Cece doing what she does best...being cute!

Last year for Christmas we had bought Cecelia a tag reading system, the storage case and 2 books. A pretty expensive gift for a 4 year old! So imagine our disappointment when she never really took an interest in it. Lucky for us, since she is learning to read at school, she has grown to love her Tag! It's an awesome learning tool and I'm so glad we got if for her...even if we could have waited almost another year to do it! I just threw the picture of Cecelia making brownies in because she loves to help around the house, especially in the kitchen. Thank goodness for that! I appreciate any help I can get with cooking, cleaning or doing laundry. Work that has to be done, and although I usually don't mind, it is sometimes tedious and is very repetitive! Watching Cecelia help me gives me some entertainment and help breaks up the work a little.

Stanley is too adorable!

Just a few pictures of Stanley. Notice in the one picture he is laying in (and fits perfectly in) my bamboo serving tray which we always have on the ottoman in the living room. We use the serving tray to set our drinks or snacks on... what a goof! Stanley gets a bath about every 2 weeks. He has gotten A LOT better about behaving in the bathtub for me, but as soon as he gets out, it's another story! He runs around the house like a mad man. He's full of energy and won't let you hold him. I try to catch him so I can towel dry him and brush him, but he would rather run from me and pounce on my bed and the living room furniture soaking wet.

Denver

Kiley turned 8 on November 12th! We traveled to Denver to see her for her birthday and we brought my 8 year old niece, Mercedes, with us as a surprise for Kiley. We got in on Friday afternoon. Aaron picked up Kiley and we surprised her with presents and cupcakes. That evening we stayed in and ordered pizza and went swimming in the indoor pool at the hotel. The next day we took Kiley shopping for new clothes...she is growing too fast and seems to need new clothes all the time! After shopping we took the girls to go roller skating. That outing made for some great entertainment. Cecelia spent the majority of our time there, hugging the wall for security. Mercedes and Kiley were a little more ambitious and just used the wall periodically for support. That evening for dinner we took the girls to Kiley's favorite restaurant: Casa Bonita. It's a fun little Mexican restaurant with lots of entertainment for the family. They even have cliff divers who jump off of a rock wall into the water below! Saturday night the snow started coming down pretty hard. I got a beautiful picture of the water fountain outside of Casa Bonita as we were waiting for Aaron to park the car. After dinner we got in more swimming and hot tub time back at the hotel. Sunday morning when we woke up, it had snowed probably 8-10 inches. Although it was very pretty outside, I was nervous that we would have a terrible time driving home. Instead of leaving after lunch as we had planned we left after breakfast that morning. The roads ended up being perfectly fine as soon as we got outside of Denver. Better safe than sorry though when you have precious cargo!

Halloween 09'

This year for Halloween Cecelia was a witch. "Alfabie" (The wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz movie) to be specific. We found some really cute striped tights and a little wooden broom and she was set! Cecelia didn't want to fuss with any face paint or colored hairspray this year. So I decided to turn my attention to Stanley whom couldn't protest as easily. Stanley was the Incredible Hulk for Halloween. We spray painted his hair with green hairspray and we got him a shirt that was a little too small, then we cut a few of the edges of the shirt (to make it look like it was stretched out and ripping). The two of them together was adorable!

Carving Pumpkins

Almost every Wednesday evening I have 2 of my best friends, Summer and Karissa come over for dinner. We each take turns buying and preparing the food for the evening. I love it! Summer has a son, Chas, who is just a few months younger than Cecelia. I love that they are so close in age. The Wednesday before Halloween, Summer and I decided to let the kids carve pumpkins. Since Cecelia was an infant we have always gone over to Aaron's parents house to do this every year (I'm not really sure why we didn't go over there to do it this year). Aaron's dad, Kent, being the great grandpa that he is, always does the actual carving of the pumpkins. Needless to say, I really didn't know that carving pumpkins was such hard work! The kids had a blast and didn't make too big of a mess:)