Madeline is 11 months!

Sweet Baby Madeline is 11 months! 

Hard to believe Madeline is almost a year! This year has just flown by! She is such a sweet little girl! She loves her daddy and her big brother and smiles when either of them enter the room. She's very snuggly and still enjoys being held, although she is moving around a lot lately! She's taken a few steps, but is very cautious about walking on her own. If she has our finger to hold onto, she'll walk confidently, but as soon as you take that way, she stops. She'll stand for about 10-15 seconds, but is hesitant to take a step on her own. She gets around quickly by crawling and cruising. She's sleeping well... usually going down around 7:30pm, waking around 5:30-6am to nurse, and then back to sleep until 7am. She still naps twice a day on most days, but occasionally only takes one nap. She's still nursing (3-4 times a day!) but is very good about eating "real food." She seems to like meat best... chicken, steak, sausage, hamburger, etc. It's amazing how well she can eat without any teeth! She just recently started signing "more" and seems to be saying "mama" and "dada" with meaning. She claps often and her smiles could melt anyone's heart. She's very expressive with her face and makes this adorable "oooh" sound while making her lips into a perfect circle. She usually does that when she sees something new, or if she gets excited to see one of us. We're loving every moment with this sweet girl!

Yep... She's climbing stairs! Needless to say, the gates are back up!

Enjoying emptying the "kids" cupboard!

Maddie's Birthday Invitation

Thanksgiving 2012

We had a busy, but wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We headed to Modesto on Wednesday to spend the day with my mom and help prep the feast for the following day. The next day, we started at Dave and Jill's and had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal and enjoyed time with them. After that, we headed back to my parent's home and enjoyed a feast with the Bollengier's and our family. It was an extra special Thanksgiving because Aunt Judy was here visiting! It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a little Black Friday shopping, so Mal and I convinced Michael to go out with us (for protection) late Thursday night. We had fun shopping the deals at Target and Ulta and made it home by 1am! Michael even admitted that he had fun! All and all, it was a great Thanksgiving. We have so very much to be thankful for!

Best Buds!

Baylee and Connor put on a Gangnum style show for us, choreographed by Brooke!

Michael getting trampled by the kids!

Sweet Aunt Judy getting loves from Maddie girl.

What cool kids I have! 

Maddie and  CJ playing together! Such sweet cousins!

Poppy and Aunt Judy came to Connor's gymnastics class last week!

Connor is loving gymnastics and is really learning a lot. Here he is jumping into the pit. 

Poppy and Daddy showing Connor some golf techniques at the park.

We sure enjoyed having Aunt Judy here to visit!

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!