Light show

We got about a foot of snow the day after Christmas and this was the view from our porch tonight. If you click on the picture and enlarge it you can see that the snow is glimmering. Sam braved the 6 degree weather to get this picture, so we hope you enjoy it.

Christmas 2012

Christmas was pretty fun this year. There is just something special about having a baby get excited about Christmas for the first time. She finally understood unwrapping gifts, even if every little piece of paper had to go into the trash before she could get any more off of the present.

 We sure do love our little cowgirl!

These are some of our highlights of the day. :) This is a long clip, 2+ minutes.

What to do?

Picture this: you have a community obligation at 5, so you lay your kid down for a nap at 3, she proceeds to holler at the world (not crying, but calling out) for an hour and twenty minutes. She then falls into a very deep sleep ten minutes before it's time to get ready to go. Great! So what do you do? Decide to go late and let her get at least a power nap in, and to kill time, you write a blog post about how cute she is.

She loves to lead the music!

 We may not have a Snowman Village, but we do have a place to put presents that no one (except Sam) can peek at them. Although they are starting to get a little tempting to The Girl, it'll still be quite a few years until she can get to them on her own.

Curls

Over the past week we have found a new joy in our house...sponge curlers! I first put them in a week ago Sunday, but they didn't have time to dry before church. Then on Wednesday The Girl went and got them out and asked me to put them in...sure, Weirdo! So I put in the curlers and she was very happy... (18 curlers on that tiny head of hers!)

 ...She was happy at least until it was time to take the curlers out. She does not like me to take them "away". Which in one aspect is kinda nice because now I know I can put them in on Saturday night and her hair is all done for Sunday morning!

 Yeah, we think it's pretty cute too. She looks like a totally different kid with all the curls! And another good part, they are still curly after 2 nights so this is a hair-do that keeps on giving.

Christmastime!

 So this year I was totally thrilled when our Christmas lights went up in less than 30 minutes! That is called team work! (Or really superb organizing and putting away from last year.) So Sam is tall enough that he didn't need the ladder to put them up, The Girl handed him the hangers and I unwrapped the lights from the spools that I made last year. It was very exciting and The Girl really likes to see the lights! We haven't taken a picture, but we didn't get any more lights since last year so look at this post to see what the lights look like from last year. It looks the same, except now we have a sidewalk in the front of the house.

The next day was Sunday and we thought decorating the tree would be a great activity, so we got that done and by Sunday night it all looked pretty spiffy.

I learned a sad lesson on Monday though... I was sooo tired from being up most the night with a little boy trying to kung-fu his way out of my insides that I decided that I needed a nap. The Girl was playing so nicely with her nativity when I closed my eyes I didn't think anything of it. However, an 18 month old who has never climbed up on anything, especially the train table, in her life decided that she needed to climb up and get the outlet cover out of the window behind the tree. This didn't go over too well. The next thing I know there is a Christmas tree on my head. Now, can I just point out that this is a really unlovely way to be woken up? Yep, you see the pillow under the top of the tree? That is exactly where my head was. I sat up and started crying, mostly from the shock and I'm sure the hormones had some part in it, and The Girl crawled over the tree and got off the table. Then she came and gave me a hug and kept saying, "It okay. Sorry. It okay." and slobbering on my face giving me her interpretation of kisses. So it was sweet, but still not very fun.

 

As a side note to anyone who may be concerned, Sam has added another platform to the bottom of the tree that makes it slightly more stable. And she has only attempted to get up on the table a handful of times since then, and only to try and get pieces of her nativity that ended up out of her reach.

Texas Thanksgiving

This year we decided to spend Thanksgiving in Texas with Lela and Papa. We had to take advantage of one more free plane ride for our baby girl. 

It was a lot of fun and while we have more pictures, I decided to post what I had on my computer since it's already a few weeks late.

The girl had a lot of fun feeding the ducks and swans at the park near the grandparent's house.  The swans were a little more aggressive than the ducks and were a little better fed.

The girl had fun helping Papa clean up the leaves in the backyard.

Before our Thanksgiving feast we went to downtown Dallas for the 45th annual Turkey Trot. We "waggled" our way through the 5k course. We pushed a stroller through most of the course, but met Papa a little before the finish line. He took over babysitting duties so we could kick on the afterburners for the final sprint to the finish. There were thousands of runners and walkers on the course. Lela, of course, did the 8 mile run and finished way before we did.

Mary went to the baby doctor a few days later and he was impressed she was able to do a 5k in her third trimester!

Our little girl sure had a lot of fun with her Texas grandparents. We can't wait to see them again soon.

Amazing!

It really is quite amazing what can be accomplished when a husband is home for a "day off". We tackled this in an hour and a half! That was all that was needed to put up shelves on the wall and organize all of this mess into something I find quite delightful! There is hope for the basement!!

 Love it!! We can now easily see what we have and what we need!

 This was her reward for helping us so much while we worked.

This was the elephant ride we like to play...oh is she a fan!

Halloween

We conveniently scheduled a doctor's appointment on Nov. 1 so that The Girl could have the opportunity to figure out what Trick or Treating was. By the time I was tired and ready to go home she was just getting into things. Good thing she has a daddy who loves her so much! She got to stay out and trick or treat with her cousins for a little while longer. This video are some of the highlights for us...

I didn't realize that dalmatians were herding dogs, but this little one sure wanted the lamb to be in a certain place at a certain time!

This is the Trick or Treat crew 2012!

Yes, I think these two make a very good pair!

 

She was quite intrigued by all this stuff called "candy"

Mary had a little lamb...

It took a promise of getting to wear her boots, but she finally put the costume on...

 

 

 This is her and her good friend, Sam says they are starting to look like hardened criminals.

She followed me to school one day...

October Fun

Here are just a few pictures that we took in October.

 "At the cat walk..." It looks like she is walking on the catwalk, but she was just heading for the door for church.

The first snow of the winter fell on 10/25/15

"Reading"

We decided we should get this on video. We got this book from the library and she started "reading" it the first time she opened it up. We sure think she is a special girl!

A Tidbit

The Girl has some news to share...

(...check out the shirt)

Yep, we made it to 20 weeks and here is the first picture of our little GUY!

Baby Boy - Coming early 2013

(Yes, this is my excuse for not blogging more often)

Phone etiquette

Our girl loves playing with the phone. We don't really want her thinking the phone is a toy, but it is so hard to take it away when she is this cute.

Those of you who have called us recently may have heard a strange greeting on our answering machine. We were surprised to find out that the boring computerized greeting had been replaced by our daughter's very animated personal greeting. Apparently by randomly pushing buttons our girl figured out how to personalize the greeting. We are a little embarrassed that our one-year-old is more tech savvy than her parents, but you must hear the message anyway.

So far just about everyone who has called and gotten this message carried on a 30-second conversation with our daughter before they realized it was the answering machine. We really should change the greeting, but honestly we don't know how. Plus it's so fun we have no motivation to learn.

We love our firsts...

This girl could have done this a while ago, but apparently she was waiting until she was ready to go. No two step shuffle for this one! After this was taken she proceeded to walk around the house for the rest of the evening, doesn't want to be helped at all!

4th of July Dance

Here's a few highlights from our Independence Day celebration.

We went to the Fourth of July dance at Woodpecker Hall. My sister was playing with her band The Pretty Darns. Our girl was getting into the dancing with the other young people. But every time mom or dad tried to cut in she was horrified. She would scream and wave her arms for us to leave her alone. Now I've heard that children are often embarrassed when their parents act as their chaperones at a social function. Is it normal for this to begin at 14 months?

Having way too much fun at the dance.

Our baby girl's first time wading in a stream. (At the Fourth of July picnic at Pole Canyon.)

Life at our zoo

The other day I was in the kitchen and heard a disturbance outside. I went out and immediately knew where it was coming from and I had a pretty good idea what was causing it. I went down to the basement and looked in the window well, coming face to face with this guy trying to tunnel out.

 So how do you go about getting a badger out of your window well? It may look cute, but badgers are about the toughest animals alive. They'll send bears running for their lives. The most popular answer seemed to be to shoot the badger. Of course I had the option to crack the window to shoot it, or come at it from above, crawling under the porch and putting my face and arm within reach of those nasty looking claws and bone-crunching jaws. Neither option sounded like a winner. So I got my 4-ft ladder, and dropped it down the window well. Then I said a prayer and went to bed. Sometime during the night the badger figured out how to climb a ladder and let itself out. Lucky for us and the badger, it hasn't been seen since.

 We also have some friendlier neighbors. This killdeer decided to build it's nest right next to our driveway, so every time we went for a walk for the last month we were greeted by this bird.

Killdeers protect their nests by acting as decoys. They walk away from their nests, hoping you will follow them.

If you don't follow them they'll fluff their feathers or drag a wing to make it look like they're easy prey. If you still don't get away from the nest they'll try a more aggressive approach, puffing their feathers and running at you.

 Here's the nest. It's so well camouflaged you couldn't see it unless you were right on top of it.

Vacation Pictures

We got to take a short family vacation to Midway, UT and here are some of the highlights...

 No, this is not the beach, it's the Salt Lake overflow by Lake Point, UT - but it looked like the beach!

 We probably should have fed The Girl more often, she resorted to chomping on her toes about the time we hit Salt Lake.

 This is the "vacation cheer"

 The carousel

 Yep, they really got into that movie.

 The Girl really wanted to give her cousin loves, they are 6 months apart so clearly The Girl has the upper hand...

 She wasn't quite sure about the ride while it was going, but when it was done she liked it!

 We posed for a family picture

 I guess we let her party too hard the night before...

She was pretty happy on the drive home.

I will do another post soon with some videos of swimming and the goats and anything else I'm forgetting right now.