Sarah on the 4th, 15 Months, and Hallie

 What a happy little girl. The above photo was taken at the end of June. These below were taken on July 3, when Sarah turned 15 months. Ben's family has been here, so we went to eat at Red Robin and Ben, Sarah, and I went to see the most awesome firework show!!! Sarah is trying to walk along the wall in our hallway.

 Today was actually the 4th and we all went to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings. I made Hallie come stand by Sarah so I could take their picture together. They are pretty cute!

Sarah Says...!!!

Mostly Pics

 So, Sarah has a cousin named Ana who is about a year and a half older than her and she gives us lots of clothes! I love these navy plaid shorts above! I took this a couple of weeks ago! I left them at my mom's on our trip down and I am ready to get them back.

 I should have taken more pictures, but here are a couple of Aubrey and Kylee Jo from our visit south. Aubrey LOVES her horsey. I think she likes to impress Sarah with how she can climb on it. Maybe one reason I didn't take many pictures is because my sister scheduled a photoshoot for all three cousins and wow! That was quite an experience. A two and a half hour experience to be exact. Well, the pictures are great. I will share them soon. I probably already blogged that info, but I have kind of been in a fog, so forgive me if that is repeated info!

 Sarah still drinks bottles most of the time, but I have been putting two sippy cups out with her toys and putting water in them for her to explore. She is quite the sight.

 She is sooo proud that she can stand by herself in the middle of the room without pulling up on something. This is her watching Barney. She just watches those kids and copies their motions! Her favorite song, by far, is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She always sings it with us. She makes choppy sounds for the short notes and long sounds for the long notes at the end of each phrase. Sometimes she is on pitch, but mostly she is horribly off key and it is so hilarious.

 very interested in her show:

 Here she is again with her favorite Little People, the little blonde boy. She hands me every toy and says "thank you" in her own way, but she will not hand over the little blonde boy.

 I have had to start telling her "no, no" and she says it back to me. She also told Ben "no,no" earlier when he tried to take a hairbrush away from her.

 can't decide which cup she'd rather have!

 I shared these on facebook, but not all my readers are my fb friends, so here is Sarah in a kiddie pool at my friend Amy's. It was her first time in a pool and she completely panicked. It was cold, though, and I think that she just couldn't stand the temperature.

 Here she is playing at Benny's house.

 I really love this little picture of her crawling up to me. She looks so happy.

I haven't been wanting to blog lately. I think we have just been so busy and are going through so many changes that I just don't know what to blog about because there is soooo much going on. Of course, Ben has his new job. It's going to be great-back in his hometown, which we both love, in the same town with his mother and grandparents, 45 minutes from my parents, and 20 minutes from my sister. I also have several lifelong and college friends in the area. The town has about 10,000 people and has most major fast food chains, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, a few other grocery stores, a nice Main Street, some pretty neighborhoods, churches, and even a little movie theater that shows 2 movies. We will be 30-45 minutes south of Little Rock and also 30 minutes from Hot Springs. So, yeah, it's a nice place. Ben really likes the community and likes to follow the school athletics. Just in case anyone was wondering what this new place is like...

Our house has only shown once. I'm willing to wait on it to sell. Whatever. I am done asking God for things to go a certain way! I feel like now when I pray, I just say what I would like but always say "...if it is Your will..." Everything that has happened to us, whether we have liked it or not, has worked out in some form or fashion and I attribute that to Him. It has always been hard to be in the middle of difficult situations, but I can look back and understand once some time has passed. So, I am not going to question this whole house thing. Everyone is in the same boat in this real estate market! And we are so thankful that we have family to stay with during this time.

We have been on the road a lot. We went for Ben's inservice and also to see my new niece, Kylee Jo. She is so beautiful and tiny. I know that a ten pound baby sounds big, but newborns are just so, so tiny. My sister arranged a cousins photoshoot while we were there. I have a few copyright proofs, and we are waiting to see the rest. So far they are adorable.

Sarah is so much fun. I plan to take her picture in the next day or two and post some updates on her. She is changing, learning, and growing so much every day!

House Showing

Well, we showed our house for the first time tonight. I was SOOOO panicked because our real estate company called at 3:30 and said to have our house ready to show between 5 and 7 p.m. So, that was a 2 hour window. Ben was at work. I called him and said "You have to come home RIGHT NOW!" The garage was a mess, I had some paint to touch up, there was laundry everywhere, the dishwasher was full of clean dishes, but there were dirty dishes in the sink, etc. etc. etc. I have never crammed like that in my life. I think I still have random stuff piled in my clothes dryer to hide it. The plan was for me to take Sarah driving around and Ben stayed to let them in because our key doesn't work. Holy cow, that is bad, too! Well, I drove. And drove. And drove. And drove. Seriously. It was 7 and no one had come. I called our agent and she called this other agent who was bringing the people to see our house and couldn't reach him! I was so irritated because I could have done so much more if I would have known I had at least 3.5 hours instead of 1.5. I know I should be ready anytime, but it just listed yesterday. So, the real estate agent said to go on about our business and she would let us know when she heard from him. Well, I got out my paint rollers and started to touch up some repairs we had done in the laundry room (which looks great!) and we got a call! They were running 10-15 minutes late. I still need to apologize to my realtor because I sort of freaked out when she said that they would be here in 10 minutes. I was standing on a sheet with wet paint around me, screwing in a switch plate, with Sarah in her crib. Anyway, I got out of the house just as they were pulling up next door. Apparently we aren't supposed to be here when the house is being shown. Ben followed me out, told them it was open...but they went to our neighbor's house! Theirs is for sale also. Anyway, they only stayed in their house about 2 minutes, we estimated. I am not sure how long they looked at ours, we left. We did see them a little later driving around, but I do think they stayed in mine a little longer. Maybe. Anyway, this is our house showing story. I hope it's not like this every time, my nerves can't take it!

Dinner and Playing

 Other than me having a terrible sore throat, we had a good day at home. I love these pictures of Sarah playing on the couch with Ben. He roughhouses her so much! But unless it scares her, it's what makes her happiest.

 Ok, so on to dinner. I mentioned that we are trying to eat low carb. Well, last night, I baked chicken tenderloin, fresh broccoli and cauliflour, and butter in foil pouches. It was so good! Tonight, I made shrimp fajitas and we only ate the meat and vegetables. It was so good, I have to share how I made it. First of all, I heated vegetable oil and a clove of garlic on medium high heat. I chopped red and bell peppers and added them, and let them get kind of done because they take longer than meat.

 This is gross looking shrimp. I bought it frozen at Wal-mart and I peeled it as I was rinsing/thawing it under cold running water. It wasn't too bad.

 Well, I did make 2 skillets, and these pictures are of the skillet with the yellow pepper. Anyway, you can see that I pushed the peppers aside so the meat could cook.

 Shrimp turns pink when it is getting done.

 This is what it looks like all cooked! I preferred the red pepper, but it was all really good, and I will probably do red, yellow, and green next time. Onions have more carbs than we wanted to put in this meal, but they would be really good with it also.

 Ok, moving on to more playing. Sarah has been doing really well at playing with her toys. She will entertain herself a lot, and sometimes we sit with her. She loves it either way. That castle is a Little People castle and it was Hallie's! Sarah loves it. Ben and I have all the little toy songs stuck in our head. I think I should go audition to sing for Fisher Price. :) Their ladies sound terrible.

 My mom got Sarah this singing bunny for Easter and she loves it. She loves it so much that she kisses it every time I get it out.

 Here she is trying to kiss it from the side:

 I am just adding this picture because I want to remember that she carries that Little People boy everywhere! She loves that one in particular. We have no idea why, but I have even let her take it to her crib for her nap!

Summer Days 1 and 2

 I am really so behind! We ended up being gone 3 weekends in a row this month, and that combined with finishing the year at work has put me way behind. That's ok though, because now I can catch up. I put all that laundry away, and now I have more!

 Sarah really likes Elmo's World...and I do need to dust.

 Sarah still isn't walking. She stands for quite awhile and kind of steps around, but when she wants to go somewhere she drops down and crawls. I am not really worried about it, I know she will walk when she is ready. Maybe I'm not ready!

 This is one of the rare smiles I have been able to catch lately.

 And this is because I won't let her have my camera...I see this face a lot lately.

I've been in a total brain fog. I feel like I have a brick between my eyes. I can't think straight or concentrate and I have been getting so unbearably hot. I get my labs done next Wednesday. They're either going to be off or I am going crazy! We are starting to eat low carb for awhile around here. We both need to drop quite a few pounds and this is a good way to get started for us. Of course, we probably won't be able to eat this way the rest of our lives, but it is definitely a good jump start. So far today we have had eggs, cheese, and bacon. Ben also had mushrooms with his. I don't know what we are doing for dinner, maybe fajitas minus tortillas, rice, and chips at a restaurant. Sounds really good to me!