Tressa is going on 17 months!!!

It is amazing how time flies when you are having fun. I can't believe that Tressa will be 17 months tomorrow. She is doing well. Her vocabulary is growing by day. Last night she heard Ken coming home, all of the sudden, she pointed to the door and asked, "Who's that?". It truly made my day. She is also into twirling around in circles to the song Jingle Bells. She will go about 10 to 15 minutes of twirling before she stops. She is our little miracle. Here are some pictures of her in her Christmas dress. Enjoy!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We just wanted to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. We are headed off to Ken's parents tomorrow morning for some turkey dinner and to pick up our car. Yeah!!! I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving feast. Drive safe and take care.

Love
The Richards Family

What an adventure!!!!

Sorry it has been so long for a post on my blog, but a lot has happened since I last posted. To save time, I will give you a short version of my adventure. First, Tressa and I went to visit Ken's parents in Cincinnati over Conference weekend. While we were visiting, we decided to spend the weekend in Charlotte, NC to visit Ken's brother, Phil, and his family. We had a great time. Tressa was an angel in the car. She was such a trooper. Tressa had a great time with her cousins, Matt and Sadie. Tressa and I came home for about 2 days, then we were off again to visit Bryan and Kirsten in D.C. for Ken's vacation week. We had a great time with Bryan and his family. Since we had been to D.C. several times before and had seen most the sites we decided to just hang out, take it easy. We will really miss them with them in Brazil. I hope that they have a great time there. Good luck Bryan!!!

On our way back from D.C., we spent a couple of days with Ken's family. Thinking that our traveling days were over, Tressa and I decided to go visit Ken's family again for Halloween (since Ken was on call that night). We had a great trip until the very end.

The night before Halloween, Colleen had a Halloween piano recital for her students. She has them dress up in their costumes and perform Halloween songs. We had a great time. Tressa dressed up as Tinkerbell. She looked really cute for the recital.

On Halloween night, Tressa and I went Trick-or-Treating with Carl and Tiona. Tressa sure had a great time; however, I think I was the one having the best time. There in Cincinnati, they had trick-or-treating hours from 6-8 and everyone in the neighborhood were sitting out on their porch or in the driveway. We did not have to knock on any doors which helped out the success of our candy. We were out the whole 2 hours. Tressa got a pumpkin full of candy. She was a cute little bumblebee, courtesy of Bonnie (Ken's sister-in-law). Afterwards, we watched close to six hours of Ghost Hunters. They were investigating the Waverly Sanatorium in Louisville, KY live. I had to watch it, since I had been a resident of Louisville and had heard stories from what happens in the Sanatorium.

Tressa and I were supposed to come home the Friday after Halloween. After talking to Ken, he informed me that he had to work Saturday morning. So I decided to leave Saturday morning and be home about the same time he did. I have saved you the best story for last. Here goes:

The night before we were to leave for home, I was on my way to Carl and Tiona's apartment with Tressa and Colleen in the back and Tiona and I in the front. We were one light away from the freeway entrance, I was slowing down for the red light, when all of the sudden I was hit from behind. I looked in my rear view mirror and my trunk had flown open. With all the commotion, I looked to my left and the driver that hit me took off into oncoming traffic and through the light that had turned green. Yes, it was a hit and run. What made me really mad is that I had my 16 month old daughter in the car. He didn't have the decency to see if we were okay. We pulled off into a gas station, while that was occurring, a cop had heard the car crash and started chasing after the car that had hit me. He was unable to catch him and decided to turn around to see how we were holding up. Everyone in the car ended up with soar necks, backs and had headaches. Tressa was fine until she saw her mommy upset.

The best part of the story was:

1. the man left his front bumper on the road with his license plate
2. he had left an imprint in my back bumper of his license plate number
3. they found the car 8 miles north of the car accident, totaled
4. they were able to contact the owner and the car is insured, now he can pay for my car to get fixed
5. the owner loaned the car to his brother that 1) did not have a drivers license and 2) has a criminal record
6. the brother claims that he was held at gunpoint in KY and the car was stolen

The cop called me and told me do to some chains of events that happened that night my accident report will take a little longer. The Monday after the car accident, I went and got my car estimated. It will cost $4200 to fix my car, but it will take 2 weeks. I was able to get a rental until the 23rd of Nov. We are going to go back Thanksgiving weekend to pick it up. For now, we are cruising around in a 2006 Chrysler PT Cruiser, light blue. Our trip lasted 1 week longer than planned. We are all doing fine. We just can't wait to get this incident past us.

Here are some pictures of Tressa in her costume. I hope that everyone had a safe Halloween.

Can't wait to get on the road again!!!

That's right. Tomorrow, Tressa and I are taking a girls trip to Cincinnati for the week. Ken is really busy at the hospital working over 80 hours, so I figured it would be fun to just get away for a little bit. We are going to also take a little vacation inside a vacation. We are going to leave Friday morning with Ken's parents to visit Phil and Bonnie in Charlotte, NC. Never been to North Carolina before. It should be really fun. Tressa and I will report back our wonderful trip next week. Have a wonderful weekend. I know we will.

Tressa new hairdo!!!

I decided to try something new on Tressa's hair. Here are some pics.

Scary moment!!!

Here's another scary moment that happened in the Richards' household. Yesterday morning, I woke up at 5:30 am and couldn't breath. Scared, I woke up Ken and told him that I couldn't breath. He jumped out of bed, grabbed me some Benadryl and his stethoscope. As he was listening to my lungs, he said that my lips were swollen. I looked in the mirror and sure enough I looked like Angelina Jolie for a minute. Ken rushed me to the ER. The doctors ended up giving me a breathing treatment and sent me home with an inhaler and a prescription for steroids. They also did a chest x-ray and a strep culture. They both came back negative. We don't know exactly what had caused this. Ken and others think it was an allergic reaction. The ER docs thought it was just viral due to the fact that I have a cold. This morning I woke up breathing, which is a great feeling.

Just when you thought nothing could get any worse.

After the dramatic experience with Tressa throwing up all over me. I thought nothing could get any worse. Boy, was I wrong. The following day, our ward was putting on the annual ward pig-nic about 20 minutes out of the city. Ken had to go because he is on the activity committee. I was debating whether or not I should take Tressa for an hour or so, just to get out for some fresh air. I really should have followed my gut and not taken her. For one reason, while we were just getting down to eating dinner, I noticed a bunch of bees flying around us. I told Ken that the bees are annoying and I was worried of them being around Tressa. Again, Ken said, "There just bees, they aren't hurting anything." Boy was he wrong. Yes, Ken can be wrong at times. Before long, I look down and Tressa is holding a bee with her right hand. I look at her left hand and she has a stinger in her index finger. My guess is she saw the bee stinging her and picked the bee up off her finger. I tried to get the stinger out, but was unsuccessful at getting it all out.

Now her finger starts to swell, we are asking around hoping someone has some tweezers. We were able to track some down, but we were not able to get the stinger out. Now her finger is getting bigger and her hand is starting to swell. We put some mud on the stinger, didn't work. Finally, we decided to just go into town and call the pediatrician. Before we left, Ken and the Elders Quorum President gave Tressa a blessing. When we got home we gave Tressa some Benadryl (which we had to get on the way home because we didn't have any at the house). The pediatrician returned our page and she said to go buy some Adolf meat tenderizer. Who would have guessed?

Ken went and got some tenderizer. By George, it actually worked. FYI: If you ever want to skip a trip to the hospital just use meat tenderizer for a bee sting. I guess it has somewhat the same effect as the mud.

Anyway, Tressa is doing much better this morning. We kept her home from church yesterday and pumping her with medication. She is getting back to her old self. She is getting into everything. It is good to have her back.

I didn't think it would happen to me.

I know as a mother, we experience things that normally you think wouldn't happen to you. I had one of those experiences last night. Yesterday, Tressa had a fever of 100.6 and it kept climbing. We switched between Tylenol and Ibuprofen every couple of hours to help the fever go down. However, it kept climbing. Before dinner she was at 102.3. I am thinking to myself this is going to be a long night. Around 7:00 we had Ken's interns over for a BBQ and games. I was surprised that Tressa went down at bedtime, expecting her to sleep through the night. What I wanted didn't happen. About a half hour before the interns left Tressa woke up. Now I am thinking to myself, "this is going to be a long night". I told Ken we should go rent some movies at Blockbuster. We pack up Tressa and go to the movie store with no diaper bag. Bad idea.

While we were walking around looking at movies, Tressa was making these burping noises, the type you here before throwing up. Yup, you guessed it. Before long out comes the pacifier, Hello food chunks. She throw up all over the front of me. I got the most out of the experience. What was worse is the movie store didn't have bathroom at all. (Isn't that illegal :) )All the way home I was thinking to myself, "I thought it would never happen to me". But you know what this won't be the last either. If you want to know, Tressa didn't crash until around 3 in the morning. Oh what a night.

How time flies!!!

As of yesterday, Tressa is now 14 months old. How time flies. She has turned into our little girl with personality. Her vocabulary is up to 25 to 30 words. Her new ones that she said yesterday are "bath" and "simpsons". She loves to read books and to have you read books to her. She has also learned to fold her arms during prayers. Here is her 14 month picture.

Labor Day weekend

We were lucky to have Traci and her family visit us over Labor Day. They arrived in on Sunday, we had dinner and after the kids went to bed, we played games and ate junk food. It was great fun. On Labor Day we went to the park to let the kids run around and get rid of all their energy. Then we treated ourselves to a nice BBQ in the backyard. While the kids were watching a movie, the adults decided to play more games. We had a great time. Thank you Traci and family for coming. You are welcome to come again. We would like anyone who can come and visit us. We would love it.

My first blog

Everybody has been telling me to start a blog so they can see how Tressa is growing and to keep them updated on everyday life. So I did it!!!