Cookie Bake

Not only did Adelyn meet Santa and we have Christmas with friends the week we were off work, we also had a cookie bake with a few dear friends, my SIL Mel, Kate, and Tawny.

Tawny’s 37 weeks prego and was a great host!! Tawny and I were middle school and junior high BFF’s!

We made sugar cookies and decorated them! (sorry for the shadow-ed picture…still figuring out my new camera!) After we got our cookies decorated we had a great time catching up and talking all things baby! I think this should be our 1st annual cookie bake girls!

Christmas with Friends

When we were off work before Christmas we had all kinds of fun things planned! One of them included traveling about an hour north to our good friends house, Vahn & Sara and their 2 girls, Emma & Grace. Sara and I worked together at the college for a few years and have stayed close friends ever since! We always say we just wish we lived closer to see each other more!

Emma is 3 and Grace turned 1 on Christmas. Grace was really connected to me! If I was sitting on the floor she would just come right over and snuggle in my lap. She’s such a sweet little girl! Sara said she was so surprised by this because she doesn’t usually go to new people that quickly!

We brought Emma just a small little bonus gift, a giant color book. It was so funny ‘cause she was more about tearing out the pages and giving them to us than coloring them! I love her look of innocence in this picture!

Sara made us a great supper and afterwards we did a little gift exchange!

Needless to say Emma was pretty excited about her new outfit! She loves clothes, it’s so cute!

And Grace was more excited about the wrapping than her gift, but that’s ok!

They gave Adelyn a Leap Frog fridge toy where you make matches with animals. She LOVES it! Thanks guys!!!

We couldn’t resist getting a picture of our 3 girls together! Getting pictures of 3 little girls under 3 is pretty hard though…Take 1

 

Take 2…

Take 3…

Take 4…still no go…

Take 5…I think this is the closest we’re going to get!

Pictures of the Momma’s are a little easier!

Like I mentioned earlier Grace turned 1 on Christmas, so we brought along her birthday gift too.

We had a great time with our friends! Thanks for having us guys!

Adelyn Meets Santa

The week before Christmas Kyle and I were off work all week. One of the things on our “to-do” list was to take Adelyn to meet Santa! Growing up Santa wasn’t a big part of Christmas, but I knew about him and we got gifts from Santa. We always knew that the true meaning of Christmas was about celebrating Jesus’ birth. I think Santa will be a fun tradition for our family. So without further ado here is Adelyn’s first time meeting Santa!

She studied him over for a quite a while and then decided to flash us  a few small smiles! These are the pictures I snapped with my camera which I was more happy with than the 2 I paid $12 for.

My sister had another good reason for telling our kids about Santa. She said she didn’t want it to be her little guy who spoils it for the kids at school if he told them Santa wasn’t real! Ha, made me giggle!

Beginning Solids

While we were on Christmas break (read: 10 days off work!) we took advantage of the time at home with Adelyn to begin solids. We started on Tuesday the 20th with sweet potatoes and went to applesauce a few days later. She did really well with the new foods and we got some great entertainment out of it! You have to check out the series of pictures below!

Bring on the new food, Mom!

And here’s the first bite of applesauce!

I don’t think she was sure what to think!

And here is where the entertainment begins! She made this face with EVERY single bite of sweet potatoes and applesauce!

Don’t worry, I tried both foods to make sure they weren’t sour! But based on that face you would think otherwise!

I think the new flavors were just a bit much for her little taste buds! This sweet girl just cracks me up!

We tried peas on Monday the 26th and we didn’t get the same result. But she also wasn’t feeling well and didn’t eat the same. So we’ll see how she does over the next few days. Hope this gave ya a giggle or two!!

From Our Family to Yours

We just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Kyle’s sister Laura designed our Christmas card this year, thanks Laura! We hope you and your family have a blessed holiday and remember the reason we celebrate this joyous season!

Adelyn’s New Trick!

A few weeks ago Adelyn fully discovered her tongue! She now loves to go “pppsssbbbbtt” (or however you spell it)! Check out the video for the full effect! If you stick around till about 1 minute she really gets going!

And you know we laughed and laughed at her doing this, but I didn’t think it was so funny when I was feeding her cereal over the weekend and she decided to do it with a mouth full of cereal! Needless to say there was cereal EVERYWHERE!

Christmas Wish

In hopes of a white Christmas, Adelyn is wearing her snowman PJs!

She is saying “Please let the weather man be wrong!”. Currently there isn’t any snow in the forecast, but we’re hoping her snowman PJs help give us a white Christmas!

Adelyn’s First Christmas Program

Last week Adelyn’s daycare put on their Christmas program. Obvioulsy she won’t remember it and didn’t sing, but I couldn’t resist having her participate in her first Christmas program! And this was the perfect time to start getting some wear out of her new SheSheMade Christmas dress!

Before we headed out I had to snap some pictures of my sweet girl! Like always, she was all smiles! My sister commented this weekend that Adelyn just gives those smiles away for free, so true!

Adelyn’s group was first at the program. They pooled the baby room with the next 2 older rooms. Mainly the workers sang. There were a few crys and some coo-ing! The put bells on the babies’ arms to shake!

It took me a minute to find Adelyn, but once I did I went to the other side of the auditorium and once I was closer she spotted me right away!

See her there in the middle? She knows her Mama! The rest of the program she had her eyes locked on me! Totally melted my heart!

Afterwards we had to get a few pictures with friends! Kim and her family are moving to Kansas in February. We are so happy for them, this is what they’ve wanted for along time, but we are going to miss them SO much. Ok, I’m done talking about it, makes me sad!

Kyle got me a DSLR camera for Christmas (obviously an early gift!), so as you can tell he’s still figuring it out. This picture is a bit out of focus, but I still love it!

We snapped a few more pictures when we got home. Adelyn was way more interested in the Christmas tree than taking pictures though! She wouldn’t let go of it!

Having our sweet baby girl sure does make Christmas extra special this year. I love making all these new memories with my little family and it’s fun thinking about everything that is yet to come!

Bath Time Fun

Since Adelyn can sit up now I finally took out the hammock thing from her bathtub. I think she was happy to be up and able to play. Or should I say chew on her washcloth!

Who needs a rubber ducky when you have a wash cloth to play with in the tub? Ha! Ever since she was born, bath time has been a favorite of Adelyn’s. She can be in the worst mood and when you put her in the tub, she’s completely happy!

I didn’t think it was possible, but I think she loves bath time even more now. She’s always kicking her feet and splashing in the water! So fun!

Smocked Christmas Dress

Our favorite clothing designer, SheShe Made, was selling smocked clothing this year. I hadn’t seen these before, but have a lot of “blog friends” who love anything smocked and I loved the details on the outfit, so I ordered one for Adelyn (nope I ordered 2, one for next year, ha!)! And I’m a sucker for anything festive to dress my little girl up in!

Well evidently smocked clothing isn’t something people from Iowa have seen before. The first words out of Kyle’s mouth were: “Why is she wearing that outfit?” Don’t ask me where in the world he got Indian from her sweet little outfit! But it sure did give me a good laugh! And lets just say when we were out that night we got some interesting comments, including one from my sister: “What did you put Adelyn in?”

I told Kyle that Adelyn is going to start a trend in Iowa! And I sure hope this post doesn’t make Iowans sound like back country hicks…! Ha! We really aren’t hillbillies!

Mommy’s Home!

The week after Thanksgiving I had a 5 day work trip to Las Vegas. Now most people would love the idea that they get to go to Las Vegas for work, but when you have to leave this sweet girl for that long it makes it MUCH harder!

Although Adelyn tried to sneak in my suitcase, she didn’t get to go to Vegas with Mommy….it did cross my mind though! My Mom even offered to fly there and be my nanny for the week! Anyway…between phone calls, skype, and lots of pictures sent I survived and so did Daddy & Adelyn! (I wasn’t worried about them!)

I got home Friday night around 11pm and it was all I could to not pick her up from her crib. But I held out, went to bed, and jumped up the second I heard her wake up Saturday morning. I went into her room and she gave me the BIGGEST smile and reached for me!! It totally melted my heart, she knew Mommy was home! She hasn’t reached for me or anyone else since, but I’m still going with the fact that she knew what she was doing!

Lots happened while I was gone that week. Adelyn went from doing the tripod sit to being an all out sitter! I was so proud of my sweet girl!! And I think you can tell by the pictures, that she was pretty proud of herself!

I think her favorite part is now she can reach out for Abby…if Abby gets close enough!

Can you tell that she loves her puppy?

And Abby loves Adelyn! We spent the day Saturday getting in lots of snuggles (Mommy needed to catch up!), did some shopping, and of course lots of play time on the floor…while sitting!

I’m happy to say I have no more work trips planned till next fall (I hope!).