Captured the hand

I was very excited to actually capture her greeting on camera. It took some effort, and both of us to get her to do it on camera, but we really wanted a picture of it, and we're glad to have it! Honeslty, this is what she does to EVERYONE now. Just yesterday in church, she was doing it to the people behind us. They kept holding her hands, and she would do it over and over again. And...just an update...she CRAWLED yesterday! We were at my parents house, and she just did it! We have hardwood at our house, so I wonder if she has been able to do it for a while, she just kept sliding!! Who knows. Anyway, it was wonderful! And, she pulls herself up onto her knees a ton too. She'll just sit there balancing, and get very mad if she starts to fall over. Right now as I type, she pulling herself up onto the couch!

Train a girl...

So now that Claire can get anywhere she wants, she LOVES to play in the DVD's. She was doing just that the other day, and I noticed that I've passed my love of Friends onto her!! Just kidding, but it was cute!

9 Months Old

Well, it's true. It's been 9 months and 1 day since that tiny little girl entered out lives. I can't believe how fast it's gone, and I'm so glad that we have her in our lives. I took some pictures of her today, and I couldn't narrow them down, so there are a ton. Sorry. Some of the things Claire is up to right now are...

-She's army crawling all over the place. She can get onto her hands and knees, but she's not so good at acutally moving around on them.
-She loves to eat! She makes a really loud "mmmm" sound (actually she sort of yells it) with most of the bites she takes.
-She gets into EVERYTHING. Our dvds are all over the place all of the time.
-She fake coughs still. It's hilarious.
-She copies your noises, and jabbers all the time.
-When she sees you after a while, she tilts her head, smiles, and extends her arm out to you, sort of like she's allowing you to kiss her hand. We have yet to get a picture of this, but it melts anyone who sees her and it totally adorable!
-She gives you hugs when you get her out of bed. She pulls you in really tight and I am willing to give her anything she wants at that point.
-She's starting balance herself only on her knees.
-She is such a fun girl, and we are excited but nervous for her to get more independent.

This is where she goes most of the time when she's on the floor. She's always by her dad while he's on the computer.
After she's done crawling, she can sit herself back up on her bum. It's made her a lot less irritated...nice for me!
On her hands and knees teasing us, but not actually moving.

As I was trying to get these pictures, she would stop whatever she was doing and frantically pull herself over to the camera...hence...the extreme closeup.
Losing her balance...don't worry, she didn't get hurt. I thought it was funny though.

She can stand some of the time. Usually if you stand her up, she just tries to jump, so this is a rare picture. She is leaning on the ottoman, but Michael isn't holding her up!
Playing with her most beloved toy. When I bought it, I tried to take it from her so the lady could scan it, and she held on with all her might, and yelled at me when I got it out of her hands. Too funny!

So tired

I was putting Claire to be the other night, but she wasn't totally ready to settle down. So, I put her down on the floor to play, and she played for a while, and slowly started to move less and less. Then, I looked down at her and found this. She had put herself to sleep. It was so adorable. I just wish she would do this every night!

New project

So this was my latest home project. We've been doing vinyl for quite a while, but I'd never done anything in my own house. So here is my new picture wall. It's missing one picture as you can tell...I still have to get it printed.

The bunny is a bunny for Halloween!

Well as you can see, we dressed Claire up as a very cute bunny. She was initially supposed to be a tootsie roll. I had the costume all picked out, and then when I went to buy it, I saw this costume. When I showed Michael, it was all over, and I'm glad. She looked adorable!! She wasn't the hugest fan of the hat, but that's not shocking. Here's a "figure out the lighting" picture before I totally got her dressed. But I couldn't resist trying on the hat!



Here's three pictures which summed up our photoshoot perfectly. She wasn't happy with me by the end of it, but I couldn't help myself!!
Happy, and cooperative...
Annoyed and bored...
Totally done taking pictures!
We went to Kevin and Cyndi's for the traditional Halloween soups (always AMAZING), and then we went out trick-or-treating with Jacey and Madi! Claire and Jaclyn tagged along too, but after the very first house, Claire fell asleep so I carried her the whole way. It was the warmest night I can remember for Halloween. I didn't even wear a coat outside. Claire just had her costume on, and she was roasting by the time we got home. It was so nice, and shocking!
This was the best picture I could get of the kids. Madi was there too, but she was scared of Jacey in his costume and wouldn't get anywhere near the kids.
After all of that, we went over to Freibergs to see everyone. The kids were already done trick-or-treating, but Claire was still a hit in her costume. We ended up playing MarioCart on Wii...oh man do I stink at that. I came in last EVERY single time. It was embarrassing, but very fun! It was a great first Halloween!! I can't wait for next year when she can officially get candy for me!

Two toothed kid

She now has 2 teeth! They're so cute! She had a wicked fever with the first one, but the second was a lot easier on all of us. I'm getting a little nervous for the top ones though. Those can wait in my opinion. These are the best pictures I could get. She has the teeht, but she doesn't really like the show them off.

8 Months Old

It happened again, Claire turned 8 months old. I can't believe how fast my baby is growing up. This is her first set of pictures where she could sit up on her own. Crazy. She sits very well, and is army crawling all over the place. She gets onto her hands and knees and rocks, but doesn't move that way, but she can motor doing the army crawl. It's really adorable. But, it means a whole new danger to all of our possessions. She's now found the DVD stack...lovely. She eats baby food like crazy and she's into all of our food too! She likes the veggies way more than the fruits, and we've still had no more success with peas. Go figure. She's almost grown out of her carseat now, and with her winter coat on, it's a tight squeeze. She's also started to get a little attitude. She throws a fit if you put her down when she doesn't want you too, and yells at us when she doesn't get what she wants. That doesn't bode well for the future I don't think. But, she is so much fun, and she gets me laughing all the time. She mimicks your sounds, and will do it on command...except for ma-ma...that's the only one she won't even attempt. She also fake laughs when you laugh. It's so cute.

Anyway, sorry this might be a boring post, but it's stuff I want to remember!!

Kalispell

So I'm back...again...after not blogging forever. I don't know what's wrong with me really. It just seems like there's never enough time for it, but I know there is, I just don't know how to get it in there more often. Anyway, so for Thanksgiving, we went to Kalispell with the Freibergs. We had a great time...did way too much shopping, eating, and lounging. All that good stuff. We got to take our first road trip in our new car. Did I mention we got a new car? I don't think I did. Anyway, we got a Mazda 5 and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm in love with our car! It served us very well on the trip. We really didn't take many pictures on the trip...which was dumb, but we did stop in Sparwood to get some pictures by the largest truck in the world. It really is pretty big hey? We also drove through Frank Slide which was sort of eerie. It's the remains of a massive rock slide that buried a town and most of the people in it in the middle of the night. So, it's like this huge tomb. They even carved the highway in the middle of it, so on both sides of you are these huge boulders. It was sort of cool though...sad, but cool.

Oh, and one more thing!

We had some more AMAZING family pictures taken...as soon as I get them, I'll post a bunch. Check some of them out here.

We're home!

So, it's been an alarming amount of time since I posted last...I know...I stink. But there's been a ton going on I guess. Well we moved back home the first of September, and while it was sad to leave my parents, it's been really nice to be a real family for the first time! We love having a room for Claire, and so much more space to spread out in. We also got a new car FINALLY! We got a Mazda 5, and I couldn't be any happier! It's just perfect for our little family. We always seem to need to haul stuff around, and this makes it totally possible!

I got released from Young Women's, and I was so sad. It stinks, but what are you going to do? Michael was released from Young Men's too, and is now a Sunday School teacher. I got a new calling, but haven't been sustained yet.

Our trip to Europe has been postponed until we don't know when, so we're enjoying our little house even more now knowing we don't have to move again right away. The trip is still going to happen I'm told, but we just don't know when. So for me, that means, it's not going to happen! We'll see though I guess.

We're heading down to Kalispell this weekend with Lara and Sean. We're pretty excited to go! It should be fun, and a great opportunity to gain some more weight...I'm always looking for good ways to do that! Ha. With such cheap ice cream, how can you not? Anyway, I have posted a ton today, and I'm hoping that now my life has settled down, I can continue to post more often.

The girls

We have so many matching clothes for these girls, we're dumb to not have way more pictures of it. Anyway, we took advantage of the matching and got some pictures! Jeffrey and Emily got way more cute ones, but I still loved these 2.

The snuggle position, and the break!

So Michael has this snuggle position that he does with Claire. It puts her to sleep faster than anything! He just has to hold her like this for a few minutes and she's out.

She also loves to play with mouths, so I was thrilled to get this picture. Now we can always remember this!

Claire is a little daredevil. She loves to be tossed around. This was funny just because she was making this face like she was so unimpressed...normally she is totally laughing! She's so funny.


For those of you who don't know...Michael broke his leg. He was leaving work one night, and walking down the stairs. He stepped onto the landing, and there was soapy water or something on it, and he slipped. He was all alone in the middle of the night. He had to pull himself up at least 2 flights of stairs to make it back to his office. When he got up there, he laid down on the couch, and called his dad (since at the time we didn't have a home phone). As he waited for his dad to answer, he passed out, so all his dad heard was heavy breathing. Thinking it was a prank, he hung up. When Michael woke up, he called back, and thankfully, his parents went and got him. They took him to the hospital, and now he's walking around in this. They weren't really able to tell exactly what's wrong with it, so we're waiting to get him into a specialist so we can know for sure! Poor guy! The funny part is, he called Jeffrey and Emily to tell them to let me know. So, Emily came up the stairs and as calming as possible, (so I wouldn't freak out) she told me the news. It's a good thing I live in the same house as them that's for sure!

New food

Well she LOVES rice cereal, and when we first brought in Arrowroot cookies, it was no suprise that she would love those too! I mean, I love them! When we introduced vegetables for the first time however, the response was NOT so good.

Here Claire is trying to get a job advertising for these cookies. I love how she's holding it just so you can see the name of the cookie!

And here is her first taste of peas!

Not such a fan.

This one is the best because you can actually SEE the peas flying out of her mouth! It was hilarious. She doesn't like peas or green beans, but everything else, she's good with now!
This is the face she makes when she's NOT going to let ANYTHING else in there. So funny!