The Princess Party

Trying on her jewels before the party Making princess party hats and bracelets The back up cup cakes if we ran out of cake. Some fancy ballroom dancing This is how the kids felt at the end up the party. We tried to take a group shot and one princess laid down, soon most of them were laying down! Opening a few presents after the party. We had a great time, but we're tired, too! Now that the party is over, we can start thinking about our Christmas plans and flying to TX. We'll celebrate Aubrey's "real" birthday as a family next Saturday and then leave for Texas on Monday the 22nd. Between now & then, we'll be finishing Christmas shopping, packing, attending Aubrey's first ballet recital and her first preschool Christmas program. It should be a fun week!

An early birthday present

We got Aubrey a little bouncer/moon jump thing for her FOURTH! birthday, which is on the 20th. We gave it to her a little early because we wanted to be able to use it for her party this Saturday. Aubrey & Will have been having a blast jumping in the basement every night when Daddy gets home from work. Look at all that static!

We might end up leaving it out for most of the winter because we haven't been outside to play in a loooong time. It's supposed to snow again tomorrow morning, we'll see...

Stay tuned for lots of pictures from Aubrey's princess party in a couple days!

I love my new camera!

I'm finally learning how to use my new birthday camera -- I love how it takes the picture immediately, instead of having several seconds of delay. I was just playing around with it the other night and caught several of Aubrey's expressions during one of her many silly moods.

I haven't posted any video in ages, so I thought I'd share some of Will's silly voices & facial expressions that I get to experience on any given day. If you can't tell, we're on a walrus & ABC kick right now...

Silly

Some silliness at the dinner table...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We missed our families yesterday, but had a good first Thanksgiving in VA. Some neighbors invited us over for a big Thanksgiving lunch. Then we came home, Will napped, we got out our Christmas decorations and then finished the day off with some UT football. It was a nice, relaxing day! We have so much to be thankful for...

Especially him!

And her... They bring so much joy into each day and I feel so blessed!

Turkeys

We had fun making cookies for Aubrey's Thanksgiving feast for preschool tomorrow.

Aubrey was very meticulous in sticking on all the feathers and eyes on the turkeys.

Saturday

It's been really cold here lately and we have been trying to find things to do inside to keep the kids entertained. Saturday morning we went back to the Air & Space museum because it is free, close to our house and Aubrey had been asking to go back. We just walked around and looked at all the planes, had lunch, and saw the Blue Planet at the IMAX there. It was a fun little outing to wear them out before nap time. Saturday night we went to dinner with some firends for my b-day and then came home and watched the OU/Tech game. We'd never been so excited to see OU win!

They were so cute together, holding hands and playing together the whole time.

Will's new thing is to say what color & size everything is. Every plane was either a "BEE airnane" (big airplane) or a "baby airnane" if it was small.

Playing pilot inside a little plane.

Family visit

My family came last Saturday and stayed through this Wednesday. We had a great time playing at home with the kids, doing a little sight seeing and eating lots of good food, of course. This picture is from a little vineyard not too far from our house. We did a country/rural scenic tour on Monday of their visit.

Here's Aubrey happily eating an icing flower off my birthday cake. It was fun to be able to celebrate while my fam was in town.

Robert got me a new camera for my birthday so I am excited to learn how to use it and get back in my previous habit of taking tons of pictures. Thanks, Robert! Will was already in bed before the cake came out.

Will still loves snowmen and had fun playing a "10 Little Snowman" game on the computer with Nana.

Taking a rest during one of the many dance parties.

Aubrey with a Sit and Spin toy on her head.

Uncle Tim and Aubrey outside the White House.

Aunt Joy & Aubrey at the Lincoln Memorial. Thanks for making the trip out here, we can't wait to see you again at Christmas!

At least it's washable

Aubrey has really gotten into her artwork lately and will spend most of Will's naptime coloring, painting or cutting & gluing. She'd been really good about staying on the paper until the other day. I was unloading the dishwasher and I glanced over and saw her colorful hand -- "it's my trek (shrek) hand", she said.

Next, she decided to become a clown.

This was our last face painting experience almost a year ago.

A little bit of fall

Yes, I miss Texas, but there are some things I do prefer here in Virginia, one being the weather/seasons (ask me again after the winter ). August was so mild with days in the low 80s and the fall has been beautiful. Fall has always been my favorite season, even though I hadn't experienced one like this. We've been soaking it up and spending as much time outside as possible.

A game of peek a boo in the swing.

Unfortunately, most of the fall colors I have seen have been while driving around, when I can't very well capture it. Here's one little tree in our backyard that turned bright yellow.

And a few more trees from our backyard. I took these pictures a little late, after lots of the colorful leaves had already dropped. Next year I'll be prepared...

Gigi came to visit this weekend from Houston and we had a great time! In this picture, we stopped to feed the ducks before lunch at the park. We also had several meals out, went to the D.C. Zoo on Saturday, drove to a cute little town on Sunday and did lots of playing and story reading at home.

More park fun with Gigi, thanks for the fun visit!

Tell me a story

Aubrey used to be satisfied by reading a few of her many books before bedtime, but for a while now, she also wants me to tell her a story... that I make up. It has made me realize how uncreative I am -- I was okay at it for the first couple weeks, but then I started running out of material. Sometimes though, she'll help me out and give me an idea. Here is an example from today of the story lines Aubrey comes up with...
"Mommy, tell me a story about 103 Christmas trees who were all family members. There's a Daddy, Mommy, big girl, baby, and a newborn. They're all different colors and they wanted to go to the beach together to look for sea shells and make ornaments out of the shells and decorate themselves."
She'll want me to repeat back to her exactly what she tells me and if I miss a word, she'll correct me. Then I continue her story and if she doesn't like the way it is going, she'll stop me and tell me what should happen next. It's fun, but it can also be exhausting!

18 months

Will officially turned 1.5 last week and is showing more & more boy and less & less baby. This is happy & sad, as it always is -- fun to watch him grow, but sad that he grows so fast!

-He chose the day he turned 18 months to greet us in our room that morning when he awoke -- meaning he jumped out of his crib! I was thankful to see that his crib rail was down, so it hasn't happened since, since we always raise it up. I hope to keep him contained in there as long as possible!
-"No" is his new favorite word, even if the answer is yes. He just likes saying no. I have to admit, I think it is cute right now, but I'm sure the "no" cuteness won't last long...
- Still obsessed with identifying letters and picks them out from signs, toys and even from sticks outside that look like "y"s and bites of food that look like "O"s or "A"s...
-His favorite car song, to my dismay, is "YMCA" -- hey, it has 2 of his favorite letters in it. As soon as he gets in his car seat he says, "Y- A" and does arm motions for these 2 letters to request the song.
-He's using lots of 2 word phrases and some "sentences":
Anytime he wants something, he'll say "old it, old it" (hold it)
When he wants me to hold him, it's "old you" (hold you)
The other day he said, "Pay baby Zac ouse" (Play at baby Zac's house) -- to give you an idea of one of his "sentences".
-He has a very cute, raspy boy voice and likes to growl several words like, "All right!"
-Several times through out the day, he likes to take roll and make sure we're all here. He'll walk around the room and identify all of us. He'll pat each of us on our shoulders and say, "Daddy", "Mommy", Aubrey" & "Wool".
-He prefers to gallop, jump or hop to get around.
-He can say "I love you" now and still lets me rock him and sing to him before nap and bed, so I'll cherish the baby in him as long as I can!