Just the 4 of Us

Awesome Giveaways

2011-11-19T17:33:00.001-08:00

Well, here I am blogging again about some giveaways, but these are seriously awesome! If you ever read my blog, you seriously just have to check out MommyandMegiveaways. They review products sent to them and more often than not, the companies also sponsor giveaways for those products!! So, I was introduced to this by a friend of mine, and I've been relatively hooked! I've won a couple pretty awesome things, not the least of which was Microsoft Word 2010 for our MAC! So, if I haven't convinced you--go check them out! Right now they are doing a fun 12 days of Christmas giveaway (hence the button farther down on my blog). All of the giveaways for this event are A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!! Here are just a few:

Mobi is sponsoring a giveaway for their digital Mobi Cam baby monitoring system. This little trinket is valued at $229 and could be won for free!! (if you're not at least curious about this blog by now, you're crazy!!)

ZVOX is sponsoring a giveaway for a Z-base 555 Stereo System!! This is a $399.99 value!! It is a surround sound with no external wires or speakers etc. This is a huge offer!!

Angeles is sponsoring a giveaway for a their crib which has the following features:

1. It is fully compliant with the NEW December 2010 safety guidelines!!! That is the most important thing for you to know. This crib is safe for your children.

2. It has a 5 year warranty.

3. BONUS! It comes with a mattress.

4. It meets or even exceeds the 16CFR1632 and 16CFR1633 flammability standards! (I told you this crib was safe)

So cool!! They also did a giveaway a little while back for a little Trike and they have tons of other great looking products!!

Scentsy, which is not part of the 12 days of Christmas event is also doing a giveaway. I have a scentsy warmer and I LOVE IT! It has been a great way to make our house yummy without the danger of fire and without me having to bake something :) This consultant is giving away a warmer and a scented bar to go with it! This gives you an idea of their typical daily giveaways!

At any rate, I'm obviously hooked! Who doesn't love free useful things?? So one of the ways I can boost my entries is to blog about the giveaway, but even more than that I want to share this wonderful blog with those of you who read this! I'm sure we're all bargain shoppers and what better bargain than brand new and free?? So, check it out at your own risk of complete addiction :)

A Mighty Fortress is Our God

2011-11-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to post this for a while now, just didn't seem to find the time to sit down and do it. But, since I'm relaxing at grandma and grandpa's and Makaela is sleeping (yes, still sleeping at 5:30) I thought I'd take a quick minute to do this post. We sang an arrangement of this song last month in choir--correction--the choir sang an arrangement and I played piano. That whole accompaniment thing is still a stretching experience for me, so the Lord must still have more He wants to teach me through it. Anyway, as we were singing first service, I was completely overwhelmed (to the point of tears which is not necessarily the best thing when you're trying to play the piano) by the goodness and greatness of our God!! I wasn't the only one, and it is always so encouraging and convicting to my heart when the spirit moves so greatly within!! So, I wanted to share the words because they are so powerful and God used them to speak deeply to me.

"A Mighty Fortress"

Our God is a consuming fire, a burning holy flame, with glory and freedom;

Our God is the only righteous judge, ruling over us with kindness and wisdom;

And we will keep our eyes on You, we will keep our eyes on You.

A mighty fortress is our God;

A sacred refuge is Your Name.

Your kingdom is unshakeable;

And with you forever we will reign.

Our God is jealous for His own, none could comprehend His love and His mercy;

Our God is exalted on His throne, high above the heavens, forever He is worthy;

And we will keep our eyes on You, we will keep our eyes on You.

A mighty fortress is our God;

A sacred refuge is Your Name.

Your kingdom is unshakeable;

With you forever we will reign.

A Mighty Fortress is our God!!"

Pumpkin Carving

2011-10-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

This Saturday we (and by "we" I mostly mean Nathan) got around to carving Makaela's pumpkin! I have this thing with the sliminess of pumpkin innards, and I thought with my current pregnant state, it might not be wise for me to try and gut the pumpkin unless we wanted to clean up more than just pumpkin innards :) I suppose that's enough, if not too much, said :) So, I was the designated photographer and Nathan and Makaela gutted the pumpkin. Since she seems to have no fear of anything, I figured she'd have no problem with the feeling of the pumpkin innards, and she didn't. She had fun pulling out pumpkin seeds when they weren't slipping out of her hands :)

Dada got busy carving the cutest ladybug on the face of the planet into her ladybug--all freehand!! We found a cute picture online to mimic and Nathan did an AWESOME job!! Here are pictures and a video of the festivities :)

Probably more excited about eating and sitting on top of the

table than the actual pumpkin and the task at hand :)

Assessing the situation

She saw mama cut the top off the pumpkin, so she decided to

pick up the knife and "cut it" herself...saying "cut it, cut it" :)

her latest "smile" :)

Getting the template on the pumpkin

helping dada clean out the inside

Picking up the seeds off the table

Back up to the table for some more action!!

Working hard and Hardly working--which is which? :)

Checking out the progress

Hard at work

checking out the candles inside

hm...what to think about this whole pumpkin thing??

The proud maker, and proud owner :)

Showing off her pumpkin :)

The finished product--way to go dada!!

Family Pumpkin Patch Trip

2011-10-31T09:38:00.001-07:00

Here are a few pictures from our trip to our local pumpkin patch. It was a fun little place here in Port Orchard with 2 patches of pumpkins, and 1 patch of small sweet pumpkins to make fresh pumpkin pie. There was also a "hay castle" with a few slides for the kiddos and a trail through the woods following a little story. This particular farm allows you to come toward the beginning of pumpkin season and choose your pumpkin, personalize it, then the pumpkin grows with the personalization in it. Kinda fun thing we will have to keep in mind for next year :) Anyway, I forgot the camera so these pics are from my phone, and because we were using my phone, we couldn't get a clear picture of all 3 of us :)

A friend of mine who works for Deere says this one is probably from the 80's!!

In the Hay Castle

Sliding down with Dada

The wagon ride probably would have been much more fun (at least for dada)

if the handle of the wagon wasn't broken :) but we made do :)

She loved this rocking horse! She was rocking so hard she was

close to tipping herself off the front side!!

Sweet girl and dada in the pumpkin patches.

Pumpkin Time

2011-10-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, our friend Rosie invited us to a "mommy fellowship" group at her husbands old church. The event for the day was going to a local farm and pumpkin patch :) Makaela's first experience with pumpkins and pumpkin patches, but not her first experience with farms and chickens. She had fun talking to the turkey's and the chickens, and enjoyed looking at all the different pumpkins. The girl has no fear, I tell you. She was ready to just tear through the patch no matter how wet it was, no matter what vines tripped her, she just kept going :) Unfortunately, dada had to work, so our first experience in the pumpkin patch wasn't with him, but we went again to a different one 2 days later to have a family pumpkin event :) Here are some pics from our time :) Pumpkin carving post is coming next!!

Checking out all the pumpkins

Gotta choose just the right one :)

For whatever reason, this was a favored face for pictures during the day :)

More Giveaway Items

2011-10-23T17:00:00.001-07:00

Hello blogging world :) I'm here to just do a quick little note on some awesome giveaways from MommyandMegiveaways!! They always review such fun things and so I stick my name into the pot a few times to try out my luck. Today's lucky blog items I'm going for are:

A Labor Gown from a company called Labor Looks. Super cute and much more modest little gowns for the hospital :) I'd love to have one of those suckers when April rolls around :)

An electric breast pump from Evenflo

and...a cutsie little trike from a company called Angeles. Here's a picture!!

Here's to hoping--and getting a few extra entries for blogging :)

Bella VS. The Bunny

2011-10-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Recently, Makaela was given one of those little furry toys that have plastic feet on the bottom, and you can wind them up and they hop/jump all over the place. I must admit, there are a whole slew of toys that make me think "I wonder what Bella would do with that". :) you know you've got a good dog who will provide LOTS of entertainment when you look at things and ask yourself that question. So, of course, I thought "I wonder what Bella would do with this bunny". Well, here are 2 videos of what she did. We knew she would probably freak out a little and definitely want to play with it. In the first video, you get the idea of how she initially reacted to it. It wasn't even 2 minutes before she had the plastic feet off of that little bunny, so you were left with the bunny, the little winder gadget on the side, and a buzzing noise when the area where the feet used to be was triggered. The result is in these 2 videos. Enjoy an if you're like me, grab a tissue or 2 because I was laughing so hard I cried :) We love our crazy Bella

p.s. please excuse the condition of my house in these videos :) We were having a lazy day :)

p.s.s. I just watched the videos again and yep---still laughing so hard I cry :)

19/20 months

2011-10-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe how fast this little girl changes! Every day new things happen or new words are said. It is crazy to think about everything she has learned since she was a baby, and it hasn't even been 2 full years!!

Now, she is quite the talker and has made our communication much easier (for the most part) :) I can decipher most of what she is saying or asking for which is really helpful. I did have my first instance of the "guessing game" in trying to figure out what she was saying the other day and after several wrong guesses she very frustratedly said "no!!" then said it one more time and PTL (praise the Lord) I got it right :) Some of the things she talks about constantly are:

milk*juice*dilla (quesadilla, which she asks for almost every day)*bars (little healthy snack bars we have)*crackers*banana*apple*orange*melon*Gunnar(s), Rowen, Canon (Patterson Boys)*Rosie and Pravis (Travis)*Big Truck (any time she sees a truck on the road, although her rendition of "big truck" sounds A LOT like "peacock")*ABC's*Twinkle Twinkle Little Star*Stairs (big step)*Bama and Pepaw (grandma and grandpa)*soggy diaper*'toot'ing*potty*

.....and a whole slew of other things. I could go on and on! Like I said, it is so helpful that she is talking so much because it makes communicating a lot easier :) Here are just a few random (and funny!!) pictures from September.

She LOVES Blackberries and we had several bushes nearby our house so we picked some and she ate them faster than I've seen her eat anything before. Seriously, within 30 seconds, she had eaten 10-15 berries. She cannot shovel them in fast enough :)

She loves to pray and that is such a delight to us! Before we eat she always says "pray" and we pray before bed. We also pray after times of discipline. It is cute to hear her pray on her own where she just gets out a few random words that we often use while praying. One night, during dinner, her prayer went something like this "Dear God, thank you...Jesus...obey...spankins" Last night in the car she kept repeating herself over and over saying to us "obey dada, obey mama". :) She is starting to understand how that all works, and now we're working on responding the right way to obedience. I like what my sis in law has taught her daughter--to "obey all the time, all the way, and with a happy heart" We're working toward those things--meanwhile being humbled and convicted myself. Parenting is such a joy because in the process of striving to teach and bring Makaela up in the ways of the Lord, I am convicted myself of my own shortcomings and failures. My gracious Father is using me teaching my daughter to teach His daughter (me). I'm reminded of and thankful for his mercy and lovingkindness every day. Praise the Lord for parenting :)

Zoo Day

2011-10-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hello blogging world! It's been such a long time since I've visited you :) Sorry friends and family, again, for the long dry spurt in posting :) I suppose if I loaded our pictures onto the computer quicker, I might be inclined to blog more often :) Needless to say, we finally loaded the pictures onto the computer, so I can update on a few things with some pictures :)

A while back, probably in August, Makaela and I took a trip to the zoo with our dear friendsThe Pattersons. Makaela had been to the zoo once before, but it wasn't with me so it was fun to go with her and see her enjoy all the animals! I'm sure if we went back now, she would be even more chatty and interested in the animals!! It is crazy how much changes in such a short time! Anyway, here are a few pictures from our outing.

You can't really see it so well, but she is sitting on a Seal :)

After you've gone through to see all the animals, there is a fun little play area with a handful of gadgets for the kids to play on. One is a large bird nest which she was checking out.

Also, a little set of "rocks" to climb on.

They had a really fun water feature that M was a little apprehensive about at first, but once she saw Gunnar and Rowen running around having a blast, she decided to join in the fun.

This was the end result of her playing in the water :)

And here is video of her checking out the little water fountains.

Giveaway Craze

2011-08-29T22:05:00.001-07:00

Yep, posting again! Just came across another awesome giveaway from Mommy and Me Giveaways that I had to share! Also, blogging about it gets me a few extra entries, so I blog about the ones that I really want. Who doesn't want awesome free stuff?!?! So this is a diaper bag (big whoop) but it sounds awesome! Great amount of space, with a insulated compartment for storing cold breastmilk or just cold milk or juice, and it also has lots of padding so if we wanted/needed to use it on a trip where we also had our computer, it would be well protected. AWESOME!! So, hoping I win this one too, but will be happy (and probably slightly jealous) of whoever does win it :)

More Giveaway Fun

2011-08-29T21:47:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am again trying to get as many entries as possible for an awesome giveaway. Let me first say that Mommy and Me Giveaways is awesome!! The last thing I blogged about trying to win was Microsoft Office Suite and I won! I was so excited I had to call my parents and tell them immediately. I actually cheered out loud which I rarely do for anything!! So, this giveaway which seems like something that would be wonderful and helpful in the not too distant future is a portable DVD player from Radio Shack! I'm thinking some possible long trips to CA to see family with a Toddler---a DVD player might not be such a bad idea. So, here's to hoping and we'll see in a few days if I'm still as lucky!! :)

18 Months

2011-08-24T14:25:00.000-07:00

I know I say this almost every time, but I can hardly believe we've hit the 18 month mark! Where has the time gone?!?! We are absolutely loving this age! We're having so much fun with Makaela and all her talking and decoding some of her language :) We just had her well-baby check up and got all her stats! She's had several growth spurts in the last few months (for her height, at least).

Weight--22 pounds 7 ounces--around the 25th percentile

Head--47cm--also around the 25th percentile

She seems to hang out around these percentiles for these two categories :)

Length--32 inches--around the 57th percentile! What?!?! Where did that come from? What I realize is that now she is finally hitting an "average" height but it seems so big compared to her 18th percentile and 22nd percentile from before :) The doctor said if she continues to grow at that rate she will probably be about 5'5". I told Makaela that's not allowed because then she'll be taller than mommy :)

Other things that are new are:

Extended Nap Time--this is mommy's favorite! She goes down between 12:30 and 1:30 and is usually in her bed until between 3:30 and 4:30. Wonderful time for mommy to have uninterrupted productivity!!! yay!

Her talking/words have really just blossomed in the last 3 months. I think around 15 months she had about 3-5 words down and now she says more than we can count--she is above average in that category :) She talks all the time and she is hilarious! She doesn't talk in sentences yet, she will occasionally babble out the sound of a sentence, but otherwise she doesn't speak in sentences. But the girl can talk and repeat anything and everything she hears!!

She has started to recognize and remember people which has been super fun! She talks about our friends Travis and Rosie Larsen ALL THE TIME! She also talks about our youth pastors kids as we see them almost every day for a walk. They have 3 boys, and she knows all of them by name. She is also recognizing grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, and cousins in pictures and saying their names.

She currently counts from 1-10 by herself followed by "yay" after she says ten :)

She also can do almost all of the abc's skipping just a few here and there. I'd say she gets about 20 of the 26 letters.

She sings parts of twinkle twinkle little star--with a distinguishable "how I wonder what you are"

I think that's most of the update on her. She is going to be so disappointed when the weather turns yucky and we can't go on a walk like we do nearly every day right now!! But she loves being outside. We're having tons of fun with her right now and are so thankful for the ability to communicate relatively easily with her. We're also just so thankful for her!! She continues to be a joy and blessing in our lives and we can't thank the Lord enough for blessing and entrusting her to us! We're praying for her to come to a saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from an early age as we strive to train her in the ways of the Lord. Such a huge responsibility we've been given and we are thankful for the Lord for his graciousness and lovingkindness to us as we learn how to parent :)

Only by His Grace..........................

Ocean Shores

2011-08-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back we headed over to the coast for the day. Still enjoying nice weather here and taking advantage of the sunshine!! We had a lovely day enjoying the beach and the warm weather! Much to my surprise, at Ocean Shores, you just drive onto the beach and park!!! That seemed a bit crazy to me, but normal to everyone else, I'm sure :)

Makaela adjusted well to the sand this time around--she actually loved it! She had so much fun wandering around and she even had fun playing in the water! We had heard it was supposed to be a little on the cool side, but still pleasant, so we didn't take our suits, but I bet Makaela wished we had! She ended up pretty much all wet anyway and she had a blast in the water with Dada!

We also found a fun little park to play at for a little bit and Makaela enjoyed swinging and playing on the playground set and going down the slide! Such big girl things she can do now!!! Here are our pictures from the day. We've really treasured these family times together and are looking forward to many more!!

Adventures in Washington

2011-08-04T12:10:00.001-07:00

We live in such a fun place! It's not often that when we drive around we don't mention how thankful we are to be here living in this wonderful place!! God has packed this place full of His beautiful creation and we get to enjoy it all the time! How wonderful!!!

A few weeks back, we headed to Seattle for the day. My dearest friend and roommate from college, Emily, was visiting and so we thought it was a great excuse to head to the city for the day. Of course, even after I had talked about it, I still forgot the camera so we don't really have any pictures from the day accept what we got on our phones. But we had a great time! It's so fun to live just a quick ferry ride away--it eliminates the hassle of a car and parking and all that. It doesn't eliminate the tired feet at the end of the day, but its worth it and so much fun!! Makaela had a blast and she even took a nap in her stroller! This was a huge blessing to us and made the whole day much more enjoyable and endurable :)

Last weekend, Nathan, Makaela and I headed up to Sequim to take in the sight of the Dungeness Spit. The weather has been beautiful and we've wanted to take advantage of all the fun and relatively close things to do before we get into the busy fall. It was such a fun and wonderful day!! I found myself basking in the blessings God has showered on me and us. Despite me being completely unworthy of all of these, my God is still so gracious to me and blesses beyond description. What an awesome God I/we serve!!!

Makaela had a great time riding on dada's back in a carrier and checking out the seaweed. She didn't so much enjoy the sand on her hands, but she got used to it eventually--nothing a little brush of the hands wouldn't fix :) Here are a few pictures from our adventure. Tomorrow we're headed to Ocean Shores which I hear is beautiful!!

ABC's

2011-07-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Makaela has started singing the ABC's minus the actual letters of the song :) But she's got most of the tune down! She sings it all the time! It's so much fun to listen to her sing and talk all day long. It's fun now...I am sure it will be a bit challenging when she is actually trying to communicate with me and I have no idea what she is saying. But for now, her babble is cute and fun and she loves it!!

This video has a few funny spots to it. One in particular, Bella comes over to check out the camera and sniffs her little snout right in front of it :)

Bonding with Bella

2011-07-25T17:12:00.001-07:00

Makaela has taken a particular liking to Bella lately which has been really fun!! She loves to "play" with her, and sweet Bella is so gentle and patient with Makaela. She is constantly sitting on her trying to ride her, or checking out her feet or her mouth or something. I see a budding friendship here :)

Our Little Break Dancer

2011-07-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

I really think we might have a break dancer among us--and No, I'm not talking about Nathan :) Makaela LOVES to dance, and she busts out some pretty funny moves!! Every time I play this video, she starts dancing right away. It is soooo funny! Enjoy!

Giveaway Fun

2011-07-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have Erin Kuester to thank for this. She introduced me to giveaway blogs. Thanks for the addiction friend :) I was quickly sucked in, but took a break as life got really busy with moving and such, but I'm going to hop back into the swing of things right now. I've been following giveaways from a blog called Mommy and Me Giveaways, and I've lucked out twice now. I won a set of Avent bottles for when hopefully baby #2 comes along, and I also won a piece of shapewear! Some of the things aren't necessarily things I would use but would love to use as gifts for baby showers or donate the to the nursery to be used there!!

The big giveaway we are currently crossing our fingers for is a giveaway of Microsoft Office 2010 for MAC. That's right. The full Microsoft Office Suite. We relatively recently acquired a MAC, but don't have any of those programs and I'd love to get my excel back to use for budgeting and keeping track of all our bills etc!! So, with fingers crossed, we'll hope for something good out of this!! If not, thats ok--I figure there's no hurt in trying for something for free :) Anyway, check out the website if you're interested in picking up any free products of various kinds!! Who doesn't love free and usable stuff?!?! :)

California Vacation

2011-06-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

We just recently enjoyed a vacation to California to spend time with our families, to spend time in the sunshine, and to eat at In-N-Out :) We flew out Sunday after church and landed in San Francisco. We promptly made a stop at In-N-Out to make sure we got the trip started off right :) Having been on our diet, however, we were diligent and we did order our burgers protein style!! Still tasty although messy :)

We spent the first few days with Nathan's family down in the Antelope Valley. We went to the beach our second day there and had a great time! School was still in session so the beach was VERY quiet which was so nice! It was pretty chilly which was also nice as we weren't exhausted from the sun when we left. It was too cold to go into the water though, so we did just a quick dip of the feet. Makaela did NOT like this at all. I can't blame her. It was pretty cold. She also wasn't a fan of the sand sticking to her. The sunscreen was a little sticky on her legs which made the sand stick to her which consequently made her stand with one leg up in the air trying to get the sand off :)

We stayed with our good friends the Ash's while in the AV. They have a son who just turned 1 at the end of May and he and Makaela had a mostly good time playing together. Most of the time they were together it was nearing time for them to go to bed, but the times they were awake they had fun. We also enjoyed our time with them being able to hang out a little almost every night.

We enjoyed time with everyone in Nathan's family and were thankful for the time we had with each of them. We even got to see Nathan's grandma on his dads side, and grandpa on his moms side--an added treat!!

Friday we got to have dinner with some dear friends from school and we treasured that time very much. We finished off the night heading down to my family in Granada Hills. We spent one full day with my entire family before we all had to go our separate ways for various commitments. Then we spent the last half of our trip with my parents and sister in Visalia. That was a great time of relaxing and chillin--doing very little which we absolutely loved! We got in a few (and by few, I really mean only a few) good hands of pinochle with my parents.

Our trip was such a refreshing time for us and we are so thankful for the time we had to go away. We came back prepared to hit the ground running and we did!! God has been so gracious to us in providing for us and allowing us this time with our families. As our family hopefully grows in the future, we know those trips will become a lot more effort so we are thankful for the ease of time we have with them now.

Now we are springing into the fall (and yes, I did mean fall. Our fall church things really start in the summer) and preparing for Christmas and for the choir year ahead. We're excited about the upcoming season of ministry and looking forward to how the Lord will teach and grow us through these next several months!!

waaazzzzzz uuuupppppppp!!!!!!!

2011-06-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

While we were on vacation in CA (which I will put up pictures of and blog about next) grandma and grandpa taught Makaela how to say Wuz Up! Enough said.

Dancing Machine

2011-06-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

These two videos have a few slow spots, but like most videos with kids, sometimes they've gotta get their second wind to continue entertaining :) Makaela has developed quite the repertoire of dance moves!! I think you will see just about all of them in these two videos. She seems to favor the break dancing moves, but seems to throw in some kind of ballroom move every now and then too. She loves music and starts dancing anytime she hears any kind of music. I'm sure you'll see that here :)

Don't mind the basketball game in the background :) Or the cheering or yelling

Fun in the Sun

2011-06-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

On days with nice weather up here, I try to get us out for a walk to enjoy the sunshine while we have it. Those days seem to be happening more often now, however, as I look outside, today is the epitome of June Gloom as its cloudy and rainy and cold. But we spent some time outside yesterday.

These pictures are from an outing about a month ago. Just a walk to get out and so mamma could get a little exercise. I got her really souped up for this walk with sunglasses and everything!! She had such a fun time! :)

On a separate occasion, we enjoyed a little picnic on our front lawn complete with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Well, Makaela enjoyed that, I didn't. I had already eaten :) But dada came home for a voice lesson and got to join us for a few minutes in the sunshine too!!

Beginning of Walking

2011-06-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Here is the video I got not too long after she started walking. It's definitely not her "first steps" but its within a few days :)

Fun at the zoo

2011-06-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Back at the end of April, Nathan and I enjoyed a nice short time away for our anniversary. Our dear friends the Larsens graciously (yeah right! more like eagerly!) agreed to keep Makaela for us. They love her so much and she loves them too! They came and stayed at our house while we were gone and we both had a great time!

Nathan and I went to Leavenworth which is a little Bavarian town here in WA. A dear sweet friend from church offered us a night at their timeshare there which we gladly accepted as the rate was much cheaper for us that way! We enjoyed walking around little main street. We tasted some fudge which consequently lead to buying some fudge. I never knew fudge could come in so many flavors and kinds! We bought 6 quarter pound blocks each a different flavor and that wasn't even half of what was there!! We haven't gotten around to enjoying the fudge yet--it is still in our freezer as we have been on a diet and haven't been able to indulge yet :) But possibly more about that later. But our time was wonderful and refreshing and relaxing! It was a perfect time after having come off a busy busy Easter weekend!!

Makaela also enjoyed her time with the Larsens. Rosie took her to the zoo with her mother in law and a few other kids her mother in law watches. This was Makaela's first time to the zoo and from the pictures, it looks like she had such a fun time! Now that she is walking, I'm sure that she would have even more fun!! We're looking forward to going back sometime when we have a nice day and when we don't have something else scheduled!! Here are a few pictures from her time there. It's really hard to get Makaela to look at much less smile for the camera these days! She is much more interested on whats on the other side of the camera--usually a picture of herself. But in these pictures from the zoo, she is completely enamored with everything she is seeing! Such a fun time!!

Playing in the Toys

More playing in the Toys:)

Checking out the fishies

From what I hear, she was extremely distraught when the fishies swam away from her.

She tried to follow them along the glass until they swam away and then she cried :)

Wish I could have been there to see that!!

Fun on the Merry Go Round. First time!!

How Embarrassing!

2011-06-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

As I looked back at our blog to see what the last thing I blogged about (because, no, I could not remember on my own it had been so long!!) I realized that I hadn't blogged since Makaela started walking!! I have a short little video of when she was just getting used to the idea. Most of you by now have seen her flying around!! She started walking about a week before Mother's Day, and has been cruising ever since! I think by now she has even figured out how to run! Or at least that's what it seems like :)

I obviously have a lot to catch up on, so I will work on all of that next, including the video of the beginnings of walking plus other videos of dancing and new phrases she's learned and of course, pictures!!

Lots coming your way so stay tuned!!

14 Months

2011-04-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

Our sweet Makaela is 14 months now!! And actually, as I type this, she is closer to 15 months than 14 months. That seems just crazy to me. The past month, a few fun things have happened. The most fun thing is actually for Mom and Dad and that is that we moved Makaela's little cubby-hole shelves of toys into her room. And now instead of having to always pick up all her toys for when company comes or when piano/voice students come, we don't have to worry about it!! It's so wonderful! Especially since her way of "playing" with her toys right now is to take them all out and leave them on the floor. :)

Recently (within the past week) she has started to stand a lot more voluntarily! She even tried to take a few steps toward mama!! So, now, I seriously think she will be walking soon. Before, we were coercing her to stand by having her stand then putting something into her hand to distract her, but now she will just let go of furniture and stand or let go of us when we move and stand. She is a smart girl though and she probably also realizes that the quickest way for her to get anywhere right now is to crawl since she does that at turbo speed. :) But, I'm sure before too long she will be walking...maybe even before our trip down to California!!

Last night, she gave herself her first BIG goose-egg! Oh my it was huge! She plays around and crawls all over and climbs all over anything and everything on the couch. She is also very good at getting down from the couch...always going feet first. Last night we were all sitting up on the couch and i got up to move all the laundry that was folded to the laundry basket to be put away. Before I knew it, I heard this thud right next to me and a little shriek, followed by that "silent crying" before the really loud scream. I don't know what she was thinking, but she dove head first off the couch right into the corner of our ottoman. Thankfully our ottoman is one of those leather storage ottomans so it wasn't hard wood that she hit, but she did still nail the corner. I saw the little dent in her forehead and before long it was the giant goose-egg. She was such a strong girl though....only the one really loud scream after the "silent cry" and then she calmed down. She even laid still while mama and dada held her to put ice on it. Today, its a little less large, and a bit more colorful :) But she isn't bothered by it at all.

She is still communicating with us A LOT! She asks questions about what everything is by pointing and saying "a-dah?" Every morning when she wakes up she says "a-dah?" and uses her sign language to tell us she wants her milk. Just this morning I made the connection that she reminds me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo saying "mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine" as she says "a-dah, a-dah, a-dah, a-dah, a-dah" repeatedly (even with the same inflection as the seagulls!!) until we acknowledge what she wants or is pointing at. This morning it was her sippy cup she could see on the counter :) She looks at pictures of all of us and says "dada" and sometimes will even point to him in the picture. She also loves to look at pictures of herself (so vain, I know :)). She will pull down her little photo album and just look through all of the pictures of herself.

She continues to learn new things everyday and is just a bundle of joy and fun!! Here are a few pictures from the last month, lots from her high chair. I suppose that's the place she is most confined which makes it a little easier to snap some shots :) Enjoy!!

A quick bath in the sink before leaving to go somewhere.

I love to throw my mom off and do something that requires

NEEDING a bath before we can leave when it wasn't in the original plan!! :)

Mom, is that you behind the camera??

(she often tilts her head like this trying to see around the camera to see our faces :))

Life doesn't get much better than this :)

Check out my Chompers!! 5 of them total!!

This is my current claim to fame!!

Video Overload

2011-03-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

I am just going to throw all the videos into this one post. Here we go :) :)

Just a little fun in the bath.

Makaela wakes up and is in her crib for quite a while before she starts to make much of a fuss wanting to get out. She talks and plays and I think this is what she is usually doing in there. She just loves to play with her blankie!!

She follows the inflections in our voice when we say things to her. For a while she would just repeat "mah" starting low and ending high. Very funny. She doesn't do it as many times in this video, but you get the idea.

13 Months

2011-03-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

Going on 14 months. WOW! Time just keeps flying, but of course everyone knows that. Makaela is still not walking--we can see that she totally could if she wanted to, but is just being stubborn. She has just blossomed over the last month or so. Her random babbling has turned into babbling sounding sentences. She is trying SO hard to communicate with us!! It's so cute. We just look at her, give her a "teachable" face like we totally understand what she is saying, and when she's finished we say "yes" like we understood everything :) Cute. She is picking up some sign language pretty quickly. She knows "more", "please", and she sometimes does "all done". Sometimes she claps for all done, but sometimes she does the correct sign. She knows how to wave and does so when she hears "hi" or "bye". She knows how to blow kisses and when we say clap, she will clap. Also, as of late, when we say "love you" she will 95% of the time respond with a 2 syllable sound (sometimes "ra-ra" sometimes "ah-da" something of the like). It's so cute.

She LOVES boys (oh great). At church, often times ladies will reach their arms out to her and she will cling to me, but the moment a man reaches his arms out for her she can't get to him fast enough!! She just loves the attention.

She loves to play on our piano, and lately she's been walking around pushing the piano bench. So much for those fun little toys she has to walk with--she walks with the piano bench :) She's also lovin' on Pooh Bear all the time. She has 2 of them plus a little Pooh lovie and she loves all 3 of them. She crawls around with the Pooh lovie in her mouth all the time.

Anyway, she is just loving life and we are just loving her! Here are some pics from the last month.

Makaela LOVES bath time and has just recently started crawling around and "swimming" around on her tummy in the bath. She just has so much fun!!

Concentrating very hard on standing!!

Makaela LOVES to crawl around and climb all over the couch!!

She also loves to pull down all the pillows and anything else that is on the couch.

All worn out from playing so hard with all my toys!! Sleeping with Pooh

Dear Sweet Husband

2011-03-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

I will put up a post with pictures and Videos of Makaela as soon as they are all finished uploading :) I just have a few things I wanted to mention.

1. I love my dear husband so very very much!! He is so sweet and thoughtful. I find myself often praising God for him, but especially yesterday. I'm so thankful for him and his job, and I'm so thankful that he loves his job. He had SO much to accomplish yesterday with both choir and band practice approaching quickly. Makaela and I arrived at church around 5 with dinner as we do every Tuesday, and he was trying to pull things together for rehearsals. He said he was running "very behind" but he was still able to finish things up (with a quick 5 minutes to inhale dinner to boot!!). This may seem like such a trivial thing, but what I'm getting to is how encouraging it was to see him working hard, all be it stressed out, but with a good attitude and in a manner that was pleasing to the Lord. And when all was said and done, he led both the choir and the band in productive, diligent, and God-honoring rehearsals. What a blessing to see him finish so well given the business and stress of the day. Thank

you Lord for encouraging him to have you on the forefront of his thoughts and actions in everything he does!!

2. I love my dear husband so very very much!! Monday was my birthday and in his sweetness and love for me, he got me a pair of aquamarin

e earrings that have a little diamond as well. They are so beautiful and I love them and appreciate that token of his love for me.

3. I love my dear husband so very very much. He rocks. Thats all :)

Strawberry Cheesecake Pizza

2011-03-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

So, I watched a show on Food Network the other day called Outrageous Food. (bad idea...don't ever watch anything like that!!) One of the things they showed was a pizza place that does over 60 kinds of pizza plus dessert pizzas. Really creative things like Mac'n'Cheese Pizza, Baked Potato Pizza and any other combination of things you could think of!! That had me interested. Then they started talking about their dessert pizza's and their chocolate pizza dough. If I wasn't hooked on the show, I was now!! I was ALL EARS!! And eyes :). They made a "dirt" dessert pizza with the chocolate dough, chocolate pudding, crumbled up oreos and worms. I saw other things on there, one of which was a strawberry cheesecake pizza. Y.U.M!! So after the show was over, google became my best friend. I found a recipe for this delightful treat and decided to try it out. Plus, I already had all the ingredients on hand so I figured that was a sign :) It was Delicious!!! I really enjoy cheesecake, but I enjoyed that this wasn't as dense and heavy as cheesecake. I made it for my birthday (a little strange to make your own birthday dessert, but it was so worth it!!). It was a pretty easy thing, not too time consuming, and worth sharing the recipe!! I'm sure this will be repeated at some point :)

For something fun with it...you could throw some blueberries on there and you'd have a tasty and festive treat for 4th of July. Here's the recipe :) Enjoy and indulge sometime...

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling

8 ounces light cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
2 cups fresh strawberries
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 cups crushed strawberries

Total Time: 1 hrDirections

1. Cream together margarine and 1/2 cup sugar. Beat for two minutes. Beat in egg and extracts.
2. Combine flour, baking powder and salkt. Gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
3. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. Then, on a floured surface, roll doll into a 13-in circle.
4. Transfer to pizza pan (the recipe says ungreased but I used Pam).
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 18 - 22 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool.
6. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Spread over crust. Slice two cups of the strawberries and arrange sliced strawberries on top.
7. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and crushed berries until blended. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. (It wouldn't boil for me, I just cooked it for about 5 minutes until it was nice and thick). Cool slightly. Spoon over strawberries. I spooned it over the strawberries just before we ate it instead of cooling it on there, but you can probably do it either way.
8. Refrigerate until serving

Emerson Video

2011-03-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Saw this on a friend's facebook page and Nathan and I laughed so hard. It was definitely worthy of the blog, so I thought I'd pass it along. Enjoy :)

2011-03-02T22:38:00.000-08:00

This was way too cute not to share :)

"Hi Daddy"

2011-02-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

Last night we had the Patterson's over for dinner. They are dear friends of ours and we are so thankful for their friendship! It was a joy to be able to serve them last night as she is 28 weeks pregnant and they are moving to a different house next week, so not thinking about or having to make dinner was a blessing to them. And it was a blessing to us to serve them in that way! While Paige was holding Makaela, Nathan said to Makaela "Hi Baby" and Makaela said "Hi Daddy". Not quite so enunciated, but we could definitely tell that was what she was saying. Similar inflections as well. So this morning I tried to get a video of her saying that. Its always different when the video camera is out :) But she does say it a few times. Its SO cute!! I will still try to get another better video of it sometime :) But for now here is Makaela saying "Hi Daddy"

The choo-choo train

2011-02-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

For Makaela's Birthday, we got her this little multi-faceted train. She LOVES it! She will sit and laugh at it for great lengths of time! We totally scored which we are super excited about!! So this train sings, and it says colors, and numbers and letters. The letters are super cool because you can put a little cube with the letter on it into a slot and the train says "A is for Apple. A A A" Then you can also turn these little pages with letters on them and they say the letters on those pages. Each letter has an object with it so it also says the name of the object etc. Then, you can sit on the back of the train and ride it around, or you can detach the back part and walk around with the train. Its a really great educational toy that she will be able to have fun with for a long long time.

So, here is a video of her walking down the hallway with the train.

Please excuse the horrid baby talking :)

Bounding Bella

2011-02-24T13:47:00.001-08:00

If I didn't know any better, I'd think we had a deer, not a dog. Often when she runs across the backyard she goes bounding. It is so funny. So yesterday, I finally decided that we had to get a video of it. So while Nathan threw little rocks (yes, rocks, not a ball, not treats--rocks) around in the backyard she would bound to go see where they landed.

Bella's New Hiding Spot

2011-02-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

Several weeks back, I noticed that Bella wasn't lying on her bed. I started walking around looking for her and low and behold she came crawling out from underneath Makaela's crib of all places! I have no idea how she fit under there, but she does. It's pretty ridiculous. Here's how she does it.

Bella Vs. the Easy Button

2011-02-24T13:40:00.001-08:00

Yes, thats right, the easy button. You know those red buttons from staples that say "that was easy" She was extremely frustrated/annoyed/perturbed that when she would pounce (yes, pounce, like a cat) on the button it would say "that was easy". So as usual, video was necessary and here it is :)

1st Birthday

2011-02-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

I still can't believe it. I can't believe I'm posting about her 1st birthday. Where has the time gone?!?! I'll give you some stats on her, then I'll jump into the big party and the pictures :) So She is just shy of 20 pounds and 28 inches long. I'd say more like 28 1/2, but I'm not always fond of how the nurse measures her length. So I never think its quite accurate. She has 5 little teeth now. One popped through without any knowledge of ours until we were at the doctor and we noticed all of the sudden there was an extra tooth in her mouth!! She is eating pretty much everything we eat and loving almost all of it! She definitely is a texture girl and doesn't like some things based on texture--like hard boiled eggs and puff pancake. Although I'm sure that she will come to like that at one point :)

She isn't walking yet, but she is doing some more walking with a few little toys she has to aid that. She seems to be so afraid of taking steps. She even refuses to stand for any longer than a half of a millisecond. I know she could stand longer if she wanted to because she is very controlled when she sits down, but she is just scared. But I'm sure before long I'll be posting videos of her taking steps :)

She loves bathtime and splashing as much as possible. She loves to go up and down stairs. She loves the song "Until the Whole World Hears" by Casting Crowns. We call it 'her jam' and whenever we turn it on she gets a big smile on her face and kicks her legs.

Onto the first Birthday. We had so much fun! We invited the staff from church and a few related families and had a blast! There were a good 36 or so of us here all very cozy in home but I think everyone had a good time. We had burgers and hot dogs and Cupcakes. Due to the expertise of my mother, we decorated 48 ladybug cupcakes and they were SO SO cute. Makaela thoroughly enjoyed the frosting and a little bit of the cake. We were so thankful to have such good friends to celebrate with. Here are pictures and video :)

Even though we were busy busy busy all day, Grandma still found some time to get her hands on Makaela. Grandma was such a huge help and blessing!! Thanks so much Mom!!

The Cupcake Creation. We did a few grass cupcakes. I saw the "recipe/pattern" for the cupcakes online and we tried to replicate that as close as possible. I think ours were a little cuter, but I'm probably biased. Anyway, we had a lot of fun doing them and they turned out so cute!!

Before :)

During

More During

After

What's left of the Ladybug

I was a little disappointed with the video only because I totally forgot to take the chocolate chips off her cupcake before she dug in so I had to do the old mouth sweep to make sure she hadn't put one in her mouth. Then I had to take the rest of the chocolate chips off. But you'll still get the idea. She just went for it!!

January/February Come and Gone

2011-02-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

Wow January flew by and here we are at the end of February!! I can't believe it. Time has gone so quickly. When we got home from our Christmas Vacation, we had just 5 short weeks before Makaela's birthday. We got right back into the swing of things with Choir and Band and my Bible Study and College group and other various activities. Ihad one chance to blog while our computer screen was working a while back and haven't been able tosince then. My parents, however, graciously gave us my Grandma's old (which is actually quite new) laptop so we are able to be online again. Thank you so much for your sacrifice Mom and Dad!! Especially when your own computer is down right now!!

So I thought since I had access to be able to blog, I would

go ahead and update on things. Mostly pics and videos of Makaela (like usual), but our life is pretty routine. So she is the most changing thing to update

on :) And, as always, we'll throw in a video or two of Bella :)

So here are a few pictures from Late January and I'll do a February/birthday post next :)

Enjoy!!

This one I just had to post because the camera caught her in the middle of a funny movement with her face. And its just too funny not to share :)

This is what Makaela did one day while I was working on cleaning a refrigerator. At least it was just the toilet paper :) Its a pretty harmless thing to keep her occupied :)

Bella Vs. "The Bug"

2011-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Ok for all you Zerlang/Board people out there. We did it. We went and bought one of the Bugs. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, this is what it is.

So my cousin, Jonathan, got a few of these for Christmas. Naturally, Nathan and I immediately wondered what Bella would do with one of those. Once we got home from vacation, we promptly bought one and the following videos are the result of her reaction to them. I just have to apologize for the shakey video--its really hard to keep the camera still when your laughing so hard your whole body is shaking, and in my case, tears are streaming down my face!! Oh Bella...

This One is for Troy

2011-01-26T11:20:00.001-08:00

Yes, I told him I would do it--I warned him! So Nathan's sister's husband is Troy (did ya follow that?) Troy loves to sing. Nathan took video of Troy singing (secretly)--this is why the video is bouncy is because 1) nathan is holding the camera down at the side of his leg and 2) Nathan (along with the rest of us) is laughing hysterically!

Justin Timberlake was on TV singing his song "senorita" which Troy decided to back him up on. Here is the result:

Makaela Videos

2011-01-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Here are a bunch of Video's of Makaela from Christmas. She had fun playing with the various toys that came out of bags and boxes, but she loved the paper and crinkly tissue paper!! Of course :)
She spent lots of time (and still does) rocking back and forth while on all fours. Its so funny to us because that is what she (and other babies) do before they learn how to crawl--but she still loves to do it. It's her signature dance move also!! But here are some videos:

Makaela LOVES the camera! It is tricky to get pictures of her because as soon as she sees it she crawls up to it so fast that its hard to get a good shot!

Disneyland

2011-01-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

Nathan and I got to spend one whole day together--baby free--at Disneyland! A sweet man from our church had some tickets that he wasn't able to use so he passed them along to us so we could use them while we were down there! I hadn't been to Disneyland since I was 8 or 9 years old! Can you believe it?? Nathan had been more recently than I, but it had still been quite a while for both of us! Nathan's sister watched Makaela for the day and we got to enjoy some time to ourselves. We of course picked the busiest week as well as the rainiest day to go! But we still had fun and as it turned out, the rain dried up after the first 20 minutes or so we were there.

We were able to hit most of the major rides since we didn't have Makaela with us. The day went as follows:
Drive Thru Starbucks on the way down (a necessity I tell you!!)
Early lunch (first thing we did there after buying umbrellas :))
Ride, Ride, Ride, Ride, Etc.
Head over to California Adventure
Early Dinner
Ride, Ride. Yes, only 2 rides at California Adventure. The lines were VERY long, but we had a blast standing in line. We did some people watching, had a lot of laughs, and had some really really great conversations. Man oh man do I ever love my sweet husband!

Here are some pictures from the day. Thanks to Eric Horton for the tickets! We had a blast!

Christmas Pictures

2011-01-26T10:40:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures from Christmas. I was not diligent at all with our camera, and I was even less diligent as our trip went on. :(

Christmas

2011-01-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas was an extra special time for us for several reasons--it was our first one with Makaela! It was also an extended vacation for us (12 whole days!!) and it had been quite some time since we had a vacation. As a side note, in the process of moving up to Washington, there was no break for Nathan/us. His last sunday at Wayside was July 25th, and his first sunday at CRCC was August 1st, so we used that week in the middle to move up and jump right in. Needless to say, after the craziness of the fall, we were so excited about our upcoming vacation!!

All of our flights went off without a hitch! Makaela did great! It always ends up being a long day for her as there are several hours of time at the airport/in the plane when she can't be crawling around, followed by several hours in the car to get up to Grandma and Grandpa's house. But we made it, and she was extremely excited to have the freedom to crawl around everywhere! We spent the first 4 or so days with my family in Visalia. We had a great time together. Christmas Eve Day was filled with preparations for our big mexican meal we do every Christmas Eve with our cousins/aunts/uncles etc. This year we all got together at my parents house and had a great time together! We've started an annual gift exchange which always prooves to be a blast and hysterical! It's similar to a white elephant exchange in its rules, however, the gifts are not white elephant gifts. This year there were 17 of us and we are all grown (except for the grandbabies) so we have tons of fun! Christmas Day was a low key morning in which we opened stockings, had a nice big breakfast, got ready for the day etc. We read the Christmas story together from Luke 2 followed by the opening of presents! My mother was a busy little elf this fall preparing lots of fun things for everyone! I think she was the most excited about present time because she was so excited about giving! We got some wonderful things and Makaela was spoiled!!!

Early the following week we headed down to the Lancaster area where we spent several days with Nathan's family. We stayed with some friends in Rosamond, but we were at his sister's house every day. Tuesday evening we spent with Nathan's dad and brother. It was good to have some face time with them as we hadn't seen them since we moved. Wednesday will be in a different post because we went to Disneyland!! Thursday, Friday, Saturday we spent with Nathan's sister. We also got to see a few friends at different times on those days. We are so thankful for the time we go to have with them down there.
New Years Eve Eve we did Christmas with Nathan's family. As it turned out, it was just Nathan's mom, sister, brother in law, the kids an us. We had decided to do gifts for the kids only and they had a blast playing with some new toys!! We enjoyed some more mexican food (Thanks Troy!!) and played a few games.

Our time down there was extremely precious to us and we were so blessed to be able to take such a long vacation. We treasured our time with our family and it seemed to go so very fast. I'm sure that our time with family will always go by quickly.

Moving right along--before the computer screen goes crazy--

Long Time Gone

2011-01-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

Hello all! It has bee quite a while since I've blogged--but I really have a good reason this time! Our computer screen hasn't been working, and still doesn't the majority of the time, however, I turned the computer on last nigt (screen not working) and came in to see it working this morning. So I thought I'd try to sneak in some blog posts before it decides to go crazy on me!!
I just took a look at our blog and realized the last post I did. My goodness, I feel like I don't even know where to start!

Before Christmas, I got to enjoy a quick last minute visit from my best friend, Emily Walter. It happened to be that she was in Portland and she extended her trip a few days so she could come up and see us. We had such a wonderful time together! Unfortunately for her she kinda as drug along with us for all of our normal activities/routines but it was so fun to have her along for those things! This was the weekend of the 18th/19th so it was right before we were leaving to head down to Cali for Christmas.
I spent the rest of that week preparing ourselves to leave--trying to pack accordingly and under all the weight requirements etc. As it turned out, we were able to travel down with 2 suitcases (1 of them we carried on) and Makaela's car seat. I had my purse and Nathan had a backpack so our traveling was quite light. We were thankful for that as everything is always a little trickier with a baby in tow.

At this point, I'm just going to hop over to a new post about Christmas as a whole :)

Crazy Hair

2010-12-17T17:13:00.001-08:00

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why (maybe just because I wanted to laugh), I decided to wet Makaela's little brush and comb and comb her hair in all directions and let it dry that way. I took pictures of course, and I definitely feel the need to share them because they are so funny.

On a more sad note, the little red spot under her nose and on the side of her nose are because she pulled one of the baby gates over onto her self (ouchie!!!). It was so sad, but after just a minute of cuddling, she was back to her busyness of scooting around checking everything out. Here's her crazy hair!!!

Yes, just incase you are wondering, her eyes are turning green.

Neither Nathan nor I have green eyes--but its looking like she will.

Playin' the Piano

2010-12-17T17:06:00.001-08:00

Alright, Makaela has discovered the Piano--and that she can reach it if she stands on her very tippy toes. It is so far beyond cute I don't even know how to describe it. So I'm not going to try, but instead I will just put up the video. Today, she started singing while she was playing--still trying to catch that on video. She wants to be like her daddy--can't blame her. He's a great guy to look up to. She is so blessed that He is her dad--she has no idea :) Look at her cuteness!!

Christmas 2010 Letter

2010-12-17T16:22:00.000-08:00

Seasons Greeting Dear Family and Friends,

The Fogde's decided that as we approach our 3rd Christmas as a family, we should start sending a Christmas letter. It only took us (and by us, we mean Leanna) 3 years to make it happen. A lot of changes have taken place in our family that we wanted to be able to share with those of you who may not know.

Our most significant change came in February 2010. Our precious blessing Makaela Rose was born on the 11th of February at 11:48 pm. She weighed in at 7 pounds 15.8 ounces--so the doctors just bumped her up to 8 pounds even. I thanked them for giving the appearance of having to work harder for an 8 pound baby versus a 7 pound baby. She has been a tremendous joy and blessing in our lives, and she has spoiled us rotten! Usually it's the other way around. She is preparing to celebrate her first Christmas and we are so excited to see how she will react to gifts etc. As with most babies, she will probably be more interested in the wrapping paper than the gift inside :) Our time with her is flying by, and it's hard to believe that in just 2 short months, we will be celebrating her first birthday!!

The next significant change came in Nathan being approached about a position as a Music Pastor at Christ the Rock Community Church in Port Orchard, Washington. We had served at Wayside Chapel Community Church in Rosamond, California for a little over 2 years. The Lord in His perfect sovereignty called us to minister in a different church, and as we prayed about the opportunity, the Lord continued to reveal His will to us. Just 2 very short months later, we found ourselves all packed up heading north. Every intricate detail was perfectly orchestrated by our Lord--who else could perfectly provide renters within 2 weeks, provide a home for us to rent (sight unseen), and get our house all packed up--all within 4 weeks, I might add!! Praise be to our Savior for His overflow of grace, love and provision!! It has been so wonderful to be part of this church and to see the bride of Christ functioning the way God designed.

Nathan is very thankful to serve in a church and to be employed in a role where he is doing what he loves to do. It has been his heart's desire to serve in a music pastor capacity, and the Lord has certainly blessed him in that role and job. He is grateful for the relationships he has developed with the other pastors as well as other guys in the congregation. He is also grateful for the opportunity he has to shepherd people at the church, as well as being discipled himself. What a blessing it is for him to go to work knowing that he is serving his Savior and doing what he loves!!

I (Leanna) am blessed to be a stay at home mom. The Lord has been faithful to provide for our needs in such a way that allows me to stay home. What a wonderful blessing!! We certainly know that is not the situation for many people today, so we are especially grateful for the Lord's provision in that way! I serve in music ministry with Nathan, and the Lord has decided to stretch me in the role of accompanying the choir. So far, it has been a good learning experience (it always is when the Lord wants to grow you) and I'm even enjoying that role :) I recently became an Independent Consultant for a company called Homemade Gourmet. I'm enjoying using that as an opportunity to get together periodically with ladies from church--and of course we are enjoying eating their food!!

This Christmas, we are eagerly looking forward to the time we will be able to spend with our families. We are going to be visiting them for just shy of 2 weeks!! What a wonderful and relaxing time it will be after the busyness of Christmas in a church music ministry. We love it, but we also love the break after it all is done. We have been so reminded of the joy we have in Christ, and are so thankful for God's sovereignty in sending His Son to earth to live as a man--to live a sinless life as an example to us, and to ultimately bear the wrath of His father for our sins. What a blessing it is to know Christ. We look forward to spending this season reflecting on and celebrating all that He has done and given us.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." Ephesians 1:3-10

All our Love,
Nathan, Leanna and Makaela

Her onesie says "this is my little black dress" :):)

Imulse Buy

2010-12-17T16:16:00.000-08:00

I just had to post about this because it was a hilarous situation and a great example of impulse buying :) The Samples a Costco are great--and we have never actually sampled anything that we immediatly put into the cart until Nathan got his hands on this bad boy...

Yes, thas right--Peanut Butter Snickers. He took one little bite of that suckers and mumbled something like "oh my gosh, we have to get these" followed by walking right back to the sample stand and picking up a bag. They are a little piece of heaven in your mouth--its true.

Dada

2010-12-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

Makaela says "dada" "mama" "baba" "guh" "naynay" (why Nathan already gets Naynay and Dada, I have no idea. It's not like I'm the one who gave birth to her) :) Totally just kidding. Its so cute :) She did once say "dog" as well as "God". She still doesn't know that I'm mama and Nathan is dada, but she says dadadadadada all the time. It used to be guhguhguhguhguhguhguh, but has changed. She also added hand motions and she just flops her hands/wrists when she is sitting and saying dadadada.

The tricky thing about catching video of her doing things now is that the instant she hears the camera, she knows what it is and she races over to us and puts on a big ol' cheesey smile. So most videos, we now have to encourage her to continue what she was doing before because we can't actually catch her in the act anymore. :)

Jungle Jumper

2010-12-13T16:18:00.001-08:00

This jumper resides at church, but oh how I wish it was at my house! She loves to play in this thing--but pretty soon I'm sure she will be walking and her love for it will be over as she finds new things to play with. But for now, its a great way to keep her occupied for quite a while. It was super helpful to use during Thanksgiving Dinner--then we all got to have 2 hands free to eat. Wohoo!!

The Dancing Queen

2010-12-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

During Nana Karen's visit up here, Makaela decided she would bust out her dance moves. Here she is showin' off her stuff :) Her favorite way to dance is to just rock back and forth--I think she feels safest doing that, but she got a little funky here!!

Disclaimer: We don't necessarily endorse this music, but once we saw her starting to rock and dance, we had to find some music with a little more groove to it :)

This one, both Nana and Nathan are trying to help her groove--so I tried to catch them helping. Nathan was a little less than thrilled :)

Makaela Fix

2010-12-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

I have some videos of Makaela uploading right now, but in the meantime here are some pics of her. Crazy to think that on Saturday she will be 10 months, and in just 2 months, we will be celebrating her 1 year birthday. How time flies!!

This is actually the most recent picture of her...taken just today :)

We enjoyed a wonderful visit from Nathans mom. She came up the week of Thanksgiving and was able to be stuck in the house with us during the crazy snow storm! Hopefully next time she comes we will be able to get out and do some fun things, although I'm sure she didn't mine having such a concentrated period of time with Nathan and Makaela :)

Makaela LOVES this Jungle Jumper at the church.

She has such a good time in it and she never stops moving while she is in it!!

Yes, Makaela does have a faux hawk. She still doesn't have enough hair to do much of anything with it, so periodically after I give her a bath, I do something crazy with it. :)

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

2010-12-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

Christmas decorating came early at our house this year--and by early, I mean before Thanksgiving. Thats right--with the snow so peacefully falling on Monday, we couldn't resist the urge to pull out our Christmas decorations. Besides, since we're going to be gone for almost 2 weeks over the holidays, we figured the sooner we put them up, the more time we have to enjoy them. So here is the Fogde Household all ready for Christmas :)

This year, we also decided to invest in an artifical tree. We thought it would be a little silly (as much as we love Christmas trees) to get a real one that would just die while we were gone. So, while we don't have the smell of Christmas trees in our house, it still feels very much like Christas :)

Winter Wonderland

2010-12-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

So, way back in November (which feels like it was way back) we were forecasted "few snow showers". If by few, the weatherman meant a few inches, than yes, few snow showers :) Enough to keep us house bond for a few days as the snow and ice piled up making the roads a little too tretcherous for us to brave. Nathans mom was with us, and due to the weather he ended up staying home a lot more than he had planned. Also, due to the weather we didn't get to go out and do much fun sight-seeing, but hopefully next time she comes there wont be a snow storm.

The snow started falling Sunday right after we got home from church and continued to fall through Monday night. Monday night also found us with no power (which we understand is a very common thing up here). Our power was out for several hours, but came back on sometime in the middle of the night, thankfully. A good portion of the homes where we live were without power through Wednesday and even Thurdsay!! Thankfully ours came back on so quickly. It was a fun adventure to say the least :)

Here are some pics :)

3 Year Old Conducting the 4th Movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony

2010-11-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

I know this has gone around a little bit, but just had to put it up here. Too cute and too funny!

Our Little Cheerleader

2010-11-19T10:40:00.001-08:00

Makaela usually loves to be thrown in the air. She picks and chooses her days when she like it and doesn't like it. Recently she started to throw her arms out to the side every time she was in the air, and not long after that she added her legs to that. Looked like she was doing toe-touches in the air. Couldn't resist taking a video :)

9 Months!!

2010-11-19T10:19:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, we got to go see Makaela's doctor for her 9 month well baby check up!! I also scheduled her 1 year appointment--1 year--C.R.A.Z.Y.!!! I can't believe that we are that close already! Anyway, so Makaela is growing--out, but not up much :) She was 17 pounds, 4.5 ounces taking her up to the 20th percentile for her weight! And she was 26 1/2 inches long, taking her down to the 10th percentile. The doctor said she is just small and everything is very proportionate so he is not concerned. It was fun to look through the list of activities they will do in the 9-12 month range and see that she is doing all but 2 of them (well 1 1/2 kindof). One said that she may try to take a first step or two which she has not tried to do. The other said that she may start to say "mama" and "dada". She is kindof doing that, although not actually associating it with us. But everything else she is doing--most recently cruising around furniture!

Going back to the whole "mama" and "dada" thing--most of what comes out of her mouth is "guh". Occasionally she does utter sounds that sound like "mama" and she will occasionally say "da" as part of "dada". Sometimes even after Nathan sas "say dada" she will say "da". But there is one thing she knows for sure--and thats the dog. We've talked before about how much Makaela loves Bella, but now she tries her hardest to say "dog". It still comes out "guh" buts its a VERY definitive "guh". When she see's Bella she says "guh". When we say "Makaela, say dog" she says "guh" with much excitement and gusto! She knows dog but she just has not put together the right consonants yet :)

She loves--all fruit except Bananas. She liked them at first, but not currently a huge fan. She loves all veggies except for Avocado--which she did enjoy at one point. I think she is just getting picky :) She obviously loves Bella :) She loves to follow us anywhere we go. She loves strangers (uh-oh). She loves everyone at church. She loves to play peek a boo. And she loves lots of other things too--mind is just drawing a blank at this point.

Anyway, just wanted to update you on her stats :) Video of our little cheerleader coming soon :)

Trip to Cali

2010-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

Last week Makaela and I enjoyed a short, busy and fun filled trip down to California. My parents were very gracious and they got me a ticket to come down and see them...and so they could also see Makaela :) We had such a wonderful time with them! It was far too short--but I'm sure it will always feel like its too short. Makaela actually got to see most of her aunts and uncles which was so much fun! She even introduced some of them to Chick-fil-A. She's such a good niece :) She also got to play with her 2 cousins on the Board side. It was so much fun to see her interact with them now that she's more interactive. Emma is 2 1/2 and Addy is 6 months and she had fun with them--for the most part. Toward the end when she was real tired and probably ready for some sense of stability to life again, she did not enjoy her cousins playing with her. She definitely had only child syndrome--but we aren't planning on changing that for a little while yet. For now, she will just have to learn to play nice with the kids around church and hopefully Christmas will be better! We are so excited to be back down there in just a month and a half or so! Time will fly, we are sure and we are eagerly anticipating time with both of our families!! Here are some pics and videos of our trip :)

Makaela Loved the Star Music Toy at Grandma and Grandpa's

Spending time with Great Grandma Helen

Grandma and Grandpa with their 3 grandgirls. Waiting for some boys to come along.

Ahem, Nathan Board needs to get on that :)

Hangin with nana Karen at Chick Fil A

With Auntie Alicia. She's providing grandbaby # 8 and girl # 5. Girls are winning :)

Makaela lovin' on herself in the mirror. Her face is a combination of squealing excitement with screaming frustration out of tiredness and lack of stability/schedule. Fun times :)

Uncle nate--He's the one who we're waiting on for some nieces and nephews :)

Darren's two girls Addy (6 months) and Emma 2 1/2.

So, here Darren and I decided to try and get a picture with all 3 girls. We have 1, Emma, who will sit still for a picture and smile at the camera. We have 2, Addy who is learning so much that she is enthralled with everything around her. We have 3, Makaela, who is faster than the speed of light and to get her to sit still without crawling to me for a picture is a miracle. Darren got a different angle of this shot, but I think for now we both failed at getting on with all 3 girls looking at us smiling that wasn't blurry :) So for now, this is as good as it gets.

One last thing, a video of Makaela with the star toy at grandma and grandpas. :) Thanks mom and dad for the trip and can't wait to see you at Christmas!!

Bella Vs. Nathan

2010-11-11T11:14:00.001-08:00

So this video--well--back when we lived in Cali, Nathan used to play with Bella under the blanket all the time (which also meant I was washing the blanket all the time). We were a little less strict about Bella being on our couches at that time, however, the new (to us) couch she has not been allowed on. But in this particular instance, I couldn't stop it from happening. I also realize its very contradictory to tell Bella to "get down" and then tell her to "get him". I just gave up and let it happen. I'm sure she enjoyed the interaction :) Her whole goal is to get to Nathan's head which he is keeping mostly well covered. She did catch a break and got her little nose in there at which point Nathan started saying "OH GROSS! OH GROSS!"

Bella Vs. the Curtain

2010-11-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, thats right, the curtain. As usual, I did not get the camera fast enough to catch the ferocious barking, but I did catch some of the growling. The vents are in our floor, and consequently when the heater comes on, the air blew our curtains out. Bella at first was laying on her bed--sleeping. But as usual, her 6th sense (the one that lets her know she's afraid of EVERYTHING) kicked in and she got up and started growling and barking at the curtain!
The noise at the beginning of the video is the episode of Dancing with the Stars that we were currenty talking about. I think I should just develop a once for all title for posts about Bella. Any ideas?

Our Lip Smacker

2010-11-11T11:06:00.001-08:00

One day, Makaela just up and stated smacking her lips. She did it A LOT during the little breaks from drinking her bottle, but there were a few days where she was smacking almost non stop for most of the day! It was her most recent new trick :)

Kisses for Mom

2010-11-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

Makaela LOVES to give kisses (oh great!!). So far, she only kisses people whe they are holding them. Sometimes they have to ask for them--but sometimes she just goes for it. It's so cute. But, why in the world do they always start off their kisses with big ol' wide open mouths?? I know she sees our lips puckered when we kis her so why the big ol' mouth, I don't know. And sometimes she has to think long and hard before she decides to go in for the kill :) Here are a few videos :)

Our Love Bug

2010-11-10T15:34:00.001-08:00

I discovered that nearly every little girl spends her first halloween as a ladybug :) They are just so darn cute that way though that the whole world has to do that! :) So much for origiality! Cuteness is a different factor :) Here are a few pics from Halloween. We didn't go out--we decided that we'd feel a little silly trick-or-treating with an 8 month old who was clearly not going to be eating the candy. Instead we went to the local Fred Meyer to kill time and hopefully avoid having lots of activity at our house. Turns out our neighborhood is not as desirable a place to trick-or-treat. The candy would probably be lame in comparison to some other neighborhoods in the area--true story. :)

Our Little Love Bug

Makaela loves to smile for the camera, however, she was a bit confused to see the blinking light on the camera with no one standing behind it. Hence--confused look and no smile :)

Hello Fall, welcome to our home :)

2010-11-10T15:27:00.001-08:00

Well, fall has finally found its way into our home :) It has take a little while, but the brisk weather and the combination of sunshine an rain inspired me to get those last few fall decorations taken care of :) I am a little disappointed, however, because I feel like I've scoured the earth to find gords and with no success! There is I might go to 1 or 2 other grocery stores, but I might just be too late. I have seen LOTS of squash, but none of the gords that have the shape of little yellow squash. But fear not, I will continue my search and hopefully come out victorious! In the meantime, I got some pumpkins and cut out the middle so I could insert little "pumpkin spice" candles. I saw this idea from my dear friend, Lisa, a few years ago and just loved it! Now the smell of spice pumpkin and cinnamon are fillng our house--and shortly the smell of pumpkin chocolate chips shall be joining the sweet aroma in our home. I just love fall :)

Bella VS. The Swiffer

2010-10-16T21:47:00.001-07:00

Yes--another Bella Vs. Video :) We can probaby post these for the entirety of her lifetime. Here are 2 videos--similar but enough differences that both are hilarious. :) What else would you expect from her?

By the way, we don't know why she is afraid of the swiffer (or anything else for that matter) but it always adds a lot of laughter to our lives.

On a side note--please ignore the massive baskets of laundry (which is all folded) and the ironing board (which is waiting for quality time with me) that are out. I had to take a break to play with the dog :)

Homemade Gourmet Launch

2010-10-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Some of you know this, but some of you probably dont. I have recently become an Independent Consultant for a company called Homemade Gourmet. In a nutshell, its dinner made easy (and yummy!!) The product is essentially a variety of mixes (dips, spices, breads, breakfast, casseroles, salads, etc.) that you use to make your meal or sides. The way it works for most of them is you simply add a few basic pantry or refrigerator staples to the mix and dinner is ready! I would probably be biased if I bragged about how yummy they all are so I will just tell you how Nathan responded. He pretty much decided that he could eat homemade gourmet food for the rest of his life. We have not had one thing that he (or myself, or anyone else really) have not liked.

I decided to start selling this product up here because no one has heard of it and I thought it might be a good opportunity to try and pack a little extra money into our savings. A larger car and hopefully down the road a house will be in our future so the more we can save the better. :)

I love to cook, but sometimes its nice to just have something easy to throw togther for dinner and thats what Homemade Gourmet is and does.

I just wanted to update you on whats going on with me :) Feel free to check out my website if you're curious and want to know more about who they are. You can also feel free to order through my website if you want to. I've tried now a large variety of their mixes and have really enjoyed all of them. Check it out :)

www.homemadegourmet.com/leannafogde

Makaela's Best Friend

2010-10-13T19:25:00.001-07:00

Currently, Makaela's best friend is Bella. She loves her! She waves to her through the window whenever she sees her and she gets so excited and pants. By the way, panting is still her most common form of laughing and showing excitement--but its still so cute :) She gets so excited when Bella comes inside and she always wants to share Bella's bed with her.
Bella, on the other hand, is not quite as excited. We don't think that she dislikes Makaela, but we definitely don't think she gets quite as excited to see Makaela as Makaela gets to see her. But anyway, they are funny and cute together. Bella is particularly funny in this video--and Makaela, cute. Go figure :)

Peaches!!

2010-10-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

This video is of Makaela eating peaches for the first time. All I have to say is I could not shovel them in fast enough!! Never before has she opened her mouth so big and wide for any food...needless to say I think she liked them :)

Pull-Ups

2010-10-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some videos of Makaela. I think I mentioned before I'm still trying to catch her in the act of pulling herself up now because she is so fast, but here are some of her first attempts at pulling herself up on the couch. Whenevr Nathan helps her at the end--he doesn't pull her up at all--he just provides steady hands for her to use. The rest of it is all her :) Enjoy!

Just a little behind

2010-10-12T15:43:00.001-07:00

Hello dear friends. It has been a while since I've posted anything, and I'm sorry. Our computer has been less than cooperative for a while, and now the keyboard is following suit. So I apologize for any silly spelling mistakes or lack of spaces between words. I will try to correct them as I go, but I make no guarantees :)

I thought since Makaela is officially 8 months now, I should post about her 7 months ;) I suppose I will just mesh them together in this post. (by the way, there will be a whole slew of videos to follow as they get uploaded). I must admit, my pictures of Makaela have turned into videos of Makaela because she is so active it seems like there is so much to catch! Plus I know that family who is far away (which is all of them) would probably prefer to see video of what she is doing. I have a few still shots that I'll throw in but mostly just video.

Like I said...she is so active there is so much to catch! After scooting like an inchworm for months, she finally decided she wanted to crawl for real. This started happening Monday, September 20th (and I really only know that because we were at a hotel when it first happened). I of course did not have my camera nearby, but eventually i caught her in the act--which reminds me--she totally knows what the camera is and she (probably like most people) stops what she is doing when she sees the camera. Thus, I have to be a little more sneaky or have Nathan around to help encourage her to continue what she was doing.

Lets see--she crawled for about a week before she was bored with that and immediately started trying to pull herself up on things. The first several times resulted in little tumbles but now she has mastered the art of pulling herself up. She crawls right over to the couch--one hand goes up--followed by the other hand and then she is standing--just like that. I'd imagine that before too long she will be bored with that and will move on to trying to take her first steps.

We have started to get into the age of discipline (oh boy). So far, she has responded extremely well (I do, however, know that it will not be this easy all the time). For the time being, if she is touching or in the process of starting to touch something that is a "no touch" I say her name and snap my fingers--she looks at me, and then I say no also using the sign language for "no" and she stops. Easy peasy, right? Not for long, I'm sure. But for now, I am extremely thankful for how well she has responded to discipline, and I pray that in the future as I know it will become more challenging, the Lord will give me grace and strength.

She is wearing mostly 3-6 month things now and few 6 month things (although they are still big on her). I had to finally retire all of her 0-3 month and 3 month clothes. She seems to be growing so much but I guess that's what all those solids do :) Speaking of solids, I have started making my own baby food--well not my own, but making it at home for Makaela :) It has taken her a little while to adjust to the different texture, but she is doing really with it for the most part. She hasn't eaten anything she hasn't liked--except for the texture of the homemade food which she is more used to now. She loves eating green beans, peas, carrots, squash, avocado, sweet potatoes, and she just had her first taste of fruit last week--peaches. Man oh man did she love those! I've never seen her open her mouth so big!!

As always we love her dearly, and while she does test our patience sometimes, she continues to be such a joy in our lives! We are looking forward to a visit with grandma and grandpa at the beginning of November and a visit from Nana over Thanksgiving. Before we know it Christmas will be here and we will be with all of our family which we are greatly anticipating! Love to you all--and I promise to post videos once they are all loaded :)

Thankful for my Husband

2010-09-16T20:23:00.001-07:00

I know the title of this post made it sound like a serious post is coming, but all it really is is a video that I came across via a friend's facebook page and this video made me thankful for my dear husband Nathan--and thankful for his heart for music ministry :) This is funny--and while it may not be the "worst" worship ever, its pretty ridiculous.

Washington Home

2010-09-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, for all you family out there who have been wondering where we're living, here it is. Some pictures of our home. Lots of the walls are still blank, but we do have things on the walls in the family room because thats where we spend the most time.

I thought I should start with Bella--I know you've all been missing her so much :) She has adjusted to washington quite well, however she doesn't love the drizzle. She goes from window to window looking for where I am in the house so she can beg me to be let inside :)

One view of the master bedroom (if you walk in the door the bed is to the left)

Another angle of Master Bedroom

Standing by couch looking toward doorway into kitchen.

We decided to use that corner as a play area for Makaela so we have

one of those big foam alphabet puzzles spread out and all her toys there.

Looking into the family room. We just got that sectional from a family on craigslist. It was a pretty good deal...needs a little cleaning up but was a good deal for the condition it is in :)

This is the guest room where you can stay if you come visit us :)

Office/catch all room :)

Makaela's Room

Kitchen--they painted it red which matches our dishes very nicely :)

7 Months

2010-09-13T17:36:00.001-07:00

As always, where has the time gone??

It is so hard to believe that Makaela has already passed the halfway mark to her first birthday! C.R.A.Z.Y. I happen to be picking things up in our office and I came across the card that was placed on her little crib at the hospital with all of her information. I had a brief (and fleeting, i might add) moment of (insert cloud/bubble above head here) I want another baby. It is our hope, and plan, however to wait a while longer before we venture down the road of multiple children.
I love to go through and look at the pictures of Makaela from then until now--to see how she has changed and grown--to see how her personality has developed and how it shines through--and as I look at the pictures I am nearly brought to tears at the wonderful joy and blessing the Lord has given to us in our precious little girl. I am also convicted of the huge responsibility ahead of striving to raise a little baby into a godly woman, of living out the gospel in my life so it can be clearly displayed to her and of striving to train her in righteousness. I am convicted of the high calling of motherhood and am convicted of areas of sin in my own life. She might be little right now, but she is an observant little one and she watches my every action. She sees (even though she doesn't know it) my selfishness, my failure to be patient, my failure to be joyful always--she sees the way her mommy and daddy interact--how they love each other--how they fail to love/serve each other. I cannot think that because she is so little that this has no affect on her because it absolutely does. The way she sees me living my life is something that will be a major factor in her development and I am convicted and challenged to be living out the gospel in my life so that she may see the wonderful grace of our savior--and prayerfully that she may come to know that savior herself in a personal and intimate way one day.
Lord, thank you for your grace and for your forgiveness. Thank you for your strength which allows me to persevere. Help me to love and serve you in such a manner that our precious little girl will see you and will desire to have a relationship with you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:3-6)

This post started off talking about Makaela's seven months, and turned into the tuggings of my heart for a moment :) But, on a less serious note...
We got to meet Makaela's new doctor on Friday. He was very kind, and I am sure that as we develop a relationship with him we will grow to love him. He was a little soft-spoken at first (and to be honest it did make me miss our old pediatrician), but our new doctor is a believer in Christ and a Biblical Counselor. Once he found out we were associated with some other patients of his (friends from church) he opened up a lot more. We are looking forward to having Makaela grow up seeing him and having him encourage Makaela in biblical principles as well.
She gained a whopping 4 pounds 10 ounces since her last visit which puts her at 14 pounds 11 ounces. You Go Girl! (It's amazing what solids and formula will do :)). She popped back on the charts around the 11th percentile and was around the 19th-21st percentile for her length/head circumference. The doctor says her projected height at the rate she is going will be 5'2" so maybe she is just going to stay petite for the rest of her life...lucky. But she is healthy as can be and other than those stats there is nothing too new to report.
We are working on liking homemade baby food as well as water...those are the upcoming tasks :)

Squeeker

2010-09-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, another video :) But I have a hard time believing that anyone who checks this blog out minds seeing videos of Makaela...especially since most of you are family and are not close by :)
So Makaela squeeks like this frequently, and her face is just so funny and cute when she does! She almost always blinks her eyes (sometimes harder than others) when she makes this noise...and to watch the muscles contort on her face you know she is working hard to get such a high-pitched little squeek out!!

Makaela's Laugh

2010-09-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

This video is not quite as good as the first one I took, but I didn't realize until after I was done taking the first one that Makaela was diaperless...so we decided to try once more with the diaper on this time :) So her laughing isn't quite as spontaneous, but its still cute :)

Bella and the Spray Bottle

2010-09-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

Oh Bella...She has adapted quite well to Washington--although we haven't had a ton of rain yet so we will see how she REALLY does when that season comes.
Typically Bella is not a big fan of the spray bottle I use when I iron. It's just a bottle filled with water, but she does not like it. However, on this night she seemed quite fond of it...
And no...our walls are not really that color green. They are green but they are a nice green...not a lime green like they look in the video. :)

The Office--Parts 1 and 2

2010-09-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

So Makaela LOVES the office. Not the actual show...but she loves the little intro/theme song. If she hears that, she stops whatever she is doing and looks for the TV screen to see it. Whats really funny is that when I uploaded this first video on the computer, she was in our office with me. She heard the video playing and started looking around trying to find where The Office music was coming from...so I had to play the video again purposely and take another video of her looking for it. She's Hilarious!! Enjoy these videos...they are short!!

As Promised...

2010-09-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some videos of Makaela as I promised :) Still working on getting some pics of our house (I have to catch it when its clean and I never remember to...or its never clean :) one of the two...) But for now here's what Makaela is up to:

We have a few rubber iPod covers which have turned out to make great little teething "toys" for her. She loves to play with them!!

6 months and then some!

2010-08-31T15:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, Makaela is now 6 1/2 months...nearing 7 months! We see our new doctor here in a week and a half and we are so excited to meet him! We have heard such awesome things about him that we can hardly wait! We are also so curious to get Makaela's stats now! She's been on cereal for about 3 months now and baby foods (veggies only so far) for about 2 months. She is also completely bottle fed now so she has definitely filled out more but is still just the cutest button!

Lets see new things--where to even begin. She is not technically crawling, but she moves around like an inchworm and she's fast! So while there is no official crawling, she is a very mobile baby. Life as we know it will never be the same. Sometimes we will purposely move things she is trying to get so that she has to keep moving and its funny because sometimes she gets tired and just lays her head down for about 10 seconds, then is back up and moving again. It's so cute! She has also just recently started going from her position on all fours to sitting. I should mention that her position on all fours is sometimes hands and knees and it is sometimes (more often) hands and feet. She has nearly perfect push up form!! She gets a good workout and stretching time in for her calf's everyday. Anyway, when she is on her hands and feet, she will bend one knee which puts her hip on the ground. Then she twists around so that she is sitting. She's amazing!

Still sleeping wonderfully--although has recently gotten into a spout where when I put her down for a nap and she sees me walk out she cries. It's so sad :( She typically wakes up somewhere in the 7:00 hour after about 11 hours of sleep which is also wonderful. We have decided that her efforts to laugh result in her panting like a dog. When we laugh, she starts panting.

She finally fits into her 3 month clothes--yes that's right--3 months. Hopefully by Christmas time she will fit into her 6 month clothes...or at least 3-6 month clothes :)

This is one very sleepy baby trying to eat.

Just hangin' out on the couch

Not sure why this picture uploaded sideways, but its just a cute outfit she has that fits her now and that she can wear because the weather is cooler!!

Hanging out with Grandpa

This is a new toy that some friends lent to us (probably because its one of those noise making toys ;) But Makaela has loved it and the noise of the piano hasn't bothered me or gotten annoying at all. Plus since she loves it, I can't complain!! :) Bella on the other hand does NOT like the toy piano.

More Comparison...just for fun

2010-08-31T15:11:00.001-07:00

Here are just a few more pictures of the house. These are all of the ones that I have comparison pictures of...I don't have that for any of the bedrooms but they all changed just as drastically. Hopefully one day we will be able to sell this, but currently we are so thankful to the Lord for providing a renter for us so quickly!!

This was the front of the house before the trim was re-painted.

It was really windy that day thats why i'm not looking at the camera :)

Trying to get my hair out of my face.

Old view of the kitchen

New view of the kitchen

A Little Comparison

2010-08-31T11:17:00.000-07:00

Only a year later, I finally have the pictures to do the before and after post of our house! Too bad we had to move before I put these up...on the flip side both sets of pictures contain an empty house so you can get the full effect of the transformation that took place. For any new readers to our blog here's a quick recap. We purchased a home in May of 2009 which was a foreclosure. We did a lot of work on it (as you will see in the pictures). The home came with wallpaper galore, nasty gross mangy mauve/rose/pink carpet. Horrible lanolium...the list goes on. We tore down all the wallpaper, painted everything, replaced ALL of the flooring as well as ALL of the baseboards. We put in laminate hardwood throughout house except in the bedrooms--those got new carpet. Additional projects that came later were repainting the trim on the outside of the house and all of the little jobs we left to do "later." We didn't know that "later" would be so soon so we replaced most of the light fixtures, replaced bathroom fixtures, installed venting fans in both bathrooms, replaced hardware on doors throughout house and many other things. Anyway, here are pictures of the house from before and pictures from after. And there are more to come in the next post.

This picture is looking into the dining room which is off of the kitchen...pre-remodeling.

The new and improved dining room!!

Looking into family room from hallway...pre-remodeling

Family room Post remodeling.

This picture includes seeing the trim all repained :)

I don't remember how to do this.....

2010-08-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Hello blogging world! I feel like it has been such a long time (which it has) and there is so much to update on (which there is). It is going to take a bit of time for us to get all caught up but it will happen hopefully in the relatively near future. Sad part is there are not a ton of pictures of Makaela to share from the past few months but I will share what we do have. Life got just a little bit hectic pretty fast...and before we knew it our summer was/is over.

July was filled with the process of trying to pack up a house as well as prepare a house for tenants...both quite large jobs. This is the part where I thank all of our family for the endless hours they spend driving and laboring over projects at home! My wonderful amazing selfless parents drove down nearly every weekend in July to help us at home (which while it was hard on them, I know they enjoyed the "projects" they got to do). Nonetheless we cannot express to them how much we appreciate their sacrifices to help us! Nathan's mom joined in on the action of painting the trim on our house...a job that seemed to never end!! I'm pretty sure at one point there were about 6 people all painting the outside trim somewhere (and I might add the weather was at least 100*). My brother came up a few weekends feeling he "owed" us since I helped him move across the country a few times. I tried to tell him sitting in a car and hanging out is way different than painting in the scorching sun and 100 degree weather but he insisted. My sister and brother's girlfriend got quite handy with the boxes and tape gun. Moving day came and we cannot express how much we appreciated our family helping us! Nathan's brother, dad, and brother in law and my brothers and brother's girlfriend (and my awesome roommate, Emily) all came up to help with loading and cleaning and finishing projects. All this to say, there is absolutely no way we would have ever accomplished everything we needed to in the amount of time we needed to without the help of our family and we are just SO grateful to all of you for your love and support and for giving up time with your own families to help us! We love you guys!!

Needless to say the end of July came faster than we knew it would anyway! Before we knew it we were packing up the dog and the baby and driving away from our first home together. That was a weird feeling...but an exciting adventure at the same time. Washington was the destination and while we were very sad about driving away from all our family, we were also excited about what was ahead of us. We're not sure how many times we said "we can't believe we're moving to Washington!!" with such awe and amazement! The Lord was SO good and gracious to us! It has been the most wonderful thing to feel such peace about such a big decision and to know that we are where the Lord wants us to be without any questions or doubts. Praise Him!!

Driving to Washington with a 5 month old and a dog (who is really still a puppy)...we weren't sure how this would go...but again it went great (and again, Praise Him!!!). It was definitely a fun adventure with both the dog and the baby giving us plenty to laugh about. It was a trip I know we will remember for the rest of our lives.

At any rate, we are here now and have been for 1 full month now (my how time flies!!). We are all settled in and really enjoying everything Washington has had to offer--including the weather! We came at the perfect time as it has been beautiful (with the exception of a few 90*+ days and humidity), although probably any weather would seem beautiful after weeks of triple digit weather! But the sun has made an appearance nearly every day which I understand I should soak up while its here. Our home that we are renting was definitely a gift from the Lord and has been such an accommodating space for us! Plenty of good space for us to use as well as for plenty of family to come and not feel cramped (cue to family....come visit us!!!). I should not even get started on how the church has blessed us...probably should wait for a different post otherwise this will become a novel. I will just say that our Savior is so wonderful and so gracious and has many vessels here to use to extend His love to others. What a blessing to be welcomed into such a wonderful new church home! More to come on that....

I will upload a video we took of the house, however we only got half of it. The video stopped when we were in the kitchen and were prompted to open up the fridge which was FILLED with food so that no immediate grocery shopping was necessary. Again... the church has been nothing shy of amazing! But once I get a handle on the house for this week, I'll take some pictures of it and post them so you call can see where we are living.

Also to come...

~Pictures of our old house--all empty--weird.

~Pictures of sweet Makaela

~Videos of sweet Makaela

I suppose I should update on her real quick...she is on the move. Not crawling but scooting like an inchworm EVERYWHERE! She lays on her back for about half of a millisecond before she has rolled over and is scooting around...and her latest thing is to go from being on all fours to twisting and contorting her body so she is sitting. More to come with her...

~Post about Christ the Rock Community Church--because they are wonderful and I just need to tell you about them!

I think that's about it. Like I said, lots of updating to do but hopefully I can get it all done relatively soon. Also, we have Skype so any of you who read this who want to Skype...we would love it!

Love all of you, and miss everyone who reads this. Check back often for updates as we want to keep you informed of our new life and adventure up here in Port Orchard!

A Little too Close for Comfort

2010-07-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

So...about 1 month ago Makaela started getting up on all fours (and by all fours I mean her hands and her toes.) She would push her little butt up into the air while balancing on her hands and her toes. a few weeks ago she started to pull one leg up under her so she would be up on both hands, one foot and one knee. We are in the full-fledged rocking stage now. I keep begging her to just let me have about 2 weeks so we can get moved and semi-unpacked before I have to start keeping up with her. But right now...we are a little too close to crawling for comfort:

5 month stats

2010-07-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

So I updated at 4 months(ish) without the actual stats because Makaela hadn't had her doctor appointment yet. But we went to the doctor two weeks ago and stats were as follows:

weight: a whopping 10 pounds 1 oz (chunker she is!! :))

length: 23.5 inches long

**I just have to say at this point that a friend of mine from high school--his wife just had a baby on the 17th of July who was born at 10 pounds 1 ounce and 23.5 inches long. Can I just say I cannot imagine giving birth to Makaela now at her current size!!

Her weight and length both dropped on the percentile chart, but doctors still aren't concerned. Her body is all very proportionate to her weight. And, I've started to supplement with formula as well as cereal and baby food so she'll start putting on some pounds here before too long.

It is funny...her weight is so low for her age that she is no longer on the percentile curve...she is below it--but again no concern (on the part of the doctors of ours).

She has been sleeping on her tummy for about the last month which means that generally speaking she has been sleeping through the night--YAY!! Every now and then she wakes up because her pacifier falls out during shifting but for the most part she is sleeping a solid 8-10 hours.

So far she loves:

~Green Beans

~Peas

~Carrots

~having her feet played with

~being tossed in the air (not too far, of course :))

and probably some other things i am not thinking of right now.

August...what?

2010-07-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Where have June & July gone? It has been a crazy few months for us. June consisted of exactly 1 night where there wasn't something going on. So I guess that means June flew by and now here we are in July...or wait here we are mainly in August.

Makaela wasn't sure what to think of the fireworks on the 4th. Her only reaction was her eyes getting very big. Bella on the other hand...Bella was very interested in them. There weren't a ton of loud fireworks so she didn't really react that much but the sparklers--oh the sparklers. Bella decided she would like to try a taste of the sparklers...while they were lit. I suppose we should have expected this but for some reason we didn't. This video is hilarious...probably a small amount of animal cruelty, but we didn't make her eat the sparkler...she bit into it all herself. And just for the record...she was a bit shocked but she was fine. Here's the video and again...This action was not forced so don't turn us in to animal control :) We already had one encounter with them...and they are pricey!!

For some reason, the video didn't upload with sound but thats OK because I don't really say anything except for "oh bella" at the very end.

4 Months

2010-06-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

Our sweet little Makaela is now 4 months old...crazy! We just bought her several 0-3 or 3 month outfits (some of which are still a bit roomy on her). We go to the doctor at the end of this month so we'll get some of her stats then. She is a teeny one though. Her cousin Addison is only 4 weeks old and already weighs more than Makaela. Here are some pics :)

In this picture, you can't tell but she is balancing on her tummy. Her legs and arms are all straight out in the air like she is flying.

We came home from a rehearsal dinner and she was so tired i put her in her crib,

and this is how she slept.
This is how tired she was in the car :)

I voted...yeah right. Sure ya did.

Mary Had a Little Lamb

2010-05-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

I think its pretty safe to say after this video that Nathan wants Makaela to play the piano...what do you think?

Bella vs. the Orange Peel

2010-05-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

As promised...

Our Little Love Bug

2010-05-26T16:59:00.001-07:00

Just a few updated pictures :)

Oh Bella

2010-05-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

I just really feel the need to talk about Bella a little bit. We've been talking a lot about all of the weird and quirky things Bella does, and something prompted me to search youtube for other boxer videos. I quickly learned that Bella is neither weird nor quirky but right at home with the rest of her breed. Here are a few hilarious things Bella does...plus a video or two of other boxers doing things that I can totally see Bella doing. I'm working on uploading a video of Bella (its about 5 minutes) that I will hopefully be able to post later. For now....Bella's quarks...or so we thought:
She barks at nearly everything...and I mean everything...with the exception of people. Hopefully we wont need her as a watch dog because she loves people too much!! Some examples of things she barks at include:

food/water dish
large branches that have fallen off trees in the backyard
rake
shovel
and my favorite of all...the sky. Yes thats right, she barks at the sky. Because we live so close to the base, we often have sonic booms and her response to such a thing is to bark at the sky because thats where that noise comes from.

One of our favorite and most hilarious things she does has to do with when she passes gas. Its a pretty raunchy smell so we have taken to having a febreez spray bottle close at hand. Bella does not like the spray bottle. It used to be that whenever she passed gas, we'd spray the bottle to help mask the smell and she would run away from the bottle. Now, we don't even have to get to the spraying part before she runs away. When she passes gas, the perks her head and ears up real fast...looks back toward her rear end (as if she was saying "what the heck was that?!?!") then proceeds to quickly look at us (with the most guilty look I might add) and run away from the place of the incident.

She is afraid of nearly all the baby paraphernalia around the house and will run away if we put any of it near her (including the bags of dirty diapers). Anywho...here is a video of a boxer who is barking at/seems to be afraid of a little white jewelry box...something I could see Bella doing.

This video is will also give you a great idea of what Bella would do. This dog named Stella (maybe Bella's long lost cousin) is barking at the lawnmower. Bella doesn't bark at the lawnmower, but she does bark at the vaccuum and try to bite it while I'm vaccuuming.

~3 Months~

2010-05-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

Here are a few snapshots...Enjoy

She strikes this pose often

Just reading :) Ok maybe not... but very interested in the pictures!!
This is a new bow I got her... I heard I was in big trouble once I decided to venture into the world of bows and its true. I can't wait to make all kinds of bows to put her in!!

So its a little big for her head... but its SO CUTE!!!

More reading :) This is how I get her to stay on her tummy for so long.

I cannot believe how fast the time is going!! (duh Leanna, thats how its going to be the rest of your life!!). But really the time has flown by. I was just thinking the other day, before I know it we will be introducing solid foods to our sweet girl who seems like she just joined us yesterday (cliche, I know :)). It has been so fun to see Makaela develop over the last several months. It seems like everytime I receive an e-mail about what my baby should be doing this month, she has already been doing that for weeks! As I sit here and look in the "what to expect the first year", by 3 months, the "may even be able to..." section reads:

~bear some weight on legs when held upright (been doing that since she was about 3 weeks--no joke)

~reach for an object (has been doing that for a little bit now)

~Keep head level with body when pulled to sitting (been doing that for several weeks)

~Turn in the direction of a voice, particularly mommy's (also several weeks)

say "ah-goo" or similar vowel-consonant combination (she started talking several weeks ago).

It seems like she's been an over-achiever in everything so far! It's like whenever I get to the "may even be able to" section for the current month she is already doing all of those things! We just can't believe it. She is truly the joy of our lives and we are reminded daily of how thankful we are to the Lord for blessing us with her.

In addition to what the book says she should be doing, she will give me anywhere from 20-30 minutes of tummy time. She loves looking at books I put in front of her, or if the blanket is enough to catch her eye, that keeps her occupied too! She sits up on the couch with us with a little help from the creases in the cushions. She squeals at Nathan (and sometimes me) with great excitement--SO CUTE!! And (praise to the Lord Almighty) she periodically will give us a few nights of anywhere from 6-8 hours of sleep! We treasure those nights dearly.

Cooking with Mom

2010-05-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was making a dessert for a group we were having over. I tried my hand at a chocolate mousse which was a bit time consuming so I enlisted the help of the Bumbo to help out with Makaela. She was completely in awe of what was going on with all of the mixing. Needless to say, she showed great interest in the kitchen... maybe she will want to cook with her mama. :)

Safety note: I did slide the bumbo all the way to the back of the coutner, and I was close by at all times to make sure there were no accidents. She was hardly moving around though... I don't know that I've ever seen her sit so still. She just stared and stared with such intensity. It was so fun to see :)

"The Government Can"

2010-04-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

Just saw this on my SIL's blog, and it was definitely worthy of putting up on mine. Very funny... and I love all the dance moves the guy does...that made me laugh more than the song, but both are still funny. Ok, i'm done posting for the day :)

Baby Party

2010-04-22T14:30:00.001-07:00

Makaela was clearly a social butterfly

It's ok though because Emma made up for it :)

Last weekend, my dear roommate from college, Emily, had a baby shower for me with a few friends from college who still live in the area. It was so super fun to see a few girls and catch up a little bit. My mom and sister and sister-in-law, April, were also able to be there. It was a super small intimate group and it was just perfect. I prefer to call it a baby party, and not a baby shower because April had Emma (2 yrs); Kimberly had Linnea (8 months); Susi had Penny (3 months) and I had Makaela (2 months). It was so fun to have all those babies together and see them in their various stages!

We really have been blessed by people at the church and I could not think of anything that we currently really needed for Makaela, so I asked for books which I'm sure we will be wanting in the not too distant future. So, we got a ton of books which we are so excited about. They are actually already being used as I will put Makaela on her tummy and stand a book up in front of her. She just looks with such awe and wonder back'n'forth between the two pages, and usually stays on her tummy for about 20 minutes!!

The Desert May be Ugly...but...

2010-04-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

there is one redeeming quality. When the poppies are in bloom, they are so beautiful! We went out to the poppy reserve last week with Nathan's siblings and took a few shots. It was super windy and my hair is like "supermodel" hair. We are hoping to go back on Friday and we are hoping it will be less windy! But for now, take in the beauty the desert puts out for a few weeks every year :)

How Silly of Me!

2010-04-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

Why in the world would I update about Makaela and not include pictures?!?! I don't know what I was thinking. Here are a few...

This is the new toy from Grandma and Grandpa's. She loves this thing and will be occupied under it for a good 30 minutes. Wohoo!!

Making eyes and smiling so big at Grandma :)

Trying out the Bumbo

2010-04-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

One day last week, I put Makaela in the Bumbo seat while I was getting ready. It was our first time using the seat, and I slid her right up in front of the mirror. She was lovin' on herself so much going through every facial expression she knows! It was very entertaining! I took a real cute video, but again, it wont upload so here are a few pictures. She loves the seat (for a short time then, like the flip of a switch, she hates it).

2 month check up

2010-04-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

Well, today was dooms day-sorta. The inevitable 2 month check up with the shots :( At least she is still little enough that she doesn't resist too much and doesn't recognize the nurses to know she doesn't like them. It was so sad to see her get her shots. I'm not gunna lie, i had little tears welling up in my eyes but I was SO PROUD of Makaela. She did so great! She only voiced her discomfort and pain for a very brief time, and she wasn't even screaming. She cries and screams louder when she gets a bath--something is wrong with this picture :) And she recovered so quickly and was just bright eyed and back to her normal self immediately after they were done. And thankfully, she hasn't even been any more fussy today because of them. She's such a big girl and i'm so proud of her :) Her stats are:

weight: 9lb 6oz
length: 23 in.
head:15cm.

She is below the 50th percentile in all of those measurements, but the doctor was not concerned at all. He said her body is very proportionate for those measurements and her development thus far. He said she is "just a petite little thing" which is somewhat strange to me because clearly neither of her parents are "petite little things." I surely do not shop in the petite department, but so far she is (i.e. still wearing newborn clothes and swimming in 0-3 month clothes).
In regards to her strength, i'm sure she's in about the 750th percentile. When the doctor put her on her tummy to check out her back, she was pushing herself up with her arms to which he replied "oh my, look at that." When I told him she started rolling over 2 weeks ago he said "oh my, thats early! Not unheard of, but wow!" I've decided there must be something to be said for being over due:)

The past month has been nothing short of incredible! We are continuing to love being parents to this sweet little (and I mean little) blessing of ours! We have conversations with her all the time which go something like"
Makaela: "aaaahhhh"
Mom: "aaaaahhhh"
Makaela: "aaaaaahhhhh"
Mom: "aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh"
Periodically she'll go with another vowel sound :) She squeaks and squeals which is probably the most adorable thing I've ever seen. She just discovered a new toy up and grandma and grandpa's which they were so gracious to let us bring home with us! It's not a baby gym, but very similar and oh my does she ever love that thing! She will just lay under it and ooohhh and aaaahhh and squeak and squeal at those hanging plastic smiling stars :) She loves them to death and it is so cute!! I'm trying to get a good video of it to share because it will melt your heart :)

Thats about it for now. She's great. We love her. Over and out.