Winter Wonderland

October 25th, 2012 - First snow day of the season.

We got wholluped yesterday at my house.  The northern Wasatch front got hammered, arguably a bit more than SLC and the canyons east.  We woke up to a ton of snow and it just kept coming!  I had to stay home, no way to get to work.  Here is the view from my back window of the snow building up.

We did a little product testing when the power went out for a few hours and I couldn't get any work done.  Nora is not too thrilled with the situation as you can see.  Got her this cute new snowsuit though - isn't it?  She never left this spot the whole time we were outside, just stood there.  She is watching Reed at this moment as he is literally rolling around in the snow.  I took her mittens off at the end and let her touch the snow and after a few swipes she was done with that.  

And here is my cute girl this morning.  I know, she shouldn't be standing on the counter, you can save the lecture.  But she is just so adorable - right?

 

Hopefully this is the beginning of an epic winter season!  Reed keeps asking about when we can go skiing - I'm asking the same question!

Later!

Nora's 1st Birthday

Holy crap! Nora turned ONE!  I know that every parent says this and I know I've said it for every one of Reed's birthday's and every month Nora gets older.  But it's true!  A whole year since that little ball of energy came into our lives.  I spent the days leading up to her birthday reflecting on her arrival and what the past year has been like.  I spent time remembering THIS story of her birth.  And I thought about no only how rewarding the past year but also how challenging.  We have gone through a lot with her, ear tubes, a cancer scare, constant sickness.  But at one year, she is healthy, happy and super active.

At her one year well check, Nora weighed 20 pounds and was 30 inches tall.  She is meeting or exceeding all of her milestones.  She's walking everywhere all the time.  Her only "word" is uh-oh.  She loves to climb up and on anything she can and loves to get on anything that resembles a riding toy.  She is figuring out how to play with more complicated and motor skill developing toys.  She likes the stacking rings a lot.

Well, we didn't do a big official birthday party, but we did have a few activities.  Gramma and Papa Fogg came to visit and we did a few activities.  On Friday before her birthday, we attempted to go to Black Island Farms to do the whole fall harvest festival deal.  Unfortunately about an hour after we got there, it started downpouring and we had to bail. 

Yummy Strawberry Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes

 Nora eating a cupcake

Liam and Reed eating cupcakes in the rain

 Here we all are huddled in the shed with instruments before we decided to bail

Daddy and his baby princess

On Nora's actual birthday, Saturday, we went down to Salt Lake City to an event called Touch a Truck.  Basically, a parking lot full of trucks and such that kids get to play in.  Here is Papa and Reed riding up in the cherry picker.

Nora got a frisbee

Fogg wanted to get his little baby princess a special gift for her first birthday.  He ordered up a bracelet made by our friend Jeff.  It's silver and gold and she loved it.  She just put it on, would take it off, twirl it around, put it back on.  She looks adorable with it on too.

We had a small gathering of people to celebrate with her.  She played with balloons.  The kids sure do love balloons! 

Time to open gifts!

 London comes to help...

 Then Reed jumped in...

 Lala gave Nora a box full of costume jewelry.  She loved it.  She had the "ooohhh" look on her face and tried it all on.

 Singing Happy Birthday!

 Icing went first

 Again, London with the assist

 then she just picked it up and went for it

 Reed taking sister for a ride

Nora seemed to have a great birthday weekend with Gramma and Papa in town.  Happy first birthday to my baby girl!

Nora the Kid and Reed Cassity

The kids school did a picture day with a horse.  I don't know what that's all about but whatever.  I took a look at the pictures and laughed my head off.  Nora seriously looks like an old west outlaw in that third one.  The facial expression is blank and sort of angry.  She really looks bad-ass.  I must have dressed her right for the day too, in a red skirt to go with.

Now Reed, he just looks too happy to be an outlaw.  He was having a great old time on that horse!

Reed got this great idea one day to take all of the pop cans out of the boxes and them make the boxes some new pants.  He walked around like this for quite some time.

Fall is here

Fall is here in Utah!  The leaves have been absolutely beautiful lately and unfortunately are already starting to fade.  I don't remember the fall colors being so vibrant as they have been this year.  Either I'm not remembering well (a good possibility) or the warm previous 12 months along with brisk evenings have created such beautiful colors.  I have tried taking many pictures of the colors but none do justice.  The below picture, I pulled over on the way up to Nana's house.  It's just a mixture of all the colors, some greens left, yellow, orange, red.  Just this morning, I noticed how much the colors have faded, but that means that winter is on the way!

My girl is walking ALL THE TIME!  She rarely ever crawls anymore and when she does, she almost stops and stands up like "oh yeah, I can walk!".  She still crashes but she is much more stable and getting really fast.  Her new favorite game is to chase Reed.  They have been interacting more than ever with each other and nothing warms my heart more.  Just this morning Reed turned to Nora and said "I love you!" to her.  Anyway, Reed engages with her more in play and she loves him so much and gets so excited when he wants to play with her.  Here she is cruising:

 The kids have been playing together, Reed forcing me to go away.  I can hear through closed door the laughter and I love it.  Gives me a few minutes to put away laundry or organize something but I can still hear them. Reed will gently tackle Nora then they both just laugh their heads off.  Another game they started playing is chase.  He will run around the house and Nora will try to follow him and when they see each other there is a lot of screaming and laughing.  Nora just seems so happy now that she can walk.  She is very smart too.  She knows where the cabinets are that she can open (the ones that aren't locked) and she will head straight to them to play with measuring cups or tupperware. She pretends to talk, I think some words aren't far behind.  She now has two bottom teeth and loves to feed herself and drink from her cup.

Reed is way into a few new things too.  Every single morning he wants to "ask each other stories".  So he will tell me a story with starts with "Once upon a time..." and is usually followed by a story about how he climbed a mountain then fell off, or was on top of a train and fell off, or climbed a tree and fell off.  Then he wants me to "ask" him a story.  I made one up about a boy that roamed the mountains collecting berries then brought them home to his mom to make pie and they ate it with ice cream.  He remembered this one from a few weeks ago and asks me to tell him that one every time if I haven't remembered to tell it.  Every time I finish he asks if he can have some pie and ice cream too. 

He is so articulate now and remembers things from quite some time ago.  Though he uses incorrect words sometimes, he knows the meaning.  For anything in the past (even months ago) he will say "yesterday".  Anything in the future is "tomorrow".  He is really into knowing what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow.  I wore a new sweatshirt the other day, he stopped me and said "mama! I like your new sweatshirt.  I like the way the colors fade.".  How cute that he noticed that it was new then went on to articulate what it was that he liked about it. 

He's pretty excited about Halloween coming up.  I got the kids costumes from Target last year after the holiday because they were 90% off.  Reed will be spongebob squarepants and Nora will be a zebra and ladybug (based on the weather).  He keeps talking about picking out a pumpkin at the farm when Gramma and Papa come to visit next week.  He is very excited about that. 

Reed wanted to visit Papa and ride his tractor so we took a trip up.  He rode around for hours with Papa chopping wood and bringing it back to the house.  He loved every second.

 Reed also has started to really like London.  He calls him his friend.  A few months ago, I yelled at London for being up in our business during dinner, telling him to go lay down.  Reed was really upset, started crying saying "don't yell at my friend London".  He felt genuine sadness for his friend getting in trouble.  Reed is such a sensitive and sweet boy.  He asked me to take a picture of him and his friend London.  Poor old dog.

Well, it's Nora's first birthday next weekend!  Crazy how fast that year went!  Fogg's parents are headed into town to celebrate with us so I'm sure there will be lots of pictures of the time!

Cheers~