Letters

These days it is pretty common for people to decorate their baby's nursery with wooden letters. Even though I knew it wasn't a completely original idea, I still thought I would like to do that for Morgan.

As long as I can remember my mom had "projects" she was working on and they almost all had something to do with painting. I still have a wooden heart that she made me with my name and a little sheep on it. Who better to paint the letters for Morgan right? Right! So I asked my mom if she was up to the task. Thankfully, she accepted and painted some pretty letters to hang above Morgan's crib.

I found this website and purchased them there. It is pretty cool because you pick what font you want, what height you want and what thickness you want. You can also buy block letters or tiles and you can buy them already painted if you don't want to paint them yourself. Here is how Morgan's letters turned out.

Thanks again mom! They turned out great and they are just what we needed to complete Morgan's room. We love you :)

The Chargers

Not Charger like Kevin's car, but the San Diego Chargers Football team. Kevin's boss has season tickets and couldn't attend the game this past weekend so he gave his tickets to us.  We don't have a specific team that we route for and aside from the super bowl we don't really watch football on T.V, but we both really like watching sports live, especially at the professional level. We couldn't find a sitter for Morgan so we had to bring her with us, but before we headed out to the stadium we stopped at Lowe's and picked up some ear muffs. (if you ever need to buy some just head straight to lowe's. Babies R us doesn't have them.) It was a good thing we got them too because it was LOUD!

Our seats where in the press section which was nice because 1) Not as crowded for concessions or the bathroom and 2) It was totally in the shade so I didn't have to worry about any of us getting sunburned.

The pre-game show was pretty neat. They had a parachute team fly into the stadium. They came in pretty hot too. Kevin and I were impressed at how smoothly they were able to stop. Some of them at to run pretty fast as they landed so they wouldn't fall.  They also had different branches of the military come out and hold the flag in the shape of the United States while the National Anthem was being sung.

As you can see Morgan hated wearing the ear muffs at first. She kept trying to take them off.

But once she realized we weren't giving in, she was fine.

She even fell Asleep!

Morgan did really well. I was wondering how she was going to be with all of the people and noise, but she was a trooper. Actually, we had several people stop us to tell us how they brought their children when they were that age and now they are all grown up. We had one woman even ask if she could take Morgan's picture with her phone to send it to her daughter. It is so funny when you have a baby. People are so friendly and they love to remember how it was when their children were little. I'm sure we will be doing the same thing 30 years from now.

We don't have many pictures of the three of us together so it was nice that we were able to get this shot.

The game was a blast. The Chargers killed the Jaguars so the crowd was in a really good mood. We are really thankful to Kevin's boss for giving us this opportunity!

9 months

Morgan turned 9 months old back on the 8th. At her Doctor appointment she weighed 19.4 lbs which puts her in the 75%. I can't remember how tall she was, but basically the doctor said she is off of the chart at over 95%. She is crawling around all over the place now and pulling herself up to stand. Unfortunately, with that comes some scrapes, bumps and bruises, but hey that is part of it. Her two front teeth are about to come through and she is eating some table food now. She is a sweetheart and can be very silly. She loves cell phones, remote controls really anything that doesn't look like a toy! She is getting more interested in books and stuffed animals and she LOVES Elmo on Sesame Street. Here are some recent pictures that I haven't had a chance to post before now.

Bath Time

Eating Pancakes

Daddy's sunglasses

playing in the box

Just being silly

Year in review (so far)

Ok so to fully understand why we moved to Murrieta I think I need to back up a bit and give you a break down of this whole year.

New Year's Eve-Kevin's magazine closes. Which means he is out of a job without ANY warning or severance pay. Not to mention the fact that they screwed him out of any and all vacation pay they owed him. Oh and we had a 3 week old daughter. Yep, that was awesome.

March-I take Kevin to the ER to find out that he had some MAJOR gallstones and he had to have surgery to have his gallbladder removed. (Don't worry we were paying for insurance through COBRA so we were covered :) Thank goodness!

Around the same time Kevin started interviewing for this company called PowerTV. They have five different car publications that they run online. That seemed to us right up his alley. He was apparently, interviewing at the same time as two other guys and it kind of felt like they had him jumping through all sorts of unnecessary hoops, BUT Kevin is a hard worker and wanted to get back to work as soon as possible.He was willing to do what was asked of him. After about three different hour and a half drives (both ways) to take personality tests and written tests they came back to him and said that they would not be offering him the job. Kevin was pretty crushed because we thought this job was an answer to our prayers. I mean, he would be back writing about and working on cars!

Kevin wanted to know why they felt he wasn't a "good fit" for the job so he asked the owner. He replied that he didn't feel comfortable writing about that over an email, but that he would be happy to meet up with him for dinner if he liked. We both thought that is a little unconventional, but Kevin needed to know for future job interviews so he agreed to meet up. Come to find out James (the owner of the company) said that half of Kevin's references were good and half were "bad". Basically, everyone said that he is a really hard worker and he always gets the job done fast, but that he may not get along with everyone. I don't know how, but after that dinner meeting James offered Kevin a temporary contractor position for three months. He wanted to see if he could handle the demanding nature of the job and also to see if he works well with the rest of the team. After three months if everything went well he would then offer him a permanent position.

From May to August (the trial period) Kevin had to work in the office Mon-Wed. He would stay over at his parents house on those nights because it was only 25 mins away. He would work from home Thursday and Friday. So for three months I was a single mom three full days a week and let me tell you-I have so much respect  for full time single mothers. That is a HARD job.

Fast forward three months and they offered Kevin the full time job. Kevin and I had a lot to consider and we weren't quite sure whether he should take it or not. Kevin loves writing about cars, but it is a HUGE pay cut for a lot more work  Kevin isn't able to be added to their insurance until December and even then it looks like Morgan and I will have to get our own separate insurance, but the biggest was moving out here to Murrieta. Not because it isn't a nice area. It is. Mostly, because it is a big deal to pack up and move for a job you aren't sure you like completely yet. Aside from that Kevin seems to get along with his co-workers and he is still able to be creative everyday.

It has been a hard year for the Shaw family so far, but we are so glad to be back together every day. We know that a lot of people are struggling right now and we feel blessed knowing that we are going to be ok. We are looking forward to this new adventure and seeing what this next year will bring.

Yep, we moved

But before we did that we did THIS

We went to a bonfire with some friends from church.

Kevin bought me Beatles Rockband! :)

The day after we got Rockband we had two couples over to break it in. It was so much fun and we played it for several hours. The week before we moved out I had two of my closest girl friends over to play it one more time.

Morgan mastered the army crawl

And started getting into EVERYTHING ;)

She also had moments were she just sat there and looked cute like this

Now that we are trying to get everything settled in our new place I don't have as many opportunities to blog right now, but I will try my best to keep this current and up to date.