are lucky babe!

After we went in and showered, we were off again. We went out to eat at a place in Sedalia, the next town over. I loved mingling with all of the country folks.

I nominate this day as the best Valentine's day ever! Travis, thanks for not dumping me this month and taking me out on TWO dates, one for my birthday and one for Valentines day!

This was after all the shooting...

We all still love each other

This is our sweet little Valentine, who we ditched all day long!

Jen and Jared

Miles, Celeste and Zo

Two love birds

The Fam Damly

About two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sneak home to Utah. JUST ME!!!!!!! All by myself. You see, it was my Mom's 50Th birthday, and my Dad had the brilliant idea to sneak TC and me home for a good old Jones family weekend. Honestly, I had never left Avery for more than 5 hours, so I didn't really know how I was going to handle it. But I quickly found out that I was handling it better than I thought. Don't get me wrong, I missed the little turd, and the big turd, for that matter, but I SO needed the break! The first thing I noticed when I was dropped off at the Kansas City International airport was that I had left my cell phone at home, don't worry, I didn't forget to pack my cell charger, just the phone. So like I said, it was JUST ME, no kid, no husband and no cell phone. Its a darn good thing all the airports have free Wi-fi nowadays so that I didn't have to pay a pretty penny for a long distance phone call. Did you know that it would have cost me $10.99 for three bloody minutes to call from Denver? I went back about 15 years to the pre-cell phone age, and I'm proud to say that I survived!

When my Dad picked me up from the airport, he announced that my sister, TC's, flight was cancelled due to bad weather. Did I mention that she was coming from Phoenix? You know, Phoenix, Arizona? They must have had a cloud in the sky or something for that city to cancel their flights for bad weather. All kidding aside, apparently they had some monstrous winds. We were sad that TC wasn't going to be able to make it till the next morning, she was going to miss the surprise for our mom.

So the plan was for my Dad to check us into a hotel in Salt Lake, pick my mom up, and then bring her inside and we would be hiding in the shower. We would pop out and surprise her and it would be the best experience of her life. That didn't go down as planned either, my mom decided she was pretty hungry and wanted to eat before going to the hotel, so my dad took her to a restaurant first. He called us while my mom was away and told us to just come and surprise her at the restaurant. Sadie and I headed across the street to the restaurant without a plan. When we made it to the restaurant, we were outside, and we actually saw my mom and dad sitting in a booth right next to the window. I looked at Sadie and just smiled and we decided to just pop our heads in the window until she noticed who it was. Well, we were sitting there for awhile and my mom never looked over. My dad finally spotted us first, and to get my mom's attention, he started fiddling with the blinds. Finally, my mom looked over and saw us. Her expression was priceless! We ran into the restaurant and my mom was crying, what a sap! Good call on the surprise Dad, I think it was the perfect idea!!!

(I think I forgot how to pack just for me and not two other people, because I also forgot my camera, and this is the only picture we have from that weekend!)

Anyways, to sum up the weekend, I will just say that after TC got in, all we did was go to movies and eat out. What a joy! What a carefree weekend! We laughed a lot, and of course there was a fight or two in there (don't ever have all girls).

I hope my mom knows how much I love her and that she is one of my best friends! Its fun to say that she is 50, she probably thinks its old, but compared to a lot of my friend's moms, she is a really young mom. Way to have kids young Mom! Happy Birthday.

On the way home, I totally missed my flight! Salt Lake was literally "the place" and everyone was flying home that Monday morning. There was some bad decisions on what line to choose, and in the end I missed my flight by two minutes. TC's flight left 5 minutes after mine, and that lucky girl made hers! I was a little stressed out because I didn't have a cell phone! Southwest just bumped me on a flight to Vegas then to KC, which for me was nice because we all know how I feel about Denver. And Luckily I had Joanna, the other woman in our household (aka Trav's lap top) and I shot out a million emails and I somehow made it home! It was fun. Thanks Dad!

One of the best parts of coming home was right when I got into the airport I saw my baby running towards me with a balloon tied to her wrist saying, "mama" with a huge smile. She remembered me! I missed my girl and my boy!

Did you think I was done? Well I'm not. Since we're on the subject of family visits, I thought I'd add that my mother in law and sister in law came to the KC to visit last week! They claimed to be happy to see us, but we all knew who they really came to see. I don't blame them, they haven't seen Avery since August, and she is a totally different person now!

Tracie and Avery instantly bonded. They both like to shake it.

Avery loved her Mumu (that's what we call Grandma Kath).

Excuse my crude language, but we call Kansas City the "butthole" right now, because it is the WORST time of year to come. It is dreary, ugly and stinking cold, so there wasn't a ton of things to show them. We of course went and got some BBQ, went shopping, but we mostly just hung out. Its kind of sad to say, but the most exciting thing we did was make hair flowers.

Our stylish hair flowers

Sometimes you don't need all the fancy lights and shows to have fun with people though, and these two were definitely the type to just hang out with! Thanks for coming. Oh, and thanks for hooking Avery up with so many cute things. Tracie, I secretly don't want you to ever have a girl because then you won't think its that cool to buy Avery girly stuff! Oh and thanks for hooking me up for my birthday as well! Oh and thanks for hooking Travis up too... what was his reason for getting a present? I forgot?

It is hard living away from family, but such a blessing to have these rare experiences with them. We love you all!

I'm really sad about this...

NBC sure let me down. I know the ratings were low, but give him a chance! This man sure made me happy. Good luck to you Conan! I honestly think you are the funniest man in the world.

I hope...

I hope that she will be this excited about washing the dishes in 10 years!* Or maybe its the bubbles?

Stinky Girl

Yesterday was a rough day for Avery and me. She was mean to Evie, her friend who came to play with her. She really exercised her lungs... that scream is deadly. She was irritable and wiggly and couldn't be entertained. I sort of lost it around dinner time and I yelled at her and told her to stop screaming.

After she was in bed, around 8 pm, I heard her coughing a lot. After a long cough episode I heard her crying. I waited a little while thinking maybe she would fall asleep, but she didn't. I went in there and picked her up, and she was all wet. At first I thought she had figured out how to open her diaper and that I was touching poop. But then I smelled and realized it was vomit! Then she started barfing more, all over me. I ran to the bathroom and she finished in the tub. Then I hollered for Trav to come up and he took care of the mess while I bathed her. She kept throwing up in the tub, but the strangest thing about it was that she was in a great mood in the tub, swimming in vomit and everything, especially compared to earlier that day.

We got her out of the tub and decided to take her downstairs while we watched American Idol, so we could monitor her. I loved that she let me hold her the ENTIRE time! She continued to upchuck, even with nothing in her little tummy, she was dry heaving the whole time, but still in good spirits. We decided we didn't want her to be alone in her crib all night, so we made her a small little bed next to our bed for the night. My mom used to do that for us when we were sick. We were prepared with rags, a small bucket and just knowing that we were in for a long night. It started again about 2 hours later. So I brought her in bed with me. By this time my t-shirt was soiled along with our couch downstairs, two pairs of PJ's, our bed sheets, pillows and a ton or rags and blankets. She was wiggly and had a couple more barfing episodes through the night. It was a pretty sleepless night.

She woke up at around 7 and I begged Travis to take her downstairs and to let me sleep. Thanks Trav, I seriously needed that! When Trav left for work, and I was up, Avery was feeling a lot better. She was sort of keeping stuff down, but then the scoots started! So much fun!

I took advantage of the situation and she let me hold her the whole morning. All we did was listen to Regina Spektor. I don't know if it was the music or what, but with the nasty smells and all, I was in Heaven and I hadn't even worked out, or showered or cleaned. Its funny how the tables can turn so fast. I was about ready to beat her yesterday, and not even 24 hours later, all I wanted to do was squeeze her. Having kids is such a surreal thing. I recommend it, even with orneriness, loud screams, stinky poops, getting barfed on and all! I love that girl. Sorry I got mad at you Avery!

GQ

I got him a skinny tie for Christmas, although it was sort of a gift for myself because skinny ties are SEXY! I told Trav to strike a sexy pose. 

This was the second take

This was the first take

Gotta love him.

The rest of Christmas...

Christmas in Missouri

If you are our family, and thought we were pulling the old "we aren't coming home for Christmas, but then actually come home " trick, well we are sorry! We really did stay in Missouri. Its not like we didn't want to come home, realistically, we just couldn't. So sorry if we didn't come through! We sure missed ya'll!

We still wanted to make it the best Christmas ever, so this is what we did.

We made a sweet (pun intended) gingerbread house with Jesse, Kim, Rach and Leif

We went to the ghetto mall and Avery rode the train

We watched a lot of people's pets
Bruce the fish

Kijo the dog, sorry about Avery Kijo. She just couldn't help herself.

I have to brag and say we had zero casualties

We had an amazing Christmas Eve dinner with the Johnson's, it was the first ham we ever cooked!

We opened up our traditional PJ's.
I picked out Trav's, and he picked out mine. We both randomly went to Aeropostle. Can you tell?

We wore them all night, and then for the whole next day!

We woke up to a very white Christmas... it stormed all night long!

Santa remembered that we stayed in Missouri and visited us, well mostly Avery

We watched Avery open her many presents

She loved them all and wanted to play with them all. We had to open presents in shifts. Our kid is spoiled! Thanks for all the nice gifts!

We ate cinnamon rolls and ham and cheese omelets for breakfast

We had a village monster cause havoc on the local Christmas village

We kept a Christmas tradition.
Every year we buy an ornament that represents a big event of our year. Our first year was a "just married" ornament. Our second year was a "Kansas city chiefs" ornament because we just moved. Last year was a "baby's first Christmas" ornament. This year was kind of hard because nothing really spectacular happened. When Travis saw this ornament, we had to get it because it reminded us that this year, we made our first vegetable garden... ... it was kind of an uneventful year, but sometimes that's OK!

In conclusion, we had a cozy little Christmas. We really missed a lot of people, but made the best out of the situation. We love and appreciate our good friends we have out here who also couldn't go home. They are basically our Missouri family.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2005

Days 10 and 11?

I got a really cute Christmas card from one of my BFF's, Niki. Along with the Christmas card, she sent one of those letters to update everyone of what's been going on with her family. Or so I thought it was that, but then I read it and it was this:

And then a flood of memories came running back to me of Christmas 2005. And I remembered that along with that masterpiece, we took this:

And we actually sent it out to people...

I'm glad Travis still wanted to marry me after this

I agree with you Niki, we were pretty awesome. Sometimes I miss those days!

I think I caught it?

Day 9 and 10

Usually every Christmas I have an epiphany that brings me the Christmas spirit. This year has been different. I didn't have one exact experience that invited the spirit, I think there were many little things. But I was thinking about it last night, and I have definitely caught the Christmas spirit, I just can't tell you when or how.

Maybe it was when we made Christmas wassail for all of our neighbors?

Or maybe it was the first time Avery played in snow?

Or her first face plant in the snow?

Or maybe it was all the fun Christmas parties?

Hey it could be because my mom sent me this in the mail...

Or possibly taking Avery to see Santa?

and the fun maze they had leading up to Santa?

I can't really pinpoint which experience it was, but the Christmas spirit is alive and living in our household!

Hope Ya'll have a great week!