Kaylee Walking Everywhere

She is walking around everywhere. I look at her stand up and start walking towards me or a toy from across the room and cannot believe my little baby is walking! She's so teeny. I love her so much. She is the cutest. She loves watching the videos I take of her on my phone so I like to do forward facing camera with her and she just watches herself the whole time. She loves herself:)

I love this little girl. She is my little best friend. I'm so lucky to have her. We both can't wait to visit Arizona in two weeks! We miss our family soo much!

Birthday's and Visits and Doing Absolutely Nothing...

I hate when birthdays end. Don't you? Another year until the next one comes around...They really are pleasant. A whole day where your sweet hubby doesn't leave the dishes out for you to wash and lets you sleep in while he takes care of the baby. Love it! My day was fun and relaxing and my husband and baby spoiled me. I got to see my good friend I met in NC, Miss Ashley Carter! We've missed having friends since we moved so it was really fun seeing her and her sweet baby boy. We all went out to dinner where Kyle was served, and bit into, raw chicken. It's cool, we got a free meal and dessert. And Kyle survived, no harm done. We like free things anyway! A few days later we got a visit from Kyle's mommy. We loved having her come see us and we had fun showing her our new home and town. We went to the mall in Nashville that flooded in 2010. They just rebuilt it and it's incredible. Lot's of fun shopping.:) We went to an aquariam restaurant that was unexpectedly pricey and annoying and they ended up charging us for another table's large bill on top of our own. We did not get any free food that day. I think it is safe to say, we will not be going back there. THEN we went to Cracker Barrel because that place is awesome and we get a 20% military discount (incredible) and it's right next to our neighborhood. Well, Kaylee was extra cranky that night and we are learning how hard it is to go to dinner with her. It was past her bedtime:( Anyways, they lost our ticket or something and it took forever to get our food. BUT, we got free dessert! :) Then we went to Steak 'n Shake and went through the drive thru and we waited a long time because they just shouldn't have a drive thru...then got our food, drove away, and found that our entire order was wrong. So basically, we have really bad food luck here.

Miss Kaylee took her first steps! She's been cruising all over the house for two months now and started to go really fast with one hand on furniture and walls. We knew it was only a matter of time before she started letting go. The other night I had a dream that she was walking and going soo fast and it was super creepy. Like a horror movie. Ew. The next day came and she was holding onto my legs trying to get me to pick her up. I was holding a bunch of bags and couldn't pick her up so I tried to step away and she stayed standing up without holding on and took two steps towards me! After that we tried passing her back and forth between the two of us and she continued to do her 2 steps. She dives forward for our hands still because she's still scared. But she's getting better! I thought maybe my dreams were starting to predict the next day. I had another dream after that day where I accidentally burned something in the kitchen and my apartment (?) caught on fire and we all escaped. That didn't happen in real life, thankfully. Other things Kaylee started to do...She waves bye bye when I put her in her crib to take naps. She's a good napper! I love that I can just lay her down and she goes right to sleep without a fight. Best thing ever. Yesterday she was trying to put her binky in my mouth and laughed about it. Haha that was the cutest. She's so giggly and happy. Despite what Kyle has to say about it, she's starting to enjoy watching Barney. She loves the kids and music. And I may or may not still know every.sigle.song. Ha Kyle thinks I'm crazy. She loves when Kyle chases her on his knees and she has to crawl fast to get away. She runs up to me and giggles and squeels. She is such a blessing. I don't know what I would do without her. I know I talk about her non stop but it's too hard not to. She's my whole world. Today is Kyle's birthday! He got a soda maker for his bday because he loves soda so much. He also got a gaming chair. I'm going to regret that purchase. He woke up to an Avenger's happy bday sign and was super pumped about it. ;) We went to Red Lobster for dinner and Kaylee was awesome because I fed her snacks the whole time. Only way to keep her happy!

(We have to put a toy chest in front of the fireplace so Kaylee doesn't crawl inside of it. In case you were wondering.) Kyle has been on leave from work for the last month and a half or so..His last day of no work is TOMORROW and it's sad sad. He's getting a little stir crazy with no work everyday though, so it might be a good change up for him. I've loved spending every day with him at home but it's time to get back into a routine and reality. We haven't done a whole lot since we first moved in and got situated other than having company. How nice to do absolutely nothing for so long. :) Just gardening (or the lack thereof...I can't keep my flowers alive!), working out, crafting, watching our shows (have you watched Awake? or GCB? Hart of Dixie? Once Upon a Time? Touch? Last Man Standing? Up all Night? Yes we have that much time on our hands!) I would love other show recommendations if you have them since a lot of mine are coming to a finale.:( thanks! I love being outside with my Kaylee Bailey.

Our new bedroom set and bedding! I feel weird for posting this but I'm excited about it, ok?

We are so blessed and happy and grateful. Life can be challenging and rough and I have had my share of hardships like the next person, but I cannot deny how great life is. I've learned more than anything that it's up to me to make my own happiness. I'm so grateful to have a Heavenly Father who loves me and my family.

Oh Beautiful Tennessee

Tennessee is gorgeous. Have you been here? You should. And come stay at my house. :)

As I eat an entire (small) bag of gold fish and watch GCB while my little child crawls and attempts to stand on boxes, I will tell you about our adventure here in Clarksville. When we moved, my generous mother flew to Fayetteville to drive with me and Kaylee through the night (so we didn't have to hear her cry during the day stuck in a carseat that she hates so much). We both didn't sleep and it was awesome. Kyle and his friend, Cory, drove a ginormous moving truck through the night, also, and by the time we got to Clarksville early in the morning we all wanted to move just a bed in the house and call it a day. But, Kyle and Cory were pretty determined to get it all done and moved everything in.


We had one casualty on the drive and that was our 50" tv. Super. So we had to buy a new one and naturally, it had to be bigger than before. Men.

We had a lot of fun with my momma. She helped us sooo much with the house and with Kaylee. Love her. And Kaylee was a little obsessed with her too.


We headed up to Nashville to explore a little and ended up at the Grand ol Opry. Amazing. That's all. My mom wanted to stop and walk around the hotel and we thought she was a little weird because it was just a hotel. But we did it for her anyway and went inside and were blown away. It's sooo gorgeous. There are a bunch of atriums that have a billion beautiful plants and waterfalls and a river and restaurants and shops. It's so pretty. Glad we stopped! Since we moved in, we go to Lowe's each day for a new project. Our favorite part of being homeowners is that we can do whatever we want to the house. Kyle is having a blast with that part. We planted fruit trees in the backyard. We bought flowers for the front yard and we have an awesome beehive in the backyard in a tree. We love spending our time out there despite that beehive. It's gorgeous. We finally met our neighbors and they are so nice.



Basically, we are having a great time here and love our home! Tennessee is so pretty, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Not looking forward to the hot summer though! And it's windy all the time! But the pretty fields and wild flowers make up for that stuff. We have moved so many times in the last three years but I have such a good feeling about this one. I'm glad we will be here for a long time. We sure do miss our friends in North Carolina though! They were so good to us. Hopefully we will see them again. That's one of the bad things about being military. You get so close to people and then you all move away! But now we have great friends in a few different states!

Kaylee helping dada put the chair together.


Pictures of the house to come!

The Waiting Game

We've been waiting two years to get to this point and now that it's here the good stuff just keeps coming! Kyle graduated and we had our moms come stay with us to be at graduation. It's so nice to have them come see Kaylee. She needs a little grandma lovin. The graduation ceremony was incredible. I'm so proud of Kyle and all of his hard work.

We found out that we will be moving to Tennessee. At first we were a little bummed but came to realize how great of an opportunity it is to try out a new state. This time that we move, it will be the longest we will get to stay. At the least, four years. That's a long time! We've been wanting to buy a house for so long and since we thought we would be staying here in NC, we had already started looking at homes. We new exactly what we were looking for. My little family took a short weekend trip up to Tennessee to find a home! It was so beyond stressful but so much fun. Stressful because we only had a weekend to make a decision. We walked through 40 homes and at the last minute before we had to head home, we narrowed it down to two. We couldn't make a decision so we left our realtor with two signed agreements for two different houses. Finally a few hours later we were able to come to a decision while on the road and called our realtor. We move in April 6th. We cannot wait to be home owners!



I have to brag, I worked out a way to get Kaylee to stop waking up at 7am and instead, wake up at 8! I am not a morning person, I hate waking up. 8 is still pretty hard. But she did it! For the last 3 days she has woken up at 8am. Hallelujah. I'm amazed at our little girl. She is developing so rapidly, I think she will be walking within a month or so. She wants to so badly. But I have to chase her all over the house and block off certain pieces of furniture with huge pillows. She stands up on everything and then falls over so often. People may think I beat her considering all the bruises and red marks on her head. She has her bottom two teeth and is cutting her third in on top. She is constantly trying to bite me. She is 6 months, 15.4 pounds, 25 inches. She is still so small but I love it:)

Movin Up in the World

There is so much happening that I MUST blog. These two lovies in my life keep me busy. Kyle and Kaylee, that is. Who else? So lets begin!

Just to recap, Kyle has been training since September 2010 for Special Forces. Technically it started in April of 2010 so really, we've been at this for almost two years now. Holy cow! We moved to North Carolina, the nasty armpit of the country in my opinion, around that time to start training. Not all of North Carolina is nasty of course, but this lovely town, Fayetteville...yes indeed. Kyle learned all kinds of neat stuff for his upcoming new career. There were several months that he had to be away but all of his training is so important that I decided to survive. He just returned from his last itty bit of training and now here we are, approaching graduation! What a huge accomplishment to make it this far. So my husband is pretty awesome. Both of our moms are coming to visit and we are all so excited! Today, Kyle becomes a seargent, too!

Now that training is over they give each graduate a new area to be assigned to. We just found out we're moving to...wait for it....Kentucky!! I think this was our last choice of the six places we could move to. Haha. And surprisingly, we would rather stay here than go there. So we mayyy see what we can do about staying but we'll see. Until we can figure that out, we're moving to KY very soon! We have already found a few homes we love and would be very close to Nashville, TN so it wouldn't be too bad. We are warming up to the idea.

Now onto Kaylee lady. She is 5 months and moving EVERYWHERE! She won't sit still. She has two teeth and is taking great naps...finally! That's a huge accomplishment. She wakes up once to eat at night but I'm currently weining her off of that. She doest agree with this idea. She is so funny. She squeels and screams so loud just for fun all the time. Its so loud that she has to cough afterwards to clear her tickled throat. Sometimes when she is playing she will stop and look at me and give me a BIG smile then go back to playing. When Kyle got home after a month of being away she was obsessed with him! She loved to crawl over to him and climb all over him on the floor and play with him. I knew she remembered him because she doesn't go to people she doesn't know like that. She's very shy. She seems so happy to have two parents to love and play with. She is so much fun. Every night before bed I read to her. We only have two children's books so I usually read both. One night I was dexperte to get her to bed quickly so I only read the short Thumper board book. She squirms and hardly listens of course. After I finished she dived over my lap and tried to get to the other book, On the Night You Were Born. She was saying "mom you have to read both!" She sat so still in my lap as I read that one to her. It was so sweet! Love her!

She just woke up today and decided to start doing this. Now I can't leave her alone thinking she's just chillin on her mat. Ohh gracious, she's growing up too fast. Speaking of growing up too fast, I get anxiety every time I have to buy a new box of diapers in the next size up. Size three already? Didn't I just push you out, like, yesterday?? As much as it saddens me that Kaylee isn't my tiny 8 pounder anymore, I am equally, if not more, excited that she is getting older. She is so dang fun now that she isn't just crying to communicate with me. She still does that, but she's so much more responsive. She's super observant. It cracks me up how excited she gets when I shake the bottle in front of her. She stares and us eating our big people food. I can't wait to feed her solids. She just started to roll from back to belly and also got her first tooth. Those things are sharp! Her personality is really starting to show, too. I don't have a clue where it came from. I know I was a little brat and a little bossy when I was growing up, but please! This girl has got the attitude down. I know all babies are generally in charge of their households but this one is in charge of all the other babies. When I take her out and someone tries to talk to her or make her laugh, she screams in their face. I have to throw out an excuse like "She's just so tired! It's wayy past nap time!" But really these people aren't very attractive and apparently she knows and it scares her. I'm sure it's just a phase because I know she just prefers to be held by me. People aren't allowed to talk to her. She's pretty shy right now. Kyle is very shy so I am wondering if she will take that from him. Little miss Kaylee is quite independent but she loves her mommy. She clings to me when we're out of the house and just wants to stare at everyone around us. I love her big smiles. Today we were leaving the grocery store and she was sitting in her car seat on top of the cart. It's really difficult to see in front of me with her seat in the way. Most of the time I have to look on the side when passing by someone to make sure I don't hit them. (I almost hit a kid once. No idea where he came from.) Well, walking out of the store I forgot to look in front of me before I walked into the street and rammed the cart right into a big cylinder cement pole sticking out of the ground to keep cars from driving on the lowered sidewalk. Kaylee's car seat flew into the cart on top of the groceries and I flipped out! Kaylee's face was a little confused for a second then gave me HUGE smile. That was just a fun little time for her I guess. As for me, I was mortified to even look up and look around me at the 15-20 people who saw me. Who hits their cart with infants inside into a pole? Embarrassing. But Kaylee was a good sport because she loves her mommy. Everyday I feel so blessed to have this little one. I'm so grateful to be able to stay home and spend the whole day with her. Being a mom is truly the best thing I could have ever done in my life. There is nothing above it.

2012: Bring It.

I normally don't do new year's resolutions and what not but I feel a little more grown up this year and I believe it's time to be more mom-like and set some goals to better myself. Woohoo!

2011: What a great year. Honestly, as far as my memory serves me (I say that lightly because the pregnancy and having a baby has realllllly screwed up my brain storage), I have never had a better year than 2011. It was tough in some places but holy cow! I had a baby! How do you top that? I had a ridiculously perfect and healthy pregnancy. I learned A LOT about myself from this and my marriage grew a whole lot stronger. I had a job that gave us enough money to be comfortable, we grew to enjoy where we live, we tackled a pretty crazy natural distaster. Actually, it tackled us. But we enjoyed it! We were safe and protected and really great things came out of it. We live in a great neighborhood where I made new and very good friends that helped me while Kyle was away. Kyle has made it through the toughest part of his career so far and still thriving. We finally got to meet our little princess who brings more joy then we ever thought possible. We finished off the year with our entire families who we have missed so much. Arizona will always be our home and we are so lucky that we are able to go back to visit and see our favorite people. I don't know how a new year can get better but I am positive that it will. Kaylee will be growing and learning so much more and we will settle in to a possible home that we will call our PERMANENT home for several years (wow!) and we will be together (for the most part). Kyle will be graduating from the training course he has been working on for almost 2 years altogether and we can finally move forward. I am SO excited to see where this all takes us.

On to 2012! I have a few goals that I'm working on. I really want to better myself in a few areas and I love that I have the new year as an excuse to get this started.

Goal #1: Lose the baby weight! Hello...why is it still there? I want to be in my old clothes again so I can go in my closet and actually have things to wear! I'm really missing my Miss Me's. How did they know? Right now I'm planning on starting a no carb diet to kick it off. I will be starting in T-36 hours. After I go grocery shopping tomorrow:) Aside from the strict diet I will have the hardest time of my life doing, I will be hitting the gym with my other post prego friend, Liz and her bebe, and working on Insanity at home.

Goal #2: Cleaning Schedule. SInce I am officially a stay at home mom I want to be sure I'm wisely using my time at home by keeping things spin and span around here. I get grouchy when my house is cluttery and dirty in weird places. Even behind the toliet dust bugs me and I just look at it and think "I need to take care of that" and it never happens. So, I created a weekly schedule. One in which outlines my daily chores throughout the house. It is very thorough. I get so behind on laundry and when it piles up in my closet, I wash it all but don't want to do the folding and putting away. So I create more piles. I hate piles. Each day I have a certain load of laundry to do. One a day makes it so much easier. I have already started this cleaning list this week and I am loving it! My house is so clean and I finally feel like I can stay on top of things.

Goal #3: Become a runner. Ok, I don't know how well I will accomplish this because I have never in my life been anything close to what you could call a "runner". I'm pathetic on the treadmill. But I want to try.

Goal #4: Drink more water! Oh geez. I don't know how I'm not dead yet.

Goal #5: Gain a stronger testimony in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This might be the most important on my list. I have lived two ways: with Him and without Him. I truly believe happiness only comes one way, and that is with Him. I want to spend time each day working on this goal.

Goal #6: Buy a house!

Goal #7: Strive to be positive in everything I do. Be happy and thankful and good to my husband and daughter every single day.

Goal #8: LOVE MYSELF.

*Notice how I got less descriptive with each goal. Kyle is waiting for me to go watch a movie with him. Haha. But I think I may have over described the first two anyway and probably lost a few people's interests.