Chocolate!

Painting the Piggy

We bought this "paint your own" piggy bank at Learning Express & Annabelle had a great time painting it. Next we'll decorate it with stickers!

Elmo!

Elmo was at the Learning Express today, Annabelle was very excited to see him. She was a little afraid of him and wasn't sure if she wanted him to hug her. I only got one picture of her standing by him because she kept running off! I think she was more interested in playing with the kitchen & train table in the store!

Our Amaryliss in Full Bloom

Here it is in full bloom. It's started to lean to the side and droop a little now, I'll plant it in the yard when it dies and hopefully it will come back next year!

Chi-Weenie Vote!

You'll notice at the top of the page you can vote on the Writer Family getting a Chi-Weenie Puppy.
Please place your vote!

Growing an Amaryllis

We've been growing this Amaryllis since a little after Christmas. It's starting to bloom now so we should have a really pretty picture of the pink & white blooms soon. Annabelle has been watering & taking care of the Amaryllis everyday! After it blooms we're going to plant it in the yard & hopefully it will bloom again next year. Weather has been fantastic here lately, in the 70's during the day (& 80's somedays) with beautiful sunny blue skies!

Felting Wool Beads

Annabelle & I decided to try wool felting. It was a fun project, we started with some wool I bought at Hobby Lobby, wet it with warm soapy water and rolled it into beads until it formed into a solid ball and then dipped it into cool water. After the beads dried we made this cool bracelet for Annabelle. Next time we're going to make some smaller beads and make a necklace.

Pico (de Gallo)

Here's a new pic of Annabelle's fish - Pico de Gallo. So far she is doing a great job feeding him and helping with changing the water in his bowl...I think she's almost ready for a REAL pet!

FRE.E.E.E.E.E.E.ZING

The weather has been just CRAZY lately. Last night temperatures got down into the 20's. It has not been this cold here in many years from what the local folks tell us. Justin & I spent Friday covering our plants & pipes since all our pipes are exposed and not insulated. Here are some pics of the pipe covering and bedding extravaganza in our front yard! Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to remove the bedding since it's supposed to finally warm up around here.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Today is Daddy's 36th Birthday! Annabelle & I made a homemade coconut cream pie yesterday for Daddy's Birthday since that is his favorite. We're going to grill a giant steak for Daddy tonight and have a Birthday dinner celebration.

Thank you Daddy for being such a terrific Daddy & Husband. We love you & appreciate all you do for our family! Happy Birthday to you!

Matching PJ's

Lisa sent me this pic of Annabelle & I wearing our matching PJ's on Christmas morning. Thanks Lisa!

2010 - What will the New Year Bring?

Ahhh, what will 2010 bring? We're hoping for the best this year but we are definitely already blessed with what we have. 2009 brought a lot of change for us, a new home, new city, lots of change in our lives. But as they say, change makes us grow & learn. So in 2010 we will continue to grow & learn! Lots of love to our family & friends out there. We wish you all the best in 2010!

And Pico Joins the Family

For months and months we've been promising to get Annabelle another pet. Each week when we head to Petsmart to pick up a 50 lb. sack of cat litter for our lazy, grumpy, continually puking 10 year old cat that will probably live to be 150 we peruse the "adopt a cat" section of the store and look at all the other "cool" cats and check out the cute cuddly puppies that the local shelter has in little cages at the front of the store knowing we will probably have grumpy old Walter forever. We walk through the tanks full of fish, crabs & frogs and promise each time that Annabelle will get a new pet "soon". Well, we decided it was time to buy a fish since grouchy old Walter won't let anyone pet, play or touch him (he's a real jerk most of the time but we continue to put up with him, guess we're true "animal lovers"). So, we bought Annabelle a Beta fish and she named him "Pico de Gallo" or "Pico". So far she's been feeding him and taking care of him, even when she fell off her little tikes chair tonight while looking at him and almost knocked out her front teeth.

White Christmas - Just What We Wanted!

I guess you get what you ask for. We wanted a white Christmas and we sure got it! We went from warm, sunny Southern Texas to cold, cold, snowy, snowy Kansas! Check out the difference...amazing! (thanks for playing in the snow with Annabelle Sitti!)

Santa Brought Daddy A Box of ROCKS!

Yes, when you are naughty Santa DOES deliver a box of rocks. (Look at Annabelle's expression!)

More pics from Christmas

Yes, it was a good Christmas at Sitti & Papa's!

After spending Christmas at Sitti & Papa's we headed out to the "big city" of Roxbury, KS to visit Great Grandma Writer & the rest of the Writer family. We were back on the road again (thanks for letting us use your car Papa!). We were so glad to get to see the Writer family again (I didn't take any pics to post, sorry!) It was so good to see our families again (although it did involve a lot of traveling time!)

Sitti & Papa's House

Christmas at Sitti & Papa's was great (as usual). Lots of good (Lebanese) food, fun & white, fluffy snow (& tons of it!). Annabelle got to play with Rylan (he is such a cutie! Even during the "poop incident of 2009") & her other cousins came on Christmas day to play. It was so good to see everyone again. Annabelle was thrilled that Aunt Lisa bought her a new digital camera, I think a new blog with Annabelle's photos might be coming soon :)

Pics of the Flight

Here we are on the first flight. Annabelle was totally AMAZED that we were IN the clouds. I was sitting next to her with my eyes closed - she kept saying "Mama, are you sleeping?"

...and the Journey Begins

We headed out to Kansas on Wednesday, we had to first drive to Harlingen, TX to the airport, tickets were much cheaper flying Southwest out of Harlingen so we decided the 45 minute drive would be worth it to save some money. Soooo... we drove from McAllen to Harlingen, flew from Harlingen to Houston & Houston to Tulsa, Sitti & Lisa picked us up at the Tulsa airport and drove us the two hours to Chanute. Needless to say, by the time I got in the car at Tulsa I had a raging headache and was ready to end the traveling extravaganza. I'm not much of a fan of flying and would much rather pull out each fingernail one by one than get on a plane but I decided to overcome my weird motion/travel/paranoia sickness - all to spend Christmas with family (heeheee!).

And...here's the weird thing...Annabelle TOTALLY LOVES flying (freak I say!). She was not scared one bit. When we had a very rough landing in Harlingen she was screaming WWWWEEEEEE! Like it was some kind of fun roller coaster ride. I'm not really sure where she got this weird love of flying - must be from her Daddy, definitely not from me. I spend my time on the plane with my eyes clamped shut waiting for the plane to land so I can stop my head from spinning (thanks for passing on the motion sickness Mom, love you!).

Our First Christmas in the Valley

All in all our our first Christmas in the Valley was a total success. Santa was able to find our house & delivered lots of gifts (Daddy would say a few too many) for Annabelle. The weather was unusually warm (for us) and we had a very good Christmas. Annabelle's swimmer puppy arrived (thank you Santa) and she got a new scooter that we were able to try out in the driveway right after she opened it (something that would never happen in KS or OK! since there always seemed to be snow and freezing cold weather at Christmastime). We opened gifts here and then headed out to the airport the next day for our journey to Kansas to spend Christmas with family.