The many faces of Kara...

My little Miss Buns loves to make all kinds of faces.

Some of my personal favorites are...

Kara sings her little buns off.

Is it stinky in here? Oh wait, it's my diaper.

Mmmmm, I think I'll have some milk chocolate covered goodness, Mommy. Now crack this box open for me before I scream so loud the whole country will hear.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Look who graduated to a big girl carseat today.... SHE LOVES IT!!!

Romance of blogging...

Wow, I almost made it 2 months without blogging. I'm awesome.



But someone, let's caller her Rachel B., no, let's caller her R. Brown, was harassing and belittling me for not posting and told me I must repent and reform. I declare I have reformed.

Ok, highlights from the past 2 months. Let's see if my 9 month post partum brain can conjure up anything...

• Kara is cuter than any baby should ever be allowed to be, and I'm going to eat her up because she is the most deliciously adorable thing I have ever seen in my life. She is crawling like a champ and pulls herself up on EVERYTHING. She stands there and is so proud of herself when she maneuvers herself upright and she starts yelling shouts of victory like a rockstar. Kara now has her 2 bottom teeth and those bad boys are sharp, but they give her such a cute little toofie grin. She jibber jabbers all day long, and she only cares about her toys for 2 seconds and then it's back to crawling all over Mommy and pulling herself up to a standing position a million times per day. She loves to go outside and sit and play on the grass and eat everything she can get her hands on. I love being her Mommy more than anything in the world; it is honestly better than I ever dreamed it would be, and everyday is a fun new adventure with my sweet little Kara Faith.

• Dean, oh yes, I said Dean. And no, I'm not mad because I'm using his given name instead of Honig. I am just in a Dean callin' kind of mood. Dean went to Iowa for 9 loooooooong days (they seemed long to me) to take Part 3 Board review, and to take Part 3 Boards. He stayed with J&R Brownie Bites and had a good old time with them. Thank you again for letting him crash at your casa. He'll find out on Oct 23rd how he did.

• Our fish tried to commit suicide. He jumped out of a bowl, took a 30 story plummet (from our counter top to our floor), flopped at least 10 feet across the floor, and was there at least 5 minutes. How do I know he was there 5 minutes? Because I walked right past him when I woke up in the morning and thought he was a dried out leaf. Five minutes later I'm on the couch texting Dean and our fish starts flopping!!! Excuse me?!! I started freaking out, grabbed a washcloth, scooped him up, and put him in his bowl where he just kept floating up to the surface. I thought he was a gonner. Alas, no, death was not his destiny that fateful day. Optimus Prime is still with us, just as spunky as ever. His color came back, he finally stopped floating to the top of his bowl, and he started eating again after 2 or 3 days. He's the fish that just keeps giving. Now try to tell me that he doesn't live up to his name.

• A Mercedes SUV rear ended us a couple of days ago. No real damage to our van, just a little tiny dent to the rear fender, but it was enough to tick me off and want to put the lady's head under my hood and repeatedly close it on her.

• We went to Arizona to visit Dean's Mom and Step Dad and brother and sister. We had a good ol' time and it was nice to be able to relax in the desert. We went swimming while there and our poor little Kara had an allergic reaction on her face. We thought it was from the saltwater in the pool but we've since come to find out that she was allergic to the spray on sunblock. Poor little bubby. Kara got some nice snuggle time in with her Oma, and she fell in love with the kitties and tried to show them love them by pulling their fur out.

• We went to Idaho for my cousin Randy's funeral near the end of August. He unexpectedly passed away of a heart attack, and he left behind his sweet wife Lisa and two cute teenage daughters, Rachael and Saren. It was nice to see family, but it is always sad that it takes a loved one passing away to conjure up such a get together. Lisa is such a wonderful mother, and she and Randy had such dedication and love for one another that was obvious to everyone who ever met them.

• I got a lovely staph infection in my left leg, and that sucker hurt. I got super sick, my leg had spreading huge red splotches on it and then it seized up on me and cramped up like I've never had it do in my life. Took a little trip to the urgent care and got some antibiotics and muscle relaxants. All is well now, but it wasn't so fun at the time. I had visions of it having to be amputated.

• We went to a movie for the first time since November. Dean, Kara, and I went to a drive-in and saw G.I. Joe and Transformers 2. I'll give you 1 guess as to who picked what we were going to see. But when I say "saw G.I. Joe and Transformers 2", I use the term loosely. Kara fell asleep 2 minutes before the first movie even started and slept the entire time. I sat in the front seat and made fun of G.I. Joe and my eyes were sore the next day from how much I rolled them. Meanwhile, Dean is over there drooling at the fighting scenes and yelling "YEAH! GET EM!!!" at the screen. Then for Transformers, I decided that I needed to climb in the backseat of the van and lie down because surely my dreams would be better than that movie. Dean, of course, loved it. Apparently it wasn't as good as the first one to him. Point being, awesome date. Just like our first date, a lot of eye rolling and me falling asleep.

• Dean is all done with his preceptorship. He learned a ton from the Dr. he precepted with, and he's really loving motion palpation now. He's still going to go into the office at least once a week to learn more from this Dr because he's a great teacher.

• Our computer has a virus. We had to completely wipe the hard drive clean 3 days ago, and the virus is still there. Cruddy.

• My 28th birthday was yesterday. Dean and I went to the Seattle Temple while Chelsey, my sister in law, was gracious enough to watch Kara for 4 hours. It was a big stepping stone for me because I've never left her for that long. I totally cried in the van right after we left Kara with Chelsey because I missed my little girl and I just get so worried about her even though I know she's in good hands. It's just overprotective mommy syndrome. But Kara was wonderful for Chels, and Dean and I had a wonderful time at the temple, and we really needed that to refocus and rejuvenate ourselves. Thank you so much Chels.

There's your catch up over our last 2 months. I'll see if I can wrangle up some pictures of Miss Buns in the next couple of days, but now my messy front room is calling and that mountain of laundry isn't going to wash itself.

Although it should.

Miss Buns plays and plays...

I will destroy this Lego tower with one sweep of my chubby hand!

Run, Secretariat, RUN!!!!

Kara got her very first sippy cup on Saturday and she loves it. She's still getting used to the handles but she was so jealous of all the other babies sippy cups that we had to buy her one to satiate her. Money well spent.

This sippy cup is the greatest invention in the world Mommy!!!

Hmmm, now how do I unscrew this top so I don't have to use this spout like a sucker?

Kara loving the sand at Redondo Beach. She's our little beach bum.

Ohhh, look, a sand crab. I'm going to eat it.

Mommy, how many times have I told you? Don't talk when I'm talking.

Apparently we have an unnaturally flexible baby.

She's just plain gorgeous.

I turned around the other day to find Kara wearing my bra as a backpack. I promise she did this completely on her own.

Pack and play, who needs one? I am content to just sit here in my Pampers diapers box.

TIHS BOX IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!!

She wants to crawl sooooo badly but instead she sticks her butt up in the air and does a baby pushup.

More carrots please.

What more can I say???...

I love my little Kara monkey more than I can express...

Growling Girlie...

Kara all of a sudden has an affinity for growling... IT'S HILARIOUS!

She growled nonstop today and she growled at everything and everyone. She's our little lion.

Another cross country trip...

We're back in Washington for good!!!

It wouldn't be a true Sheldon driving trip without a couple of mishaps along the way so why would this trip be any different? On June 30th Kara and I boarded our plane on to Denver and then on to Seattle and the worst that happened to us was that the cruddy gate attendants who handled our stroller when I gate checked it scratched up the stroller handle.

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My hubs and his mama, they got the fun part of the trip.

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We had some awesome guys from church in Davenport come out and help us load our moving truck on the 29th and some lovely ladies came over to help take care of Kara and help clean. It was more appreciated than I can express. Honig's Mom flew out to Moline that evening and then they headed out at the same time Kara and I went to the airport the next day. All is well for them until they get to Council Bluffs, Iowa and the check engine light went on and the Penske wouldn't go any faster than 55mph. So they called Penske and they had them take it to a shop in Omaha, NE just across the state line. A fix that was supposed to take 1 hour ended up taking 3 and then they got on their merry way.

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They drive drive drive forever across the neverending state of Nebraska and they got to Cheyenne, Wyoming and the check engine light goes on again and they can't go faster than 55mph. Since it's in the middle of the night they drive past Cheyenne to somewhere where they can park and sleep. They called Penske at 8AM and they had them turn around and take their sweet 55 mph time back and take the truck to a shop in Cheyenne. They look at the truck and after an hour of them "working on it", they come out and tell Honig and his Mom that they can wait for the entire weekend in Cheyenne for a part to be shipped in that they need or they can wait around for a new Penske truck to be brought up from Denver later that day and they'd hire a moving crew to help move all of our belongings over from the craptastic truck to the new truck. Of course they opted for the second choice so after waiting 6 hours for the truck to get there from Denver and the world's poorest excuse for moving guys transferring an apartment full of stuff from one truck to another and scratching up some of my stuff while doing it, they were on their way 8 hours after initially getting to the shop.

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So then they drive drive drive some more.

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They stopped in Orem, Utah for the night at Amber's house, Honig's oldest sister. They visited for a little while and then went to bed since they'd only slept for 2 seconds so far. The next morning they head on out and it's pretty toasty outside so what do you guess is going to go wrong now? That's right! No air conditioning. It got up to 95 degrees out and my poor hubby and mother-in-law don't have any air conditioning in their truck. They were roasting and boiling the entire trip up from Salt Lake to Seattle. They opted not to stop again and have Penske fix it because with their luck they would have either taken all day to fix it and put them wayyyy behind again or they would tell them it was unfixable and they'd have to switch trucks again and they were having none of that so they just endured being in a sauna for 14 hours and rolled the windows down as much as possible. They just wanted to get to WA to see their family. Honig was missing his little Kara and her mommy pretty badly so he was willing to make minimal potty stops and food stops.

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So, moving out to Iowa we learned to not rent from Budget. Moving from Iowa we learned not to rent from Penske. Looks like Uhaul will be our next one to try. The only 2 good parts of the cross country trip were that Honig and his Mom got to spend some quality time together, and after taking the truck back we got 60% of our rental reimbursed.

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There's nothing like a Sheldon cross country trip.