we have a loose tooth

Ladies and gentlemen......

My first child has her first loose tooth!!

She mentioned it to me on Sunday as we're walking into church. She's been working her tongue on that thing and by the end of the day had really made some progress......

No tooth fairy visit needed yet, but it'll be soon!! So fun!!

Where I've been

I've just had a whirlwind of a weekend and a crazy 3 months preparing for it. My assignment at church (a calling) has me working with the Public Affairs Council for my Stake (group of congregations in the area of Allen).

We celebrated 25 years since the first church building was dedicated in our city and with that came a commitment to the city to give 2500 hours of community service in one morning.

The weekend began with a silver celebration where a 30 minute video of the history of the church in our area had been compiled (again one of the projects I'd worked on with a committee for MONTHS) turned out fabulously--I was so honored to have played a role. It was beautiful!!

Then the next morning to the service: I was one of those helping to organize and mobilize 7 congregations worth of volunteers (our goal was 650 people) working on 11 different projects throughout the city. To say the least it's been a part time job coordinating and trying to communicate and organize all these projects to make the weekend a success.

The morning went off beautifully in spite of last minute stress that it would all fall apart. We had MORE than we needed at almost every work site and from our estimations we had nearly 850 volunteers working throughout the community and gave over 3000 hours of community service that day.

It was truly humbling to watch as the members of my church came and served, there was never a lack of willingness to work and work hard--each person giving of their own time and talents. I worked coordinating 2 indoor projects--one was making fleece blankets for cancer patients and the room was FILLED with the sounds of women chatting, sewing machines whirring and each person felt needed, worked with a purpose and truly touched my heart.

Thank you to the Allen Texas Stake for letting me be a part of this landmark event!!

Lindsey is 2

I was determined NOT to have a baby on Halloween (it's my least favorite holiday)--or in October for that matter so I was grateful when my OB allowed me to wait until November 1 to be induced to have Lindz......but what that's created is a CRAZY SUGAR FILLED time at our house celebrating both things literally back to back!
So in honor of my ELMO loving girl we had an Elmo themed birthday party. It included the Elmo cupcakes, (seen in the previous post---side note--I'm really not that creative there are a bunch of ideas for these online and I totally stole them)

A game of Pin the nose on Elmo,
(A thank you to our resident artist Grandpa Lewis who made magic appear on a red poster board.)

I made goldfish bean bags (Dorothy) and we threw them into the "fishbowl" or box decorated like a fishbowl.

And we ate Elmo's favorite (and Lindsey's) meal--PIZZA!! It was yum!

We were grateful to those family members who could come: Grandpa Lewis, Uncle Ben, Aunt Summer and Baby Elenore and Aunt Rachel! We had a blast!!Here she is with the new set of dress up shoes that our home desperately needed--she's really getting into dress up and has always had a shoe fetish. (disclaimer--this is THE SMILE we're getting from her these days--it's intentional and she thinks it looks FABULOUS!)
And yes she is modeling a new dress up skirt that my AMAZING sister-in-law Summer just whipped up in a couple hours with some left over fabric--too cute!
And here the birthday girl is with candles in one of her cupcakes! I can't believe she's already 2! What a big girl!!

Boo!

Halloween--whew! What a weekend!! Here's a snapshot:

Friday dawned and there was a tri-ward Halloween play group activity at the church. Sam dressed up as a RACECAR DRIVER and Lindz was her Dorothy--she didn't really have a choice--it was the cutest of her options.Then that night was our ward (church congregation) Halloween party with a carnival, chili cook off and traditional trunk or treat-- our kids got a TON of candy and we passed out 3 bags in 20 minutes. I guess that's what you get with 145 kids in primary--whew! Kaitlyn got to come to this one and while originally she wanted to be a baby and we had the costume all worked out--at the last minute she changed her mind and wanted to be a fairy--good thing she also informed me that her friend Sydni had THE COSTUME she wanted to wear and would I "please call miss Tammy and ask to borrow it"--thankfully it wasn't an issue and she got to be her fairy!The DAY OF Halloween was great. Sam changed his costume idea and wanted to be Bob the Builder, so here are the Three Crazies!!

Kaitlyn the Fairy

Sam the "Bob"

Linz as Dorothy--with her todo (which by the way she insisted on carrying along with her bag of goodies--which was fine until you needed to hold her hand--then things got interesting)

We enjoyed a block party with our neighbors--most of whom we were still trying to get to know where we enjoyed socializing, food a pumpkin carving contest and a bounce house. Then we got ready for trick or treating.

Our kids really made a haul with the candy--we threw out the not so good stuff and were left with 2 HUGE bowls of stuff. But I'm the one that primarily eats it so I throw it out after a couple weeks--please my belly is getting big enough!

Dad was WONDERFUL and took them trick or treating while I stayed home and made these:

Yup, it's a teaser for my next post!

Ode to Tercelito

While I was on my mission, my parents probably made the best car buying decision they've ever made by getting this 1995 Toyota Tercel. When I came home it was given to me and I took over the payments and paid off the balance, thus making it THE CAR Stephen and I had when we got married in June 2001.

See, not a bad looking ride right?Little did I know, that car's membership in our family would last quite awhile and an unusual attachment by my husband (though he will deny it) to this car would develop. He thought this car was great--and I don't disagree. We've changed it's oil and bought it new tires and had one other minor repair in the YEARS we've owned it. That's it.

It has been dependable to say the least. And one of the things that I love MOST about my husband is his lack of vanity--he could care less that it's appearance over the years deteriorated to shabby--it was still getting 40 miles a gallon and it was Summer of 2008 when gas was over $4.00 a gallon--it was practically making us money!

In December 2001 we were driving it to Colorado for a skiing vacation at Christmas when it fell victim to a 4 car collision and was "totaled"--so what? We thought the damages were minor, bought it back salvage from the insurance company and paid less than our settlement to get it fixed and pocketed the remaining cash--we LOVED this car!

Our plan was always to trade it in when we upgraded to a family van but as luck would have it, 4 days prior to having Sam we were in an accident in our other car and it was totaled beyond repair and the Tercelito was spared.
The teenagers in our congregation at church wouldn't be caught dead owning his car (yes we had a family tease their kids that they'd bought it for their teenagers to drive and they were mortified!) and he was recognized by our friends simply by his car.

But the time had come, a program in our state was trying to get older more polluting vehicles off the road and we qualified for a sizable voucher towards the purchase of a new-er car and we had to do it--we wouldn't get $500 as a trade in for this car.

Stephen dragged his feet-there was NOTHING wrong mechanically with this car--it still ran great. And look at this:

YUP! We'd gotten it to go: 240, 672 miles!!

Sure the driver side door handle was broken and required a "special touch" to get into it.


Sure the paint was two toned where the sun had bleached it and the repaired part was looking better than the rest.

Sure we'd lost 3 of the wheel covers over the course of owning it and just took the 4th one off to make it look uniform--it wasn't worth it to replace them (though we had a neighbor joke he'd get them for him for Christmas one year)

Sure it leaked oil so we didn't dare park it anywhere but the street--which our neighbors LOVED I'm sure.

BUT we subscribe to the principle--wear it out, eat it up, make it do or do without. I think it really HURT Stephen to give up a car that didn't need replacing but the voucher program wouldn't last forever and we couldn't pass up the opportunity....

So late last month we said our good byes to TERCELITO and said hello to this little number:


A gold, 2009 Toyota (hey our last one went 240 thousand miles--we plan to do it again!) Corolla. Stephen is getting used to it I think. It does have a working door handle and a CD player (a bonus) it has a lot of life left in it.

And the kids like it too--the day after we bought it. Sam was riding home from church with dad and said, "Dad, I like your car....the furniture is fuzzy!" what more can we say? I'm thrilled!!