Ivylicious Def.

My little neice, Ivy, turned one last week!!

She is so pretty, I think. And cute and very smart. Pete calls her Ivylicious Def. Kind of a takeoff on that song "Fergalicious," the part that goes:

Fergalicious def.
Fergalicious def.
Fergalicious def. Defdefdefdefdef...
Fergalicious definition make them boys go crazy..."

That song makes me shake my booty. Anyways. We had a leetle party for her about a week ago. Here are some shots from that evening.

Brock helped her open all of her presents. Ivy was more interested in playing with the bows from the presents anyways:

Dylan was playing with some glasses from their Mr. Potato Head toy, and Jake told him he looked like Dr. Octo. Is that the name of the bad guy from Spiderman 2? I can't remember. That's my guess:

Nat got Ivy the book, A Fish Out of Water. I had forgotten about that book, and when I saw it, all of these old, good memories from when I was very, very small came flooding back to me. I can't describe it. It was one of my very favorite books, and I haven't seen it around my parents' house since I was like five. I don't really know what happened to it. And I forgot about it until I saw Ivy open it. And it made me so excited!

It's like when you smell something, and it brings you back to your childhood. I love when that happens. Last night, we were at Mom's house, and she was cooking some bacon to put in a salad, and suddenly, I realized that my grandma and grandpa's house always smelled like bacon. I don't know why it took me this long to realize that, because I cook bacon all the time, but it just hit me like a ton of bricks. It smelled like my grandparents' house used to smell. And it brought back really good, happy memories. I told Mom that, and she said, "Yeah, Grandma used to cook bacon for breakfast every single morning." I never knew that!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to pick up Sadie from preschool, she was working on a puzzle of humpty dumpty. It was the exact same puzzle I had when I was very small, and I just got chills and started squealing. I love when that stuff happens. I wanted to ask if I could buy the puzzle, just so I could have it again.

So here I am, looking at my favorite childhood book. I'm gonna have to get it for my kids:

Sorry I look so gross. I just got my jog in right before we went over there. And sorry you can see my garmies. I forgot to put my belt on, so my pants were falling down, of course. Again, because I have a flat butt and no hips (no matter how fat I get), my pants are always falling down. I could be 300 pounds and my pants would still fall down. Just the way it is.

Here is Dad, describing Lexi's knee:

Lex no longer has a miniscus, and she's missing one of her ligaments. She is going to have surgery next month, with parts from a cadaver! Ewwwww!!!


Here is Sadie. She was soooooooooo dirty that night. It was that night I was telling you about, where she looked like our nappy neighbor girl, Ashlynn:

I just didn't have time to clean her up before we went over.


And, parenthetically, Ashlynn was running around with a t-shirt and nothing on her bottoms a couple of evenings ago. No underwear whatsoever. Just hanging out there. She's five years old. Ben opened the door and yelled at her: "Get in your house and put on some underwear, Ashlynn!!" And her brother, H.B., looked down sheepishly and said, "I'm not wearing any underwear, either..." He at least was wearing jeans, but he was going commando, apparently. Ben came in and muttered, "There is something majorly wrong in that household..."


I love my mom's crow's feet. I love it when she has this expression on her face. I just think she's cute:

We sang to Ivy, and then Brock really quickly blew her candle out. Jake was yelling at him in this shot. I think it's really funny:

Here's a leetle slide show from the evening: