Merry Christmas!

Lauren is 1!

Our cute little Lauren is now ONE! Can you believe it???

Lauren is happy. She is friendly and loves to smile. Right now she is pretty clingy to mom, but she will smile and so she will only play with other people if I am holding her. She can be a little ham! When we got the camera out, she was all smiles.

She loves to play peek-a-boo, swing upside down, and chase brother down the hall. She is a downright tease with daddy. When he is gone during the day, she talks about him all day. When he comes home, she is so excited and plays with him for about two minutes, and then she is back in mommy's arms.

She isn't quite walking yet. She cruises around the furniture, and has graduated from holding onto two hands to just holding one of my hands. Grandma got her one of those push toys that pops, and she has more presents coming for Christmas that I think will help motivate her.

Her favorite foods right now are carbs. Bread, pasta, pizza, cheerios, crackers. She also loves bananas, peaches, pears, and anything mom or dad is eating. She has seven teeth in, and she is working on a few more.

We sure love our baby girl and we are so happy to have her in our family.

Apple Jacks for breakfast.

She loved the popper, but she can't push it on her own yet. 

She tried the frosting first . . .

She decided she liked it!

Then she had to squeeze it bit . . .

before taking a big bite.

Then she dove right in!

Reading

Patrick has started to read! We have been doing a little bit with flashcards and sounding out words, and then I found some beginning reading books at the library, and he read a whole book by himself!

He has always had a love for books, and he still sits in his room by himself for a while each day, looking at books.

He does a great job sounding out words as long as it is a new book. He memorizes his books very quickly, so if I have read him a book before, he will probably just tell me the story instead of actually trying to read the words.

He also loves spelling. He always asks me how to spell words, or he will hop up from lunch and NEED to use the magnetic letter on the fridge to spell some words we have been talking about at lunch. He really is a smart kid, and I am excited for him to go to school next year.  

Halloween

Halloween was pretty fun this year. Patrick was a Lightning McQueen race car driver, and Lauren was a zebra, or a white tiger, your pick. I made Patrick a cardboard car to wear with his costume, and he was so excited about it while I was making it, but he didn't want to have anything to do with it when we were ready to go trick-or-treating. It was nice and warm, so we didn't have to worry about coats. Love that about Colorado!

After the trunk-or-treat at the church, Patrick just wanted to hunker down and eat his stash, so I couldn't get him to go through our neighborhood at all, but whatever makes him happy! I am looking forward to the time when Patrick gets really excited about dressing up and going around the neighborhood. But he is pretty easy to please, and that is nice. And Lauren is just our happy girl! (Her costume is size 3 months, btw.)

I am a mean mom! I made him take pictures!

Anniversary 2012

This year we celebrated our 7th anniversary, and we spent a wonderful day as a family. We took a beautiful drive up to the mountains, and we found a great little hiking area near Conifer. It really was the perfect trail for us. The weather was perfect, and we just had a fabulous day together.

We had to have some snacks before we started out, and Patrick found some big rocks to climb on, and he had fun throwing sticks. What more could a four-year old ask for?

Lauren was so happy the whole time. She ate that whole banana! She loved being outside with us.

Still working on that apple  . . .

Some family shots . . .

When we got home, we carved our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. It didn't take long for the squirrels to get to them though.