Okay, so seriously! I LOVE my daughter!!! Every day she just makes me laugh and absolutely love life. Even the hard days are laced with laughing moments. I love it!

Yesterday she slept in. Bart and I were downstairs when we heard her wake up at 8:00. But then she fell silent again, so we thought she had gone back to bed. She is now very aware of what the word, "Baba" means and yells out "Baba" Whenever she wants one. At 8:30 we heard her yell, "Baba......Baba.....Baba." So I ran upstairs to get her up. I opened the door and was greeted with this:

If you think that it looks remarkably like she doesn't have a diaper on, that's because she doesn't. She had unzipped her feety pajamas, unbuttoned her onsie, and taken her diaper off. There will be no peace in the Francis house any more...our daughter knows how to strip.

Today we were watching a movie, and I smelled something not so pleasant. After asking around, and assuring myself that nobody had tooted, we all looked at Addison who smiled, and turned around revealing that she had somehow miraculously grown what looked like a tail. It wasn't. And I was very glad that it was Bart's turn to change her diaper. :o)

Bart got a new calling today at Church. He is now the Sunday School President. I swear! Our ward changes presidencies ALL the time! NONE of the presidencies are the same since we've moved into the ward, and the only "Presidents" that are the same are the relief society president and the bishop.

Fortunately I am still in primary and loving it. When I first got called to primary I was really worried that I wouldn't get to know anyone (a big deal since we were new to the ward and I hardly knew anyone as it was). But now that I'm there, I think I know more people than I would have if I wasn't. It's because I know them all through their kids. I'm not nervous about getting to know kids at all, so when I meet their parents we automatically have something to talk about. It's ended up being a real blessing. I love it.

Well, that's about it for this week. Until next time, Au revoir.

Prayer Signs and Goals

Random picture of week - Addison in glasses. So my mom put her glasses on Addison. She absolutely loved it. When she had the glasses on, Addison would reach toward someone, and when you got her close enough, she'd tap them until they would look at their, then she would just start cracking up. Then she'd reach for someone else. It was like she wanted everyone to look at her! It was so funny!

So one of our family resolutions this year is to pray more on our knees with Addison. Bart & I always say family prayers when we wake up and when we go to bed, but usually Addison is either still sleeping or hasn't woken up yet. I will say night time prayers with her, but I haven't been very good about saying morning prayers with her. So we decided that we wanted to pray more with Addison so that she could learn how to.

I was actually very surprised. The first time we really did it this year, we helped her kneel down, and showed her how to fold her arms. Ever since then, when I say, "Addison, prayer time." She smiles at me and folds her arms. Of coarse after that she proceeds to crawl around and play while we pray, but at least she is getting the folding the arms part down.

I actually think she might think folding her arms is the sign for "prayer time." She's getting really good at signs now. I think she actually knows what half of them mean too. When I ask her, "Addison, do you want a bottle?" she'll do the sign for milk and then start walking toward the fridge because she knows that's where I get the milk for her bottle. It's so neat to really be communicating with her! I love it.

As you can see, I posted some family new year's resolutions this year. I read somewhere that if you tell people what your resolutions, you are more likely to keep them. So I decided to post our family resolutions.

Bart read somewhere that it's better to have a few resolutions that you can easily achieve than a whole bunch of ones that you're really going to have to work for. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I understand the whole psychological thing....make your goals easy to achieve, then when you achieve them, you'll feel good about yourself and be more motivated and all that.

However, I am the type of person that wants to make a million goals because I want to be perfect. :o) Unfortunately I do usually do fall into the pit of depression when I don't reach them. Last year I changed my attitude a little bit though. In stead of getting depressed when I didn't reach my goals, I think, "But look at how much better I did than I would have if I didn't set that goal."

So I think I will continue to make my million personal goals. Although instead of making huge goals at the beginning of the year, I think I'm going to take them one month at a time. At the beginning of each month I will assess how I did with last month's goals and make a new goal list for the new month. Hopefully this will keep that million goal list from being too overwhelming.

Christmas Moon and Pray for Kenya

Okay, I have to admit, I absolutely love this picture. Addison's Christmas pajamas didn't include a onsie, and whenever she doesn't have a onsie on, she tries to take her diaper off. We snapped this priceless picture in the middle of opening Christmas presents.

So yeah, I have come online to post every single day this week, and each time have been so overwhelmed with how much I wanted to write, and how many pictures I wanted to post that I just didn't do it. I finally decided posting a little bit is better than not posting anything. So here goes...

We had a great Christmas. It was wonderful seeing family and friends. And it was GREAT talking to Eric! It ended way too soon.

We LOVED the new house, and have decided that once I stop working we're going to live there in the summers! Te he he.

It was really hard for me to come home. Bart kept saying, "Rebecca, we need to pack!" And I kept conveniently finding other things that needed to be done. :o)

Addison loved the trip too, and misses Grandma dearly.

Here are a few pictures From Christmas. I may randomly post more in other posts even if they don't have anything to do with what I'm talking about ;o)

On another note, as a lot of you know, my brother is serving a mission in Kenya right now. Well, they just had their elections, and unfortunately violence has broken out. I just read a pretty scary story about a town that Eric emails us from every week. We heard from a missionary couple there, and it sounds like he's doing alright, but if you all could keep Eric, and the people of Kenya in your prayers right now, we would be very grateful.

Okay, that is all for now. I will talk to you later.

Walking!

So the big news for the week: MONTHS after her first steps, Addison is FINALLY walking! I still wouldn't call it her main mode of transportation, but she's doing it a LOT more now. I think the reason she finally decided to walk is because she likes the idea of being able to hold something in her hands and get from point A to point B.

Thanksgiving, Polkadot shoes, Bye Bye, and BAWT!

Okay, so I am way behind! But it's been a busy couple of weeks.

First of all we had a great time with Bart's family for Thanksgiving. Bart's sister made these cute little pilgrim's hats out of marsh mellows, cookies, and chocolate. Addison loved that...come to think of it, I think that's all she ate at the actual Thanksgiving meal. She got it ALL over her face! It was pretty cute though.

Addison LOVED Bart's aunt's dog, Bear. She would hold her hand out, Bear would lick it, she'd squeal and pull her hand back, laugh, and then hold it out for Bear to lick again. It was so stinking cute!!!

We went and got a Christmas tree with Bart's family. It's the first real time Addison has been out in the cold for an extended period of time. We were worried that she wouldn't keep her hat on (she hates hats) but she did a pretty good job.

The only bad thing about Thanksgiving is that Addison had a terrible cough. There were several times that she coughed so hard she threw up. Of coarse she was her usual happy giggly self right before and after, but it sure was messy to clean up. I took her to the Doctor on Monday, and they said it's probably just some cold she got. They said it may be allergies too, so they gave us some allergy medicine. I'm not sure if she got over it on her own, or if it was the allergy medicine, but she's doing a lot better now.

The main reason I didn't post last week was because I was working on Christmas presents. Bart and I are finally done. Well, we need to like deliver candy and stuff to friends, but other than that we're done. YAY!!!

Addison has somehow acquired a taste for fashion...well, shoe fashion anyway. Last Saturday while we were Christmas shopping we went to Payless and she grabbed these pink polka dot air walks, and refused to let them go. When I took them away from her so that the lady could ring them up she was not happy with me. We put them on her as soon as we got out of the store.

They are really cute. When she's not wearing them, she's trying to put them on her feet. It really is cute, and I'm happy she's wanting to wear shoes now...but the cute factor was somewhat diminished when she threw a fit when I wouldn't let her wear them with her Red and black scotty dog dress to church. Oh well, at least she now has shoes she'll wear.

Addison totally knows how to say bye bye now. Whenever she or someone else is leaving, she waves and says, "Bye Bye." Which really sounds more like "ba ba," but eventually she'll learn her Y's.

Addison also loves to pretend to talk on the phone. She'll grab the phone, put it to her mouth, talk into it, then had it to me. I put it to my ear, say, "Hello, yes she is here, just a sec....Addison, it's for you," and give the phone back to her and the whole sequence starts over again. Ironically, when I try to get her to talk to real people on the phone she just smiles or opens her mouth real big like she's surprised and refuses to make a peep. Kids!

Last week, Bart and I finally got our Christmas decorations up. YAY! I do have one more nativity to put up. But other than that we're done.

Addison LOVES picking up things, and giving them to you. Today as I was cleaning out the dishwasher, she crawled over, grabbed a spoon, and gave it to me. So I put it away. Then she grabbed a fork and gave it to me, so I put it away. This continued until we had put all the silver wear away! (I had taken out all the sharp utensils because I saw her coming.) I've decided this is definitely something I am going to encourage!

Today Addison also surprised us all when she was eating breakfast. I was feeding her in her high chair, and Bart came over to feed his frog, so Addison saw him and squealed with delight, "Bart!" (The r was more of a w sound, but the word was unmistakable). Then I was upstairs with Addison and called down to Bart to get me something, and after I had called to him, Addison looked to the door and called, "Bawt.....Bawt....Bawt." Until he answered! Then, at Church during primary Addison was being fairly rowdy, so I let her crawl in the Hall. Bart was teaching a class at the end of the hall and Addison heard his voice, so she bolted for the classroom. I ran to get her, and after I had picked her up she screamed, "BAWT!!!" And threw her head back right into my tooth. It hurt a ton, but fortunately it didn't break skin. Addison cried for a second, and wound up with a little bump, but other than that she was okay. I'm really going to have to start working on calling Bart Dad instead of Bart.

Well, that's it for now. It was a long one, but hopefully it won't be so long before I write again.