Friends Thanksgiving 2012

This year we had Friends Thanksgiving at Heidi and Ryan's home. Like always, the food was delicious and the company even better! Our group keeps growing and it's evolving into a wild party with so  many kiddos! Next year, there will be one more since Jax is becoming a big brother. It's such a fun tradition and we feel so blessed by our wonderful friends. It's so wonderful to have good friends to go through life with!

Connor's Last TBall Game

Connor had his last Tball game of the Fall Ball Season. It was a great first season and Connor seemed to have a great time! Michael helped the coaches at every practice and game, and was recruited to be head coach during the regular season. I'm excited to be team mom! It's so fun to see Connor's love for the sport! He's such a dream come true!

Family Weekend in Modesto

Last weekend, we had a lovely trip to Modesto. First, Connor got to go to the Cinderella musical with Mimi and her friends, and then we got to visit with Grandma Jill's family, followed by a birthday celebration for Gigi the following day. It was a fun and love filled weekend!

10 Months Old!

Our Sweet Madeline is 10 months old! Holy Moly, time is scooting by just a little too quick! She is just such a sweetheart. Her newest thing this month is cruising... she pulls herself up to a stand and can cruise around the house fairly quickly now. She is still crawling well, but likes to be on her feet. She's eating better and really eats pretty much what we're eating each day. Pretty good for a baby with no teeth! She's got the pincer grasp down and feeds herself quite independently. She's taking to the sippy cup, but still spits out the water mostly. Mealtime is messy, to say the least! She's sleeping well, occasionally waking up in the night, but nothing too problematic. She smiles and laughs often, especially when Connor is playing with her or when we're tickling her.  She's just a love bug and we are so enjoying getting to be her mom and dad. I can't believe she'll be 1 in two months! With the holidays, I know it's going to fly by. I just want to slow it down... each day is such a blessing with these kids.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Playdate

Here are some pictures from our Halloween play date yesterday. We had a great time celebrating Halloween with our wonderful friends. Connor was so excited to have his friends over, that he helped me clean the day before! We had a fun time playing with toys, doing a pumpkin craft, eating lunch, and having time for the mommies to chat. So thankful for our friends!

Pumpkin Decorating

We had a blast decorating pumpkins this year. It turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated. I made a classic jack-o-latern, Mallory made a monster, Connor painted the baby pumpkin, and Michael wanted to make an SF logo in honor of the Giants winning the World Series again, but somehow I got stuck with actually carving the SF logo. I can't complain, since while I carved, Michael did all the clean up!  I'll post the end results later once we have them lit up for Halloween. So fun to get to do these fun traditions with our kids. 

Disneyland 2012

We had a wonderful trip to Disneyland last week. I found out about a week before that my district would pay for me to go to LA for the annual CASP conference. Since I'm still nursing Maddie, Michael agreed to come with so the kids could come along as well. We combined the trip with a couple days at Disneyland. We hadn't planned to make another trip to Disney until Maddie was older, but Connor has been such an outstanding brother, so we wanted to do something extra special for him. We surprised him the morning we were leaving and gave him a gift filled with Mickey jammies, a Mickey shirt, and Mickey fruit snacks. He was overwhelmed with the news, but became more and more excited as our road trip went on. We enjoyed one day at Disneyland and one day at Ca Adventure. Connor was really into seeing the characters and thoroughly enjoyed the parades at each park. Even Maddie seemed to have a good time! It was really a perfect get away and as usual, we had a blast spending time with each other. We are so very blessed!

Madeline's 9 Month Photos... Love this girl!

Annual Trip to Apple Hill

We enjoyed a wonderful day at Apple Hill last Monday. Our friends Danielle and Sophia joined us and we really enjoyed spending the day with them. We had a picnic lunch, Connor rode a pony, fed fish, played with the goats, and ate lots of yummy apple-stuff. Another wonderful memory for us!

Captain Hook and His Princess

West Sacramento Fire Station Open House

We had a great time at the Fire Station open house this year. We got to see a simulated call where a fire fighter rode down the pole and got dressed in under 2 minutes. We also got to observe two real calls, which was exciting. Connor enjoyed the bounce houses and the free hot dogs, and we were able to get both kids' fingerprints done which was one more thing off my to-do list. It was a really nice event put on by our local fire station.

Tball

We had another fun Saturday filled with Tball and Connor had a good cheering section as usual. Grandma and Pops were there and Mandy, Chad and CJ came to cheer him on too. He did great and had fun!

Grandma and Pops came to cheer Connor on!

Connor loves his Cousin CJ!

Running the Bases! Grand Slam!!

Making snacks for the team

9 Months

Our sweet baby girl is 9 months old! My how time flies... it seems to just be speeding by. Maddie is really getting around now... crawling and cruising! She follows Connor everywhere and tries to play with all of his toys. The cutest is when Connor plays baseball with Michael out back and Maddie will stand at the window watching and tapping on the window. She's also very talkative... lots of mama, dada, baba, daba, etc. going on. She's a very happy girl... smiley, energetic, snuggly, playful. We just love her so much. She's still sleeping well... 2 naps during the day and 7:30-6am each night. For eating, she's pretty much moved on to whole foods instead of purees. She'll eat some fruit purees (apple sauce, oatmeal with banana) and yogurt, but pretty much feeds herself everything else. She loves bread, fruit, pasta, and some vegetables. At her 9 month well baby check up today, Maddie weighed 19lbs. 3 ounces and measured 27.5 inches tall. She got the first shot of her influenza vaccine and tolerated that well. She's perfect in every way and we are just completely blessed to be her parents.