Doermann Family Blog

Greg traded skills with a co-worker (her photography, for Greg's photoshop knowledge) and we were able to take family pictures! Now we can put up pictures that have Mona in them. I haven't printed a single picture with her in it! Isn't that shameful?

I do love my Mona too. I love gummy smiles. She was so good the whole time!

I just love this one.

There's Mona with her hand out. At least she's happy!

Look at our two girls! We love them. Thanks Jen for such cute dresses. I love those too.

I had been looking forward to Thanksgiving for SO LONG. First, my parents came out to Utah early, and it was so much fun to have them. Then we caravaned down to Arizona. On the second day of travel. Pearl was in the car with my parents and threw up twice, but never really acted sick, just disturbed she had vomited all over herself and had to be changed and wiped down while it was freezing outside (I'd like to congratulate my Dad for keeping it in himself. I'm sure Grandpa Daines would be proud). Because she hadn't acted sick, I assumed it was car sickness. However, that night she started running a fever. I felt bad because she'd played with all her cousins that day. Oops. The next one to get sick was me at 2:30 Thanksgiving morning. Kind of ruined the day for me.





I did manage to get myself presentable to take family pictures. Where would I be without this sibling picture or the memory of how much my brother didn't want to be there taking it with us?

The next day the trip was pretty much ruined for everyone else. My Dad, Jennifer and Collin all got the stomach flu. Also on Friday, Rebecca, Natalie and Pearl started losing their voice. (At least Rebecca was the source of that germ though. Wouldn't I feel awful if we'd brought ALL of it?) By the time we were driving into Provo Saturday night, Pearl was so sick with cough, congestion and fever, Greg just dropped me off at the ER. And then Mona and Greg got it, and then me.

Even if we did share too many germs, I loved being with family and wouldn't have missed it for anything! I wish we lived closer to cousins! Pearl talks about them all the time.

She likes to use the word Fa'anunu for everything.
Sometimes it replaces words she doesn't know, as in "Get me that Fa'anunu."
Sometimes she just rhymes with it: "Fa'anunu ba'anunu sa'anunu"
Other times it's an insult: "You Fa'anunu head."

I asked her, "Do you like to say Fa'anunu" and her response was, "That's a silly Fa'anunu."
Three years is a strange age.

Here we are the night before Halloween dressed as witches and a warlock. Our neighbor, who helped us out a lot this summer with gardening advice, invited us to her party. Notice our headstone... our tomatoes reached 7 ft. this summer. We had them tied to huge stakes, our gutters, porch light, anything we could think of to keep them from falling over. Our little backyard was so overgrown.


Our neighborhood had a little carnival on Halloween. Mona's dressed like a candy corn today. She spits so bad she needed two costumes. I had the hardest time choosing costumes this year, because I'm pretty sure it's my last with Pearl. She seemed excited about a witch, but it took A LOT of convincing (and tears, mine and hers) to get her to keep the hat and cape on.

Pearl's birthday was such a fun day. She actually gets the concept of opening presents now. It was so fun to watch her that she had opened all her presents before we even had breakfast. So, doing a birthday on a budget went extremely well. Build-a-bear gave her $5 store credit, plus they sent me a coupon for a free animal. Our new mattress was late in coming so the store sent us a gift card to cold stone, and we let Pearl pick out her very own cake. Naturally she went for the one with berries on it: Raspberry Cheesecake. It was delicious.

On the Sunday after her birthday we had a party at Greg's parents. We drove up after church and Pearl fell asleep on the way.

Alayne and Andrea bought Pearl a really fun play food set. She plays with it EVERY day. By the way, this is Uncle Alex. He came home from his mision in July. It didn't take long for Pearl to warm up to him. They always play so cute and read lots of stories. Shortly after he came home, the Harry Potter movie came out. Alayne and Alex came over and watched the girls so Greg and I could go out and see it. Pearl still says, "Member Alex came over and you and Daddy went to Harry Potter? Do that again."

I feel like I haven't posted much about Ramona. What can I say, she's a pretty happy, easy baby. She sleeps decently. She eats great. She has a fantastic giggle. I feel like her being so good is making up for her spitting up. She is the worst. Well, Pearl was awful, and if I eat onions, Ramona is definitely worse than she was. However, if I don't, it's very manageable. With Pearl it was never manageable.

Mona is very mobile- started crawling at 5 months, pulled to stand at 6 months and started walking along furniture at 7 months.

This is a rare shot. Mona lying still, on her back.

This is a typical face for mona. She likes to spit. She blows for a bit, then giggles, smiles and blows some more.

On Labor Day Weekend we got a new mattress. YEAH! Greg's parents were kind enough to watch the girls while we picked one out. When we got home they decided we got such a good deal, they wanted one too. So, Greg and Pearl went back to the store with them. When Greg told Pearl it was time to go, she ran to go get her baby doll, but fell and whacked a box spring on her way down. There was blood everywhere and Greg, who is the calm one during a crisis, was kind of panicking. Luckily there was an EMT in the store and she assessed the situation, calmed everyone down, and then they rushed Pearl to Emergency. When I got there she was calm, but Grandma, Pearl and Greg all had blood everywhere!



17 stitches later, this is what it looked like.

It's healed really well. Pearl is great about reminding me to put on her Mederma and sunscreen. We kept a bandaid on for about two weeks. This picture is doing double duty. Pearl is potty training and really likes her panties. She likes to wear them all at the same time.

This is the house where my mom spent most of her summers. This fall we took a one day trip up to Paris, ID (north side of Bear Lake). The house is so run down. I'd love to see it fixed up some day...

I have no clue what this machine does. It was scary walking across the field to it because we passed an animal skull on the way, and when I was little and came to this house there were little black snakes all over.