Another Tag

I was tagged by Katie with this one a while ago. So here it is.

Four things I am looking forward to in the coming year:
1. Adopting! (hopefully)
2. Allary turning 3! I can't wait to put her in a ballet class.
3. I am really looking forward to seeing my family in a few weeks at our reunion.
4. I don't know, mostly I am hoping to add a baby to our family, soon.

Three joys in my life:
1. Allary
2. Jason
3. All my family and friends

Four movies I could watch more than once or twice:
1. First Knight
2. That Thing You Do
3. Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one)
4. While You Were Sleeping

Three fears:
1. Never being able to adopt
2. BEES!!!
3. Richard Simmons

Four Favorite Foods:
1. Mexican Food, especially chips and salsa
2. Chocolate!!!
3. Mashed potatoes and gravy
4. Diet Coke (does that count?)

Four goals I have set for myself:
1. Spend more time teaching Allary things, ABC's, colors, numbers, etc...
2. Get Allary completely potty trained. Ugh!!!
3. Catch up on scrap-booking.
4. Play the guitar and the piano more often.

Four TV shows I watch:
1. Dancing With the Stars
2. The Bachelor
3. Grey's Anatomy (I am currently watching Season 3 on DVD)
4. Veronica Mars (also watching on DVD)

Three current obsessions:
1. Blogging
2. The Twilight series ("Breaking Dawn" August 2nd, YEA!)
3. Cleaning

Four places I have visited:
1. Disneyland
2. Washington, DC
3. New York City
4. Cozumel, Mexico (on a cruise)

Three places I'd like to visit:
1. Paris, France
2. Hawaii
3. New York City again, I loved it.

Four random facts about me:
1. I have a backwards tooth.
2. I used to despise country music, now it's what I listen to 90% of the time.
3. I hate waking up in the morning, hate it. It takes me a long time to wake up and get moving and I won't talk to anyone until I've had significant time to do so.
4. I've only been on a boat once in my life (2 if you count the cruise ship). I'm afraid of open water. (Liz, this was a speed boat on the lake by your cabin a long long time ago, remember?).

There you have it. I think everyone I would tag has already been tagged.

Picture Blog Tag

I've actually been blog tagged a couple of times. So alright already, I'll do one or two. :)

Aspen tagged me with this one, a Picture Blog Tag. The rules are you have to take ten pictures of the following things. And you have to do it right away. No straightening, cleaning or wiping your child's nose. Then you tag five others.

1. The fridge.
2. The closet.
3. A Self-Portrait
(Yikes!)


4. Your Favorite Room
Okay, so this is Allary's play room, but I love it. She can make a huge mess and I only clean it up to vacuum once a week. It just so happens that we picked it up and vacuumed yesterday, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to see the floor. I also love it because it is pretty much the only room of the house that I fully decorated with my own things.


5. The kitchen sink


6. The laundry room

7. The toilet


8. What are your kids doing right now?
Allary is taking a nap. I took a huge risk by snapping this photo.


9. Your dream vacation
I would love to visit Paris some day, or anywhere in Europe. I've never been out of the country.
But, my favorite family vacations growing up were to Disneyland and so I hope to get to do that alot with my family too.

10. Your favorite pair of shoes.
I don't buy shoes near as often as I used to. Still, I love them and would have a hard time choosing just one pair as my favorite. So, these are the sandals I am wearing today.


I tag Dena, Liz, Diana, Angela, and Katie.

4th of July

We went to Jason's parents' house for the Fourth. Jason, of course is working crazy hours and so we drove down on Thursday night and drove back home late Friday night after the fireworks so that Jason could be back, only to get up early and leave town for work on Saturday. Ugh.
Here are some photos from the holiday festivities.

We went to the parade in the morning. Allary thought the whole idea of people throwing candy in the streets was pretty awesome.


We ate lots of yummy food at Jason's grandparents' house. We talked and played and ate for most of the day. After dinner, Grandpa broke out the pinata.
More candy up for grabs?! Awesome!





Waiting for the fireworks to start...

Grandma and Grandpa's House

Jason has been out of town for most of June for work. I was feeling very lonely and decided it would be a good time to go spend some time with my mom and dad.

Allary spent quite a bit of time in Grandma's wading pool.



Grandma bought sparklers at the store and Allary thought that was pretty cool to get to do that with Grandma and Grandpa. Here she is marching in the sparkler parade with Grandpa.









I also got to see some of my two best friends, Katie and Mandi. Mandi was chaperoning a youth dance at the church and so Katie and I went to visit her and crash the youth dance. Oh man, did that bring back memories of our youth dances. Good times. I love these girls.



My mom and I did the usual shopping and eating out. This was one particular day Allary literally shopped 'til she dropped.


Thanks again Mom and Dad for letting us come. We had a great time.

Look at my Little Swimmer!

Yesterday, I took Allary swimming over at Kevin and Leslee's pool.



Look at her go!!!

Once Upon a Time...

I get frustrated a lot of the time with Allary because I have such a hard time trying to get her to sing songs like the alphabet or twinkle twinkle little star or anything really. She gets mad at me and tells me, "No, Mom, that's not how it goes." And she goes off into her own rendition of some made-up song. It's cute and I try to put aside the frustration by realizing what a creative thinker she is. She's been really into pretending the past little while. Again, she is super creative and imaginative, but there is a part of me that is a little weirded out by her imaginary friends. I can't tell you how many times she has freaked out because I sat or stepped on one of her "friends." I wonder, are these imaginary friends a result of a healthy active imagination... or a by-product of moving to a place where she has no friends or other children her age around? (sigh) Sometimes I think the isolation is getting to us both.
Lately, she loves to make up her own stories. Most of her stories include a princess, a monster, and a prince. Here is a video of my little creative story-teller:

Enough talk, here are some photos!

I've been writing a lot on here lately and I decided it's time to post some photos. So, here are some photos of what we've been doing around here.

Some cute bath pictures. Check out that crazy hair.




I was trying to put together our photo collage for our adoption profile and I realized we don't have any pictures that do not include Allary. So, we took some.


Here I am with my guitar. The sad thing is, I don't remember the last time I pulled it out to just play it. I am way too protective of it to let Allary anywhere near it.


Allary and me playing dress-up.



A nice sunny day in the backyard. Allary loves her wading pool and we love having a yard! I just signed her up yesterday for swimming lessons. It's difficult to find any fun activities for her this summer because all classes start them at 3 yrs old and she won't be 3 until September. Every class I can find that is for 2 and under is a Mom and Me class. I think she is ready for more independence than that so I searched and searched. I did find a class that would take her and I am excited. I think she will love it.


The weather here drives me nuts sometimes. One day it's nice and warm and we're outside playing in the water, and the next day.... this. It may look like a little bit of snow on the ground, but it was hail. It was a crazy storm; wind, hail, lightning, thunder. We went out and Allary was so mad that I made her put on long pants and a shirt under her tank top. I'm with her though, you should be able to wear a tank top and shorts in June!!!


Jason had a day off over Memorial Day and so we went to the zoo. We live so close to the zoo now that we bought a membership for the year. I am excited because now I can go anytime I want and just spend as much or as little time as we want. I may just go to let Allary ride the train, which is by far her favorite thing there.
Jason snapped this nice shot at the bird show.