15. An Exciting Life

Well, I missed Thanksgiving Day completely, but it's still November, right? I am so thankful for the amazing life God has blessed us with. Chris and I were recounting our past Thanksgivings, and we realized that we have never celebrated Thanksgiving in the same place twice. Here's the breakdown:

2010: At the Smith's (Harper's first Thanksgiving!)
2009: At the Warne's (and then again at the McDougall's)
2008: At the Jones's
2007: In our home in South Africa
2006: In London (we splurged and spent 25USD on Burger King)
2005: At 13th Floor with the first American team (I cooked 4 turkeys at once...never again)

This is where it gets a little hazy with the years, but we think this is right...

2004: At Chris' dad's in Illinois
2003: At Chris' mom's in Florida
2002: With my family, I think at my dad's

We can't remember the Thanksgivings while we were dating, but these are all the ones since we've been married. I am sad that it's been so long since we've seen our family on turkey day, but I am so thankful that God has taken us to so many exciting places, and blessed us with so many amazing friends who have taken us into their homes on this holiday. Hopefully our family could come out here for Thanksgiving someday and I could be the host. I wonder what next year will bring...

14. Grandma

This is a picture of Harper and her Grandma Holohan. Chris' mom has been battling cancer for over a year and a half. Today, she is finally at rest. We are so sad that she is no longer with us, but we are glad her pain has ended.

Harper's grandma loved her so much! She kept pictures of Harper all over her room, she listened to Harper's cute noises over the phone...Harper brought her joy when it was hard to find. She won't remember the time she spent with her grandma, but she will know how much she was loved by her grandma. We will make sure of that.

13. Pigtails

12. Home Improvements

I got a dish washer!!! It's been like 7 years since I've had a dish washer. And even then we only had one for a year. It's a complete luxury, I know. Not a necessity, but such a nicety! Our friends Jeni and Mike remodeled their kitchen and gave us their old dish washer. It's still in great shape and it was so nice of them to think of us. Yesterday my hubby worked with our friends Jim, Kris, and Brian to get it installed.

See it on the right? That's not all they were doing. UCYC gets many donations from Lowe's, and recently our camp received several new ceiling fans. The ones that were previously in our house were SO UGLY. The guys got one of them replaced in the dining room by the time I got home. It was such a great surprise! Then, my husband just goes and replaces the one in the living room in less than 30 minutes, like he's been doing it for years. They amaze me. I would have no idea where to even begin.

Before

After

The Old

The New

The Dining Room Before

And After

Notice the pretty ceiling fan? We've spent a long time working on this house, but it is really starting to come together now. There's still plenty to do. In this picture alone, you can see that we haven't put in base boards yet, but that's a later project. We still have 3 rooms to paint, a wood stove to replace before winter, some new light fixtures to install, the list goes on. But we're getting there! It's fun making this house our own. 

11. Guinness and Damar

For those of you who don't know, "Great Danes and Baby Names" was derived from my husband's blog "Great Danes and Coffee Stains." We got our first "baby" soon after we arrived in South Africa. Her name is Guinness (for she will be black and stout!)

That's a picture from our first HOT South African Christmas. We all look like babies!!! We toured with a performing arts ministry doing shows all over South Africa and some neighboring countries. Our wonderful friend and nanny to Guinnes, Alycia, would live in our house and take care of her while we traveled. But we felt like Guinness still needed another friend. So a year later we got Damar (pronounced Day-Mar, named after our family photo business, which was named after my grandparents: DAvid and MARian)

This is her as a puppy, that's right I said puppy, sitting in our living room in SA. Like our house? We loved it so much! And technically it's still ours, although we hope our friends will be the owners very soon once all our paperwork goes through. Sorry for the tangent. Here's another picture of her while she was still small. It was so funny watching our African dogs' reactions to snow!

This was Guinness' hiding place in SA when she got scared.

Then of course we had child number 3. The dogs weren't too sure at first, but now they love her. Here are the 3 girls in Harper's old room.

And here's Harper and Guinness in our new living room. Harper loves to crawl on Guinness, and Guinness just lays there ever so patiently. Damar on the other hand usually just leaves the room. She's not ready to cuddle just yet.

And here's our family photo. This was also taken by my good friend Jenn Jones when Harper was just 3 weeks old.

I love my family and thank God for them every day!

10. Resources

Harper has this Fisher Price table that she loves. She can use it to pull herself up to standing, cruise, play music, learn to count, learn colors, and even learn spanish! All that for just 40 bucks at Target. It's amazing really.

She loves this thing, as you can see. She has a DVD/flash card set that can teach her how to read...that's right, it's designed to teach babies how to read! She has books, tons of toys, an awesome jumper, a baby stroller that helps her walk, the list goes on. I am so grateful for all these things. Are they all necessary? Nope. But as parents we want the best for our kids.

Then it makes me think of all the kids in the rest of the world who have nothing. Not even food for breakfast. Harper has one of those nice high chairs where just the top tray part pops off for easy washing. It's even dishwasher safe. It's just sad that the differences are so vast. I'm grateful, but it still makes me sad.

Before we lived here in Prescott, Chris and I lived in South Africa for 2 1/2 years. We loved it there. We didn't live a in metal shack, but there were more than plenty of people who did. Whenever we went to the townships (the very poor areas), we would always see some kids playing with something as simple as a stick, and they were so incredibly happy! Those kids were more content than I think I could ever be. Ironic.

Let's help. There are so many ways to help needy children, or even adults for that matter, around the holidays. This morning at our church the bulletin was full of ways that we can help people. We can choose a child off of these cards and send them wrapped shoeboxes full of presents. There was another set of cards of children whose parents are incarcerated. You choose one of them and give them a great Christmas. Those are just 2 examples of things that we can do. As I mentioned in an earlier post, The Freeman Project sends pencils and paper to kids who have nothing. If I can spend $40 on a cool "educational" table for my 10 month old, I can find some money to send these kids. I put a link on the right to the website where you can donate. If you do, please check on the amount that you donate so that we can see a difference over the next month and a half.

I love kids. I absolutely LOVE being a mother. I am so glad that we are able to give Harper so much. But what about those kids who don't have anything? 

9. My Silly Baby

This is something her "Uncle Kris" started with her recently. Here's Harper and her daddy making some noise. So silly. I love seeing her personality come out more and more everyday!

8. Heroes

Of course today I am ever so thankful to all of the men and women who serve or have served in service of our country. We have many people in our family to thank: my mom and dad, Chris' dad, my grandfather, Chris' uncle, and Chris' brother Jeremy, who is currently serving in the Marines.

I would also like to mention a very special hero. Matthew Freeman was a great guy that I grew up with. I lost touch with him and most of my classmates soon after high school, since I moved away shortly after graduation. I learned of his sacrifice only recently. He died for his country overseas last year. Even though it's been years since I've seen him, his death was very hard to take. I regret not finding out when it happened. I would have done anything to go home and be at the parade that was held in his honor.

Matt saw a great need for the children in Afghanistan. Most of you never knew him, but I beg you to take a few minutes to visit this website and hear his story. Hear about the great work he is still a part of by leaving behind this great mission. And if you are able, please donate to help further the education of the children in Afghanistan. The Freeman Project

7. Happy Baby

I am so grateful to have such a happy baby! Everywhere we go people mention how happy she seems. Sure she has her fussy moments, but all in all she is a joy, and she makes her mommy and daddy so so happy!

6. Jenn Jones

Jenn and Ty Jones are some very good friends of ours who lived here at camp since before we got here. They lived up the hill from us, we went to San Diego together, we shared Thanksgiving together, our dogs were even best friends! A few weeks after Harper was born, they moved to Washington. We weren't the only ones who were depressed about their departure. Everyone at camp has missed them terribly, until a week ago. They're back! They have officially moved back to Prescott, and I am so happy to have my friends back. Since we have lived here, our three closest "couple friends" have all moved away. The McDougall's went to CA, the Warne's moved to SD, and then of course the Jones's. So yeah, it's pretty great for us. Here is a picture of Jenn and Chris at the camp Christmas party. And yes, that's how she always dresses...

Jenn shared one of the most important days of my life with me, and Harper's too, for that matter. She was actually in the room when Harper was born! She and Chris were the only ones. She is an amazing photographer, and she took some beautiful pictures of all of us that day. I can't tell you what a blessing it was to have my very talented friend there to share the experience with us. Here are some that she shot.

As you can see, she's amazing. You can see more pictures that she's taken on her photography blog, including more pictures of Harper, at jjennphotography.blogspot.com. If you're near the Prescott area, give her a call. Not only is she super talented, she enjoys doing it! And don't let the Christmas sweater stop you. It was only a joke.

5. Baby Orajel

Harper got her first tooth yesterday! She's been teething on and off since she was 4 months old, so it's about time that tooth showed up. My friend Jeni felt a bump the other day, and when I looked there were two huge swollen bumps on her bottom gums. The next morning I felt the sharp point sticking out on the bottom left. 

Last night was a long night. Harper was pretty uncomfortable, so I was up quite a bit. I felt so bad for her. I would walk into her room to find her face down whimpering. So sad!! I've been using these teething swabs on her gums, which according to her tastes terrible, but it does a good numbing job. I've heard of teething tablets and haven't tried them yet, but I'm open to some suggestions if any moms out there have some good secrets in helping their little ones through this painful, yet necessary and exciting process. But so far these teething swabs have done a good job. 

4. Our New Home

We got to move into a much bigger camp house recently, and it has been so great for all of us. The house we lived in before was pretty tiny for Chris, me, and 2 great danes. Then we added a baby to that, and it was crazy small! We had wood floors that weren't sealed, so they would splinter sometimes, making it pretty unsafe to put Harper down on the floor. So she was very slow in the crawling department. Within a week of being in our new home, which is probably twice the size of our old one, Harper started crawling, pulling herself up, and cruising! She was ready, she just wasn't getting the floor time she needed. So thank you so much UCYC for the new home! We love it!!

Harper's room, apart from decorations, is finally complete. We still have some work to do as far as putting things on the walls and adding some pink accents in place of the green ones that now blend into the walls. The walls which, by the way, are not nearly as bright and yellowish as these pictures show. It's a nice green color. But here are some before and after pictures. The room was blue all over. I mean ALL OVER. The trim was blue, the door was blue, there were even blue light bulbs in the ceiling fan! It took us a day and a half just to put primer over that color that I now hate.

Our friends here at camp removed that board on the wall and replaced it with drywall.

The color came out a little brighter in the pictures than the actual!

Notice the trim is now white. And the closet is full.

We still need to hang some curtains in front of her closet. That will come.

Chris removed this shelving system to give us more room.

The camp guys also replaced the broken window and we hung some new blinds.

Harper likes chillin' in her new room. I can't believe she used to look small in this seat!

3. Pacifiers

Harper woke up thankful for her pacifiers today! She only gets them at night (or on airplanes or at the lab where they fail to draw blood). But to ensure that she can easily find one in the middle of the night without needing mommy's help, I put several in her crib. This has become a common sight when we come to get her in the morning.

2. Today

I am very thankful for today because it means that yesterday is officially over. I had to take Harper for her 2nd flu shot and to get some blood drawn. The flu shot wasn't so bad, she kind of just winced at that. But then we went to the lab for her blood. They were doing a routine test for anemia and also a lead poisoning test due to the age of the house we previously lived in. I had to hold Harper in my lap while one lady held her arm and another lady searched for a vein. The tourniquet alone caused her to cry. Then the lady stuck the needle in and I held on to Harper as best I could while I watched the needle fish for a vein under the surface of her skin. It was terrible! They decided to switch to the other arm after what seemed like an eternity. They put the band on that arm and couldn't even see a vein to start with, so then they called in someone else. We had to wait for this other person, so I just cuddled Harper and tried to calm her down. She had cried so hard that she kept gasping for breath. You know that kid cry that just breaks your heart? I almost left so that I could come back when Chris was with me.

Finally the other lady came, and also not seeing a vein in the right arm, she went back to the left which was already sporting a rather large, painful looking hole. This time Harper cried so hard that I started crying. I was silent though. I figured those women were having a hard enough time as it was without hearing the mother sobbing, too. So I just buried my face into Harper's head as I restrained her.

When we went into the lobby, I had already stopped by the bathroom to dry both our faces, and Harper was fervently sucking on her pacifier, but silent. I set Harper on a chair so that I could find the car key and the woman next to her told her what a brave baby she was. I wonder what all those people thought hearing her scream. My poor sweet baby. I am SO thankful that it's over!

1. Friends

It may be cliche and a little over done, but I think it's so important to reflect on what we're thankful for. Sure, we do it every year, and we read it on every blog, and every facebook status, and we see it on every TV show. But let's be honest, we're all so great at complaining the rest of the year, that why not dedicate one month to some positive reflection.

So today, Harper and I are thankful for friends. There are so many great people in our lives, so many people I wouldn't want to live without. And of course I am thankful for all of my friends! But Harper and I happen to share some very special friends out in California that I want to honor today. Sorry for the shadows in the picture. This is Harper and I with Melisa and Braelyn at In-n-Out. Great friends enjoying great food!

And here are the dads...

Pumpkin Patch

We took Harper to a pumpkin patch on Friday to get some fun fall pictures. It was on a farm out in Chino Valley, and they have all kinds of stuff for kids. First, we took pictures behind some painted boards with the head holes. (Okay, I'm not sure any other way to explain that, but the picture makes it obvious what I'm trying to get across)

Next we stopped by the animals and saw a giant donkey, a miniature horse to which she responded the same way she greets our dogs (they are often times mistaken for miniature horses), and some ducks. She didn't like the ducks.

Harper and I enjoyed a delicious snack of fresh roasted corn before taking pictures on the tractors.

We found a really large red tractor with huge tires, so Harper walked over to it. And then she ran into it. Ouchies!

Here's her boo-boo. See the red bump on her forehead? Poor baby.

A few pictures in the pumpkin field, then home. We had a blast, apart from the bump on the head, and maybe next year she'll be old enough to pick out her own pumpkin.