Ultimate Recipe Showdown

I am sitting here on my couch counting down the minutes until the Ultimate Recipe Showdown comes on Food Network at 9:00 tonight. Why am I so excited? Because I know one of the contestants that's going to be on there!! I've talked a lot about Katy on here...my boss...her son is Michael and he is also a Realtor in our office. His girlfriend, Brigitte Nguyen is on the show tonight! She is such a cute, sweet person, I just love her. She graduated from Sullivan's culinary program last year. She was chosen to go over to feed the Olympians and is now competing on Food Network!! They have been very tight lipped about it, so I have no idea if she wins or not, but I am keeping my fingers crossed for her! If you click on the following link, you can find her name and watch her bio video. Good luck Brigitte!!!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/ultimate-recipe-showdown/index.html

Happy 15 month birthday!

Bailey imitating a monkey!

I can't believe Bailey is 15 months old today! I don't know where the time has gone!! Oddly enough, her 15 month check-up isn't until February 9th...which will make her 16 months then...oh-well, crazy doctor schedules! Here are some updates at 15 months: Favorite food: Still has to be biscuits and gravy. She is finally eating her vegetables good again! We just have to give her those about ten minutes before we put anything else on the table :) And she loves soup of any kind! Favorite drink: She loves her juice! She only gets it about once a day (and it's watered down of course), and she gets so excited. Favorite sign: Eat/Food. When she wakes up this is the first thing she does. I think she would eat all day if we let her! Favorite toy: This seems to change regularly, but lately it's been a little basketball. She can entertain herself for a long time bouncing the basketball in the kitchen. She picks it up, says "Ball", drops it and then chases it across the floor. And if you bounce it for her she gets excited and she'll just squeal! We call this, Baby Fetch :) Favorite cartoon: Sponge Bob...and I HATE Sponge Bob! Nick watched it even before Bailey was born and she started watching it with him. If she even sees a TV she asks for "Bob". She still loves music and dancing. It amazes me how much she picks up on without us even noticing. Now we can tell her "Go to your room", and she'll go right in there...very handy for diaper changes. And if you ask her if she wants to take a bath, she almost runs into the bathroom! This is definitely one of her favorite activities. She has recently started shaking her head no...so now if she doesn't want to do something she'll just look at you and shake her head no. She loves to impersonate animals. If you ask her what a monkey does, she'll put her hands under her arms and make little noises, and if you ask her what a bird does she'll flap her arms like she's flying, and we're working on what a pig does...she'll push the tip of her nose up but won't make the pig noises yet :) Question for other mommies who use/used Baby Signing Time...have you noticed that your child likes to sign more than talk? Bailey's great with the words she uses all the time, but I feel like she will imitate us before she will try new words. Mommy's favorite things about 15 months: Her curiosity! Even if it leads her to getting into trouble occasionally, I love watching her try to figure new things out. Her little personality seems to grow everyday. Every month I think "This is the best age yet!", but the next seems to always get better!

Thankful Thursday

This week I am thankful for... 1. Extended warranties. On Christmas Eve morning my dryer quit working! It wasn't until yesterday that the company received the new heating element and was able to come fix it. Luckily, we had purchased the extended warranty when we bought it and it didn't cost us a thing to have it fixed. Let me tell you, 2 weeks is a LONG time to go without a dryer!! 2. Parents close by. OK, I'm really thankful for this one every day, but with no dryer it was great to be able to take my wet clothes to my parent's house! 3. Quiet nights at home. Last night we didn't even turn the TV on until after 7:00. I got home a little after 5, started dinner, we ate, Nick took Bailey almost straight to the bath tub (it was spaghetti night!) and I cleaned up the kitchen. Then the three of us went to the newly converted play room and played. It was so great just spending time with my two favorite people!!

Grandpa Ted

This past weekend Nick's dad & brothers came up from Tennessee to stay with us. We don't get to see them very often since they live 5 hours away, so we were really excited to have them up here! Unfortunately, Nick took all 3 of them to play basketball with him on Saturday morning and his dad ended up throwing out his back! So they ended up cutting their trip short and headed back home Saturday. I was afraid it would take Bailey a while to warm up to them since she hadn't seen them since summer, but Nick said she went right to them! (I was at work when they got into town). The boys were so good with her! Lee Alan is a freshman in high school and Bryce is 10...whatever grade that puts him in :) They're great (and young!) uncles! Saturday morning when I was getting Bailey up Ted came into the room and Bailey just squealed! It was great having them here.

Bryce helping Bailey open her presents.

Bailey in her new jammies with grandpa Ted. Nick definitely looks like his dad!

And the new chair that Pap made for Bailey!!! I absolutely love it! The boys helped by painting the whole thing red, and then Pap did the rest. I thought I had taken a picture of Lee Alan with Bailey, but I must of forgotten to :(

First Hair Cut!!

Bailey finally had her first hair cut on Wednesday! This was LONG overdue. I had just been really nervous about how she would handle the whole thing, because he hates having her hair messed with. We both got a hair cut on the same day and she sat in my lap while Andrea cut her hair. She ended up doing SOOOO good! We had brought a portable DVD player so she could watch that and it kept her mind off of the hair cut. She only looked up a couple of times. Here's some photos.

She hated the cape, so we went without.

7 Little Secrets

Well, Ashley tagged me in "7 Little Secrets", so here goes... 1. I would love to have a house full of kids! I think this comes from being an only child. I do have 2 step-sisters, but never lived with either of them. Nick on the other hand, would be perfectly content if we didn't have any more babies at all. We have agreed on 2, but I'm still pushing for 3. I hope and pray that the next time I get pregnant I'll have twins, because then I win! :) Even though twins don't run on either side of our families! If we were financially able, and I could EVER get him to agree to it I'll probably want 4 or 5...I know I must be crazy! And maybe that would change once I hit 2 or 3...who knows! 2. I want to go to Italy. One big problem...I HATE planes!!!! If I even start thinking about being on one it makes my stomach hurt! 3. I have 2 tattoos. This isn't a huge secret, but I guess it is for the blogger world :) I got my first one really just because no one thought I would ever do it. It's a small butterfly. My second I actually got with my mom, my aunt and my aunt's sister. We all went to the shop together, it was a second for me and my mom and a first for my aunt and her sister. This one is a tribal symbol that means "I rest in God". Although, I've always questioned if all the symbols in the shops actually stand for what they say... 4. I am a country girl at heart. Now, when I say country, this is a limited country girl. My big thing is I want to move out of town so I actually have room around me and so I can't see into my neighbor's houses from within my own! I definitely want at least 1 acre, but would love to one day live on 5 acres. And while I may not want to do any farm work now, I used to help my dad on the farm when I was little and I loved it. 5. There's a very, very, very small part of me that would like to pack up and move somewhere new just for the experience. I LOVE Georgetown. I love the fact that my family is all here and I love that we still have a small town atmosphere. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere else. This however, will probably never happen because I hate change and I don't think I could move away from my family! 6. One of my lifetime goals is to publish a book. I've always loved writing. I can't tell you how many different books I've started writing, only to change my mind 100 different times about how I wanted the story to go, so I never finish! My newest idea is "Diaries of a Working Mom". This would be based on my own life with some fictional parts. As a mom, whether working or stay-at-home, you have some very interesting and funny things happen throughout your day, and it's perfect material for a book! 7. I didn't become an official Maxwell until 12-23-08! Me and Nick got married June 24th, 2006. As most people who know me would confirm, I am a procrastinator! I did go to change my name on my license not long after I got married only to be told I had to change my name on my social security card first. Well, I printed off the paperwork, but never quite got around to sending it in. Then my bank let me go ahead and change my name WITHOUT having done my social yet...which is a little scary! So I really wasn't in a hurry to get it done. So I finally got on the ball in December, and on the 23rd my new social security card came in the mail!! Well, better late than never :) Alright, I want to know 7 Little Secrets about you, Shana Noe Halee Griggs Laura Vinson

Thankful Thursday

This week I'm thankful for...

1. Space storage bags! One of my New Year's Resolutions is to get more organized, and these really help do the trick. I am keeping most of Bailey's clothes just in case the next Maxwell baby is a girl, and up until now I've been storing them in her diaper boxes and I had a big box that her kitchen came in full of clothes. Last weekend I was able to move all of these clothes into 2 storage bags which now fit easily under my bed! This shows the before and after!! And I opened one up and all the clothes fluffed right back up like they do on TV.

2. Games. I LOVE board games! On New Year's Eve my friend's and I played the game Partini which is a lot of fun and we played Buzz,

which is a PlayStation 3 game. It was a blast! It's a trivia game that up to 8 people can play and you each get a "buzzer" to answer with. I highly recommend it. Apparently you can also get it for PlayStation 2 and we're going to look and see if Xbox 360 has something similar.