Wicked

Our Anniversary was this weekend. To celebrate we went up to Los Angeles to see the the musical Wicked. I cannot not say enough about this show. It is SPECTACULAR, AMAZING, TERRIFIC, AWSOME ... I'm sure you get the idea. Everybody MUST see this show. I saw it with some friends when it came to San Diego a little over a year ago and fell in love with it then. I went out and bought the soundtrack the next day and I have been playing it in the car ever since. Seeing it the second time it was even better then the first, I have fallen in love with it all over. I want to go see it again! Tim really enjoyed it. Not only did he let me listen to the sound track all the way home to San Diego the next day, but I even caught him singing along!

Trick Or Treat

Adopted Friends Playgroup

Pumkin Patch

This past week has been crazy here in San Diego. The fires did not threaten our home, thank God! There are so many people that were not as lucky as us. Please take a moment to pray for all of those who lost so much in the terrible fires. May God be with them as they try to rebuild their life.

Now that the fires have died down and the air is getting a little better we decided to venture out to the pumpkin patch. It was a fun afternoon. Grace fed a llama, picked out her own pumkin and rode down a very HUGE slide. I hope everyone has a very fun and safe Halloween this week!

Big Girl Bed Update

Well, it's been about 2 weeks since we got Grace into her new bed. It was a pretty uneventful transition. Of course I cried as we took apart her crib, but it didn't even phase her. She slept great the first night in her bed and has been sleeping great ever since. She didn't fall out or get up in the middle night and wander around and she still calls for us when she wakes up in the morning. The best thing about her going straight to a twin bed is that I get to lay in bed with her and read books and cuddle :) Here are some pictures of her right before bed on the first night in her new bed.

Trip To Pittsburgh - The End

On Monday of our trip we decided to take Grace to the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh. Kelly and Chris met us there with the kids and Kelly's best friend from our childhood also met us there with her two kids. We started off in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. There was a puppet theater, a trolley that the kids could sit in and a bunch of other fun activities.


Next we moved on to the art studio. This place was awsome! Right in the middle was what looked like a huge abstract tree sculpture. AS it turned out it was also a climbing structure. That is where the kids went first. I was a bit nervous at first. I thought "what if Grace gets up there and gets scared and can't get back down?" There was no stopping her so I figured that we would cross that bridge when we come to it. Last up the structure was Hailey. Slowly pulling her way up each level she made it 3/4 of the way up. She was having a great time. All of the other kids had made their way to the top and were back down, but Hailey was just hanging out up there. We all started getting nervous after she was up there for a few minutes. We tried everything to coax her down. We even sent some older kids up there to get her, but she wouldn't budge. Finally, one of the workers went up and got her down a couple of levels, but Kelly had to go in and get her the rest of the way. It was funny ... but not so funny all at the same time. In the meantime, Grace and the other kids played with clay, painted pictures, and did silk screen art.


Some of the other exhibits we spent time in was the garage, which had a real car that the kids could play in and a bunch of inventions. Then there was sort of a playhouse area with costumes, crazy mirrors and a really fast slide.

That museum was so awsome. We spent 3 hours there and we didn't even get to the second floor. I think the adults had as much, if not more fun then the kids. Tim is still bitter that we didn't get to the second floor.

After the museum we went to Grandma's house for a BBQ where we hung out with the family. It was a perfect ending to a great trip. The next day we headed back to California.

Trip To Pittsburgh Part 3

After the wedding we spent the night nearby at the Marriott. We lesiurely got ready in the morning and grabbed some breakfast and headed out to Grove City, where my Uncle Mike and Aunt Bev live.

We spend the day relaxing and watching the Steelers with the family. The kids enjoyed running around and playing in the huge backyard until it was too dark to play anymore. Aunt Bev and Uncle Mike made a lovely dinner. It was so great to just spend time with all of them. Here are some pictures of the day.

Look for part 4 of our trip soon. We went to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and it was GREAT!

Trip To Pittsburgh Part 2

The whole reason for making the trip to Pittsburgh was to attend my cousin Krystal's wedding. The wedding ended up being beautiful. It was at a place called The Mansion. The ceremony was held in a grove of trees on the grounds and the reception was held inside the mansion. Grace was great! She was quiet during the entire ceremony, she was good during dinner, and when the music started she was a dancing machine. She danced with any random person that wanted to dance with her. At one point she was dancing with her Daddy, it was so precious. My heart was so full of love at that moment I could not contain the tears. I am so blessed!

Here are some great pics, enjoy! I will be back soon with more about our trip.

Trip To Pittsburgh Part 1

We have been back from our trip to Pittsburgh for a little over a week now. The trip was a whirlwind, it just wan't long enough. We spent the 4 days there mostly visting family. It was so great to see all of the Aunts, Uncles, and cousins who we haven't seen in a long time. It was so great for everybody to finally get to meet Grace.

While in Pittsburgh we stayed with my Uncle Jim. He lives in a very cool loft on the Southside of Pittsburgh. We loved staying with him. My Uncle has some very special and unique people in his life. One of those people is a neighbor who's boyfriend passed away. While helping her clean out some of his stuff, my Uncle noticed a lot of very interesting hats. As it turned out his friend's boyfriend collected hats and she offered them to my Uncle. So ... Uncle Jim has these hats on display in his house and I thought it would be cute to take some pictures of Grace in the hats. It was hilarious, she totally "worked" the camera.

Enjoy the pictures and I will be writing part 2 of our trip soon!

Our Budding Artist

Grace loves any kind of art. She loves to color with her crayons, draw with her markers, put stickers on paper, and doodle on her Magnadoodle. She has just found a new medium in which to create a masterpiece ... watercolor painting! It is so cute, she is very serious about her art. Here are a couple of cute photos from last weekend.

Big Girl Bed

We decided to bite the bullet and buy a "big girl bed" for Gracie. Her crib is a 3-in-1 (crib, toddler bed and full size bed) but grace is getting so long that if she lays flat with her feet touching one end and reaches above her head she can almost touch the other end of the crib. Also, she is getting really good at climbing out of her crib. She's getting so good at it that I am not even afraid she is going to hurt herseld anymore. I don't want to convert the crib to a full size bed because it would be way too big for her room, she would have no room to play. So ... after much discussion we decided to buy her a regular twin size bed that she can use for a long, long time. At first I was looking at Craig's list everyday to see if I could find a used bed but I hadn't had any luck. I was looking around online and found the cutest bed at a really great price from http://www.jcpenny.com/ . It was just perfect for her room so I bought it and it arrived yesterday.

We are really nervous about changing her over. I wonder how she is going to handle it. We decided to wait to do it until we come back from our trip to Pittsburgh at the end of the month, so we will keep you posted. Here is a picture of the bed.

Tea Party

As I did some stuff around the house yesterday morning Grace was playing quietly in her room. When I went to check on her I found her having a tea party with her bear and her baby ... It was so cute it brought tears to my eyes. Here are some pictures of the event.
















Other then having a tea party yesterday, Grandma and Pa Pa came down for a visit. We didn't do much We watched the first Steeler game of the year and we relaxed. In the afternoon Grandma and I took Grace to the YMCA pool, that was a lot of fun. Grace took a moment out to pose for a picture with Pa Pa. It's so cute, they are both wearing their Pittsburgh Steeler gear.

Shoe Fetish

It's official, our daughter has a shoe fetish! Last weekend we went to the mall on a hunt for a dress for Grace to wear for my cousin's wedding at the end of the month. Did you know that no stores have toddler dresses right now? After going to Gymboree, Children's Place, JC Penny, Target, Walmart, Sears and Mervyn's I thought that I would never find a dress for her. As a last resort on Wednesday I suggested to Tim that we go to Fashion Valley to try Macy's and Baby Gap. We had gift certificates to both places so I was hoping we would have some luck at one of them. As it turned out Baby Gap had a bunch of cute dresses. We picked out a cranberry colored dress that has fall colored flowers on it ... very cute! I got Grace out of her stroller so I could hold the dress up to her and she immediately spotted a wall of shoes and made a beeline toward them. She looked at each and every pair and ohhhhed and ahhhed. I spotted a pair that were so cute and matched her dress so I grabbed them. After struggling to get Grace back in the stroller we headed to the register to pay. As the salesperson put the shoes in the bag Grace threw a huge fit, apparently she wanted to wear the shoes right then. So the salesperson was nice enough to cut the tags off and Grace got to wear her new shoes home. On the way home Grace fell asleep so we gently got her out of the car and to her room. I laid her on the changing table and changed her diaper while she continued to sleep. I attempted to slip off her new fancy shoes and she immediately woke up and screamed ... SHOES!! It was soooooo funny! After Grace was asleep in her bed Tim quickly slipped the shoes out of her room and he stuck them on top of our dresser, but I hadn't noticed. The next morning Grace was sitting in our bed watching her Baby Einstein video when she spotted the shoes and started yelling ... SHOES, SHOES! Of course she had to wear them to daycare that day. Lora, our daycare lady, said Grace kept saying pretty shoes all day. She cracks up up! Needless to say, those shoes are safely hidden away, out of site for now.

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Close To My Heart

Close To My Heart is a company that sells scrapbook and stamping supplies. It is sold through consultants and I have been one of those consultants for awhile now. I have not been very good at selling, I mostly used it to support my scrapbook habit ;) Now ... I am going to try to get this business started and sell something. I completly believe in the CTMH products. They are far superior than a lot of the products on the market. Their paper packs come in beautiful colors and patterns. CTMH is the pioneer of clear My Acrylix stamps that make it so much easier to create multi colored images. These pictures are of a lunch pail that I altered using CTMH More To Adore paper and My Stickease. This lunch pail is a wedding day suvival kit that I made for my cousin who is getting married at the end of the month. (I hope she is not reading this blog)

{Krystle - if you are reading this SUPRISE! This will be showing up on your door step in the next week or so:)}

Anyway, I am launching my new CTMH website. Please check it out and feel free to buy something from me! You can order directly from my website. The web address is:

http://www.foleyfun.myctmh.com/

Thanks for your support!

Oh Happy Day!

Last week my sister and brother-in-law fianlized the adoption of Tristan and Hailey!! We are so happy to have them "offcially" be part of our family. Tristan and Hailey have felt like family since the day they arrived at Kelly and Chris's house, but to make it final is great feeling of such peace and joy. We celebrated with the Newton family and 50+ of their closest friends and family at a park in Corona yesterday where the thermometer pushed 100 degrees! Even though it was HOT, we had a great time celebrating this very special occasion. Here is a link to the website Kelly and Chris have set up for the kids. http://www.babyjellybeans.com/web/do/site/home?ID=176365 There are pictures there of their court proceedings last week, plus much more.



Fianlly, here are the long awaited pictures of Grace's birthday party. I have put them into a costco album, just in case anybody wants to order prints. http://www.costcophotocenter.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=20693532/a=4245274/

Till later ... God Bless!

Our Little Star

We took Grace to get her picture taken for her 2nd birthday a couple of weeks ago. When we first walked into the place she started crying. I really thought we were going to have to reschedule. Tim took her and walked her around to look at all of the pictures while I gave them all of our information. After a few minutes she calmed down and it was our turn to take pictures. We put Grace in front of the backdrop and she turned into a different kid. All of a sudden she was totally working the camera. She was doing every pose the Photographer asked her to do with big smiles. We got so many great shots! When we were leaving the store the photographer asked if we would sign a release to use her photos in the store and last week they called to say they were going to put her photos up in the store! I am such a proud momma! Here is a link to view the photos.

http://smilestore.picturepeople.com/my/images?tk=8b94db83-05bf-47b0-8cdb-9ebbfb7ea595

I promise, coming soon ... the birthday party pictures. I need to upload them from my camera still.

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