twinners

A few weeks ago we had the kids over and Caden showed up wearing the same shirt Brennan had on! I thought it was pretty funny so I took a picture. :)

Brennan helped them each do a melted crayon project. Kelbie is the only one who finished hers before they left.  It was quite a struggle to get a picture with her eyes open but we finally managed.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Brennan had the whole week off from school and just had to work the first three days of the week.  It was great to have him around a little more but not he's back at it with only two weeks of classes left until finals! Eeeek! It will be a stressful few weeks, no doubt, but it will be good to have this semester behind us.

The Monday before Thanksgiving we did a gratitude FHE and we all made hand turkeys and put what we were grateful for on them.  Brennan and I do this every year and it was entertaining to try to include Tatum in the tradition this year.

Here she is with her turkey. Judging by the way she reacted I think that holding her hand on the paper to trace it was the most painful thing she has ever experienced.  Crazy kid.

 Our family of gratitude turkeys.

On Thanksgiving eve we headed to my parents' house to spend a few days.  Thanksgiving day was very typical.  The guys went and play football in the morning.  The rest of us went for a walk or a run and then watched the end of the football game before heading home for yummy breakfast muffins, the parade, games, and then the big meal.  We ate way too much, as usual. And then we started to plan our strategy for shopping.  Brennan and Caden went out to a couple of stores together that night.  And then mom, Crystal, Kelbie and I headed out at 3 a.m. We are crazy.  We froze our tails off, found a few good deals, enjoyed some breakfast and had a good time together.

Tatum discovered the joys of the rocking chair with Aunt Crystal on Thanksgiving.

And the next day she played in the tunnel with Grandma.

 It's a horrible picture because Tatum's hand got in the way but I still love mom in it. Too funny.

Tatum has really been opposed to Thanksgiving from the beginning. Someone has got to teach this girl some gratitude.  She is always taking down my "Give Thanks" decoration like she just doesn't want the reminder.

It all starts with the mischievous grin.

 And then the destruction begins.

I am grateful for this time of year and the nudge it gives me to count my blessings and remember all that I have to be grateful for.  Saturday morning (which quickly turned into a morning of chaos as we tried to get to the temple) our car died.  And it's going to stay dead.  And it was completely avoidable which makes it all the more frustrating.  And it was my car, the better one, the one with presumably more life in it. And it's expensive to get a new car. And and and and and. I could go on and on.  It was a frustrating weekend with a frustrating outcome and it has made it more of a challenge for me to stay grateful.  But it has been a great exercise for me to remember what really matters.  We have so much! How lucky are we that we have TWO cars so Brennan can still get to school and work.  We are so lucky that it died five minutes from my parents' house so they could come and get us before we froze to death.  We have a warm home, a healthy daughter, the means to get another car, generous parents to loan us theirs in the meantime, enough food to eat, knowledge of the Savior and his atonement, the opportunity to get an education, a good job. I could go on and on.  So what's one car dying prematurely compared to all that? Not much, I know, but I'm human and it will still be hard. :) So for those of you around me, have patience. As Brennan will gladly point out to you, I'm not very good at being an optimist, but I will sure try!

We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!

11 months

Tatum turned 11 months old yesterday. I can't believe how close we are getting to 1 year. Too crazy.  I feel like this has been a big month for Tatum.  She is all too quickly changing from a baby to a little person.  It is so fun and I love it.  But at the same time it saddens me to think about how quickly it has all gone by.  She certainly wasn't a little baby for long.  I guess that's to give you motivation to go through labor again right? :)

So what is Tatum up to these days?

-Walking.  Always.  A month ago she had already taken her first steps, but about two weeks ago she decided walking was better than crawling and now she never stays in one place for very long.

-She waves. She has been waving for a long time but now is much more consistent. Almost every time we ask her to say bye-bye she will wave.

-Just recently she has started to "dance" to music. It's just a little bit but it is adorable.

-On Halloween she surprised us by clapping on her own.  She loves for us to sing "If you're happy and you know it" and will often clap along with us.

-She learned to click her tongue a week or two ago and for several days was doing it almost constantly while she walked around.

-She is sleeping through the night!-ish. :)  A few weeks ago I decided she wasn't going to eat during the night anymore.  We were worried it would make for a few sleepless nights but it has gone really smoothly.  She still wakes up once a night and almost always cries long enough that one of us will finally go in.  But we just lay her back down and she will go back to sleep.  I definitely can't complain!

-She does "so big!".  Where when you say "so big" she will lift her arms in the air. Too funny.

-Her favorite thing to play with (besides my phone maybe) is this set of mini (2 in x 2 in) nursery rhyme books my mom got her.  She will carry one as she walks around the house just jabbering. Or she likes to put them inside anything she can fit them in. She LOVES them.

-She kinda-sorta says "hi". She will never do it when we ask her to, but when we are out for a walk or at a store and pass someone she will often lean way over, look at them, and very loudly say "hieeeeeeeeeeeee".  It's worth a chuckle.

I think that about sums it up.  She is a funny girl with lots of energy and we love having her in our family.

And here are some videos showing off some of her latest tricks. A little boring for the average person I am sure, but if you are finding yourself bored today take a look!

little Mario

My sister found us a Mario costumed hugely marked down after Halloween.  I figure it will be good for future Halloweens and/or starting our dress up collection. Although it doesn't fit her now, I couldn't resist putting the hat on her and taking some pictures. I think she's a pretty cute Mario!

brainwashing

I suppose it's no secret that a grandma's job is to spoil. And it's probably not a surprise to anyone that my mom takes her job very seriously. :)  Tatum's young enough that she isn't all that "spoilable" but grandma still finds a way.  Usually through food and drink.  For instance, she will give her a bottle of diluted juice and basically whisper repeatedly to Tatum to "remember Grandma gives you the good stuff".  We were over at my parents' house for dinner last Sunday and Brennan went in search of Tatum after we hadn't heard from her in a few minutes.  This is what he found:

Not only had Grandma given her a little cookie/cracker thing, but check out the bib.  "My grandma is the best." I think we have some brain washing going on here, what do you think?

third time's the charm

A couple of months ago I started crocheting again, only this time I wanted to make something other than a small animal/creature. :) So I set out to make a hat for Tatum. I found a very basic pattern and got to work. Apparently I crochet a lot more tightly than the average crochet-er and the hat was way to small for Tatum. I'm no quitter so I tried again. This one was way too big.  I hoped I would be as lucky as Goldilocks and I tried one more time. BINGO! It fits!  And I think it's pretty cute. Now if only I could get the shoes to work that I have been trying for several weeks....

this and that

I was backing up our photos and noticed lots that I haven't shared so I thought I would do a quick post letting you know some of the things we have been up to for the last few weeks.

Tatum tried out a merry-go-round for the first time. I think she thought it was pretty neat, hard to tell though.

Tatum steals my water bottle nearly every day. She seems to think water tastes better out of it. And her constant thieving could explain why it seems that one of us is always sick.

Tatum's new mobility paired with the falling temperatures has made the mall playground a new favorite place for us. She loves all the tunnels she can crawl through as well as the slides and just watching all the other kids. A couple of weeks ago we met a few friends there.

Here are Tatum and Oakley about to go down a slide.

(Side note-While I was in Target that day, Tatum dropped the headband she is wearing in this picture. I retraced my steps but couldn't find it. Even checked with customer service to see if anyone turned it in. Personally, I can't imagine finding a headband and just picking it up and keeping it. Who knows where it has been or what lice-infested head it could have been on?! Grrrr!)

We also went swimming at the indoor pool here in North Liberty. Three days a week they let you bring your kids swimming for only a dollar a kid! It was a lot of fun and I imagine we will be doing it several more times this winter.

Tatum and her friend Kalia.

We still manage to make it to the park just about every day.  We usually don't stay for long but it's because I'm freezing, not because Tatum complains. It's amazing how the temperature really doesn't seem to bother them one way or the other.

And when we aren't busy doing any of the above or countless other things, Tatum's favorite thing to do is play with my hair/attack me.  Sometimes it is funny, other times not so much. :)

Things have been pretty low key, but good. Tatum has officially mastered walking and always wants to go-go-go, so life around here is a little different these days that is for sure.

Halloween

I suppose it's about time to write about our Halloween festivities. First up was our church Halloween party.  There was a cake walk/cake decorating competition that we signed up to make a cake for.  Costumes were encouraged and since it was Tatum's first Halloween we finally stopped being sticks in the mud and came up with some costumes.  Seriously, Brennan and I have never dressed up for Halloween since we met. Until this year that is. Huge milestone for us.  The party was fun and I thought Tatum looked adorable even she didn't really love being in her costume.

Here's the cake we made. Obviously we kind of cheated and just did cupcakes instead.  All I did was bake the cupcakes, Brennan took care of the rest. I thought it turned out cute!

Tatum, the cutest bag of popcorn you've ever seen. :)

The popcorn with the popcorn sellers.

A few more, because she was just that cute.

A few days before Halloween we finally got around to carving our pumpkins, but we did a horrible job of documenting it.

Here's Brennan carving away.

Tatum loves to make messes and get into things so we thought she would have a hay day with the pumpkin guts. Not so much.  She pretty much thought they were disgusting and would hardly touch them.

She looks a little concerned in this photo.

Showing mom her hand.

Being forced to touch the guts.

Not really the best quality and certainly not the most flattering picture of me, but Tatum just peeked around me to look at Brennan with the biggest smile, like she was posing for a picture, and we couldn't pass it up.

Here's Tatum the next day with my finished product.  My least favorite part of carving pumpkins is deciding what to carve. I hate decisions of all kinds.

I didn't get a picture of Brennan's finished product, but it had my name in the mouth. We had a third pumpkin and intentions of carving Brennan's name in it, but we never did get around to it.

Halloween itself was pretty uneventful.  Tatum and I were up the whole night before because she wasn't feeling the greatest. She didn't wear her costume at all that day and we didn't go trick-or-treating. I think next year will be plenty soon enough. She can't eat the candy and we don't need it haha. So we just donned our Halloween orange and passed out candy.

And to cap off our Halloween fun we went to another party this last weekend.  We forced Tatum into her costume again and she didn't seem to mind it so much this time around. It was fun to visit with some friends and eat some yummy food.

Me and Tatum with Chef Gretchen. Andy the sniper is in the background. He loved his costume. ;)

Tatum hanging out with Mama Smurf (aka Kassy).

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween as well!

laughing

We caught Tatum's little laugh on video the other day.  Sorry that you have to hear my obnoxious laughter, but that is the only way to get her to laugh. Enjoy!