oh, no she didn't!!

Oh yes she did!! This afternoon, Fiona decided she wasn't taking a nap. She was up playing and talking in her crib for awhile having a grand ole time - or so I thought. While I was indisposed in the potty, I hear a little thud - I wait for the cry, but nothing. Then I hear what sounds like little footsteps. And as I finish up and go running up the stairs who meets me halfway? FIONA!!! The girl has never even tried to climb out of her crib nor does she have much luck in opening the doors. But today - luck was on her side. She climbed out of the crib, opened the door and started coming down the stairs. What is so funny is that she totally acted like this was nothing new, just what she does!!

So we have a big weekend ahead of us to Child proof her room, convert the crib to a toddler bed and hope she stays in bed when we put her in there!! Amazing, I thought I had another year or so before we needed to do this!! What's next? Potty training? Talking in full sentences? School, Prom, College Graduation, Marriage and grandkids!!!!!!!!YIKES!! Ok, maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself here. But my baby is growing up, what a crazy combo of emotions, pride, joy and sadness all rolled into one.

Uh-oh and your time is up

Fiona's new word that she started on Tuesday is "Uh-oh"! Not sure really where she got it, we don't say it that much but its hilarious. She just started while I was walking the aisles of Michaels and she would say "jibber jabba jib Uh-oh!" over and over again. Now when she wakes up its the first thing out of her mouth, Mike and I just crack up!!

So my attempt to try and keep the house under control is going well, we have our ups and downs, but overall I think I am hitting an 85% average here - thats pretty darn good. So one of the tricks I have been employing is an old trick Mom used to do with us as kids. She would set the timer and see how much we could get cleaned up in that time. So I do little tricks like that now with myself. A minute and a half to heat my tea every morning = top rack of dishwasher emptied. Half hour of Handy Manny = downstairs picked up and vacuumed and powder room cleaned. One DVRed show = laundry folded and put away or kitchen cleaned up and dishwasher loaded after dinner. I find that I often get a little overwhelmed by all the stuff, so when I break it down to little chunks of time, its much more manageable and it doesn't take me nearly as long as I think it would. I love it cuz when the time is up, my chores are done, too. Do you have any tricks like that? If so, please share!!!

Pictures to come. been a little busy reorganzing my scraproom to become a little more user friendly and to house all my crafts and such. That Organized and inspired scrapper book has got me inspired and motivated and I understand what works and doesn't work so much for me. I am loving it!! One thing I realized is that my storage containers must be able to withstand Fiona dumping - the cool ribbon storage idea I had no longer works so we spent all afternoon yesterday redoing my ribbon storage - you should have seen all the spools and ribbon everywhere - Fiona was in heaven running around with ribbons saying "oooooo!" I think I am creating a monster :) I should have taken pictures but I was a little tied up with the ribbon. LOL!! ok bad joke...

Fiona and Mommy day!!

Dad (Mike) is out of town, so Fiona and I had a whole fun day together. Playgroup this morning. Its is always such a gas to get all the kids together. There are usually 5-6 of us who get together and all the kids are within six months of each other age wise, but boy do they all have such different personalities. And thanks to Miss Elenie (sorry if I spelled it wrong!!) Fiona's new name is Onina (pronounced: O-nin-nah). She started it the other week and now Alex calls her Onina now too. I LOVE it!!

We came home and grabbed a nap (mommy did too) and just played and had a good time!!

So with the new camera, I tried out some of the self timer funtions - disasterous with a 20 month old who doesn't stay anywhere for 10seconds while the timer is going off. Then I tried some unique angles off the mirrors in her playroom - again disasaterous. So I just starting taking pics of her and me with the camera at arms length - much better result, but she didn't smile.

so back to the good ole taking pics of just Fiona. Well she did the funniest thing. She started playing with the tripod was pretending to take pictures - telling me to say "Cheese" and turning all the knobs, just like Mommy!! I just about died laughing!!

I did get one of me in the mirror - don't I look cool and pensive and artsy?? LOL!! And the one with the camera in my face - That is how Fiona thinks her mother looks all the time :)

New feature to the Hyland Blog

Hi everyone,

I have added a new feature to my blog - a little gallery of my Project 365 Scrapbook album. It is located on the right hand side under our Family picture. Click on the picture and you will be able to go to my gallery and see the digital pages of my album. Right now there is only one, but keep popping in to see more.

Also feel free to leave us a note or comment after we post. There is a little link under the post that says 0 (or what ever number) comments. Click on that and leave us a note.

Hope everyone is having a great year!!

The Sound of Music

...has returned!! Since Mike is taking a break from graduate school this term, he is focusing some of his new found free time back to learning to play his guitar.

I remember when Mike and I first started dating, he used to play all the time, and truth be told, I have really missed him playing me his silly songs with the lyrics he makes up on the fly. They always elicted a good laugh, my favorite being "The Overbearing Claw," which described Riley's bad habit of clawing us when she wanted attention.

Fiona loves to dance and always rocks out when Daddy is practicing. It helps of course that he is trying to nail down Old MacDonald - a song Fiona loves!!

Here is a pic of Daddy practicing and concentrating on learning his new chords.

Had to make it black and white and all cool and rocker looking :)

Happy New Year

We had a nice and restful sleep to bring us into the New Year, and I think we needed it. Fiona is so active these days, its a joy and exhausting, LOL!!

Here is what I am talking about - you turn your head for a few minutes to empty the dishwasher while she is eating breakfast and this is what you come back to:

"Look Mom, we don't need to go to the spa today - I already had my oatmeal facial!!"

Lets try little more here...

The O-Face has returned with the sweetest OOOOOOHHH sound this is usually preceeded by her doing something she shouldn't have done. In this case, the oatmeal mask, as good as it is for the skin is sticky, and I want it off now.

"Ok, Ok, I get it, its cute and funny, just wipe it off already, Mom!!"

But then the next day she is just as sweet as can be - took about 150 pics and over half I love! Here are a couple of my favorites:

Apparently the key to Fiona's happieness and content is a Santa Pez...

Videos

Christmas Recap

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had the most wonderful Christmas. Dad was home this year and Santa was extra generous with us. Fiona was so much fun this year. Her top two favorite gifts were her bike which she only left to play with her powerwheels from PopPop. she even ate her breakfast on her bike. she really was a hoot to watch. It took all day to open most of her gifts and she just loved them all.

Here are a few pics from the day. I will have videos of Christmas Eve and Christmas day up later today...The one from Christmas eve is hilarious at the end!!

I am a bad, bad girl cuz I didn't get my Christmas Cards out. So be on the look out for a special Valentine Card from us.

Love you all and Happy New Year!!

New Addition to our little family

Today was a big day in the Hyland household. We went to see Santa today and Santa had a little surprise waiting for us - Bridgett Hyland.

She is Labrador Retriever Mix, 10 months old and we rescued her from a local shelter here. It was a bit chaotic meeting her and getting all the dog stuff (I just got rid of all the stuff we had from Riley), but she is seriously a perfect fit so far for our family. She is the sweetest natured dog, loves Fiona they were running around and laughing this evening. Novi, our cat, as seen below, is not exactly happy about a new member - but he is tolerating her much better than the other dogs who have come to visit us.

Fiona thinks Bridget's crate is her new playhouse...
Novi not too happy about sharing his Mommy, Daddy and Fiona

We really missed having a dog as a part of our family, and now we feel that the house feels nice and full.

Snow Day

Well, if you hadn't heard it on the news, we had a HUGE freak snowstorm here in the desert. When all was said and done, we ended up with about 13 inches of snow!!! Can you believe it?? The city closed down (and still is closed today) all the highways in and out of the area also were closed, many people were stranded. lucky that Mike had taken off work yesterday so we could see Santa, but apparently even Santa was having a hard time getting around and we didn't get to see him.

Heather is in town also, and had planned to drive to Fresno to visit with a friend, but had to turn back after 30 miles - it took her over 7 hours to drive 60 miles yesterday. She is so glad she made it back here.

here are the picks from Fiona's first time in the snow - she HATED it. We took her out today to try and make a snowman, but no such luck. It is pretty beautiful, but it totally reminded me why I don't want to live in the Northeast again, LOL!!

Snow is almost gone already today it'll be gone by this weekend I am sure, but it was pretty amazing to get so much snow around Christmas...

SANTA CAME EARLY!!!!

Well, to my great surprise (sorta - cuz I have been bugging Santa alot) I got my Christmas present yesterday!! A Nikon D60 camera - my dream of all dream cameras!! It rocks I took like 150 pictures today just to play around with it!! Still getting used to the whole SLR thing but it is a load of fun and I got some good shots today. I figure the more I practice the better I'll get :)

And the other great cool thing?? Heather is coming to visit tomorrow and she is staying with us with a short little break until the 22nd!! How much better can Christmas get???

Here are some of the pics from today...

Advent Calendar...ooooohhh Lights

First, today we started our First Advent Calendar. We are doing for Daddy and Fiona since Daddy is also doing RCIA and I wanted to him to experience the joy of the Advent Calendar like all good Catholic kids do...

Fiona got a pair of Christmas Socks that light up. She wanted to play with them so bad so I let her. I look over and this is how I found her a few minutes later:



yes, she is wearing the socks like a headband!! LOL!! got to give her points for creativity.

Then there was the "stringing up the lights" portion of the afternoon. I though, hey, I can put the lights on the tree while Fiona watches her 2nd favorite guy, Handy Manny. So I pull out the step ladder climb up and start putting on the lights, only to have Fiona start climbing up the ladder after me. Apparently, since accomplishing our stairs and the ladders to the slides at the park, the step ladder was quite enticing. Now, I must explain one thing about Fiona, she is a sensitive soul and does not like being told no. The girl will take a tumble on her head, get up and rub it and be fine. You say to her, "Honey, this is dangerous, please don't climb up here." The Girl just melts down. - Ask anyone!! so I made the mistake of nicely asking her not to climb on the ladder, while I am at the 3 step, she just sits down on the second step and begins to melt down. Great now I am stuck and can't get down to get her off or to comfort her... Somehow I finagled a toe on the second step and made my way down. Needless to say we waited until Daddy got home and finished up the lights. Check out our beautiful lighted tree:



so then we started decorating the tree. it started out well, Fiona playing in the gold beads - in truest Fancy Fiona fashion, that is until Fiona, and seriously it was like watching it in slow motion, took a glass ball turned towards the kitchen floor and throws it as hard as she can and smashes it into a million peices. Kids and experimentation, Hey I wonder what would happen if I throw this over there?? ok, not so good - ball breaks. Hopefully the mental note to self not to do that again kicks in. Needless to say there are 3 boxes of glass ornaments that are safely in the box in the garage this season. but here are a couple of cute pics:

It was a lot of fun and I will post more tree pics later.

It's Beginning to look like Christmas...

Well, it really is beginning to look like Christmas here at our house. Most of the decorations are put up in the house. And we got our tree today - a beautiful 7-8ft Noble fir. Appropriately purchased at Nancy's Ranch, we had to go there just cuz it had my name:) It was a blast to do - this is our first Christmas as a family this year so we are going all out. Mike and Fiona had a blast playing in the hay and strolling through all the Christmas Trees.

On the way home we briefly began discussing what we would do to decorate the house outside - this is the first time we lived in a home where we could go all out - and boy do we plan to. And as we pull down the street what do we see in our Neighbor's yard but a huge inflatable carousel that actually turns. Oh yeah, its on!! Our neighborhood does have a "friendly" decorating contest and we are determined to win!!! Stay tuned for pics of our cool house!!! Who knows one day we may just end up on TV for one of those crazy houses that the lights are synchronized with the Christmas music.

For now I leave you with some pics of us from today's Christmas tree adventure:

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well its a little late, again - notice this has been becoming a new trend for me...late for everything. Although, in my scatterbrainedness, I thought that today was the 29th and not the 28th and called Colin to wish him a very happy birthday, and the happy accident was that I was a day early this time!! WOO HOO! Anywho, Thanksgiving was really nice. It was wonderful that Mike was here this year. We had one of his coworker's family here with their 3 little guys - it was really a lot of fun. All the kids had a blast. Fiona had a bit of a tumble and now has a black eye - you can sorta see them in the pics... poor little girl :(

And here is a funny video of Fiona before everyone got here for dinner - hilarious!!!

Only Fiona knows what she is yelling, but this has become a new routine lately in the house and it cracks Mike and I up totally - why the running in circles with the yelling?? Who knows!!!

Dinner was perfect - everything came out cooked and not raw, edible and tasty and relatively at the same time!! Our Menu for the day was:

Appetizers

Veggies and dip

Artichoke dip

and Cheese tray and crackers

Dinner:

Turkey and gravy

Stuffing

Mashed potatos

Sweet potatos

green bean casserole

Cranberry relish

Salad with craisins and sunflower seeds and orange and honey dressing

and rolls

Dessert

Lemon Merangue pie

Chocolate silk pie

Yummy - I am still so stuffed check out our "Adult Table" and the cute place cards I made yes it was a great Thanksgiving because we are so lucky to have so many things to be thankful for. We did miss Aunt Meg's annual Thanksgiving - seriously its one of the only things that make me homesick. One of these days we'll get back again for that.

Also a little update on the health and well being of Fiona. As mentioned there was a bit of a tumble on Thanksgiving and she has a bit of a black eye, but other than that we did have a Dr. checkup on Tuesday and she is "perfect" - the doctor did say that. she is a little over 25 pounds now and is 33 inches long!!! Tall and sorta skinny - that buddah belly says otherwise. Well off to bed for now. Miss you all!!!

oh, and we started to decorate for Christmas...Here is Fiona in Mommy's Santa Hat

*camera is seriously on the fritz - word is that Santa is working on a replacement - Mommy cannot wait!!*

And then there was the Hot Dog dance - she loves this from Mickey Mouse club house. She stops everything to watch and dance to it. You can see how well she twirls - this usually lasts longer but the camera is apparently more interesting :)