Our Trip to California

So last week we got a great opprotunity to go to California for a Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Conference in Sacramento. The conference was really great and we learned a lot. But before the conference we took a little detour to Oakland to visit our friends, the Beardsleys. Me and Laurie met at JMU and have been great friends ever since. It was fun to finally meet her little guy Joey, who isn't that little anymore. Eve and Joey had a fun time together, as we all did. They took us to San Francisco touring and we got great pictures at the golden gate bridge. We also ate chinese food in China town as well as saw Pier 39. It was such a good time to get to see them again.

After a bath in matching pjs. Thanks Laurie

Bubble Bath

We are very blessed parents to have a very well behaved little girl. Mind you she like all children have their moments, but she is a very good listener and tries hard to do what we ask. So the other day after we went to a basketball game and she was so well behaved, I wanted to do something special for her. So as a treat for her, we gave her her first bubble bath. At first she was very skeptical about the bubbles, but thats really her personality. She is reserved about trying new things, but slowly warms up. She ended up not wanting to leave the bath when it was all done. She was so funny though and may need a lesson in modesty. She was fasinated with covering her "boobies" with bubbles. We try to discourage her from saying that and call it her chest, but to little avail. We got a good laught out of it and she had fun.

And you can probably see how Eve is still a skinny minnie. We took her in for her 18th month, although she was actually over 19 months and she is barely over 19 lbs, 19lbs, 3 oz to be exact. We laught that she is in the like neg. 20th percentile. But as long as she is eating and gaining a little the dr isn't worried.

Big Girl Bed

Eve has now been moved up from sleeping in her crib to a "big girl" bed. She was very excited to see us taking down her crib for the promise of a bed of her own. We have been talking to her about it for a while. We had gone out and picked out a matress set for her at the local furniture shop at a sale in Oct. and then she picked out her sheets in Nov and then got her comforter for Christmas. We did it on Sat. so that we would both be able to get up with her if there was any problems. And its not really a bed, more of a matress on the floor. We decided on that since it is low enough for her to get in and out, and if she falls, she only falls down about six inches. So far things are going really great. We had put a pillow in her crib about 2 months ago to get her used to the idea of sleeping on one side of the crib and using a pillow. She sleeps curled up on that pillow and has not fallen off her bed. She does not like the sheets and woke up some the first night because of it, but once we brought her favorite blanket from her crib, she has been a happy camper.

It is much harder for me than her. It was bittersweet to take down her crib. I remember the day me and Tyler put it up. I always thought that she might want to stay in it longer and then we would have another baby or one on the way before we would have to take it down. Hopefully God will bless up again and we will get to go through the joy of putting that crib back up. Here is a little video minutes before bedtime of Eve talking about being a big girl.

Eve's Favorite Place to Go

Where? The Zoo. She gets so excited when we tell her thats where we are going. We are lucky that we have a nice, free one about an hour away, and out here in the middle of nowhere you have to go an hour just to get anywhere. So whenever we need to get out of town and go to Sams club, we also make a trip to the zoo. We even took Natalie there when she was here.

We were also lucky to be one of the first visitors to go in December and see the new baby giraffe when he was a few days old. Eve has been a big fan of the giraffes since she got to feed one a leaf at an early visit. You can see it behind her in the picture. She is even wearing her giraffe boots that Nat got for her for Christmas. She is also a big fan of the camels. She loves playing with them in her little people nativity set and then going and seeing them. She makes spitting sounds at them and I can't help but laugh.

Christmas Pictures

We were able to enjoy our Christmas in Kansas. It was nice not having to travel further than 15 minutes away, but strange to not have any of my family around. Eve was definitly lots of fun. She loved opening presents, until she found one she wanted to play with right then and there. It is just so much fun to enjoy Christmas from the eyes of a child.

One of the traditions we started last year with Eve is something called the three wisemen gifts. Each year she gets three gifts, a want, a need, and something to share. This year for her want she got a little people A to Z zoo. It has an animal for each letter of the alphabet and a mat that you can touch to hear the letters and animal sounds. It was an instant hit and she plays with it every day. And she can already tell you the name of each and every animal. For her need gift, she got a comforter and sheet set for her big girl bed when we put it up sometime. And for her share gift, we ordered her a toddler chair. Its hard to get her something to share because right now it is just her, but hopefully one day she can share it with some younger siblings.

Go EAGLES

We have had such a fun week with my sister Natalie visiting. She arrived very late Friday night. We had a really great time last Sunday watching our Eagles thoroghly kicking the Cowboys butts. We were all dressed up in our Eagles apparrel and were yelling and screaming. Tyler always thinks we get way too worked up over the games and anyone who knows me will definitly agree with him. What can I say, I bleed green. We are excited about the game tomorrow and hoping for another big win.

O Christmas Tree

Sorry for the lack of blogs recently. I will have to make it one of my new year resolutions to blog more frequently. I'm sure people may have missed Eve's cute face. So anyway, two weeks ago we went out and got our first "real" tree, meaning not an artificial one. Since we are spending Christmas here is Kansas, Tyler thought and was right, that it would help my holiday spirit. So we drove over an hour to the tree farm, all of us in a non-extended cab pick-up to cut down our perfect tree. The weather was so nice that day and Eve enjoyed running throughout the trees. So Tyler cut down our tree and we drove home and enjoyed dinner at Braums on the way back. In case you have never heard of Braums (I didn't until I lived here), its a fast food place that makes hard ice cream and milkshakes. So on the drive home we enjoyed some ice cream and Christmas music.

Later, Eve and I tackled the job of putting the lights on the tree. She enjoyed playing with the board with the lights wrapped on it. The pics just turned out so neat of her with the lights. I actually don't have a picture of our finished tree. We actually don't have any ornaments on the tree because we knew that Eve would spend all her time playing with them. We used some ribbon on the tree and it does still look good.