I had a great idea

So I had this great idea for a birthday present for Grandma Jeana. Oh it was going to be so cute, Lena was going to hold up signs and I take pictures of what the signs say as she was wishing Grandma a happy birthday...so fun right???

How did I forget that I was not only working with a 2 yr old but I was working with MY 2 yr old...
It started off not too bad, I mean we could still see the words and she was smiling but it wasn't it...so we tried again

Oh yes give a child paper and it's crumpled in 2 seconds...nice thought Jazz

So maybe I ended up taping it to her

Oh this was her rendition of Head Shoulders Knees and Toes...
but it's called Head Shoulders Knees and Nose

I'm so proud

I know what that face is saying...do you??

And then I realized it was nap time!!!

Here is the final cut....Happy Birthday Grandma Jeana!!

Lost Dog

For my local Maryland friends, this female yellow lab was brought to our clinic today. She doesn't have a collar and she is not microchipped!

(Yet another reason why you should have your dogs and cats microchipped!!)

She was found off Indian Hill Drive in Marriottsville. Call our office if you think you know her!

410-489-9410

or email:wfah@ comcast. net

(Yes I know you are thinking that this looks like my Chloe dog, and NO I am not trying to get rid of her, this girl is really a lost dog!)

It's Thursday

It's Thursday here at the Livingston home, which means dad is at school all day and I get to be a stay at home mom for 24 hours!! For those of you still new to us Livingstons, or maybe I just haven't shared it...us Livingstons are still going through school....Masters???? We get asked that a lot, and we smile and answer..."no, bachelors" We're on the 10 year program, but hey at least we're still doing it. I/We refuse to not finish. Even though it would make life easier NOW for Brenton to be working along with me (stupid recession), we know that in the long run, I need a retirement! I need vacations! I need my pool boy Pablo to bring me diet soda drinks while my leathery tanned skin is sitting poolside for the 8th hour in a row (quite the visual no?) Which means The Brenton needs a good job, which means he need a degree or 2. So while he is working on those degrees, I am the bread winner, not something I love but it's what we both agreed to when we moved out here...So we continue on. The good news is, we're just one month closer to the cap and gown, we have 1 school yr left, or in my countdown 14 months!!

So back to Thursdays, I love them, I love Tuesdays and Thursday because that means that I get to be home with my Lena Diva ALL DAY. Some days I am begging for the work day to come to relieve me from the stress an almost 2 year old brings...but lately they have been wonderful. The weather has been good to us, so we venture out, yes it's still 40 degrees but the ice is gone and it's dry (except for today) so we bundle and get our legs moving. I love watching how much she loves to run. She points out the birds that she sees flying, the cats that are being fed by the cat lady across the street and of course the BUGS. She is such a girl.

Tomorrow I will return to work, and I will think about my girl all day, sometimes I cry when I leave and sometimes I just try to get through the workday so I can come home to my wonderful family. Our family has been blessed by the Lord in so many ways, I mean how many kids get to have their dad home with them ALL DAY 3 days out of the week? The Brenton knows that this is a rare time, and he probably won't get to have this with the other kids that may come, so he is soaking it up. I love that. I love that we don't have to pay for daycare because I have a wonderful job that works with my schedule when changes need to be made to fit Brenton's school schedule. One of us is always here for her, and as I have said many times in this post...I love that!

I love so many things about Thursdays,but mostly because NBC has funny shows starting at 8pm, like Community and 30 Rock, Outsourced is great too.

Okay now enjoy the pics:

This is how we do Valentines Day, Crab Legs, Cheesy potatoes, Old Bay,and FLOWERS. He's so good to me!

She is either a kitchen-get-in-the-way-er....or helper...here I think she was helping

It's hard not to love them

The Brenton makes FANTASTIC homemade bread. Stupid recession with their $4 a loaf, he makes it every week and it's just so much better. This bucket is FULL of flour from Costco for $6, you do the math!

This picture represents so many things, 1. She opens doors on her own 2. She gets things out of the garbage and 3. She is just getting too BIG. Flashback to the broken leg, this is a picture just min before we took it off,

(please excuse robo-dog)

She got a hold of the camera,I must say all the fat in her body is probably stored in her feet! Whoowza

The Brenton's Ladies, he's got it good!

East coast stink....bugs

Do you see this jerk?

Well he is one of a bajillion million stinkbugs and they love it over here in Maryland. Rumor has it these buggers are Chinese origin and found there way here with some products that were imported in. They have NO known enemies and they are just taking over.

They are annoying and ate my mint I had planted last summer so we're not on speaking terms.

But this week I found value in these guys....My Lena is afraid of them!! Last year I would find her sticking them in her mouth...don't worry they were dead (yeah I puked a little when I saw her do it)And they are around all the time, but on Friday she had it....they scared her. She saw a bug on the stairs and would not move, even after I moved the bug she still sat there pointing saying "bug, bug, bug" So now I am thinking about when she is getting really clingy and I just need some space....I am going to hide behind a row of stink bugs so she'll leave me alone! I am even debating a stink bug t-shirt!

We almost did it

Livingston Good News Moment:

For the last few weeks Lena had finally stopped saying her precious F word. We changed it to Fork, it was perfect.

That is until I was at Costco with Lena yesterday and I started saying "Fake" well that was just not right, and out comes that awesome word she liked to say so much. My Bad. I think I am just waiting for her to say it when everyone is quiet at church.

They missed the Mark

So way back when,I went Christmas shopping, looking for a stocking stuffer for The Brenton. I found this great deal, it was a Nivea for Men gift set that included

1)Very Manly body wash
2) Very Manly shaving cream
3)Very Very manly aftershave lotion
(did I mention this was all for very manly sensitive skin? That was an oversight, The Brenton has regular tough manly skin)
and last but not least
4)very manly chapstick...and here lies my concern.

and mind you, I took like 4 marketing classes so I am a PRO at this stuff)

Now I can imagine it must be hard for the people who design and create these products to go from their main consumer group (oh yeah marketing terms..that's right!) of women and channeling it towards men. And I can see how they tried, I mean they made sure to make the chapstick "Non-shine" so it would appeal to men...BUT they really missed the mark on this because

they designed a chapstick for the man to use EXACTLY like a tube of lipstick! The Brenton likes the product but vows to never use this thing outside the house because it will look like he is applying makeup.So close but yet so off!

I'm ALIVE!!

Holy cow where did my blogging go? I will do my best to catch you all up and get on a better blogging schedule (pronounce shed-ual).

October-The Brenton and I worked and went to school and parented...I worked,he schooled and we both parented. Adalena enjoyed her first real good Halloween and the meaning of way too much candy.

Nov-November, was pretty much like October, only difference was we really got into some good eating. Though family was not close by we still enjoyed our Thanksgiving. It was full of smoke alarms, burned arms and a delicious meal, and isn't that something to be thankful for!

Dec-wow!! What an amazing month, I don't remember much of it since it went by way too fast, but I must say that we were a very blessed family! We had work, we had our health and we had each other, so what more could we ask for? Oh yeah, a little girl with her first Tu-Tu, thanks Aunt Jamie!

Jan-The new year, so far it started with this pretty little picture

Spiral fracture of her right tibia! Sheesh! technically this happened in 2010, but the cast joined the family just yesterday. She is a trooper and has come to terms with the cast. It will only be on for 2 weeks, which gives her plenty of time to master her pirate walk. She pretty much walks like she has a peg leg. Tomorrow I am working on teaching her how to say "ArRRRR" with one eye closed. How did she do this you ask??

Well I will tell you, the girl is a climber! She was climbing on the coffee table and fell off, we x-ray-ed it that night with no sign of a fracture. But 2 weeks worth of limping, and 3-4 other trips and falls (which made my baby cry so hard) and I was ready to get it x-ray-ed again. This time we could see her leg healing from what I was told, by Dr. What's Her Face at John's Hopkins... a spiral fracture.

So there you have it 2011 startin' off with a bang. I am so excited for 2011 because 2010 kicked my trash. I enjoy trials/hard times only for the part that it makes me appreciate when there are no trials, so this year I am working on less trials, more enjoying. My New Year's resolution is to learn how to cook French food and to figure out how to get my 19 month to stop saying the F word. Yup you read that right, the one word that is NEVER NEVER used in this house, or by either of her parents and she has said it enough to fill a whole HBO show! I have my work cut out for me!

Happy New Year to you Blogging world, may all your wildest dreams come true!

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What's not to love??

The MVA (DMV for everyone not in Maryland)

Okay so today The Brenton and I had a morning/afternoon date....Brenton ditched school and we ended up ditching Lena and spent 2 1/2 glorious hours together at....The DMV!

Okay so here in Maryland, a little insight for all out "outsiders" is that the DMV here is called the MVA, yeah I get what it stands for and all, but why can't they be the DMV like everyone else?????

So anyway, we were there for 2 good hours so that means lots and LOTS of people watching, and with all of the watching I had about a trillion facebook status updates that I wanted to post...since we all hate when someone changes their status a trillion times in one day...I saved them all for one good blog post...so here we go

(P.S. it seems to be real tiny, so sorry if you have to squint)

It's nice to make new friends

Chloe has found so many new friends here at the new house. Today she found herself a leaf bug. Now I am not going to say that she wanted to play hop scotch with this bug, rather she wanted to eat this green friend....but still a friend is a friend

Life Changing

We moved, yes we did it again....Aren't you tired of reading about us moving?? Sheesh!

There are so many reasons why this move has bettered the life of our family and I can go on and on and on

but I will tell you one of the best benefits of this move

Ahh Mr. Microwave, welcome back!!


Mr. Microwave and I had a falling out

It happened in 2007, when we moved (the first move of many) to a great apt, everything was great, except...it was with no microwave

Why didn't we just buy one?? Well that is a question we debated for a long time, but my answer was that....we had NO counter space for a microwave, well I guess we had some, but if we added the microwave then we would have no place to set down the items that we were microwaving...see the problem???

And then we moved to a new apt here in Maryland that was also without microwave and little counter space


So for 3 very long non microwaving years, we lived in misery, but that misery has finally ended

And I can bring a new man into my life!

The invasion

This is how it started, with just a few boxes here and there. Neatly organized and strategically placed so that the Diva could not get her tape pealing fingers on.
notice my poor insecure puppy Chloe on her pillow, she knows what brown boxes mean

We have to hide boxes on the patio so that both dog and child don't get into them!

This is the box inspector, she has to go through all the boxes to make sure they are up to code!

5 more days and then we are onto a bigger home with get this....SPACE! I am going to be carbo loading all week for our big move, gotta keep my energy up!

I hate Goodbyes

I am a believer that God puts people in our lives for 2 reasons

#1) To make us a better person by giving us helpers, or little angels on earth, as I like to call them

or

#2) To make us a better person through trials because they are a pain in the butt!

So today I am talking about Rileigh Hansen, she is my category #1, angel on earth

Yesterday she and her amazing family packed up and moved to Oregon! Who does that??

Here is my summarized list of reasons why she is amazing

• She always has a smile on her face...always
  
  
• You always felt welcomed in her home
  
  
• She loved my daughter like her own
  
  
• Her frosting recipes were AMAZING, Ghirardelli chocolate and coconut extract..yeah so good!
  
• Anything she baked was a work of art
  
  
• She could dream up a themed party and it would be the greatest thing you've ever seen
  
  
• To call her crafty would be an understatement
  
  
• She knows movies, and in my family, that is a great characteristic
  
  
• She is just one of those people that just makes you want to be a better person
  

She used her great photo-taking-skillz and took

Adalena's 1st birthday pics

Our first family pictures

She made this for Brenton's b-day party
Here she is handing out cupcakes for Brenton's Birthday
Isn't she just amazing??? Okay so Oregon, you better recognize what greatness is in your state now, and find this girl and just love her!! If not, there are many Marylanders who will gladly take her back.