Celeste loves her Daddy.

She did not want to cooperate for a picture with Taylor. I was trying to get a pic of her cute dress for my sister cause she bought it for her.

We decided she might cooperate more for her mommy. But she was still pretty ornery. Taylor, on the other hand, loves getting his picture taken. He is a ham.

Under the table is Celeste's favorite place to be. She loves Taylor's booster and especially loves it when he is sitting in it, or when he is under the table with her. They are a couple of kooky kids.

Disaster

I'm playing catch up right now. I've been meaning to sit down and do this for awhile now, but every time I do, I end up just reading other blogs and then when I remember, the kids are demanding my attention. Yeah, I have a lot of excuses, but mainly, I'm just lazy and usually want to go to bed when I have a minute at the end of the day. Anyway, over a month ago, we had a bit of a problem with our main water line to the house. Well, I guess you could say it burst. The house we live in is almost a hundred years old, and the water line was about 50. It had had enough, I guess, and decided it was done. Thankfully, we are renting and it was the owner's responsibility to fix, so all we had to do was find a place to stay for several days. At first, I thought it would be fixed by the next day, so I figured we'd just stay here and suffer through not having any water. Apparently, I don't know anything about plumbing, though, and it took all weekend, plus a day. Justin's sister read about it on Facebook and immediately called me to invite us to stay at her house. They have a son on a mission, so his bedroom of course is free. I'm still so grateful for her offer, considering I had grossly misjudged the amount of time the water would be out. The plumber did say that we could probably have gotten a water key from the city to turn the water on whenever we needed it, but umm, no thanks. Walking outside to turn it on and having more water go down into the cellar was not too exciting a prospect. So, we stayed with family for 4 nights and got back into our house on Monday. I am happy it's fixed, but now we have a mud pit for a driveway because it was only gravel before and now the gravel is gone. But once again, happy that we are renting and didn't have to pay for the new pipeline.

This is when I realized there was a problem. I went outside to throw something away and found the driveway spouting water and running down my sidewalk.

The water pooling outside the cellar and then flowing down the stairs.

The city had to come and dig in the snow and ice to find the water shut off valve, and then they left the rest up to us. It took several hours to finally get a hold of our landlord, and he couldn't get a plumber out till the next day. Fun experience. Glad it's over.

Haiti

I found this picture while browsing through photos of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. It broke my heart to see this poor father's face as he's carrying his child who was killed in the disaster. My heart aches for the survivors and all that they are going through right now. A lot of people lost loved ones and all that they have in this world, and I am so grateful for all the people who are doing what they can to help. I was reading an article about all the celebrities that are donating and trying to raise money for the relief effort and a lot of the people that commented on it were saying that there are a lot of people suffering here in America too, and that they are going to help them before they would be sending money over there. I don't think people realize that even before this earthquake, the people over there had nothing. And now they have less than that. The only way they can survive and move on is with our help. Even the most poverty stricken family here in America has more than most of the people over there, simply because they live here. We are so blessed to live in this country, we have much to be thankful for, and I hope we can remember that when life gets hard. I was thinking about the big earthquake that is going to hit someday here, and realized that even if it is of a larger magnitude, we still wouldn't suffer the devastation that they are experiencing in Haiti. I am not doing this post to make people depressed, I just wanted to express the thoughts that have been going through my head since last week and I finally got a moment to do it. So, hug your families a little tighter, there are many people in Haiti that lost theirs last week.

Christmas 2009

After we got the tree up. It is so small in our house with the high ceilings

We went to the lights at Layton Park. Taylor loved it, Celeste was a little cold.

Christmas morning. They were both in a relatively good mood. It was nice.

Justin's present from my mom and dad, they spoiled us.

We had a lot of fun this Christmas with our two kids. Taylor really enjoyed opening his toys and I think he will actually remember Christmas when it comes around again. He was still scared of Santa, I have high hopes for when he's 4. Celeste was okay with him, but she didn't really know what was going on. We spent Christmas Eve with Justin's family. Justin's mom does a great job with a beautiful program every year that helps us to think of the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas morning, we actually slept in until 7:30, which was pretty nice. Both kids were actually happy to be opening presents. After that, we headed over to Justin's mom's again for a little while before going down to my parent's for the remainder of the day. The kids got some great stuff from everyone and so did Justin and I, actually. It really was a nice Christmas and of course it all went too fast, as it will next Christmas. It always does.

6 months

My little angel is six months! I seriously can't believe how fast time goes. She is the little flower on the left. This was taken on Halloween, obviously. The other girls are her cousin Alexis who is next to her. She was born two months after Celeste, and then cousin Emily, who was born two months after that. I'm so excited to see her grow up and get her cute personality. She is mobile, not quite crawling all the time, but she's got the army crawl down. She loves to follow Taylor wherever he goes. I'm gonna start having to use a baby gate to keep her out of the kitchen. She is just a beautiful little smiley girl. I love her more every day. Unless she is just too ornery, you can always get her to smile. She smiles for strangers too. She is not shy. Taylor adores her, he won't leave her alone ever. Unless she's asleep and I threaten to make him take a nap too. I'm so grateful to have her, she seriously keeps me sane. Although, I'm not so sure that will be the case as she gets older, but right now it's great.

Umm, I'm here

I am so bad at posting on this blog, I sit and read everyone else's blogs forever, but fail to update mine. I'm what you call a procrastinator. I even think of things I would like to blog about, but find other things to do instead. I know, no excuses, right? Anyway, I finally have a song that comes up on my page that I will probably not mute every time I'm on it. I love Glee! I think it's one of the most clever and funny shows that have been on in a long time. And if they keep it up, they'll probably be on for a long time. Hopefully. Have you ever noticed that the networks decide to cancel shows for no reason? Shows that seem to be doing pretty well and have been around for a few years? It drives me crazy when I like a show and the next season it doesn't come back. My Name is Earl is one of those shows. You can't just axe a show after it's been on for four years and not even resolve it. It's just not right. That was a really funny show and we'll never even know if he finished everything on his list.

And just so you know, I've been a t.v. junkie in the past, but I'm really trying to break the habit. Some shows that I will just not give up though are Glee(of course), Bones, and The Office. I also love So You Think You Can Dance, but for some reason, I haven't gotten into it this season. Maybe because they just finished a season in the Summer... Oh, and I've been a long time fan of American Idol, but we'll see what happens this coming season. I might be able to give it up, except I really want to see how Ellen Degeneres does judging. It could be pretty funny.

Anyway, the family is doing great. Celeste is growing like a weed. She is only 5 months, but she can scoot across the floor like a pro when she sees something she wants. She can't so much sit up though, too much to look at. She'll fall over every time. Taylor seems a little bored right now. I wish I had gotten him into preschool this year, but it just didn't happen. Next year for sure. But if anybody has any ideas on how to entertain a 3 year old with a lot of energy, I need some ideas. He really needs something to focus his energy on that will not harm him or others. If I could afford My Gym or a tumbling class, I think that would be my best bet. But not right now. That'll have to wait awhile. Life is kind of crazy right now. We have tried only Justin having a job, and it's lasted over 5 months, but until he finds a new job, I really need to find something part time and in the evenings to supplement our income. Anyone out there know of anything? I've even toyed with the idea of making a new blog and trying adsense, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I've heard you can make some money doing that, but I'm not sure what I'd even blog about. And while I'm on the subject, Justin needs a new job. He loves his job at Goodson Signs, but they just can't afford to pay him enough to support his family and have insurance. He is a very talented Graphic Designer, I think that he is worth a lot more than he's getting right now. He is starting a blog to showcase his portfolio, so go check it out. It's JDB-Design.blogspot.com. He doesn't have anything on there yet, but he will soon. I really don't think I have anything else on my mind right now, so Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Yes, we still do have Thanksgiving, it is before Christmas. I think all the stores forgot about it.