My worst fear

Let me tell you… as I still shiver

While working outside during naptime today, one of my worst fears came true. 

I was hunched over filling a pot with soil at the garage door, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something patterned that didn't belong. This guy.

A copperhead. A foot away from me. Watching me with his beady eyes. Under my japanese maple tree. Planning his point of strike and destroy. Where my dog was standing just this morning. And within feet of where Cheyanne plays throughout the day.

Shiver. 

My reaction? I screamed of course! Thank God I had a neighbor (that I've never met) outside and heard me. I yelled for him to come over and seriously, thank God he did because I have no idea what I would have done. I swear I'm not overdramatizing this…mostly. I hate snakes. Not just hate. I loathe them. I question why God even created such a disgusting slithering creature. There's a reason why Lucifer became a snake. Because they are NO good! Duh.

To make things even better (sarcasm here), just minutes before this guy almost attacked me and took me to the grave, another thing happened. I was rocking to some old school Billy Joel on my Pandora when  my cell phone slipped off a shelf, hitting the concrete garage floor and cracking the screen in half. Yes, this is the second time in a month that due to no fault of my own- husband- my phone has fallen and shattered on some form of a concrete garage floor. Twice in a month. Come on! Today is apparently not the day for breaks.

And did I tell you that to make things worse, the Giant is away? Things apparently get exciting when he's away.

Thank God its Friday.

And because I can't have a post worth reading without a picture of Chey Chey…

Outside art

I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in Charleston today, it has been too beautiful to stay indoors so I have found every reason to go enjoy the 80 degrees. We (Cheyanne and I) started off our day with a healthy homemade breakfast (made by me- what what!) and then went on a nice run. And by nice I mean I didn't die. That's huge! Yall, seriously, I haven't run since Cheyanne was born a long time ago. It was my first time running with a jogging stroller too. I should have taken a picture of us girls beforehand which of course I didn't think of until it was too late and my face was all red and sweaty. A friend of mine mentioned that she was looking to sell her stroller which is perfect since I'm looking to buy one. I'm testing it out this week while she and her family are away on vacation. So far, so really good. Let's see if I can keep it up over the next few days. I have to keep reminding myself that summer is coming up fast and seems even faster down here as some of my friends are at the beach right now as I type. Ugh bathing suits…

Anyways, after the run and a quick lunch, I made it an art day. You know how much I love arts and crafts. I'm so thankful that Cheyanne seems to enjoy art as much as I do. I bundled up a few towels, paper, a few brushes and a lot of finger paint, and we headed out to the driveway. I grabbed my camera in time to get some pretty cute pictures of my little Picasso.

Sometimes she painted on the paper.

Sometimes she painted on her legs.

And sometimes she thought her nose needed a little extra color.

And these shots, I just like.  To see through her eyes.

That was our day. How was yours?

19 months

Oh Cheyanne, my how time is flying by. You, Sweetie, are a handful of joy. I never know exactly what's brewing in that head of yours. I love that you keep Momma and Daddy on our toes. So, lets see what you've been up to this month. Nineteen months...

You started counting to 3 this month. You say "uhn. oo. shree."

You've learned the word "no". Awesome. Nuff said.

You are getting really good at repeating a lot of words now. You don't say many of those words on your own, but you'll repeat it as soon as you hear Daddy or I say it. You definitely have your own language though that you completely think we understand.

Had your first full on tantrum in public which also happened to be Momma's first grimace-in-embarrassment moment. Body on floor, tears streaming, the works.

We started you in gym class this month every Tuesday for 9 weeks. You're a tumbling bumblebee.

The terrible-twos have come early and its really awesome…. The good Lord made you irresistibly cute for a reason, to save your life my dear.

You have your Momma's temperament and your Daddy's mannerisms and personality.

This was a big month because it was your first holiday with your Daddy NOT on Skype but right beside you. Finally. We love Easter.

You point to planes and say "Dada." It doesn't matter if its a C17 or any other plane, they are all "Dada"s plane.

You've renamed your pacifier "baba" - which I'm really hoping will disappear this next month if I get gutsy enough.

As much as you love Mickey Mouse, you have discovered new things exist. Your favorite movies are Rio and Lady and the Tramp. Anyone every need to know the scripts of either of these movies, just let me know. I now know them by heart.

We went through a few weeks of sleep issues aka you HATED going to sleep and would scream when you realized it was night-night time. It started the day after Daddy and I went to the squadron banquet and we weren't the ones to put you to bed. Then to make matters worse, Daddy left the next day for a mission and I think the two simultaneous things got you all out of whack. But we're all better now- thank the Lord. 8pm-7am solid sleep.

Art time always makes you happy. You love to draw, color, paint, chalk, you name it. If it involves you making some kind of art, you love it.

You cry when you see Daddy putting on his flight suit. You know it means he is leaving for a while. Talk about heartbreaking. We appreciate late night or early morning flights much more so we can skip the goodbyes. Until he gets back, we say "Daddy's at work." It seems to make things better for you.

_____________
That's you at 19 months baby girl. We love you to pieces, all the way to the moon and back.

A new addition

No I'm not pregnant. Let's just get that out there right now before anyone thinks otherwise!

By popular demand…. let me introduce our new little one here in This Wood House.

Her name is Lola (this week at least while the Giant is away). She is a 4 week old yellow lab mix that we adopted on Saturday. She and her brothers had been dumped in a box somewhere near a dumpster. Thank God they were found. Who does that? It kills me to even think about those poor pups left alone in there. There loss is our gain though.

We already love her so much. Cheyanne can't get enough of her new best friend. 

With how much Cheyanne loves animals, it was only a matter of time before we got a dog for her. I think being home with me all day by ourselves was getting a little boring for her, something I've always felt guilty about. Not anymore. 

They play all day long and crash hard at night time. They even take naps at the same time during the day right now, not that napping is hard for a 4 week old puppy. She does a lot of that these days. 

Isn't she precious? Welcome to the Wood house Lola!

Eleven for Eleven

I'm attempting to get caught up on things here. I'm checking this off my list as you read this…

I've been tagged. Kate over at Barefoot Daydreams passed along this blog "game" called Eleven for Eleven getting to know other bloggers. She responded to her questions in a VLOG 'video blog.' Uh, I won't be doing that. You are enduring my annoying writing, you do NOT need to endure my annoying on-camera voice too! :) I'll spare you that. And, I'm just too dang lazy to go ALL the way upstairs to put makeup on and be semi-presentable. So, lets get started with a little Q and A.

Quick review of the rules…

*You must post the rules.
*Answer the 11 questions that the tagger posted for you; then create 11 questions to ask the people you will tag.
*Tag 11 people and link to them in your post.
*Let them know you have tagged them.

Here are Kathryn's Eleven for Eleven questions and my answers….

Q 1- Are you a freak morning person or a night owl?

A 1- Can I say neither? I'd say I'm really an afternoon person. I'm definitely not a morning person despite Cheyanne's best efforts to make me one like her. So, I guess I'd have to say night owl. At least I would be if I didn't have a child that is an extreme morning person like clock work.

Q 2- What’s the best road trip you’ve ever taken?

A - Not on American roads, but my greatest road trip was when I lived in Turkey for a college semester. Turks know how to make great road trips. It was an adventure with very little English speaking involved and probably was not the most safe thing I've ever done, but Bayram was a week long roadtrip along the western Turkish coast and one of the best weeks of my life. I actually kept a travel blog at the time, one I hadn't looked at in years until now. You can see it here. I look so young! 

Q 3- What was your first car?

A - 1990something Teal Ford Escort

Q 4- What’s your favorite day of the week, and why?

A - Any day that my husband flies home. Welcome home day is always the best day for the Wood house.

Q 5- What bad habit of other people’s is most annoying to you?

A - I want to say smoking since its so harmful, stinky, and very in-your-face, but that seems too easy, so I think I'll say spitting. I know everyone does it, me included, but it is just plain gross. Ironic that I say this and yet I have a husband that dips since it comes with the job (or so he tells me). Lately, I can't stand to see people spit. Its annoying and gross.

Q 6- If someone made a movie of your life, who would play present-day you?

A - I want to say Reese Witherspoon because I love her so much, but she's probably way too famous and busy to every be willing to play out my boring life. I'd hope they'd zazz it up a bit or even the director would fall asleep in filming. And yes, I said zazz- jazz just sounded too embarrassing.

Q 7- What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

A - In high school I worked at a dry cleaners. You can't even imagine what some people brought in to be dry cleaned. At one location, we had the honor of doing dry cleaning for a certain local retirement home. Need I say more?

Q 8- Obama or Romney?  Just kidding—don’t answer that. Answer this:Team Gale or Team Peeta?

A -Is it sad that I had to google this? The first thing I thought was "Oh God, did Peta throw blood on Gale King or something?" Hunger Games has not been on my list of things to do but I'll add it now that I'm pretty sure not having read Hunger Games is social suicide. Sorry Kate.

Q 9- What would you consider the most important event in your life so far?

A - Hands down it would have to be meeting my husband. Without him, I would have nothing that is now in my life, daughter included. He is the most important event and blessing in my life. I'm grateful everyday for that XXL Virginia Tech sweatshirt which caught my eye in Ancient Egypt class. ;) Hi Babe, miss you.

Q 10- Do you have any phobias?

A - Is a fear of bees a real phobia? If so, yes I do. Its not rational and despite having hear a billion times in my life that if I don't mess with them they won't mess with me, I still freak when I see one. ::Shiver::

Q 11- Would you rather…always have a popcorn kernel stuck in your throat OR have Cheeto fingers forever?

A - Ah, I was waiting on a would you rather from you Kate! No game with you is complete without it. I'd say popcorn kernel stuck in your throat because at least with that I could still function. I mean, Cheeto fingers would really be hazardous to pretty much everything hands related. A kernel would be annoying but livable, Lordy I hate that feeling though. Good one Kate.

Ok, now onto my questions.

1. If you could move to your dream city, where would it be and why?

2. If you had the chance to rename yourself, what would you choose?

3. Where did you go on your favorite vacation?

4. Whats your most memorable holiday tradition?

5. What's your favorite book of all time?

6. What is your favorite thing about yourself?

7. Do you have any siblings? 

8. If you could sit and have lunch with anyone, who would it be with and why?

9.Whats your favorite southern phrase?

10. Do you believe in love at first sight?

11. If reincarnation is true and you had to return as a kind of wine, what kind of wine would you be? Or for any non-winers, beverage of your choice? And of course, why?

Alright friends. The 11 8 bloggers I'm tagging are:

Christi @ Crazy Wonderful Beautiful Life
Jessica @ Love from Texas
Kristin @ Our Growing Garden
Jessica @ TART
Lauren @ The Beckner Bulletin
Kristin @ Meet the McQuiddys
Mama Fee @ It Won't Be Like This For Long
Devon @ Life As We Live It

Have fun! Tag away! If I accidentally left you out and you want to be tagged, let me know and I'll link you up right away.

And to copy my friend Julia @ In My Shoes, since I don't have all that many friends that have blogs, I want everyone to respond! I'd love to hear your responses to the questions too- so how about you leave them in the comments. Let's see what you can come up with.

Our first Easter

No, it wasn't really "our" first Easter, but it was our first Easter (or holiday for that matter) together as an entire family with the Giant home since Cheyanne's birth. First holiday, unless you consider halloween a holiday, then I guess its our second since he left for the Air Force a few weeks after her first halloween- a year and a half ago. Isn't that hard to believe?

We might have gone a little overboard this Easter, but I feel like we were making up for lost time so its acceptable, right? Just look at all that Easter loot that was waiting on her to wake up.

After church, we had our own easter egg hunt in the back yard. 

Lesson learned. Forty-eight eggs is too. many. eggs for an 18 month old little girl. 

Half of that really would have been plenty.

By half way through, the egg hunt became more of an egg pick-up. I may or may not have started tossing them in front of her to hurry things along. 

We even got a thumbs up at the end.

She loved our easter egg hunt so much that we ended having round two at the park with her boyfriend (our 2 year old next door neighbor).

Egg hunting lasted all of a few minutes then quickly turned into just another day at the park with friends.

All in all, it was a fantastic Easter. I don't think I could have asked for anything better. My family together enjoying the sunshine- perfect.

Day 1 of Disney Vaca

I warn you now. The next few Disney posts are going to be entirely too long and jam packed with pictures, but consider yourself lucky. I'm saving you from having to view the other 560 photos I took in a 5 day timespan (not joking). You're welcome.

Going on close to a month ago now, oops, we took a post-deployment vacation to Every Princess' Paradise also known as Disney World. It was the perfect place for our family to reconnect and Chey and Daddy to get to know each other again. Yall know how much this vacation was needed for all of us. The love of Disney is something that the Giant and Mini-giant seem to have in common. Mostly Mickey Mouse, but this trip might have turned our little mouse lover into a full fledged princess. 

Would you believe that this is actually one of only three decent pictures we got of the three of us together the entire trip?! And yes, I am wearing the happy birthday pin I was given at the entrance cause I'm cool like that. The first few "happy birthday"s I heard from the Disney workers were fun when I entered, but that wore off quickly when I remembered I'm not 5.

I had been talking to Cheyanne about Disney World for the last month trying to introduce the idea of our vacation to her. Every time we saw one of the commercials we would "talk" about how Mickey Mouse lives in that castle (best explanation for a Cinderella-who toddler) and how Mickey Mouse can't wait for us to come visit him.  I repeated many times that when Daddy gets home, we're going to go see Mickey and all of his friends at the big castle. I have no idea if any of this talk stuck with her, but it made me feel like I was preparing her. You just never know how Cheyanne is going to react to new things. 

Well, let me just show you how far that got us.

Our first encounter with a character. Donald.

I'm pretty sure she would have actually punched him if he had gotten any closer.

Yep, that good.

Ok, so we thought, maybe its a fluke. Let's keep going and see if we can sneak a peak with Mickey Mouse. Surely she'll love to see her favorite person. 

No. Wrong. Bad decision Mom and Dad.

There you go baby. Just cover your eyes and it will all be over soon. If you can't see them, they don't exist.

Cheese, and we're done. I actually apologized to Mickey and Minnie as we backed out of the room… like a doof because you know, they've never dealt with scared children before. Duh.

After the trauma of the previous events, it was fun ride time. One great thing about Disney is that it truly is a place for people of all ages. It wasn't geared towards one age group. There were rides and entertainment for everyone, Cheyanne included. I think I was a little nervous about that before hand. 

Her favorite thing by far the first day (and a few days later as well) was the Its a Small World ride. Its outdated and at parts seems more like a traveling Chucky fair, but she didn't see it like that at all. She loved it and was not happy when it ended. So, at the end of this ride we learned two things. 1) She doesn't like things bigger than her that shouldn't be and 2) she doesn't like when rides are over. But who does?

Amazed.

Twins?

I have video of her on the ride and if you listen carefully you can hear her saying "Wow" throughout the entire ride. Wow is a word she picked up on the trip pretty quickly. I know some of the video is really dark, but its too cute not to show you.

Update : its still uploading to youtube so I'll add that video in tomorrow.

OK, here we go.

After a quick wardrobe change which entailed a buttnaked baby in the center of Main Street, we ended day one the best way that I could possibly imagine, with prime real estate seating near the castle to watch the night parade and light show. So worth the late night with a tired toddler and the battle to exit through an obnoxiously huge crowd of other late night toddlers and parents.

Yep, I'm holding said sleepy toddler and a corn dog. 

The moment Chey and I both discovered our new love of Disney corn dogs. I'm not brave enough to try any other ones at this point.

My favorite.

And my other favorite.

End of day one concluded. This is going to take a while.

Just for Nana

Somebody's missing her daddy

Hello, Daddy?! Are you there?

Come home soon!