a 21 month post

It's been a while since I posted about Dafney and what she's up to, so I thought I'd better do one!  My Dafney is 21 MONTHS {and 10 days} old already!  I'm in major denial that my sweet, little girl is going to be TWO in a few short months.

Over the past few months, I've noticed so many fun & exciting changes with Dafney.  Back in May, she started in the Toddler room at daycare & I swear she learns something new each day.

*I was going to attempt to do a "21 for 21 months" portion, but I don't have the time want this post to be a novel*

1.  Walk don't RUN, please.  She is on the move and at a fast pace.  The days of walking at a nice leisurely pace are looong gone. Now she runs which gives me a mild heart attack every time!  

2.  Say what?  Let me tell you, the girl LOVES to talk.  65% of the time I have no idea what language she's even speaking, but more & more often, I actually know what she's saying {or trying to anyway}.  She is starting to put small phrases together.  My personal favorite..."hi mommy" {♥ melting}!

3.  ABC, 123!  She is getting so close to knowing a majority of the alphabet.  She has the tune down perfectly & half of the letters correct.  I just can't believe how much she knows!  And, she can also count to TWO.  Yeah, yeah, it's only 2, but I still think she's a sheer genius!

4.  She's got moves!  Let me tell, that girl has MOVES!  She loves to dance & when she hears any sort of music, she will stop pretty much anything she's doing to bust out her moves ;)

5.  Friends!  My baby has friends!  She has a couple of best buds: Hannah & Eloise are the 2 she probably talks about most, but loves to be around any & all children.  She knows pretty much everyone at daycare & asks "where they are" on the weekends :)

6.  She is FUNNY :) - let me tell you, Dafney has a pretty funny personality.  She loves to make people laugh & her laugh {you know, that deep down belly laugh} is enough to make Mr. Scrooge crack a smile :)  Even her daycare teachers tell us that she loves to make them laugh & does a really good job of doing so!  Hmmm, I wonder if this means we have a class clown on our hands!?

7.  Yep, she's STILL clingy!  What can I say, the girl loves me...and I don't blame her I am pretty cool...hardy-har-har!  I love that she wants to spend her every waking moment with me, really, I do, but can someone please reassure me that she'll over come this clingy stage before she hits High School?

What Dafney's lovin': singing {especially row, row, row your boat}, dancing {music in general}, bubbles, playing outside, slides & swings, looking at frogs at night, anything to do with her babies, cars {not real ones yet, thank-fully}, playing tug-of-war with my parent's dog, Maddie, phones, playing in her kitchen, looking at books, water, watching The Mickey Mouse Club, jumping on beds/trampolines, going for walks and of course, being with her family ♥

What Dafney's NOT lovin': eating dinner {actually eating in general}, having her face washed, being told "no", most dogs, having to sit still, wearing pants {hehe}, being without Mom & Dad and being dropped off at daycare!

What Dafney's wearing: she is mostly wearing 18 month shirts/sweaters & jackets.  Most of her pants/shorts are 12 months, but she still fits pretty comfortably in her 9 month pants {except they are a little short}.  18 month pants are WAY to big on her yet. And, she wears 18 month PJ's.  She also wears a size 4-4.5 shoe.  Her feet are still teeny-tiny, but they've grown 2 sizes since May...

{some of} Dafney's favorite words/phrases:  ♥ hi/bye ♥ see you tomorrow ♥ what's that ♥ where's frog ♥ o-toodles {ha, you know what this is if you watch Mickey Mouse} ♥ a phone ♥ a on ♥ baby sad ♥ who's this {as she points to herself} ♥ ride ♥ where's "ryie" {Rylie is the dog that she's totally scared of & we baby sat him a couple months ago} ♥ it hot ♥ water ♥ it rain ♥ it hurt ♥

Well, I guess that sort of sums up Dafney & what she's been up to lately.  She is the sweetest little girl around and I love her to the moon and back!  She is constantly making me laugh and is always bringing a smile to my face!  

I love you, sweet Dafney!

xoxo

goodbye summer

I love Fall, but it's always so hard for me to say "goodbye" to summer.  I love everything that summer brings: longer days, warmer weather, outdoor dinners & concerts, bon-fires with friends, long walks in the evening, beach time, dresses & sandals, drinking cocktails on the patio, family bike rides, eating fresh fruits & veggies straight from the garden...seriously, the list could go on and on {& on}, but I'll stop there; I think you get the point :)

This summer, as always, flew by...I mean at lightning speed flew by.  This has been one of the best summers to date.  It was so much fun to watch Dafney run around & enjoy all that summer brings. One of her favorite things was playing in the "wa-wa" after it rained {or in this case, sitting in the "wa-wa"}!

Dafney is like a magnet to water...she loves it!  Pools, lakes, puddles, bowls of water...you name it, she most likely will enjoy it ;)

Dafney enjoyed running around our driveway & sidewalk with her cars.  It was fun {and a lot of work} to play with her outside this summer.

This summer, Dafney was even able to experience a bouncy house for the first time.  She thought it was the greatest thing and I'm prett sure she'll be asking for one of these in the near future!  

Our neighborhood is amazing and there is always something fun going on over the weekends.  Whether it's a concert, a race to watch, a carnival or people watching at the beach, you can always find really fun {& cheap} forms of entertainment.  And, we certainly did our fair share this summer.  

We were even luck enough to make it up to my parent's camper for some R & R!  

We also had some very special visitors this summer!  My brother-in-law, Rich & his wife Lindsey came to visit us all the way from HAWAII!  Lucky, lucky us :)  We had a mini-MacKenzie-family reunion in their honor!  We don't get to see Rich & Lindsey very often, so it's really important to spend as much time with them as possible when they are here!  

This summer I was even lucky enough to be in a wedding for a long-time good friend of mine!  She & her now Husband are totally amazing people & it was a total honor to be asked to be a part of their special day.  Even though the day went by way to fast, I had an amazing time celebrating them & their love!

And, even with all the fun we had, we even found some time to get things done around the house...well at least Dafney did ;)

So, as excited I am for Fall & all-things-pumpkin (!) I am really sad to see this summer come to an end.  I have so many fond memories to look back on & to tell Dafney all about someday!  

With that, I will look forward to all that's in store for us this Fall! 

Happy 1st day of Autumn!

...and so it starts!

This past week, our "house project" began!  We had a rather large tree in our side yard...well, until yesterday, that is.  The large tree is no longer!

Therefore, we have deemed this the official start to tearing our house down, even though the house won't actually be gone until next Tuesday.  It will be so weird to drive by and see an empty, house-less lot :(  We've had our fair share of problems with this house, but it's been our home and it is sad to say "goodbye" to this house.  

However {isn't there always a "however"?}, I am really looking forward to having a brand new, designed-by-us home!  Though we designed everything {with the help of our builder} and picked out everything for the house, it's a little hard for me to picture what it will all look like when it's complete.  

Our hope is to be into our new home by mid-January!  Here's to hoping the weather cooperates {yeah, this is directed to YOU, Mother Nature}!

I look forward to sharing pictures with you along the way...

But, for now, I will just say: "good bye Casa de MacKenzie...you'll be leaving us with a lot of great memories"!

weekly photos

movin' on up...

We're moving...even if only for a short period of time!  It's true...we are BUILDING our very own, brand spankin' new house! I think I left it off with some issues with our appraisal amount, but after some work with our builder and an appeal, our number came back much higher.  Good news for us!

These past couple weeks have been spent frantically packing, tossing & moving things out of our house into storage.  After a lot of hard work, our house is finally empty.  Though I'm a little sad that we are leaving the house where we: got engaged, planned our wedding, brought home our baby girl & shared oodles of laughs and amazing memories, I'm beyond excited to have a home that my Husband & I designed together!  It's been an amazing experience thus far and we are so excited to see the finished product. 

The "demo" day is slated for next Tuesday.  It will be so weird to see our lot with no house.  I hope to share the progress along with pictures on the blog each week!

Here's to all the good memories in "the house" and to all of the new ones!

August Bakin' Friends: All things PRETZEL

This month, I decided to try a new penpal group and I completely loved it!  It's Steph's "Bakin Friends"...if you haven't checked out Steph's blog you are totally missing out.  I highly suggest you check it out.  Now.

Bakin friends is a penpal program where you send baked goodies to your penpal {different person each month} while incorporating the month's secret ingredient.  Sounds amazingly FUN, right?  

This month's secret ingredient was pretzels!  Their salty-ness matches up perfectly with something sweet!  I was so excited when I saw my Bakin' Friends package sitting on my doorstep...I ripped open excitedly opened the package and found some amazing looking chocolate chip, pretzel crusted cookies!  Yes, Jennie over at The Messy Baker Blog sent me oodles of fantastic cookies {and she even threw in some amazing Blueberries & Cream Granola...to.die.for.}!

Aren't they delicious looking {sorry, I couldn't find my camera, so I used my phone}.  They were crunchy on the outside and soft & chewy on the inside...plus the pretzel crust gave them just enough salty-ness to be so delicious!

Seriously...a pretzel crust?  GENIUS!  And, I absolutely loved that they were shaped like little muffins :)

Here is the recipe for these awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Pretzel Crust!  While you're there, check out her Cake Batter Fun-Fetti Cookies with a Nutella Ganache {I made them for a party a couple weeks ago and they went like "hot cakes"}!

Thanks, Jennie for the amazing treats!

Interested?  Check out Steph's Blog for all the details!

I'm already looking forward to next month's eats & treats!

Happy Friday!

weekend review, July foodie penpals & some disappointing news

Why do the weekends have to go by so freakin' fast?  I feel like I literally blinked & it was over :(  I will say, I sure do enjoy the time I have though!

Friday night's are usually low key around our house.  This past Friday wasn't any different.  We took a trip to Target to do some grocery shopping & headed home for dinner.  After dinner, we decided to take an evening walk.  I absolutely love our neighborhood!  Plus, the weather was wonderful, so a walk was the perfect way to start off the weekend!

We were walking past the new bowling alley/restaurant in our 'hood and we came across this totally adorable dog {or "uppy" as Dafney says}!  

He was totally well behaved and posed for a photo-op!  Not sure what his "mom & dad" thought about said photos, but he was too cute not to snap a quick one!  Now I want a motorcycle & side car for my dog :)

Saturday morning the Hubby got up early to go for a bike ride and noticed that our local Shoe Shop was having a sidewalk SALE.  So we decided to walk over there before lunch.  Low and behold, they were giving away FREE lunch...score!  The highlight was the little bouncy castle they had up for the kiddos!  Dafney was intrigued so I asked the nice owner if I could walk through with her & he obliged!  

She had so much fun bouncing & jumping around!  And hey, even I had some fun in there, too ;)

After some lunch & bouncing around, we headed back home.  Dafney proceeded to give her "baby" a walk, too.  Most of the time, she treats her baby really nicely...and then there are the times that she takes her baby and throws her down on the ground and laughs :)  

After, we went down to my parent's house as the Hubby went to a party in their hometown with some of his Hockey buddies.  Dafney & I just hung out together.  She didn't really nap all day so I was pretty happy when she decided that she finally wanted to go to bed around 9pm.  I was even happier that she slept until 9 the next morning!  

Sunday left us relaxing and just hanging out as a family!  It was wonderful!  And, we even have a house guest with us for a few days.  However, I know one little girl that will be beyond happy to see him leave Tuesday night.  Yep, Dafney is completely scared of other dogs, yet, she loves Hannah.  Thankfully it's a short visit :)

July foodie penpals - I was excited to participate in anther month of Lindsey's foodie penpal program.  However, for whatever reason, my penpal didn't send me anything this month :(  And, actually things were so crazy for me, I didn't really realize this until close to the end of the month.  Therefore, I don't have anything to really post this month.  But, come back at the end of the month as I'm participating in a new penpal program: Bakin' Friends put on by Steph's Bite by Bite.  I'm excited to try her program and hopefully "meet" some new bloggers!

On to the disappointing news.  I should probably give a {quick} recap before jumping into the news.  A while back, the hubby & I decided that we wanted/needed to move out of our current house & into something bigger & newer.  So, we briefly pondered building a house.  It quickly became a thought of the past and we started to look at houses in our neighborhood & in surrounding areas.  After looking at what felt like a million houses, we decided to look back into building.  We found a builder and even met with him & his wife {she does a lot of the interior designing things}.  After speaking with us & getting a feel for what we were looking for in a home, they sent us a couple different custom floor plans and things took off from there.

In May we signed the contract to move forward {pending Loan Approval and Appraisal}.  Over the past couple of months we had been meeting regularly with the builder to nail down the design and everything down to the light bulb!  It's been a lot of work, but SO much fun to see our house take shape.  

...enter bad news.  This past week, we received our home appraisal back and it came in {gulp} $35K lower than what we needed it to appraise at.  It nearly took the breath from my lungs when I saw the appraisal #.  Seriously, I felt completely heartbroken.  The some-what positive note is that we can appeal the appraisal, but I don't know if it will get us close to the # we need.  Our builder is out of town until Wednesday, so we're waiting to do anything until we can speak with him.  All I can do is HOPE that he knows enough about appraisals to talk our way into a higher #.  Wish us luck!

Happy Monday!