HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BLAKE!!

I swear I blinked and Blake turned ONE!   This year has flown by.  Seems like the first year with Abby felt like it lasted 10 years...but not this one.  Blake has been the easiest and mostly happiest baby and I know how lucky we are.  And I'm so thankful he has this personality and I hope it stays with him through life!

He's still trying to ramp up on his walking skills and he's still very vocal with babbling (no real words just yet other than bye-bye).  His favorite person (besides his Mommy of course) is Abby.  He beams when she plays with him and gets sad when she won't.

I can't wait to see how much he will develop over the next few months, he's turning into quite the little boy!!

We love you so much sweet boy!  Happy Birthday!!

Abby's new "do"

This is Abby's new layered "haircut".  Complements of Avery, one of her BFF's at school.

Great.

Walking!

Watch out world, here he comes!!

(video)

Catch up post!

We've done so much over the past couple months that I haven't even had time to update the blog with everything, so I thought I'd do one big "catch up post" here!

1. Right after Thanksgiving we went to Gaylord ICE in Grapevine, TX with my Mom and Sister.  It's cold.  Very, very cold!!

2.  Heather and I went to Mexico.   That is a whole story by itself, but it was still very relaxing!  And warm!

3. Blake has become quite the He-Man and likes to rearrange our kitchen.  Often.

4. Blake's first and only words so far are "Bye-Bye".  But it's so cute I make him say it all day…therefore he has no idea what it actually means. :)

5. Abby got to talk in the dome of the State Capital for the first time while we were there for a private Christmas party.

6. We baked Christmas cookies. 

 7. And went to the new Austin Aquarium.

8. Stayed warm by the fireplace.

9. And wore Christmas Jammies.  :)

10.  Christmas Eve we sipped Hot Cocoa and drove around looking at Christmas lights.  In our jammies of course!

11. Abby made sure to take care of not only Santa, but his reindeers too!

I think that about sums it up!  I'll post Christmas and NYE soon!

Dance show!

When I was little and in dancing, each recital we had my Dad used to video tape it.  But the final product was always just a whole video of it zoomed in on ONLY me.  You could never see the other kids dancing, just me…the whole time!

Maybe it's a Dad thing?

Last week at dance they did a small "performance" for the parents.  I wasn't there, so Matt made sure to video tape it for me.  And guess what - it's just a zoomed in video of JUST Abby. :)

See it here!

11 Months Old!

Blake is 11 Months Old today!  He is a man on a mission - always cruising/crawling, getting into things, throwing balls, banging toys as loud as possible, turning on the bathtub to play in the water and TEETHING!  I think in the past month he's had 4 teeth come in with 4 more on the way (as confirmed by his doctor this morning!).  

Gingerbread House Fun!

This year I decided to take Abby to a new facility in Austin called The Thinkery to make a gingerbread house.  The Austin Children's Museum in downtown closed and built this brand new place.  And it's awesome!

She got to build a house (er, Mommy built it) from fresh locally baked gingerbread and then decorate it with loads of candy. We went with her BFF Keira and those girls had a blast.

While waiting for the masterpiece to dry they got to explore the place and it was really neat.  I see a birthday party here in our future for sure!

The sheer weight of the icing and candy was slowly but surely causing the walls to buckle a bit and the roof to slide down.  But it's perfect!!

Santa!

Well, that went well.

Funny - Abby has been telling us for several weeks now that she wants Santa to bring her a giraffe and a candy cane (no idea where she got the giraffe idea). We went to see Santa at her school and after sitting on his lap for the photo, they handed out stuffed animals and candy canes.  And guess what was poking out of the top of Santa's bag??  A giraffe!  She had spotted him when we first got there and immediately whispered giddily to me that there is a giraffe in his bag.  I'm pretty sure she thinks it was there JUST for her.  And we will let her think that!! :)

Dentist!

Matt took Abby to her dental check up last week where she had her first set of X-rays done and she was a ROCKSTAR!!!

Slide fun!

Blake has quickly figured out all the fun non-age appropriate toys we have available to him in our house. :)

I think Abby got this slide when she was about 2.  He's already figuring it out at 10.5 months!  See the video here...