blah blah blah

She is just talking up a storm. I can't believe it. Most of the time (amazingly) I understand what she is saying! I guess that's a mom thing.

We bought a new camera so new pictures will be coming soon, yay!

Today something really funny happened. Bethany knows what a bus is and whenever we pass one on the road she yells out, "bus!!" Today we were walking out of Linens N Things and a Ford Expedition drove by and she pointed at it and yelled, "BUS!" Haha! I just said, "Yeah, I know, it looks like a bus, doesn't it?" How cute. Also, for some reason she has a Pavlov reaction to the word "color". Whenever she hears the word she says, "yellow" (lellow). She knows many colors. She can look through her color book and recognize red, yellow, blue, green, purple, white, black and brown. So you can point to an object and she'll tell you the color. But whenever you say, "what color?" she says, "yellow" (lellow). Oh, well.

And...we will finally be in our home next week! YAY!!!! Next Tuesday we will be residents of DeLand. We are sooooooooooo excited!

a fun weekend

Last weekend was really great. Bethany did a lot of new things and handled it all amazingly well. My niece's birthday party was last Saturday. My brother and his family recently moved to St. Pete for a new job, so the party was over there. They are currently living in my great-grandmother's house, so that means nobody else has a place to stay when we go over there anymore. Nathan, Susan, Ricardo, Bethany and I all stayed at a Days Inn about 15 minutes from where the party was going to be. Bethany was great the whole car ride over. She just talked and read books and ate some snacks. Then, when we got to the hotel, we put her down for a nap (we requested adjoining rooms so we could put her down and hang out next door). She just talked for about an hour and then finally fell asleep about 5:00. We had to wake her up to go to dinner. There was a Cracker Barrel (YUM!) across the street and my brother and his clan came to meet all of us (mom was with us, too). She was pretty good and kept pointing at Hope across the table and saying, "Ho!" (she's not very good at those ending consonants yet). So, then she went to bed pretty easily, too, and we just hung out watching "What Not to Wear" in Susan and Ricardo's room until we got tired. Our only problem was that I had been sick (on the verge of bronchitis) and woke up about 6am with a horrible coughing fit. I went into the bathroom but Bethany heard me and woke up. We decided to just get up and go to breakfast then see if B would take a nap before we went to the party at 10am. She did, and we actually had to wake her up to go! She had a lot of fun at the party. They had the party at a park. It was the first time she actually walked around in the grass and went on a playground. We tried putting her in those toddler swings, but she didn't care for it too much. I thought that she would love it, but maybe she'll just have to get used to it. But she had fun just walking around everywhere. And they had bubbles and hula hoops and pinwheels (which she calls "Fi"-sounds like eye). I think she thinks it looks like a butterfly, which she calls the same thing. Anyway, we had a great time and it only took 20 minutes for her to crash in the car. She slept almost all the way back to Orlando. She was really good the whole weekend. Too bad mommy was too sick to go to church on Sunday. She hasn't seen her church friends in awhile. While mommy was in Tucson, B stayed at Grandma's house while Daddy went to church. He was working sound that week so he had to be there REALLY early! Hopefully we'll all make it there this Sunday.

I'm sorry to say that we may not be posting any new pictures for awhile. Our camera broke this weekend. We don't know what happened. It just stopped working. We'll have to figure out a way to get the pictures up from this weekend, because there were some really cute ones.

March of the Penguins

Today, Bethany went to her first movie. We went to see March of the Penguins. She did pretty well. We had to get up and let her walk around a couple of times. There was a walkway that went behind the seats and she just walked back and forth and then we we would go back and sit down again. She seemed to like it when she paid attention. A few times, she pointed at the screen and said either, "bird!", "baby!", or "oooooh!". It was cute. She really was pretty good. So, it was her first time at the movies, and there will certainly be a page in her scrapbook about it (if I ever actually start one!). :)

growing up so fast

I know, I know. It's been awhile since I've blogged. We have just been busy, busy since we've been back. With church, SAI, work, and having friends and family to hang out with, blogging has taken a back seat. I guess the first thing to tell is that we are buying a house! It was totally unplanned, but the rental market in DeLand really stinks and it just made more sense to go ahead and buy even though we didn't really have much saved to do so. You know, moving to and from Hawaii can really screw up your savings. Anyway, we were able to buy in DeLand really close to campus and we will be closing at the end of the month. Pictures are forthcoming.

Bethany has been growing up like crazy. She tries to copy just about anything we say. You've seen the list of words. I could continue adding. Well, okay, I'll do it now! She can now say wash, bite, box, eyes, nose, mouth, toe, hair, bear, blue, boo, water, hello.

She can also pant like a dog, shush (puts her finger to her mouth and goes "sssss"), say "hello" and laugh with her phone up to her ear, and dance on command. When she knocks down a stack of blocks she raises her hands above her head and says, "ooooooooh!". She is running around this place like crazy. And she crawls up on everything. She loves to sit on the couch like a grown-up.

She's been eating more grown-up foods lately. She loves spaghetti! She also loves apples, grapes, cherries, bananas, nectarines, strawberries, cheese, yogurt, animal crackers, pb & j, bagels, egg, chicken, potatoes, and other things I can't remember right now.

Well, that's a lot for now. Hopefully I can write more soon!