What a Week

My goodness it has been quite the weekend/week. Alivia was sick the whole weekend with a 102 fever and then it just suddenly went away Sunday night. I was so happy that she seemed to be getting better but she still wasn't herself so I took her in to the doctor yesterday. Looks like it's just a summer virus. She has been the fussiest/clingiest EVER. He said that adults who are getting this say that it gives them a pounding headache. Poor girl. It didn't help that Eric went out of town so we were on our own. Plus I'm trying to get ready for camping this weekend. Ugh! But today was much better and my mom came up to help and play with Alivia.

Eric and Mandy's birthdays are this weekend camping so I made some chocolate peanut butter cupcakes to take. I made an exception to our no processed food for their birthdays. I mean come on, you have to live a little. They look so yummy. They have a peanut butter filling inside that reminds me of a peanut butter ball without the chocolate coating. I might have died and went to heaven.


Then this little miss got into the dogs' water bowl and just went to town splashing. Uh gross but it kept her entertained while I finished dinner.

So I filled up a bowl with some toys and took her outside. Who knew tupperware and water could be so much fun!

I think the water felt good at first but when she was done, she was DONE. I will say this. I have so much admiration for single moms. I honestly don't know how they do it. I'm so exhausted when Eric has to go out of town for one night. I'm very thankful for a husband who is so hands on and works so hard to support his family!

Saturday Morning Scene

It's Saturday so that means linking up with Katie for Saturday Morning Scene!

The poor miss has come down with her first bug. She's been fighting a fever and you know she doesn't feel good when she is cuddly and lays around watching baby einstein. I've never seen her be so content to just be still before. So hopefully with lots of love and rest today she will be feeling better!

Blog Makeover

The wonderful Erin at Designer Blogs just installed my new blog design. I love it!

Shaved Puppies and Kitchen

The dogs finally got their summer shave. I think they are SO cute when they are shaved. Here's Zoey:


And here's the piece of work Sadie with Alivia looking on:


Those dogs have so much hair. I usually need to sweep, vacuum and vacuum the whole house every day to make it feel clean. Hopefully the shaving will help that some. I just love how they look like puppies again when they are shaved.

The other exciting thing that's happening is that Eric is redoing our kitchen cabinets! This is how it looked when we moved in over three years ago.


The only thing we've done so far is paint the walls and trim. Kitchens are just so much work and are so expensive so it's been on the back burner. Hopefully soon we can get the backsplash and new countertops done. Anything will be an improvement from this.

Bye bye, wheat...again.

As I've mentioned before, for the last several months I have cut out wheat (among other things) to help Alivia's acid relflux. Her refux has been gone for a few months now so I thought I could probably let her have some whole wheat bread. So on Saturday I gave her some delicious bread from Great Harvest. She LOVED it. Well, I think she has some sort of intolerance to it after all. It was so heartbreaking. Last night and again today she has had absolutely terrible stomach cramps (at least that's what it seems like) and just screamed and screamed in pain. It was awful. Even with her acid reflux she's never acted like this. She's sleeping peacefully now so hopefully since I'm not giving it to her anymore she'll just go back to normal. My poor babe :( Good thing I have a lot of months under my belt of no wheat!

Homemade Tortillas

Tonight I made tortillas for the first time. Since we are on a real food only challenge I've had to start making pretty much everything from scratch. I didn't buy much processed food to begin with but suddenly when you can't eat anything processed you realize that you do rely on the convenience items like bread. So anyway, I wanted to make fajitas tonight so I made these whole wheat tortillas.


They are definitely not the most beautiful but they were delicious! It made a dozen so I just froze the rest with a piece of wax paper in between each tortilla and then in a gallon size zip lock. They were a little time consuming but I'll definitely make them again. Healthier and cheaper!

10 Months Old!

My little Livy Lou is 10 months old today! How is it possible she is now in double digits??

8 1/2 months was a miracle time for us. All of a sudden she started crawling, her acid reflux disappeared (THANK YOU LORD), and we were finally able to do some sleep training. Up until then because of her acid reflux she just did not sleep. And I seriously mean that she would wake up every 1-2 hours crying and I would have to pick her up, give her some colic calm, and hold her until she went back to sleep. And this was all with her sleeping with us. I swore I would never do that but when you get almost zero sleep you do what you have to do. At it's worst she wouldn't even take naps or go to bed at night without me sleeping with her. Let me tell you, I was getting seriously sick of going to bed at 7 pm. Anyway, all that to say, you can see that it is a true miracle that she is now sleeping like a champ! I am able to put her down awake and she usually sleeps until 6ish and wakes up to eat. Sometimes if we're lucky she'll go back to bed until 7-7:30. Some other things that Alivia has been doing this month are:

She is getting her 8th tooth. We're hoping for a good break before her molars start to come in.

Pulling herself up like a champ and cruising on the furniture.

{Showing off some toofers while climbing up the couch}

Loves her some Baby Einstein - thank goodness because otherwise I don't know how I could get ready in the morning!

Eats all table food - she loves eggs (yolks only) and peaches for breakfast. Sometimes she shares my oatmeal with me. She also loves all meat and pretty much everything actually. The only thing she didn't like was banana but she seems to like it now.

{Enjoying some eggs for breakfast}

She got her first taste of bread and let me tell you, she is just like her mother and loves her carbs.

Waves on command to either hi or bye. She also loves to wave at random people in the store. Also, if anyone makes any sort of eye contact with her she thinks they want to be her best friend and gives them the hugest smile ever.

She LOVES sunglasses or glasses. She tries to swipe them and she's so quick about it.

{Trying on daddy's glasses}

It sounds like she's starting to try and say dog. I'm sure it's because she hears me yelling at our dogs all day long!

She also loves to chase and annoy the dogs. She has also recently started to try and feed them from her high chair. Lovely.

{Chasing after Zoey}

We love you baby girl! You make our life so much better and you are just so fun. We can't imagine life without you!

Saturday Morning Scene

It's time for another Saturday Morning Scene. Yes, I'm a bit late today. But the picture was taken this morning when we went to the Saturday Farmer's Market. Alivia was trying to get her daddy's sunglasses while he was taking the picture (sorry it's so dark). Pictures are getting harder and harder to take with the little miss!

Pool Time FAIL

We've finally been getting some hot weather around here so I thought it would be fun to get out Alivia's little pool. She's always liked the bath so I thought for sure she'd like sitting in the pool water. It started out good. She was having fun climbing all over me trying to get the camera while daddy was blowing up the pool.
Then it was time to get in the water. And this was the best picture I could get ha!

She freaked out before her feet even touched the water??? I don't know if the pool scared her or what. She's been a little cranky lately because she's getting another tooth so maybe that's what the deal was. I love how Sadie is looking on just dying to jump in the water. I guess we'll try again in a few days and she if she likes it any better.

Just Because She's Cute

1st Trip to the River

We took Alivia to the river for the first time on Saturday. Oh my, she hated the cold water. We only put her feet in but you'd have thought she was dying. It was pretty funny, bless her heart.


The dogs live to go to the water. They could go fetch and swim for hours if we'd let them. It's great because it tires them out for days.

This was Zoey's other favorite thing to do. She'd get in the water and be soaking wet and then roll in the dust. Nice.
Hopefully we can go more often now that the weather is finally warm!

Playing at the Park and Other Randomness

This last week has been craaazy. It wasn't the best week but we did have some fun moments. We took Alivia to the park for the first time. Here's her first time going down the slide. Please ignore her outfit, her daddy dressed her.


Sadie tried to walk on the play equipment. She wasn't a real fan of the grates ha!


Zoey showing off with her one trick that she can do -- jump really high to get the ball.

And then yesterday I tried to make our ugly back fence look a little prettier with some hanging baskets. They are really pretty in person. We're trying to get the backyard all spruced up for Livy's 1st birthday party. How is it possible that I'm already planning her first birthday???

As you can see, our dogs are wrestling and trying to destroy our grass.

Then we headed down to my parents house for a few hours while Eric went to the shooting range. Alivia decided to attack Cameron's face. It was quite amusing.

The best part was later when we were watching the pictures on the TV, she was laughing at herself. Too funny. She's also mastered waving and she now waves at random strangers. She's much friendlier than her mom.

Have a wonderful Saturday!

Saturday Morning Scene

I'm linking up with the lovely Katie this morning.


Watching some baby einstein (seriously the dumbest movies ever) while eating breakfast. Eric had to work today so I knew this would be the only way I could get ready. Mother of the year right here.