Fun at the Park

I took Daci to the park today and she L.O.V.E.D it! Her favorite thing is the slide. She even went down a tube slide today. She was a little nervous to go down the tube her first time but after she did it once she just wanted "more! more!". They also had swings but there weren't any tire swings so I jumped on with her. We had a lot of fun!

My Little Watermelon

We met some fun friends in the ward and they invited Daci and I over to run through the sprinklers in their backyard. Daci has developed a few fears over the last few weeks and I had a feeling she wouldn't like the sprinklers but I got her in her swimsuit anyway. She LOVED playing in her suit and you could tell she thought she was so cute :) But, as predicted, she was scared of the sprinklers. Thats okay though, she just ran around outside in her suit and had the time of her life anyway! One question I would like answered....how come white, cellulite thighs are so cute on little babies and so NOT cute on grown women like me? I really don't think it is fair!




Doesn't this look like a male model for Hollister pose? Seriously she is such a ham!

Do not ever fly United. It is 2:30 and I'm in Indiana. I was supposed to be in Chicago with Kori and the precious Daci last night around 10. I havent slept, I spent ten hours literally standing in line before I was able to speak with a person, and during the whole time nobody even knew if we supposed to be waiting in the line at the gate, or go to the ticket desk or what. So supposedly we will be leaving in about an hour but at this point I am just hoping we get out today. So yes it has been miserable for me, but a lady we have been standing in line with has had it even worse. She was trying to get to Milwaukee from Dallas. Yesterday she was supposed to leave Dallas at 10 AM, she was delayed 8 hours in Dallas and finally got on our plane which was going to Chicago. That plane ended up circling Chicago for hours before being sent to Indianapolis. We are still here and it is 2:30 the next day. Nobody has slept. Oh, and this lady is traveling with a 4 year old and a 15 month old all by herself. The airline has not done anything to help her out the whole time. This has been horrible.

WORST NIGHT EVER!!!!

So...last night chalks up to be the worst night I have ever experienced! Rick has been at training in Texas all week long and his flight was supposed to get in at 10:35pm last night. About four hours before he was supposed to take off it started raining here. He called me and told me that the plane had been delayed until 11:45pm because of the rainstorm. So, at 11:00pm I woke Daci up, piled her in the car and headed toward the airport. After about 30 minutes of driving a HUUUUUGGE rain/thunder/lightening storm hit. I have never seen anything like it in my WHOLE life. The rain was just coming down in sheets, the sky was white with constant lightening and the ground was shaking from the horrible thunder. Let me tell you......I was having a true anxiety attack! People were pulling off of the side of the freeway and putting their hazards on because it was impossible to see anything in front of you. But then there were still the few idiots that thought they were better and smarter than everyone else that decided to stay on the freeway and continue at 80mph speeds. Now I was worried one of them was going to spin off and smash my precious daughter and I in our stopped car. For a second the rain let up enough that we could see and I hurried back on the road and continued as far as I could before I had to stop again. This time I was the only one stopped on the side of the road and I was definitely terrified. I tried to keep it together so Daci didn't get scared but it didn't matter...she was scared already. She started crying and her little lips were quivering. I sang her primary songs and tried to calm her for about 20 mins. Then, another slight break in the sheet of water, so I made a run (or a drive) for it. I made it to the "O'Hare Oasis", an exit that has a big gas station and overpass restaurants, just in time before the next big wave hit. Daci and I pulled into there at midnight, just as Rick called us. I thought he had landed and was ready for me to pick him up and I was relieved! But then, more bad new, the weather was so bad and they had been circling above the airport for so long that they couldn't wait anymore so they diverted him to the Indianapolis airport. Grrr! I came all this way in the this horrible storm and I don't get to see my hubbie at the end of it!!!?? I decided I would stay at the gas station until I felt it was safe enough to drive. We were there until 4:30am! Daci, of course, wouldn't sleep so we were awake the whole time. She was pretty wired and kept getting in to everything! She found my camera and wanted to take pictures. I taught her how to click the button and she turned it around to take pics of us! We had our own little photo booth in the car last night. It was so funny, after a few times of her watching me pull funny faces at the camera she caught on and did it too! She was the one pushing the button and she kept getting too close to the camera so she is cut off in most of the pics but you can still tell she was pulling funny faces each time. She is such a ham! When the rain finally calmed down a little I headed for home but the storm had moved in that direction and we had to drive through it a little bit again for the last 15 minutes! As soon as I pulled into my house and put Daci in her crib the wind and the rain got HORRIBLE! It felt like the whole house was shaking. I'm so glad it waited until I got inside! All I have to say is that a lot of prayers were said last night and I definitely think they were answered. There were a lot of big accidents last night and I am so grateful that we were safe!

These are our sad/bored faces

Happy!

Goofy

Silly

Crazy



We "meowed" for this one :)

I love my booger! She was such a trooper last night!

Our Little Home

So I promised photos of our cute little house so here they are. We are in the process of buying this townhome. There are quite a few things we are excited to do to the place but for the most part we LOVE it. Here is our family room from a "bird's eye perspective", I took the photo from our stairs :)

Family Room again

We have a walk in closet! It may not be that exciting to you, but boy do I love it :)

Our bedroom....don't mind the beautiful drapes that don't match our bedding...they were left here by the old woman who lived here before. They are of course not our taste but we quickly realized that we love them because without the Utah mountains, the sun shines in our window very early in the morning. We decided to keep them until we can afford to get our own :) Our room has a master bath, the door leading into it is opposite the bed, we also have our walk-in closet on that wall.

Daci's bedroom/ guest room. I LOVE this room but of course there are some things missing still. I still need a pink bedskirt to go with the bedding on the bed and I want to do a really light green paint on the walls in here.

The wall opposite Daci's crib has her dresser (excuse the water bottle..didn't realize it was there!). The room also has its own bathroom, the door is to the right of the dresser.

Things we love about our house:
-It's ours!!! Well, okay it isn't actually ours yet, we are still trying to close on it. Can I just say that it is an extremely stressful thing, waiting for a house to close...I mean come on, we can't lose our earnest money!!!!
-We have a dishwasher!!!!!!! Wahoo!!!
-Lots of storage space
-2.5 baths
-It has an upstairs
-We have a Laundry Room!!!!
-Walk in Closet :)
-Back Porch
-Garage!
-We got it for a great deal

Things we can't wait to do to our house:
-All of our trim, baseboards, doors and cabinets are oak. We want to replace all the doors, baseboards and trim with white ones and replace the cabinets with white cabinets
-Our walls are just boring white. We can't wait to make them a warm tan color! In some rooms we also want to add a little color (like maybe a light green in Daci's Room and maybe a light blue in the downstairs bathroom)
-Rick is going to wire a whole home entertainment system!
-Eventually replace our appliances
-Re-do our shower
-Re-tile our floor...we like the white tile that is in our kitchen and bathroom until we realized that we have to clean it every five seconds...it shows everything!
-New Light Fixtures
-New Stainless Steel hardware (knobs, faucets, etc)

We are so excited to work on our house together. It should be a fun project! This house will be great for us for a few years and then we are excited to sell and hopefully make a profit :) I will post pictures as we make changes. I will also post some more "before pictures" of the kitchen and some of the bathrooms, I just haven't taken any of them yet.

Tannon's Mission Call!!

So since I am in Chicago, and my mom was here visiting for a week, we weren't able to see Tannon's mission call in person. Thank heavens for the wonderful invention of Skype! We were able to watch him open his call and it kinda felt like we had our own little show. We got to see it better than anyone else because the computer was right in front of his face....no trying to peek around the crowd to get a glimpse of Tannon's reaction. This pic is of us anxiously waiting to hear where he will be called.

Tannon reading his call.

Still waiting....

No way! Malaga, Spain!!!!!! Enters the Provo MTC October 20th!


We were soooo happy! My mom bawled....okay I cried quite a bit too. I am so proud of Tannon and for his decision to serve. He is going to be an outstanding missionary!!! Love ya bud!

Another RC jet from the show. This was a really nice scale model.

Daci and I(Rick) went to the RC air show in St. Charles. We saw some pretty sweet planes. This video is a low pass by a jet turbine rc plane. You'll want the volume turned up to hear the great sound it makes as it passes.

Busy, Busy, Bees!!!

We have been so busy exploring Naperville and Chicago before Rick has to start work next week. There are many forest preserves near our house and we went to visit a few of them. They are gorgeous!!



Then, we stopped by Rick's old Mission Office. When he was here there were two missions, he served in the Chicago South Mission. Recently, they combined the two missions and its just called the Chicago Mission. We stopped in and met the President and the ladies that work in the office. It was really cool seeing where he was when he was AP.

We went to another forest preserve that is more like a meadow and marshland. Rick was really excited to go to this one because it had an RC Airstrip. Rick loves RC planes and helicopters and was so excited to see them. When we got there Daci fell in love with the "panes!" (planes) and "co-ters!" (copters).



Father and Daughter watching the planes!



Rick has a family from his mission that he is very close with. They even drew all the way to Utah for our wedding. They have three BEAUTIFUL kids with one on the way They came over one night and Daci was delighted to have friends over!

Daci and Pia...about 6 months apart.

Then, we picked my mom up from the airport on Sunday and took her straight downtown to see the sites. This is Rick and Daci at the Bean in Millennium Park.

Mom and I in front of the river...so great to have her here!





Rick and I in front of the Bean

The next day we went back downtown and went to lunch with one of my moms high school friend.

Daci had a blast downtown. She turned into this HUGE ham when we put her up on the ledge to get some photos. Everyone around us stopped and stared at the goofy, silly, cute little girl :)

We love and miss everyone but are having fun here!