I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the holidays! Christmas music is already playing on the local radio station, we read Christmas stories before bed last night, we're going to get started on our decorating this weekend and last night we did one of our favorite pre-holiday activities. I helped Ella "finish" off her drawings - she can't quite draw glasses and pigtails just yet. Have you heard of Operation Christmas Child? Each year, people from all over the country pack shoe boxes full of Christmas goodies that are then transported to children all over the world. Can you imagine your children not getting any gifts on Christmas morning? What if their gift pile that morning could all fit into one plastic box? I have had the pleasure of packing boxes each Christmas since SD ...
Love Letters: Seven Months
How is it possible that you are already seven months old? Somebody asked me how old you were at church this morning and the question kind of caught me by surprise. You are over halfway to your birthday; you are more big girl than baby. Some days I love your new found independence and other days it makes me want to cry. You still only weigh 15 pounds {Ella was 17 lbs 2 oz} and are 26 inches long {Ella was 27}. You're still in the 20th % for weight and 95th % for height! Dr. Darby was impressed with your motor skills this month and gave us the go ahead for table food. You aren't sure what you think about all that texture just yet, but you're slowly getting the hang of it. You love to eat. You've tried apples, bananas, pears, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, plums, carrots, squash, sweet ...
My Little Duck
Just this week we've gone from sitting up in a bath chair, to being free to move about the tub. Can you say happy baby? Last night she took her first solo bath, since Ella was at Mission Friends, and she was in heaven. I gave her a few inches of water, a washcloth and a few toys and you would have thought I saved the world. She crawled from one end of the tub to the other, back and forth, for over thirty minutes. bought this to plug the drain in the tub when Ella was a baby, but since both of my girls pull it out to play with, we have a plain white stopper instead. Ella calls this a "ducklin" - I love hearing her say it. Sophie just chews on it and throws it up in the air and giggles every time she sees it. She loves this little "ducklin." I love this little duck. She has such a good ...
The Best Laid Plans
So, remember that doctor's visit I was talking about? I had an appointment scheduled for both girls in mid-October. I thought I could get Ella's 4-year-old visit and Sophie's six-month visit scheduled back to back and keep me from taking time off on two different days. My work schedule got a little hairy and I had to move the appointments to early November instead. I remember talking to the nurse on the phone and making a note about the new date on a post-it note near my calendar. I still have that little yellow square and it says that I have two appointments scheduled for Thursday, November 4th. I had cute outfits for the girls to wear that day. I would have packed my camera. I would have worn my cute zipper leg skinny jeans and flats. We would have slept late and cooked breakfast and ...
Can We Discuss?
How happy this bridge makes me on my morning commute? I promise I was pretty careful shooting this on my way into work. I didn't even look through the camera and was very surprised to see that I actually caught it. I've been admiring it for over a week, but never managed to have my camera handy. I finally planned for it and snapped early last week. It always makes me smile. How wonderful it is that Ella can sometimes feed Sophie breakfast? Sometimes Ella loves to help and other times she acts completely put out. She and her daddy had requested pigs-in-a-blanket the morning this was taken and it's kind of hard to feed her and accomplish anything. Ella volunteered to feed her some fruit and cereal and boy was it a huge help. If I could convince her to change diapers we would be in ...
My Little Minnie Mouse
This is what a birthday party will do to you. ...
Junk in the Trunk
After a fun week of Halloween activities and parties, we were finally to the big day. Ella woke up with a grin on her face and talked about trick or treating all day long. We went to the annual Trunk-or-Treat event at our church. It is one of the largest ministry opportunities we share and often draws over 500 children from the surrounding communities. Ella started giggling when we turned onto this street and started talking about how much fun it was going to be! I bought Sophie this chicken costume last November. At the time, I didn't know what we were having, but it was hard to pass up a $0.97 costume this cute. I really thought it would be too big for our little bitty and bought the pumpkin costume as a back-up. We decided at the last minute to give it a try and believe it or not, it ...
the post in which we carve pumpkins
I'm not really the pumpkin carver in the family, but since Josh could barely walk upright on Sunday {yucky back problems} I was in the spotlight. The nice part was that he manned the camera and I was in some pictures for a change! I convinced Ella to let me carve their initials instead of faces this year and its a good thing I'm persuasive. The smaller pumpkin was too little to squeeze my hand inside and empty, so we opted to shave the skin off in a star pattern. ...