Thanksgiving 2011

What a great holiday. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too! Rori and I LOVED having Dar home with us for 5 WHOLE DAYS without anything on the schedule. It was WONDERFUL! Dar loved it too and was bummed he had to leave us today to go to work. We're just all looking forward to Christmas break already :) The things we loved most about Thanksgiving this year: our first Thanksgiving being together as a family of three--being grateful for all we have--swimming--being with extended family--spending time with friends--relaxing--great food--and just to reiterate: being together. That's what the holidays are all about. Being with the people you love most, and boy, did we need it!!

Getting a nap in before turkey time

Mmm! SO delish! Great job on the turkey, Travis!

Us :)

You can see Rori's top teeth in this picture. So cute!

Part of the crew

She loved the turkey and the rolls. Happy girl :)

And some other pics from our break
Rori had her first experience being swung in a blanket by Dad

Dar set up our Christmas tree and Rori just wanted to play with the box.

Rori in her darling new owl beanie my friend Nicole made. Thanks again, Nicole!! We love it!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Gratitude.

For Family Home Evening last night we had a "gratitude activity" in honor of Thanksgiving this week. I created pieces of paper with the numbers 1-100 on it for Dar & I to think of 100 things we're grateful for. At first Dar wasn't too thrilled and thought he could only maybe come up with 50 at the most (he was pretty tuckered out from work). It did seem like a challenge at first, but we were both pleasantly surprised with how quickly we came up with our 100 blessings. It wasn't our "Top 100" list but "The-first-100-things-that-came-to-mind" list, and we honestly could have kept going long past 100. There were many things I thought of that I didn't actually write down but Dar had on his list and vice verse. Some things were pretty general and others were really specific. It was definitely a fun activity that I'd like to make a tradition for FHE the Monday before Thanksgiving each year. I think it will be fun to see how our lists change from year to year.

And just a little sample, here's the first 10 things and our last item we each put on our lists:

Darwin:

1. Kiara
2. Aurora
3. Knowledge of the Gospel
4. Atonement of Jesus Christ
5. Blessings
6. Abundances
7. Few major trials
8. Home
9. Job
10. 2nd mortgage nearly paid off
100. That Heavenly Father gave all of this to me

Kiara:
1. Heavenly Father
2. Jesus Christ
3. Darwin
4. Aurora
5. Laughter
6. Happiness
7. Smiles
8. Temples
9. Scriptures
10. Prayer
100. Life

Happy Thanksgiving this week, and I hope you each take the opportunity to count your blessings and thank our Heavenly Father for all He has given you!

Chocolate.

She's been introduced. There's no going back now!

Dear Santa,

I just wanted to let you know that you will be receiving a wish list from me soon. I'm going through the adds right now.

Love,
Aurora

11.11.11 - 10 months!

First off, HAPPY VETERANS DAY! Thank you to the many, many people who serve our country and have served our country, especially my family members who have served and sacrificed. We couldn't be more grateful for your service!!! And Happy Birthday to my friend, Janice, and Tracee's twin brothers, and anyone else who happens to have a birthday on this fun date!

Our little one kind of has a birthday today. She turns 10 months today! Ho-ly smokes! No more single-digit birthdays for this little one, when you're counting by months, of course. Aurora is such a joy, and her little personality is popping out more and more. It seems like she has learned so much in the past month, check out our monthly list and pictures below. I honestly can't believe we'll be celebrating our 1st baby's 1st birthday in just 2 months. Monumental. Can it be real?

At 10 months:
-Aurora is so curious, loves to explore, and gets into EVERYTHING. Nothing at our house is safe from baby fingers anymore.
-She discovered she can put her finger in her nose. Hilarious, but not something we're trying to encourage.
-We discovered a few weeks ago that she can climb a whole flight of stairs all by herself, even though we don't have any stairs at our house for her to practice on.
-She loves to be everywhere I am and follows me all around the house.
-She loves to "help" me with whatever I'm working on, be it laundry, dishes, cooking, what-ev...she wants to be right there with me.
-She likes to play "hide-and-seek" and will come search around the house for me when I'm in another room and keep calling her name. She thinks it's so funny!
-She's working on trying to walk, and I'm sure she'll be walking on her own before we know it.
-We've been trying to get her to go to sleep on her own (she stopped doing it when she figured out she could stand up in her crib) and we haven't been very successful yet because she makes herself throw up. SO not fun!
-She loves when Daddy comes home from work and gets so excited to hear his voice.
-She's eating more and more table food and loves to feed herself with her fingers. She's also getting much better with her sippy cup, but she LOVES her bottles! Weaning is going to be loads of fun.
-She loves to bite EVERYTHING with her 6 little sharp teeth! She even has a chipped tooth already. Seriously. (Ever seen Lemony Snicket's: A Serious of Unfortunate Events? She's totally like the little girl who's talent is biting things.)
-She's getting more and more vocal, although I haven't picked up on any new words this last month. She likes to sing when we sing, especially at church. It's pretty dang cute.

Happy 10 months, baby girl! Thanks for making us so happy and keeping us laughing. We love you!

"Helping" Mom unload the dishwasher

Eating spaghetti and peas. Mmm!

Playing with her books and burp cloths; almost an everyday occurrence

Finger in the nose

Oops! Got caught!

Another shot of finger-in-the-nose. Just for kicks.

Discovering the toilet paper roll

1st time walking with the push-car!!
(This was just last night)

A common sight I'm sure we'll get used to as she's running away from us in a couple months.

And a video of Rori walking with the push-car, for anyone interested:

Halloween 2011

We love Halloween at our house. It pretty much goes without saying. It's amazing to me how fast the time flew and that we didn't get to do some of the stuff I had hoped, but that's what happens when you have a baby that goes to bed at 8:00 and a super busy hubby. Such is life. It was still a great holiday, and I thoroughly enjoyed it :)

We really wanted to go all out with our family theme costumes this year, but we're trying really hard to pay down our student loans and things right now and we couldn't justify spending the money on the costumes we really wanted. So we went with Plan B. Cheap, but cute.

We couldn't resist going with a bee theme for our costumes this year as our plan B, with Dar having his first beehive and all. Rori was the baby bee, I was the queen bee, and Dar was the beekeeper. It was fun and everyone who saw us liked our creativity.

Our adorable little baby bee. I LOVED her floppy antennae.

At our ward party. I didn't have my crown :(

Dar's AWESOME pumpkin this year. Just about every trick-or-treater we had told us how awesome it was. We know. Good job, Babe!
(Then some stinky kids in the neighborhood went around stomping on all the pumpkins yesterday and ours were casualties too.)

My skill level is a little less than Dar's, but at least I carved one this year!

Happy Halloween!! Until next year....