Singing Christmas Carols

This is kind of long but at least watch the end...Kayla will show you her latest "thing".

Gingerbread Houses

Every year, it is tradition in my family to make and decorate "gingerbread" (graham cracker) houses. We invited our friends (and upstairs neighbors) the Bradley's to make them with us this year.

We appropriately made a "Reese" house. Jer was the architect and I was the decorator.

The back of our house----------->

The front of our house------->

It was a lot of fun and we are so glad Dustin and Emily came and enjoyed the evening with us. Thanks guys!

Game Time!-------->

(It was a close game, but I won of course....hehehe)

Kayla meets Santa....

This past weekend, we went on our annual trip to the Ethel M Chooclate Factory to see the lights on the cactus garden and get some yummy chocolate. This year was extra special because we were going to take Kayla to meet Santa. We knew she would probably scream and we would scar her for life, but every one has to met Santa on there first Christmas.

Waiting in line to see Santa...you can tell from Kayla's face she is not too sure about this tradition.

They meet and.....

She liked him! No tears, no frowns, Kayla just looked at the elf waving bells around like she was crazy! When we walked away from Santa, she kept staring back at him and waving. It was priceless!

Some lights...this picture really doesn't do them justice. Not quite temple square but as good as it gets in Vegas. As we walked through the gardens, we would stop and look at the lights and say "UWWA" and then Kayla would say "UWWA" after. It was a lot of fun!

The three amigos

Us and the M&M man.

Kayla and Mommy

SO, we've always known that we were going to make our blog private after a few months. Now that everyone who would want to read our blog is aware of it's existance, we are ready to pull the plug on the public blog stuff. SO, if you would like to have access to read our blog, please leave your e-mail address by clicking on the comment bar below. (Don't worry that everyone will be able to see your e-mail address, I have set it so no one will see the comments but myself.)Thanks for reading & Happy Holidays!

The stats are in!

(Warning: long journal entry)

Well, it's true, Kayla is now 9 months old! We went to the Doctor the day before Thanksgiving for her check-up. Here is how she is measuring up:

Weight: 18.2 lbs 40th percentile

Height: 28 in 75th percentile

Head: small.... 20th percentile

We were surprised that she only weighed 18 lbs! We were leaving for Utah straight from her Dr. appointment and we were afraid she was going to be over 20 lbs and we were going to have to run to the store and buy a new car seat for the trip. We are glad we didn't have to quite yet.

I had no idea those biscuits could be so messy!! You can see her tooth on the bottom right if you look closely.

She has teeth! Her first tooth came in a couple days before she turned 9 months old. Now she has the second bottom tooth coming in as well. They are moving really slowly and are just peeking out of her gums....but they are sharp little guys!!

So, her latest thing is waving. She waves her hand hello and bye-bye. When you wave at her she will wave back....it has been fun! She still claps, laughs, smiles a lot, babbles, says mamma, dadda, numnums, and off course she still screams now and then which we have been trying to work on! She can stand on her own for a few seconds but then she bends her knees and sits down because she is being cautious. She learned how to open the cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom and thinks it is funny to pull all the towels out.

She is very well trained....I mean we didn't train her but she just does things on cue. When we say "Yeaaah" she will start clapping and when we give her her blankie she automatically starts sucking her fingers. Silly girl!

She still LOVES bath time and tips her head back for me when I pour the water on her head...which she loves. It must feel good, like standing under a waterfall or something. I still use her toddler tub because our tub is so huge that it is really hard to use. So, Kayla floods the bathroom floor every bath because of her insane splashing (she blames rubber ducky but I know the truth).

She is sick right now for the first time. She caught a cold in Utah and then to my surprise she throw up a couple days later at the store. (fun times) She is doing better but still has a runny nose and I think she is getting a little cough. I hate coughs and really hope it doesn't progress. We are not taking her out of the house to avoid the cold air so hopefully she will be back to her old self soon!