Happy Birthday and Happy Thanksgiving!

In addition to Thanksgiving this week we also celebrated Peanut's 1st Birthday, November 26th. ! I can't believe how fast it's gone! Here are a couple pictures of my teeny Peanut.

Lots of family and friends came to help her celebrate her birthday. We had yummy soups for dinner and ate a giant star cupcake - cake.

And she had a cake just for her! She wasn't quite as messy as she was with her cousins' cake a couple weeks ago.

She got lots of new toys and cute clothes, but the next morning her favorite gift was still balloons that Officer brought home for her.

After the party was over I got started on baking pies for Thanksgiving - I spent most of 24hrs in the kitchen. I made 2 pots of soup, baked 2 loaves of french bread, 48 cupcakes, 2 pumpkin pies and 1 apple pie, 2 pans of stuffing and...I think thats it. Officer made me take a picture of the pumpkin pie (his family LOVES pumpkin pie and he wanted to make them jealous I think - it was a yummy pie) Baking is great, but I'm glad I didn't have to cook the turkey. Needless to say it was a busy couple days. It was nice to sit and enjoy Thanksgiving day with my family.

We are grateful for so much, but especially all the little things that happen around our house and make us laugh. Here are just a few

Totally off subject because I am so grateful for the home I have, but I found my dreamhouse and the picture of it was uploaded with all the birthday pictures. I'd love to build this home on a couple acres somewhere - but probably just in my dreams.

We are the proud parents of a toddler.

Can you believe it?! She's really a toddler now! Where did the time go? We'll celebrate her 1st birthday next week.

Before and After

5months since we first started the helmet and we've mad lots of progress - we're thinking that it will only be a couple more months unitl we're done.

Mmmmm.....

Mmmmm... Those were her words as she got her first ice cream cone. It was one of those teeny kiddie cones and she finished the whole thing all by herself. Such a big girl already.

This going to be a long post - just to let you know!

Forgive me for my lack of blogs the past couple weeks. I've been trying to spend less time on the computer and more time doing other stuff so my blogging may be a little more infrequent. In attempt to catch up yet again - I'll start with Halloween. I dressed up miss Peanut as a Martian again and we decided to take homemade bread rather than treats and visit a few earthling friends.
When I loaded her into our car she kept looking at herself in her little mirror like "something's different mom". Really funny to watch.
On our little adventure out, I took my little martian on a trip to visit grandpa at work and happened to run into her astronaut cousin - you can see that it was a peaceful encounter.

The next morning bright and early we left on a flight to sunny Arizona. My brother agreed to drop us off at the airport -Thanks again cause it was really, really early. Peanut is still an awesome traveler! I think I've been bragging about her lately - cause hello she's an angel - most of the time. Of course she got a little restless, but to be expected.

Officer's brother and family live in Mesa and we hadn't seen all their kids in about two years so we really wanted to just go hang out with them. They also had twin cousins for Miss Peanut (and us) to meet and they celebrated their 1st birthday while we were there. We got to go to the Pheonix Zoo just after we arrived - sorry no pictures I camera was packed in a bag somewhere. Of course Phoenix Zoo is huge compared to our local zoo and it was so nice to be out in the sunshine now that its getting colder at home. It did get hot for all the little ones and they had this water feature play area for the kids. They were all soaked, but it cooled them off. Officer and I were able to visit the Mesa Temple, I did a little ribbon shopping and the boys all went hunting one afternoon, but most of our trip we just wanted to hang out with the family.

The twins celebrated their 1st birthday and after they had their fun with cake we gave Peanut a trial run since her birthday is in 2 weeks. I started her with a cupcake just to see how it would go. Um - so after she ATE the entire cupcake we let her go at the cake (Rhett would hardly touch his cake - we couldn't let it go to waste). Her birthday will be fun!

I am amazed watching my sister-in-law keeping up with 6 kids. With them living in AZ I haven't been able to spend all that much time with her so it was really fun to get to know her better. She also taught me how to make bows - silly I know, but she has it down and they are so cute, so I picked up a new talent. Here are a couple modeled by Peanut - she wasn' t that thrilled that Gabe was holding her and wouldn't look at the camera, but you can see the bows really well. Other than making bows - I just loved watching all the kids play together. I hardly saw Peanut most of the time because she was right there following the twins.

I had to censor the cutey bootey!

One night we all went out for pizza at Organ Stop Pizza. The kids totally loved it. They were all boppin' to the music.

Mitch and Peanut were swapping sippies the whole week - what is so interesting about some one else's sippy - I don't get it. Lucky for us Peanut didn't get sick. My poor sister- in-law! When we left her she had 3 barfing kids and was still knee deep in laundry after 10 loads. It was a sad way to end our visit, but we totally enjoyed the trip. I'm sure they're all feeling better now - we miss you guys!