Professional Family Photo

The Kelly Family plus us Heits and a Bowles
Chelsea wouldn't smile until she got to sit in the little white chair. Oh well.
This was also before her hair cut.

Us Heits
Erin, Rick, and Chelsea.
We ordered a slightly different photo of the same pose to hang on our wall.

Grandma Diana and Grandpa Mike
They also ordered a slightly different photo of the same pose, though personally, I like my dad's little grin in this one, hehe.

The Sisters: Beth, Jennifer (Bowles), and Erin

We'll end on the cutest one of us all. Miss Chelsea, actually smiling in her little white chair and long hair.

It's Birthday Time!

A little pre-party swinging.

Starting out healthy with Doritos! Yum! For Chelsea's second birthday we took her to the auditorium where they had sloppy joes, chips, brownies, and soda to eat. For five dollars a kid they could jump all they want in those big blow up jumpy things. I don't know what they are called, but we thought Chelsea might enjoy them.

We were right! She loved every minute! She was bounced around and jostled by some big kids. One little girl even jumped on her back (we got it on video even) and Chelsea didn't seem to mind. She just got up and kept jumping. Whew! That was a relief, since that potentially harmful jump happened in the first five minutes she was in there. No other potential heart attacks (for ME) happened, thankfully. Yay for uneventful excitement and fun.

Whee! Get all that energy out!

Some of these were too big for Chelsea to go in. She had a blast in the few she was big enough for and didn't even ask to go in the huge ones. Smart girl.

Making her way up this big slide. I have some really cute video of her coming down and getting really excited that she DID IT! DID IT! DID IT! If I can't get it to upload on blogger (I seem to have trouble with that) I'll put it on facebook later.

We had a Princess theme this year, so of course, we had a Princess cake!

Not as a big a spread as last year, but I didn't have my professional party planners (my sisters) do the party this year. My mom bought the cake and I made cookies and we mixed up some punch. I made the pink punch because it was pink, and Chels loves all things pink, and I decided that's what I wanted to drink. I knew Chelsea wouldn't care what was served, hehe.

Holding her TWO candles.

And now blowing them out! Happy Birthday, Chelsea! Watch your nose, those candles can get HOT!

She managed to get a bit of cake on her fork and is slowly and carefully bringing it to her mouth.

Got it in! Yum! It must have been worth it because she went back for more!

She liked the plates all by themselves, also.

This picture is fabulous. Looking at it, you'd think that she just tasted something yucky and was not liking it. In actuality, she had just double fisted a whole cookie into her mouth and was brushing her cheeks with her fingers. She LOVES chocolate chip cookies. And chocolae milk. And brownies. Yeah, she's a girl who loves her chocolate.

Time for presents! She is getting better at this gift opening thing. By Christmas she will be a pro and we won't be able to hold he back!

From Mommy and Daddy she got Princess books! Books are some of her absolute favorite toys. Yay for books!

Here is a fun igloo from Grandma and Grandpa Heit. After the festivities we went downstairs to watch the assembly of the igloo. Then we all just hung out and watched Chelsea play until bedtime. What en exciting day!

Under the igloo.

In the igloo with Auntie Beth, talking to Beast.

This is the next day. Chelsea got a couple swim suits and other assorted swim accessories from Grandma Kelly. She decided that she wanted to wear her new suit. Ok. Whatever makes you happy! I love this picture. So cute. She also wore those water shoes for days until I finally hid them. She wore the suit all day, including shopping and to the park, though I made her take it off on the playground. Fun times. We officially have a two-year-old!

The joys of a two year old.

Dancing Queen

This is in the first five minutes in the jumpy thing. She gets jumped on, and watch how she reacts.

First Official Haircut

Does this girl need a haircut or what? I've been meaning to cut it for MONTHS, literally. In the meantime, it just gets shaggier and shaggier. This is a pretty good "before" picture, even though it was taken long before the actual cutting took place.

Here's a couple before and after pictures. I'm disappointed in my picture taking abilities, but I decided now is as good a time as any to give her a haircut and it was going to happen whether she liked it or not. Well she didn't really like it. She wanted to lay back against daddy and watch her videos instead of sitting up. She didn't want to look at me so I had NO idea what the sides were looking like. I ignored the bangs because they don't count anymore. They've been trimmed a number of times already. She didn't really sit still, and I have no idea how to cut hair. So this is what we get. :S

Here is a view of the back before and after. It doesn't look like I cut all that much off, but I cut at least 2 1/2 inches or more off. I saved the majority of it in a little envelope to put in her book. Yes, it is as uneven as it looks. Though after the fact when her hair was washed I straightened and evened it out a little bit while it was wet, but she didn't enjoy that either. It looks better than this picture shows, but it's still not perfect. I am just glad to have it done. I notice every bit of hair that I'd like to trim right now, but oh well. I guess I'll just have to learn to be a better hair cutter. Now I need to spring for a haircut of my OWN. Blah. Who can ever decide what to do with their hair? I have no idea personally.

The Park

This is at Grandma Heit's house while Jeff, Lois, and Reed were still in town. Yeah that's how far behind I am in posting, it's true. We played outside until the rest of the family was ready to head over to the park.

We picked quite the windy day to be outside! Check out that hair!

Cute pose. Chelsea doesn't really ride this little scooter. I guess she will push herself along a little here and there, but this day she just sat on it.

Finally at the park! Slides are by far Chelsea's favorite playground toys. She always wants to slide, slide, slide, something else, slide, slide, etc.

She also likes being able to talk Daddy into doing just about everything she does. :)

Swing break. This was fun, but she was ready to go back to the slides soon after. Reed's face is really cute in this one.

Whee!

Hey these tunnel thingys aren't too bad either! Once you get high enough, there is a little slide down to the end!

Cheese! Made it through.

Up the step to the next slide.

Peek a boo!

Kids and balls, gotta love em.

A try on the big swing. It makes me nervous, but she seems to do alright. :S

Vacation Time

Alright folks. Sorry for the long delay between posts! There has been a lot going on. First, we went to Utah for a week or so for Michelle and Jeff's graduation/vacation time, which I will show pictures of here. On the way home from said vacation is when all the excitement began.

We made it about four hours out of Provo when our car decided it didn't want to drive anymore. We started slowing down and had no acceleration whatsoever. Lucky for us we were right by an exit to Sugar City, Idaho and not out in the middle of nowhere. We made it half way up the ramp before we ran out of juice completely. Chelsea was asleep at this point, so I stayed in the car with her while Rick started walking to the nearest gas station. He was still in sight when a car drove past me on the exit. That car stopped and picked up Rick and drove him to the gas station. Well on Sunday in Mormonland most all things are closed, including gas stations. So the nice people brought Rick to their parents house in Sugar City (they were visiting family that weekend) to make phone calls and arrangements. Rick called a tow truck place, which was open, and then several fix-it places, all of which were closed, being Sunday. So there was no hope of continuing the journey that day. Well the nice folks lent Rick their car to pick up us stranded folk and necessary luggage for the night and their nice folks let us stay in their home for the night. They fed us roast beef and mashed pototoes with gravy and corn and homemade bread, and cake. It was much better than the peanut butter and jelly we had planned. :)

So the next day we waited. We found out that the fuel pump and fuel injector needed replacing. :S They said it would be $800. We got a deal and only paid $795! It took a good portion of the day to get fixed, but we did manage to get three more hours of travel in before stopping for the night. We were very blessed with the circumstances overall, being close to a city, being picked up by the first car that drove by, having them be a very friendly and welcoming family that were able to comfortably accommodate us, and having the car fixed the next day, and not having it break because of an accident. I had to push my doctor appointment back a week, but that was no big deal. So that was our first adventure.

When we got home we discovered that our basement was wet! Our carpet on one side of the basement was completely soaked, which happened last year when we had thunderstorm after thunderstorm and many days of rain all together. With all the snow that we got this year melting, we were afraid it would happen. I didn't discover it for a couple days, but when I did I cleared the room of furniture and toys and started sucking up the water with our carpet shampooer. It was that same day that Rick came home on his lunch break and told me the news. He had just been laid off. No notice. Effective immediately. Well sheesh. That was kind of a slap in the face kind of a surprise! So our top priorities became clearing the basement of water (which took a number of days and then had to be shampooed and rinsed and dried again) and finding a job for Rick, which we are still in the process of. I've been spending MUCH less time on the computer, and didn't have time at first to blog. Then I left my camera at Grandma Heit's house and didn't pick it up for about a week. But now, as you can see, we've got our camera back and we can blog blog blog. Let's talk about some fun stuff!

The picture way above is Chelsea checking out the koi fish pond in our hotel after our first day on the road to Utah. She loved the fish!

Here she is checking out one of the several hot tubs at the hotel. We stayed at the C'mon Inn in Billings. It was kind of pricey, but worth the experience. And it was very comfy. We had a crib brought up for Chelsea but she ended up sleeping in the bed with us in the end. Good thing it was a King!

This picture was taken in the game room. It was actually dark with black lights, but you can't tell in the photo. Chelsea is checking out the cool effects on her clothes from the black light.

Swimming! This little kiddie pool was ideal. It felt like a giant bath tub! Chelsea loved getting in and out of the pools all by herself. She wanted to use the stairs in the big pool with no help and wanted to just keep walking even after her feet couldnt' touch! Crazy girl. She objected to being held up or in this floaty at all times in the big pool, but oh well. She fell over a couple times in this little pool and needed help up! She's just so light that any waves knock her over! She had a blast though.

This is the one hot tub in the pool area. All the other hot tubs are interspersed throughout the hotel's main area and around the koi pond. Chelsea wanted to get in this one too, but we only let her dangle her feet a little. We don't want a cooked kid! I only dangled my feet in the hot tub too, so that probably made it acceptable for her. We don't want a cooked baby either!

This is just cute. What more can I say?

Aunti Michelle and Chelsea at the place where we got our family photos taken. I didn't take any big family shots with our camera, but we got a couple cute ones of Rick, Me, and Chelsea. I didn't put that one up because it needs to be cropped and a sun spot taken out of Rick's hair first.

Mommy and daughter...and Grover.

This is just precious! I love this picture. Oh, and a big thank you to Reed for sharing his sippy cup with Chelsea. She was dying of thirst apparently and we were unprepared. We forgot the diaper bag altogether, but even then I wouldn't have thought to bring water. Hey, there's was still snow at home at this point. We weren't used to heat/thirst. But we learned our lesson and carried water AND the diaper bag with us after this. :)

Grandpa Heit with the grandkids. Reed is tossing the ball into the frisbee golf thingy. I love the expression on his face.

Whee! Aren't grandparents great? Life would just be not as fun without them. :)

Chelsea got to spend a lot of time with Aunti Amanda, being as we stayed at their place during the visit. A big thank you to Chris and Amanda! You guys were great! Chelsea loved having Amanda's pen jar and Dr. Suess books to play with. She was also very good at getting Amanda to read to her. :) It was very cute. She still talks about Chris and Amanda and Jeff and Lois and Reed and Randy and Michelle and Greg and Grandma and Grandpa. Daily. Every prayer she has to thank Heavenly Father for all these people, along with other Grandma, other Grandpa, etc. :) Sometimes she even says thank you for other Randy too, hehe.

So here is the last picture we took on vacation before our batteries died. I figured they wouldn't last, yet I didn't bring extras. Silly me. Oh well. We missed some cute moments, but there are so many cute moments every day. I wish I had camera eyes, where I could just blink and capture a cute expression or dance pose or something. Here she is "singing" along with Rock Band while the rest of us do guitar or drums. She got somere around the lines of 22% of her song, hehe.

But anyway. We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers on our behalf. It's been just over two weeks of unemployment for us now. I'm actually feeling quite spoiled, except for the lack of income part. I love having Rick home so much more. Chelsea loves it too. She tends to cling to HIM instead of me if we are both around, so I've been able to get a lot more done for myself and for the house than I normally do. It makes it a little harder for him to get HIS work done, but he always makes time for her and also gets his work done. I love the family time we've been able to share. I say that Chelsea is going to have a shock when Rick goes back to work, but really I think it is going to be ME who gets the shock, hehe.

We are not sure what the future will bring. We've recovered from the shock and are now excited for a change. We don't know what will happen, but we've discussed several things that we want to have happen and goals that we have and what we need to make them happen. It's all up in the air at the moment until a few key things happen, number one being employment. Once that is established, we can get going on "the future." Dun dun dun. ;) In the meantime, we are being well cared for by the families in town. We have shared many a meal with both the Heits and the Kellys. It is much appreciated and we feel the love that goes into every meal. Thank you everyone! We love you!

By the way, Chelsea with be TWO YEARS OLD on THURSDAY. Whoa. We are having a Princess themed party. Pictures are sure to come!