Thankful

I am very behind in getting my blog updated so you all get 2 at once. :)
Thanksgiving has come and gone and as I reflected on my blessings this year, my heart was full of thankfullness to God for what he has done for us this past year. This time last year we were wrapping up Josh's deployment to Iraq. I am so thankful for the protection He provided to Josh and Sadie and me during our time of separation. God has blessed us with yet another beautiful child and has provided for our daily needs in ways I never expected. We certainly have much to be thankful for!

We headed to Oklahoma again this year for Thanksgiving with my side of the family. We also celebrate Christmas at the same time so it's a pretty big to-do. I wasn't sure how a 10 hr car ride with 2 little ones would go, but they were both little angels. They did so well and we made it in 12 hrs, which is far better than I was expecting. Here they are enjoying a peaceful nap AT THE SAME TIME!!!

This was Lilianna's first time meeting all the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandpa on my side. She sure enjoyed them all. Here she is getting in some quality time with cousin Allie.

More quality time with cousin Gracie.

And of course, who can resist kisses from cousin Hudson?!

Two of my sisters are pregnant this year. My second oldest sister, Aubrey, is due a the end of Dec and I've been singing the praises of my Moby wrap to both of them, so here she is trying it out for herself, 8 months pregnant and all. I told you this wrap was amazing! :) Lilianna enjoyed her time bonding with her little cousin Tilly too (though I think she got kicked a few times). :)

As I've mentioned before, Lilianna has a definite opinion about things. She was quick to share her opinion with Auntie Aubrey when she tried removing the finger Lilianna was enjoying gnawing on.



Here she is getting some quality play time with Grandpa.

And of course Sadie got her share of quality time too doing one of her favorite things, reading books.

Here's a shot of all the cousins together. From the left: Allie (my oldest sister's youngest), Sadie, Gracie (my oldest sister's oldest) and Hudson (my second oldest sister's little guy and so far the only boy!).

Sadie thoroughly enjoyed her cousins! She had so much fun playing with them the entire time we were there and hasn't stopped talking about them since our return home. Here's a little fun time with cousin Hudson before bedtime.

Yes, we do indeed have much to be thankful for this year!

Our Girls

As Lilianna grows, the relationship between her and Sadie grows too. It has been such a joy to watch Sadie play with, share toys with and make Lilianna laugh as they play together. Sadie still doesn't know her own strength and commonly tries to love on her little sister a little too hard, but she does everything with love and adoration and for that I am thankful. My worst fear has been realized in that Sadie attempted to pick up Lilianna and dropped her on the floor. Thankfully BOTH instances of this did not result in any serious injury on Lilianna's part, but now that we have that behind us, nothing fazes me. :) Here they are sharing some play time together.

And speaking of growing. Our little baby is certainly doing a lot of that. Lilianna is 3 months old now and weighing in at a hefty 16 lbs. Here she is at 3 months.

Lilianna is also starting to laugh and talk more and is so fun to listen to. She appears to be following in the footsteps of her older sister in her delight of exciting games. She loves being tossed in the air by daddy and hates lying on the floor playing with her toys. She wants to be right in there where the action is happening. Here's a little glimpse of her giggles and chubs. :)

Sadie got a little dress up outfit from Grandpa Rolly for Christmas this year. I thought she might be a little too young for wanting to play dress up, but boy was I wrong. She wanted to put on her skirt and pretty head band as soon as she opened it up and she wore it the rest of the evening.

She also wanted to dress up her baby sister in it after we got home. Here she is helping dress Lilianna in it.

And of course she had to try it out on daddy too. Oh the joys of being a daddy to little girls! I have a feeling this is just the start. :)

Some more miscellaneous daddy moments with his girls. Here is Sadie enjoying one of her favorite activities, being tossed in the air. As you can see by Josh's hands, she's flying at least 10 ft into the air. What fun!
And both girls going for a ride on daddy's arms. In their matching overalls no less. :)

We are certainly enjoying our two little angels. I can't imagine life without them!

Trunk-or-Treat

Halloween has come and gone and Sadie's thankful for that. She loves the candy, but was deathly afraid of anything having to do with Halloween (costumes, decorations, pumpkin-heads, etc). We volunteered at our church's Trunk-Or-Treat this year for the first time and had a blast! Sadie didn't wear a costume cuz she didn't like them, but she was happy to hand out candy, well at least to the first couple of cute little princesses and innocent-looking characters that came by. Then a scary skeleton-masked boy came by and she jumped up from the truck bed crying and shaking and ran into Josh's arms. It took quite awhile before she'd hand out anymore candy. Here she is eating some food with Daddy and still looking a little traumatized.

She warmed back up and started handing out more candy later, but as you can see at the very end of the video, the last little guy that came by for candy had a scary mask on too and she almost didn't give him any candy. She loved our friend's little guy, Gunner though. They had a blast!



And this is how Lilianna spent her time at Trunk-Or-Treat. She slept the whole time all cozy in her stroller.

Overall the night was a blast and Sadie was high on sugar by the time we got home. Pretty funny!

Sadie and Daddy have a new game now. One that includes Lilianna (you can never start them too early). Here they are playing the new game. :)



As much fun as Sadie thinks it is to be chased by her sister, Lilianna likes swinging best of all. Daddy can always get a smile out of her by swinging her around.

Our nights are getting chillier now and I've pulled out the fleece jammies. The girls looked so cute in them we had to get some pictures.

Well, that's about all the updates for now. We're sure lovin' fall, but looking forward to the holidays and getting to see family!

Growing, Learning & Funny Stuff

Lilianna is growing and changing so much. She's getting stronger and more aware of her surrounds daily. She finds it especially enjoyable to be awake late in the evening with Mamma and Daddy after big sissy's gone to bed. Of course she's supposed to be going to sleep too, but finds it way more exciting to practice holding her head up and looking around. Here is just such an evening. So cute!

Sadie is still thoroughly enamored with her little sister. Lilianna and I went to get her out of bed after one of her naps and I laid Lilianna in bed with Sadie. Oh boy! Did Sadie think that was exciting! She hopped all over the bed covering the baby with her blanket, giving her a bear and squealing in delight. Then she sat down right by her head so she could pat and touch her. So funny!

Sadie loves to help me with the baby any chance she gets. The other day I was burping Lilianna on my knees and Sadie came up and started burping her too. When I went to get her out of bed after a nap the other day, she was being especially affectionate to all her stuffed friends and started burping her bear. I was so happy I could catch it on video. You'll also notice in this video that she "showing" her teeth. We ask her to show us her teeth and this is how she does it. We video taped her doing it the other day and now she thinks every time we video tape her, she needs to show us her teeth. :)

Sadie is learning and figuring things out at a very fast rate now. She's putting things together and trying new things almost daily. I was getting ready to put her in her high chair to eat last week and turned around briefly. When I turned back she had climbed up in her chair all by herself and was desperately attempting to put the tray on too. Haha. Josh caught it on video a few days ago.

Josh has been buying and parting out beat up 4-wheelers the past several months and selling them on ebay in order to make ends meet. None of them that he's bought so far have been running. This past week he bought one that actually runs. It's a noisy racing 4-wheeler and Sadie has decided that she LOVES riding it. She was scared when he fired it up, but as soon as he asked her if she wanted to go for a ride, she ran right over. The faster and crazier he drives, the better she likes it. Here they are going for one of their first rides.

And this was her reaction when it was time to be done riding and come in for supper. Oh it warms her Daddy's little heart! :)

Sadie now has a list of very exciting things she likes to do every time she goes outside and goes down that list asking to do every one of them until we let her do one. They include giving the dog a treat (or taunting her with a treat), going for a ride in the back pack while Daddy mows the lawn, sweeping the shop, swinging like a crazy maniac on the hammock, going for a ride on the 4-wheeler, getting pulled on her little tractor or playing with the ball and bat with the dog. Oh life is so exciting for a little 19-month-old!

Fall Fun

I can't say enough how much I love fall. We've been so enjoying being able to play outside without bugs and humidity to bother us.

Sadie is deathly afraid of fall/halloween decorations. Our surrogate grandparent neighbors decorated with pumpkin heads, straw people and a few witches and ghosts and Sadie is terrified every time she goes over (which is funny cuz she LOVES visiting Grandpa Bobby and Grandma Donna). Grandma Donna helped her overcome her fear of pumpkin heads by helping her make one for herself. Now she waves hello to all the pumpkin men we see when we go for walks.

Last weekend we went to a local farm here that has a restaurant and apple orchard and pumpkin patch and animals for the kids to pet. It was a gorgeous day. Sadie really enjoyed herself and Lilianna slept the whole time snuggled in the Moby Wrap. :)

Here's Sadie eating her first caramel apple with Daddy.

We went to the orchard so Sadie could pick her own apples. She loved it!

But she loved eating them even more. :)

She thought the ducks were a lot of fun too.

Soup Weather

We have had our first official fall days here this week and we're loving it! I call this soup weather and boy am I glad to have it back! Not only is soup one of my favorite things to make, but it makes meal planning super easy. So the meal plan for this week? Monday: Chili; Tuesday: Southwest Chicken Soup; Wednesday: Potato Soup; Thursday: Beef & Vegetable Soup; Friday:... just kidding. I'm not making my family suffer through soup every day, but I did make my first pot of Wild Rice Soup for the season last night and boy was it good! Made with rice from the homeland! I sent a bowl over to our neighbors who recently introduced us to southern ham hock and beans cookin'. I told her she could experience a traditional northern dish. :)

Monday started out the week with 1 month pictures for Lilianna. While I was gone with her, Sadie and Daddy decided to teach the dog how to slide down Sadie's new slide. Our neighbors gave us the slide that their little guy doesn't use anymore and Sadie is thoroughly enjoying it (so is the dog). Here they are showing off their new trick.

When I got home Sadie and I played for awhile until Lilianna decided she wanted in on the action too and then Momma's arms were quite full. :) I got a Moby wrap a couple of weeks back and it's the best investment I've made since Lilianna was born. Keeps her happy and Sadie too. :)

Tuesday was another beautiful fall day, but chillier. So when Daddy got home from work we decided it was a good day to start a fire in the fire pit. And what's a fire without marshmellows? Lilianna is roasting her first one (well she kinda slept through the whole thing, but I'm sure she would have enjoyed it had she not been so cozy). :)

Here's Sadie roasting her first marshmellow. She's never done this before.

Here she is eating the fruits of her labors. :)

And sporting a very cute marshmellow mustache.

And what would roasting marshmellows be without the dog? Of course Sadie had to share one with her too.

We rounded out the afternoon by grilling hamburgers on the grill. It was an absolutely perfect, impromptu, fun, family day.

Now for some randomness: Here's Lilianna enjoying some peaceful alone time. Something she doesn't get when Sadie's around.

And this would be why Lilianna's growing so fast. She's gotta hurry up and get big so she can defend herself against the "affectionate assaults" she receives from her big sister.

Sadie's physical and word skills literally seem to grow daily. She was working on her throwing dexterity the other night and was actually getting the ball to project. Something she hasn't been able to do up to this point. Of course, the ball took her with a couple of times. :)



She wanted to wrap her dolly up in the Moby wrap a few nights back so I wrapped her up in it and stuck her dolly in it, just like Momma carries the baby. She's added the word "stuck" to her vocabulary recently and uses it quite often. You can hear her talking about how the Moby is stuck on her in the video.

Aaahhh! Soup weather! The best time of the year!

Babuski Updates

Here are just a few random updates...

Sadie was busy pooping her diaper tonight and I asked her if she wanted to go on the big girl potty. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed her potty seat

but by this time she was done pooping in her diaper and we told her it was too late, so she decided to try it out as a hat instead.

She got tired of asking us to read her story books so she climbed up on the rocking chair, snuggled in with Boo and Blanky and "read" to herself for several minutes. This coming from the child who rarely, if ever, plays by herself now that Lilianna is here. It was pretty cute.

As of July, Sadie hated the slide at the playground. Well, not anymore. We went to the playground a few days ago and Sadie LOVED the slide and the bouncy car. She sat and bounced that thing all by herself. Here she is going down the slide.

She also loves being pulled around the yard on her tractor. Daddy rigged it up one night with Shelby's leash and pulled her around. Now she begs to be pulled around every time we go out to play. Shelby thinks it's exciting too because she thinks she's going for a walk every time she sees her leash. :)

Sadie HATES having anything stuck to her that she can't get off. She particularly hates bandaids. Thankfully we haven't had need of many, but I did have to put one on her toe the other day because she scraped it and it was bleeding. She did everything in her power to push that thing away while I was putting it on and wouldn't stop crying, so we had to cover her foot with blanky and watch some cartoons to keep her mind off of it. A little while later, thinking she'd probably forgotten it, I went to get Lilianna out of bed (something Sadie ALWAYS helps with) and Sadie stayed on the couch, fussing because she was pretty sure she couldn't walk on that foot with the bandaid on it. Hilarious!

The other day she was in the office with Daddy and he was refilling the ink cartridge for the printer when she decided she needed to help. She got ink all over her fingers and all of a sudden I hear her crying hysterically. Yep, you guessed it, she couldn't get it off her fingers. Here's a little of the commotion.

Lilianna is growing like a little weed. She's gaining an average of a pound a week so far and weighs in at a whopping 11 lbs already and she's not even quite 4 weeks old. She's a very good baby, though she definitely has her own opinion. When she's hungry, she's STARVING and lets us know about it. If she's done eating or doesn't want her paci, she clamps those little lips tight and lets nothing past. She doesn't like having a dirty or wet diaper and she doesn't particularly like having her eyeballs poked (though I can't blame her for that one).

Here she is snuggled in the blanket Auntie Leah made for her.

Hanging out with the teddy bear from Grandma Carol.

Catching flies (a very common site). :)

And here she is just lookin' cute!

Though our lives are crazy busy now, we are thoroughly enjoying our two little girls. What little blessings they are!