Like mother, like daughter?

I am not a girly girl. Never have been. When I was little, I was always playing baseball with the boys and loved running and just being outside climbing trees and really not caring about getting dirty or hurt. In 3rd grade, we moved to Texas in December(perhaps some foreshadowing of my adult years). On Tuesday, we had gym class and one of my favorites was dodgeball. I remember Miss Poole standing there with the red mesh bag filled with the yellow Nerf balls telling us to get ready to play and reminding us of the rules of the game. My best friend at the time was Allison Brown and she leaned over to tell me that my shoe was untied and that I should tie it. However, Miss Poole had just told us to get to our sides for dodgeball. As we were moving to our sides, she began to divide the Nerf balls to the teams and was throwing them to the different sides. This made us move a little quicker to get to our side. The competitive side of me said worry about your untied shoe later after you get one of the precious few Nerf balls. I saw a ball floating gently in the air just out of my reach. I just needed to move a little faster, Allison right beside me thinking the same thing. Next thing I know, I step on my untied shoelace, trip, and fall forward. This doesn't sound too bad...only thing is, there is a WALL right in front of me. I fell face first into the gym wall (kitchen side for those of you familiar with IC), bounced off, and onto the floor. Now I'm sitting on the floor and I look down at my white pants. There's one big drop of red on one leg, now two, one smaller drop on the other leg. Hmm...more and more. My mouth hurts. Allison screaming for Miss Poole to come over. I have the Nerf ball. Miss Poole arrives and tells me to just be still. She gets me a cold towel and tries to stop the bleeding. I'm crying now. I have to give up my Nerf ball. No more dodgeball. After they get me off the gym floor, they call my sister who is in high school. She is in the middle of her geometry exam. She is expecting to get in trouble for something, then she sees me and my face is distorted. She calls mom to come pick us up. She is glad for once in her life to have a little sister because I get hurt at the same time that she was about to fail her exam. We go to the emergency room and the doctor puts in 5 stitches to my upper lip. He explains that my tooth has completely made another opening in my head all the way through my lip. I have 2 stitches on the outside of my lip and 3 invisible ones inside to close the hole on either side. I cannot smile, talk, laugh, eat, anything that you normally do with your mouth. It hurts. We go home. I haven't played Dodgeball yet. The next day is Wednesday, my last day of school before we move. My class and teacher are so nice that they throw a party for me to say goodbye. They have cake. THEY have cake. I can't eat any of my own cake. How depressing. I hurt. Today I went to pick up Claire at daycare and the teacher says she has two accident reports from today and one from yesterday. Claire ran into the wall twice and cut her lip from her teeth. Then she ran into the table and has a purple bruise on her cheek. I look at Claire and her cut is in the exact same spot as mine was. Just not nearly as bad. It's swollen. Her little mouth is lopsided. All the memories came flooding back. I hope this means we're not moving soon!

Oh Boy!

Today on the way home from church, Justin had to make a decision on the yellow/red light for a left hand turn. He said, "Oh Boy!" as he made the turn just as the light turned red. Claire shouts from the back seat, "OH BOY!" I know she listens to everything we say and is such a sponge, but my goodness.

Pictures!

Ok so I'm trying to catch y'all up. Claire turned 2 in October and we had a birthday party for her at our house. My parents flew in from Michigan to attend and we all had a grand time. She finally brought her "boyfriend" over to the house. I should explain. She has a boy that is at daycare with her Monday through Friday. This same little boy is also at church on Sundays so she sees him 6 days a week. His parents are in our sunday school class and are good friends. Their teacher at daycare did not know that our families knew each other and that they saw each other on Sundays as well, but mentioned to us that the two of them play together like an "old married couple." One day at dinner I asked her if she had played with Nicholas at daycare. She replied yes. Then I asked her about several other friends of hers from daycare and she continued to say yes. Next I asked her if she liked the other boys in her class naming them off. She said yes to every single one. When I asked Claire if she like Nicholas her response was different. She said YEEESSSS! with a sing-song in her voice like YES MA'AM! I almost couldn't hold it together. Then I talked with Nicholas' mom and told her about it. So she asked Nicholas one day at church when all of us were present about liking Claire. He did a typical boy response and tucked his head down into his chest as far as he could, put his arm over his forehead and slightly nodded his head. So embarrassed! Anyway, we tease them that they are meant to be and if they are, so be it. If they're not...it's still cute. Here's the couple playing together.



For Halloween, our church had a Family Fun Festival with lots of games, food, and prizes. Claire dressed as a Care Bear. Her nickname for a while has been ClaireBear, so it certainly seemed to fit.





We celebrated Christmas with Justin's extended family in Galveston and the best way (or so we thought) was to get there by ferry. This was not Claire's first boat ride as she's been on the ferry before, but this was the first time I got a picture of her on it. She really enjoyed the seagulls and at Aunt Peggy's house was where she got her first joyful experience of opening presents.



We also decorated our tree and Claire helped Daddy put on the ornaments. We had a real tree and it smelled so wonderful! Then one night while I was wrapping Christmas presents, the phone rang. As I returned to wrap some more presents, I found Claire trying to wrap her baby. I don't know if this was a good thing or not, but it was cute. She received lots of big girl underwear for Christmas. That night she decided to wear them but taking after her mommy she couldn't make a decision on which one pair. She decided to wear all 14 pairs of underwear all at once....and over her pull-up.




Hope that catches you up for the most part and satisfies your Claire fix!

New Year, New Blog???

Ok so I know it's been six months...but who's counting??? I figured it was about time since my dad is the one who said something about me not updating the blog...my dad! But a big reason why I haven't updated is my laptop was not in working order. Now we finally got it back, so back to blogging I go. We'll see how long it lasts =) Claire is now 2 years old. WOW! The time has flown by. We were looking at video of her as a newborn and she just kept saying "Baby crying". yup. I don't have time now to fill the 6 months in since I have to go to work today but hopefully I can fill y'all in at some point!