Picture Nazi

*Warning..... Start from the bottom of this post, it's backwards, and I don't have the time to switch it (see previous post).*

Kael and his Great Grandma Alice.

Poor grandma can't remember anybody's name, but she did remember Kael's name the whole time we were there. :)

Such a beautiful Temple

We took the opportunity to go to the Las Vegas Temple while we were there. Oh my gosh. The celestial room glows when the light comes thru the windows at just the right time. It seriously took my breath away when I walked in.

Driving the big boy car

Kids took turns playing in the leaves

I guess I know what Kael is getting for Christmas. He sat in this toy car for so hours. He loved it!

We got to ride it Talon's cool dune buggie. I think that's what it was. It was freakin fast. no joke I about peed my pants.

It was really loud while they were playing games so Chase took a nap with Kael in the grass.

This is also for all yall texas family who wasn't there this year in Vegas with us. Just wanted you to see everybody and how much they've grown. It was so empty with out. Loves.

Cynthia and Amber this is for you.

Kael loves his bath time and now he has fun toys to make it even more fun. Thanks. Miss you guys. Loves from Kael.

He crashed the moment he was buckled in to go home. What a good first birthday.

no clothes, surrounded by toys.... thats the life for me

time to clean up

ramped it off the cake... wow check out that air.

He found his car candle and decided it needed a drive. He he, such a boy.

The first bite

He didn't really like us singing to him

He got so many gifts. Thank you everyone who got him stuff. He loves it all.

Kael didn't like his clothes. Ha, ha. He would throw them anytime we would put them on his lap. Silly boy has never like those confining things.

opening gifts

Kael's cake

daddy making birthday boy his breakfast

Kael's blanket I made him for his birthday

(my first blanket I've ever sewn)

So I've always known that I'm a picture freak. I have wanted a camera since I was little but wasn't aloud to have one until I was 12. My mom was smart and didn't want me wasting film. Cause you know back in the old days you actually had to by film and wait to see what your pictures looked like, and if they turned out. I remember the year I got my camera I would set up my barbies, yes I played with barbies when I was twelve, and then take their picture. I would make my family 'smile' and 'say cheese' too. It was this ghetto little box camera that you had to manually load and I remember it was a deep purple too. But I loved it and I love taking pictures. My next few cameras were 35mm and a little more high tech. (no manual turning required) Then the best invention ever!! Enter the digital camera. I think this is the coolest thing ever. No more waiting to see your pictures. So I get mine and I had the thing f...or....ev...er..... It was a pink kodak. My best friend. Enter the digital SLR!! Dun du da dun! I gotta have one. hum.... crap.... no money. So I hold off and keep using my pretty pink camera that I'm pretty sure I've had for like five years. I told you it was my best friend. Well it finally took a crap recently and my sweet hubby let me buy my sweet Canon Rebel XSi DIGITAL SLR camera. Whoop whoop. Hello new best friend. I did take two years of photography in high school and a semester of it in college. But I'm no expert photographer. I don't consider myself educated in the subject either. I just love love love taking pictures. So now that you know my silly story consider this my formal apology for the over load of picture taking. Over the past week and a half, no wait it was only on the weekends so technically only five days, I have managed to take 360 pictures. Yeah. Call that an accomplishment? I do. Holy crap. Was the camera glued to my face? Ha, ha. Well I'm not going to show you all 360 but I probably will have a lot to show you so...... Sorry and enjoy.

Homeless for Christmas....

So we are officially homeless for Christmas. :( Do you want to know why? Of course you do, why else would you still be reading? So here's the scoop. We have been renting from our old Stake President while they were serving as mission presidents. Three years was the plan. That's how long you serve as mission presidents. July would have been three years. Only 7 months to go before we needed to be out. We have been house hunting for almost a year now with absolutely no flippin luck!!! Can you tell I'm irritated about that? It's just so just...... grrrrr...... because me and Chase have such a hard time even agreeing on a house. He wants these crap holes to fix up and I just want a home that's not going to fall apart while living in it or to cost a million dollars just to fix up. Husbands. Anyways, it has been a long, horrible experience. We have fought more in the last few months then we ever have because of this stupid house issue. So a horrible thing happened and the stake pres. that we are renting from had a heart attack. I know, so sad. So he was doing good after the fact but Salt Lake decided to send him home early. Great for them because they get to be home for the holidays. Not so great for us cause we still haven't gotten a home. Poop. The day we found out they were coming home was the day we found out we got rejected from another house. Surprise, surprise. We didn't know when exactly they would be home. They said it could be two weeks, or a couple months. Wow. So we planned on being ready in two weeks, just in case. Well Kael's birthdays was that first week and the second week was Thanksgiving and we were in Vegas with my dad's family this year. So needless to say not much time has been spent packing and we didn't have any time to go look for a new place to live. I did get a lot done before we left for Thanksgiving but we still had a lot to do. Anyway Sunday when we got back we went over to Chase's parents to say hello. His dad had heard when they were suppose to be home and it was next Monday!!! AHHHHH! So I have ONE week to get all of our crap out of the house... and....... we don't have enough time to find a place to live. So we are moving in with Chase's parents temporarily. The last few days all I've done from early morning to late night is pack, pack, pack. Fun! Talk about crazy. ha ha. Stress is my companion for now. I'm just so.... how do I describe it..... UGH..... about Christmas. It is my most favoritest holiday ever and we won't be able to do much this year. So sad. At least I am. I know Kael is too young for it to matter to him, but it matters to me. No Tree, no stockings, no putting up lights, no gingerbread house party, no baking goodies. I'm sure my mom in law won't mind letting me do a few of these things but it just won't be the same because we aren't in our own place. Maybe we'll be able to find something before Christmas. I don't know. Well if you don't hear from me for a while, thats why. Life will be major crazy.

Oh Dear...

Oh my sweet baby Kael... where have you gone? I have been stuck with this mean ol' stinker of a friend. He's such a lil' sass, he steals my food, ignores me when I say 'no', and yells at me if I get up to take away what I just said 'no' to. Oh please tell my sweet baby Kael to come back. I miss his kisses, and how he would share his snacks with me, and how he love to share his toys. I miss this sweet heart who has been replaced by this lil' sass of an attitude. :)

Kael has taken on this lil' stinker of a 'tude lately. He has been throwing fits when you say no, or take away something he can't have. And I mean fits! He cries like you just broke his arm or something. Big ol' tears come pouring down his cheeks and he arches his back and kicks his legs. I mean if he was standing up he would be stampin' his feet kind of thing. I can't help but laugh because as soon as what you just took away appears those mysterious tears and crying "poof" vanish. Lil' turd. I laugh but it makes me so mad too because it's just pathetic the way he's figured out how to work us over. Ha, ha. Man are we suckers. Most of the time we stick to our 'NO' but sometimes, like tonight, when we just don't understand the 'want' followed by 'the fit' we cave. I know, BAD. But you have to hear this story to understand the hilariousness of it. So when Kael was younger, like just learned to sit up kind of young, I would set him in the bathroom sink while I got ready. Well he would be good for a while, then would get bored and start his destruction. He would always go for the Q-tips and then eat them. So I quickly learned that if you don't want it in the mouth, put a binkie in it. He won't take out the binkie because it's just too precious to him. Ha, ha, sneaky I know. Anyways, he got older and is now too curious and too big to be sitting up there now so its been a while since he's gotten to play with the fun stuff on the counter. Well my mom was babysitting Kael the other night and he found a random Q-tip. He played with that stupid thing FOR-EV-ER. He would hold it in the air, rub it on his toes, switch it from hand to hand, play with the cotton on the ends. I mean this kid thought he had just discovered the coolest thing. Well I came to pick him up and my mom told me what he's been doing. I laugh and then think 'gross! it's probably been used!' so I casually take it away, so I don't make a scene. Ha, Kael cried like I just killed his best friend. We all kind of stared for a second in shock, then laughed. I gave it back and immediately he stopped crying and smiled at the stupid Q-tip. The Q-tip. So, the mean mom that I am, I did it again to see what he would do. Yup threw an even bigger fit. Kicking legs, big ol' tears, and...... he dropped the binkie out of his mouth!! If you know Kael, his binkie is his best friend, won't sleep with out it. And so I showed him the Q-tip, and..... tah dah... no more tears. I laughed. What else could I do? It was just the oddest thing. Well tonight, my sis went and got a clean one and he did the same thing again. He is such an odd little boy, but I sure love him.

Kael loves, loves to read books. This was a couple Sundays ago and Chase was reading his book and Kael wanted his dad. So Chase picked him up, set him on his lap and handed him a book. Kael leaned back, opened his book and started talking in his own little baby language. It was just the cutest thing. Luckily I had my camera close by so I snapped some quick pics. He actually surprisingly stayed there for a while just chillin'. I know, just too cute.

Cowboys and Indians

This was Halloween Day. We were major slackers this year and didn't do our pumpkins until the day of and forgot to light them before we went trick-or-treating so we had to go back. So sad. Kael liked rolling his pumpkin around on the floor while we worked on ours. Chase did a monkey face, it looked really cool but some how I didn't get a picture of it. Then me and Kael did a skull and a spider on ours. (in other words, mommy did Kael's pumpkin)

His hair was crackin' us up. It was standing on end before he went to bed last night and it was even wilder when he woke up that morning. I just had to leave it for a lil bit.

We went trick-or-treating most of the night. We started with my family then walked over to his parents and walked with his family for a bit and then we hit a couple friends houses on our own. Kael crashed about half way. It's so funny he had a sucker and then crashed, I'm so glad sugar doesn't affect him much. But then again he doesn't really get it that much to really know.

Cowboys and Indians

This was the night of our Halloween Party!! It was so fun, I hope everyone had has much fun as we did. The food was so yummy too. Every body did such a good job. The costumes were seriously so awesome this year. We had cavemen, gangsters, a toothbrush and toothpaste, cowboys and indians, little green monster, Danny and Sandy from grease, white trash couple, killer bees, rockin', tutu wearin' clown, an angel, halloween regurgitated, pirate, Turk and JD from scrubs, Ghost Busters, Indians from India, and more. It was seriously so awesome. Thanks to everyone who came. It's always fun to celebrate with friends!

Kael was a major party animal, can you tell?

This was at Chase's parents house. They have a Halloween Dinner Party every year with the grandkids. This is probably my favorite family activity because this party was the first and only family activity that I went to when Chase and I were dating. The next family activity I went to with his family was the night we got engaged. I had the honor of meeting his ENTIRE extended family on his mom's side. Yup, all 24 Aunts and uncles and a whole bunch more of cousins!! Whoop, whoop! So needless to say I love Halloween because it was sort of the start of our eternal journey together in our families.

Poor Nans, Kael has been a real stinker to her the last little while. Look at that 'tude he's giving her.

This was Kael's very first Halloween!! Last year I was hugely pregnant with him. So it was so fun that he was a little older for his very first trick-or-treating experience and get to actually eat the candy we collected. Almost all of the candy he got, he can eat himself. Everything else, mommy ate, ha ha. Sorry sugar is my weakness. All in all, it was a really fun Halloween!!