Five on Friday

1) Zack is FINISHED with his first year of medical school!! He told me yesterday that this is the most difficult thing he has ever done.  He has worked so hard and we are so proud of him!

2) After finishing Burn Notice, Zack and I have moved on to the show White Collar.  We have finished the first season and tonight will move onto #2.  Apparently we love the USA network. 

3) The sister missionaries asked if I would go with them today to a meeting with one of their investigators.  The Lord must know that I need more spiritual experiences in my life!!  I'm excited to be able to go with them and help them out with a ride!  I just hope that if I'm asked to say anything that I will be able to find the right words.

4) I picked up the small book, Thank You Notes from the library this week.  I read some of them to Zack as we took Elise on a walk last night and we laughed the whole way.  If you ever watch Jimmy Fallon you've seen that on his show he ends it with writing little thank you notes that are mainly thanking people/things for the annoyance they give.  Definitely good for a laugh!

5) To celebrate the end of the first year, all the M1's (well, now M2's!) had a BBQ and pool party.  Fred, our friend and future landlord, was gracious enough to be our host!  We had a great time!!We can't wait to have more time to do fun things together this summer.

Elise and I in the pool!  We thought for sure she would love it! We had no doubts, but she didn't love it.  She quietly whined for a little bit but we kept her in there for a while and are hoping that with time she will love it!



Five on Friday, Elise Edition

Five things about our Elise:

1) Her favorite food right now is apples.  She loves it when I slice them and give one to her to gnaw at for hours on end.  She likes holding it in her hand and chomping at it as she continues to play.

2) She loves and fears the vacuum.  I get it out a lot to pick up all the little crumbs we get in the family room and she get so excited when I get it out of the closet.  She looks up at it and giggles and then moves far away from it when I start it up but still has a smile on her face.  It is so funny!

3) She loves her daddy and cries when he leaves each morning.  While I'm so happy she loves him and is sad when he leaves, I wish it wouldn't result in such a meltdown. Makes it hard on me!

4) I think she has been cured from her bad sleeping habits (that I'm sure I inevitably taught her).  She now will sleep from 8pm to about 8am and it is amazing the difference it has made in her and in me!  I love it!

5) She discovered sprinklers!!  We went on an evening walk a week ago to pick up daddy from school and walk home with him.  As we walked in the grass by the medical school, the sprinklers were on and she curiously walked up to it in wonder.  Zack showed her that you could touch the water coming out and she got so excited!!  She then went running through all of them!!  She laughed and loved it and so did we!  She was absolutely drenched from head to toe so we stripped her down and brought her home in only her diaper!  Thank goodness it was a really warm night! 

See?  Just like Dad!  She held up his shirt to me and I put it on her and she was so excited!  The shirt is long sleeved and down to her ankles when she wears it!  Darling!  

Things I love....

My Family

We took this picture on Mother's Day.  It is so rare that we are all dressed up and that we take a picture all together, I wanted to make sure to capture the moment.  I sure do love my little family and especially Elise wearing that darling dress!

Baby Feet

How cute are these little baby feet?  I kiss them all the time :)  I painted my toe nails the other day and Elise watched very curiously and when I switched to do hers she was very excited.  When I finished she stomped around giggling.  How adorable. 

Maligayang Farm

Maligayang means happy, merry in Filipino

This past Saturday we were able to head out to the beautiful farmlands of Wisconsin.  One of the Doctors at Zack's school has a small farm and invited some of the students out to a BBQ and Alpaca shearing!! 

Elise was in heaven being able to run around all over and see all the animals!  They had one llama, alpacas, ducks, chickens, sheep, and of course some dogs!!  What could be more fun for our little girl?!

Here is a look at all of the alpacas and the one llama.  The llama is the tallest one you see in this picture :)  That is how you can tell the difference I guess!! 

Let the shearing begin!!  Dr. Hulbert's family even went to sheep shearing school to know the proper way to shear them.  I can't believe how much fur comes off of them!!  It was really neat to get to watch the transformation!

They had lots of sheep that were all named after a different kind of coffee bean. This one in the picture with Elise is named Cappuccino.   Dr. Hulbert said that this one is more like a dog than a sheep so they let it run around the yard and even give it some chips.  Elise had so much fun chasing him around they yard.  It was the cutest thing! 

We had a great time!!  It was fun to get out of the city and get to play with these great animals!

Kids in Motion

Yesterday I decided to do something out of the ordinary.  Elise and I went on a little mommy/daughter date to a fun place called Kids in Motion.  It is an indoor play area with a huge soft play in the middle and lots of fun themed play rooms.  There are rooms for trains, art, music, dress up, dinosaurs, construction, etc.  It is a lot of fun :)  It was great to get out of our ordinary routine and mix things up! 

 Having fun filling up her dump truck!!

She loved it when the bubble machine would come on!!  She would run out and scream and clap her hands!  She is a happy screamer and screams very loud!  Other kids were trying to shush her and were covering their ears, it was pretty funny!

Crawling up the soft play!

I got in the soft play with her to make sure she was safe and wouldn't get stuck and man- it made me feel old!!  It hurt my knees to crawl through these tunnels :)  It was worth it for all the fun Elise had though.

Hanging out in the Dinosaur room with her friend Mr. T-Rex and the Brontosaurus.

After we were finished at Kids in Motion (we were there for 2.5 hours!) we stopped by Wendy's to share a frosty :)  It was a fun little outing for the both of us and made me realized that we need to get out and explore new parts of Milwaukee more often! 

My Library Card

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have been putting lots of things on hold at our local library. It is great to get that email telling me that my items have arrived but sometimes that means that I have lots of things all at the same time.  Currently here is what I have checked out:

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
The Baby Sleep Solution by Suzy Giordano
I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
So Sexy, So Soon by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne
Secrets of a Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg
Philadelphia Chickens CD, music by Sandra Boynton

I just picked up this lot today, so I have a lot of reading to do!  It isn't looking good that I'll finish all of these in the three weeks I've got, but I'll give them a whirl!  What have you read lately?  Anything to recommend?  And yes...I do have a goodreads account, I just never log in! 

Five on Friday

- It is only 8:30am as I write this and I have already done my 30 Day Shred workout and went on a long walk with Elise!!  I decided a few days ago that I need to kick up (aka start again) my exercise routine.  Let's hope I can keep it up for a long time!

-It is the Kentucky Derby tomorrow!!  This will be the 138th annual derby and this is America's longest running sport!  I started watching and getting into the derby in high school when my favorite teacher offered extra credit and other prizes for a correct pick of the winner.  She even let us go to the computer lab to research all the horses.  Other random derby facts: it is quite the feat to be a Triple Crown winner.  In order to do that you need to win the following races- The Preakness, The Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.  You can have a horse of any age in two of the three races but to be in the Kentucky Derby you have to be 3 years old, so you only get one shot at it!!

Do you have your derby hat ready?

-It is Cinco de Mayo tomorrow!!  Instead of doing something to celebrate our Mexican heritage (we don't really have heritage by birth but Zack's mom grew up in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish) we have been invited by some friends to Cinco de Sushi at a Japanese Ginza restaurant, should be fun!!

- Our dinner menu this week has consisted of the following recipes:
     * Hot Buttered Scones
     * Lip Lickin' Chicken
     * Chicken Noodle Soup
     * Soft Tacos
     * Asian BBQ Chicken
     * Slow Cooker Chicken and Rice
     * Creamy Ranch Pork Chops
The were all delicious and fairly simple!!  I know I always need new recipe ideas, so I thought I'd share what we have been eating!

- For some strange reason I have heard people talk about the movie Annie Hall a lot this past week.  I decided that since it is a classic, won 4 academy awards including Best picture and because it has Diane Keaton in it I should check it out from the library and watch it.  My review?  I was so bored the entire time!!  Granted it came out in 1977 and times were different- movies were made different, comedy was a little different and so were politics and other things so I guess we can say it just isn't a movie for me!  Have any of you seen it?  What do you think of it?

Practically Perfect in Every Way

No, I'm not talking about me.  Ha ha ha, as if any of you thought that :)  I'm talking about my sweet Elise.  I wanted to update everyone that we had a fabulous night of rest here last night!  Here is how that was accomplished: I had a white noise machine in Elise's room (have for months now), white noise machine in our room, ear plugs, windows open and poof! 9 hours of sleep was obtained!!  I can't tell you how great it feels to have slept so long and to not have to get up several times in the night.  Even if you only get up for 5 minutes, it really takes a toll.  We'll see if this method works again tonight, fingers crossed!! 

I know that my last post was a big rant on lack of sleep, but besdies that Elise truly is a great little girl!  She has always taken great naps (still does) and is so much fun to be around!  She is learning so many new things this month that I wanted to share:

-She blows kisses!!!  She saw someone do it on TV and immediately mimicked it!!  It is the cutest thing ever!!

-She plays peek a boo

-In the song, "If You're Happy and You Know It" she has figured out how to say "hooray!" for the third verse!

-She waves hi and bye to everyone she sees!

-She still LOVES dogs with all her heart.  I wish we could give her one :)

-She loves to give kisses to me and her dad.  She even makes a little smooching noise while she does it.

-She loves to eat Strawberries!!  Definitely one of her favorite foods!