My life is good.

I had a really great visit with three amazing ladies in my ward (church congregation) this afternoon.  One just recently lost her husband to a 4.5 year battle with cancer.  They're such an amazing couple and such great examples to Darwin and me.  Another lady just lost her son a couple weeks ago to suicide.  The other is a double divorcee and is recovering from a recent surgery for cataracts.  I felt so blessed to be able to sit and chat with these three wonderful women for a whole two hours today.  We laughed together, we cried together--a lot!--and we just enjoyed each others company.  It was so nice!  I'm grateful Darwin didn't question me when I came home two hours after what was supposed to be "just a quick visit" to the one who just lost her son.  How I adore her and love our monthly visits together.  She is such an amazing example to me and always has such great advice to give me with my various life challenges.

I love this church for so many reasons.  One of them is the associations I get to have with so many wonderful people.  Our ward is like a family to both Darwin and me.  I love that I get to interact with the women--young and old--and I learn so much from them.  Always.  I've been privileged to serve in the Relief Society Presidency for almost a year now and my love for the women in the ward has grown tremendously.

One thing I really appreciated from my visit today was the reminder that MY LIFE IS GOOD.  I certainly have my challenges and trials, but mostly I am blessed.  I am grateful for that reminder today.

12.22.13 - 9 months!

I'm not really sure why, but 9 months old feels like such a big milestone.  It's like rounding 3rd base and coming into home plate a.k.a. the big 1st birthday.  Whoa.  WAY too fast!

Savannah has grown so much in the last month.  She's learned lots of new things and is becoming such a big kid!  Each new stage is so much fun and we all love having her around.  We're so glad she's a part of our family!

Savannah's 9 month stats:

Weight: 20 lbs 10.5 oz (85%)

Length: 31 inches (99%)

Head: 44.5 cm (68%)

At NINE months:

-Savannah has become a pro at crawling!  She started crawling on December 2nd and we haven't been able to slow her down since!  She LOVES that she can move around so much on her own now.  I love that she comes to find me when I'm in another room--and that she says my name to let me know she's looking for me :)

-She says "Mama" and "Dada"--intentionally.  She knows who we are and she definitely knows our names.

-The same week she learned to crawl she also figured out how to pull herself up to the furniture in a kneeling position and just a couple days after that starting standing up to the furniture.  Now she inches along the coffee table and couches really slowly, but she's getting faster every day!  We'll have a walker on our hands before we know it!

-Unfortunately she also learned she can stand up in her crib and her sleeping isn't quite as awesome as it was before.  She has a harder time falling asleep on her own now--this happened with Aurora at this stage too.

-She eats mostly table food now--and baby food when we can get her to, just to finish off the stash we have in our pantry.  She loves being able to feed herself.

-So far she doesn't have any allergies! Yay!  I'm personally really glad she can eat dairy!

-She loves playing with Aurora's toys and usually prefers them to her own toys.  Luckily Aurora is pretty good at sharing with her--most of the time.
-She loves watching herself in the mirror and seeing pictures of herself.  She especially loves to give herself kisses in the mirror.  Even she can't resist kissing those irresistible cheeks! ;)

-She wants to be just like her big sister.  I love to watch the two of them play together so well.  They love each other so much!
-She's getting to be so active in the tub--standing up to hold onto the side and crawling around chasing after toys.  It's nice to see her becoming more confident in the water.
-She still only has the two teeth she got at 7 months, with no signs of new teeth coming in any time soon.
-She's a true Momma's girl and has some stranger danger.  She even cries when I leave her with Daddy sometimes.  She really adores her Daddy too though.
-We get comments from people all the time still on how smiley she is.  That's why we call her Smiles!
-She has such a sweet personality and she lights up our lives each and every day.

 

This sweater was hand knitted for Aurora when she was a baby by our dear friend, Alice Rowley.  How talented she is and how grateful we are that she shared her talent with us!  We love this sweater! :)


Giving herself kisses in the mirror is one of her new favorite things



Cheerios spectacles--she's trying to start a new trend. Haha.

Trying to see underneath it :)

Funny girl!

9 month photo shoot of our beautiful Belles!

Happy NINE months, baby Belles!

We Love Josh Groban!

Because he's AWE-SOME!  And he sings our other favorite Nastassia song :)

Our new friend, Frosty.

Aurora LOVES Frosty the Snowman.  She asks to watch the Christmas classic all the time.  My favorite is her version of the song.  She sings over and over again, "Frosty the Snowman was a holly, Jolly Roger!"--to the tune of Frosty.  For those of you who may be out of the loop, the Jolly Roger is the name of Captain Hook's pirate ship on Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  That's the extent of the Frosty the Snowman song to Aurora.  It's the cutest.

We got this idea from a friend--thanks, Denise--and Aurora begged and insisted we do it to our fridge too.  She loves Frosty. Obviously. She gives him a hug and a kiss every day before nap time, and at night before bed too.  Frosty is VERY loved at our house!

Reading/singing "Frosty the Snowman was a holly, Jolly Roger!" to her friend Frosty

I'll work on getting a video posted of her singing it.  It's pretty darn cute and makes us laugh every time we hear her sing it.

Who knows, she may not let us take him down and he'll have to stay on our fridge year-round!

Love you, Rori--and Frosty too! ;)

Decorating for Christmas and SNOW!!

**Note to the reader**
If ANTS make you squeamish, you should probably NOT read this post

It's tradition in our family to set up our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations the morning of Thanksgiving but that will probably change the year I end up making Thanksgiving dinner.

Dar got the tree set up, but the rest of the decorating had to wait until the day after Thanksgiving--we've learned that sometimes things end up being a multi-day process now that we have kids :)

We have a nice set of Christmas bulbs that we've had for about 7 years that we love and we store in our storage unit year round.  We've never had any problems with anything in our storage unit until last year.  We didn't take any pictures for proof last year but when it happened again, Darwin made me grab the camera for evidence.

For some reason, ants like our Christmas bulbs.  Yuck!!!

 We thought we resolved the issue last year when we removed the de-moisturizer packet things they were eating, and cleaned them all out really well (we thought we removed them all, anyway).  We were unpleasantly surprised to see they found their way into our Christmas stuff again this year.

And these are not small ants.  Eew!

Our poor vacuum worked so hard sucking up those little buggers that it overheated.

Aurora was a good spotter and would yell to Darwin over the noise of the vacuum if she saw an ant escape out of the box

Savannah had fun watching Dad work too.

The vacuum just sucked the little guys up though, it didn't kill them.  It totally gives me the eeby-geebies to just look at the picture.

Dar is a very thorough cleaner--I'm so glad I have him!



Cleaning up the ants was definitely a process and took a big chunk of time.  We only found one later on that had escaped.  Guh!  Although, I am glad they were ants and not spiders!

Even with being busy cleaning up the nasty ants and decorating, Dar found some time to play with the girls and made them the happiest girls in the world by making a "Time Machine Sled" for them.  They loved it!



 
 After a few Time Machine Sled rides around the house, Rori loved decorating the tree this year.




And Savannah watched :)

She's getting so strong!

That Sunday we pulled out the girls fun Christmas clothes.  As soon as we put the hat on Savannah, Aurora wouldn't call her anything but "Rudolf" and treated her as such.
 
Savannah hated the hat.  She kept trying to pull it off the second we put it on, as she does with most hats and bows I put on her head.

Look at Aurora's face.  She was so proud of herself and her idea to use Savannah as her flying reindeer.

Savannah got sick of playing the part of the reindeer, so Daddy traded his role as the sled and took a turn being the reindeer :)


I love Aurora's camera faces sometimes :)

Savy made herself nice and cozy after a few laps around the house

Oh, how I love these girls!

When Aurora had her fill of riding in the sled she took a turn playing the reindeer too :)



That diaper box has turned into a favorite toy lately.  The joys of being a kid with a box at Christmas time!

A couple days after getting our decorations up, we got a good amount of snow.  It snowed lightly but it came down most of the day.  When Daddy got home from work he bundled Aurora up and took her out to play while Savannah and I stayed in our warm, cozy house and made dinner.
Aurora was so excited to go play in the snow!

Her poor little face was so cold and red when they came back inside--see the tear on her cheek?  But she was totally happy and had such a blast playing in the snow with her daddy.

I love this little family of mine.  They make me so happy!

We hope you're having a great Christmas season so far.  We definitely are!