Dear Little Baby

Dear Lorelei,
You are now 15 months old! Here are some things you have done in the past 3 months:
1. You can walk! You took your first steps in your room one night after your bath. I set you down and you stepped over to your books. I called your daddy in right away to see you walk! It was on your Mimi's birthday. But, when you really started moving was on Oct. 6. I dropped you off at Mimi and Gdaddys while I met friends for dinner. On my way to dinner I get an email video of you walking across their back porch!!
2. Throwing fits. Screaming way too loud. In the car. At home. Anywhere and everywhere.
3. Saying "go go." I wasn't aware of it, but I must say "Let's go" a lot or something because now you love to say go go go. When you wake up, when we put your shoes on you, when we are in the car...you are ready to go!
4. You went to gymnastics and did a headstand in class. Later in the afternoon you were home with Daddy and he told me that you kept trying to do headstands. I had not even told him about class so we thought it was so funny that you were trying to practice your skills! You smart girl! You love to do headstands.
5. You decided you didn't like most of the food you previously liked. Cheese? Love it. Pasta? Love it. Waffles? Love them. Anything else? Not so much. Picky, picky.
6. You love playing with balls. The apples on Mimi's kitchen counter are balls, and all the pumpkins at the store you also call balls. We bought you a little pumpkin when we went to the pumpkin patch. You like to roll it and call it a ball.
Oh little girl, you are so much fun.
7. Dancing. You dance to the tunes of your leap frog fridge magnets. It is hilarious.
8. Chasing. You like for us to chase you around!
9. Feeding the dogs. You love to give them some of your food.
10. Loving on Milo. You give him pats and try to hug him. It is adorable. I think you are learning that Maggie isn't so appreciative of your love, but Milo adores you!
11. Words: Night night, momma, dada, all done, baby, hi, bye, go go, hot, bubba (pacifier's name)
12. Signs: Milk, all done, please, thank you, more, bath
13. At your 15 month appointment you weighed 24 lbs and 3 oz. and were 32.5 inches tall.
14. You still love gymnastics class, going to see your friends at church, and going to school one day a week.

We love you hunny bunny!

Top 10 in '10

TOP 10 IN 2010

1. I became a stay at home mom!


2. We moved from Lubbock back to DFW!


3. Rob and I took a get-away trip to Mexico!


4. Rob started a new career in management!


5. We started building a new house!


6. Lorelei turned ONE!


7. Rob accepted Christ as his personal savior


8. We were Baptized and joined the Baptist church!


9. I started my Scentsy business!


10. Rob and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary!



Other things that we were blessed with in 2010:

My Nana got to meet Lorelei.



Our house sold in 2 days!


Lorelei started sleeping through the night at 7 months old! (This should probably make the top 10 list!)
The crickets are FINALLY gone!


"From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another"
John 1:16

Christmas Cards

I love getting Christmas cards. Especially ones from friends and family that we don't live near. Except when ever I see their picture, it makes me miss them more! We have a new tradition that we want to start with Christmas cards. We plan to keep all the cards we get and throughout the year, pull one out at a time and spend a little time praying for that family.

I am so far behind this year that I have not even designed my cards. Well, yes..actually I did design them. Hours and hours of time creating one from scratch and then saving it and then printing it at walmart. Only to see that it didn't print in very good quality. So, I am putting my creative juices aside and going to use shutterfly this year! Their Christmas cards are beautiful and I can be sure it will print in high quality and (fingers crossed) they will arrive quickly at my door so I can get them in the mail to you :)

The only time I have used Shutterfly in the past was for printing photos, so I am really excited to look around their store and see what other fun things I can find to order. Such as a photo mousepad like this one since right now my mouse is sitting a photo mouse pad displaying a picture dating back to 2002. Their Christmas cards are beautiful and I can't wait to design ours.

A few of my favorite cards from Shutterfly are:



You can see all the cards HERE.

Still needing a 2011 calendar? Make one HERE

And in February, you can expect a cute Valentines Day card like THESE from Lorelei!

And if you are a blogger, check out how you can get 50 FREE Holiday cards HERE!

Keeping Christ in Christmas

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, 
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

Rob hardly ever (ok, well, never) writes or contributes to a blog post. But with the Christmas season here, we have been talking a lot about Christmas traditions. So we sat down together and started writing...

Last week, I (Mary Beth) went to a friend's house for a Sky Mom's gathering. Sky Mom's is a ministry of Sky Ranch Christian Camp, where moms get together in someone's home to fellowship and have a discussion on an aspect of parenting. The topic last week was, "Keeping Christ in Christmas." Rob and I have talked over the years of our marriage about what we want Christmas to look like in our home. Here are some of the things that we already do and hope to do in the coming years.

To us as Christians, Christmas is the glorious celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. We want this to be the sole purpose that is reflected in our home on Christmas. We want our children to have a personal relationship with Christ, asking Him into their hearts, and in return having the Holy Spirit live inside them and the promise of eternal salvation. And we want them to realize that all of this is possible because Jesus was sent by God, born into this world, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the dead. Christmas is about Christ.

1. Since Christmas is Jesus' birthday, we will bake Him a birthday cake and sing Him happy birthday. No birthday is complete without a cake in our house :)

2. I tend to get carried away with toys and presents. Part of the reason I have been prone to do so is because we do not usually buy toys and gifts for each other throughout the year. However, in order to take the focus off receiving gifts, we are choosing to give each person in our home three gifts each, just as Jesus received three gifts from the wise men.

3. We go as a family to Christmas Eve worship service and then have a big dinner together. A while back, Rob decided he wanted Christmas Eve dinner to consist of steak and potatoes, which sounds perfect to me! Then we will read The Christmas Story. Rob grew up reading the Cajun Night Before Christmas, so we would like to read that one as well.

4. Growing up, my mom had a little rule about the nativity. She did not let us put Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning. The anticipation killed me as a little kid and then on Christmas morning, it was always so exciting to get to put the little baby Jesus between Joseph and Mary, with all the animals surrounding them. This is something we will continue to do, making it a big deal with oue children about getting to move Jesus into the nativity!

5. In front of all the other presents under the tree, one will stand out. It is an empty box, wrapped in white. Tied with a red ribbon and some greenery. It will be used year after year, never opened, always admired. It is wrapped in white to represent the sinless life He lived. It is tied in red to show the blood He shed for us. It is empty because the tomb was empty on the third day. It is garnished with greenery to show the new life He gives us through Him.

6. Every Christmas season growing up, I loved to choose a child of the Angel tree and go shopping for him or her. I liked to imagine what the child would feel when they opened the presents they had wanted so badly, but that their parents would not be able to provide for them. In college and when we first got married, we continued to do this. I can't wait to share this tradition with our children, each allowing them to choose a child to buy for.

7. On Christmas morning, we want to spend time as a family in prayer. Then we would like to open our stockings and eat a big breakfast all together. Finally, we open gifts - taking turns, so that we can enjoy seeing what other's gave and received. We also love having a fire in the fireplace and Christmas music on!

8. Growing up, my mom kept all the Christmas books in a basket on the fireplace! I loved having tons to choose from during the month of the December. An idea I got from someone in yesterdays get-together was to wrap 25 Christmas books (the same ones each year), and have the kids open one a day during December. On that day, you get to read the Christmas story that you unwrapped!

We can't wait to share Christmas with Lorelei this year. Last year she was just three months old so she slept through Christmas morning.

What are your Christmas traditions?

Thanksgiving

I know it's a little late, but my sister is bugging me about updating my blog and honestly-I can't think of anything else to blog about!

So here it goes.

I am thankful for-

my salvation in Christ
our church
my husband & very best friend, Rob
our families
our sweet Lorelei
my mac book
new friends and old friends
blogs
fountain diet cokes
fuzzy socks
our new home
my mom's breakfasts
Rob's job
DVR
green tea from our Keurig
craigslist
Scentsy
my education
MDO (mothers day out)

Thanksgiving Day Rob had to work, but L and I woke up and watched the parade! She loved it. To me, Thanksgiving isn't complete without a morning of parade watching in our pjs. We went over to Rob's family's house around one and spend the afternoon eating and chatting. Everything was perfect, except that my sweet husband had to miss it. But, he got a great dinner when he got home that night!

Now, onto Black Friday...an event in which I do not understand. I told Rob I did not think there was anything I needed to get up at 4 am to shop for (or anything I needed to stay up all night and shop for that matter), but that I felt like I was missing something...like I was missing out maybe. He told me it was the media message that tells me so and he is right. I don't get Black Friday and I don't like it either. I did go out Christmas shopping for a few hours in the afternoon of Black Friday, but that is because my sweet mother in law watched L and I needed to get some things done. But WHY O WHY does just after everyone finishes eating Thanksgiving dinner, everyone becomes completely crazy for Christmas and shopping? I mean that is absolutely nuts and unnecessary for a store to open at 10pm on Thanksgiving and stay open all night! When did this whole Black Friday thing start anyways?

Another First

There's firsts for everything in parenting...and today I was lucky enough to experience one of those firsts..

First throw up. But I can't say I was lucky enough for it to have occurred at home. Rather, it was in the car. On the way to gymnastics, which we have now missed for the 3rd week in a row. She was fine all morning and started suddenly crying near gymnastics. I started to smell something really bad. I mean really bad. Parked, went to get her out, and there is was. My first baby throw up experience. All over her. Face, hair, clothes. And all over the car seat. So I have just now finished cleaning and reassembling the car seat. (Not sure if it is difficult in all convertible seats, but definitely not fun if you have a Britax Boulevard...)

And I don't feel so good...

Secret Love

Some days I secretly love it when Rob calls to say he will be home later than usual because then I can sit my hiney on the couch and watch all the shows on DVR that he would never watch with me...tonight-Oprah's Favorite Things episode is on my list :)