Our Little Bag Lady, Shoes, and The Pumpkin Festival!

All week Addy has been collecting all the bags she can find in the house and carrying them around, with a few other prize possessions, her duck with it's tutu and her keys. She has even gone so far as to put them all by the car, I think she is expecting another trip and wants to make sure we don't leave any of her stuff behind!

In this one you can see the remains of her nose and lip burns from jumping off the bed at the hotel last week!

We made it to the pumpkin Festival this year, and had a pretty good time, taking in all the vendors, hanging out with friends, Addy got her face painted, and she saw her first parade. It was a lovely day! She even wore a pumpkin shirt, she fit right in with the festivities! They had pumpkins there that were big enough all three of would have fit in, they bring them in with fork lifts, quite impressive.

So this week has been all about bags and shoes! What a funny girl. This week at playgroup another mom was saying she has found Toys R us to be the best store for her boys she takes them finds a chair and lets them try out one aisle at a time, I noted we feel that way about the shoe store, Addy thinks she is heaven, and is more then content to play there for as long as I will let her, I am not so sure the shoe store likes us coming, but it is a GOOD time!

North Dakota!

We survived our First trip to North Dakota (as least our first trip as a family there) We actually had a good time. It is a little over five hours to Bismark from where we are, so we decided that since we were going we would make a little family vacation of it. Hooray for Family time! This was Addy fresh out of bed the day after we arrived, she is loving her muffin on a fork? What a funny girl! She loved the Continental breakfast, getting to have whatever she wanted, so not how we run things at home! The traveling was actually not too bad, not nearly what we were expecting, although I am sad to report she watched more movies/tv in our short 3 day adventure then I care to even think about!

Well you may be wondering what there is in Bismark  fun to do? Well we went to the Zoo (we don't have one of those at home) And loved seeing all the animals, the weather was cooperative, just a lovely day!

 ( so after just one week of gymnastics this girl is a monkey, it is like a switch was flipped and my shy clingy girl is back to her outgoing, ready to take on the world girl! She seriously didn't do much climbing at all before, and now we find her on top of pop pyramids at the convenience store, scaling the diapers in the grocery store, and trying to attack this poor flower bed, look at that smile though, I think she likes it, and back to no crying this week at nursery, so worth it!)

No worries they let me leave with my favorite two monkeys! We did a couple days of swimming and most importantly, the reason we were there, we went to the Temple with our friends, that were sealed as a Forever Family!

 Bismark ND temple it is a small temple, but Just Lovely! This is the temple we are assigned to, but it was actually my first time there, as we usually go to the Billings Temple for logistical reasons.

 Here are friends, just after a long AMAZING day in the temple. Liza is due to have her first girl in about two weeks, how blessed for her to be born into the covenant! We are so thankful they invited us to be there with them on their special day, it was really very moving.

 The whole story is quite amazing our friends had some pretty big obstacles in their way to get to the temple so it has taken them a little over a year and half to get there. But they made it! They were planning to go to the San Diego temple, but it just didn't work out, so they decided to go here, and can I just say there are seriously some perks of being in with a small temple, like the day we were there the temple was actually scheduled to be closed for cleaning, but given the circumstances they opened just for our friends! We were also quite blessed. I was the escort for my friend who received her endowment, and Doug was brave enough and kind enough to take on the kids while the morning activities happened, but both Doug  and I really wanted to be there for the sealing, we had stressed over how to make that happen, and had resolved that one of us would have to stay out, when at the last minute a sister from our ward, happened to be there and volunteered to watch Addy, so we could both be there, which will probably be the last time we will be in the temple together until we have this baby, it really was a wonderful day.

Our Forever Family, (me at 26 almost 27 weeks, yikes those sessions are long on a pregnant bladder)

Addy was so tired by the time we were ready to load up the car and come home, she wouldn't even look at the camera to show off her black eye, and rug burned nose and lip, it was quite the weekend for her too, the two monkeys I brought home from the zoo were jumping on the bed, and the little fell off and completely buggered her face! I am so thankful we could go to the temple, and so thankful for my family! I just adore them. This is probably the last of our traveling as a family anyways until December, how nice that the last trip was so fun and memorable.  I love to travel, But really I am quite ready for things to slow down a bit in our neck of the woods, we will see if that happens, LOL!

blah.. BlaH... bLaH....

So, a screening, a very thorough eval, and the result (well don't have the whole written report yet) but come Friday we will be meeting the speech therapist!  A strange thing to be excited about, but, we are excited, for a number of reasons, I am really not going to go into, but after months of seeing our little one digress rather then progress in the speech area of development, we are glad we ignored all the advise we were given and got her screened. She is great at communicating, just not verbally? Which well you know tends to be important. (add a little sarcasm) I think that a number of parents must not want to admit there is something missing in their kids development based on when she failed the screening in the speech area the Screener was very gentle in letting me know, like she was expecting a break down, I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way, I was more on the page of either this is all in my head, or there is really a delay we should be looking into and I just wanted an outside opinion from someone who actually knows and would look at the bigger picture, now, not years from now. And that is just what we got with her evaluation! Four specialists came to our home and evaled her in her "home environment" it was great! So informative and helpful, not to mention the only part our little Addy didn't like was when her four new friends left! So, developmentally she is doing great, with the exception of her speech. It is true she may talk when she is good and ready to, but come Friday we will be ensuring we are doing all we can to help her with her talking, rather then waiting even longer to look into something we have been noticing and concerned about for months. Given our families histories and genetic possibilities  not to mention the pattern we were/are seeing, we had some serious concerns that for the most part have been ruled out! Thankfully, and the best part is that it was all for free, including her coming therapies (we are thrilled to get to see our tax dollars at work,)  While I know there is no magic wand to wave and solve the problem, I am relived and excited to be working on it, rather then just worrying about it..... Why did I hesitate in taking her in?  Really, What an amazing program! ( I loved the insight the specialists brought to our home, and know that years from now should the problem persist I won't be kicking myself for not doing something when I knew I should.)