Lily is coming up on the 1 year mark!!

(thanks to the Blackwell's for this outfit!)


That's right - she's 11 months and counting :) What do we have planned? Nothing... lol - seriously, what are you suppose to do for a 1 year old without family close by? We'll bake her a cake for sure and celebrate - but we have nothing planned. We'll wait and expect Grandmas and Grandpas to throw her lavish birthday parties with petting zoos, private ponies and blow-up jump-around bouncey things!





Lily was dedicated at church this day! She was adorable. We really enjoy our church here (despite the long efforts to find it) and have fit into a wonderful Bible study and group that we love!!! We chose and really believe in infant dedication -- that we as parents are dedicated to bringing her up in a Christian home (read deep into that and all that this entails) and admit that we cannot do it alone. We need and ask for our church family (friends and family too... but we're just too far away to have people here for this) to take part in this adventure and HUGE responsibility as well! Lily was pretty good up on stage but it was bottle time... She waved to the crowd a few times and rammed her finger up her nose. It's like she just realized "Hey - this fits here" so the repeatedly puts her finger up her nose and then pulls it out... what can you do?

The Boy Scouts say...

The most dangerous knife is a dull one. I bed to differ - I much prefer my dull knives pre-marriage to the fancy ones we have now! LOL - I need to rephrase that - the dull KNIFE I had prior to marriage. When I met Josh I learned you were supposed to sharpen knives! Know I know - with sharp knives.. you can't cut an object while it's in your hand!! Lesson learned.
Thursday night - I was simply slicing an English muffin with our big ole bread knife. Well - I opened up more than the bread! I saw the cut - knew it was deep and knew it needed stitches... but both Josh and I dreaded that with Lily at 8pm at night and an ER that was already backed up (we called...) So I went against all nursing knowledge and stayed home! I did inspect the wound (on the floor mind you - it made me woozy of all things?) and I saw no tendon or muscle damage - no bone -- just lots of fatty tissue and a gaping wound!
I went in Friday - and they were stuck with what to do... the proper way to treat a cut is having is stitched within 12 hours and I was there like 14 hours later. So they finally decided to stitch it loosely with just a few stitches... leaving it open so that if there was an infection - it would ooze out instead of go deeper. Fine. Lucky me - I got to be the guinea pig if you will for a learning airman on stitches too! I figured - after I was numb... might as well let someone learn! My cut was just over an inch long and about 1cm deep. Good one. They had to cut off some of the fatty, jagged edges so it would stitch well. Then he tried... removed the stitches and tried again. LOL (but not really laughing) I was a good patient though. They finally stopped with just 3 loose stitches intead of the 6 the dr asked for. HA - it looked fine to me.
So now my task has been taking care of Lily and such while keeping it dry and watching for infection. No signs of infection at this point! I cleaned it up as best as I could for a picture for you guys! It looks marvelous now compared to before - I'll spare you the lovely gaping hole with lots of tissue hanging out :)

The deepest parts were in the fatpad - which is good~ kept me from cutting anything important!

Happy Birthday Analiese!!!

Lily wants to wish you a VERY happy 2nd birthday!! Uncle J-Osh and aunt Kristi do as well!!!

Happy Halloweeeeeeen!

So we're bad parents... we didn't have Lily a costume. Nope - not at all. We did have her a little Halloween shirt (in the pumpkin pictures...) and we figured that was enough. WRONG -- we were told by many a people that we were just flat out wrong to assume such a thing! Soooo - to the rescue came Grandma Pernell and one of Josh's workmates! Lily ended up being Miss Halloween instead! She wore her shirt all day (complete with a wash and dry during naptime due to messy lunch...) She paraded around Mommy's work as the Itsy Bitsy Spider thanks to Grandma (she especially loved chewing on the legs!) We went to a little Halloween party with some other parents and kids -- she came in as a reindeer, enjoyed playing on the floor in her Halloween clothes (Dad dressed up as a graduate and mom was a nurse), changed part-way through to be the Itsy Bitsy Spider,
and ended up in her Halloween pjs before we left! Now THAT is the spirit, right? So don't worry folks - we won't mess up next year!