6 months

Henry,

You have added a measure of joy to my life that I treasure. You are always happy to see me, and I cherish your cuddly side. You are a good sleeper, and you surprise us some nights by not needing us at all. You are becoming more aware of your world, and especially that of your brother's. You stare at him constantly, and he'll sometimes involve you in play. You LOVE food. I've never seen a baby scarf it all down, or put it away quite like you do. You explore everything, and it goes straight to your mouth. You love to be held, but only when I'm not doing something that takes me away from your attention. You are very strong, but won't roll over anymore. You still hate being on your tummy, but we still keep trying.

You kick all the time, especially when you're excited. You are loving the walker more and more, but would still rather be held.

You fall asleep often in your car seat, but almost never in our arms. We've accustomed you to sleeping by yourself lying down, so you won't give in when we coax you at church.

Your squeals and noises keep us happy, and we enjoy watching you learn. Your personality has been interesting to figure out, and we are so pleased with your mellow charm.

You sit up on your own now, and you're starting to engage yourself more in play and exploration with new toys. It's fun to watch.

You laugh a lot at our expressions, and you seem to have a grasp of what's coming up next. (We love schedules!)

Letting you cry has been the key to many naptimes, and we're grateful you put yourself to sleep at night, so we don't have to hear you cry then.

You are on formula now full-time, and watch us like a hawk when we get bottles ready.

You've been easy and fun. We love having you with us and look forward to your sweet laid-back character to continue teaching us.

WE LOVE YOU!

online scrapbooking

I'm so excited! Look what came in the mail a few weeks ago. I spent a month working on this "scrap" book of Porter's first year. I have always wanted to keep a memory book for my children, but I have no time for cutting and pasting.

I decided on a 12x12, cause that's the size I would do if I kept a scrap book. I loved this project, and hope to do one for every year of their lives. I did keep a journal for Porter, so I have a lot of the details and dates of things, which I included in the book.

He doesn't get it yet, and i don't let him look at it unsupervised, but I flatter myself that he'll appreciate it one day...

As promised!

Here's my house. We've been here for 8 months, but it seems we've always lived here. We're a far cry from getting it all decorated and fitted to us, but we'll get there.

Sorry the video quality is so poor- we had to make it fit in blogger somehow...

And as for the mess in the master bdrm... we just finished hosting play group when I filmed this. I didn't take the time to pick up the mess. Enjoy!

Craft day

Tea and I decided to make a V-Day craft this month. I stumbled across these cute XO XO frames here and decided to try them out.

We bought some Stik 'n Seal at HD
I spray-painted my frames from the Dollar Store
The frames, and thus paper is only 5x7 size.
Unlike the originals, we wanted to have some color to ours, so we picked up bigger rocks. These are Tea's. These are mine

How cute. It only took us about an hour.

My Collection

Since my wedding four years ago I've had a serious lust for anything pampered chef. I have to admit, one of my secret desires is too have one of everything-I know, I know...kind of shallow. Going to a party is like poison on my pocketbook, but the good thing is...Evan kinda crushes on 'em too!

We had another AMAZING family photo experience with Susan Monson. She captured the best of what we gave her, and we're glad to have some updated pics with all 4 of us!

Thanks Henry!

Henry slept through the night!

9:30-8:00. Actually, he did this the night before last too, but we didn't want to jump the gun, however, he proved to us he's finally ready to make mommy and daddy happier during the day. It could be the cereal we fed to him right before bed, but we haven'y slept this well since before he was born. His naps have improved a lot too. I love this boy! Can you tell?

Christmas

We had a low-key Christmas this year. We wanted to stay at home with our little family and do Christmas morning here, then we went up to Evan's parent's house for the afternoon. We spent Christmas Eve with my family at my parent's home, where we always have a little christmas message and devotional with music.

Mother nature gave us the gift of 3 ft. of snow. We didn't go anywhere for a few days.

Evan and Porter made a snowman! Porter still begs for one every snowfall. Kinda creepy, huh?

Porter playing with his collection of CARS from Christmas

My first loaf of whole wheat bread from my new breadmaker!

Evan and my dad had been working on a table Evan wanted to build for Porter. This table is AWESOME! It has room for toy bins below, and when not used as a table, they can stack to become storage bins for toys and other supplies. I don't have a picture of it from the camera, because we mostly got christmas from our new video camera. Speaking of which, maybe it's time to do a tour of the house, since we've only been here 8 months. I'll get a picture of the table posted as well.

Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house. We won the vote simply because we had cable tv. It was perfect. After borrowing tables and chairs from the neighbors, we had enough to fit the 50+ people we were expecting. We love having people over, and unfortunately the weather was down in the single digits, so playing outside was out of the question. Here are the pics.