New Blog Design :)

I was getting pretty bored with the template I had on my blog, so I decided to change it up. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet; Derek likes it so I think I'm going to keep it for now.

Last week was so exhausting with no sleep and whatnot. For the last 2 nights Alexis has actually been sleeping; The nights before she would fight it and cry. Like I mentioned before, I thought she may have an ear infection again, Derek thinks it's just because she is sick that she couldn't sleep. She had tons of mucus in her throat and she has actually thrown up 4 times. She threw up on Saturday while we were out, luckily we were sitting in the car but I guess also very unlucky because she threw up all over herself, the carseat and also a bit on Derek's back seat. She threw up today during breakfast so I'm thinking it may be a stomach bug that's going around. She has been eating pretty light lately since nothing seems to be sitting well with her; It bums me out because whenever she gets sick like this I know it's affecting her weight gain, because even though she is sick, you wouldn't be able to tell with how happy and active she is.

I'm hoping she feels back to normal by this weekend...because we are going home! [Yes, I do still refer to Southern California as home.] I am so excited to get to see my family for Christmas. I am excited for Christmas in general.

Speaking of Christmas, I finally got the rest of Alexis' Christmas stuff. The only thing I had been waiting on was her ballerina doll for her stocking. After Pottery Barn Kids having it on back order twice they finally sent it. I was so excited until UPS accidentally delivered it to someone else, which they also did with her stocking. Luckily the person on the other street who got the stocking bought it back, we'll same thing happened with the doll but I wasn't so sure the person was going to bring it by, but they did today! I put it in her stocking and now everything is complete :) On kind of the same note, I ordered Alexis her first pair of Tiny Toms :) I wanted to get her these really cute Lacoste shoes but they didn't have her size so I feel in love with these toms. They should be getting here Wednesday if UPS does their job. I even called them today to make sure they don't send it somewhere else.

We did a little bit more Christmas shopping today got the Christmas Presents for my brother and his gf and my little niece Harlow. Now I just need to get my 3 little brothers something. I was surprised at how many people were doing all of their Christmas shopping today. I am so glad we got most all of it done after Thanksgiving.

Now that Christmas is just around the corner I am almost sad that this year is ending. Granted I know that next year we will have so much to look forward to so I am thankful for that, just sad in a way to see the holidays go.

I wanted to say how heartbroken I am about the tragedy in CT that happened this week. I was at work and it was on the TVs in the restaurant and I spent the day having to hold back tears whenever something new surfaced about it. I cannot fathom the thought of having to come home without Alexis, to all of her things and to never see her sweet face again, aside from pictures and videos. No parent should ever have to bury their child. I know how I feel when I think of Alexis' bright future and all the thing she will do and accomplish and I think about these parents who had kids who played sports, instruments, who were so bright and talented and to see that wasted to know that they would never get to experience a full life. I cannot fathom when this happens with adults but with children it's so much harder to comprehend, to take their future away from them and to take the innocence away from those children that witnessed it, is so heart wrenching. I was watching an interview with one of the kid's parents, who survived, and they said that whenever the doorbell rang he was afraid that it was the "bad guy" coming to kill him and that he asked his parents if there were more bad people like him in the world, I broke down and couldn't keep watching.

I know that everyone is either making this a political issue or mental health issue. I really disagree with people making this an issue about guns. If he didn't have access to guns there is no telling that he wouldn't have turned to explosives or any other homemade weapon he could have made. I am also tired of hearing people say that it could have been prevented, had his parents taken him to get help. If what they say is true, and my opinion based on what I've seen, this guy was a sociopath, there is no amount of medication or psychotherapy that can change that. Sociopaths are missing that part of their brain that allows them to tell right and wrong and do not have any sort of conscience. I am also beyond appalled that the media is trying to make a connection to Autism and why he killed all these people. People with Autism, while some are aggressive, they have random spurts of aggression and none of it is premeditated or in anyway calculated. Autism is a social and developmental disorder and someone with this disorder cannot have the ability to premeditate something like this. Sorry for the rant, but I had to put it out there.

I feel like there is more I should say but it's escaping me right now. Oh ya, blogging from an iPad is amazeballs!

Love Online Shopping!

Our Christmas cards got here yesterday and the Calendars got here today! I seriously love online shopping. I heard someone once explain it as a double rush, you get all the excitement of purchasing the item and more excitement when you receive it! I love love love our Christmas cards and we will be sending them out this week :) I also just received the calendars I made for my parents for Christmas. I had never used Shutterfly, but heard so many great things about their Calendars and it's definitely true.

Here are some pictures of the Calendars.

I am so in love with them. Shutterfly didn't have any calendars in Spanish so I wrote all the comments in Spanish but the months and all that are in English. I chose a different template for each of them, something more girly for my mom and more basic pattern for my dad; I did use all the same pictures for both though. I wish Derek and I had made one for ourselves, we will definitely have to. They are really great quality and I got 40% off, can't beat that!

I will also, finally, be expecting Alexis' ballerina doll in the mail. I ordered it weeks ago when I ordered Alexis' stocking and ornament but it had been on back order and Pottery Barn Kids had sent me emails telling me it was going to get to me soon but it never did and after talking to someone 3 different times, it is finally on its way! Alexis' Christmas gifts will finally be complete. Isn't it cute?

I was supposed to do a mommy and me baby ballet class with Alexis come Spring, which is where this whole ballerina theme thing came from, sadly the SLC Ballet is not offering it in the Spring; I was crushed, they offered it in the Fall but for some reason are not offering it in the Spring. I couldn't find a different ballet class that is offered at a time I can go and if I did it was for 2 year olds and up; I want to get Alexis started right away but it looks like we will have to wait and see if they offer it in the Fall. So we found this cool tumbling/gymnastics class offered on Saturdays that we are going to sign up for. I want her to do tumbling and gymnastics as well as ballet so I'm not too bummed, I was just really looking forward to ballet :(

Lexi is sick. I think she may have an ear infection again. I called her pedi's nurse and I think Derek is going to have to take her in tomorrow if she can't sleep through the night again. Getting 2 hours of sleep is not fun. I can't miss work,so daddy is going to have to take care of his little girl.

Oh ya I forgot to mention, Lexi had her picture taken with Santa and she loved it. She really loves the camera. Here is one of the pictures.

Enjoy!

Christmas Pictures

We had our Christmas pictures taken on Monday. I was so excited to put Alexis in her beautiful little dress :) We went to Camera Shy in Lehi and they were great. I personally like having pictures taken on location, and they do that as well, but for the price we decided to do it in the studio and it was really nice.

I don't like the way I looked but I OMG Alexis looks gorgeous, as she always does ;) I think Derek looked good as well, just not me lol. I didn't post all of them on Facebook so I will post a couple more on here than what I actually put on Facebook. Enjoy :)

We're going to get our Christmas cards out soon, now that we have our pictures :) Alexis loved the camera she is such a model :)

I just wanted to post these on here before I forgot. That is all for today! Enjoy!

P.S. When Derek picked up Alexis from daycare they told him that she was flirting with the boys in the classroom, chasing them and hugging them trying to kiss them lol She is sassy like her mommy ;) love it!

What's New?

I feel like I haven't blogged in a while so I thought I should update.

Alexis had her 18 month appointment last week. She won't be having any more appointments until she is 2 :) She had some more shots at this appointment and she was such a trooper. They checked her blood to see if she needed to continue taking iron supplements and luckily her pedi let me know she wants her to stop the iron for now and come back in a month to test her again and see if she can stop it altogether. One thing that was a real bummer is that Alexis fell to the 2nd percentile for weight, last visit she was in the 4th percentile :( but thanks to her daddy is in the 70th percentile for her head size lol. The two weeks that Alexis had that ear infection and had broken out, she didn't really have an appetite so I'm sure that contributed to her falling to the 2nd percentile. Alexis is an amazing eater, she is just so active that I'm sure it makes it hard for her to keep the weight on. Well her pedi asked us to start calorie packing and gave us a list of a ton of things to feed her. We are super strict with what she eats in terms of having no juice, unless she is sick, and not giving her any sweets or anything like that but now we've had to let go a little. We're still not giving Alexis any juice but her pedi asked us to give her lots of cheeses and put butter on her food and give her things like pancakes. Even though I don't like the idea of calorie packing, I know that it is for her own good and it definitely is going to stop once she gets to a good enough weight. I've said it before and I'll say it again, as long as she is healthy and eats I don't care how small she is, she is just always going to be petite and I don't mind that at all :)

Speaking of calorie packing; Alexis has officially started ordering off the kids menu when we go out, and she can pack it all away :) It's so weird to me that she is at the age where she can have her own meal when we go out, instead of eating off of mine and Derek's food. We have also started letting her have chocolate milk here and there, and she loves it!

Alexis has started saying "Uh-Oh" it is soooo cute; I think she may have learned that at daycare. She is also saying "Tank you" lol can't quite say the "h" in Thank you. this I also think she learned at daycare. She is still saying "hola" but not as much, I think because she hears a lot of the English words at daycare so it is easier for her. But not to fear I bought more Spanish books for her for Christmas and hope that will help the Spanish along more. Besides momma and daddy, which she has been saying for a while, I know there are other things she is trying to say I just can't make out what it is, one of these days she is just going to explode with a vocabulary.

My little Boo has become the most expert stair climber, which I do discourage because I don't want her to fall. She is definitely an expert walker, even in her boots she has become a great walker. Alexis loves sitting on these tiny chairs in the play area and crossing her legs, she is so cute! For a long time now whenever Derek and I are sitting next to each other, she runs over freaking out wanting to be a part of it, she seriously does the cutest things. She has also been giving kisses for the longest time, I would say "besito" and she would lean in and kiss me, well for the last month she has been puckering up her lips and coming in for kisses one after the other, she understands that concept now :)

Even though Alexis has dropped in her weight percentile I still feel like she has gotten so big. Her hair is so long; I love it! It is past her shoulders. I don't want to cut it and even though her bangs are in her face at times I just can't bring myself to cut it, it's so beautiful.

My little Lexi won the kids costume contest at my work :)

I am super proud of my little cute :) and proud of myself for making it without a pattern :) I also won a gift card for winning the contest, so that was a nice bonus!

On another note, I am super excited for Christmas! We bought all of our presents during Black Friday! We got all of our stockings done and our gifts; Now all I have left is to get my parents, brothers, and little niece Harlow their gifts. We put up our Christmas tree too :)

You can't really see it in the picture, but we put Alexis' new block ornament on our tree :) her first Christmas ornament is down in Southern California so I need to have my brother mail it to me so we can add it to the tree.

We are taking our Christmas pictures on Monday :) Alexis is going to look so fabulous in her dress! I am excited to have our pictures taken and get our Christmas cards sent out! I love the holidays!!!

Well that is all for now! Enjoy!

Random

It has been a long week and I still have 2 days to go till my weekend; It's ok though because tomorrow Derek and I get to have a date night :)

At work we have a Fall Film Festival, I think they also have one in either Spring or Summer. So what they do is they rent out some of the theater rooms within a theater only for us and we get a certain amount of tickets and we can choose which movies we want to go to. The three movies they were doing were Wreck it Ralph, Breaking Dawn, and The Hobbit. I got 4 tickets and picked 2 for Breaking Dawn and 2 for The Hobbit. We get the tickets, a gift card to buy snacks and free popcorn :) The Breaking Dawn showings are for today, tomorrow, and Saturday; I should have gone today but I wanted to go Friday since it is closer to my weekend, lately I don't go out anywhere late since I have to wake up at 4:30am in the morning for work. The Hobbit doesn't come out till December, but I'm excited for that too. I am excited to see Breaking Dawn but at the same time I thought the book sucked so mostly it's just because I've committed so much time reading the books and watching the movies that I am excited. The other cool thing is that I got 2 extra tickets for Breaking Dawn because I submitted some pictures on our work instagram page :) Derek invited his coworker and his wife to come with us. I haven't been on a double date forever so that's kind of weird lol

On another note, I can't believe Alexis is 1 1/2! Alexis has her 18 month appt with her pedi this month. We have been to her doctor twice since her last visit because she got sick so her weight won't be a real surprise, because they did weigh her both times we went in. I am excited to find out how she is doing with everything else, developmentally. Now that Alexis is 1 year and 6 months I am starting to get ideas for her 2nd birthday lol I know Derek looked at me like I was crazy, which I probably am, but I am just so excited to plan her 2nd birthday. Plus this time we will hopefully be in our home and hopefully have a big enough backyard to be able to have it there :)

I am sooooooooo looking forward to the end of the month! We are going to finish up our Christmas shopping, for the most part. We bought Alexis her activity cube already, it was on sale at Target and we were going to get it for her anyway so it made sense. I ordered Alexis her stocking, one that she will have for years to come. I also ordered Alexis an ornament and a doll for her stocking. Pottery Barn had the stocking on sale and I won a $50 gift card at work because my team won the October challenge :) so I used that to get her stuff. I got Alexis the cutest ballerina stocking, it is huge! I thought it would be smaller but it is seriously huge. To go with her stocking I got Alexis a ballerina doll to put in her stocking. As you can see there is a ballerina theme here ;) We are putting Alexis in mommy and me baby ballet classes through SLC ballet for the Spring. I also got Alexis her ornament for this year, it's a glittery block ornament to signify the end of her baby years. I want to have a tradition of buying a new ornament every year for something new that has happened within the year :)

Excited for Breaking Dawn, Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping!

October Fun!

I decided to post about Alexis' costume separately, otherwise this would have turned out to be a very long blog post.

This month has been pretty busy. Alexis had an ear infection about 3 weeks ago, so I had to miss work to take her to the doctor, then 2 weeks later she broke out in a rash and daycare told us we couldn't bring her in because they didn't know if it was contagious, so I had to miss work again to take her to the doctor and it turned out she had a reaction to the antibiotics she was taking for her ear infection, so again I had to miss work. I'm hoping Alexis won't be needing anymore doctor's visits at least not until her 18 month well visit.

I spent a lot of the month making Alexis' Halloween costume, so of course I was excited to show it off :) In October we went to a pumpkin patch, my work Trunk or Treat, and went Trick or Treating for Halloween.

On the 29th we went to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. It isn't exactly a Pumpkin Patch it's more like a ton of games and corn mazes and things like that. We put Alexis in her cute little outfit we bought her for the Pumpkin Patch. We took a ton of cute pictures and picked out the perfect pumpkin! She loved seeing all the kids there :) Here are some pics.

The day after Cornbelly's was my work Trunk or Treat, which was also at Thanksgiving Point at their barn. I had finished Alexis' costume and was super excited to show it off. At the Trunk or Treat they were taking pictures of the kids in costumes for a costume contest; I think the winner gets a gift card or something. I was excited to have them take a picture of Alexis and hopefully win the contest. Everyone loved her Boo costume. Apparently it was going around like wildfire because everywhere we went people were like "Hey someone told me about the Boo costume" lol we even had someone ask to get a picture of her. I will upload the professional picture as soon as they send them out at work and hopefully will win the contest :) for now here are some pictures.

On Halloween I had to work, but it wasn't too bad. We had this contest within our team all month, we got split into 4 mini teams and I was the leader for our team. We tried super hard and have been ahead the whole month and it got pretty close the last day so we don't know yet but hopefully we pulled through, there is a $50 gift card for each person on the team that wins, so I definitely want that :) Alexis wore her cute outfit to daycare she had worn to the pumpkin patch and they gave her a glow stick for Halloween, she also made some cute little crafts with her footprint and paint that they sent home with her, they are too cute. We went out Trick or Treating that night, I had originally planned to just take her around in the stroller and have her look at all the little kids in their costumes, she wasn't going to eat any candy anyway so I figured it wouldn't matter, but we ended up going with Derek's uncle and his kids; Derek didn't feel well so he didn't come out with us. Alexis was so excited, she was shrieking and running around and just so happy to be going around door to door. Here are some pictures from the night.

My little Boo was so cute. October was an amazing month with lots of fun memories :) I am so excited for the Holidays, mostly Christmas. Enjoy <3 \

P.S. Alexis has been giving kisses for a while now, but stopped for a bit and now she is giving them like crazy, leaning in and giving me kisses and shaking like crazy from excitement lol I love her so much <3

How To Make A Monsters Inc Boo Costume :)

So I decided to post a blog specifically on how I made the Monster's Inc Boo Costume. First let's talk about how this even came to be, making the costume and all. I was going to have Alexis be a bumble bee or ladybug, but everyone kept telling us she looked like boo, so I decided to just make the costume :)

So my background in sewing was limited to a class I took my freshman year in high school. I made 2 quilts with different fabric and sewing patterns, a pair of shorts, a shirt, and a purse. I got an A in the class so I guess it wasn't too bad. So I searched the internet to see if I could find a tutorial on how to make the costume. I found this website. I followed this for the most part except for using a different purple fabric, making an undershirt, and I didn't make the hood as big. When I started this project, I thought that I would do my best and hopefully it would turn out ok, but I definitely surprised myself with how great it turned out :)

Here is how I did it:

First I bought the fabric, I went off of what I saw on the website, aside from choosing different fabric for the suit and the fabric for the shirt. The Fabric total as well as safety pins, velcro, pipe cleaners, styrofoam and thread came out to about $38.

There weren't any specific measurements for everything on the site so I measured Alexis and went off of that. I started with the fabric I measured out and pinned it into a rectangle with the batting and sewed around the edges. Then sewed 3 lines across the fabric to make the shape of the outfit. I cut arm circles into the fabric, I think I may have made them a little to big but I was winging it, it ended up working out fine. I also added the teeth to the body. Finally I added the velcro to keep the costume together.

After the body I made a shirt and pants. I just took one of Alexis' shirts and her pants an cut out a pattern. I ended up not using the paints, the body was long enough so that I didn't need them.

After being done with all that, which I did feel was the easiest part It took me a couple of days to get started on what I would call the "hood". I didn't want to make it too big or too small. I didn't want it to cover her face, I wanted it to just rest right above her forehead. So I measured her head across and went a couple of inches out. I cut the fabric in a crescent shape and stuffed it with some batting and sewed around the edges and sewed the teeth on. I wanted to stay as true to Boo so I made sure she had the right amount of teeth on there.

I took the styrofoam balls and using a sharpie colored in half of the "eye" and colored in circles for the pupils. I took 2 pipe cleaners,for each eye, and twisted them together and stuck it in the back of the "eye". I then took my dollar tree mop and used the mop hair for the hood. I sewed it on by hand, I wanted to put enough of it on the hood but not too much. After I finished the "hair" I sewed the pipe cleaners onto the hood, which was not easy, you can't really sew through the pipe cleaners, so what I did was sew the "hair" really tight around them and it worked :)

Finally I used elastic to sew the hood onto the body and it was done!

I had to use some safety pins; I had sewn the elastic a little too high so I used a couple of safety pins in the back to hold it down better. Here is Alexis at my work Trunk or Treat on the 30th. She was a hit!