Miss Cutie :)

Just wanted to let everyone know that Rosalie has been named the 2010 Miss Cutie for Miss Khloe's Bows :) Congrats Princess!!

Just a reminder.. please read.

As many of you know, back in August Rosalie was the winner of a Miss Cutie Contest at Miss Khloe's Bows. It's the end of the year and all of the winners are placed into another contest. The contest will be held on December 30th (I'm not sure what time the voting starts.. i think probably 9 pst)

I'm asking that everyone head to Miss Khloe's Bows on facebook on the 30th.. first you have to "Like" her page.. then she'll probably have an album with the contestants in it. You have to go in the album and "Like" Rosalie's picture. Be sure you "Like" her picture, not the album, and make sure you "like" the picture in the album, not the picture floating on the wall.. or else the votes won't count! You could even head there now and "Like" Miss Khloe's Bows page that way when she posts the contest on the 30th it'll pop up on your wall as a reminder :)

Thank you guys!!!!!!!!!!

Did Santa Find You?

I hope Santa found you all! He was def good to the Hollis family this year! Rosalie made out pretty good.. TONS of toys.. books.. movies.. clothes. To sit here and list everything she got would put you to sleep... let's just say she had 3 hours in unwrapping presents. I honestly don't know if she has a favorite; she goes from one thing to another. She seems to spend a lot of time with this ride on Winnie the Pooh train that my dad picked out for her.. it's really obnoxious and she hits the same buttons over and over and we hear "i'm going on a train ride, i'm going on a train ride" about 45375934 times a day. Thanks Pap. hahah. Santa and Nana both got her sets of stainless steel pots and pans and she discovered if she bangs them off our tile floor it makes an obnoxious noise. Come on Santa, what were you thinking. Haha!

Kevin and I made out pretty good too... I got a lot of my presents early because I mainly asked for clothes and I needed them, so Kevin and my mom both gave me some of my stuff early. I also got 2 sets of VS flannel jammies, which I love. I asked for regular pjs because I'm always wearing under armour and t-shirts to bed.. I decided I wanted REAL pjs. They are sooo comfortable. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to order more! I also got 2 Jenny McCarthy books and one is already finished. lol. The one I finished is Life Laughs. If you haven't ever read a Jenny book, I seriously suggest you run out to B&N and pick one up right now. She tells it how it is. I'll be honest, her work is usually crude, blunt, and honest.. so if you are appalled by crude talk, save yourself a trip to the bookstore. If you're looking for a good laugh or think you're alone in some of life's mishaps, pick up one of her books. When I was pregnant a friend of mine bought me Belly Laughs. After reading every chapter I was like "Wow, I thought I was the only one. Apparently I'm not!" Anyways.. I also got Eclipse on blu-ray (which i still haven't had time to watch!), Made of Honor (one of my FAVORITE movies), and House Season 6. I also got a Clarisonic face machine. The most AMAZING thing my face has ever experienced! Kevin got tons of clothes, PT gear, a PSP, games, and accessories.

We had a lovely Christmas. Our awesome friends came over for dinner which makes it a whole lot nicer when you're so far away from all your family at Christmas time.

Yes, we were the scrooges that took down our tree already. Rosalie already had half of it undecorated and we needed to get it out of the way... Rosalie got a lady bug tent for Christmas and you couldn't walk in my livingroom with the tree and tent so the tree had to go. We spent the day yesterday de-Christmasing my house and organizing toys. We went to the base and got bins and shelves... needless to say, my livingroom looks like a Toys-R-Us.

With the new year upon us, I'm feeling tons of mixed emotions... excitement to see what the new year will bring us and all of the European vacations we have planned... scared knowing that we are coming up on our first deployment and rosalie and i will be in Italy alone. Yes, we have been separated before for TDYs and schooling and BMT, but this time it's different.. I'll be in a foreign country with a 1 year old, by myself. Speaking of New Year... do you set a New Years Resolution? I never did.. until last year. I always thought a year is a long time.. i won't stick to it. Last year I did. I set a resolution to take off 50 lbs and I did it.. I actually went well over the 50 lbs. This year, I'm setting another.. to lose another 20 lbs. That's a little less than 2 lbs a month.. totally feasible. I've already made a jump start and got back on the wagon as soon as Christmas was over! What's your resolution?

I'm not going to bog this blog down with tons of Christmas pictures.. instead I'm just going to attach the Christmas photobook I made.

Click here to view this photo book larger

I'm about 100% sure I've rambled enough.. Rosalie is sleeping and since we were up at 4:30 because of a certain baby screaming over her last molar, I'm def going to go relax.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and have Happy New Year!

christmas time

I know that I have been doing a terrible job updating.. we've just had so much stuff going on and Kevin's home all week so my normal routine is just way off.

Last Saturday we had Kevin's squadron Christmas party. I'll be honest, I did not want to go. I wasn't in the mood to force small talk.. plus we were taking Rosalie. They provided day care but I don't leave my child with strangers. Thank god she was VERY well behaved. She fell asleep before we even ate. The food was delish... which is to be expected.. it was held at an Italian restaurant. The best part of the night... we won a 22 inch flat screen tv! Woot! We also got a gift certificate to an Italian restaurant, but we gave it to one of the guys in Kevin's shop because we knew we'd never use it.. we really don't go out to eat..

Me before the Christmas party :)

Daddy and Rosalie

Our big prize :)

This is seriously my favorite picture.. love these 2

Princess and I

On Sunday we took Rosalie up to Piancavallo to play in the snow.. it's so awesome driving up into the Italian mountains.. it's so beautiful. Rosalie hated the snow though so glad the view was worth the trip :) haha

view going up the mountains.. i love the mountains in the background.. they look photo shopped in

Sun setting on the peaks of the mountains

"what's this crap?"

Getting ready to go back home

Rofl. She looked thrilled to be in her snow suit

We also took Rosalie for her FIRST hair cut. Oh boy.. we were nervous. 1, we thought she was going to be out of control hysterical and 2, Italians were cutting it so I was scared what they would do to her hair.. WELL it turned out ADORABLE. She looks so grown up and she was SOO good. We were in and out in 10 minutes. The guy was awesome with her.. they were sword fighting with their combs lol.. he gave rosalie her own new comb to keep her occupied and it worked. I can't believe how different she looks.

Rosalie before getting her hair cut.. isn't she just precious!

Her hair was so long.. I wanted to wait til her and I went back to the states but she couldn't hold off 2 months.

During the cutting...

Sword fighting with Ciro

After her hair cut! (Pulling her boots off lol) Such a lady now!

We also had our friends over yesterday evening. We grilled and the boys played wii and the lil ladies played together. Those two girls are just the sweetest. We had a good time!

They saw the door open and they both took off haha how cute

Rosalie hiding haha

Rosalie kept putting her foot on Audrey, and Audrey would push it off hahaha clowns

Playing together like biggy girls

Christmas plans.. hmmm.. we don't really have anything. We plan on going to Poffabro with the Williams Christmas Eve to see all the nativities.. it's a town a couple minutes from our house.. but it's done nothing but rain here, so if it's raining that will be out of the question. Last year we went in the rain and it totally sucked. I plan on skyping with my mom and dad so they can open their gifts that we got them.. and Christmas day we'll probably just hang out here after lil miss opens up all her presents and let her play with all her new stuff! I'm kind of disappointed because I guess they are getting storms in the UK and no mail was moving.. so one kevin's and one of Rosalie's presents didn't make it on time.. plus she still has her shopping cart coming from Nana's house... so she'll be getting 2 Christmas presents late.

Well that's all for now.. Ciao!

Gettin' on the scale

I haven't been on the scale in... I can't even remember. I actually had to pull up my last blog post to see when I last weighed myself. OCTOBER 21st. WOW. I have really been cheating myself! I was pretty scared to get on today because I knew I was going to be disappointed and have gained weight.. because let's be honest, I haven't exactly been sticking to my diet for the past 2 months. I had myself set up for failure.. I knew that one week of dieting on top of 2 months of not dieting, I wasn't going to lose.

So I got on the scale......... and the verdict...

I'm DOWN 2.9lbs! WOOT Go Me! That brings me to a total of 65.7lbs!

A Mouth Full

It seems that every day Rosalie is popping new teeth in. We are now up to FIFTEEN teeth and her last molar is coming through. She now has all her cuspids and 3 of her molars. Everyone says the molars are the worst, but honestly, we had such a harder time with the first 8 teeth and she has broken the following 7 (the molars and cuspids) with ease. It's crazy to see so many teeth in her mouth. My mom told Jacob how many teeth Rosalie had now and he said "Nuh uh.. she's a baby." After she convinced him that Rosalie now had 15 teeth, he had to count his own. He said he had 26 teeth. hahaha he's too funny.

I know I have really been slacking on the updates, but we have just been so busy. Kevin's working 12s this week so they can get some time off for Christmas.. we're half way through the week and it seems like it should be Friday. I've been trying to stay EXTREMELY busy to make the time pass faster, but it seems that I'm just wearing myself out. In the past 2 days I tore my house apart and did a nice deep, thorough cleaning. I did some organizing and threw stuff away. I got all of my laundry done (which is basically impossible here, but i did it) and everything is ironed and put away. I have even been working on my continuing educations for my x-ray license which are VERY time consuming. Here it is Wednesday, and there is nothing left to do. Guess I'll spend the rest of the week working on more continuing educations and working out. (with that being said, I'm doing really well with my diet.. i'm going to jump on the scale on Friday.. we'll see how that goes)

I won't lie.. I'm absolutely ready for Christmas to be over... because 1: I'm so tired of stressing over "are all the presents going to be here on time". I ordered Rosalie a shopping cart back in JUNE from Amazon. It never came and never came. Come October, I cancelled the ordered and ordered one from Walmart. Granted, I had to pay more, but I was being extremely picky over what I ordered. I wanted something with chunky wheels and had good reviews and of course it had to be pink. Well, it was shipped October 23rd and never showed. I contacted Walmart last week, they refunded our money because now that cart is out of stock. Go figure. They did give us a $15 gift card for all the trouble and I used it and got Rosalie a big set of 101 pieces of play food.. she's going to love it! So I ordered a different cart.. one that I liked better but at the time I ordered the first this one was out of stock. I got an e-mail from Walmart this morning, that one was out of stock too. I came to face the reality that the cart wasn't going to make it on time for Christmas, so I ordered one from Amazon that I originally wanted that doesn't ship APO and had it shipped to my moms house. I know it won't ship because of being oversized because the exact same cart in red ships APO, but the pink doesn't. So I had it shipped to my moms and told her she can either send it out to us, or keep it at the house til we come in February. It's not like she isn't getting enough for Christmas... you can't even walk in our spare room from the stacks of presents. Here's a pic of the cart I ordered.. isn't it freaken cute? You can put a doll in the car in the front!

Another problem I had was with something i ordered Kevin. I contacted customer service wondering why after 2 weeks it wasn't shipped and they said my order was cancelled (supposively they were having technical difficulties that day.. of course.. only this kind of thing would happen to me) and of course that item was no longer available.. so they honored the price that I got the first thing for and I had to pick something else. THEN there was something Kevin wanted and I completely forgot about it.. I ordered it, but I doubt it'll be here on time.

Reason number 2 I'm ready for Christmas to be over.. our tree. Rosalie has undecorated the entire bottom half of the tree and we've left it that way.. she keeps taking the balls off and smashing them so we just left it be. Our tree looks dumb now hahah. On top of that, she won't leave the lights alone now. All we get done doing is yelling at her to get away from the tree.

Reason number 3.. We are SO Christmas partied out. We had Kevin's shop party the first weekend in December. The second weekend we had Rosalie's Children's Christmas party.. which was a bust. Rosalie bawled when she sat on Santas lap... plus it was packed... We have the squadron Christmas party this weekend. Some pics from the Children's party..

My lil doll baby.. isn't she just the most precious little thing you ever did see?

She's that cool...

FAIL.

Santa trying to bribe Rosalie

All it took was one look and she lost it

Well that's about all for now. Ciao :)

Doctors out the wazoo.

Yesterday seemed to be the longest day. Ever.

I had a dental appointment at 9am. I've been having a lot of pain in the back of mouth, top left. I finally made a dental appointment because I figured if I had a bad tooth that I should get it fixed before Kevin deploys just in case if something went wrong or anything. I woke up at 5:15... of course, Rosalie decided to sleep in. I love how days I have to get up early she actually sleeps. Never fails. Anyways.. we picked Kevin up from work and headed to the dentist. I was seen right away.. and was out of there in 20 minutes. Nothing is wrong with my teeth. Actually the dentist said I had perfect teeth! X-rays showed that my sinuses are completely filled with fluid and are pushing down onto the roots of my teeth and that's what is causing me pain. I knew I had bad allergies but I didn't know it was that severe. She referred me to my primary care physician to do something about the sinuses. Of course, they couldn't see me until 4:00.

In the mean time, while I was in the dentist, Kevin took Rosalie down to Peds to get her eye looked at. The area around her has been red and her eye has been watering really bad. Yesterday it was REALLY bad. Of course, they wouldn't just look at it.. she needed an appointment, so they made her one for 3:20.

We took Kevin back to work and went home. We got home around 10ish and left again around 2. Before the appointments we went to the wonderful Doris's house because I bought some gymboree clothes from her. They are so stinken cute.. I can't wait til Rosalie can fit into them.. she'll probably be able to wear them around the time we're back in PA. Thanks Doris :)

We hit up the post office and then went to Rosalie's appointment. The doctor had no clue what was wrong with her eye... but he did know that it WASN'T pink eye (well i knew that) and there wasn't an infection. The whites of her eye looked great. He gave me this ointment for her eye. We put it on last night (i haven't yet this morning) but her eye is already looking better so it must be working.

Next was my appointment. I guess I have a sinus infection on top of the allergies.. so he put me on a z-pack... and then a cocktail of meds for my allergies. I'm not kidding.. he prescribed me FOUR things for my allergies. This morning, I already feel better. I can breathe through my nose for the first time since we've arrived in Italy.. I can actually smell things other than really strong scents... my nose isn't constantly running and i wasn't up all night with them. I don't feel really groggy. Ah it's awesome.

On another note, I've been on my diet for 3 days now and i've been sticking to it. I'm hoping I can stick to it. I've even worked out the past 2 nights. I feel great. I want these last 10 lbs GONE.

And how about some new pics of Rosalie...

Watching tv with her dad.. you think she likes him just a lil?

Writing a letter to Uncle Mike who is in Afghanistan

Cutie-Pa-Tootie

I think she went from infant to toddler over night

Haha I love her.. such a goof.. wearing her Pats gear from Aunt Sandy.. Daddy doesn't approve haha

welllll.. CIAO.

Dear Diet

Dear Diet,

I have failed you TERRIBLY this past month. With the big turkey dinner and all the trimmings.. cookies and cakes... I have just completely blew it with you. I was determined to stick to you because I wanted this last bit of weight off before I went home in the beginning of the new year. I started to get discouraged because after a month of searching for a dog sitter, I was having no luck and told myself that I wouldn't be able to go home. I went down hill and didn't even acknowledge that you existed. Now things have worked out and Rosalie and I WILL be going home.. I'm thinking around mid February. By then, I want to take off 10 lbs. I believe that is completely feasible. So diet, today, we meet again.

As some encouragement.. to prove that I can do these measly 10 lbs..

This was me.. right after I had Rosalie.

This was me.. about 6 months into the diet...

and this was me.. a week ago.. a year into the diet.



When I look in a mirror i don't see a change... but seeing these pics.. I can't believe I have shed 60 lbs from my body. If I did 60, what's another 10?

Alright diet. We can do this.

Love,
Mandee

My Italian Speaking Bambina

Last night Rosalie said her first Italian word.. Bella! It means beautiful.. I guess she hears it enough that she learned it. I think we were prouder than when she said her first English word. We're going to start working on more Italian with her. I think she'll pick it up faster because she loves the Italian language. She goes nuts when the Italians talk to her. Budders on the other hand, he HATES the language. He gets sooo mad when we say Ciao. It's hysterical. I'm going to charge my handycam so I can get it on video. It's hilarious.

On another note.. we took Rosalie to see Santa. Let's just say, she hated him. The pictures will explain that.

AND Rosalie got tooth #11. Her first cuspid.. now she has 6 on top and 5 on the bottom and the bottom 2 molars are working their way through.. just haven't broke the surface yet.

We also had the AGE shop holiday party last night..we only stayed an hour so we could go see Santa, but Rosalie didn't stop moving the whole hour we were there.. she had so much fun running around. Here's a few pics before we left for the party.

That's about it for now.. I've got a cake in the oven for lil Miss and have to start supper in a few :)