Singing Star

Sunday night Olivia was in a singing mood and I was able to get a few really cute videos of her showing off. Here she is singing her ABCs. Notice that there is no EFG, but two HIJs. We cannot seem to get her to say EFG no matter how hard we try. ha ha!

Here is a video of her singing "her version" of twinkle twinkle little star:

This last video is my favorite. Here we are singing 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed together:

Great Wolf Lodge

What a busy weekend we had! We (Grant, myself, Sara and Randy) took the girls on a surprise trip to The Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA. We went last year and the girls had a great time - so we wanted to take them again this year. (We were supposed to go last month, but that was the weekend I wound up in the hospital, so we postponed until this past weekend).

Olivia had no idea where we were taking her. Here is a video from when we arrived and she got to look out into the water park and figure out where we were. Notice what she says at the end of the video - what a mess!

Sara and Randy got there later that evening and didn't get a chance to hit the water park that day. (We only went for a little over an hour the first night). We had dinner with them and then it was time to get the girls to bed. We were going to attempt to let them sleep on the pull out couch together - well, here's the couple minutes that they were actually both asleep the first night:

Needless to say, the first night was not too successful with them sleeping - especially Olivia! We wound up awake with her most of the night and she was back and forth to our bed - Gracie also wound up in bed with her parents. The second night was MUCH better. We wore them out all day at the water park and they actually slept the entire night in bed together!

Now onto the good stuff. Here are some pictures and videos from the water park. This is from the first night that Grant, Olivia and I were in the park.

Our little swim suit model:

She LOVED the water slides! She would go down then the first thing out of her mouth when she got to the bottom was "I wanna go again!"

Here is a video of her going down. She would have done this all night if we let her!

The next day we had both girls in the water park. They both had a great time! Just like last year, Gracie was a bit more hesitant to do the water slides then our "No Fear" Olivia (but she warmed up to them).

Here is a video showing Olivia going down the slide then Gracie considering sliding - changing her mind, then Olivia going again. You can see how quickly she gets off the slide then gets right back up there again!

Here are the girls sliding down together. After we put the camera away, the actually slid down holding hands the whole way! How sweet!

By the end of the day, Olivia had gone down the slide on her stomach head first, feet first and then eventually decided to get really daring and she just started going down backwards. This child really has NO FEAR! Here's a video of her going down backwards:

There were some bigger water slides in the center of the park - adult sized! They told us that as long as she could sit up, she could do it - but had to go by herself. So we asked her if she wanted to, and of course she did! The three of us went up, one parent went first and stayed at the bottom to catch her while the other helped her go down. Then the last parent got to ride. You could see her spinning around and flipping over down the slide - but when you caught her at the bottom - she said "I wanna go again!" - she's such a dare devil! We did it about 4 times in a row! All of the older kids that were in line were amazed at how daring she was!

That night we went to dinner at a place called Jungle Jims. Here is a picture of the girls being goofy out front:

Sunday morning we had to check out so we really didn't have time to go back into the water park again. Instead, we went down to the arcade to play around. Here is a picture and video of the girls playing around:

We had a great time, but it was a long weekend! I'm still recovering! LOL. We cannot wait for her to get big enough to do the bigger rides.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you guys all had a great time! Olivia didn't quite get Halloween last year, but this year she understood it pretty good and was very excited about dressing up for several weeks leading up to it. Every time someone asked her what she was going to be for Halloween, she'd reply "I be snow white!" very excited! Ok, so maybe the grammar needed a little work - but it was very cute the way she said it, so no one minded! :)

Here is our cute little Snow White:

So on Friday before Halloween we had a day full of Halloween fun. We brought her costume to daycare and they had a little Halloween party. Here they are all dressed up (even some of Angela's grand-babies came to join the fun!):




That afternoon we went to see Daddy at work for his work Halloween party they were having all day. All of them were dressing up and having a costume contest. Let me tell you - it was quite a site when we walked in! They had a lot of their clients just coming by to say hello and visit with them - that's always a good sign when their clients like them enough to visit even when they don't have an appt! Grant was dressed up as a crazy hippie dude! Check him out:

And he treated his patients like that all day!!! The funny thing was that when we first got there and walked in the gym, Olivia had no idea who he was. I kept pointing to him and telling her that was her daddy. She had this look like "um . .. I don't think so!" and then after a while (probably almost 2 minutes), recognition hit her - her whole face lit up and she yelled "DADDEEEEE" and ran over to him. Everyone there thought that was so funny!

Some of the other costumes there were:

Olivier (His business partner), dressed as a big baby! (Wrong in so many ways!) Sam was dressed as a bee keeper with little Alexandra as a bee, they had a poodle skirt girl, a cat, a banana and the winner of the contest (since Olivier and Grant didn't count) was Jen dressed as Workout Barbie. Here she is giving Olivia her workout:

Then after we hung out there for a couple hours, it was time to head over to the Little Gym for their "Boo Fest" - they had the gym open, were giving out candy and their business park was open for trick or treating for the occasion. So we had a good time doing a trial run of trick or treating. She did really well - she even said "trick or treat" and "Thank you" to everyone without hesitation. Here she is with the BIG CAT outside the little gym:

Then we picked up some dinner, ate and crashed! On Saturday we didn't make it to the little gym because our house was becoming infested with colds (especially Grant and Olivia) - So we took it easy that morning. But that afternoon, it was time to carve those pumpkins we got at Hillridge Farms! Olivia wasn't too keen on reaching into the pumpkin to get the guts out - so we had to help. But She did pick out the pumpkin at the patch and picked out which face she wanted us to carve on it. So she was a good "helper" - maybe next year we can get her to help with the guts! :)

Here she is with *her* pumpkin:

On Sunday, we had invited Sara, Randy and Gracie to come over to trick or treat with us - so the girls could go together. (and our neighborhood is bigger than theirs - more candy!) Gracie dressed up like Tinker Bell (her costume, shoes and wand even lit up!!). The two of them were really cute!

And Sara decided that she was going to make the two of us dress up, too! She even brought a costume over for me. After a little hesitation, I joined the fun. Here we are:

Bat Girl and Super Girl to the rescue!

It was all fine until I answered the door to some ~12 year old boys and one of them was like "heeey there bat girl!" and he was checking me out - yeah, I had a 12 year old hit on me! That's just a little bit disturbing! Sara found it hilarious, but I found it a bit creepy! Oh, well!

All in all, Halloween was a lot of fun. We had another busy weekend, but that's not a bad thing!

Hillridge Farms

Last Sunday (after we did the fair on Saturday), we invited Grant's brother and his family and his parents to join us in going to Hillridge Farms. It is a big farm with tons of stuff to do (hayrides, train rides, pumpkin patch, etc). We just knew that Drew would love it and we wanted Olivia and Drew to be able to play together there. They both loved it and held hands quite a bit while walking around!

The first thing we tackled was a bounce house. Here is a video of them jumping, jumping, jumping (and Olivia - falling, falling, falling!):

There were lots of animals to see here, as well:

There was a maze that the kids were so cute in working together to figure out how to get out to the other side:

Here's Grant, Drew, Olivia and Chad being goofy:

They got to run and jump in the hay:

And, of course, we had to do the train ride. They REALLY loved that! Here we are waiting our turn at the station:

A nice family shot of Chad, Becca, Drew and Emma:

And a nice family shot of us:


Here we are on the train:

Check out Grant and Olivia coming down the 80 foot tunnel:

Then they got to play in the other tunnel on the ground.

Check out this video:

We also got to do a hay ride out (and back) to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins to bring home. Apparently Olivia granddad fear is all gone. She rode both ways on his lap and was his pal all day! Here they are being silly together:

What a BIG pumpkin!!!


We actually got a cute picture of the two of them sitting still!

We had another great day - very busy, but very fun! What a crazy weekend it was - but it was a good kind of crazy! I'm glad all the Nelson's were able to come join us for the farm. Maybe we can make that a yearly tradition!

NC State Fair

Ok, so as usual, I am way behind in my blogging. Let me first catch you up on how I am doing. I am doing ok. I had another procedure last week and am still waiting for the biopsy results - no news yet. But on the upside, my doctor agreed that she did not think this was Celiac disease so she is allowing me to do a "gluten challenge" for 3-6 months (i.e. eat all the gluten I want - like a normal person) and then they will redo the blood work and biopsies for celiac to confirm that I don't have Celiac Disease. I have been doing this gluten challenge now for over a week and am doing well. Not sick because of it - so, we are pretty sure that it is not celiac disease (YEAH! - get me a donut!). The downside is that they really don't know what is going on. Hopefully this round of test biopsies will show something (anything!), but we aren't hopeful. I'm not really even sure where we go from here if it doesn't show anything but I'll keep you all posted.



Ok, enough about me - let's talk about Olivia! Let me start by posting just some hanging around the house pictures of her:





I got some new boots and Olivia really likes them. Here she is trying them out (she did this all on her own!):

We ate dinner at IHOP to celebrate my new gluten allowance. Here is Grant and Olivia sharing his water.

This past weekend Grant had 3 tickets (Front Row!) to see the carolina hurricanes and we thought it would be a nice way to thank Sara and Randy for helping us out when I was in the hospital (and many other times), since they are HUGE canes fans. I stayed home and watched the girls. Here's a picture from the news and observer website that caught them. The are right in the front row - Sara, Randy, Grant (leaning on the railing):

Meanwhile - this was my view from the evening:

We went to the fair last weekend and Olivia had a great time. It was a perfect day and we got there early - right after they opened - so it wasn't too crowded yet. We rode some rides, ate some good food, played some games and did a LOT of people watching!

Here's Olivia getting ready to go into the fair:

We saw lots of animals:

And Olivia even got to ride a pony! She LOVED it!

Here we are on the Ferris Wheel:

Then we got some tasty corn (dipped in butter, of course!):

She even won a Dora doll playing a fishing game. But by the end of the day - she was zonked out! (so were we!)

We had a lot of fun and were headed home for naps by about 3pm. It was a good day!